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Magic System like in Buffy RPG/Ghosts of Albion? [General d100]


Darkholme

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Since we still lack a general d100/brp board, and instead only have boards for specific game lines, I had to pick somewhere to put this.

 

Ghosts of Albion/Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Cinematic Unisystem) has an interesting magic system; basically:

  • You know individual spells.
  • Spells are designed following a set of rules, rather than pulled from a published list (In fact, IIRC the book doesn't include any pre-built spells)
  • You make a skill roll to cast spells.
  • More powerful spells are more difficult to cast
  • Complete Failure: Nothing Happens
  • Partial Failure: You fail to control/direct the magical energies conjured. Roll on a table of spell backfire effects, ranging from getting lucky and the spell still working, the spell happening late, to being less effective, to hitting the wrong target, to the caster getting burned in the process of casting the spell, to completely unintended magical effects.
  • Casting (most kinds of) spells causes fatigue. Fatigue gives you penalties on future spellcasting rolls.
  • Characters can have a Magic Threshold, which gives you a power level of spell you can just cast indefinitely without taking fatigue.
  • There's a system for multiple casters collaborating.
  • Magic spells often have longer casting times based on their power(multiple rounds), but those casting times can be incrementally reduced all the way down to a single action.
  • The degree of success on a spellcasting roll can be used to apply metamagic effects (increase range, duration, etc) to your spell on the fly.
  • You can do things to get situational modifiers (such as longer casting time) to make spellcasting easier.
  • Theoretically anyone can cast spells (using the occult knowledge skill), albeit not with reduced casting times, or from memory.

Is there a magic system anything like that in any variety of d100/brp? It's my favorite magic system, but I'm just not that big of a fan of the rest of unisystem these days; it's a bit too World of Darkness for me.

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Hmm.

 

That's too bad. BRP has a very large number of magic systems, and I'm not familiar with all of them, so I was unsure.

 

I agree it would be a good thing to have converted, but my d100 Rules Mastery is not yet up to the task. I don't yet have a good enough sense of the systems balancing points nor a strong enough understanding of the power curve involved in the existing magic systems to build a new one.

 

Maybe some day (if nobody else has taken the time to do so) I will convert this over; but it's not going to be right now.

 

Thanks for the info though, Great Old One!

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Different d100 games have slightly different styles of magic. RQ6 and Legend's are very similar but OpenQuest, Renaissance and my own, Magic & Flintlock have some similarities to your list. RQ6 is definitely the leader in the current d100 landscape for different types of magic. If you're looking for a wide variety check there, but the last three I mentioned each have some elements of what you listed.

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Different d100 games have slightly different styles of magic. RQ6 and Legend's are very similar but OpenQuest, Renaissance and my own, Magic & Flintlock have some similarities to your list. RQ6 is definitely the leader in the current d100 landscape for different types of magic. If you're looking for a wide variety check there, but the last three I mentioned each have some elements of what you listed.

I've played some Legend/RQ6; and while I haven't played a ton of it, I know that the magi systems they have are all very different from the Ghosts of Albion magic system. I haven't looked at OQ or Renaissance much though, and I haven't heard about Magi & Flintlock before. I will definitely look into those.

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At the risk of sounding churlish, can I ask that any general d100 threads are posted somewhere else instead of using the RuneQuest page as a general chat room? I quite agree that a general d100 discussion board is needed, but I don't see why the RQ page should become the de facto host for such discussions until one is created.

 

Many thanks.

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Thanks Darkholme.

 

There's no reason why discussions like this can't be posted in either Alastor's Skull Tavern or the main BRP board, until a general d100 discussion panel is created. But yes, I would like to keep this space free for RQ6 discussions.

 

I would move the discussions myself, but since changing to Invision my moderator rights have changed significantly so I can't actually edit what appears on this board.

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Sorry to hear that.

 

It's also somewhat frustrating from the other end, when you go to make a post and see "Hmm. There's no "Right Place" for this thread.". Alastor's skull tavern is for off-topic discussion, and it's definitely on-topic to the forum even if not to the RQ6 board; and I don't expect that posting to the BRP will go over much differently than posting here; but I guess I will see. And trying to figure out who to contact regarding it has also been frustrating.

 

Hopefully the thread I posted in the off-topic board gets seen by someone who can make new boards, and we get a general d100 board soon.

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