Standard magic: area spells and walls

[Gnome]

Originally Posted by Dustin

I ran a long-term campaign with no generalized Magery, and magic divided into 9 super-colleges at 5 pts/level. I thought it worked well to incentivize more specialization and give NPC mages strong themes for their spells.

Some more details at https://thorsgrumblings.blogspot.com...rps-magic.html

I did something sort of similar in a years-long campaign that worked very well. I had the usual one Magery advantage, but to force some specialization I assigned each college a mundane skill that you had to have at least 4 points in to learn spells from that college:

Air—Breath Control
Body Control—Physiology (any)
Communication and Empathy—Psychology
Earth—Masonry or Prospecting
Fire—Smith (any) or Fire Eating
Food—Cooking
Healing—Physician
Illusion—Artist (Illusion)
Knowledge—Research
Light and Darkness—Artist (any mundane)
Making and Breaking—Engineer (any)
Meta—Thaumatology and Research
Mind Control—Hypnotism
Movement—Acrobatics (any)
Necromantic—Expert Skill (Thanatology)
Protection and Warning—Observation
Sound—Singing
Technological—Engineer (any)
Water—Swimming
Weather—Weather Sense

Players liked it because it didn't feel like "wasted points." Most of the skills are useful in their own right!

[Devil_Dante]

So it s like a - 50% limitation right? I used the same. But I thought was too expensive point wise. Because I have 13 warrens, I can set the price at 4 point per magery per Warren.

Thus, it's still very expensive

edit: found this one: http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=85852&page=3

I'll try this way, i like it

[Blind Mapmaker]

I had the same problem as the OP and I'm using an extra two spell classes to make tactical trickery like that viable: Ring and Line. Ring is basically what Wall of Lightning does, while Line is just line of single hexes and can be any shape. Most spells that use these are wall-type spells and have both classes. They're both more expensive than large castings of area spells, but they're useful in dungeon-type situations.

Here's an example, though I am not quite sure about the numbers (both energy and damage) yet.

Flame Barrier (IQ/H)
Ring/Line
Creates a ring or a line of fire 1 m wide. The fire burns without fuel, but might ignite combustible material. It inflicts 2d-2 burning damage per second, 1d-1 when running through one 1 hex for a fraction of a second.
Time to Cast: 2 s
Duration: 15 s
Cost: 3 / 1 for circle (minimum: 6 / 2 for 2-Hex radius), 1 / 0.5 (minimum: 4 / 2) for line
Prerequisites: Magery +1, Create Fire (2)

Edit: Cost for Ring is calculated like area spells, but only affects outermost ring of hexes. Cost for Line is per hex. Both might be a bit high still.

[Devil_Dante]

In first attempt, I'd wish to try to convert the wall length from the spell's circumference. For example: 2 meter radius is 12 meter circumference. It could work too

[Dustin]

Originally Posted by Gnome

I had the usual one Magery advantage, but to force some specialization I assigned each college a mundane skill that you had to have at least 4 points in to learn spells from that college

That's pretty great, I could even see those skills substituting for the Magery prerequisites. "Mundane skill" at Attribute+1 instead of Magery 1, Attribute +2 instead of Magery 2, etc

[Gnome]

Originally Posted by Dustin

That's pretty great, I could even see those skills substituting for the Magery prerequisites. "Mundane skill" at Attribute+1 instead of Magery 1, Attribute +2 instead of Magery 2, etc

I hadn't thought of that. Magery does so much more than act as prerequisite (acts as a Talent for magic AND raises the "level cap" for many spells) that I'm not sure I would want to disentangle all of that.

I found that mages in my campaign usually chose 2-3 colleges to focus on, and NPC masters who were true generalists were impressive in many ways.

Clerics with Power Investiture really shined in the campaign because they weren't forced to buy mundane skills other than Theology, Religious Ritual, etc. In fact, the only dedicated caster among the PCs was an earth cleric. The rest of the casters had other capabilities as well: a gnomish craftsman/gunsmith, a warrior/mage with fighting skills, spells, and imbuements, and a scholar/sun cleric.