Re: How many is too many?

From: Roderick and Ellen Robertson <rjremr_at_...>
Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2004 19:18:24 -0700

> I'm curious if anyone has hit this problem either. I have someone who is
making up a
> grimoire for his character, and I'm not sure where I might want to draw
the line on him in
> terms of size.
>
> On 11 Aug 2004 at 13:43, yuskim1 wrote:
>
> > How many Spells should there be in a Grimoire? I.e. what factors
> > could an inexperienced GM use to decide whether game balance is going
> > to be adversely effected because a Grimoire that they have come up
> > with contains too many (or too diverse or too powerful or whatever)
> > Spells?
> >
> > Is it the same for Affinities and Feats too?

For an initial Grimoire (ie, the one he's going to start the gamne with), allow him to include enough to be interesting. Also, enough that he'll not complain that his magic is useless because he can't cast spells on X or Spells of Y, while his Barbarian Devotee buddy has 15 feats and can improvise them (remember that spells *can't* be improvised (Page 161)). Remember that Grimoires are (usually) narrow-focus collections - there may be 15 spells to fix an injury in a book of Magical healing, frex, but nothing on *causing* injury. But also remember that the particular order/School might have several Grimoires available to the new Adept.

Basically, probably between 5 & 10 spells is good for a "starting" grimoire, with the ability to "discover" more spells in it later, if necessary.

Also, the Grimoire writeups provided in the book are inclusive, not exclusive. If you want there to be more than the seven spells given in _The Army Book_ (page 172), go ahead and add them. It's a way around the "Can't Improvise"rule - but remember that you need a talisman or the physical Grimoire to cast a spell (it acts as a talisman for all spells contained in it).

RR
It is by my order and for the good of the state that the bearer of this has done what he has done.
- Richelieu