Originally written as an alternative for Clerics, "Clarity Casting" is a way to replace Vancian casting entirely in OSR style games. The Cleric has a new resource called Clarity equal to 1 for every three Wisdom they have, as per the following table;
3- 5 Wisdom, One Clarity
6- 8 Wisdom, Two Clarity
9-11 Wisdom, Three Clarity
12-14 Wisdom, Four Clarity
15-17 Wisdom, Five Clarity
18-20 Wisdom, Six Clarity
When the Cleric wants to cast a spell, they say a prayer and roll 2d6 + Clarity. If they roll over 7 their prayers are heard and the spell succeeds. You then reduce the Clarity by the spell level. If the spell fails, no Clarity is lost. Clarity is recovered by prayer at various times a day depending on faith, though I recommend no more than two a day. At the table this leads to a low level Cleric getting one spell off guaranteed or near guaranteed, then they run the risk of spells not being reliable. This emulates the iconic scene of a priest repeating a prayer over and over before it kicks off, getting more and more desperate. As Cleric advances they increase clarity every level after the first.
This means a level 2 cleric with 12 Wisdom has 4 clarity from the stat, plus 1 for his level gained giving him a maximum of +5 to rolls, meaning the first prayer he calls upon is heard, and the rest has a risk of not being heard. Clarity casting is not intended to make ALL spells have a chance of failure, but to allow casters to continually attempt to cast with decreasing chance of success.
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