Fantasy Heartbreaker: Vancian Spells vs Spell Points & Charging Spells

The Gygax school of games use Vancian magic. That is magic that is prepared for the day and gone once used, at least until the next day. Although I like some of the explanations of this, especially GROG games which describing each spell as a daemon which makes me think of spells leaking out of spell books in Hidden University in Disc World, I didn't like the mini-game of guessing what spells to use for the day and then forgetting them once cast. I prefer other limitations on spell usage.

Back in the day in RuneQuest casting a spell reduced a characters POW. Then in the third edition of those rules they added Magic Points so that POW stayed the same. OpenQuest used Magic Points as well. I liked the system but wanted more risks to casting so I decided instead of using Magic Points, or even POW (a characteristic I chose not to use) to track that spells I would use HP and eventually CON instead. That way casting has a noticeable limitation, it tires you out and makes you a easier to kill in the short term. The Wizard is taking damage for spellcasting.

OpenQuest  also allows a Wizard (well anyone can use magic in OpenQuest, but I scuttled that idea) to charge a spell with extra magic points to make it more powerful. Instead of Cure Light Wounds and Cure Critical Wounds being two different spells they have a Heal spell that you charge using magic points to cure the amount of damage you like. I vastly prefer this sort of thing. It makes the spell list smaller and more adaptable. It also makes things a bit confusing. I decided to allow for the flexibility but to add it as a feature using feats. Go up in level and you learn to increase the duration of your spells, or the range, or whatever. This seemed a more controlled way than just allowing any adjustments at a price.

GLOG does a similar thing in that when you increase the power of a spell you cast another die and if you ever get doubles its a fumble of sorts and triples is super-bad. So bad that most casters are unlikely to charge a spell with 3 die worth to avoid the repercussions. I love this dynamic but have opted with a Fumble system (later) instead. What I have done is every 'charge' a Wizard adds to their spell not only costs a HP , but it also adds a +1 to the skill roll which increases the chance of failure (but not too bad, unless you really want to power up that range or something).