Re: What useful purpose do the concentrated magic rules se from parental_unit

From: parental_unit_2 <parental_unit_2_at_...>
Date: Sat, 08 Jan 2005 06:43:01 -0000

I've enclosed what I intend to tell my players about magic types and concentration. Based on your suggestions, I decided:

Players can buy magic improvements at concentrated rates. However, if they mix "incompatible" magic types, they might have to pay un-concentrated rates, among other penalties.
What's "incompatible" is determined by the religions or organizations that teach the magic.
To use Common Magic actively, characters have to make a higher level of commitment to a Common Religion. Common Religions have resource requirements for committed members in line with those of cults, practices, orders and the like.
Players can meet resource requirements for an organization by spending Hero Points on specific abilities learned from the organization. I'm not going to require players to roleplay specific sacrifices or the like, beyond what the character normally does, unless the player wants to.

With the above, I think I can avoid magic concentration rules and the threefold Otherworld model. It seems like I can safely ignore a lot of the distinctions between Common Magic and Specialized Magic. I think I will still be able to set up decisions that the characters and their players will have to wrestle with, e.g. "Is it really worth giving up all my Lanbril magic to get into this wizard school?"

Thanks to everyone who had suggestions,

Rob

Magic Abilities

Most characters have small magic abilities that help them do tasks. For example, Henriette has the Silent Step ability, which helps her Sneak ability, and Marguerite has a Flickering Sword ability that aids Sword and Shield Fighting. These kinds of abilities are called Common Magic and are learned informally from friends, family, and colleagues. They normally cannot be used as active abilities, but can always augment some other ability.

Characters can learn more powerful magical abilities by joining various organizations in and around Namur, including craft guilds, saintly and knightly orders, and wizard schools. Some of these organizations just teach characters how to make the Common Magic that they know more powerful, enabling them to use Common Magic abilities as active abilities. Others teach entirely new abilities.

Characters who learn more powerful magic from an organization must generally commit time and other resources to the organization and its goals. The commitment can run anywhere from 20% to 60% of the character's resources, depending on the magic learned. To represent the time a character is spending, the player puts Hero Points on abilities learned from the organization or on the character's relationship with the organization.

For example, suppose Henriette joins the Society of Donandar, a guild of entertainers. She must spend 20% of her time working for the society and performing the magical rituals that she learns from it. To represent this, Elise must spend one out of every five Hero Points on abilities from the Society, or on her relationship with it.

Some organizations also require that members give up magic that's incompatible with that of the organization. For example, many wizard schools require characters to give up all Common Magic not learned at the school. Characters also might suffer a penalty learning and using magic, if they mix magic abilities that are incompatible with one another.