Daemonic Magic System

For those of you who are familiar with the Ketty Jay books (I'm guessing not many), this question is pretty straightforward: How do I create a magic system that closely emulates Daemonism without sacrificing usability?

For those of you who are not familiar with the steampunk Ketty Jay novels, you can still help! Daemonism is not very well described in the novels, but as far as I can tell it has the following properties:

- Preparation: Daemonists can do nothing on the fly. They need to get materials and properly set things up in order to summon a Daemon.
- Music: Daemonism has something to do with sound. Primitive Daemonists use music to summon Daemons, modern ones use complex resonators and advanced mathematics.
- Intelligent: Daemons are intelligent, ranging from ones with the brainpower of an insect to those many times more intelligent and cunning than any human.
- Persecution: Daemonism is highly frowned upon in the main setting, punishable by near immediate death.
- Effects: Daemonism has varied effects. The ones we actually see are:
- A skeleton key that unlocks most things given time.
- An intelligent cutlass with innate skill at swordfighting that allows a near novice to fight toe-to-toe with a master swordsman, deflect a bullet and has limited mobility on its own.
- A golden tooth that mesmerizes the weak minded, allowing the tooth-wearer to give them subtle suggestions.
- A golem. This is the most advanced Daemonism we see in the novels, which required a great expenditure of money and effort. The golem has more intelligence than any dog, but is strongly influenced by emotion. It is ten feet tall, and armoured like a tank.
- Communicators that look like earrings and function kind of like little Bluetooths with limited range. Also used as eavesdropping devices.
- Drainage: Using Daemonic devices quickly drains the stamina of the user, with the little communicator totally exhausting a strong man in a minute or two. Trained Daemonists are much better at taking the strain, but are still limited.
- Skill: Daemonism is entirely based on skill and intuition. All the Daemonism we see in the book originates from a single source, Crake, who is only moderately skilled. It is possible that much, much more can be done with optimal equipment and a master Daemonist.


So, how do I create a playable magic system with these qualities? Don't worry about making Daemonists underpowered, the system is designed to be pretty gritty, ranging from levels 1-10.

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Originally Posted by GnomishGesturer

For those of you who are familiar with the Ketty Jay books (I'm guessing not many), this question is pretty straightforward: How do I create a magic system that closely emulates Daemonism without sacrificing usability?

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I'm familiar with them. I'd never really given it any thought. If I were to try to run something in that universe, I'd probably steal the magic rules from Stormbringer/Elric: they're all about binding demonic forces, thematically similar, and allow the creation of items with similar abilities (there's a lot of DM decision-making in that, but it's simple enough).

First of, you might also like the Bartimaeus Sequence by Jonathan Stroud. While being set in an alternative modern world, it still features magic that is all about summoning demons. Not gritty, but funny and exciting.

Anyway, what's stopping you from creating a skill (summoning) and add a list of demons that may be summoned (difficulty according to power/versatility)? You could also add sub-skills that may benefit the summoning skill (playing an instrument, taking the strain, research).

Huh. I just finished reading those books a couple of weeks ago. I won't lie, I've been doing some fair musing on how to replicate the mechanics in Fate Core, but since you didn't give a specific system I'll just air my thoughts anyway, see where they lead me.

In general terms I'd have characters with daemonism be able to craft items within their "strength" of the skill. Skill in daemonism gives them a maximum amount of strength that they can reliably and safely craft, and it'd involve distinct, quantifiable but still freeform effects, which could include things like bonuses at skills (cutlass), automatically succeeding at specific tasks that are not actively opposed (skeleton key), make the characters able to use their daemonism skill in place of other things (tooth, and again the cutlass if you wish to go that route), or just simple minor effects that wouldn't otherwise be possible (communicators, the see-through-walls -effect of one of the Century Knights, etc). Each effect could have its cost and effectiveness scaled to make more or less powerful items. Exact parameters are of course fairly out there.

At the same time, the actual use of these items for their purposes in play would come at a cost. A daemonist would be able to create an item with power beyond their strength limit granted by their skill but increase the drainage it causes (with perhaps a minimum amount, depending on what the item does). If the system separates mental and physical "health", this would cause mental damage. If hit points are abstract, make them cause hit points. Or something else entirely, depending on how the game emulates, but the idea of cost should always be there.

Characters should generally have some sort of limit of daemonic tools they have at their disposal at any given time. How to emulate Bess (the golem, for those who haven't read the books) would likely be done with other rules, an advantage chosen at character creation or other feature, leaving the actual item rules for simpler and personal trinkets.

As for the equipment used in daemonism but not daemonically thralled, it'd likely belong to a separate but related skill, which would essentially mean that a proper daemonist would have two skill dedicated to safely practicing it. They can be powerful but uncontrollable, controlled but weaker, or a balance between the two. It gives a bit of choice in character creation and allows for at least some variety in different kinds of daemonists and how they do things.

This leaves the ritual kind of daemonism, in the sense of summoning and controlling daemons for information, tracking or other one-off uses. This too would be used by the daemonism skill in conjunction with the "control" skill (whatever its name turns out to be). These could be made into single rolls, or into full fledged encounters with multiple rolls depending on the complexity. I'll admit I haven't given this part nearly as much thought.

You might try porting over something like L5r's Maho rules or Shadowrun's Drain mechanic (with some suitable adjustments) (both involve risking/taking some sort of damage to make the power go, with Maho even having a mechanic that tracks its corrupting influence, though that can easily be left out.