TEXT: Greetings from the pit once more, dear readers.
  This Whispers from the Pit is about spells, and more 
  specifically spell trappings. There aren’t any new rules included. 
  If you want them, you’ll need examples in the Fantasy or Sci-Fi 
  World Builder Toolkits.
  Trappings
  First of, we’ll look at exactly what a trapping is. Trappings 
  come in three forms—those that determine how a spell is cast, 
  those that give an effect, and those required for casting a spell 
  in the first place.
  Casting Trappings
  A casting trapping is something like “whispered words” or 
  “gestures.” Take a look at beast friend, for instance, which has a 
  trapping of “mage concentrates and gestures with his hands.” It 
  defines how the spell is cast and no more.
  Casting trappings can be used to help define a particular 
  style of magic as well. A combat mage, for instance, could have 
  a rune engraved on his skin which, when activated (an arcane 
  skill roll), gives his the effects of the armor spell. The rune by 
  itself isn’t magical—it’s just a trapping to explain how the spell 
  is invoked. Maybe the same mage has to spill a few drops of 
  his own blood to cast a spell, not enough to cause any injury, 
  of course (that’s a way of adding a trapping to the Soul Drain 
  Edge). A cleric of war wanting armor may simply repeat a war 
  hymn or give a certain battle cry.
  What about a bard, a staple of a well-known fantasy game? 
  Does Savage Worlds even support bards? Sure it does. Just take 
  a the Arcane Background (Magic) Edge and list all your casting 
  trappings as songs or short tales. Easy! 
  Try to avoid casting effects like “drink potion” or “read 
  scroll” unless you’re using a different form of magic from 
  what’s in the main rules. Potions and scrolls, to most gamers, 
  are very specific items, they don’t fit the form of: “vials of cast 
  whatever spell I want from my repertoire so long as I have 
  enough Power Points.” 
  A character could have a special tonic which allows him 
  to work magic, but then you get into problems about how 
  it recharges Power Points. Claiming the liquid mysteriously 
  replenishes itself is pretty cool, but it also means your tonic 
  bottle becomes a thief magnet, and you’ve now turned a casting 
  trapping into a material trapping (see below).
  Okay, so do you need a casting trapping? Well, no, not 
  really. Any miracle can simply be imagined as a prayer to the 
  respective deity. A mage, at least traditionally, just repeats his 
  words of powers, and our bard sings his song. The trapping, 
  in this respect, is already covered by the character’s Arcane 
  Background.
  Let’s be clear on one thing, though—there’s no reason a 
  spell can’t have casting and effect trappings. In fact, having both 
  makes your setting more detailed, and certainly a lot cooler. A 
  mage who simply casts a fireball (blast with a fire trapping) by 
  repeating certain words of power just isn’t as cool as a mage 
  who must commune with the spirits of the fire realm to invoke 
  his spell. Both make the same die roll, both spells have the 
  same effect, but one has more flavor.
  Effect Trappings
  Effect trappings don’t, by themselves, tell you what a spell 
  does—that’s covered by the spell game mechanics.  These 
  trappings are basically what the spell looks like when it goes 
  off. Most times these are for offensive and defensive (i.e. 
  combat) spells, such as bolt, which has trappings of fire, ice, 
  light, darkness, colored bolts, and insects.
  Every spell should have an effect trapping, even fairly 
  mundane spells like healing. Maybe the recipient is surrounded 
  by a brief glow, or wounds rapidly knit closed. Again, both spells 
  with these trappings work the same, they just look different. 
  The trapping doesn’t have to be anything totally astounding, as 
  it’s really just there to increase the flavor.
  As I said earlier, we looked at new game mechanics for 
  acid, cold, darkness, electricity, heat, ice, light, and necromancy 
  in the Fantasy World Builder Toolkit. Even without that book, 
  it isn’t rocket science to invent your own unique effects. Of 
  course, not every spell needs, or indeed should have, an effect 
  trapping with a new mechanic. A cleric of the sun casting 
  healing may surround the target in a fiery glow as an effect 
  trapping, but the target shouldn’t burst into flames and burn to 
  death. The glow is just dressing.
  Ideally, effect trappings should have different game 
  mechanics where they fit. Precedent has been set with fire 
  trappings, which have a chance of setting a target on fire. I’m 
  not going to repeat anything from the Toolkits, and common 
  sense is all you need. If fire burns, why can’t light )or darkness) 
  blind, ice be slippery, and such like. Game mechanics should, 
  of course, be balanced. If you make ice trappings too powerful 
  (such as freezing a victim solid until he escapes), every mage 
  is going to be using it. These are side-effects of the spells, 
  remember; they should never outshine the effects of the spell 
  itself.
  ThaT Voodoo ThaT You do: Making SpellS Special
  Whispers from the pit
  
  One further note, never duplicate the effects of another 
  spell with a trapping. Obscure creates a zone of darkness which 
  lasts for a few rounds. If you’re adding it to blast, the effect 
  should either last until the end of the current round, until the 
  caster’s next action, or give the victim a chance to throw off 
  the effects (like a Spirit or Vigor roll).
  Material Trappings
  These don’t appear in any standard power, but you can 
  find one on page 81 of Savage Worlds Revised, the form of the 
  bedknobs and broomsticks spell. In this example, a witch needs 
  her broomstick to fly. Her spell isn’t any better than a guy just 
  mumbling some words, but it’s a specific requirement. 
  You could go down the typical fantasy route and demand 
  every mage needs a material trapping to use a spell, but to 
  be honest, 90% of players probably don’t give a moment’s 
  thought to them, and having one character continually hold 
  up the game while he goes off to collect duck’s nostrils and 
  spider spit just isn’t fun for the others. There’s no reason why a 
  mage can’t use them, but it’s better to charge him a flat 50 gold 
  pieces per Rank he has every time he levels up (as an example) 
  than demand he keep an exact list of how much he has of 
  every spell component for every single spell he knows.
  Maybe a generic wizard has to have a wand or staff. It isn’t 
  actually a magic item, just a focus for his power. If he loses it, he 
  has to make a new one (takes an hour, day, week, or whatever 
  else you feel is appropriate). Gandalf always had his staff to 
  hand when he worked magic, so there’s a precedent in fantasy. 
  It also removes the need for those pesky spell components you 
  might be thinking of introducing into your game.
  Ideally, keep these spells to a minimum, or tie them into a 
  specific Arcane Background. If you create a Witch AB, then sure, 
  she may need a cauldron to work her spells, which have the 
  potion trapping.
  Edge Trappings
  No, I haven’t gone insane, but I am stepping into non-spell 
  territory for a moment. There’s no reason why a character, 
  arcane or otherwise, can’t have a trapping for his Edges. It 
  doesn’t work for every character archetype, but let’s go back 
  to our bard again as a prime example. If you want to duplicate 
  a traditional RPG-style bard’s special powers—look at taking 
  Leadership Edges. All the bard does is use the standard Edges 
  with a “trapping” of song. No new rules needed at all.
  Spell Names
  The name bolt tells you what the spell does, but it gives you 
  about as much flavor as sucking a piece of paper. Savage Worlds 
  uses the spell names it does for ease of use (we don’t know 
  what names might be appropriate to your setting, after all), but 
  you should really be looking at renaming your spells to suit the 
  trappings—all of them.
  Take a look at bolt and its trapping list. You could call it 
  fire dart, shards of  ice, light sphere, blinding orb, prismatic shaft, 
  or insect swarm. Again, all these versions produce exactly the 
  same effect, but they’re flavorsome. If I’ve built a mage who 
  specializes in fire, I want spells that sound cool, not the same 
  as the hippy druid character in the group.
  One Trapping, One Spell?
  So, should every spell with an effect trapping be a unique 
  spell, or can a mage chop and change? At the end of the day 
  that’s up to you, but if you’re going to use any examples from 
  the Toolkits, which provide additional game mechanics, they 
  should really be separate spells. A mage, for instance, would 
  learn bolt with a fire trapping and with an ice trapping as 
  different spells. Otherwise, he is gaining twice the benefit.
  Making Your Own Spells
  Sometimes we get asked whether there’s a formula for 
  creating balanced spells. The answer is “no,” though several fans 
  have created their own DIY spell cost tables. At the end of the 
  day, a spell is balanced when the GM says it’s balanced, and not 
  before. Not exactly what you were after, I’m sure, but here are 
  some general tips.
  New spells should be available to both characters and 
  NPCs, primarily as a counter to super-spells. If you create a 
  spell which can kill a Wild Card instantly with no chance of 
  avoiding the fate, then you can bet your players will either 
  demand access to it or start thinking about another game.
  Spells with minor game effects, such as an Open Lock 
  spell, should generally be low Rank. In many cases, you can 
  get around these spells by renaming boost/lower trait into a 
  specific spell, such as open (which boosts Lockpicking only), or 
  by creating a cheaper version which grants a fixed skill bonus, 
  rather than a die step increase. The big drawback to this is that 
  it now means there are another 29 or 30 spells available, and a 
  character can only have so many.
  Tagged on to this is another piece of advice—don’t create 
  spells just for the sake of creating them. You don’t need 50 
  offensive spells which do slightly different damage or have a 
  slightly different set of Cost, Range, and so on. By altering just 
  the trappings, and giving them subtly different game mechanics, 
  you can create a battery of combat spells using just bolt, blast, 
  and burst.
  When deciding on the Power Point Cost, think about the 
  effect and how many times the average character can cast the 
  spell. A starting character is limited to just 15 Power Points, with 
  
  a maximum of 35 (assuming you stop shortly after Legendary). 
  Even if you carry on playing at high Ranks, characters still have 
  to climb the Experience ladder first. The more powerful the 
  spell, the fewer times it should be castable, and thus it has a 
  higher Cost.
  Occasionally we get asked whether a certain spell should 
  have a higher or lower Rank, Cost, or whatever. The answer we 
  usually give is, “if you want.” Savage Worlds isn’t a set of rules 
  carved in stone. The rules are generic, and should be altered to 
  fit your campaign as you see fit. If you want invisibility to be a 
  Novice spell, then make it happen.
  No Power Points
  So what if you don’t want Power Points in your game? 
  D&D doesn’t, and never has in the core rules. I know I said 
  there weren’t going to be any rules here, but D&D is a popular 
  game and we know some of you like the way spells are handled 
  instead of working out Power Points. Here’s a very quick way 
  of handling a similar system in Savage Worlds. 
  This is a very quick system, and isn’t a new rule we intend 
  to use. To be honest, it’s not even well balanced, but it took only 
  a few minutes to design. I’m sure you’ll come up with a more 
  balanced and elegant (and different) system of your own.
  The “att” below refers to the character relevant arcane 
  attribute, that being Smarts for most and Spirit for cleric-types. 
  Note, that if a character changes his appropriate stat, he gains 
  one extra spell per day per die increase. I chose not to use 
  arcane skill at the basis because that’s a measure of how well a 
  character can cast his spells, not a measure of his basic ability 
  to hold spells in his head.
  Because of the way the table works, a spellcaster needs a 
  minimum d6 stat at Novice to work magic, d8 at Seasoned, d10 
  at Veteran, and d12 at Heroic and Legendary.
  For example, a mage reaching Legendary with a d12 Smarts 
  could cast 8 Novice (6+2), 6 Seasoned (6–0), 4 Veteran (6–2), 2 
  Heroic (6–2), and one Legendary spell (6–5) per day. 
  Should he be able to cast any spell he knows, or does he 
  have to nominate spells at the start of the day? That would be 
  a setting rule you’d have to decide on should you opt to use a 
  system like this.
  Whether or not a character instantly learns new spells when 
  he increases Rank or whether he has to take the New Power 
  Edge for each spell as normal is a choice you have to make. If 
  you go with the former method, spellcasters get very powerful 
  very quickly. If you go the opposite route, the character has no 
  more spells than a regular Savage Worlds character of his Rank, 
  but he can cast them more often.
  Of course, such a system opens up more questions. How 
  do variable spells like bolt work now, for instance? If I had to 
  use a system like this, I’d keep it at one spell but with different 
  effects at different Ranks. Maybe at Novice I’d allow a single 
  2d6 bolt, at Seasoned the character gets one 3d6 bolt or two 
  2d6 bolts, and so on.
  Other Genres
  These notes apply equal well to other genres. Most sci-fi 
  games are likely to stick with psionics, of course, but there’s 
  no reason why you can’t have cryomancy, electrocmancy, or 
  pyromancy trappings for these mind benders. Even without 
  these, maybe the recipient of telepathy gets a bad headache or 
  his eyes bleed. It really depends on what sort of game you’re 
  running at the end of the day and whether you want psionicists 
  to be people who simply stare at victims and deliver an unseen 
  mind bolt, or who produce a showy effect.
  Horror can run the full gamut like fantasy, but ideally NPCs 
  should stick to nasty trappings, like bloodletting (not always 
  their own), swarms of spiders, screaming skulls, or having a 
  victim’s flesh just rot and drop off.
  Wiggy
  PC/Spell 
  Rank
  Novice
  Seasoned
  Veteran
  Heroic
  Legendary
  Novice
  Half att –2
  —
  —
  —
  —
  Seasoned
  Half att –1
  Half att –3
  —
  —
  —
  Veteran
  Half att
  Half att –2
  Half att –4
  —
  —
  Heroic
  Half att +1
  Half att –1
  Half att –3
  Half att –5
  —
  Legendary
  Half att + 2
  Half att
  Half att –2
  Half att –4
  Half att –5
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  eMail To: SubMiSSionS@peginc.coM. 
  
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