[5th Edition]Tarakian Age Magic System Work

[Tywyll]

So I remember a long time ago reading a lot of gripes and complaints about the Ta magic system (dividing actual spell costs by 3 for final cost). 

 

Is this a problem in play? Does it makes casters too powerful? Or does it balance with free gear?

 

Furher, does it make a difference if magical items are 'free' when found (instead of paid for out of character points, unless the PC builds them)?

[Lord Liaden]

IME ease of buying magic spells with character points, or obtaining magic items for free, has more to do with the tone and style of campaign you want to run than with balancing different types of characters, e.g. magic-rich "high fantasy" or grittier "low fantasy." For a lot of RPGs choosing one character "class" is about exclusivity; there are things only that class can do, and other things it explicitly can't do. In Hero such things are campaign ground rule choices rather than hard-wired into the game. If a thief character wants to learn a spell of silence, or a warrior wants to learn how to brew a potion of strength, or a wizard wants to learn the Fencing Martial Art, each GM in consultation with his/her players decides if that's appropriate to the campaign.

 

Personally I find monitoring the Active Points and Damage Classes in Powers built as magic, in relation to the abilities of non-magical characters, to be more useful to maintaining game balance than whether or not a CP divisor is employed. That said, the dividing-spell-costs approach makes it easier to build more rounded spell casters, as well as spread magic more liberally among different PCs. Depending on campaign objectives, and the expectations of your players, that may or may not be problematic.

 

My suggestion when trying a specific approach for the first time, is to let your players know that this is an experiment, and if it doesn't work out you'd like them to be on board with reworking their characters to better suit the game you want.

[ScottishFox]

I'm using a similar approach for my Pillars of Eternity I conversion to HERO.

 

Spells all have a cost multiplier of 0.4 (basically divide final cost by 2.5), but we've balanced that by tossing multipowers out the window.

 

Spells are coming out to a reasonable cost.