I don’t like playing wizards partly because I’ve been driven into frothing rage by systems where wizards get to CHEAT! King Arthur wants to smite the Black Knight with Excalibur? Roll to hit, Arthur! Merlin wants to fireball the Black Knight? Just skip straight to rolling the damage, Merlin!
Neither Merlin nor Arthur should be Player Characters. Merlin doubly so. There were PC magicians in 4th Ed PENDRAGON: they had to Lie Down for whole seasons together if they cast magic they hadn’t prepared beforehand. Merlin must have done himself a mischief attempting to restore his manly potency to woo Nimue to explain all that time kipping in a tree.
I am still rather fond of the earlier edition Pendragon magic rules:
a magician can do whatever they wan
magicians are only ever NPCs.
But I think Dr Bob’s point is more a mechanical one: one character has a roll to hit, roll to parry, do damage, while the other just has do damage (sometimes with a saving throw first).
Well, that’s the rule they went back to in the later editions.
I think Dr Bob may have a point about ARS MAGICA: the mage only needs to have the skill to create the Pilum of Fire and not to get the Pilum to hit the enemy. The perfect Platonic fire weapon of the spell always hits.
An interesting design decision in the Hero System is that there are no absolutes. It is practically impossible to recreate Magic Missile because in D&D/AD&D that spell always hits, whereas Hero always includes the chance of failure.
Palladium’s fantasy role playing game from like 1984 offers some standout here perhaps.
The Magic system had pretty normal spellcasters, warlocks that had elemental specialties and could multi-class to have another elemental speciality, diabolists that used mystic symbols, and summoners that inscribed magic circles of power.
The ability to understand symbols and circles was a skill most of the magic classes could learn. They couldn’t empower them but they could understand them.
It’s fairy clunky early 1980s homebrew D&D stuff but it sets up in the character rules a world that has runes and symbols and circles and spells as different approaches to magic that aren’t as exclusive as channeling and essence magic in Rolemaster.
They are also therefore much less consistent in concept and execution than spell law but I think it can be looked at as an informative parallel track from that time.
You get something similar in GURPS4—which means something like a fire elemental rnds up with lots of damage resistance against fire, and you can still damage them if you do enough fire damage, rather than “this is where I live, you might as well throw water on a fish”. Which is fine in some settings, obviously, but is not as generic or universal as I would personally like.
I like when different kinds of magic use different enough mechanics to feel different. 3rd ed RuneQuest was the first system I tried that really pulled that off.
Now with GURPS I’m fond of using the default system for learned wizardy types, Divine Favor for priests, and advantage-based magic for witches and fae.
I liked what I saw of Harn’s divisions of magic, enough to crib them for a GURPS treatment using only 9 colleges instead of GURPS’ 20+. Interested parties can find that here (blogspot link).
And that was what Rolemaster fell down on, to my mind: yes, you have different spell lists that do different things, but mechanically it all works the same way, your stat generates power, you cast spells using those power points, etc. (And when Space Master came along, its psionic powers system was the same again.)
Chivalry & Sorcery was hardly a model of clean and streamlined design (I only know the first and second editions, so can’t speak for its current mechanics), but one thing it did tremendously well was making every magical discipline feel entirely different. The downside, at least the way C&S did it, was complexity and a huge burden of learning for the player, but my word it was flavourful.
There are Modes that define effect of magic and Orders that provide play atmosphere and change how some Modes work.
So an spell using the attack mode is the same rules-wise for all Orders but an Order may limit it to a fire blast for a elemental mage or the range to unless a witch has a sympathetic connection to the target.
Barbarians of Lemuria also has 3 distinct modes of magic: alchemists, magicians, and priests.
Alchemists brew potions and craft devices. These require Craft Points that are earned between adventures. More powerful items may require multiple adventures to earn enough Craft Points for their creation.
Magicians cast spells of 4 levels of magnitude. Spells are regulated through Arcane Points. Small magic is relatively easy, but bigger spells take more preparation and take longer to recover from. A magician can reduce the cost by doing things like waiting for the full moon or making a sacrifice…
Priests grant boons (advantages) or flaws (disadvantages) on to people. These are limited by Fate Points that are only regained through hours of prayer, meditation, leading ceremonies, etc.