Steve Jackson Games Forums - View Single Post

Blind Mapmaker · 09-03-2011, 10:52 AM

In an effort to bring spellcasting a bit more in line with regular skills, I am toying with the idea of changing some spells to have easy or average difficulty. For example, really low-powered spells such as Light or Sound would be easy and more powerful ones such as Shape Fire or Spasm would be average. This would make it possible (read: not a total waste of points) to play an IQ 12-13 dabbler with one level of Magery and still get cost reduction due to high skill for a handful of spells.

I already did a conversion for a magical school game that had 1-2 easy and 2-5 average spells per college, but that campaign never really got off the ground.

My questions are: Has anybody actually done something like this in a campaign? How did it affect balance between mages, non-mages and dabblers? Could it be reasonably extended to even more spells (e.g. make Fireball average and Explosive Fireball hard)? Am I missing any potential pitfalls or is having only hard/very hard spells just a world-building decision?

In a related question: Would lowering the skill thresholds to save energy by one or two have a great effect on how magic is used?

09-03-2011, 10:52 AM	#1
Blind Mapmaker Join Date: Sep 2010 Location: Mannheim, Baden	[THAUM] Varying Spell Difficulty In an effort to bring spellcasting a bit more in line with regular skills, I am toying with the idea of changing some spells to have easy or average difficulty. For example, really low-powered spells such as Light or Sound would be easy and more powerful ones such as Shape Fire or Spasm would be average. This would make it possible (read: not a total waste of points) to play an IQ 12-13 dabbler with one level of Magery and still get cost reduction due to high skill for a handful of spells. I already did a conversion for a magical school game that had 1-2 easy and 2-5 average spells per college, but that campaign never really got off the ground. My questions are: Has anybody actually done something like this in a campaign? How did it affect balance between mages, non-mages and dabblers? Could it be reasonably extended to even more spells (e.g. make Fireball average and Explosive Fireball hard)? Am I missing any potential pitfalls or is having only hard/very hard spells just a world-building decision? In a related question: Would lowering the skill thresholds to save energy by one or two have a great effect on how magic is used?