Magical Tropes and Rules you Enjoy

[Herremann the Wise]

See this is EXACTLY what I was trying to get at over in the "Vancian Forest Burning / Must Go Away" thread.

Cool.

The downside is obviously that such an approach means people that play casters need a higher level of system mastery--even higher than they do now. For example, My wife can play a basic cleric right now because there's really not many choices to make. Pick the best spells that seem useful, and swap out healing as applicable. Throw in another layer of complexity, and there's no way she'd go for it.

I think this is what previous editions of D&D catered to quite well - providing different classes that played differently and made different demands upon the player. I think for some players though, a class that demands system mastery is exactly the type of class that they like to play. It won't be for everyone but again, it gives players further options and choice and I think that is a positive.

Plus, there's another layer of adjudication that goes on top of the actual spell effects themselves--which is already a common slow-down for many groups. But the overall effect of something like Herremann suggested is highly positive.

Thanks . I'm actually thinking of writing up this Liber Arcanus and posting its development. I think it might be fun and something different to play around with.

And besides, is it a bad thing to expect a more experienced player to play the caster classes? Something about the whole, "With great power comes great responsibility," or some such notion. If your character can kill stuff by speaking a few words and waving some bat dung around, I think it's a good thing to have a player that takes their RPGs a little more seriously pulling the character strings.

Certainly, but I think you have to tread a fine line here. You would not want such a creation over-powering the rest of the party. In fact, I think you could really take the opportunity here to fix a couple of things that can still be laid at the wizard's feet:
- Get rid of or limit the swiss army knife effects that tread upon the toes and expertise of other characters.
- Abolish the "15 minute day" that some (but not all) groups have a problem with.
- The certainty of successful casting - casting is hard to do, particularly in combat and particularly when you are maintaining numerous effects.
- Spellcasting monopolizing table-time during combat.

But taking all of this into account, I really like the concept of it being a challenge to play a wizard effectively. I'm quite happy for the sorcerer to pick up the slack of being the more accessible arcane class.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

 

[steeldragons]

Magic Trope that I enjoy?

Magic Missile always hits. Best magic trope ever.

That is all.

Carry on.

-Steel Dragons

 

[Set]

This is beginning to feel a little bit GURPS-y, with the notion that not anyone who fits the minimum requirements of casting stat 10+ can be a spellcaster, and skill rolls / failure chances for spells, and individual spells requiring specialized training and not just showing up in a lump and automatically being as easy as every other spell known.

I don't mind that sort of thing, being a big fan of how GURPS handled their magic system, with basically a 'feat' to buy into it, and extra feats blown to be better at it (increasing levels of Magical Aptitude), and each spell being it's own skill, so that a mage might be really good at fireball, but, upon learning wall of fire, he's not quite so good at it, yet.

It's a pretty huge step away from D&D's traditional spellcasting (although very similar to what Elements of Magic does, with feats to 'buy in' and individual spells, or even more closely aligned with Green Ronin's Complete Psychic, which has each psionic ability purchased as an actual skill available only to those Psychics who have purchased the prerequisite feats).

The Complete Psychic system seems the easiest starting point to strip away the names and replace them with feats (Abjuration access, etc) some coming free with spellcasting class levels, others purchased normally, and then individual spells purchased as skills, with the spelllcasting classes having a pool of skill points only available for spell skills.

At the end of the day, the feat + skill magic system would look like a frankenstein bastard love-child of D&D, GURPS, Ars Magica, Elements of Magic, Complete Psychic and Mage: the Ascension, I suspect.