The Island - Playing with Fate - Magic

I was originally going to start my design journal for the Island by talking about skills and what changes I plan on making to the skill list. However, partway into it, I realize whatever I decide to do with skills will be directly affected by the magic system.

The magic system for Time Heroes of Fate was easy to come up with. Using Stunts as spells. Whatever Magic Stunts you have, that's what you can cast. Unfortunately (or fortunately, I suppose), I want to make a deeper, more visceral system for the Island. This topic may end up taking up more than one post as I'm not sure how exactly it's going to work.

Aspects/Skills/Stunts
My immediate idea for the magic system for the Island involves Aspects, Skills AND Stunts. I'll break down how I envision it working below. Any feedback is appreciated. I don't want to create a magic system that's either completely broken or completely uninteresting.


Aspects - My current idea is to have skills for the basic types of magic: Air, Earth, Fire, Ritual and Water. Ritual magic is a skill that anyone can use with the proper components. However, to be able to use any of the other types of magic requires choosing an aspect associated with one of the elements.

Example: A player wants their character Frantosh to be able to use the Water and the Earth Magic skills. He would have to devote one Aspect to each of the elements of magic. So, he might choose to create Aspects called "Born of the Earth" and "Favored of the Lake."

Skills - As I briefly mentioned above, I want to create five magic Skills: The four involved with Aspects are Air, Earth, Fire and Water. The fifth doesn't require an Aspect to be able to use. That one is Ritual Magic.

Ritual Magic by itself won't be overly powerful. Perhaps a minor ward or cleansing food/water at camp. It is more potent when combined with other magic skills, or other skills in general.

Example: A smith character could make an extended test using Ritual Magic and the Trade: Smith skill to make magically sharp blades.

The four elemental magics can work independently or combined. A player makes a roll for whatever skill they want to use for magic (Air might be used to create a gust of wind or to fly, fire to create a dart of flame to shoot at an opponent). However, if a player wishes to combine effects, they make consecutive rolls for each skill. During a conflict, this means one skill during one turn, the next involved skill during the next turn, etc. until all effects have been added. Only after the last skill has been rolled successfully does the spell go off.

Example: A player wants to reverse the gravity in a room. The player makes an Earth Magic roll. On the next round of the conflict he makes an Air Magic roll. Once both rolls are successfully made, the gravity in one Zone switches and down is up and up is down.

Stunts - Stunts are the way a character will be able to quickly combine magic skills without having to spend extra rounds. If there is a spell they plan on using often, they can create a stunt listing what magic skills it uses. Then, when the character needs to cast the spell, they merely have to make one roll and then add the average of the magic skills to be used.

Example: Frantosh is a mage who can get into places other cannot. He decides he wants to create "Ghostform," a Magic Stunt that would give him the ability to turn invisible and walk through walls. His player and the GM decide that the magic skills to be part of this would be Water for invisibility and Air for turning insubstantial. Frantosh has a +4 (Great) in Water Magic and a +2 (Fair) in Air Magic. The average of these two skills would be three, so any time Frantosh wants to use his Ghostform Stunt, he rolls the dice and adds 3 to the total.

Anyway, this is the magic system as it currently resides in my brain. I don't know how well (or even if) it will work as a feasible magic system, but it's the first one I thought of. Unless I hear a bunch of reasons why I should scrap it I'll probably move on to skills tomorrow under the assumption that this will be the magic system for the Island. If I change it later, I'll just have to do some redesigns.