Need help putting together a halfway decent Mana system

[BackSet]

Okay so I'm making a fantasy roleplay and I want to make sure people don't abuse magic and make overpowered mages so I'm making a mana system. Or, more accurately, I'm tossing out my old mana system and making a new one. The original had each race have a certain mana pool (I believe the highest mana pool was 25) but I'm not sure that was working and want to make a new better mana system.

 

[Echopixel]

I'd just use a spell system from an existing tabletop game and be done with it . . . or just kill the player from the RP who decides to be an OP asshole who can't listen.

 

[BackSet]

Eh. Fair. Let's go with that.

 

[Echopixel]

Hehehe, I mean that is what I'd do. If someone wants to be OP despite being told to curb that fuckery, well screw you I don't need your bullshit in my roleplay. If everyone else can listen so can you! But you know that's me . . . and I'm to lazy to makeup a system so I'd steal one, I mean D&D is super popular and easy with the spell slots . . . so you get the cast your whatever spell twice a day. Until the day resets in-character you're stuck holding onto them spells . . . or some shit! >D

 

[adrian_]

Could just make your players roll a d20 when they make their character, with modifiers for races. Every time they use a spell it takes off 1 mana. They rest to restore it.

 

[Idea]

Assuming you want a dice system, then I think what the others suggested should work fine. Dice systems are a lot easier to limit than freeform.

However, in freeform, having concrete numbers might seem a little odd. As such, here are a few ideas for dealing with that:
*Having the mana/magic be stored in some expandable container, thus making magic's cost be measured in those containers (example: X spell costs Y mana crystals)
*Video-game type world
*Having "stages of exhaustion" or otherwise very concrete and visible signs of one spending a given amount of mana, and enforcing those signs when you think is appropriate.

The alternative to this is to limit magic through means of limitations that are not mana/energy costs. Honestly, those types of costs are pretty flimsy, and they don't really stop someone from making an easily abusable power most of the time.