Steven Barker
First Post
I've been exploring the Magic chapter in O.L.D. recently. To better understand the MP cost of spells, I made a spreadsheet listing the MP costs of each of the skill based spell effects. Since the MP cost of an effect cost is also its prerequisite skill level, this is very useful when thinking about character creation and advancement.
Check the spreadsheet out here!
The spreadsheet isn't intended to teach you what the different effects do (though it does describe a few of them that have weird prices). It mostly just names the effects, rather than going into any detail about of how they work. Look in the book for the each effect's specific rules.
Effects that have several different costs listed in the book are shown on different rows with clarifying text in parentheses. For instance, the effects that add conditions will usually show up four times (for mild, moderate, severe and extreme versions of the condition they apply).
Most other effects with variable costs are shown in the row for their incremental cost, with a slash indicating how much benefit you get for each multiple of the cost. For example the Shielding effect from Abjuration gives +2 DEFENSE (against a specific creature or damage type) for each MP spent, so it's listed in the 1 MP row, with the label "Shield/+2". The version that gives defense for all types of attack is listed as "Shield (all)/+1", since it gives only +1 DEFENSE per MP.
I'm not certain I've entered everything correctly, so please comment if something doesn't look right, and I'll try to fix it.
Creating this chart has shown me that I don't really understand how some magic skills are supposed to work (e.g. Creation seems absurdly good at making small items like personal weapons and armor, even at very low skill and magic attribute levels). I'll ask about those oddities in a separate thread.
Check the spreadsheet out here!
The spreadsheet isn't intended to teach you what the different effects do (though it does describe a few of them that have weird prices). It mostly just names the effects, rather than going into any detail about of how they work. Look in the book for the each effect's specific rules.
Effects that have several different costs listed in the book are shown on different rows with clarifying text in parentheses. For instance, the effects that add conditions will usually show up four times (for mild, moderate, severe and extreme versions of the condition they apply).
Most other effects with variable costs are shown in the row for their incremental cost, with a slash indicating how much benefit you get for each multiple of the cost. For example the Shielding effect from Abjuration gives +2 DEFENSE (against a specific creature or damage type) for each MP spent, so it's listed in the 1 MP row, with the label "Shield/+2". The version that gives defense for all types of attack is listed as "Shield (all)/+1", since it gives only +1 DEFENSE per MP.
I'm not certain I've entered everything correctly, so please comment if something doesn't look right, and I'll try to fix it.
Creating this chart has shown me that I don't really understand how some magic skills are supposed to work (e.g. Creation seems absurdly good at making small items like personal weapons and armor, even at very low skill and magic attribute levels). I'll ask about those oddities in a separate thread.
