Tywyll

Just finishing up my mage only fantasy game. I was planning to link the starting info here if people were interested, so I will take this to mean people are interested.
Some caveats to the primer, it is a living document and as such contains notes and modifications, but we had to tweak some things on the fly that might not have made it in. For example, I would probably drop the Ranks AP ranges down and change the skill penalties to match. No one had any reason to buy access to anything higher than Rank C. In any event:
5 Magics Primer
 
If anyone was interested in the Traveler based character gen we used, here's the whole directory:
5 Magics Setup Documentation

This is the link for my basic magic system, there's a lot more about it in my book The Fantasy Codex, but this gives you the bare bones.
 
Hint: when I come out with the Player's Guide for my Jolrhos campaign setting, this will be altered slightly and expanded.

Small change hurts.
 
For my homebrew low-end-of-High Fantasy campaign I'm planning to mostly use MPs for arcane spells and VPPs for religious invocations.
 
The basis for arcane spellcasting is the Talent Mage Sense, an Unusual sense bought as Detect Magic (Sense) for 7 points. Other Sense Modifiers can be added before or during play, like Discriminatory, Range, Increased Arc of Perception, and Targeting. Characters are mostly born with Mage Sight, but it can be bought in play in very rare circumstances. Northern spirit warriors, for example, gain the talent when they are imbued with their totem spirit.
 
The size of the Multipower slots would be determined by the relevant Skill for a specific magic tradition (elemental wizardry, animistic druidry, mentalist sorcery ... all Skills based on EGO); fifteen points of Variable slot MP for every point over ten in the Skill. When a spell is first learned, there are certain Limitations that must be bought: Requires [Magic Tradition] Skill Roll (-1 per 20 Active Points), Concentration (½ DCV), Extra Time (full phase), OAF (for example, a staff for a wizard), Gestures (one hand, to activate), Incantations (to activate); all of them can be bought off except for RSR (which can be taken as a Limitation on the MP as a whole). Spells can be bought outside the MP, but then the RSR is -1 per 10 Active Points and the other Limitations should only be bought off with justification.
 
The VPP-for-invocations bit I haven't hashed out in detail yet. Mostly this is because actual holy people are rare, and their personalities mostly make them more suitable as NPCs, I feel.

Thanks. Almost all of them saw play to some extent or the other, though the magic systems that have been used by PC's have gotten more actual playtime than some that were only used by NPC's. A couple of them were mentioned and were "in play" but due to the vagaries of campaign flow the players never wandered into an area or scenario where it became relevant.
 
Magecraft is one of my favorites, and has been used by both NPC's and PC's. Other people have sent me emails over the years indicating that they used it in whole or part to good success. The `Ars Mysterium` type of magic in Here There Be Monsters is adapted from it and may be a cleaner representation. Generally speaking, the various magic systems listed in Here There Be Monsters for Mystics to use are my current working set, and if I were to ever revisit the Fantasy Hero material again I would rebase off of the HtbM set rather than going back to the original 5e versions in the fantasy section of the site. You might want to check them out.

I'm a bit flabbergasted by people complaining about this.
 
I mean, in any fantasy game where you have casters and non-casters the casters are almost always 'the most powerful' by dint of versatility. Even in Hero where two characters might have the same points and therefore be 'balanced', no amount of STR or CON or skills helps a non-caster take out a flying, lightning spraying wizard with a ward vs missiles. Just having the potential to exceed human options (with flight, invisibility, etc) makes casters routinely more powerful/versatile/etc.  
 
And yet... the games persist. People play fighters, barbarians, rogues, etc. D&D was worst about this, though the original editions kept play balance with the non-casters having increasingly better saves and spells being so easily disrupted. Modern editions, especially 3.X, ruined that and gave us Linear Fighters and Quadratic Wizards, where there was little point to playing non-casters. Hero is better than that, but if you have a magic system, there is usually little incentive not to invest in it.
 
This setting just sounds like it has four magic systems that work differently and allow different schticks, which seems cool to me. 

I have some magic...oh, never mind...

Oh, I get why KA was reduced. But if anything, I would think a setting that uses hit locations, and is therefore more realistic/deadly would reduce those modifiers to stay in line, otherwise  you end up with those settings dangerous Body attacks knocking people out like they used to.