Tywyll

2 hours ago, rsanford said:

A unified powers document is uploaded to BRP Central. It handles all sorts of magic and super powers. It can be found at  http://basicroleplaying.org/files/file/516-brp-unified-powers/

 

That is interesting. The 'Sorcery' power there has some potential.

But the write up keeps referencing Exp? Not clear on what that is intending?

1 hour ago, Atgxtg said:

Not really. I think you are expecting D&D results. In D&D a couple of points of damage here or there doesn't make that much of a difference, due to the increasing number of hit points and how injuries work (i.e. there aren't any injuries). In RQ any atttack that gets past someone defenses can disable a hit location or kill someone. 

I'm aware of that. And I'm not expecting D&D results, I AM expected a system that can create the heroes of the setting and still function. 

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So all those Runelords in RQ2 were always vulnerable to a high damage roll, special success (extra damage) or a critical (which bypassed armor) getting past their armor, and then probably taking them right out of the fight, if not killing them outright. So they weren't laughing. In fact, there is a well known story about a Runelord who got killed by a lucky hit from a trollkin.

They were vulnerable to attacks within a certain vin diagram of attacks. While yes, a special might threaten them (but 2d8+2 vs 15+ armor isn't much of a threat. Only Crits which ignore armor would be truely deadly, or attacks from things with +3d6 or more damage bonus. Average soldier? Not so much. 

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I think you misunderstand. The designers did consider how it would work. It's just that they considered that weapons and magical attack that got past defenses should be deadly. There isn't supposed to be a lot of wiggle room. This is very different from D&D where experienced characters can soak multiple hits and shrug off a lot of attacks. 

Yeah, they created a falsely dangerous system. Look at daggers with their 1d4+2 damage which incapacitates the average limb with a minimum damage roll (and does more minimum damage than a broadsword for some reason). Meanwhile, in real life, people can be stabbed numerous times and survive, fight off attackers, etc. Only strikes to major organs are life threatening or incapacitating...so our heroes are weirdly fragile. 

Another point to what I consider bad design is how the system uses damage dice. Weapons that use 2 dice are inherently more dangerous than ones that use a single die, thanks to how averages work, regardless of the deadliness of the weapon in real life. A weapon that does 2d4 is always preferable to a weapon that does 1d8 because the averages are in your favour...meanwhile, historically there is little advantage to said weapon. Its just that weapons rolling different dice was a thing in the early days of RPGs so it's duplicated here. And to make a large weapon list have meaningful choices between weapons, you have to make them have mechanical difference. 

And if you want beginning, inexperienced characters to have not a lot of wiggle room between life and death, that's fine. But since the setting material includes Big Damn Heroes, I expect that at some point, you can take a knife to the arm without falling over. 

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SO as you up the power levels the game is supposed to become more deadly, not less. 

That doesn't fit the setting the rules originally were created for. Nor does it do well for long term play. 

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What do you consider "balanced?". Someone who can do 4d6 damage in BRP is hitting harder than most rifles. 

If that uses up all their MP, for an attack that might bounce of armor, then it isn't balanced. Also, rifles are irrelavent to the discussion...modern day weapon values are often waaaay inflated in BRP to the point I don't even want to go there. 

If a character is built with the idea that they are primarily a magic user, I expect them to be able to function more than once or twice a day before needing to rest. This isn't first level DND, or at least it shouldn't be. If casting spells is your schtick, I expect it to be something you can do reasonably several times a day. A 4d6 spell, versus a single target that exhausts all your resources is pretty wasteful...especially if you are frozen casting it for a couple of rounds. But balancing damage output with expected armor levels with resource management is hard. 

But again, I said this was a different discussion so lets focus on magic systems right now. 

4 hours ago, Joerg said:

Think of negative or overwhelming emotions you can get rid of for good.

Ah, yeah, okay good point. But it's kind of a double edged sword isn't it? I mean, if you get rid of your feelings of shame over something, or anger, you can never feel shame or anger again, right?

4 hours ago, RosenMcStern said:

Rd100 arcane magic is specifically designed to allow spellcasters to function like D&D or Diablo wizards, if you wish. A powerful PC mage can fire blasts of 8d6 elemental energy within a reasonable range. And long-duration spells are easy to manage.

You can find a sample magician who can use effective lightning blasts in the Conspiracy Theory free scenario. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/224824/The-Conspiracy-Theory

I've tried to wrap my head around the power system in REvolution d100 but I haven't been able to. Is there a post or anything where someone breaks it down in how to use it, it's limits, and benefits? Also, could it be ported into more traditional BRP mechanics games?

4 hours ago, soltakss said:

RQ3 Gods of Glorantha, under the Red Goddess cult.

Okay, this system is rad, I don't know how I've missed it all these years.

Probably because I have zero interest in lunar stuff and Glorantha stuff in general beyond what I can canabilize for my own worlds. 

Duration seems a bit weak (10 mp for a spell to last 50 minutes) and I'm a bit worried that Disruption might be TOO powerful with this system (5 or so MP and it's nearly a guaranteed limb breaker/death spell depending on the location struck). 

Don't like the Free INT limit, but could probably swap that for 1/10th your skill in the various manipulations, and I would probably make each spell its own skill as well. Hummm....
 

17 minutes ago, Joerg said:

Mainly the lack of a familiar and much of the ballast that went with that (having to go through a zoo of Otherworld beasties for becoming an adept, sacrificing permanent stats to it, yadda yadda).

Yeah, familiars in RQ3 were broken stupid. I'll have to check that out.

17 minutes ago, Joerg said:

Gods without Godar was a small boxed text section about contacting the deity directly rather than through a cult. Basically a form of heroforming.

Very interesting. Thanks for the heads up. I'll see if I can find that.

17 minutes ago, Joerg said:

IIRC they were from the RQ3 Glorantha Bestiary (the green booklet with the Morokanth metalworker on the cover). Jelmre can crystallize intense emotions, but lose the ability to have these emotions afterwards. The crystals in turn can activate such emotions, IIRC as one use items. In other words: weirdness galore.

 

Okay, I have that book. I'll look that up. However that...sounds pretty stupid? I mean, why would you give up something permanently for the chance to recreate once? That's just... dumb?

3 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

 

I've never seen a "high level" warrior in RQ shrug off 4d6 with armor and protection spells. But, if you want the original Magic World gave 1D6 damage per MP. 

I'm running a high level, more trad game of RQ right now. With 5 point Shield extended to season long duration, one of the players has 19 armor in all locations. Granted, he's screwed if he needs healing and what not, but its hard to reach that point. And looking at the Runelords in RQ2, many of them walked around in 10-11 point armor before protection spells. Laughing off a 4d6 hit is not unlikely for character's at that level.

That actually hits one of my more general complaints about BRP with armor (or really any system that uses armor as damage negation). Attacks rarely have a sweet spot beyond basic level. Once you start rising in power, its like the designers didn't bother to consider how it would work. You either completely ignore attacks, are completely splattered by attacks, or die to crits. Without a Strengthen Ritual to increase HP, there is little wiggle room in your damage location hp to survive a hit powerful enough to penetrate your armor. At least that's how it feels to me. But that's another topic!

3 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

The reason why no other version of BRP/RQ does this is because it makes spellcasters too powerful. Unlike D&D a 5D6 damage spell that blows past a warriors armor is probably going to kill or disable him.

Exactly. See above. 

3 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

 

Don't we all, but I doubt we would all agree on just what is perfect. 

Sadly true. Right now I would probably settle with one that allowed a caster to do balanced damage spells. 

39 minutes ago, RosenMcStern said:

Maybe you can tell the others what you want ? What specific aspects of sorcery would you like to see changed / highlighted / improved ?

Please see above, I've added that in.

4 minutes ago, soltakss said:

Dragonewts and Dragons use Dragon Magic, which might be a power system.

Were there rules for actually playing that though, or was it simply here are some powers that they have with no context on how to learn it or gain it in play?

41 minutes ago, Joerg said:

The RQ3 Land of Ninja ki skill system, its mandala variant of RQ3 sorcery, and the RQ3 Vikings box Gods without Godar might be worth mentioning, too, as well as Jelmre crystals and similar exotic stuff.

Yeah, I forgot about Ki magic, though I'm not sure I would consider that a magic system (though I guess it is as much of one as mutations, so fair enough).
I'll have to dig up my copy to look at the mandala variant...can you tell me what's different? Is it just new spells?

What did the Vikings box set add?
What are Jelmre crystals and what source do they come from?

1 hour ago, Atgxtg said:

That's pretty comprehensive. The only stuff you missed were RQ3 Lunar Magic (Spirit Magic that can be boosted in Intensity like Sorcery) and RQ3 Dragon Magic.

Do you have an idea of what sort of magic you are looking for?

 

Oh? Where are the rules for RQ3 Lunar Magic?

I left out RQ3 Dragon Magic because it wasn't, AFAICT, detailed enough for PCs to use.

As for what I'm looking for...

The setting is an old D&D setting so I'm looking for something to fit into the arcanist/magic-user/wizard slot. I love a lot of the ideas about RQ Sorcery, but some I hate.

I love preparing long lasting spells in advance, the whole wizard in a tower feel that creates. I love the long term spells allowing the caster to transcend mundane limits. 

I loathe anything Free INT being a limitation on your magic.
I dislike it's absence of direct attack magic. I'm not sure that Sandy's Sorcery or RQ4 really properly fix this (their take on blast magic makes it pretty weak, especially for the cost/casting time involved). RQG has this issue as well...spend 20 MP to do 4d6 damage! Never mind a 'high level' warrior will shrug that off with their armor+protection spells quite easily.

I like Wizardry from BRP, especially the d-infinity website's house rules (sorry, can't remember the author's name) that better integrates it into Glorantha. What I don't like is that it doesn't feel as nice as the long prep wizardry, and I'm not sure how balanced it is damage wise. I also don't like that every spell with a duration basically lasts 15 minutes. Also, with only staves and familiars, a caster has a very real ceiling on how much juice they are likely to ever get (no binding spirits).

So basically I want the perfect magic system... >.<

I am working on a campaign that I'll hopefully get to run in the next few months. It's primarily non-Glorantha Runequest. I'm looking for a magic system to fill the void of Sorcery, but I'm not finding anything that quite fits what I want. So I've been looking through all the power systems for BRP that I know of. These are the ones I have found or have at least heard of. Are there any I have missed? This can include somebody's homebrew that's on the web or whatever.

BRP
Wizardry
Sorcery (Also Elric Magic and Magic World Magic, including Necromancy)
Psionics
Superpowers
Mutations
Enlightened Magic
Magic Kung-fu (Swords of Cydoria)
Biomancy (Swords of Cydoria)
Witchcraft (I think there is a monograph about this? Don't know if I'm getting confused or how its different from any other system)

Stormbringer/Elric/Magic World
Summoning/Binding
Eastern Magic

Runequest
Battle/Spirit Magic
Divine Magic
Sorcery
Enchantment/Summoning
Sandy's Sorcery
RQ4 Sorcery
RQG Sorcery 

Call of Cthulhu
Mythos Magic 

MRQ/Legends
Rune Magic (Battle Magic)
Divine Magic
Sorcery (1st and 2nd edition)
Dragon Magic
Necromancy
Blood Magic
Elementalism

RQ6/Mythras
Folk Magic
Divine Magic
Sorcery
Mysticism
Classic Fantasy Magic

White Dwarf
Demon Summoning

Revolution d100
Various power systems 

 

Oh, I'm very familiar with how powerful wizards are versus how powerful they were. I've been playing D&D since it was sold in Sears!

That said, the point I guess I'm trying to make is that fireball was a big 'clear the room' style spell. Even if a wizard could only do one, he still had 2 1st and 2 second level spells left. AS I understand this system, you can never come close to that, and if you are comparing a higher level wizard, the math gets worse. When a caster has 3 fireballs and tons of lower level spells...well you just will never be able to throw 3 fireballs in this system, not 3 fireballs that could severly hurt comparable targets. God help you if you are up against foes in heavy armor!

At least that's how it seems. Even with items to give you bonus MP. 

Reading over Classic Fantasy, I'm trying to wrap my head around how to play a typical blasty wizard. As far as I can tell, you can't.

A wizard is jumped by a group of bog-standard orcs/goblins. She manages to get off a fireball before they get to her. In order to have a 50% of reducing their locations (arms, legs and head anyway) to 0 and take them out, she needs to a) hope that 1/2 armor is rounded down, and need the spell at intensity 7. That's 9 MP. That assumes they don't make a resistance roll for half damage (I didn't see resistance in their stats so not sure what the chances are). So... an 18 POW wizard is now down to 1/2 her MP for the day (I assume you recover PP in CF as a 1 an hour or all per day, I couldn't find anything else about it). 

If she were up against armored opponents, even human brigands, she needs even more MP to hope to drop her opponents. BAsically giving her a single spell she's likely to cast that day.

I know there are magic items that hold MP, but those don't hold much (not like getting a spirit in Runequest or something). So are wizards always basically 1 spell a day unless they stick to non-offensive spells? I know if she were rank 5 that would reduce the cost of that spell by 4 I think? But that still hardly reflects the capabilities of the source material.

Do the PP come back quicker? Are there ways to store MP? And how does the memorization work for spells?

21 hours ago, womble said:

 

Simple probability, really. I assume in my Glorantha that Spirits have knowledge of various spells, and the higher the magnitude of the spell, the less likely it is for a spirit to know it. Same as people, really. [variablespell]-2 is going to be fairly common, if it's a useful variable spell. The same spell at 10 isn't. It's probably some Maxwell-Boltzman shape on the frequency curve, with the peak at 3-4.

The point I was making is that there is nothing I have read in the rules that suggests things are rarer or not rarer. If they are uncapped, how difficult it is to find X level spirits isn't spelt out. Sure, in your Glorantha it might work that way, and maybe that's RQ3 influence, but in RQG? Are they limited? Who knows? We certainly do not at this point*.

*Unless I've missed something in the core or bestiary somewhere. 

On 2/6/2019 at 9:05 AM, womble said:

Quite. They'd be rare, which is why not every Shaman knows where to find a spirit with such a high mag single spell for you to attempt to beat in spirit combat.

Of course. Absolutely. So the spirit you transfer your Bladesharp 10 to will need CHA 10, but that's not too much of a stretch. The eventual limit will be that you can have 6 or 7 spirits bound (as your CHA starts to get close to hu-Max), so you can theoretically have about 7 or 8 'big' Spirit Magic spells available. 

Why would you assume they are rare? I know they would be in RQ3, but I've not seen anything in the new rules (or RQ2) that dictates a random distribution of battle magic magnitude over a given spirit population. AS you say, CHA 10 isn't much of a stretch and unless I've missed a rule somewhere, every average (3d6) spirit could be carrying a single 10 point spell. 

11 hours ago, Jeff said:

We quite deliberately did not cap spirit magic as in RQ2.

Would you care to go into that a bit more? Why did you make that choice? I mean its obvious that you decided to go that way, but without understanding the rationale, it makes it harder to decide if one adopts the new thinking or not. 

13 hours ago, Carew said:

In Mongoose Runequest 2 and Legend, common magic is capped at INT divided by 3, so if your INT15 the maximum Bladesharp you can get is Bladesharp 5. This avoided arbitrary limits and tied the spell magnitude to the characteristic. I like this approach best and will be using in my games.

That's just as arbitrary as any other limit. 

Ugh, this is all terribly confusing. I thought I understood it. But now I realize I'm overlaying my knowledge of RQ4, where bindings that allowed the spirit to see outside the object were specifically called out and cost an extra POW. I'll probably just got with that as its much simpler. Looking at NPCs in modules with their various write ups and the spells in their spirits and bindings, I don't believe it was ever intended for you to need to release a spirit to have it cast spells specifically, because most of the NPCs didn't have anything to control the spirits after release. But of course this is older editions, I'm not sure what they want in the new one. 

8 minutes ago, PhilHibbs said:

In RQ3, there were different spirits each with an individual capability.

• Intellect Spirits: You can store spells in them and cast the spell yourself.
• POW Spirits: You can use their MPs to power your spells.
• Spell Spirits: They can cast their one spell for you.
• Magic Spirits: Can know and cast several spells for you, some might even know divine or sorcery.

RQG Bound Spirits seem to have the capabilities of all of these in one.

Ah, I see what you mean now. Did 3rd edition have the limit of spirits based on your Charisma?

To be fair though, this way does seem to be how they worked in RQ2 (there was really only one kind of spirit and you used their pow and int for your own). 

19 minutes ago, PhilHibbs said:

I'm not sure I'm comfortable with how easy it is to get a bound spirit that casts Healing on you on demand, as well as being able to draw on its MPs and cast its spells yourself.

Isn't that how it worked in RQ3? I thought that was how it always worked with spirits who had spells that were bound. 

Personally I like the one from RQ4 (unreleased edition):

"In general, lay members may not learn more than a 2 point cult magic spell, initiates may not learn more than a 4 point cult magic spell, and acolytes, priests and Rune
Lords may not learn more than a 6 point cult magic spell (a 2/4/6 spell limit). If the cult spell is one that is not particularly important to the deity, lay members may not
learn more than 1 point, initiates may not learn more than 2 points, and acolytes, priests and Rune Lords may not learn more than 4 points (a 1/2/4 spell limit). If the cult spell is a particular specialty of the deity, lay members may not learn more than 4 points, initiates may not learn more than 6 points, and acolytes, priests and Rune Lords may not learn more than 8 points (a 4/6/8 spell limit)."

So a Humakt Rune Lord might know Bladesharp 8, but a Chalana Arroy Priest could only know it to 4 for example.

58 minutes ago, Runeblogger said:

I like this idea. 

I also like the idea of capping Spirit magic as described in the never released RQ4, because it helps define the different levels of adherence to a cult. For example, I would also place caps on rune spells, so only priests and rune-levels can access 3-point spells such as Flight and Resurrection. This means the most holy secrets of the cult are only taught to the most devoted individuals, which makes sens IMHO.

And then, shamans like Muriah in River of Cradles can have their terrifying Bladesharp-10 because, well, they're powerful badass shamans and they are able to find and defeat powerful spirits.

Yeah, RQ4 made the most sense, if you are going to go beyond the 4 point cap.

3 hours ago, Sumath said:

So... why do you want to cap Spirit Magic spells?

Because it is the way the system originally worked and as I said in the OP, I wonder if it makes the math and other aspects of the system work better.

Hummm...I can see those points, but it feels like if it does exist but is really hard to get then it becomes just one more thing that NPCs have access to that players don't really in most campaigns (Hero Quest abilities, full allotments of Rune Points, multiple sorcery skills at 90%+). As for player progression, Divine spells are there for progression, so are enchantments, etc. 

Personally, it doesn't bother me if Shaman are 'weaker' than Priests... spirits are weaker than gods so it seems reasonable to me that Shaman would be weaker than Priests. Shaman have their special abilities, which are pretty powerful, so it's not like they don't have a niche. But that's just me. 

So a bunch of spells in RQ2 had a hard 4 point limit (Bladesharp, Protection, etc). This has been removed ever since RQ3. Is this a good thing? 

I go back and forth on it. On the one hand I like the idea of powerful battle magic spells, letting an unarmored warrior drop a 10 point Protection or whatever. On the other hand, it seems like that sort of a magical arms race makes the game more difficult to manage (players will always be trying to get bigger and bigger spells, which limits their ability to carry magic, also it prevents easily gauging how powerful a creature might be, messing with the math of damage vs defence, etc).

So...does capping the spells work better? Was uncapping them a bad idea? Was it a good idea? 

For my own campaign, I was thinking of going back to Capped spells, but allowing Priests and Runepriests to sacrifice POW to exceed the caps...so uncapped spells exist, but they are only in the hands of Rune level characters. Or something like that. Alternatively, using the RQ4 idea of spells being limited to 2 for lay people, 4 for initiates, 6 for Acolytes (Godspeakers maybe?) and 8 for Priests. But I'm not sure.