Magic supplemental books

[rustorod]

Hello,

I was wondering if I purchased Advanced Sorcery then would purchasing the Magic Book be redundant?

Thanks.

Mike

[BMonroe]

Nope. They're completely different books, and don't really cover any of the same territory. Be aware that the Magic Book uses a lot of options from the core BRP, so you'll have to do a bit of fiddling to get it to work with Magic World.

 

That being said, if you want another cool book to add on to Magic World, I highly recommend the new "Enlightened Magic". I've been dogging through it lately and like it a lot.

[rustorod]

Thanks I'll take a look at Enlightened Magic.

Mike

[Simlasa]

I've been reading through Enlightened Magic and getting all sorts of ideas. Some of it I can see pulling into Magic World as flavoring... but the spells themselves, the rules for the rituals... I'm not so sure they would be a good fit with more wiz-bang spells of Magic World... which are more immediate and overt (though Enlightened Magic's spells are both weaker and much more powerful... depending on how you look at them).

IMO It feels a bit like dropping 'hard scifi' elements into a Buck Rogers serial.

[tooley1chris]

Ordered both Enlightened Magic and the Magic Book last Sunday. Can't wait to tear into them! Wish Chaosium gave up a PDF if you ordered a hard copy...I'm not very patient. LOL.

[BMonroe]

I've got an idea for a game I want to do with MW where I'll just drop Sorcery all together, and use the stuff from Enlightened Magic. Setting it up so that magic is subtle, slow to take effect, etc. Not something PCs can always rely on to save their bacon. It's all going to be very Kane/Conan/Thieve's World/Lankhmar sort of stuff.

[Simlasa]

I can see that working quite well... being very atmospheric, somewhat creepy even. Magic that comes from afar on stealthy unseen feet... vs. the fireball artillery variety.

[tooley1chris]

Haven't read enlightened magic yet so I may be talking nonsense, but players put precious points in POW/INT to have a character able to cast sorcery spells effectively. By gimping magic use, won't that make it rather unappealing? Such a system would work well if only NPCs used magic but...

[BMonroe]

I doubt it. They'd just be adjusting their characters to conform to the requirements for a different system. POW and INT have other uses in-game as well as just prerequisites for magic use.

 

Of course, in my home games I don't make players roll for their PC ability scores; I just have them assign the stat values they want to make the characters they want to play.

[Mankcam]

Haven't read enlightened magic yet so I may be talking nonsense, but players put precious points in POW/INT to have a character able to cast sorcery spells effectively. By gimping magic use, won't that make it rather unappealing? Such a system would work well if only NPCs used magic but...

 

It would only be gimping Magic if you are running a High Fantasy, High-Magic setting where Spellcasting is almost as instantaneous as using Super Powers. That's cool for emulating the kind of settings portrayed in rpgs like Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder, etc.

 

Low-magic Fantasy settings, Sword n Sorcery, and covert-magic Modern settings could be portrayed down to a tee with the rules from Enlightened Magic. Very atmospheric, and it places real value on spell casting. 

 

I think Chaosium should have considered revisiting Snead's Liber Ka much earlier than than they have done, but better late than never!

[tooley1chris]

Okay. I've finally received The Magic Book and Enlightened Magic. Both have some really good ideas. Some I don't care for as much.

I've been toying with the idea of combining all of these ideas into a more basic spell casting system. All the different spell casting methods and "sources" of power drawing from one source.

The first thought I had was to limit "methods " of casting to occupations, but that just seems too much like the old class system with a different name. I dont want to limit what a character can learn to do like that.

I want to include alchemy, Spirit Magic ,Divine, and Arcane but need to figure out how to do so in a way that one character is less likely to be a master of all of them.

My next thought was perhaps allowing cross training methods of casting as an Atete. (From Advanced Sorcery )

In other words a character must have a certain score in certain skills in order to succeed.

Like a Craft(alchemy) skill of 100% before learning a new method. But that's probably too limiting and not very realistic.

Now, my thought is that each casting method has individual costs associated.

A character casting Divine magic has to donate time/coin to the "higher power" in order to cast.

Alchemy will just be darn expensive (as it probably should be) and require a laboratory.

Spirit Magic may require an entrapped spirit to power spells.

Arcane Magic requires expensive material components.

Deep Magic (which I really like) requires....?

I really would appreciate anyone's thoughts/ideas on this.

My campaigns tend to be in between medium and high magic.

I'm not too familiar with a lot of other materials for BRP other than these and Magic World.

Maybe there's a similar system already? Maybe I'm over thinking?

[Psychman]

As the Magic Book systems are derived from RuneQuest 3rd edition, maybe some principles from that may help.

 

Divine Magic usually requires that the caster has committed themselves to a Deity to a certain extent.  This involves making vows and committing onese;f to certain ethical standards that could include not using certain other sources of power.  As the caster improves in status and access to the magics (one-use to reusable) the commitment grows.  Religions usually have other skills they require of their members beyond just casting ability.

Spirit Magic spells are generally available to all but the significant powers of the shaman, again require commitment to a set of beliefs and behaviours that may well preclude following other paths.

Sorcery requires many skills to develop a useful level of ability so can be self-limiting in regard to developing other magics.

Alchemy requires money, as you identified.

Deep Magic as I recall involves a childhood focussed opn its development so ruling other training unviable is completely appropriate to it.

Apparantly Arcane is also limited by cost.

 

Hope that has helped some with your worldbuilding.

[p_clapham]

If you are not interested in having magic tied to professions, having them tied to skills may be the way to go. If a player wants their character to know sorcery, they must purchase the sorcery skill. If they want divine magic they would need a pact skill with the appropriate deity. If you want to limit players from having access to more than one magical tradition you could have subsequent magical skills taken after the first cost double.

[Mankcam]

CthulhuFord is on the right track. Make up a new skill called Arcane Lore (Speciality) which operates like a cross between a Knowledge skill and an Allegiance skill. It cannot be increased through skill use, only training/research (at a slower rate than usual) and/or also by rewards for particular behaviour associated with that lore, like Allegiance. Perhaps makes teachers hard to find, or rewards only achievable after completing mystical quests and such.

 

Then give magic spells a Threshold Value (possibly 20% or 30% + MAGx10%). This would be the minimum Arcane Lore required to be able to perform that magic. Usual Magic Point cost.

 

Then just change the magic trappings to suit each speciality. Examples would be Arcane Lore (Sorcery); Arcane Lore (Animism); etc  Divine Magic would be named after the religion itself, or after a particular Deity.

 

Most spells could be lifted almost verbatim and applied to a simplified, universal magic system like this. The main thing is to change the trappings to make the magic styles feel very different narratively, although they all use similar game mechanics rules.

 

Depending upon the setting, you could have the Arcane Lore representing Runes or Spheres perhaps, such as Fire Rune or Earth Sphere etc.

 

I can not see this working with Enlightened Magic or Deep Magic, but you could certainly use it for a general fantasy setting without the players needing to learn separate mechanics for different magic styles. It's kinda like tweaking LEGEND's Common Magic and spreading it across all the magic styles.

 

I don't think you can have one meta-magical system for all settings, and in some settings having more than one is good to highlight intrinsic differences in magic styles. For example, the Enlightened Magic rules would compliment the Mythos Magic in a Call of Cthulhu setting. You could easily add in the Allegiances of Enlightenment and Corruption to such a setting, and use it as a meta-threshold for those magic styles perhaps.

 

Deep Magic can co-exist in a generic fantasy setting as an example of a higher form of magical manipulation, or you could easily use it in a modern setting to play similar to White Wolf's MAGE setting.

 

The system I described earlier however, can cover a lot of different magical styles in a general fantasy setting, and can save player headaches trying to learn different mechanics for their styles. Easily doable, because I have been doing such for my fantasy setting and it has worked fine so far :-)

[tooley1chris]

All good stuff guys. I currently use a skill set up in my sorcery system. Knowledge(sorcery ) that must be rolled to properly cast any sorcery spells. I've given some thought to do this but the problem is that skill increase through experience is free. So a character could feasibly have increases in every knowledge skill involving all the Magic types without sacrifice. Unless...

What if, since all Magic is drawn from the same "source " through different casting methods, a character could ONLY increase a single knowledge skill involving casting, during experience gain rolls? This would limit use by limiting skill %. It may be all of the "sacrafice" i need to create the balance Im looking for.

Ben gave me a teaser about some extra uses for allegiance system in the upcoming Companion Guide (name?)

I wonder if I could use some of those ideas and can't wait to see it.

I really love that this community has a few active geniuses that can inspire and point out the ups and downs to ideas. Thank you all for your input and continued support to this great game!

[Mankcam]

I just rule that Knowledge Skills cannot be raised through usual skill checks, or are at half (thus +1d3% rather than +1D6%). Seems to limit things quite well, including magical knowledge skills. Your way should work just as well. All you need to do is limit the the amount of magic skill increase in some fashion to provide game balance.

 

" Ben gave me a teaser about some extra uses for allegiance system in the upcoming Companion Guide" 

 

This statement caught my interest...
 

[BMonroe]

The Chrinicler's Companion had a chapter on expanding the benefits of Championship, as well as how to use Alegiance to model cults and belief systems. Essentially breaking down the abstract notion of "Light, Balance, Shadow" into a way to create interesting pantheons.

[Nakana]

The Chrinicler's Companion had a chapter on expanding the benefits of Championship, as well as how to use Alegiance to model cults and belief systems. Essentially breaking down the abstract notion of "Light, Balance, Shadow" into a way to create interesting pantheons.

This is what I'm waiting for...

[Mankcam]

Sounds interesting. I do like how Allegiance was used in Mythic Iceland to tie in with worship, and I'ld like to see another take on it. No doubt another good book in the works

[Robsbot]

To run other sources of magic in a campaign including Sorcery I just make Sorcery harder to obtain, or make it ostracized. In my current campaign Sorcery is evil. There is both the Light and Balance types of Sorcery but even dabbling in those elements tend to make the users want more power and lean towards the dark side. This causes Sorcery to be shunned uniformly and only secret societies dedicated to the eradication of Sorcery use the Light spells as they would probably be punished as well due to the number of Light sorcerers who fell to the dark side. Since it is so shunned this makes Grimoires hard to find as they are burned and disposed of unless secreted away for study later.

This balances out the power of the MW Sorcery system with those of RQ6, the BGB, and even Enlightened Magic. Enlightened Magic runs surprisingly well next to the other systems as a more subtle and preparatory form of magic that can achieve much more than other forms if given time. However, dabble in Sorcery (Elric / MW style) and you'll be forced into a life of secrecy and constantly be hunted for your efforts as you try to fight the consuming effects of Shadow.