Andrew Bean:
>Since we are talking about Kralorela at the moment I thought I would
>ask somone to send a short summary of how the Mysticism approach to magic
>of Kralorela actually works in their game world.
David Cake:
> An interesting idea for magic is skill based magic. Sandy uses
>something like it in his campaign, according to Guy Hoyle (I think).
I discussed Kralorelan magic with Sandy in private e-mail correspondence this August, so I'm partly guilty to those rules (we kind of merged two separate ideas). I thought I'd present a short summary. This is going to be a bit rulesy, but since it is Gloranthan rules I hope nobody minds.
There is a basic mysticism skill, appropriately called Mysticism. This defines how spiritually enlightened you are. It is increased 1) 1% every sacred time if you do the correct rites 2) 1% for every season spent in a monastery, learning mysticism 3) 1% each time you make a critical success with a magically boosted skill. Base chance is 1d6%, when you learn the first basics.
An average Kralorelan might have 20-30%, a mandarin 60-90% and an Exarch 120-150%. Godunya would of course have an obscene number.
There are two types of magic attached: for low magic you merely spend MP to increase skill success chance. You get a 5% / MP and you may use up to Mysticism skill/10 MP at once. You must concentrate only on the skill to boost, so you can't do it for more than one skill at the time.
When you have achieved mastery in a skill (90%) you may sacrifice 1 POW to get access to the high magic of that skill. With high magic you get more for your MPs. E.g. with low magic you can boost your sword skill, but with high magic you can also increase damage or decrease strike rank.
Those who have mastered Write Kralorelan and sacrificed for the high magic of that skill can create magic texts (what I have called 'poems of power' in my Red Tiger stories). The text is loaded with magic for some _other_ skill. When the user reads it, the magic takes effect. If the creator sacrificed POW making the text, it can be used any number of times.
An example of such an item is a war banner, which is inscribed with a suitable poem which is understood correctly only by those initiated in the secrets of the company. When the soldiers read it they get a boost to their war performance.
This can also be done with Painting, so that a paper with a painted fire actually produces a small flame when contemplated for example.
High mystic mgaic can also be used to produce divine magic-like effects through mastery of special cult knowledge skills. Thus cultivated Kralorelans with a mystic bent can still be cult members and have access to the magic of their gods.
I have high magic effects for a number of skills saved, in a rather unorganized format. I don't want to clutter this list with them, but anyone who is interested can contact me by e-mail.
OK, that's the rule part. More generally I take the mystic worldview to be mainly holistic, i.e. you are one with the universe and the universe is one with you. You just have to see through the web of illusions to realize this.
/Nils W
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