Rules Question: Buying Advantages vs. Characteristics

[jp1885]

I'm sure it's somewhere in the rules, but I can't find it!

Can a player save up enough Development points to buy an Advantage that requires prerequisite Characteristics, if they don't meet the prerequisites?

E.g. someone has saved 10 Development points and wants to gain the Magical advantage, but only has 40 INT and 50 POW. Can they do it?

Thanks in advance.

[Dangermouse]

22 hours ago, jp1885 said:

I'm sure it's somewhere in the rules, but I can't find it!

Can a player save up enough Development points to buy an Advantage that requires prerequisite Characteristics, if they don't meet the prerequisites?

E.g. someone has saved 10 Development points and wants to gain the Magical advantage, but only has 40 INT and 50 POW. Can they do it?

Thanks in advance.

I think the answer is they can't. 

Pg 50 says you must have the pre-requisites to take the advantage on creation.  The Development rules (Pg 122) doesn't say you can ignore the pre-requisites requirement.
Therefore I've read that as the rules on creation still apply.
 

[jp1885]

Thanks Dangermouse, that’s what I suspected.

Might be a bit harsh on players who want to learn magic later on, but I’ll just have to warn them during character creation.

[Dangermouse]

Yeah, it's the conversation I've had with the players - you can learn magic later, but you need the INT and POW now.

[Matthew]

Alternatively you could consider the later purchase of the advantage, without the prerequisites as a way of simulating the learning that they will have to do to get their attributes up to scratch, remember lower pow means less raw magical power to throw around. Lower skills means less likely to be able to cast the spells.

[Dangermouse]

Had an early morning thought - and it'd be a house rule:

1 Dev Point = +5 to an attribute, with a limit that you cant increase an attribute beyond 50% of it's starting stat - plus the usual 80 cap (90 with optional rules).

So if you start on 40 INT you can only increase it 60, or from 30 to 45.

Just a thought.

 

[Lynne H]

By the rules, you need to meet the prerequisites to take an advantage.

However, as various people have said, there's nothing to stop you from house-ruling it if that's going to be more fun for your game.

[jp1885]

Cheers everyone!

[g33k]

I'm pretty opposed to most flat rules-based "no you can't" on character advancement; at least for long-term play.

At the same time, sometimes being "true to the setting" is important -- violating one person's sense of the world in favor of another person's character-concept is usually a dicey business...
"I mixed a pound of finely-ground uranium into the dynamite.  We toss it into the maw of Dread Cthulhu.
Even if the explosion doesn't kill him, he'll die in a year of radiation poisoning!"
🙄

Often enough, it's the GM themselves with the strongest sense of the world & attachment to the importance thereof; there's more than one railroad track crossing the RPG table!  Sometimes, the GM needs to keep them on the track, and sometimes let them go off the rails.
 

Edited February 13, 2023 by g33k

[Darius West]

While presently I think the rules disallow characters to get magic later, it is an obvious progression in a longer campaign.  We are all going to house rule this I'm sure, and I suspect that when the first companion to RoL comes out, there will be rules for this in it.  That's my 2 cents.

[Dangermouse]

On 2/15/2023 at 12:17 PM, Darius West said:

While presently I think the rules disallow characters to get magic later, it is an obvious progression in a longer campaign.  We are all going to house rule this I'm sure, and I suspect that when the first companion to RoL comes out, there will be rules for this in it.  That's my 2 cents.

Lynne has just confirmed (just before 11:00 in the latest Chaosium ROL video) that characters can get magic after creation.