Brian Stanfield

As far as our guy becoming a total badass by buying his "raise army of the dead" spell, that's for you and your campaign group to decide.  You may just say "no, a spell like that is not available".  But even if you buy the thing with points, you're probably spending at least 30+ points, even with a lot of limitations.  It's an expensive spell.  Sometimes its a staple of fantasy fiction to have these enormous world-affecting spells, so I wanted to leave that as an option.
 
It's up to you exactly how you want to do it.  If I ever run a Fantasy Hero game, I may try my system.  I like the idea of people getting the starter spells, and anything beyond that is something that you encounter during the game.  So yes, maybe Cloudkill is an Air Magic spell, but you have to find it in play to add it to your spellbook.  It's like finding some rare weapon type.  The warrior can't use a blunderbuss, even though he has the weapon familiarity, because he can't find one.

As far as the use for Power Skill: Magic, my post was kind of stream-of-consciousness and I changed my mind on things a bit as I was typing.  At first I was thinking that Power Skill: Magic would just let you do basic stuff.  As the post developed, I thought that maybe it should be more important.  Maybe you can use it as a complementary skill for your more specialized magics?  Or maybe the Knowledge Skill spell fields are far more limited in spell selection?
 
With 19 points, let's say Bob has 30 spells.  But a warrior could nearly take +4 OCV with everything for that price.  And the spells are as balanced as you want to make them.  Let's take a look at some standard D&D style spells.  I'm going to assign some random skill roll penalties (I'm not going to stat out each spell in Hero, this is total guesstimating).  I don't think having access to these would be overpowered.
 
KS: Magic 13-
Detect Magic, -0; Detect Poison, -0; Dancing Lights, -0;
Mage Hand, -1; Prestidigitation, -1; Obscuring Mist, -2;
Comprehend Languages, -2; Detect Secret Doors, -1;
Detect Undead, -1; Sleep, -3; Magic Aura, -1; Silent Image, -2;
Feather Fall, -1; Magic Missile, -2; Protection from Evil, -3;
Web, -3; Detect Thoughts, -3; See Invisibility, -2;
Blur, -2; Knock, -3; Spider Climb, -2
 
There you go.  There are 21 starting spells that a mage could know that let him do obviously magical things that aren't too unbalancing.  Most of these are utility spells that will only get used in rare situations.
 
Now let's say he buys fire magic because so far he's a little light on offensive abilities.
 
KS: Fire Magic 14-
Light, -0; Flare, -1; Spark, -0;
Scorching Ray, -3; Flame Blade, -3;
Burning Hands, -2; Fireball, -4;
 
That's 7 more spells and it gives him some more versatility and more offense.  There's a little bit of overlap with stuff he can already do, but he's not doing too much that will have a really big effect.  Most of what he gets just changes the special effect, or changes the area on what he can already do.  In Hero, Scorching Ray and Magic Missile are going to be pretty similar.  A minor change in special effect, a little more damage, but that's about it.  This version has 28 spells total, for a grand total of 13 points (so far).  But again, most of these are only useful in special situations.  As far as real combat goes, he's got Sleep, Magic Missile, Scorching Ray, Burning Hands, Flame Blade, and Fireball.  Which really just means he's got a few different RKAs with different advantages on them, and an HKA.  Plus Sleep.

There's substantial difference between a GM who seeks to make death (or ignominious defeat) a possible consequence of poor decision making on the part of the PCs, and a GM who seeks to ruthlessly kill the party every chance he gets. I'd say the former is simply normative roleplaying, whereas the latter is borderline sociopathic. At the other end of the spectrum, a care bear GM seeks to soften the blow of every poor PC decision so that there are virtually no negative consequences (character death in particular). That may be a reasonable approach for a one-off demonstration game intended to attract newcomers, but it is not the kind of long-term campaign I'd recommend for most players, especially those involving children. Such campaigns denude the game's tremendous potential for teaching valuable lessons about actions and consequences, all folded into the fabric of fun adventure and engagement through creative problem solving.

Form a fellow gamer many years back, killing the PCs is easy.  Making the players think the PCs are going to die is hard.

Lemme try again with a super bare-bones approach.
 
Bob the Wizard starts with the Power Skill, defined as Magic, on a 13-.  He paid 3 points for the skill, and 4 points for a +2 to the roll (let's leave out his base Int stat for just a moment), so 7 points total.  With this, he gets access to a handful of simple spells.  Let's say we have maybe a dozen "basic magic" tricks that he can perform.  5 Str Telekinesis.  1" radius sight and hearing Images with -0 to the perception roll.  Simple, basic spells.  He takes a -1 to his Magic roll for every 10 active points in the spell.  So if he wants to get better at casting these basic spells, he needs to buy up his Magic roll.  There are better spells that he can cast than just zero level cantrips, but of course they're going to have more active points and so will be harder to perform.
 
So now Bob wants to be able to do Fire Magic.  So he buys KS: Fire Magic for 3 points, which gives him an 11- roll with it.  And he spends 3 more points so he's got a 14-.  This now gives him access to basic Fire Magic spells.  There are a dozen or so spells the GM has created, and he can now cast these just like the basic magic he could cast before.  He uses his KS: Fire Magic as the skill roll for any of these spells, which is cheaper than buying up his Power Skill, but it only applies to Fire Magic.
 
Later Bob decides he's going to learn Wind Magic (or Plant Magic, or Divination, or whatever).  He buys another KS for that.  Each time he buys access to a new type of magic, he learns somewhere between five to ten new spells.  Some of them are minor, but some of them are pretty good.  Fire Bolt may be a 2D6 RKA, Armor Piercing.  Not bad at all.  Of course, he needs to have a pretty decent skill level in Fire Magic to use it reliably.  The basic spells you get are considered "general knowledge".  Every fire wizard knows how to cast Fire Bolt.  These spells are all pregenerated by the GM and are balanced against what warriors and other classes can do.  No wizard is going to be overpowered just from the "starter pack" of spells.
 
More powerful spells have to be discovered through adventuring, research, or outright point buy.  Suppose Bob wants to be able to raise an army of the dead.  That spell is not in the KS: Necromancy starter pack.  He might have an Animate Dead spell that can raise 4 skeletons (Summon 50 point skeleton, slavishly devoted, x4 being = 40 active points, or -4 to KS: Necromancy roll).  But Bob wants to be able to raise thousands.  Well, he's going to need better magic than what he's got.  Increasing the Summon so that he can have 1000 skeletons in one go would make it 120 active points.  That's a -12 to his roll.  Now maybe you're okay with letting a guy who buys KS: Necromancy at 25- to start raising armies of the dead.  Or maybe you want him to find the spell through a quest of some kind.  That kind of magical knowledge is probably jealously guarded.  This is an excuse to send Bob and pals to look for the Necronomicon ex mortis.
 
Now maybe Bob doesn't want to do a quest.  Well he might be able to research a spell like that.  He's a wizard, after all.  This can be roleplayed out too.  If he's got the Research skill, have him make some rolls.  Assign a certain difficulty, declare that it takes a certain amount of time and costs a certain amount of money. As an example, maybe it takes you a year of research, and 50 gold pieces a day.  At the end of each month, you need to make a Research roll at -3.  If you fail, the month is wasted.  After 12 successes, make a Magic Skill roll (unmodified) and a Necromancy roll (at -1 per 10 active points, but you can take extra time and use supporting skills and such to give bonuses) to make sure the spell actually works.  If you fail the roll, it's an extra month of research for every point you fail by.  Do that, and now you have your spell.  Just add it to your spell list.
 
But maybe Bob doesn't want to do research either.  He wants his army of the dead spell now.  Well, he's always free to just buy the thing with points, like a normal power.

If I can either buy KS: Fire Magic and bump the skill roll for 2 points per +1, I don't think I would buy skill levels to get a +1 bonus to my skill roll for a few spells for 3 points.  Perhaps the restriction gets applied overall - no Fire Magic spell can have a real cost greater than the points in the Fire Magic skill (or some other derivative of the skill restricts the power of the spell).
 
To the "wow it is really hard to modify a spell" issue, what does that leave us with?  If Wizards are bookworms, then they want a lot of downtime so they can use Spell Research. and spend their xp to modify their spells.  If the knowledge they need is secreted in ancient tomes requiring adventuring to retrieve, then what does spell research actually do?  They can't use it to research - seems more like a KS of ancient tomes and their possible locations.  And now we have the non-wizards forced into specific scenarios because their wizard buddy is always dragging them off to seek out musty ancient libraries.
 
Do the Warriors have to undertake quests to unearth ancient manuals that will teach them unknown combat skills so they can spend their xp, or do they get a free pass and only wizards get told "nope, sorry, you have to role play out access to the abilities you want to buy"?

I think that comes into the GM style.  It almost has to be shown early on that if the players screw up (not usually the dice unless they are only being rolled due to bad decisions) then someone is likely to die.
 
When my players decide that they are going to embark on a headlong assault on a hard point that I have demonstrated by wasting countless NPC lives to be deadly, then they accept they are now in life or death dice rolling.  If one of them dies in this, I am pretty unsympathetic.
 
If they had sought another way round the hard-point, trying to think but it all goes wrong due to issues they had no way of knowing about, I am more likely to seek to transform death into capture or severe disadvantage (loss of equipment, disabling wounds etc).
 
It is almost impossible for the game to be both deadly and forgiving.  Gamers will game.  If the system has built in mechanisms to escape death, gamers will not keep them for special situations, they will consider them as part of the tactical landscape.  (I am not using gamers pejoratively here, just saying we are playing a game and players will often look to play optimally, even when making bad strategic decisions).
 
Doc

This looks like what I was originally trying to do, but then I started thinking too much and made it soooooooo much more complicated than I intended.
 
I think when I try to teach Fantasy HERO to a new group of players I should just go with the spells in the HS Grimoire and leave it at that for a beginning. As you say, a low bar of entry is of great value for this experiment. And the Grimoire allows for different variables within each spell to help it match campaign requirements.
 
I'd like to see your system when you get a chance to post it!

If you are getting the following error that means you are running HCM 1.1.11a and it has the wrong Combat Record export files which you used to export your characters from Hero Designer to be used by HCM. 

If you are using the HCM 1.1.11b (at this time the latest version) you shouldn't have the above problem.  You can either download the new version of HCM or you can go to this link and download a zip which has the HCM export files you need.
 
Sorry about that folks.

In my Fantasy HERO Basic  write up I've gone with a system where the mage is a member of a given school (I'm calling them "traditions") and buys a magic skill that represents their understanding of the tradition's magic. i.e.: it's the skill for the Requires a Skill Roll limitation that all spells have.  The magic skill also doubles as a complimentary skill for KS rolls about that tradition. All spells are bought individually. The cost adds up fast; but I'm foreseeing a game in which most characters only learn a few spells with only truly dedicated mages learning more.
 
To make my life easier I've written up the spells in each tradition. This means that I'm only dealing with spells that I'm happy to deal with. I haven't made allowances for VPPs, MultiPowers,  or spell research. This is because I want to keep it simple. It's meant to be basic; to have a low bar of entry for new players. To this end all spells have a very similar design: all require gestures, incantations, and skill rolls. Some spells have other, additional limitations. If I get a chance tomorrow I'll post my system here for your perusal. <Zoidberg voice>  Also for some feedback, maybe...
 
 

Well put.
 
It's not about when our characters die, but how. I think most of us want to feel like our characters' actions matter and that our characters have had an impact (ideally a legendary one) on the game world, so that if/when they do die, whenever that may be, they will not have died in vain.
 
I don't like Care Bear campaigns because I'm firmly in the "what's the point of a game with no risk of character loss" camp. I once played a paladin-like character in a GURPS Fantasy campaign and I got so sick of the GM fudging outcomes to keep my character from nasty consequences that in frustration I deliberately tried to sacrifice the character in the most glorious and epicly heroic way possible, and even then the GM would not let my character die. He assumed that just because the other players were Care Bears that I was too. Ugh! I stopped playing shortly after that.

When we played horror games, usually it was for a limited time.  Everybody knew that we would only have like 6 sessions or something, because Bob had finished running his game, and Mike wasn't quite ready to start yet.  Or Billy was going to get deployed overseas in a few months, and didn't want to start something long and involved.  Taking a break in the month of October to play a scary game was also a hit.  The idea of "normal guy versus the supernatural" has an appeal.  You just have to realize you're not Rambo.
 
For munchkin players, I found that giving them small scale stuff to fight keeps them happy for a little bit (you can kill a cultist, but the monster he summons flies away without seeing you).  The monsters should be established as clearly outside of their weight class, something that requires a special weapon or whatever to defeat.  1st level D&D characters don't charge dragons.  Even the most die-hard powergamer understands that.  In fact, I think the roll players (as opposed to role-players) are the ones most likely to react appropriately if they think the monster is too tough to kill.  Some Vampire the Masquerade player may love the idea of standing up to Cthulhu and delivering an impassioned soliloquy on how love conquers all.  A point-crunching munchkin is going to run like his ass is on fire as soon as he realizes the battle is hopeless.
 
But I didn't really put players in the situation where they were facing down hopeless odds.  Not in a combat situation anyway.  You find out that there are CHUDs living in the sewer below the city.  You fight one of them when it comes out for a stroll late at night.  It nearly kills you, but you manage to beat it to death with a lead pipe you grabbed in the alleyway.  You hear movement behind you, and when you turn, you see a dozen pairs of their creepy, glowing eyes coming out of the shadows.  You've lost a lot of Body and are barely standing as it is.  You have to run.  As long as the player chooses the clearly obvious action, he'll get away (they aren't interested in pursuing you, they're primarily interested in retrieving the body of their fellow creature).  But now he knows that he can't just slaughter his way through the things.
 
As far as playing doomed characters goes, it can be fun if you're in the right mindset.  The way I see it, in horror stories people usually have one terrifying experience and then it's over.  The sequels usually involve new people encountering the same monster.  It's rare for somebody to become an Ash, fighting the same things over and over again.  The character doesn't have to die by the end of the adventure, but you shouldn't expect them to keep coming back.  I found that leaving them "on the run" can be pretty enjoyable.  The players wonder what happens to them after the game ends.
 
I played in a game where I was a camp counselor.  Turns out the camp was a cover for a Dagon-esque cult.  I was supposed to be a sacrifice.  They already had a death certificate printed out for me and everything.  I found out a lot of the rich, old money families in the United States had traces of Deep Ones in their ancestry.  Sometimes, it manifests and one of the wealthy goes all fishy.  They get sent to live in the underground lake near the camp.  A lake with hundreds of half-fish men.  Most of the people who sent their kids to camp there were part of that elite group.  The movers and shakers of America.  So I found a list of names in the camp office, and jotted down as many as I could.  Names, addresses, etc.  I stole a bunch of money, set the place on fire, and ran.  I escaped the scenario successfully, but I still couldn't go home.  I was officially "dead" already.  A week later, someone ransacked my motel room when I went out for burgers.  The cult leaders at the camp were dead, but clearly there was somebody who figured out that one of the sacrifices had escaped.  So I had to keep moving.  The only way I could get my life back is to start picking off the people on my list.  They are out to take over the world.  I am going to be a hero.  If only they hadn't destroyed the list when they trashed my room.  But I'm pretty sure I remember who was on it.
 
We played that game like ten years ago, and I still wonder what happened to him.  From an outsider's perspective, he's absolutely insane.  He wants to kill all the fish people, the ones who secretly control the government?  Riiight.  From my own perspective, he's insane.  He's not even sure who was on the list anymore.  He's trying to do the right thing, but his perspective is skewed.  He's a half step from putting on a mask and murdering kids at some random summer camp.  At the very least, he's going to break into rich people's houses and shoot them as they sleep.  Maybe some of them will even be the right ones ("Swenson?  Swanson?  Oh, Samsonite, I was way off!").  Wondering about what became of him is way more fun than just saying that he went on to have a happy ending.

I am the big block to my group playing Cthulhu, I hate the genre with a passion(and more broadly to horror based games).  I would not stop the group playing but I will usually find an excuse not to participate when that kind of game is on the table.
 
I do however support disposable character style games (as long as we are up front about it).  In several games we played, including a dystopian superhero game, the idea was to work towards a satisfying death scene.  We had several excellent games that resulted in near TPKs where the dead characters players were happier than the ones that survived.  Champions, Pendragon, D6 Star Wars and Spacemaster all featured games where I grew and sacrificed a character in a most satisfactory way.  ?
 
Doc

As discussed on 6E1 84-85, “Penalty Skill Levels (PSLs) are a type of Skill Level that only reduce or counteract a specific type of combat-related penalty.” The key phrase here is “combat-related penalty,” which means a penalty to OCV or DCV. Common examples include Range Skill Levels (which offset the Range Modifier’s OCV penalty), Targeting Skill Levels (which offset the OCV penalties imposed by the Hit Location Table), and Encumbrance Skill Levels (which offset the DCV penalty for being Encumbered). The important thing to note here is that PSLs do not apply to Skill Rolls or Skill Roll penalties. (The same applies to Combat Skill Levels (CSLs), which also only affect CV.)
 
To create the sorts of abilities you want to build, you need to use Skill Levels (6E1 88-89). Depending on what type of SL you buy, you could have it affect the Power:  Magic roll used to cast spells, the Inventor (Spell Research) roll used to create new spells, a KS: Arcane And Occult Lore roll to research some obscure historical fact about magic — or maybe just one or two of those things.
 
For example, in the land of Korrak, wizards typically use several Skills as part of their craft. First and foremost is Magic (a form of the Power Skill), which they use to actually cast spells (and which suffers the standard -1 per 10 Active Points penalty). The second is Domination (another form of the Power Skill), which they use to control demons, elementals, and other summoned beings. The third is Spell Research (the Fantasy form of Inventor), which they use to create new spells. The last is KS: Arcane And Occult Lore, which is the general Knowledge Skill covering all sorts of mystic learning.
 
If we look at the Skill Level Table, we see that the more Skills an SL applies to, the more Character Points it costs. One of them is the 3-point SL, which covers three related Skills. That fits pretty well here, since we have four related Skills, but one is a KS that the character won’t use in combat much. So a wizard could buy, for example, +3 with Magic, Domination, and Spell Research.
 
As they stand, those three SLs with Magic, Domination, and Spell Research can be used at any time to assist with rolls using those Skills. If you only want the SLs to offset penalties (such as the Active Point penalty), you can take a Limitation on them to reflect that. Creating different “packages” of Skill Levels whose use you define with Limitations might be a great way to add ‘flavor” to your magic system and help to distinguish one wizard from another.
 
I hope that helps! If I've missed anything, plesae post a follow-up here, or PM me. I love creating magic systems and enjoy talking about how to create them using the HERO System, but usually that's more appropriate for a private conversation than clogging up the Rules Questions board. But I'd say a lot of HERO fans also enjoy discussing this sort of thing, so if you haven't yet, try posting your thoughts, ideas, and questions on the Fantasy Hero and/or Discussion boards -- you'll get all sorts of great suggestions.

It's not exactly what you're asking for, but I'd suggest having a few different magic systems.
 
The most powerful, and the most expensive, would be just buying a big VPP or Multipower.  At that level, the character has spent way more points than a warrior.  It makes sense that he would be more effective.  In fact, he should be.  Chucking dozens of fireballs is very powerful, but if the guy has spent 80 points or so on magic, then hell yeah he should be able to wade through hordes of orcs.
 
The next level down would be buying an individual spell.  Somebody wants to cast Xen's Lively Lightning, a modified version of your basic Chain Lightning spell.  Let them buy it as normal.  With enough limitations stacked on it, they can make it cheap enough that it's not that much more expensive than buying it as a skill.  Especially if you just make them buy the extra stuff and let them use the underlying "skill based magic" without buying it outright.  So if the Lightning Bolt spell is a 2D6+1 RKA, then Xen's Lively Lightning might be a naked advantage.  Area Effect Cone, nonselective.  That's 26 points (in 5th edition, anyway).  Now limit it with concentration, extra time, requires skill roll, gestures and incantations, focus (spell components), 4 charges (you can't do it very often at first), costs end.  That'll bring the cost down to 5 points.  That way people can tweak things if they want to spend the points, without being too out of line with the basic spells.
 
At your most basic level, just write up some cheap spells and let the players access them with a skill roll.  Since a warrior can swing a sword without paying points for it (needing only a 1 point weapon familiarity), a wizard can probably cast Burning Hands without unbalancing the game, even if he didn't buy the whole thing.  I'd keep these spells somewhat in line with normal damage.  If a fighter is doing 2 1/2D6 HKA with his axe, a 2D6 RKA Explosion that requires a skill roll and extra time is probably not unbalanced at all.  Might even be a little weak, in fact.  Your wizard buys KS: Fireball spell at his base 13- (from 18 Int) for 3 points, then +4 to skill roll for 4 more points.  If it's a 50 active point spell, that gives him a 12- to cast it for 7 points.  If anything, that might be a little weak.  His spells with rapidly get very expensive, the more he buys.  Taking Scholar would be a must, to reduce the point cost.
 
The way I think that would go, you'd have "dabblers" in magic who would take maybe one or two spells.  Bob the swordsman learns how to cast Fire Blade, and just leaves it at that.  He spends his 6 points or something to get a boost to his damage, and he leaves the rest of the magic to the experts.  Once you've bought 3 or 4 skills with spells, a Multipower is going to start to look appealing.
 
Another possibility is something I had a GM fiddle around with once.  We never used it, it was a magic system he wanted to use in a Champions game, but nobody ended up playing a mage.  You bought Contacts with extra-dimensional beings.  Make your Contact roll, they would grant you their magic spell.  You'd get a default spell that the entity cast through you.  So if you wanted to cast the Ruby Lance of Lyacon, you make your 12- Contact with Lyacon roll.  If you're successful, you cast a 9D6 Energy Blast (or whatever it is).  Just don't be surprised if, later on, he wants a favor in return.  Cultists and other low level magic users would often take the Contact route, because it's a cheap and easy way to get access to decent magic.  You've got a long way to go if you want to be Sorcerer Supreme, but it's the mystic equivalent of handing a soldier a machine gun.

I'm not sure how the "tweak on the fly" system would play out.  If penalties are significant, and especially if you go the "spell multipower" route, I suspect it would be infrequently used, although it could open the avenue for a player to have a wizard exceptionally skilled at changing magic on the fly, who would have less powerful spells, or fewer of them, as the points for the "tweak on the fly" skill have to come from somewhere.
 
The Multipower approach would make it a lot easier for a player to have multiple versions of a spell, since the real point cost (and thus the required skill cost) would rise much slower.  That would put even more significance on "what is a tweak and what is a brand new spell", but could be interesting as a dynamic.  Maybe having skill in multiple schools would open the options up a bit.  For example, someone skilled in FireMagic could not make his fireball a burst of cold as part of a multipower, but perhaps someone who has invested in both FireMagic and FrostMagic could.
 
 
The warrior-wizard comparison can be challenging. Let's assume the spell and weapon familiarities have more or less equal costs (although at 4 points for pretty much every weapon, that won't allow for many schools of magic, and if the KS is a real skill, not a familiarity, even less).
 
What stops our Warrior from purchasing, say, a Naked Advantage on bow fire to fill the sky with arrows?  Now he gets an AoE much like the Fireball.  He can put limitations on it as well.  Perhaps it takes Extra Time, Extra END, etc. Maybe he must succeed in a DEX roll, or a STR roll, to rapidly fire so many arrows (RSR).
 
He didn't have to pay for Bow Research to learn how to do that, or to develop an AP or Penetrating naked advantage.
 
A lot depends on how much you'll allow the non-wizards to augment their gear, of course.  But couldn't our Wizard have bought an "Arrow Multiplication" spell rather than a "Fireball"?

I would say, even at the height of my gaming, it was really a once a week occurrence for the RPG thing. Yes, sometimes more, and we had our long weekends of multiple games when we pulled people in from far away... but I didn't play multiple regular sessions every week. Our group had one weekly game night.
 
That said, even then, when I basically ran a large meta-campaign that lasted for 25 solid years, and five more sporadically, I could only do that by changing things up. Make a big world, with players having multiple PCs, so moving between small arcs of certain characters kept things fresh. "Ok, on we are playing the Vanguard, ,high-powered global heroes" vs. "Ok... let's play Mavericks for a while... NYC based, mid-level heroes on the edge of the law"  vs. "Now it's Malta Professionals, metahuman and cybernetic mercs working for whoever pays in Euro-African theater" etc.  The games had different feels and scopes and PC interactions... but at the same time, inhabited the same world, and got to see larger plots from different angles... maybe one group would set something in motion that another group might have to deal with... so the players really got to become part of the larger world.
 
That really helped me both, stay focused enough to continue moving a large campaign forward, but varied enough to not get stale or bogged down. It also allowed players to GM their own storylines at times. I found that really empowering, as I could then riff off some small thing they introduced, some technological MacGuffin stolen from a lab, whatever, and wind it into my larger plot, and it helped everyone feel like they were contributing to building the world. That level of interaction made it easier to GM, as it wasn't just people waiting to be entertained and I had to do all the prep.

APG1 gives a -12 penalty for targeting the eye. That seems about right.

Paranoia...

Ninja-Bear, way back, our group was largely playing Champions, D&D and CoC (Chaosium version).  It was noted that CoC characters required by far the least investment in time and effort to create and manage experience for, and rightly so.
 
We also had a player describe the games (and genres) as:
 
CHAMPIONS - if you play reasonably well, the characters will likely succeed in the scenario.  It's pretty much impossible they will be killed.
 
D&D - if you play very well, the characters will likely succeed in the scenario.  If you play reasonably well, the characters will likely survive, and may also succeed.
 
CoC - if you play extremely well, and the dice land in your favour, your character has a shot at surviving to play in the next scenario.  Don't get too attached.
 
Actually, I also find this is an answer to many complaints that players don't put in an effort to invoke personality in their characters.  No one wants to spend 4 hours working on a background and carefully crafted personality for a character who may not life for 4 minutes in the game.

There is a fantastic mechanic in FFG Star Wars called the destiny pool.
 
Instead of everyone having individual fate points or power points, there is a shared pool with a fixed number of points.  If it is set up with six points, three of them are dark, three of them are light.  At any time the players or GM can use a destiny point to improve a roll, add something to the story etc, just like most of these mechanics.  The twist is that when you use a destiny point as a player one of the White points turns black.  The GM can use them to alter dice rolls etc and that changes a dark point white but can also turn them over when the players achieve things, act heroically etc.
 
it is surprisingly effective especially when the GM constantly tempts you with what he will offer IF you want to spend a destiny point...the slow turn of white to dark actually ramps up the tension and there is a dynamic early in the game where the players are casual about using the points but really try to get it all or mostly white by the end, when things are heading to a climax.
 
Doc

Some random thoughts:
 
As each Spell’s power will require investing in a separate skill, a spellcaster is likely to have a few spells that grow in power, not a lot of spells.
 
A high INT and skill levels don’t help me very much, since they will not enhance the power of my individual spells.
 
I have to buy a separate Knowledge skill for every type of magic I want to use, further constraining my spell choices.
 
The Math
 
A +1 to the roll will allow me 2 more real points, and 10 AP in the spell if I want the same chance of successfully casting it.
 
Our hypothetical Wizard buys a Fireball spell.  So what’s that?  Probably an RKA with an AoE at, say, +1/2.  He will have to limit that with Requires a Roll (-1/2).  He’ll likely also apply Gestures (-1/4) and Incantations (-1/4).  Will there be other common limitations to spells in your game (specific, or some general expectation of –x in limitations)?  Let’s assume no for now.
 
So he can have a 6 AP Fireball for the base skill level – that’s almost enough for one whole Damage Class!  Let’s assume he wants his Fireball to be a 1d6+1 KA (matching a Broadsword with no STR add).  That’s 30 AP and 15 RP, so he needs to invest 15 points in the skill, meaning +6 to the roll.  So he now has a 19- roll (13- base from 20 INT), which means he can successfully cast the spell on a 16-.
 
Absent huge limitations, it doesn’t seem like Wizards will fail at casting their spells very often, as they are forced to take a pretty high skill roll.  Maybe our Wizard needs an OAF Staff (or wand, or material component, or whatever) to cast his spell, so that makes total limitations -2.
 
Now his 30 AP Fireball is only 10 RP, and he could drop the skill to +4 and have a 17- (succeeding in its casting on a 14- roll, which seems OK – you don’t want the spells to fizzle as often as they function, after all).
 
Later, he can spend another 4 points to get that skill up to 19-, and bump the Fireball to 45 AP (2d6 KA), which will succeed on a 15- roll.
 
Assuming the expectation is -2 in Limitations, that seems OK.
 
Now, he also wants a Fire Shield to protect him from harm, so perhaps that is 6 PD, 6 ED Resistant Protection (similar to chain mail) which Costs END to Activate (-1/4), along with all those other limitations.  That’s 18 AP, and 6 RP, so he has to invest in +2 to the skill roll, or 15-, success on 13-.  Also feels OK.
 
Spell Research - Tweak
 
So we want Spell Research to tweak the spell. 
 
First off, what does “tweaking a fireball mean?  Can he vary the AoE, perhaps, so that 2d6 RKA, +1/2 AoE could become 2d6+1, +1/4 AoE, or a smaller Fireball that’s AoE 1 hex Accurate (+1/2, so still 2d6), or expand it to 1d6+1 with a +1.25 AoE?
 
Can he remove AoE entirely and make it a FireBolt?
 
Can he change it to a ball of cold, altering the SFX (maybe this requires adding the Variable SFX advantage, so it gets a little weaker, or a little smaller, or both)?
 
Could he make it a Line or Cone of Fire instead of a Sphere?
 
Maybe he can make it AP, or NND heatstroke instead of flames?
 
Could he change, or even remove, limitations (so he could drop that 2d6 Fireball to 1d6+1, and cast it with no Staff, or replace the Gestures and Incantations with Concentration, 0 DCV)?
 
It seems reasonable that the difficulty would vary based on the power of the spell (so total AP) and the extent of the changes (so perhaps every +1/4 change to advantages or limitations).  Maybe that’s -1 per 10 AP, and -1 for each 1/4 change to limitations or advantages – so if he wants to convert the Fireball to a FireBolt that has no OAF and swaps out Gestures & Incantations for Concentration, that’s -4 for 45 AP, -2 for changing +1/2 of advantages, -2 for swapping +1/2 of limitations and -4 for removing the OAF +1 limitation, for a total of -12 – fair enough, as he’s changed almost every element of the spell – only a truly expert wizard should be able to do so.
 
Should this come from Spell Research, or from the KS used to grant access to this spell school?  The latter would give wizards a reason to bump up that KS, and also mean one can be more versatile in some schools than others (also a further reason to specialize).  Maybe the KS or Spell Research is a complementary roll.
 
Spell Research – Create
 
First, we need to figure out the difference between tweak and creation.  Then we need to figure out how we want research to work when creating a brand-new spell.  Presumably, AP penalties apply, but why invent a high AP spell when you can invent it at low AP (with a 3 point skill), then just buy the skill roll up?  Maybe AP penalties don’t apply. 
 
A KS is likely also needed, in the appropriate school (perhaps a complementary skill).
 
Perhaps a penalty based on how far away this is from existing spells in the school (as this is a way to get out of buying multiple schools’ KS)?  A Fire Wizard seeking to create a Fire Bolt spell might have an easier time than one seeking to Teleport between fires.  This would clearly be pretty judgmental.
 
Research likely takes a long time.  Maybe the standard is 10 years (tweak for desired frequency of new spells in the game world), so if you want to reduce the time, you need a really good roll to succeed with the penalties for moving down the time chart.  Perhaps you need an expensive library, lab, components, etc., so loot becomes important.  Can assistants help you research?
 
This seems like the challenging one to nail down – first, you need to assess how common you want new spells to be, as that should guide the research rules.

This is a very valid point - what is an RPG beyond "let's pretend" with more objective, rather than purely subjective, task resolution? 
 
"I shot you - fall down, you are dead!" 
 
"No, you missed - I am not hurt."
 
is replaced with "My roll hits any DCV up to 9", so we can determine whether I hit or missed.  Then we will roll damage and see whether you are dead, or how injured you are, if you were indeed hit.
 
But the line gets drawn in different placed by different people.
 
 
To take a more commonly debated mechanic, a great Charm or Persuasion roll by an NPC perhaps should be taken to indicate that my character should be more persuaded and willing to believe him than I, the player, wanted, or realized from pure intuition.  Rather than contradicting the dice when Slick Eddie rolls a 4 on his Persuasion roll, should I not relinquish a degree of agency to circumstances including Slick Eddie's social skills, and that great die roll, and accept that my character is seeing things Eddy's way?
 
If Slick Eddie had, instead, pulled a Saturday night special, and I laughed because I have a DCV of 10, and I know he has an OCV of 3, that 4 would still hit.  No one would side with me if I insisted that he should have missed instead of taking me out with a lucky damage roll.  Why should Slick Eddie's social skills should only affect me if I choose to allow it, or I am being "robbed of player agency"?  Just like, in CoC, the Sanity system will dictate just how hard my character's mental state is hit by shocking circumstances, and Cthulhu's combat stats will dictate whether how rapidly and gruesomely my character dies.
 
Note that I am intentionally flipping between "I/me" and "my character".  But I am not my character, and I should not conflate them.  I am playing a role in a game - hence the name of the hobby.  That is the role of my character, as my character interacts with the game rules. 
 
I am not being robbed of player agency when the dice do not go my way, and the mechanics dictate things do not play out as I may have wished.  I direct what I want my character to do in the game, be it resisting Slick Eddie's persuasive charms, dodging his gunfire, maintaining my grip when confronted with a shocking or terrifying event, or surviving an encounter with a Great Old One.  But my character's abilities, as compared to the abilities of those wishing to prevent my character achieving the goals I have set out for him, are adjudicated by the dice to determine whether my character successfully achieves the objectives I have given him.  At least, that is the way it works in a game.  When I see the results, I should be playing the role of my character as he responds to those results (or, perhaps, making a new character, depending on just how bad those results were for the present one).

No offense intended, RDU Neil. I should have been more explicit that the "training wheels" are for my case in particular, not for you or anyone else who may use this approach. In principle, zslane is right in that people need to want to role play in the first place rather than just problem solving. But I agree with you in that incentives are a great tool to keep people's heads in the game.
 
 
I was thinking about this imbalancing problem as well: perhaps the dice could count as xd6 to add to damage, so if you roll 3 "drama dice" a 1, a 5, and a 6, you add 12 to the damage. But when used for reducing skill rolls, penalties, etc., the body of the dice could be counted for the reduction. For instance, if you roll 3d6 "drama dice" to influence a skill roll, and roll a 1, a 5, and a 6, you'd get -0, -1, and -2 for a total of -3 to the skill roll. 

I know that some (many) may disagree with what I am about to say.
 
But Fantasy Hero does not have a magic system that can be "played out of the box".  Fantasy Hero does not work that way.  It gives you the tools to build a tailored magic system to your world.
 
You decide how magic will work and then build it and tell the players what the rules are.
 
Hero System as a whole is not like most of the RPG's out there. 
The way I usually explain it is this way.  
 
D&D, Pathfinder are like a Play Station or X-Box game.  A complete programmed game with everything designed on a disc.
Hero System is like the programming language used to make the Play Station or X-Box game.  It gives you RPG "Code" that you use to make your game. 
 
Fantasy Hero has examples of magic spells and advice on creating a magic system.  But it does not have a complete ready to use comprehensive spell system.