[RPM] Big Magic, Without Breaking the World

[lexington]

Big Magic here means rituals with a cost between 500 and 750 energy, things like placing a protective dome over a city for a month or improving the weather across an entire kingdom. Uncommon events but imaginable to characters in a high-magic world.

To this end a bit of experimentation has led to me making a few cosmetic adjustments to the RPM rules.

First: I'm eliminating sacrifices as an option, they don't fit the flavor of the setting and they encourage wacky decisions by powerful casters like gather 28800 people in one place.

Second: I'm eliminating group casting altogether. In a low-magic setting its harmless but when its easy to find a few people with Skill 18 it becomes degenerate. Flattening a building every thirty seconds with a 1.46% chance of failure is not really what I'm going for.

Third: Rather than being able to draw on any number of Power Items casters are limited to a single Power Item so that smaller Power Items don't



So now I'm stuck trying to price Power Items. I could simply declare that the only ones in existence are a dozen massive ones owned by major wizarding organizations but I don't want it to be that arbitrary. Can I safely port in the pricing scheme for Powerstones from GURPS:Magic with my own modified recharge rates?

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by lexington

Big Magic here means rituals with a cost between 500 and 750 energy, things like placing a protective dome over a city for a month or improving the weather across an entire kingdom. Uncommon events but imaginable to characters in a high-magic world.

To this end a bit of experimentation has led to me making a few cosmetic adjustments to the RPM rules.

Okay.

Originally Posted by lexington

First: I'm eliminating sacrifices as an option, they don't fit the flavor of the setting and they encourage wacky decisions by powerful casters like gather 28800 people in one place.

Seems reasonable. Keep in mind that you'll only be able to draw from Mana Reserves and Ambient energy...which could lead to some odd things. In most fiction I've read being able to tap "deep reserves" is a standard trope - sacrifices mimicked that pretty well.

Originally Posted by lexington

Second: I'm eliminating group casting altogether. In a low-magic setting its harmless but when its easy to find a few people with Skill 18 it becomes degenerate. Flattening a building every thirty seconds with a 1.46% chance of failure is not really what I'm going for.

Why? The -1 to skill per person after the first is pretty darn limiting. And the critical failure "sharing" can get nasty. If you're going to ban group casting make sure you get rid of other combining efforts for other power sources or your players are going to complain.

Originally Posted by lexington

Third: Rather than being able to draw on any number of Power Items casters are limited to a single Power Item so that smaller Power Items don't

Sounds like a quirk to me.

Originally Posted by lexington

So now I'm stuck trying to price Power Items. I could simply declare that the only ones in existence are a dozen massive ones owned by major wizarding organizations but I don't want it to be that arbitrary. Can I safely port in the pricing scheme for Powerstones from GURPS:Magic with my own modified recharge rates?

I wouldn't. I've tried it. It doesn't work too well. How about you figure out how much 1-point of Energy Reserve would cost? I've used 10% of the starting campaign before and that works pretty well.