sorcery, etc from Richard Ohlson on 1997-12-15 (Glorantha Digest Vol 05)

From: Richard Ohlson <richo_at_epix.net>
Date: Mon, 15 Dec 1997 13:38:25 -0500

I was thinking about some of the complaints with Sorcery, as it is written. Pretty much, it comes down to, "It's ridiculous that there is very little difference between a guy with a 30% skill and a guy with a 90% skill, if they have a week to prepare a spell."

One limit I was thinking that might cut down on highpower, high duration spells is to play that magic points of spells STILL IN EFFECT do not regenerate. That means that a sorcerer with a lot of magic point matrixes (and presumably lots more experience) would be more powerful than a chump with only a few. Likewise, it would mean that Sorcerers would (usually) have less extraneous magic points to power immediate spells.

Now, depending on how much you want to hinder the Sorcerers, it could be decided that only Duration Magic Points are withheld, or everything would be. The people this would hurt the most, btw, would be those guys who happen to know "Immortality" and use every possible MP they can.

Now, this is a simple, unplaytested fix. On the otherhand, Sandy's Sorcery rules are also very good. Mind you, I had mixed feelings when the Sorcerer in my game dropped out. It was interesting, but still required lots of bookkeeping.

Rich Ohlson
(Oh, I tried to use carriage returns so this thing isn't spread out accross a billion lines. If anybody knows another solution, PLEASE email me. Richo_at_epix.net)