Cantriped

Re: Rarity of Magic? Actually I think that has a lot more to do with religious and cultural conflicts then the presense of absense of commonly available "lethal force". People in those areas have been killing one another for millenia before the invention of guns. Introduction of commonly available lethal force just means that the distinction between the "warriors" and the "peasents" has blurred. Culturelly speaking Guns are the universal equalizer in a sense, when just about anyone has a good chance of killing just about anyone else you'll see one of two results. In an already relativly stable group, the introduction of weapons will tend to deture people from becomming criminals because there is no beneit. In an already unstable or heavily conflicted group, the introduction of "lethal force" will pretty much give them all the excuse they needed to start 'paying back' all the indignancies they and their ancestors had 'suffered' over the generations. So really, I think if were going to talk about the effect of magic of a society or culture we have to look at what the society or culture was like before it's introduction, and what forces drive that cultures existance.

Re: Rarity of Magic? Part of my problem with a world in which deific intervention is necessary to survival and said intervention comes only through the actions of people is that for such a model to be workable, it requires that humans were created with an infallible knowledge of certain universal truths, such as the presence of gods and what must be done to apease them. This would fundementally change how a culture develops in ways I'm not even going to try to theorize. As for Axis' of magic: I'd use High/Low to represent magic's effencicy, if it takes just as much or more effort to do something with magic as it does to do it "by hand" or with technology, then it's Low. I'd use Wide/Narrow to represent the bredth of the "mage" demographic, if everybody can learn a few spells it would be wide, where as if the "mage gene" is recessive still takes training to produce a mage then it would be narrow.

Re: Elves

Re: TA: Wizards and Armor Well I was talking more about penalties to the magic skill roll then anything else, and likely only with powers using gestures. or increased END cost due to some sort of buffering effect armor has on magic, etc. Why do you say that given an effectivly unlimited amount of wealth, the only thing a character could do with that money is purchase armor? that seems to make no sense what so ever. Same with STR, both of these hypothetical situations are so specific that the only way they would come up is if the DM purposly wanted the character to upgrade his mundane defenses, rendering the points made moot as the assumption made in my above examples were to find ways for the GM to discourage Armor Use. However your point about opportunity cost is valid, but not from the perspective I was taking, the whole point was to encourage spellcasters not to wear armor, as such there would need to be an effective "unbalance" where casters do not gain as much benefit for purchasing armor as a warrior would.

Re: Elves Yeah I have trouble believing that a species that take 100 years to mature physically would be survivable, especially combined with low fertality rates.

Re: TA: Wizards and Armor Hmm, I've played a mage in TA, and I can say I didn't wear armor, though one of our party members did and he was a warrior mage. Right up til I took an arrow to the chest and two the the left theigh (out of the 7 fired at me that phase), then I quickly decided my next mage would have a lot more defencive capability then a wimpy "shield"-esk forcefield. Overall the I think if you want to have unarmored mages your options are to either make magical defences more effective then mundane defences. ("Full plate? Bah, I've got a 10/10 FF spell that doesn't weight anything, I'll stick with that thanks"), or somehow penalize mages over and above warrior types for wearing armor. (penalties to skill rolls, increased END cost for casting in armor, limit how much STR they can purchase, etc). Of course if you want to remove some of the incentive for armor period then you would imporve weapons in such a way to make armor Less effective in specific cases. For example Bludgeoning attacks would automatically get a level of penetrating, only vs. "real armor" and attacks which historicly penetrated armor rather well, such as military picks, crossbows, early firearms, etc. would get AP, only vs. Real armor. Of course in "traditional" combat armor retains some usefulness, but against opponents armed with mauls and crossbows, that armor isn't nearly as effective as the good sense to duck

Re: What are _____ like in your game? Mmmhm, Tenticaled monsters from out of the depths... the other vaguly purple meat.

Re: Magic System Crunch Also, considering that the requirement above is simply requiring a physical component, I see no reason why the character could have have the same diagrams tatooed on him. "Spell-foci Tattoo"s would be skill levels tha character paid for, and would follow the normal rules as far as number of levels granted for number of lims. The limitation value of the "tatto" would be -1/4 per Hit location (to a max of +15 (-3 1/4)) and naturally the character could not "reuse" the same location for multiple spells. of course such a device would also be a distinctive feature. though I'm not sure if it would get points for that as it's SFX of the skill levels. Anyway still looking for oppinions, I can do this all day but without some help I'll just end up chasing my own tail like I have been for 8 months.

Re: Rarity of Magic? I've never been fod of divine magic, theres just something inherently unpalatable about drawing upon the power of some incalcuable goddly figure, as opposed to "doing it yourself" though I don't mind so much when it's more of a shamanistic drawing upon to "spirits" of specific archetypes. but I supose that partially my own views on religion hampering my gameplay. As far as magic I've used, I like somewhat narrow caster demographic, with mid level power caps. basicly by and large the things you can do with magic really arn't any easier to do with non-magical means, just a bit faster

Re: Elves Elfquest was great, I never finished it, but it was very nice indeed. And as for Faries not paying for college, darn those lazy bastiges! Darn them to warm places with uncomfortably high humidity!

Re: Rarity of Magic?

Re: Magic System Crunch Ok, in prep for rev # 9 (8 was clarification on a minor caveat) I've been going over old stuff I had written up for the system. I've actually been working on this magic system for quite a while and keep ending up with the wrong feel. So perhaps it will help all of my 3 readers to help me by clarifying by intentions in this system. My primary inspirations for my settings magic are drawn from Full-metal Alchemist (not alchemy itself, but the way they do it), the Iron Kingdoms setting, and a small buttload of fantasy novels who's influence I don't want to deprive casters from partaking of. As-such. I am planning on modifying the "required lims" caveat to say something more along the lines of "minimum of -2 1/2 in Diagrams, or -1/2 in 'spell foci'" Spellfoci would essentially be a piece of equipment, jewlery or clothing which has had a "diagram" already drawn into it. These would simply be handled as "Equipment" built with skills the character possesses, Mechanicly they would be skill-levels purchased with the apropiate level of Foci, and an SFX limitation for how narrowly they can be applied (-1 for only a specific spell, -3/4 for a narrow group, -1/2 for a medium group, -1/4 for a large group). Naturally the number of levels given would still be limited by the value in limitations applied to them as normal procedures would be, but are otherwise handeled as equipment, and could infact be weapons or armor (thus having other non-related powers attached) the overall SFX will not change too much, the caster is still applying limitations to "coax" energy into a framework, now I am merely requiring that that framework have a physical component.

Re: NOBLES, KNIGHTS, AND NECROMANCERS -- What Do *You* Want To See? A Cabal of dark sorcerers who are funded by an otherwise beneficient government. The government knows nothing of their actual workings and pay the payroll because they give results and the reports look good. They have not interest in taking over the world or similer nonsense, but seek to master the arcane arts, and have no problems sacrificing virgins to dark gods to get it. or plucking "test subjects" off the street for the practicals on that new lightning bolt spell their working on.

Re: Rarity of Magic? Magic can also lead to corruption, as shown in Elvenbane, where the Elven Lords had so throughly enslaved humans that they've lost any notion or knowledge predating Elven ocupation. Of course this situation was largely caused because Humans lacked the evocative magics possessed by the Elves, instead having psionics. If power had been more evenly distributed then perhaps humans would have have been so easily subjacated.

Re: Rarity of Magic? Not necessarially, what mages know (or think they know) can be frought with superstitions, or as in some systems it could be something that has none of the common DnD-esk conotations of wizardry. Sure, people have learned to wield it, but they have a very limited understanding of what it's actually doing or why it does it.

Re: Rarity of Magic? Hey Thai, Just from what you've said here, it might be worth it for you to try converting to what I set up Here It's not exactly the kind of High magic of DnD, but it works pretty well at keeping the effective price for wielding magic in line, especially when you start dealing with high end stuff that would otherwise cause problems.

Re: Magic System Crunch Ok, Actually I Retract my earlier statment, I just spent a decent amount of time rolling dice, I roll 3d6 100 times, and not once got an 18 (though I did get a 3 which has the same probility of comming up)

Re: Magic System Crunch Well, it doesn't seem to work out like that in practice, at least from my experience. which was all I was saying.

Re: Magic System Crunch I Honestly have trouble believing that rolling an 18 is a 1/2% event. I've rolled better then that generating DnD characters. Rolling a 6 on a d6 is about a 16.6% chance, your chance of rolling a 6 again doesn't change simply because a die was rolled before it, so I think it becomes more likely that your "actual" chance of rolling the same number consectuativly would be divided by the number of times you rolled, in which case you chance of rolling an 18 would be about 5.53, only slighly better then the chance of rolling an 18 on a d20. But were kinda getting off topic. Either way the chance of failing under such a system would rise either in an arithmatic or exponential fashion. In anycase it's still not a system I particularly wish to implement simply because thats the whole reason I went to the trouble of designing a differeing mechanic, I'm sick of mages getting killed just because their spell fizzed at an inoppertune moment, granted under this system it can still happen, but at least if that spell that they KOd themselves with was a teleport there is a decent chance they'll survive. Of course given that Attack Spells often have the highest APs they are the ones most likely to cause backlash.

Re: Rarity of Magic? Well there is a certain level of distaste for common magic aside from just a cultural standpoint. When something becomes common it becomes more like a science and less like mystisism. From my experience mystisism has a lot more plot hook in it then science since it doesn't matter if it's actually true or not, the people believe thats how it works. As for my personal taste in magic I'd have to say, given that I prefer to play mages I personally like magic to be playable (not inanly limited), but at the same time I'm drawn to the aspects of mystisism and intrigue that magic can produce, I like the idea of magic being awe inspiring and valuable as a skill, wether it's overpoweringly effective in combat or not.

Re: TA: Wizards and Armor There is nothing specificly mentioned about armor conflicting with spellcasting, but some GMs choose to include skill roll penalties as a side effect of the Real Armor limitation.

Re: Magic System Crunch Yeah I squasted that possibility in one of the revisions. Rev # 7 is now up, I added anouther rule to the procedures that came to me while working on the sample character.

Re: Magic System Crunch rev #6 up (I did 5 earlier)

Re: What are _____ like in your game? Hmm, we need a seperate thread just for dwarves I think.

Re: Magic System Crunch This seems much more appropite to me, but again, I'll have to work more with the SFX to decide how appropite additional conditions of this nature are, already the system penelizes spell failure rather harshly.