Some ideas for variable parameters and roll modifiers when designing spells

In a prior post I recapped the spontaneous magic rules from Nephilim: Revelation (NR) and mentioned that I wanted to adapt what I could to the enlightened sorcery rules printed in Liber Ka (LK) and Enlightened Magic (EM). In this post, I would like to explain how I would use NR as a basis for more robust rules for designing and casting spells on the fly. I use both LK and EM as my resources here, since EM adds additional spells that are useful for illustration, but I use the d20 roll-under task resolution from NR. For reference, EM refers to Ka-vision as "Mystic vision"; the main difference is that the latter has a passive state that mage characters have active at all times to notice vaguely when something magical is happening in their vicinity.

As explained in LK and EM, the different circles of Sorcery have different limitations. A rule I'd like to adapt from NR is the generic table, which lists the various parameters that spells can have (range, duration, area, etc.). By varying these parameters, the player may apply modifiers to the d20 roll that make the spell harder or easier to cast. The same idea can be applied to the enlightened Sorcery spells: e.g. a smaller illusion is easier to project than a larger illusion, or a smaller object is easier to conceal than a larger object. I still need to adapt the enlightened magic rules to the d20 system, but that's the basic idea behind it.

Unlike in NR, some enlightened effects are Instant in duration and don't expire. For example, healed wounds wouldn't suddenly tear open, magical damage wouldn't vanish, a flipped switch won't suddenly flip back in the other direction, and a person or object moved telekinetically from point A to point B won't suddenly reappear at point A. Those are all things that happen under the NR magic rules due to how the generic table works, depending on how your GM interprets it.

Likewise, enlightened Sorcery doesn't allow the transmutation or creation of matter: you cannot turn someone's eyes into oil, melt a gun, turn someone into a frog, etc. But you can make someone hallucinate their their eyes turned into oil, that their gun has melted, or make them think they are a frog, etc. If you want to transmute matter, then you'll need to use enlightened Alchemy to produce a Black Stone substance that can affect matter in the desired fashion within the rules' limitations.

If you'll excuse me, I have to get back to work...

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