Magic Dice & Components
I've been mucking about with hacking together a system for an open table hexcrawl kinda thing. Just one big pastiche, really. For the magic system specifally, both Wolves Upon The Coast and the concept of magic dice (which I encountered first in GLOG, I think? Or Mausritter?) served as the main progenitors:
If you got Magic Dice (d6), you can use them to cast spells you know. Spells use the number of MD invested [#] and their total [Σ] as variables, e.g. heal # creatures for Σ HP each. Any 6 rolled this way damages your Resolve by 1, signifying a spell that's gotten just a bit out of control, searing your neurons.
The idea is to make magic malleable while retaining a good degree of randomness. No spell level fuckery, just a character's amount of magic die. At the same time, casting more powerful spells carries a greater risk.
Now components are something that's always been so, so very cool but at the same time many systems sorta shove them into the background (hello component pouches) - OR they make components absolutely necessary.
In keeping with the malleability I figured I'd make components a choice (my spotty memory credits Arnold K with this). If you have them, you can use them to power up your spells (or brew them into potions).
A spell may consume a its components to attain one of the following effects:
a. double either # or Σ, without doubling the Resolve damage incurred from 6s
b. ignore Resolve damage
c. decrease casting time, e.g. 1 turn becomes 1 round, 1 hour becomes 1 turn
Of course, the above is just the framework: Some spells might have different options altogether, like making the duration permanent. Some spells might not work without components at all.