From: Ken McKinney cleverly disguised as Michael (mad@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu)
Date: Mon 08 Jul 1991 - 09:56:33 EEST
Several people wrote some great comments on my sorcery system, which is
still in a great deal of flux. I've got some general clarifications to
make and then some comments on their comments.
First of all, I wrote this system because I don't think the current one
works, especially for beginner GM's who try to run sorcerers in their
games. There's no real middle ground for a sorcerer; Either he's godlike
or he sucks. Let's look at sorcerers with say, 10 years previous
experience.
This would be pretty typical in my game for sorcerers adventuring with
good
initiates (plenty of skills in the 50-70 range, looking at becoming
acolytes soon).
1 ) They can't cast their spells reliably. Since there is no variability
in the difficulty of the spells there's no way they can choose to
learn spells which are easy to cast.
2) Their spells take forever to cast. Coupled with (1) this makes a dead
sorcerer.
3) Their spells take tons of magic points. The only reasonable spell
for a sorcerer of low level to cast is Palsy, and it takes 6 magic
points to cast generally, as opposed to 2 for a befuddle or demoralize
spirit spell. So a sorcerer is only going to be able to get in one
spell per encounter.
4) They've had to waste lots of skill points in their sorcery skills and
spells, while the spirit/divine magic worshippers got to spend theirs
in things like attack, parry, dodge, hide, sneak, track, orate, etc.
In my game I try to start characters with roughly equal points so the
sorcerers get screwed. Note that this also holds true with my system,
but at least the sorcerers will have some magic which they can cast
reliably.
Okay, now let's look at the high end sorcerers in the current runequest
system. I consider an adept in the current system to be a very good
sorcerer.
He probably has all of his INT free, by keeping his spells in a familiar,
matrices, or bound INT spirits. He also has at least 20 or so magic
points
available to him besides his own and those of his familiars (in mp
enchantments
or POW spirits; He probably made Enchant his ritual or lore at 75%, since
it is by far the most useful, and it gives him something to do with his
POW (In my game, Malkioni sorcerers can also get patron saints and
sacrifice POW to them for special abilities, but I'm drawing on
unpublished
stuff by Stafford that most GM's don't have access to). He probably has
a fair reportoire of spells; which ones are you going to give him?
Damage Boosting - the number one campaign destroying spell. Makes trolls
superflourous (I mean, who cares if you have a damage bonus if you have
damage boost 15 on your weapon). DB 17 is the equivalent of a 5d6 damage
bonus. I find it hard to believe that this was ever playtested. But
what's worse is that your pc's will probably settle for DB 5-7 on ALL
of their weapons ALL of the time. Since 10 duration gets you a week
this isn't at all out of reach.
Mystic Vision - Instant identification of magic items, including a mental
picture of who made them. Why bother going to the Lankhor Mhy temple?
I think Mystic vision is too powerful, and have broken it up into
several spells in my system.
Fly - Put a Wind Lord to shame. If you cast Diminish SIZ on yourself
first, you can have it on all the time. How many suspenseful scenarios
can be messed up with a Fly spell? At least the Orlanthi can only do
it for 15 minutes.
Vision Projection - check out the whole castle/tower/cave/ruin before
you go in it. Cast spells at anyone; unless their actively looking
for you they probably aren't looking at the ceiling (when was the
last time YOU looked at the ceiling?)
Tap -the grossest spell of them all. Makes a sorcerer immune to the
magic of others, and lets his spells overcome the POW of anyone but a
shaman 95% of the time. The only other real purpose of the spell is to
totally ruin a player character. In Glorantha, many Malkioni sects
allow tapping. The Borists regard it as a sacred duty, so how do you
tell a Borist PC that he/she can't have the Tap spell?
Anyway, there are lots of imbalanced sorcery spells and they aren't any
harder to cast once you know them than say, a glow spell. My rules
build restrictions on powerful spells into the rules, rather than forcing
GM's to rationalize why their PC's can't know them.
Another point: There are far too few spells in the current RuneQuest
sorcery system. In the writeup on Arkat in Troll Gods, it states that
troll sorcerers are experts with darkness magic. But what darkness magic
is there? All I can think of is boost elemental, darksense projection,
and form/set & animate darkness. So you can't really create a sorcerer
around a certain specialty, like darkness or fire or ice and make it fly.
What my system tries to do is smooth out the sorcerer power curve. I have
some spells of low difficulty (demoralize, for instance) that have effects
comparable to spirit magic and take only slightly fewer magic points to
cast. Likewise I've made an attempt to tone down really imbalancing spells
like Damage boost. Lets say one sorcerer has Damage boost at 60%, 14
Free INT, and Intensity at 60%, and the other has a Disorder/Earth/Fire
spell (difficulty 40, does 1d6 extra damage per 5 Law points), and Law
skill at 60%, all associated runes at 40%, and the spell at 60%. The guy
in my system is a whole lot less effective. He can only cast a 12 point
spell
where the other can cast a 14 point spell, he only does +2d6 damage (avg
7)
while the other guy does +14 damage. His chance to cast is the same (but
he needed 3 other skills at 40% for it to be that way).
My system makes a player define the sorcerer's specialty and the scope
of his abilities. You have to decide whether to be good at healing magic
or attack magic with an element or spells which affect the mind or spells
which affect magic, for instance. I think this gives sorcerers more
flavor and makes them more fun to play, without imbalancing them in
relation
to the rest of the party. A medium crossbow still blows away a firebolt
when it comes to doing damage and it's owner can fire it without spending
magic points or worrying about encumberance. It's true that a sorcerer
has a lot of options available to him in terms of what spells he learns
and what he can do, but one has to decide on strengths and weaknesses;
It's
possible to be a jack of all trades (cast easy spells in many areas) or
a narrow specialist (only cast fire spells, for instance) but each choice
has definite drawbacks and the person who chooses to specialize is still
limited by his Law skill and his available magic points.
So sorcerers can compete without 2-3 POW spirits and and INT spirit.
(My system also does away with Free INT). This also takes the heat off
the GM to dish out lots of magic, since sorcerers no longer need it to
be viable.
<CRIMMARTI@urvax.urich.edu> says about my sorcery system:
> Comments on part two of your magic system: If your players
>want a flash-bang sorcery system, give it to them. If that's not
>what your players want, or if it detracts from some players'
>enjoyment (i.e., those who aren't sorcerers), then you'll have to
>rethink.
I guess I'm not sure what you mean by a flash-bang sorcery system. It's
true that there are a lot more spells in my system and that they have
better
special effects, but I've tried to design the spells so that they don't
make sorcerers better than the other classes. That's why I put difficulty
numbers into the system. Sure, Fireball is an awesome spell, but it's
difficulty 100, which means that if you had your spell at 75%, the fire
rune at 75%, and the mastery rune at 75% your chance to cast would only be
50% - Enc. Because of the way the experience system works a sorcerer has
a real incentive to go out and study another rune rather than raising
these
skills any further up. Also, Fireball does 1d6/8 Law points. You're
going
to need 2d6 to affect armoured targets, so you need a minimum of 16 Law
points, which means that your Law skill needs to be 80%, or more if you
want to increase the spells area of effect. Also, the spell takes 1.6
rounds to cast, and blows 16 magic points. It's easy to see that a
sorcerer
who has these skills at this level is the equivalent of a rune lord in
terms
of experience, and if he's allotted his training this way he probably
can't
cast other useful spells, like healing, magic detection, spell screen,
etc.
If I had a choice of playing this character or say, an Orlanthi Wind Lord,
I think I'd take the Wind Lord.
>It does not seem to
>me, however, that the Staffordian world-view, which I knock in
>the last paragraph of this message, includes wizards creating
>rings of fire, beasts out of thin air, etc., except at very high
>levels of personal power. Orathorn. Arolanit Zzaburi. Mistress
>Race Arkati. You know the type.
I wish I knew more about the Staffordian world-view concerning sorcerers.
I mean, if you read the Genertela book it's obvious that there are a lot
of powerful spells which aren't in the sorcery rules. The Brithini
routinely ressurect anyone who dies in their society. According to the
Gloranthan Bestiary, the sorcerers of Kimos fight an ongoing battle
against
the Gorgers using weather-manipulation. Looking at the stats of the
Gorgers, it seems pretty obvious we're talking something a little more
deadly than say, form/set clouds. Then there are the big guys: Delecti
and his Zombie Horde, ZZzabur who closes the seas as an "accidental
byproduct" of one of his spells, etc. There's a mile-high tower in
Sog City, if I remember correctly. How did it get built? I guess you
can explain away all of these powers as HeroQuest abilities, but I prefer
a spell system which can incorporate them, but only for characters with
godlike skills. What's wrong with having, in my system, a 200 -difficulty
ressurection spell that takes 40 Law points to cast? The pc's will never
cast it, that's for sure, and it makes Brithini society a little more
believable without introducing the game balance implications of just
slapping
a ressurection spell into the current sorcery system.
Another reason I put the really powerful spells into my system was to set
guidelines for people who invent their own spells. By setting the
difficulty of Fireball at 100, I forestall some player convincing a GM to
let him design a Fireball spell with a difficulty of 50, which wound be
imbalancing to the game. Because my system is intended to allow design
of spells by players (with GM approval) it needs spells at a wide variety
of power levels to provide a framework for fitting other spells in.
> I agree with Andrew's comments about Illusion. I think the
>other runes can achieve equally flashy and powerful effects
>without creating things.
Are you saying that you think my system would fit Stafford's world view
if I got rid of the Infinity rune and all of its associated spells? I'm
not fundamentally opposed to this. I run a Gloranthan game and try to
be as true to the world as I can.
> For example: Disorder can confuse and
>distract beings, weaken things, and destroy information. How
>about a powerful Disorder spell at a cross-roads, making
>travellers take the wrong way?
It seems like the Illusion rune would do these things as well. I saw a
lot of similarity between the two, so I made an arbitrary division and
said that disorder was for changing things and Illusion was for concealing
them. Do you think, for example, that disorder is more appropriate for
the crossroads spell than illusion? If so, why?
>As for summoning things quickly,
>one can either summon and bind them, or craft some sort of
>specialist who trades off flexibility for quick response.
>Shamans can summon easily in an Axis Mundi, so it's not
>ridiculous. What you need is a player with imagination and a
>good working knowledge of the runes and their inner meanings.
I wish I had knowledge of the "inner meanings" of runes. I can only guess
at a lot of things about them.
About summoning: I haven't really figured out how to do ritual magic
in conjunction with this system, and have thought about designing a
separate enchanting/summoning system for sorcerers. But I've put it off
because I feel like I need to get what I've got working and well defined
before I tackle anything else. If anyone has any ideas on this I'd love
to hear them.
About Ethilrist: I'm thinking he's a Brithini Knight who went renegade.
He has a shrine to Arkat at Muse Roost, so I at least know he uses
sorcery. I may say that Black Horse Country is run using a kind of
degenerate feudal caste system, kindof like the Rokari except that
Ethilrist
is the only Talar and he's also a bigtime sorcerer and Ethilrist's will,
rather than lineage, determines what caste a person is in. Since he's
Arkati there should also be shrines to appropriate warrior gods (Humakt,
Orlanth, possibly Yanafal Tarnils).
>From abf@cs.ucc.ie Tue Jul 08 09:56:33 1991
From: malcolm.smith@alcatel.no (Malcolm Smith)
>First, can someone explain where a sorcerer gets his Law
>and Chaos percentages from, and how do they increase?
>Secondly, for spells such as Create Basilisk and Create Man
> there is a reference to a number of Chaos and Law Points.
> Exactly what is this reference?
> Thirdly, would I be correct in assuming that if one casts
> a spell correctly then the caster can make an experience roll
> on the Runes associated?
> Fourthly, with the Forever step on the timescale, would
> this make Immortality a possibility, or would only be
> immortal within 10 metres of the casting site unless one
> spends more Points on widening the radius of the spell/area?
Okay, Sorcerers learn Law (and possibly chaos) just like every other rune:
They study it from a book or learn it from another sorcerer. I would think
that most sorcerers learn Law as part of their early training, much like
they would learn Intensity in regular RQ sorcery. Chaos would be learned
by chaotic types, or by really good sorcerers who felt they could handle
it,
or by religious types like the Borists who learn it because of religious
needs. (The borists feel that Tapping chaotic beings is a religious duty.
I made Tap a chaotic spell because Sense Chaos will register a sorcerer
who knows the Tap spell in glorantha.
All spells are powered with Law or Chaos points, which roughly replace
Intensity and Duration in the old rules. You can only put as many Law
points into your spell as your Law skill divided by 5. You can put twice
as many chaos points into your spell as your chaos skill divided by 5 but
if you fail your roll you have to roll on the fumble table, which is
very deadly for chaotic spellcasters. Some spells have variable effects
and
the number of Law points (and it also takes 1 magic point per law point)
you
put into the spell determines how powerful it is. Other spells, like
create man (which wasn't intended to be a spell a pc would cast, but only
to be an illustrative example for determining spell difficulties) have
a fixed effect so they require a fixed number of Law points. Thus to
cast the Create Man spell one must have a Law skill of 200% and 40 magic
points to blow. You'll also need the associated runes at ridiculously
high
levels to cast the spell. Note that you also need Law points to increase
a temporal spell's duration, so you have to make a tradeoff between
duration
and effect.
Re: experience rolls on runes: I'm going to say at the moment that
you only get experience rolls on spells, and that the runic skills
only go up through research and training. That's the way the
sorcery skills work in RuneQuest now. Of course, none of this is
playtested, so it may turn out that I made a poor decision. What
do you think is better?
>From abf@cs.ucc.ie Tue Jul 08 09:56:33 1991
From: Andrew Bell (bell@cs.unc.edu)
>Subject: Conditions on enchantments
>User/Target conditions: The description says that a target condition
>requires that the target be in a clearly defined group. It seems to me
>that this makes it fairly easy to create the ultimate inquisition
>device -- say, have a condition of "casts a light on any worshiper of
>a Chaos cult" or "anyone who would like the Red Moon Goddess and the
>Lunar armies defeated" or something of that nature, so you just go
around
>touching people with the object or have an area-effect they have to pass
>through. What do you think the limits on the detective power of
>enchantments to determine such things should be?
We've never used target conditions in my game so the question never
came up. I'd say that unlike the user conditions, which can detect
all sorts of things, target conditions can only be based on something
that is clearly visible and apparent. I know this sounds stupid, but
treat the enchantment as if it was a person with eyes but no specific
knowledge. If it can look at the target and determine whether the
conditions are met, then the target condition is ok (example: only
works against trolls). Otherwise you could rule that a matrix for the
appropriate detection spell was neccesary on the enchantment and that
it had to be linked with a mp source and the other enchantment.
Sorry this is so long, but I had a lot to say. I'm glad you guys are
reading my sorcery system!
Ken McKinney
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