Can we discuss roll-to-cast in Shadowdark? I've played around 20 sessions of Shadowdark now and I generally quite like the system. I have some experience with OSR systems, including OSE, Knave, LotFP, and Dolmenwood. Initially I thought the Shadowdark magic was quite brilliant because it is uncertain: roll to cast meant that magic was interesting and that was cool. However, I'm finding myself getting frustrated with it. Many wizards get pretty significant bonuses to spell casting (and advantage on their favorite spells), so the chance of failure seems quite low. While failure does happen, magic at my table is still so abundant and "easy" that it feels less significant than when a spell is finally used in Vancian magic systems.

While spells like Sleep and Turn Undead have always been powerful, they seem overwhelmingly powerful in Shadowdark. Even low-level priests can potentially make a full Lich run away like a bitch. It's fine if spells like Sleep essentially dominate an encounter if you only have 1-2 uses of it, but in Shadowdark people can just keep Sleeping enemies and it's hard to adjudicate this in a way that isn't ass pull-y but also doesn't make the game boring as hell.

I am starting to miss OSE/Dolmenwood a little bit. However, magic is quite generic and perhaps *too* predictable in those systems. Having something like miscasts and mishaps is interesting and makes magic feel meaningful and unpredictable (these things are a big reason why I find DCC very fun, but there are other reasons why I am not currently running DCC).