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Old 06-20-2018, 08:13 AM   #1
meteoricshipyards
 
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Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Minnesota (brrr)
Default We don't need no stinkin' Heros and Wizards

While playing with some TFT characters, I was fooling around with a Druid. I made him a Wizard gave him some animal control and summoning spells, and was going to give him Animal Handling (2), and Naturalist (2). However, due to talents being twice as expensive as spells to a Wizard, he couldn't afford them. The same with a thief getting the Lock/Knock spell.

So, I was wondering, does anyone have any experience with just doing away with the distinction between Wizards and Heroes?

Gurps did it, although spells were all Difficult (at least) and there was the Magery advantage. I'm not trying to recreate Gurps, but wondering if people tried this and how did it work?

Thanks!
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Old 06-20-2018, 08:34 AM   #2
Chris Rice
 
Join Date: Dec 2017
Location: London Uk, but originally from Scotland
Default Re: We don't need no stinkin' Heros and Wizards

Quote:
Originally Posted by meteoricshipyards View Post
While playing with some TFT characters, I was fooling around with a Druid. I made him a Wizard gave him some animal control and summoning spells, and was going to give him Animal Handling (2), and Naturalist (2). However, due to talents being twice as expensive as spells to a Wizard, he couldn't afford them. The same with a thief getting the Lock/Knock spell.

So, I was wondering, does anyone have any experience with just doing away with the distinction between Wizards and Heroes?

Gurps did it, although spells were all Difficult (at least) and there was the Magery advantage. I'm not trying to recreate Gurps, but wondering if people tried this and how did it work?

Thanks!
Yes, I did away with the distinction between Wizard and Hero so everyone paid the same for Talents. "Wizard" became a talent instead, I think it cost 5 points but came with a few basic spells. They could learn further spells at 1 point each, wheareas those without the Talent had to pay 2 for each spell (assuming they were allowed to learn spells but that would depend on your World setup.)

It would be easy to do the same with "Druid". Make it a Talent which allowed a few relevant nature related spells. They can then buy further Talents to round out the character without paying double cost.
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Old 06-20-2018, 08:48 AM   #3
Terquem
 
Join Date: Apr 2018
Location: Idaho Falls
Default Re: We don't need no stinkin' Heros and Wizards

That's a great idea Chris
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Old 06-20-2018, 08:49 AM   #4
zot
 
Join Date: May 2018
Default Re: We don't need no stinkin' Heros and Wizards

Druids are one option I want to explore with my (non-wizard) religion system. I think the two religions I already have might already have some seeds for a druid religion: the Mngineer "Clockwork Creature" ceremony is really just a long-term summoned creature and the Village Wise One's "wither" talisman power is close to the D&D druid's "Shillelagh". Also, many of the Village Wise One ceremonies are connected to nature spirits.

At this point, we're play testing the two religions I have and I want to flesh those out but everyone is welcome, of course, to play test the system and make their own religions (I have a bunch of design notes that can hopefully help with that).
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Old 06-20-2018, 09:55 AM   #5
meteoricshipyards
 
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Default Re: We don't need no stinkin' Heros and Wizards

One of the things I liked about TFT over D&D was the elimination of the "cleric" class. If it was supernatural, it was spells, if natural, talents. Gurps, with its much more expansive spells, led to more "Only this group knows these spells" so you could have different religions with different miracles/spells.

As for the druid I was trying to create, it's less a religion, and more a nature or animal based character.

I'm not sure about the Wizard (or Druid) talent. Seems to be moving back towards a more classed system.
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Old 06-20-2018, 10:12 AM   #6
zot
 
Join Date: May 2018
Default Re: We don't need no stinkin' Heros and Wizards

You can think of this religion system as an alternate system of ceremonial magic that doesn't overlap with wizards, without using points or spell slots. It uses the Priest and Thelologian talents (and some additional Theologian talents). It's not a character class, any character can gain access to the ceremonial magic by taking the Priest talent -- each successive Theologian talent grants access to 5 more ceremonies.

The system does model religions but it can also be used to model other things like druids, psionics, and fields that are appropriate for ceremonial magic. The second religion, "Mngineering" is one of these non-religions.

Can I ask you to at least take a look at it before you form an opinion about it...

Last edited by zot; 06-20-2018 at 10:14 AM. Reason: clarification
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Old 06-20-2018, 11:06 AM   #7
Skarg
 
Join Date: May 2015
Default Re: We don't need no stinkin' Heros and Wizards

Personally, I generally don't like having lots and lots of people having spells, or dabblers having many spells, so I try to like there to be a serious barrier to non-specialists having several spells... well, it also depends on the type of spells.

I tend to get overwhelmed as GM if there are many characters with spells and/or characters with a large number of different types of spells. Unlimited access to GURPS Magic spells, for example, is hard for me to think about what everyone can do with their spells. I like TFT's set of spells (minus a couple such as Trance), but I would want a way to discourage/prevent every TFT warrior getting a few spells, at least in my own campaigns.

However I like thematic magic learning. GURPS Magic is manageable to me if/when people who have spells have a limited set that goes together in a way that makes sense to me. About 1990 I started dividing the magic in my campaigns into small groups of spells that each organization/religion/school/etc knew and taught, so that what spells people had made sense to me and I could keep track of them much more easily.

To finally get around to your druid example, it seems to me it would make sense to pick the set of spells and skills that apply, figure out how many learning points you feel that ought to add up to, and divide that total cost up into bits, and then arrange them into prerequisites that justify the discount because they are related overlapping limited knowledge.

So for example, if your list is:

Animal Communication
Animal Control
Squirrel Summoning
Snake Summoning
Bird Summoning
Wolf Summoning
Hawk Summoning
Bear Summoning
Serpent Summoning
Eagle Summoning
Shapeshifting
Animal Handling (2), and Naturalist (2)

That might become:

Druidic Animal Handling - IQ 9, (2) - requires Druidic inclinations, a teacher, and additional study time, but does not take any more learning/IQ points than ordinary Animal Handling.

Druidic Naturalist - IQ 10, (2) - requires Druidic inclinations, a teacher, and additional study time, but does not take any more learning/IQ points than Naturalist.

Druidic Animal Communication IQ 9 spell - requires Druidic Animal Handling
- allows communication with animals, interrogation, negotiation, gives bonus to Animal Handling & Riding, etc.

Druidic Animal Control - IQ 10 spell - requires Druidic Animal Communication and Druidic Naturalist (spell is itself a prereq for all druidic animal summoning spells)

There are three (could be more) Druidic summoning spells, all of which require Druidic Animal Control, and each of which takes one spell learning point, which have increased levels that require higher IQ and more study time (see learning spells in Advanced Wizard) but do not require additional learning points to get the higher levels of each

Druidic Squirrel Summoning (IQ 8) -> Wolf (IQ 9) -> Bear (IQ 11)
Druidic Snake Summoning (IQ 9) -> Serpent (IQ 12)
Druidic Bird Summoning (IQ 9) -> Hawk (IQ 11) -> Eagle (IQ 12)

Druidic Shapeshifting (IQ 14) - requires the druidic summoning spell for the animal you want to shapeshift into.

I would not charge a druidic wizard double to learn animal handling and naturalist (nor woodsman and maybe not Vet) in the same way I wouldn't charge a Wizard double to learn to read or do alchemy.

A druid wizard would need 10 learning points to get all these spells and talents.
A non-wizard druid would only get 2 spells in with 10 learning points (so both talents and up to Animal Control).

A druid could either be a new "class" like wizard or hero (who would pay double or triple to learn other spells), or just a wizard who follows this prereq path, or anyone who follows this prereq path.
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Old 06-20-2018, 12:34 PM   #8
Shostak
 
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Default Re: We don't need no stinkin' Heros and Wizards

We did away with the distinction between wizards and others. It worked fine. We did not see a proliferation of spell-casters. We did have more wizards capable of wielding swords, but that did not seem to detract from balance or fun.
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Old 06-20-2018, 12:36 PM   #9
zot
 
Join Date: May 2018
Default Re: We don't need no stinkin' Heros and Wizards

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Originally Posted by Shostak View Post
We did away with the distinction between wizards and others. It worked fine. We did not see a proliferation of spell-casters. We did have more wizards capable of wielding swords, but that did not seem to detract from balance or fun.
It certainly sounds worth a shot!
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Old 06-20-2018, 12:48 PM   #10
Jim Kane
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Default Re: We don't need no stinkin' Heros and Wizards

I guess I am the odd-man-out on this one.

I have no issues with the character rules for Fighters and Wizards the way they are. In fact, I am very comfortable with the rules as written.

JK
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