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Quote from: Balbinus;263864Quite a lot of work though, no?

Could be.

On the other hand, in that kind of game, PCs are unlikely to be sorcerers.  I'd be tempted to just come up with NPC sorcerers that have whatever specific magic powers I decide to give them.  PC "dabblers" would also be granted small spells/rituals if they managed to acquire such.  

In other words, you wouldn't need a complete "system" for handling sorcery.  In many ways, I like this better than a codified system, since it makes sorcery that much more mysterious and weird.  

If you wanted a more comprehensive "system," there are multiple sources that could be drawn on for inspiration: the system in the 1e Lankhmar supplement for AD&D, the system in Stormbringer, the system in Green Ronin's Black Company book (or True Sorcery), the approach taken in d20 Call of Cthulhu (and the Book of Vile Darkness), et cetera.

Quote from: Philotomy Jurament;264375In other words, you wouldn't need a complete "system" for handling sorcery.  In many ways, I like this better than a codified system, since it makes sorcery that much more mysterious and weird.

In Praedor, the magic system boils down to loose guidelines for setting the difficulty level of the attempted effect, depending on just how far it would bend the laws of nature: for instance, manipulating probability is trivial, and reading minds rather more difficult, and blurring the line between life and death so that a corpse will rise again as the person it once was... well, with enough effort an exceptional sorcerer might conceivably pull that off, at the risk of a backlash which in the worst cases could bring to a mockery of life something that was never meant to shamble blindly around or hunger for human flesh. It's all strictly for NPCs, of course: sorcery in the setting is an arcane science that requires several lifetimes to master. At best PCs can get their hands on tiny scraps of the power in the form of alchemical concoctions and rare artifacts. And smart characters may avoid anything that reeks of magic, anyway, since even touching an ancient talisman can mean instant death.