Re: Vancian Magic

From: Douglas Seay <seay_at_...>
Date: Tue, 09 Feb 2010 00:07:16 -0500


It has been many years since I've read the Dying Earth books, but one things I remember was a spell caster having to chose between learning 6 lesser spells or 4 greater spells. This means some sort of spell slots or spell points. Also, magic was supposed to be hard to learn, so I'd make lots of little skills that have to be bought independently just to slow things down. Maybe just making the skills more expensive will do the trick.

Maybe a keyword like "magical understanding" and its rating is how many spell points the character knows. Perhaps a lesser spell costs 5 and a greater costs 7, so a character with a rating of 17 can hold two lesser and one greater, or any other combo that does not exceed 17. Increasing this rating will slowly allow the character to hold more spells. A bit like RQ3's INT and Free INT.

I did not get the impression that studying spells made them more powerful, because each spell did what it did regardless of who cast it.  A Hero Point to add it to a spell book, and after that the spell has a fixed rating, something like a HQ charm.

If you come up with something that you like, please post it. I'm curious as to how well this works out.

Nikodemus Siivola wrote:
> I've been thinking about how to implement Vancian magic with HQ 2.0.
>
> My current idea is to have Spellcraft as an umbrella keyword, and
> spells under it. In order to memorize a spell, the character must have
> spent points on the specific spell. A memorized spell can be cast once
> per point spent on it before it must be rememorized. Characters can
> memorize at most 50% (rounded up) of the spells they know.
>
> Any suggestions, or better yet: experiences with Vancian magic in HQ?
>
> Cheers,
>
> -- Nikodemus
>
>
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