OLD Magic Question

1. Yes. The cost of the enhancement. You have to be pretty potent to drop a 10d6 fireball!

2. General enhancements do not cost. Just the one listed under list of skill-delineated magical enhancements. Though I do know one GM who house rules that General Enhancements key off the spellcraft skill, which I thought was a little harsh, but he was running a low-magic world.

3. I wouldn't worry about it myself. If you create food, it lasts till you eat it unless it expires before then. Once you've eaten it, it's done. I guess you could get super biological with that, but I don't think that would add anything to the game.

This relates to something that struck me in the spell lists: "Create Food and Water"'s spell costs are listed as "2 MP enduring object (food), 2 MP enduring object (water)." There's no duration MP assigned to the spell despite the statement that it lasts for about a day (even if this is a description of total nutritional value rather than spell duration, there's no way you could eat a day's worth of food in the one-minute default duration), so "Enduring" seems like a keyword of sorts that isn't described anywhere.

hadavar said:

This relates to something that struck me in the spell lists: "Create Food and Water"'s spell costs are listed as "2 MP enduring object (food), 2 MP enduring object (water)." There's no duration MP assigned to the spell despite the statement that it lasts for about a day (even if this is a description of total nutritional value rather than spell duration, there's no way you could eat a day's worth of food in the one-minute default duration), so "Enduring" seems like a keyword of sorts that isn't described anywhere.

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Enduring object is under Create, at least in the SRD.

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Enduring object is missing from the book.

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Got removed in playtests as it was very exploitable. I'll get that removed from the WRRD.

Morrus said:

1. Yes. The cost of the enhancement. You have to be pretty potent to drop a 10d6 fireball!

2. General enhancements do not cost. Just the one listed under list of skill-delineated magical enhancements. Though I do know one GM who house rules that General Enhancements key off the spellcraft skill, which I thought was a little harsh, but he was running a low-magic world.

3. I wouldn't worry about it myself. If you create food, it lasts till you eat it unless it expires before then. Once you've eaten it, it's done. I guess you could get super biological with that, but I don't think that would add anything to the game.

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I have looked all over for the part in the O.L.D. book (I have the version 1.1 PDF) where it says you need a certain amount of skill to cast a spell (i.e. Infuse 4 to give attributes) but I was unable to find any.

Does this mean that if I want to give Str and End in a 10' area, I only need Infuse 4 (Infuse Metal 4, Infuse Earth 4, Area 1) even though the total MP is 9?

Thanks!

Flips said:

I have looked all over for the part in the O.L.D. book (I have the version 1.1 PDF) where it says you need a certain amount of skill to cast a spell (i.e. Infuse 4 to give attributes) but I was unable to find any.

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Page 167, "Skill Prerequsites".

Does this mean that if I want to give Str and End in a 10' area, I only need Infuse 4 (Infuse Metal 4, Infuse Earth 4, Area 1) even though the total MP is 9?

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Yup.

Based on my reading of the rules.

1. the base effect elements are additive. So yes you do need an illusion skill of 7 to make an illusion that iwll fool all the senses. And yes you to need an evoke skill of 20 to throw a 10d6 fireball. This seems resonable to me considerting that to have 10d6 hit point a character would have to be at least 15th grade, and to have more HP than this you'd need to get to 21st grade. This means that it such a fireball would have a good chance shot of one shot killing most monsters of 20th grade or less.

2. For the overall cost of the spell, you need a magic attribute which is equal to or greater then the amount of points you plan to spend. so to create something permanent you would need a magic attribute of 21 or more.

3. the rules imply that You'd have to make it permanent. But if you google the figures on how long things take to work their way through the human body then you could say that to avoid health loss later water has to last 3 weeks to be useful, and food has to last 6 months or a 1 year. Though the way the duration chart is set up this doesn't save you much in the way of magic points.

Konrad Zielinski said:

So yes you do need an illusion skill of 7 to make an illusion that iwll fool all the senses. And yes you to need an evoke skill of 20 to throw a 10d6 fireball. This seems resonable to me considerting that to have 10d6 hit point a character would have to be at least 15th grade, and to have more HP than this you'd need to get to 21st grade.

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I have not really looked at how PCs compare at high grade marks, but at low grades the "problem" (and I put it in quotes because it might not be one) is that it's trivially easy to put together a physical melee fighter with 4d6+X damage. You really only need a longsword and Deadly strike, and you can do it all day. To do that with a spell takes 8 MP and a skill of 8 [or a fully dedicated firemage, and deadly strike]. So it seems that you need to invest a lot more in magic - either exploits for a firemage, or skills for a general mage - to achieve the combat ability that a non-magical character can achieve with just 1-3 skill points and one exploit. That seems somewhat unreasonable to me.

I think the fix may be relatively easy; I'd give Evocation +1d6 for 1 MP up to 4d6, then increase the cost to +1d6 per 2 MP. That would let a starting mage go toe-to-toe with a starting archer or fighter for a skill of 4-5, and throw 5-6 such attacks before he/she runs out rather than 2-3.

I don't think its's particularly unbalanced either, because with 13 skill points investing 4-5 (a third!) just to get a strong attack prevents them from being an unbalanced 'do everything' type of character. At least in theory.

OTOH, this is really an issue of play group preference. If they like sword and sorcery, I think they need to boost sorcery. But if they like a lower magic campaign, the system without modification is very very good.

easl said:

I have not really looked at how PCs compare at high grade marks, but at low grades the "problem" (and I put it in quotes because it might not be one) is that it's trivially easy to put together a physical melee fighter with 4d6+X damage. You really only need a longsword and Deadly strike, and you can do it all day. To do that with a spell takes 8 MP and a skill of 8 [or a fully dedicated firemage, and deadly strike]. So it seems that you need to invest a lot more in magic - either exploits for a firemage, or skills for a general mage - to achieve the combat ability that a non-magical character can achieve with just 1-3 skill points and one exploit. That seems somewhat unreasonable to me.

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It's deliberate. It's not designed to emulate D&D, which has much higher magic; it's more Tolkien where magic is less flashy and isn't usually the only thing you can do. With a sprinkling of it being harder to learn, but potential rewards for high grade casters being greater. If you're thinking of starting magic users as equal in combat to a warrior type, they won't be.