Elements of Magic: Mythic earth

[Korzon]

Has anyone used this in an ongoing game? I'm VERY intersted in it and right now it's going to be either Mythic earth of Montecooks WOD system and i'm tending towards ME since it has fewer assumptions tied to the WOD. So has anyone played it extensively, tried to break it, told it they respected it and than left it in the morning?

 

[genshou]

Haha, it's not nice to leave game books in the morning.

I've used it in an Urban Arcana game. Been toying around with a setting or two that would use it, but haven't had a chance to DM again.

I like the feel of it more than the mechanics. It just feels so right for making magic feel like, well, magic. As the name implies, it really captures the mythic roots of the supernatural.

 

[Korzon]

Anything specifically you don't olike about the mechanics? I've been thinking of either that or MCWOD, but I like the idea of not having to keep track of any sort of "spell points" since that'll keep things flowing. I did notice that in the basic system there seems to be no limit other than your skill on how much damage you could pump out and it seems wise to put some sort of level cap on it.

 

[Korzon]

One thing I'm considering doing is limiting the range and taking the MCWOD sympathetic magic rules and adapting them to longer range spell casting. that makes "super long range" attacks a bit harder to pull off.

 

[genshou]

Well, I didn't like that not all ability scores could be increased by the various action types. The fact that it's simpler than Elements of Magic - Revised Edition (a mana point system that used the elements heavily) is both a blessing and a curse--what you get in streamlining you lose in versatility. Still, it covers all the basics you really need in spellcasting, even if you do lose a few of the nifty options you'd get in a more complex ruleset.

One thing I really like is using Action Points for item crafting. This forces item crafters to give up something useful and finite, without forcing them to end up lower level than the rest of the party.

 

[Korzon]

EOM struck me as too complex with all the various element types and interactions.
As for the enhance i'm thinking of taking that out of the various skills and making it a skill of it's own-- enhance like MCWOD does it-- that means that those who don't have it have to make it a corss calss skill which keeps it lower, and the skill itself would be limited to a few traditions, which could keep it rarer. It'd be along the line of the skillm ost likely used by shadowrun style phsyical adepts.
Of course, you're right--the fact that it is streamlined loses some of the detail-- the ability to make your self physically faster wouldn't nessecarily fit with making yourself smarter, but i'm not certain if dividing the enhance ability up into two groups (mental and physical) would be wise.