Tywyll

Would the greater number of powers from Superworld be translateable to BRP now? The super power section seems a bit thin.

For example, I'd like to see some physical powers (Claws) that use the Superworld build system rather than mutations... as how would you compare two characters built in the two different systems?

How does someone learn a skill that starts at 0%? How long do they spend if being taught or researching before they get to make an improvement roll?

I ended up opting to use the Sorcery powers rather than the Magic powers in my campaign, but for a while I was toying with using the Magic rules, with a level cap equal to your "spell skill score" divided by 10 rather than INT/2. It struck me that most beginning Magic users would have 50-75% max, meaning 5-7 levels of magic spell, rather than a pretty-much-standard 8. Then, really serious magic users with 100%+ skills would be lethal, whilst beginning cantrip-level hedge-wizard apprentice types would struggle to cast a couple of levels.

It helps you a bit with the magnitude issue, but admittedly doesn't resolve it. But then, powerful wizards *should* be scary and dangerous - dirty great warriors with 90% halberds and a +1D6 damage bonus certainly are (4D6 damage on a normal hit unlimited at *zero* PP cost ... never mind specials and criticals... urk).

In the end I opted for Sorcery. It's "magic as augmentation" much more than "magic as artillery", but the choice is definitely an issue of campaign style.

Cheers,

Sarah

I think I've found the fix I'm going to be happy with.

Spells cost 1MP per level. Max level worth of a spell you an cast is 1 per 20% (minimum of 1) So you'd need a skill of 40% to cast a 2d6 bolt, for example.

Spells that do direct damage to a single target and can be mitigated by armor will do the d6 per level.

Spells that do AoE damage and can be mitigated by armor do d4 per level.

Spells that do direct damage to a target and ignore armor/defenses do d3 per level.

Buff spells will be limited to +3-5 in general, so we won't have buffed combatants completely dominating the battlefield and making combat purely a measure of who your friends are.

Since I'm going to mix and match several spell styles, this will keep Wizardry on line with the other stuff I'm going to put into the mix (and leave Divine Magic as more potent in a stand up fight).

I'm the author of both of the monographs you've mentioned above, and I have also done two books for Mongoose's EC line. Despite being written for MRQ, they are very compatible with BRP.

The first was Bright Shadows, an in-depth look at Melnibone, the island and its people. The second was Magic of the Young Kingdoms, which is exactly what it sounds like.

I'm not currently working on anything for them, but that will likely change in the future.

I love Magic of the Young Kingdoms, btw. It is wonderful. Am currently trying to work on a way to make 'Paths of Elementals' work in my soon to be run BRP game.

Any system with augmentation spells is going to produce this result just because one is a durational effect and one isn't. And to tell you the truth, given a choice between the mage turning the archer into a 1d8+9 damage output and dumping 8d6 outright, on the whole I am more concerned about the latter; the former requires the oppositon be fairly tough or have its own magical augmentation but is doable; the latter requires opposition so tough no one _but_ the mage is going to be able to do anything.

I disagree that buff spells must by default be better than direct damage spells. Buffs need to be a viable tactic, but so do Blasts. Currently, this is not the case and Buffs are the only viable tactic.

Even then, the dice of attack spell damage outstrip those pretty fast. Using the Magic World spells as an example (since I don't have the book yet), 1 rank of spell either does 1d6 damage, adds 5% and 1 point of damage to a weapon, or adds 1 point of armor. There's some benefits to the latter two at the bottom since they're starting with some armor/damage right away, but that's washing out by the time you get to three ranks in each of them, and as you exceed that they fall farther and farther behind (someone with 4 armor and a 1d8+1 sword has a d8+9 sword and 12 armor at rank 8 spells; he's still going to take expected 16 damage with one hit from that spell, which is most likely sufficient to kill him outright. Even at rank 6 (which is a more expected result) he's getting 21 points applied to his 10 armor which is enough leave him in deep trouble if either hit locations or any kind of of severe wound system is in play (and could well leave him unconscious or dead if he's not good in Con and/or Size depending on which specific rules are in use.

You've made part of my point for me: 3MP per d6 is good when HL is being used, but not when total HP are being used. The two values are _not_ the same and shouldn't be treated as though they are.

Does that mean the buff spells aren't the better deal on the whole? No, of course not; frankly, there's no way for them _not_ to be the better deal except by being next to useless, simply by the fact they have duration. But that doesn't make the single large attack spell any less disruptive.

Again, I disagree that the system inherently requires that buff spells be 'better' or that they be useless. If direct damage can remove an opponent from the equation directly than the tactical choice is relavent. If it cannot, then and only then to buff spells always become the better deal.

And again, while a world in which the only spells a caster knows are 'buffs' is perfectly valid (Glorantha), it isn't the standard 'adventurous fantasy' setting.

It does allow it. It simply means that sort of thing has a very limited loiter time without exterior sources of mana. Since BRP characters are, by their nature, somewhat more brittle than in most game systems, that's far better than having the situation where its way too easy to simply one-shot someone.

So the problem is fixed until MP storage items are entered into the equation, an then it reappears? That's not really a fix. Further, not all games are D&D like in that they expect characters to be pants until they get their gear. I'd rather see spell casters be potent on their own right.

Then I think the mage's limits there are the least of your problems if he's the only one that can damage the dragon at all.

I use it as a thematic example only. I don't expect a mundane human to ever be a threat to a dragon. A spellcaster, by virtue of not being mundane, should have a chance. A guy with a normal sword, barring the most exceptional string of criticals, shouldn't.

There are other methods, but all of them are more complex and would annoy people probably just as much; for example, you could reduce the cost but apply a penalty to the skill roll of 10% per level over one. That would tend to mean only fairly highly skilled mages could produce heavy hit spells, and they'd be unreliable.

If the magician's potential unbalance is the concern, then I think that is a far better 'fix', in that the most unbalanced characters are only those that are very, very skillful (appraoching the same range in which warriors get two attacks for example).

I fail to see how a -10 or -20 is that complex.

At which point the function of other characters becomes largely to hold the mage's coat since they're not going to be able to contribute as much as he does unless he's supporting them.

Compared to the current function of the mage which is to make the other character's even better while he himself does nothing particularly effective.

As I said, you're never going to have buff spells in a game where they don't win. That's not an excuse to allow magical attacks that are so overwhelming that those without magical support are simply doomed, and that was pretty much the problem with the original Magic World values. I'm not saying that the solution chosen is ideal, but I think on the whole its the lesser evil.

Situation plays a big role in which method is preferable. The problem with the current model, as I see it, is that it is _always_ preferable to cast a big buff than it is to cast a big blast, even if only against a single foe that must be dropped quickly, 4d6 damage is less reliable than the +60% +12 damage buff option.

That's a problem. Anytime a choice is a given in a rpg then that choice is too good. The tactics should each have flaws and advantages, so that one style of play doesn't become the only style of play.

Personally, I love Witchcraft and Armageddon. I'd be interested in helping you, though as they say, it won't be coming up with a formula and plugging in the values, as that won't really work. But if you want to kick around some spot creations, that would be cool.

Granted, I don't yet have BRP, so I'm having to go via guess work till I can get my hands on a copy.

And at least in the latter case, the archer is going to be even more useless. High armor tends to make doing a lot of dice if anything _more_ attractive because you can at least potentially get something through.

Incorrect. Assuming we are in the kind of world that allows for it, the buff spell becomes king (and this was the bane of 3.X play, btw). A magician is much better off casting a 10 point buff on the Archer, that way he gets a constant +10 Damage (and +50% to hit if I remember correctly), versus a single 3d6 blast.

From a GM perspective, which is more bothersome, which has more kill power? I'd say the Buff.

(You're correct that armor helps if it works, but if I'm understanding the standard rules correctly, someone with a source of power points can do as much as 9d6 with a high intelligence, and 7d6 shouldn't be hard. The latter is about 24 points of damage and even your 12 armor points are letting way too much of that through--and as far as I can tell, that's much more armor than the default range of BRP armors; if I recall correctly 12 armor is about what Jason assumed high tech power armor stops).

Not counting magic or buffed armor.

Well, I have to point out we're talking about BRP style magicians; there's nothing stopping one being a decent shot with a crossbow _in addition_ to his magic.

True. As it is, the rules encourage the caster to be a buffer rather than a direct damage dealer. Granted, this is more or less the style of RQ, wherein heroic sword play was the order of the day. But it doesn't allow for the kind of play involving dangerous lightning bolts and other such spells.

I'll turn that around; what does an archer do to that? At least 6 or 7d6 of damage expects to get through that. It just doesn't have the one shot take-out capacity it does against less tough opponents.

The archer can't do anything, which is more or less as it should be. No one expects a normal person with a bow to take out a Dragon (Yes, Smaug got dropped by a single arrow, but its fairly clear it would have been a magic arrow in an rpg, and Bard was a Hero, not a scrot).

Now, give that archer a magic bow, or a buff spell, and then he might be able to hurt the dragon.

But keep in mind a mage will have this capacity well before he hits that kind of stuff; far as I can tell, the only reason a starting mage wouldn't be able to do it is lack of available power/mana/magic points.

That may be, but that is why I'm arguing for alternative limiting mechanics.

Granted, if you want to run a game that is item dependant, like RQ2&3, then I suppose it works... a powerful magician is defined by the goodies he carries.

I'd rather it be more intrinsic than that, however.

I think I'd look at available armor first; my sense is that even a lot of tough opponents may not have more than 6 armor, and given that, damage in the 4d6+ range is still going to be awful.

That's probably true, but when the average person has around 11-12 HP, you need to do 18 points to expect a kill, and that is just on the town guard. To average that, you are looking at 18 MP, or pretty much all of the caster's points for the day.

If he opts for blasts over buffs.

Thanks everyone for the positive comments!

To try to answer some of the questions:

Well, the demons are both everywhere and nowhere. Their influence is extremely pervasive. However, they operate from the shadows (with a few exceptions). They have "people" to do their dirty work for them: corrupt generals, innocent generals, corrupt church leaders, innocent church leaders, superstitious mobs, etc. One of them, Zazeer, is a hyperintelligent social engineer who has created new social structures that reduce or in most cases eliminate the need for the demons to reveal themselves to the general populace. A big part of the campaign is the players finding out that there are actually demons still around, and that they are pulling society's strings. (There aren't enough surviving demons for them to work safely in the open, but they are calling the dance).

In terms of rules set, there are a couple of chapters on this. One discusses which BRP rules, skills, gear, etc. are in play, and another is a variant magic system. I assume access to the BRP main book, and then talk about things like these skills are available, these aren't, these are under limited circumstances, use this rule, don't use that one.

The art was a deliberate choice. There's some social commentary under the surface of the setting.

I did only do one continent and an island. I am considering doing a couple more regions in a sequel. However, there is a reason for this (read the chapter on Marine Travel; the demons are heavily invested in preventing seafaring for a very specific reason, so no one really knows what lies across the ocean).

I'm not sure what is up with the dead tree version other than I was told that one is coming shortly. Not even I have a dead tree version other than my core file that I printed out.

Can you tell me more about the new magic system? I'm very interested in the crunch elements of the setting before I think about getting the PDF.

Cheers!

I don't disagree that'd be better, but its not what the rules do, so some other limiter had to be. I'll note that even 4d6 is a hell of a lot of damage in BRP, especially if armor is irrelevant.

I still assume that it isn't irrelevant, personally. And if you use top end armor (say something like Melnibonean Plate in Elric! that does d10+6 ap, or Iron Armor in a RQ style game that stops 9-12 damage) you are looking at having a difficult time making your MP count for something.

Now, maybe that is the answer (to yoink an idea from 4E): give Magicians an At Will effect that is very cheap (0 or 1 MP) so that they can still be effective, without being the equivalent of 1st or 2nd level magicians in od&d.

And how many rounds does he has to be doing so to get the same effective result that the mage gets in one? Honestly, while I see the problem, I don't think you can overstate the potential benefit of that sort of one-shot take out potential. It can easily turn a difficult combat into a trivial one by taking down the most capable opponent early before he's had much time to do much damage.

I agree that its a lot of potential damage. But how powerful are top end monsters? Dragons in RQ3 had 12 points or more of armor. Can the mighty magician even threaten such a creature?

Personally, if a spell ignores all armor, I'd probably leave the 3 per 1, but if armor was taken into consideration, I'd lower the cost.

Because the magician can dump enough damage out to take out a target reliably with one hit, even if its expensive for him; an archer can't do that.

It may not be what you want to have mages being one shot fire and forget weapons, but as long as they're capable of generating 6-8d6 damage with a single attack, something no non-mage can do, something's got to at least partly balance that, and their limited loiter time is what Jason chose to do it.

Easier balance could be achieved by limiting the number of levels they can cast with the spell by their % in the skill. 1 level per 10 or 20% (probably 20% if you want to stay on the low end). then it takes a mage with an 80% skill to do 4d6 damage.

For that, he is spending 4 or 8 MP, for a chance (he might miss and waste his MP) of doing that sort of damage. The archer can keep firing away, and even if armor does hamper him, he won't worry about becoming a 'one-shot magic item' like the wizard will.

If there is anyone who has a copy they are willing to sale, or could make other arrangements, please let me know. I am very interested in this book.

Gods of Law is sadly out of print, and will not likely see printing again. I sold my last comp copy a few months ago.

;-(

Could you tell me more about what was in it? why won't it see print again?

Just taking a slight tangent, but still on topic.

I feel that magic attack is very expensive when compared to range combat.

For example a competent caster with POW 16 can only cast one spell per round at 3pp for 1D6 damage. He will only be able to do a total of 5D6 damage over 5 rounds.

Compare that to an archer DEX16 with a quiver of say 20 arrows. Using Strike Ranks, he could shoot 3 arrows per round at D8+1 (or thereabouts). Even with a dismal skill of say 33% (1 hit per round) he will be able to shoot 20 arrows in 7 rounds and cause 7D8+7 damage.

Why is there such a need to penalise magic by making it so expensive?

Exactly!

I think they should have offered options: Low Fantasy where one should use a bow, 3 per die. Middle/Adventure fantasy maybe 2 per die (at most) and High Epic Fantasy 1 per die.

That seems reasonable to me. You might want to cap the number of levels a caster can cast in any spell to 1 per 10 or 20% in a spell. Otherwise, ta da!

I just heard about a Monograph for Elric! called 'Gods of Law'.

Does anyone know anything about this? Does anyone know where I could pick up a copy or a pdf?

Bumping up the damage for these spells might 'fix' this problem but still leaves a disparity between locational hit points and total hit points for other sources of damage. So is it in fact a problem?

Not having locational hit points is more 'cinematic' as your character stays on her feet for longer. The 'Magic' spells follow that in the same way as a Greatsword does.

Al

Personally, I have no intention of using locational HP. That being the case, I can't see how they think d6 versus total HP and d6 versus locational HP is anywhere near equivalent.

I mean, yes, if I used Locational HP, then 3 per d6 seems 'ok' I guess (though I still think I'd lean towards 2 per d6).

But with Total HP, 3 per d6 seems far too expensive. Why be a 'blaster' magician when a bow works much better?

If, as I've been told, spells like the AoE one do damage to all hit locations at once, I don't see how this can reasonably approach 'fair' or balanced.

Also, in RQ1-3 yes, 1 mp did d3 damage, but that was also a spell for a world that didn't have magicians doing much in the way of 'blast' magic, so I don't think for a 'generic' rules set that is a fair comparison. Even with, the d3 ignored armor which in WoW, most of the spells don't do that.

I understand in the new Magic system that d6's of damage with spells tends to cost 3 MP. This is regardless of whether one is using Hit Locations or Total HP.

I was wondering if I could get some input on this and some reasoning as to why. It seems that it shouldn't be constant, either you should decrease the cost for Total HP (which seems probably better) or increase it for HL, because 2d6 vs Total HP is not the same as 2d6 to the chest/head.

I am compiling all of my Stormbringer notes and houserules, with the goal

of packaging it up in pdf for a few people who have been asking. This

includes some of my old group whom might get to do some Multiversal

romping.

-V

I'd love to see those house rules when you get them compiled.

I think you should first take a look at the 4e books before answering your own questions with "yes".

Having done so, I can say that 'yes' fits the bill to all those questions. You may have limited yourself to playing it as a skirmish game, but that is up to how your group used it, not what you can and cannot do with the game. BRP could be played as a skirmish game if you wanted. All games if you simply focus on combat can be reduced to such.

Since we aren't debating Gamist-Simulationist-Narrativist styles of play, and last time I checked, BRP still fell in the GS camp rather than the N camp, the only thing missing from 4E currently (and even that is debatable) is a detailed setting to use the rules in.

You are referencing systems that do not use rules like grapple or intentional knockback, or spells like Fear or Madness. But the world of BRP has evolved a bit since RQ2 not for everyone, but it has evolved. Plus, the point is not that the rules specifically reference effects connected to criticals in the RT, but that the GM may want, and should want, to grant special benefit for special successes on a Resistance roll.

Elric! has grappling rules in it and intentional knockback, and barring BRP0, its one of the most recent versions of the BRP system.

And if the rules don't specifically reference effects connected to the criticals, then its quite debatable what the GM should 'want' to do with the system.

Since most resistance rolls are binary, not a lot of them will have much to benefit from special effects of the rolls.

Lemme see, I use my STR 11 vs a resistance of 20, yielding a result of 1. This means that I can either fail, or critical. And in any case criticals are 5% of all rolls, not 5% of successful rolls, i.e. the characteristic you are using has no effect whatsoever on criticals.

You may like it but this will never happen in my games. Isn't it multiplying by 5 easier than fumbling with numbers to adapt to d20 what was developed for d100?

Considering Resistance Rolls almost never use specials and criticals (I've never seen an example of such in CoC or SB or Elric!) its a moot point. So, a d20 would work perfectly well for a table/rule that was created for RQ2 where-in every %tile roll was in 5% increments.

Not quite, Trif. Some spells work differently if the roll to overcome the target resistance is a special of critical success (Fear, Madness, etc.). Other resistance rolls have additional effects if the roll is a special success, for example the intentional knockback is (or used to be) STR+SIZ vs. SIZ+DEX, and it allows specials or critical successes like all other attack rolls. If you use a d20, you have no simple way to find out what is a critical and what is a special success.

As for skipping the table, you can do it with d100, too. I have never used the table in twenty years: 50+(Active-Passive)x5%.

1=Critical

Special is just 20% of your score, rounded up or down or mathematically for taste.

2-4 usually.

I still say balls to it. Sticking to the normal resistance table is fine and dandy, if you have stats above 30 or so then there's something going wrong, unless your playing a dinosaur

Or you are playing supers...

Or High Fantasy...

Or sci-fi (cyborgs et al)...

Or pretty much anything that isn't hyper focused on the 'mundane'.

Vampire/World of Darkness > Anne Rice novels

Speaking along the horror lines, I'd personally not mind a supernatural/horror/urban fantasy style game involving playable vampires, werewolves etc. I think that NWoD has moved too far away from where most modern media have taken the vampire mythos. Anne Rice stuff was great, in her day, and I love characters with tragedy and pathos... but the more modern depiction of vampires in media are in things like Blade and Underworld, or TV shows like Moonlight and Blood Ties and Angel are essentially ACTION shows. NWoD has done everything it can to kill the 'vampires are cool' which was part of the great attraction of Masquerade.

I don't know how viable that market is, but I do know that WW lost a /huge/ amount of customers with the shift. I suppose the question would be creating something unique enough to stand on its own.

I like the idea of rolling damage dice, but I also like the idea of more granularity. I have come up with the following. Obviously some people won't like it.

etc...

Personally? I think it looks great. I look forward to taking it for a spin. :thumb: