Making a Magic System "Feel" Magical

As I've been typing out the specifics on the new sorcery system, I've been thinking about what makes a magic system "feel" magical to the player. In some magic systems, the player just picks a spell, and it works. They know how long it takes to cast it, they know exactly what will happen when its cast, and they know exactly what it's going to do.  For a game where magic is more like science, this is a great approach. But for a sword & sorcery game, I feel that the magic system should actually have a sense of feeling like performing magic to the player. There are 2 components that I believe can make a magic system feel more magical.

The first element that can make a magic system feel more mysterious and magical for the players is instability. Rather than spells just working, there is a difficulty in casting the spell, and success or failure is uncertain. The player must roll the dice to find out whether or not their spell worked as intended or failed, or even worse, backfired. The sorcery system for Blood, Sweat & Steel already has this element in place, and I think this adds greatly to the feeling of wielding uncertain and arcane power. Many magic systems use Difficulty as a way of making a magic system a little less reliable, because it's pretty simple to integrate. Just treat magic like every other skill by assigning a Difficulty to each task being attempted, and you're good to go.

But another element that I believe can make a magic system feel more magical is unpredictability. Beyond instability, which is determining whether or not the spell succeeds or fails, unpredictability adds the idea that the effect may not be exactly what was intended. Unpredictability is a bit more difficult to quantify in a game system, I believe. But I also believe that it's a bit easier to pull off in a system based on a bell-curve system rather than one with a linear system.

This all got me thinking about my sorcery system, which is based largely in part to summoning supernatural Entities (Elementals, Spirits and Demons) to either Control, Bind or Pact with them. In this system, there isn't a spell list. In fact, spellcasters lack the ability to control magical energy themselves, which is why they must instead summon a supernatural Entity to do their bidding. In this sorcery system, the spellcaster gives the Entity a single task, which if successful, the Entity will carry out, and then return to its place of origin.

In the current system, the power level of the Entity determines the Difficulty. So, a Demon of Great [+2] power would have a Difficulty of [+2] to summon.

What if the intended power level of the Entity was actually a baseline? using the example above, if the sorcerer wishes to summon a Demon of Great [+2] power, the GM uses that +2 as a modifier, and then makes a Fudge roll to determine the type of Demon that actually appears. Using this example, I just rolled Good [+1], which means that a Demon of Superb [+3] power actually appears. The upside for the spellcaster is that they have a more powerful demon to work with. But the downside is that a more powerful demon will be harder to Control, Bind or Pact.

In addition to adding some uncertainty to the system, I think this is also kind of a "rev-limiter" on the magic system. I think it would encourage players to be a little more careful when using their power, and err on the conservative side to lower the risk of summoning something they can't control.

One other thing I really like about this approach is that you can get more impact and use out of sorcery modifiers. In the current system, sorcery modifiers are things with which the spellcaster can use to make their rituals more reliable. Animal and human sacrifice, celestial timing, and places of power could be used to reduce the variability of the ritual, making it more stable and reliable.

Of course, the obvious downside is that this would make for a more complex system, and it would add some rolling to the process. I think the trade-off could be worth it, assuming it can be constructed in a way that maintains an intuitive system.

There is the risk that this approach might feel too unpredictable to be fun to use in play for some players. I'm going to spend some time working out the math on this and see how stark the difference would really be.

What are some other magic systems with unpredictability baked into the mechanics?