I just got my copy of "Forskaen Lore" today. I was flipping through all of the the additional copies of the existing spells when I had and interesting thought (at least I found it interesting).

I ran a session of Mansions of Madness for a group of friends last week and I like how the spells cards in Mansions, on a successful casting, usually instruct the player to "Discard this card and draw another copy of [insert Spell Name]". It occured to me that you could easily add that mechanic to the spells in Eldrich Horror.

Why? Because magic is always in flux. The same number of successes that let you raise two different skills with "Feed Your Mind" today might overload your mind and cause you take sanity damage tomorrow and might draw the wrong kind of attention and earn you a Dark Pact the next day.

That may work for sure, but FFG would have to increase the amount of spell copies. If someone doesn't own FL, he'll have only two copies of each card and if two characters manage to own the same spell, well, you're screwed.

I don't know how it works in Mansions of Madness (though I hope to soon, it's definitely next on my list to play [ those minis...]), but I think there's still plenty of variety in a spell's results based on how many successes you make. e.g.:

0: Fear overwhelms you. A deep, infinite void swells in your mind like a black sea. Your last fleeting hope is that this darkness within you is the product of the malformed magic you foolishly hoped to control, but deep down you know this void has always been there. Lose 12 Sanity. If you rolled any 1's, 2's, 3's, or 4's, discard this card and hide under the table.

1-2: The magic sparks and pops from your outstretched hands like cheap fireworks, briefly distracting the monster from gnawing the last of the meat from your friend's bones. The subpar wizardry catches your robes on fire. Lose 3 Health and gain a Very Badly Burnt condition.

3+: Neon-blue lighting erupts from your eyes, leaving gloriously permanent after-images. Against the laws of physics, the creature before you is completely obliterated leaving not one molecule behind. All of the other creatures on your continent are also destroyed, as well as all of their ancestors across time and space. Echoes of an Angels' chorus fade away as the dust settles. Talking kittens from the Moon materialize around your legs and congratulate you on a job well done, 'ol sport, and invite you to afternoon tea.

In MoM every spell is on a separate pile. Whem you cast it, you look at the other side of the card and resolve that effect. Usually if you fail, you suffer the consequences and discard it. And if you pass, you resolve it, discard it and draw another copy to maintain the unpredictability. One of the few things I liked in that game.