Byron Alexander

Yeah, I like the idea of spending (or gambling) POW on extremely powerful magic, but having to use it for the simplest of things sounds a bit extreme. It does actually say in the BRP corebook that rare, powerful sorcery spells cost permanent POW but I don't think it has any that do in it, leaving them to future supplements.

I'm not sure I would scrap it, but I'd adjust it; say an Allegiance (Deity) of 75 or 80

SDLeary

Seems a little high, unless you want to make priests etc. with magic really rare - bearing in mind you need 100 allegiance points to attain Apotheosis people would know they were getting close by the fact that they could use magic.

There's no problem with that if that's what you want in your setting, of course, but I'd say it's an odd default.

Sorcery is the closest thing to divine magic presented in BRP. However, it has several limitations that make it unsuitable for divine magic.

- you need POW 16

You could always just scrap that rule. On the other hand, the idea that only people of POW 16 or above (especially as that also influences luck) have a close enough link with the gods/God to use divine magic is not an unreasonable one.

- many spells are definitely EVIL

Honestly not seeing this as a problem. If you're using a classic polytheistic pantheon then the gods are not necessarily nice. If you're using a classic fantasy D&Desque world there have been evil gods granting powers in that since year dot as far as I'm aware (though I only go back to 2nd ed AD&D). If you are using a real-world monotheistic religion then in theory God is a nice guy but in history the miracles claimed by the monotheistic religions can take on a dark aspect - especially the stuff God does in the Old Testament.

- weapon spells are very poor, you cannot make a decent paladin/templar with those spells

This is an issue if you want to have the classic fantasy paladins running around. I think inventing new spells is the only way around this one (or possibly using a third powers system and allowing Paladins to have Super Powers).

A quick-and-dirty method would be to use the Magic in the corebook as wizardly magic (powerful, doesn't always work, takes a LOT of learning) and Sorcery as priestly magic (less powerful, but consistent and more instinctual).

I'd then say that Sorcerors have to have an allegiance to their god/cause and that if any other allegiance ends up higher then they lose their Sorcery powers until their god's allegiance is the top one again.

Done.

EDIT:

Looking at it again, this really doesn't answer your question. Too late and done too much re-drafting tonight.

Tywyll might have a better answer, I believe his magic monograph is going into things like this...

Ah, yes, that does make sense. :thumb: Although it is standard that extra levels can be used to increase duration most of the spell descriptions do state it explicitly; all the ones I've written for BRP - Witchcraft do as well.

Put like that it does seem absurd. :ohwell:

Personally I'd have probably changed it to 1 combat round per level instead, but the 3 SIZ thing limits it well.

I had assumed, given that it is a spell which only lasts for 10 combat rounds, that more levels simply gave you longer quality time with an elemental of your choice and that a level 1 version did, indeed, summon an elemental as described in the core book.

Given that magic - unlike sorcery - is not automatically successful but is generally pretty powerful if you can get it right this didn't seem overpowered to me. Then again, I have never playtested it so it might be.

A problem that I see with this is that most weapon and shield tactics were based on responding with the primary weapon. Parry... holding attacking weapon aside, striking with primary. Much of what you see in individual combats, wether from main or off hand, are responses to what the other combatant just did. This is why combatants do disengage and circle periodically to re asses attack strategy and look for new avenues of attack (taking us to a new combat round).

The only other way I see to handle this is to limit ripostes to a single attempt, regardless of skill, on a special or better parry, moving all advanced techniques from eastern and western fencing into Martial Arts type skills.

Speaking from my own experience in fencing and battle re-enactment (the latter being far more limited experience, I must admit) bouts can go attack-parry-riposte-attack-parry-riposte-attack-parry or for even more and it tends to be the better fighters that keep pressing for an opening. So I wouldn't want to limit ripostes to only one per round, myself.

I do have issues with a riposte being possible with a secondary weapon such as an off-hand dagger or a shield, though. Most of the time, as others have said, those are used to hold an opponent's primary weapon at bay while you move in with your own primary weapon. I'd be tempted to say that ripostes can only be made if you parry with your primary weapon.

They are excellent rules, though, and seem to match actual fencing quite well. :thumb:

Off the top of my head, here's my suggestion :

An extra tick when a skill is used, not to show progression but to show simply that it is still in use.

At the end of a given time period any skills not checked in this way drop by 5% (or 1D6 or 1% or whatever you like).

That way unused skills will slowly atrophy. I leave time scales up to you because that'll vary depending on the game.

I would be tempted to allow everyone to choose any profession but give them a base level of skills that suggests some level of training in the army. After all, we're talking about a period in which conscription is widespread - although everyone is competent with a firearm it isn't really what they do (unless they are one of the few professional soldiers).

Are you going to allow individual characters access to more than one power? Because I'd be likely to disallow a single person having both magic and sorcery, myself, on the grounds that if you think magic works one way you can't work it the other way. I'd probably allow psychic powers across the board, though.

YUCK! You are mixing how a power works and how you balance character power levels at character creation. What would happen if you ported characters to other campaigns?

I honestly think that if you're thinking about porting characters into other campaigns you shouldn't deviate from the rules as written and should keep the 1% characteristic.

In all my years roleplaying, though - including a university career when many games were happening at once - I have never seen a character directly ported from one GM's campaign to another. Redesigned to fit, yes, but ported as-is? Never.

What about a percentage according to power scale such as:

1% - normal power level

2% - heroic power level

3% - epic power level

4/5% - superhuman power level

Or something like that?

I like that idea, I think it'd work pretty well.

(assuming skills over 1005 etc)

:eek::eek::eek:

I know what happened here, your shift button didn't work.

Still, it brought a smile to my face.

I mean, I've never really got how a robust and healthy individual with a big frame can be physically weak? But there you go: RPG systems, like physics, aren't perfect.

They could have a really weak immune system. That'd make them more susceptible to complications from injury and give them a low CON resistance. That makes pretty good sense to me.

Alright, it's a bit unusual but it's not completely unreasonable.

If you make it a straight STR=SIZ you run the risk of SIZ 3 adult humans, though, and if you make it STR+3 or something you run the risk of SIZ 24 adult humans!

What about making SIZ equal to STR+CON/2, so that you have it for things like spells which work on SIZ (for which neither STR nor CON is a good substitute), making HP equal to CON and working out damage bonus based on STR.

That'll give a good reasonable SIZ, imo, and also make SIZ far less important... I really don't see how you can do without it for spells like Invisibility, though - without substantially re-writing the spells.

(Obviously, in a setting without magic, doing without SIZ is much easier.)

I was contrary and went for Something Else.

5% is way, way too much. Let's face it - it has no power point cost, it is always on and it is capped at your DEX+POW.

Let's assume you have rolled average DEX+POW and so that caps it at 22 levels.

That means that for 22 character points you can subtract 110% from every attack made against your character, whatever the circumstances. :eek:

That is, to put it mildly, absurd. For 22 character points and no other powers my character is virtually indestructible.

However, 1% seems a little too low. I mean, I'd choose it if I was going to go for either but at 1% why use the character points on it? Wearing good armour and putting the 22 points into Parry or Dodge is probably just as good in broad terms.

So I would, personally, make it 2%. That means for those 22 character points you get to subtract 44% from all attacks made against you - to me that is Super but it is not ridiculous.

In my normal games Cha plays a big roll. For this though, I think Communication, Mercantilism, and Thievery can cover the bases well. As it stands, I'm seriously thinking about dropping Int too. Knowledge and Lore cover anything that Int might be used for. The stats would shake out as the three physical and the one spiritual/magical. As far as game balance goes, I fully expect that all PCs will wind up with at least some magic skills. I'm also thinking about snagging the alternative mp system from Gods of Law.

Surely by the same token Brawl, Craft skills, Dodge and the various weapon skills can cover anything STR and DEX do - pretty much leaving you with CON and POW. Thinking about it, there'd be nothing wrong with that. Attributes are the fortitude of your body and the fortitude of your mind with everything else represented by skills. Would that be too stripped down, or is it something to consider?

Bit of an update for you all. I have just (within the last half hour) finished the first draft. I'll be spending the rest of the day re-drafting it but it won't change substantially. The sections will be as follows:

Intoduction : Witches in society - a description of how witches fit in to their primary setting periods of Dark Ages, High Medieval, High Fantasy, Arabian Nights and Renaissance.

Profession : Witch - the witch's profession skills.

The Source of Witchcraft - an overview of neutral, pagan and infernal as the possible sources of witchcraft.

Witchcraft Organisations - an overview of solitary witches, familial organisations and wider witchcraft organisations.

Witch's Magic - A description of how witches differ from other magicians in their handling of magic, a list of the core book spells available to witches and a host of new spells.

Witch's Sorcery - Though the main focus of the monograph is on magic, there are rules here (and extra sorcery spells) for witches as sorcerers. I wasn't going to add this for a long time but some people may like the sorcery rules better and there's no reason witches can't be sorcerers.

Witch's Potions - An in depth look at the skill 'Craft (Potions)' and a small list of possible potions. Thanks to Threedeesix for his suggestions - this potion system will be compatible with Classic Fantasy. So, yes, you can be a dungeon-crawling witch.

Talismans - Witches can make one-shot magic items with their unique skill 'Craft (Talismans)'. This section explains how. Obviously, both crafting potions and talismans would be useful for other magic users.

Witches' Allegiance - A description of allegiance to Black or White magic. What is required to form the allegiance, what is gained from it and apotheosis in both are gone into.

Mystical Artifacts - Unique Magical Items - The descriptions and powers of some unique artifacts that are associated with witchcraft and GMs might want to include in their game.

Sample Organisations - Three sample witchcraft organisations : a dying dark-age tradition, a Victorian revival and the corrupt wing of a fantasy Inquisition.

Sample Characters - Sample characters from the three sample organisations and one Normal character for each of the main suggested settings, for ideas and readily playable characters if you need one quick.

All that crammed into 30,000 words... well, 31,000 words.

The artist is also nearly done so the in-for-September-to-be-out-for-October deadline seems to be holding up.

With regard to charisma, I'd keep it.

The thing with charisma is that some people don't ever use it, but some use it a lot - to determine whom it is that NPCs consider the leader etc. I think enough people use it to be worth keeping it, even if it ends up a dump-stat for some groups.

The whole thing looks like a good, streamlined fantasy system. :thumb:

Chalk me up for 'Mass rather than weight' as well, although in certain circumstances treating SIZ as zero because you're in zero-G would make sense. It all gets a bit weird when you go off-world.

I just like to make sure everyone is on an even playing field when they play a game. I don't like it when all the powergamers flock to a race/profession combination because it has the most power.

It's that combination that is difficult to avoid. For example, to say 'starts with +2 POW, -2 STR and cannot put any of the 3 shiftable points in STR or take them out of POW' is balanced but is automatically going to lead to a magical race. Fine if you don't have a problem with the players of one type always going for one race but problematic if you do.

Therefore, I'd suggest going with quirkier differences that don't make a difference to profession choice but do make an in-game difference. For example, if a race is nocturnal it suffers no penalty to Spot at night but a -20% penalty in full daylight because it isn't used to the brightness. If you want a magical race, go for something like +2 POW but because they are fae and changeable they only gain 1 Allegiance point for every 2 they should get (if you are using Allegiance) - enough people will want to try for allegiance that not every magic user will be of the magical race.

That's great news! 150 new spells? That's... a lot of spells!

Are you using just the magic rules, or are you using sorcery as well?

Ah, and now it all makes perfect sense! It also explains why I haven't seen it anywhere else.

Thanks, man.

I've seen this in sigs, what does it refer to?

My girlfriend thinks it is something to do with the 4/20 cannabis thing but I'm guessing it is something else (so kudos to her if it is).

So, what does it mean?