Classless play

[JimmyPlenty]

Originally Posted by Skarg

One thing about letting everyone learn spells, is that if you only charge one point for them, that makes them extremely easy compared to talents. Hmm, I can learn to swim, or learn to magically fly... learn to ride a horse, or learn to summon a gargoyle from thin air.

Things is, this could be very interesting. This is what happens when technology takes over. Who would walk if everyone had rocketpacks?

[Skarg]

Originally Posted by JimmyPlenty

Things is, this could be very interesting. This is what happens when technology takes over. Who would walk in everyone had rocketpacks?

Could be interesting for some players.

Myself, I tend to be very interested in playing within the limits and effects of mundane situations. I like magic to be rare and limited, because otherwise the mundane situations tend to become overshadowed or even trivialized. I want to have to worry about, and to be able to work within, the natural obstacles of things like terrain, walls, supplies, lighting, etc, and not to have many situations easily addressable or bypassable by magic that anyone might have.

Not to mention how common widespread magic can make situations very complex, and require thinking about who might have what magic and what they might or would do with it. For example the treasury being in a non-magical castle is foolish if magic is common - if security needs to anticipate anyone very possibly having any spell, then players and the GM always should be thinking about the whole spell list all the time.

And, TFT magic has quite a few spells that don't have great countermeasures. It kind of works (sort of, maybe, at least if you edit a few things...) in a world where there are only so many powerful wizards, and most don't want to risk becoming notorious outlaws. But if spells are easy for everyone to learn, it implies much more complex situations could and would be afoot.

It would certainly open up many more "interesting" tactics if you could expect most of your part to know, say, Aid and a couple other spells, as well as being whatever else they are. For instance, you could start off a charge through a door with the whole party having Aided the people with Illusion for 2 ST each, so that not only can you start the battle with several illusions, but your group may only need to rest 30 minutes after to be at full ST. Iron/Steel armor would probably be a lot less popular. Etc. etc.

[KevinJ]

So, I prefer not having the distinction between WIZARDS and HEROES as presented in ITL, so I introduced the Talent ADEPT. If you do not have the ADEPT talent you use magic like a HERO in the rules with the exception that each spell is 1pt. If you have ADEPT then you use magic as described for WIZARDS in the rules, but talents are purchased at normal cost.

ADEPT IQ9, (2): A person with this talent is attuned to magic. This talent allows the character to learn spells in a fraction of the time a normal character would learn them, though the cost in IQ remains the same... Only Adepts can cast spells from Scrolls, and Books. This Talent is not required to cast spells, but it helps.
Generally speaking, an Adept is not quite the same as a mage, wizard, sorcerer, conjurer, warlock, witch, or other title given to a mystical character.

[Steve Plambeck]

I just don't like the idea of playing in a campaign world where anyone and everyone can know "a little magic". It just seems really homogeneous. Rather than consider wizards a "class" I see them as a specialization, and one that adds flavor to the mundane world without supplanting that mundane world. Call it diversity perhaps.

That said, I'm a big proponent of a "Wizardry talent" that makes for an objective definition of what a wizard is, and also simplifies rules for how figures learn and memorize things down to a single standard for all.

But it must be an expensive talent, so costly that if you don't take it as a starting character you are unlikely to switch to it in mid-career. Not impossible, but very unlikely. It's a two way street. The character that starts out a wizard should be unlikely to become an expert or master with a wide range of weapons. Again it shouldn't be impossible, just extremely difficult and unlikely. To be both a wizard who doesn't know enough magic and a warrior who doesn't have enough fighting skills, at the same time, should be a very dangerous way to live with a mortality rate higher than anyone else. Those that try and survive would be really badass characters, but there should never be that many of those people around at one time.

[larsdangly]

This is an issue where every point along the spectrum, from 'everyone knows magic' to 'magic is horse crap that doesn't work', can be the basis of an excellent campaign. Glorantha is one of the greatest fantasy roleplaying settings ever and basically every sentient being in the game casts spells; Pendragon also has one of the greatest fantasy roleplaying settings ever and magic is so mysterious an out of reach to player characters that it isn't even covered with formal rules (at least, in the early editions of the game).

So, I would happily play a TFT game in which every character could learn all talents and spells at 'base costs', and then happily turn around and play another in which 'magic' was nothing more than superstition and charlatans' tricks.

[KevinJ]

Originally Posted by Steve Plambeck

I just don't like the idea of playing in a campaign world where anyone and everyone can know "a little magic". It just seems really homogeneous. Rather than consider wizards a "class" I see them as a specialization, and one that adds flavor to the mundane world without supplanting that mundane world. Call it diversity perhaps.

That said, I'm a big proponent of a "Wizardry talent" that makes for an objective definition of what a wizard is, and also simplifies rules for how figures learn and memorize things down to a single standard for all.

But it must be an expensive talent, so costly that if you don't take it as a starting character you are unlikely to switch to it in mid-career. Not impossible, but very unlikely. It's a two way street. The character that starts out a wizard should be unlikely to become an expert or master with a wide range of weapons. Again it shouldn't be impossible, just extremely difficult and unlikely. To be both a wizard who doesn't know enough magic and a warrior who doesn't have enough fighting skills, at the same time, should be a very dangerous way to live with a mortality rate higher than anyone else. Those that try and survive would be really badass characters, but there should never be that many of those people around at one time.

If you want to make Magic more inaccessible, just ass Prerequisites to ADEPT like Literacy (1) and Sorcerer's Tongue (2 because it's harder to learn than normal languages) ADEPT just represents the "I have X years of formal training as a Wizard" and does not give any bonuses other than allowing the character to use magic as written for a WIZARD.

There is already a mechanic in place for the time required and methods in which characters can learn magic and non-Wizards basically learn magic at the whim of Wizards. "So, you want me to teach your [Insert spell with no prerequisites here]? Fine, fetch 20 gallons of water from this specific well every morning, sweep the floors of the workshop every day, cook my breakfast, assist me in my lab in the morning, make my lunch, step and fetch for my formal afternoon classes, remove the refuse of my work every evening and if there is any time left in the day, I will teach you. [<Spongebob Narrator's voice> 6 months later...] "There you are, you know know the intimate workings of the Blur spell."

And to make it even more discouraging, CHARGE them money to be a servant.

[Steve Plambeck]

I don't recall hearing of Pendragon -- that sounds tempting. But there it is: variety is everything. Whether it's variety within a single game, or variety across multiple dissimilar games.

And what one wants to GM and what one wants to play can be different things too.

[Steve Plambeck]

You left out, "And paint my house" ;)

Originally Posted by KevinJ

If you want to make Magic more inaccessible, just ass Prerequisites to ADEPT like Literacy (1) and Sorcerer's Tongue (2 because it's harder to learn than normal languages) ADEPT just represents the "I have X years of formal training as a Wizard" and does not give any bonuses other than allowing the character to use magic as written for a WIZARD.

Oh I'm a huge proponent of tiered magic-user talents. I started a thread on that with an article here:

http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=164761

I too made Literacy and my group's equivalent of Sorcerers Tongue prerequisites, although we kept that language cost at 1. (And made the language free for anyone who learned it as their native tongue, making at least one ancient race slightly better qualified at becoming wizards.)

Chris Rice also wrote a fine "Adept" talent, mentioned in the same thread I think, which was at IQ 8 I believe. I will probably integrate that or something almost identical in my future campaign world.

Originally Posted by KevinJ

So, you want me to teach your [Insert spell with no prerequisites here]? Fine, fetch 20 gallons of water...

I just don't agree with the no prerequisites part. But as you say, a certain language and the Literacy talent might suffice as prerequisites.

The Literacy part I'm not as sure of. Because I also like the notion of backwoods folk practicing magic without it. My old group even had a separate table of "backwoods spells" that were at IQ 7.

One could say only spells above a certain IQ level require Literacy to learn, but I rather favor not going down that path. I prefer Literacy be used to distinguish the wizards who can teach themselves spells from books or cast spells from books from the ones that can't.

Scrolls are a slightly different matter. I love the notion that the scroll takes over the mind of anyone who starts looking at it, even an illiterate, and they are forced to speak the words on the scroll, which then casts the spell, even if they have no idea what the funny words they are pronouncing even mean.

"Klaatu barada nikto, what did I just say?"

"I dunno either, but you seem to have summoned a big silver myrmidon."

[larsdangly]

Another way of controlling the 'flow' of magic through your game without introducing a new infrastructure of talents and other prerequisites is to craft a campaign setting where players (and presumably NPCs) don't have ready access to the information they would need to learn spells. In a setting like that, a tome containing the Invisibility spell would be a potentially world-changing object.

[Shostak]

That's precisely what I prefer to do. In addition to controlling the magic somewhat, it gives characters another reason to go adventuring. And sometimes, when they come home, they find that their stronghold was burgled and some of their arcane tomes are missing.