Yet more clarifying questions for RPM

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by Zoomfarg

Thank you for the replies!

No worries.

Originally Posted by Zoomfarg

Sorry, I haven't gotten anything from the DF series until now--after your reply, I picked up DF 19. (The inclusion of the Summoned table is pretty great!)

Nice.

Originally Posted by Zoomfarg

I was actually trying to ask about "incantations" from your "Alternative RPM" article from 3/66, under the "Ritual Powers" heading.

Ah. Ok. Then for your original question, yes. If you want to use more than at a time buy the most expensive, then the next most expensive, and so on with each additional one after the first allowing another power in the set to be used.

Originally Posted by Zoomfarg

OH RIGHT that's a good point.

Actually that raises an interesting question... would it be appropriate to use the crafting penalties table when labor is involved, even for other spell effects?

Like say you've got a big chunk of marble and you want to use magic to carve it into a statue, or you're trying to dig a mining tunnel that would normally require laborers and engineers...

EDIT: to be clarify, I’m proposing that in some cases, maybe the Crafting Penalties Table could be used based on the wages for the value of labor that would otherwise have been used for what the ritual accomplished, like sculpting or tunnel-digging

Whenever labor is involved would probably be too broad... that would mean you'd have to--on the fly--convert every action that could be achieved by mundane methods into wages. That's definitely too much bookkeeping (literally). But it seems like maybe there's room to apply it outside of Create.

I wouldn't. Seems too complicated for too little return.

Originally Posted by Zoomfarg

I did! The thing I really like about Realm magic was the "dividing up the world" formula, so that different systems of division (ie different realm systems) were roughly cost-balanced. I liked being able to have different realm systems represent different magic traditions from different cultures.

It is useful for that.

Originally Posted by Zoomfarg

RPM mentions using alternative paths, but since it doesn't have anything like Realm advantages RAW, it seems like you've got to have roughly 9 path skills in any system. I've been noodling how to deal with that.

7-9 is the sweet spot. Less than 7 and the paths are usually too powerful. If you do that though you can compensate by making them priced as WC skills. That about evens it. The same is true of 10 or more skills. It waters them down. You could make them all Hard skills and it would balance ok.

I also wrote recently about breaking down Path skills on my blog.