Quote:
Originally Posted by RyanW
I, on the other hand, have become quite tired of magic systems like you describe. My fantasy setting is very limited on direct damage options, and has no instant "have some HP back" style healing, and casting times are typically measured in minutes.
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The only reason Sagatafl and my Ärth setting has direct damage spells is because of legacy, since the Ärth world was originally based on
someone else's RPG system, Quest FRP, which had such spells.
By the time I gave up trying to GURPSify Quest FRP, and instead decided to resume development of what was then called FFRE, there was more than enough backstory legacy for the Ärth NPCs to make it impossible to surgically remove the combat time-scale direct damage spells.
I don't mind those spells being there.
They're not
as crazy as AD&D and D&D3 having a low-level area-of-effect damage spell. Fireball is a
3rd level spell, on a scale from 0th or 1st up through 9th level, and with a
huge area. Sagatafl's spell scale goes from 1st to 6th level, and the only area-of-effect damage spells you get are puny-area 5th level ones and somewhat-larger-area 6th level ones (but still not the hundreds of square feet of AD&D's Fireball), although they are still combat time-scale (with a Casting Time Increment of 1 Round, meaning you usually cast them in 2-10 Rounds depending on your skill and on how strong your Focus item is, and of course whether you want to take the
risk of trying to cast a 6th level spell at all; best case scenario is you turn your familiar into a horny catgirl, but most casting Fumbles, especially of 6th level spells, are actually unpleasant).
But if I were to start over from scratch, those spells
wouldn't have been there.
(I've also seriously thought about making parts of the Ärth setting the equivalent of a "Low Mana" area, specifically for spells from the Element category, but ultimately decided against it, since that would boil down to screwing the players depending on which area the campaign started in, and I'm against GMs having sex with players.)
Instant healing isn't available as learnable spells. There I did put my foot down, relative to Quest FRP.
You get the equivalent of some characters being able to learn and cast spells to temporarily give others Rapid Healing or even slow Regeneration (such spells aren't CTI 1 round, nor do they
need to be), and things like that, but insta-healing is only for inborn Powers, such as Virgin Powers, Divine Powers and Royal Powers (think unicorn-riding maidens, Abrahamic prophets with healing hands, and dudes like Aragorn, respectively), which are explicitly rare in in-world demographics terms.