Magic variant for Knave

The star of the show.

It's starting to seem like the end is in sight for my group's current campaign.  We've just achieved one of the big goals and know exactly where the other one is and who we have to go through to get it.  It may all be settled at brunch with our enemies, provided we can make bail in time for it.  Our success has been thanks in no small part to a highly effective NPC.  That's him on the right.  The most capable member of the party doesn't even have opposable thumbs.  However, it's starting to look like he sold us out to the cops so I'm not ready to give him MVP status just yet.  I have questions, Johann.  Serious questions.  Your communication is limited to sarcastic eye-rolling but you're not eye-rolling your way out of this, rabbit.

This has all been in a house-ruled version of the Nemesis system, on the  planet of Harmony where the discovery of alien artifacts has triggered a gold rush and no-one is paying nearly enough attention to the local wildlife.  The next campaign is likely to be Shadowrun with James II as GM if we can find enough D6s.

After that, I've raised the idea of a short campaign to test out a fantasy module I'm writing: Elysium Bath House.  5e is the obvious choice of system, but we've talked about it before and there are elements of D&D that people find less appealing - classes, levels and dungeon-crawling.  I created Elysium with this group in mind, so it's not a traditional dungeon.  I think Ben Milton's Knave satisfies the other two points.  In place of classes, it uses an encumbrance system.  Want to be a fighter?  Fill your slots with weapons and armour.  Magic user?  Fill them with spellbooks.  Mix and match as you please.  It's level-based, but rather than adding feats, gaining a level just means adding a hit die and spending some points on improving stats.  Spells are level-less but increase in effectiveness and duration as a character levels.  That satisfies the group's objections.

The magic system doesn't quiiiiite match up with the game I want to run, though.  Spells can be found in spellbooks - one spellbook per slot, one spell per book.  Spellbooks cannot be created or copied.  Spells are cast by reading them from the book and work once per day.  I can see why Ben wrote it this way: he likes to encourage player creativity and thinks it can be best served by preventing spells from being overused or overshared.  Want more magic?  Get out there and quest for some.

I can see why, but it still seems a little contrived that spells by their nature can't be read more than once per 24 hours.  I'm looking to run a game where magic is more available.  I think my preferred solution is to say that spellbooks function exactly like the RAW, but it's also possible to learn spells and cast them at will.  Learning a spell is a normal Knave INT saving throw, with an added bonus equal to the learner's level and a penalty equal to the number of spells already known.  Failure means rolling on a magical mishap table like this one by the Hecatohedral Monk.  Check out some of those magical disasters - "Caster can no longer perceive sunlight."  "Caster is henceforth prone to being summoned by summon monster spells cast from other Material Planes."  Some of the entries are ready-packaged adventures waiting to happen.

Casting a learned spell consumes a slot of magical components.  Components themselves aren't hard to come by.  They can be as simple as a blade of grass twisted into a mystical sigil or a hair from the caster's own head tied in an associative knot around a stone from the last river he forded.  The point is to be something that has to be prepared, and then carried and protected in a slot of its own.

I have no doubt that characters with learned spells will venture forth every day with every spare inventory slot stuffed full of magic components, but that seems fine to me.  When you only have a hammer you might be inclined to look at every problem as a nail, but that's a space for creativity to occur in as well.