Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Pielorinho" data-source="post: 5216704" data-attributes="member: 259">Bingo.  A botched vulgar effect with a level 3 sphere and in front of civilians is 7 points scourge immediately, nothing to sneeze at, and it'll have a base difficulty of 8; very easy to botch if you're rolling 3 dice!Absolutely true.  The game will start in Spain, as well, with the Inquisition at full power.  You can get burnt at the stake for being a Jew; practicing sorcery (even Catholic sorcery, like the Celestial Choir's) is definitely a no-no.  Once they make it to the New World, it's less dangerous: first, pirates tend not to have much respect for things like the Inquisition, and second, there's no anti-sorcery group as powerful as the Inquisition.  But there are still highly superstitious pirates who will want to kill wizards on sight, and plenty of people who will automatically mistrust and fear anyone practicing magic.  With good reason.You're totally right.  Whereas in D&D there's rule zero (is it still there?), followed by a buttload of rules, M:SC is the opposite.  There are rules, but the game almost seems to sneer at you for needing them.  Over and over it emphasizes the priority of drama over rules, and makes it sound like DM fail if you resort to rolling dice.  I'm exaggerating, but only slightly.Anyway, I'm totally fine with a super-prepared, brilliantly-executed instant ship-kill, as long as it's peculiar to the situation.  If they know that they'll be fighting Captain Beauregarde, and so in port they bribe one of his sailors to bring them a sliver of wood from the ship, and they prep a ritual around that wood to bond it to a a twist of cord, expending a dozen or so successes on it, and then when the ship turns its cannons toward the PCs they light the cord on fire, you better believe Captain Beauregarde is bursting into flames.What won't happen is this:  "A ship?  My turn?  Okay, I use connections3/force3/prime2 to light a spark in the powder room.  2 successes.  boom!"</blockquote>

Verification