[Iron Heroes] Magic oddities.

[Driddle]

I'm the one paying for the goddam blah blah blah ... And you can shove that patronizing tone, DEAR!"

Nice sound bite. Let's get substantive. You certainly need some element of the fantastic in order to have fantasy. And that fantastic element can be called "magic" as easily as anything else,

1. Dandy. Then stop whining about how to make it into something it's not. Go Somewhere Else.
2. Thank you. And more than a sound bite, it's true. Yes, "some element of the fantastic" *can* involve magic, but (to repeat) it's NOT necessary. You can have fantastic sword fights, fantastic critters, fantastic political plots, fantastic quests to find some imaginary ice cream flavor, and fantastically obtuse refusals to accept a game without a heavy reliance on magic.

Once again: Why is it so important for some gamers to have a certain amount of magic in their games? Best guess: Because they can't imagine it any other way.

 

[Felon]

Once again: Why is it so important for some gamers to have a certain amount of magic in their games? Best guess: Because they can't imagine it any other way.

Since you cannot conceive that anyone whose opinion differs from yours is anything than a petulant, obtuse, whiny child, you are hardly positioning yourself to be the next posterchild for open-mindedness.

Magic is a definitive component of the genre. It was as such when Robert E. Howard was writing for Weird Tales, and it was as such when George R. R. Martin was writing his stuff. That's why they rewrote their stories to include magic when originally the stories didn't contain them--because otherwise, they'd be considered as pseudo-historical fiction. And more imporatnly, it's a definitive component in Iron Heroes. Rules for magic should be supported in some fashion (if not in the PHB, then a supplement), and expect that players will envision characters that will have access to it.

And before you say "well, that's just because the audience at large lack the imagination to accept fantasy without magic", I will not only point that is not a case of de facto reasoning, but I ask you: is it a particularly imaginative response?

 

[Driddle]

Thanks, Felon. You have single-handedly answered my question. No need to elaborate any further.

We can move on now.

 

[ThirdWizard]

Huh. This thread seems to be less about adding magic to a magic-less system and intead fixing a half-implemented magic class that is already existant in said sytem. I, for one, am all for taking the Arcanist and molding it more to my liking. But, then again, I'm all for taking any aspect of Iron Heroes, or D&D for that matter, and molding it to my liking.

There's already magic in Iron Heroes. It just isn't prevalent, easy to use, or necessary toward the mechanics.

 

[Christian]

I wonder how well the Wheel of Time magic system could be integrated into this sub-game. Some pieces are rather setting-specific, and I don't know how much of it is OGC, either; but it had a pretty good power level & appropriate flavor, as I recall ...

 

[Kaos]

Fantasy does not require the presence of magic. It requires a creative mind.

It may not require, but very rarely does it not include some[/] magic. And I'll note here that you didn't comment on the rest of my reasons; can I take that as recognition of their validity?

The big one is "because it's there." If Mike had gone with his original plan (paraphrased as "no time to make this right, let's just leave it out for now,") there'd be no issue.

But it did get put in, and it came close to what I was looking for. Now I'm applying my imagination to see if it can be pushed the rest of the way.

Huh. This thread seems to be less about adding magic to a magic-less system and intead fixing a half-implemented magic class that is already existant in said sytem.

It's more a case (IMO) of a subsystem that looks like a first draft of something that could have been great. Liimited to the bits that (IMO) need very little revision, the Arcanist is fine.

 

[Kaos]

I wonder how well the Wheel of Time magic system could be integrated into this sub-game. Some pieces are rather setting-specific, and I don't know how much of it is OGC, either; but it had a pretty good power level & appropriate flavor, as I recall ...

Don't have a copy of that one myself, but whether or not something is OGC doesn't particularly matter if you're just using it as a personal patch. Nothing stops me from adapting concepts from one 'proprietary' RPG into another for my home game.

It's just if I want to 'publish' the methods I used to do it that that OGC concerns come up. (For varying degrees of publication which, not being a lawyer, I don't know the extent of.)

 

[JohnSnow]

I wonder how well the Wheel of Time magic system could be integrated into this sub-game. Some pieces are rather setting-specific, and I don't know how much of it is OGC, either; but it had a pretty good power level & appropriate flavor, as I recall ...

EXCEPT that it used spell slots. Spell SLOTS!!! in a setting based on the Wheel of Time novels - the books that prompted TSR to introduce "Channeling" in the Player's Option: Spells & Magic book.

All RPG magic does not have to be based on bloody spell slots! I believe the first d20 game to attempt to replace them (in a reasonably balanced way, IMO) was FFG's Midnight. That game's magic system dumped spell slots (and class lists) for spell energy, limits on spell access and learning spells, and the ability to "overcast" at great risk. It also allowed talismans to reduce the cost of spells and let characters combine forces to channel powerful magic. And all those things suit the Wheel of Time world better than the system that was in the Wheel of Time RPG. The only downside is that FFG kept the OGL D&D spell list, rather than totally rewriting it (a decision I can't totally blame them for).

I tried rewriting the list to eliminate D&D magic. It wasn't THAT hard. I don't think it was totally balanced, but I didn't get to playtest it either. Basically, you start by saying that characters get talents rather than schools. Stealing from the WoT game, you have (off the top of my head): Balefire, Cloud Dancing, Conjunction, Earth singing, Elementalism, Healing, Travelling, Warding and a few others. You need one for illusions, for example, but I can't remember what it was called. And obviously, in a non-WoT setting, you could dump "Balefire."

That's the basics. As to why we're reworking the Iron Heroes magic system? Because when you have "close to perfect," you really want "perfect" of course.

 

[Ace]

I don't have Iron heros yet but all the rumra about the magic system leads me to think an easy fix might be borrowing the one from Sov Stone D20

You roll Level +1d20 each round until you take subdual and are KO'd -- abort the spell or the spell goes off . Tweak this a little with a "roll a 1 and get frapped" rule and maybe up the DC of blast spells and the system should work fine

Toss that system onto the Arcanist and go

 

[Plane Sailing]

Felon and Driddle - calm down please, and be nice.