DFRPG Bards and Seeker spell

[Joseph R]

Most of the Seek spells fall solely into the college of their subject matter (Earth college for Seek Earth, Food for Seek Food, etc). This implies that Bards cannot have them, for although they are Information spells, they do not also count as Knowledge spells. The only exception I can see in the Spell Table is Seek Magic (Spells p.77).

That being the case, Bards cannot fulfill the prerequisites for Seeker, which would otherwise be a valid spell for Bards. Specifically the Spell Table gives the requirements as follows:

C: PI2 • W*: M1/BT1, IQ 12+, 2 “Seek” spells

Hopefully this is a simple oversight. I am inclined to consider some or even all of the Seek spells as valid for Bards, on that basis.

Suggestion: If not allowing Seek spells universally for all bards, then perhaps the GM might vary which are available (at least for starting PCs) based upon the racial/cultural heritage of the Bard in question (e.g. Seek Earth for Dwarf Bards, Seek Food for Halfling Bards, Seek Plant for Elf Bards, Seek Water for Bards from a desert culture, etc).

[ArchonShiva]

It’s not an oversight. But it makes eleven bards much better because they can access such spells. Nordlondr Fólk (By Gaming Ballistic) is an official DFRPG supplément that offers a few more races with access to Magery.

That said, some other role playing game that predates DFRPG would let a spell caster learn spells they could not cast for the purpose of fulfilling prerequisites. It seems it was cut from DFRPG for simplicity, not balance, so you could just do that: spend [1] per missing prerequisite.

Another option, alluded to in DFRPG, is to let any character buy Magery 0 [5] regardless of race. Elves just get it automatically. Any IQ 13+ PC would do very well to take it, there’s great stuff in there.

A third option is to let bards learn any spells that are prerequisites to spell they are allowed to learn. It won’t break anything, either, just make non-elven bards more flexible.

Your idea is fun - but it requires extra work, without knowing if your player is even going to pick a certain race, although you could do it on the fly. That would have been a great Pyramid article, a Magery -1 [1] that let’s you learn a few inconsequential spells based on your heritage.

[clu2415]

I had noticed this. It’s like 40% of the school that gets cut off. My work-around was to allow 2 Keen (sense) spells to count as the prerequisites.