Inventing New Spells and the first Mage

Anaraxes · 09-02-2012, 12:00 PM

Arab folklore has it that Allah gave the first blacksmith the first pair of tongs, because you can't forge a pair of tongs unless you have one already. In a fantasy game, this could even be literally true for mages.

"Required" is not an absolute prohibition. See B345, top of the page, for various skill penalties for lacking proper tools. ("The quality of your equipment modifies your skill rolls for tasks that normally require equipment.")

You might also consider the back-history of magical development to be much like technology in that past mages bootstrapped their way up, making tools to the make the tools. (There's a section in Campaigns discussing the "advance the local tech level" plot.) Perhaps there are primitive versions of the tools, inefficient enchantments that take a lot more work, tool enchantments that are only temporary or even cast spells, none of which you'd want to use once you can make the better stuff -- but which you can use when you must.

09-02-2012, 12:00 PM	#2
Anaraxes Join Date: Sep 2007	Re: Inventing New Spells and the first Mage Arab folklore has it that Allah gave the first blacksmith the first pair of tongs, because you can't forge a pair of tongs unless you have one already. In a fantasy game, this could even be literally true for mages. "Required" is not an absolute prohibition. See B345, top of the page, for various skill penalties for lacking proper tools. ("The quality of your equipment modifies your skill rolls for tasks that normally require equipment.") You might also consider the back-history of magical development to be much like technology in that past mages bootstrapped their way up, making tools to the make the tools. (There's a section in Campaigns discussing the "advance the local tech level" plot.) Perhaps there are primitive versions of the tools, inefficient enchantments that take a lot more work, tool enchantments that are only temporary or even cast spells, none of which you'd want to use once you can make the better stuff -- but which you can use when you must.