[DF] Path/Book mages in DF?

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Kromm

A Path/Book caster would enter adventures with charms prepared and use them up, not unlike how an artificer uses his Gizmos. Then he'd need time to set up new charms. The game effect would be a bit like a wizard who does everything via Delay, Hang Spell, and Link. Such a caster's ability to unleash prepared charms instantly and at no FP cost would be amazing, though! He'd just need to have other skills to fall back on after doing so.

Really, I think it all hinges on the rituals. Being able to hit the monster with a dead rat with a knotted string tied to it and have the monster cursed to -1 or worse on all dice rolls, or snapping a twig and unleashing a devastating blast of spirit energy, would be entirely cool. Don't think purely in terms of love charms and the like.

Sure, that would work, after a fashion, but there'll be more conflict between players and GMs, in terms of how much downtime there should be between adventures, and quite possibly also between those players who have characters who can utilize downtime on their own, to prepare for adventuring, versus those players who can only make use of downtime until their funds run out.

So either you'd have to accept the very real possibility of such conflict arising and staying around, or else create a rules solution. The most obvious solution would be to have preparer-ritualists need funds for their charms, so that they, too, run out of funds after a few weeks or at most a couple of months.

That boils down to letting some types of player characters create non-permanent magic items. I like it on principle, but I've actually never done that in my own homebrew RPG, Sagatafl, because I haven't been able to find a good and non-world-impacting mechanic to limit it (my solution to limit permanent magic items simply doesn't work for non-permanent ones).

World-impact is, at best, a secondary concern in DF, and anyway doesn't seem to be a real concern even in non-DF GURPS, so it is probably fairly doable.


Another solution is to use Modular Abilities. This means each ritualist must buy a number of Charm Slots or Charm Units, during character creation, and is then limited to using that number of charms per adventure, but can of course buy more Slots with earned experience points. This removes funds from the equation, and means there's a limit to how much downtime a ritualist can benefit from, although charm-creation still has to require time, otherwise a ritualist can make replacement charms every night before going to bed.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by malloyd

Voila, spell memorization substitute - accumulate the energy, hold it in one of your limited number of spell slots and cast it later with the usual process brief (Thaumatology is somewhat unclear on the official version, either 1 second or 1d+1 seconds) release process.

Why not have it be 1d6+1 seconds by default, but offer an Advantage that changes it into 1 second? 10 CPs might be a reasonable price for such a speed-up.

[Greg 1]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

Sure, that would work, after a fashion, but there'll be more conflict between players and GMs, in terms of how much downtime there should be between adventures, and quite possibly also between those players who have characters who can utilize downtime on their own, to prepare for adventuring, versus those players who can only make use of downtime until their funds run out.

I don't think this was ever a huge issue back when I played D&D.

[Kromm]

I was thinking about Path/Book casters replenishing their charms between action scenes, or simply off-screen – not over a period of hours, much less only in town. Specifically, a well-designed Path/Book variant could easily support Path/Book casters preparing a small number of charms as the cleric heals, the scout scouts, the thief picks locks, etc.; we're talking a span of minutes here. Another approach would be to let Path/Book casters simply buy the ability to use a small number of charms per game session, much as how Gizmos works. Either model would require customization, which is why you'd need to summarize an entire magic system and not just offer a template plus a bunch of Paths and rituals. And neither possibility would affect the other PCs' use of time at all.

[aesir23]

Originally Posted by Kromm

I was thinking about Path/Book casters replenishing their charms between action scenes, or simply off-screen – not over a period of hours, much less only in town. Specifically, a well-designed Path/Book variant could easily support Path/Book casters preparing a small number of charms as the cleric heals, the scout scouts, the thief picks locks, etc.; we're talking a span of minutes here.

Wouldn't Adept, particularly to remove the element of Time, be more or less sufficient to these ends?

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by aesir23

Wouldn't Adept, particularly to remove the element of Time, be more or less sufficient to these ends?

Yep. The simplifications of which I speak would amount to choosing a specific subtype of Path/Book magic, assessing certain traits as "standard" on the caster templates that use it, and cutting away verbiage about lengthy rituals and so on. In essence, it would be all the fastest and potentially tactically useful parts of Path/Book magic with the other bits left out.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Kromm

I was thinking about Path/Book casters replenishing their charms between action scenes, or simply off-screen – not over a period of hours, much less only in town. Specifically, a well-designed Path/Book variant could easily support Path/Book casters preparing a small number of charms as the cleric heals, the scout scouts, the thief picks locks, etc.; we're talking a span of minutes here. Another approach would be to let Path/Book casters simply buy the ability to use a small number of charms per game session, much as how Gizmos works. Either model would require customization, which is why you'd need to summarize an entire magic system and not just offer a template plus a bunch of Paths and rituals. And neither possibility would affect the other PCs' use of time at all.

But if a character with those skills can prepare 1 charm in 3 minutes, then he can prepare 100 charms in 5 hours.

What do you intend to use as the limiter for how many charms such a character can prepare?

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

But if a character with those skills can prepare 1 charm in 3 minutes, then he can prepare 100 charms in 5 hours.

What do you intend to use as the limiter for how many charms such a character can prepare?

There are already limits in the rules, like "no more than one prepared charm of each type" (Thaumatology, p. 139). Add some material components – which are also part of the rules (Thaumatology, p. 128) – and make sure these aren't free. Now you have a system where even if a caster knows every ritual covered by his Ritual Magic skill, he can only have one charm for each . . . and he won't go nuts creating these, because they cost money.

As I said, the author of such a supplement would have to read and internalize the system, isolate the useful parts, draw emphasis to them, and present them as a system alongside templates and rituals.

[Stone Dog]

WHFRP Dwarven Runesmiths had the limitation that they could never duplicate their own work.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Stone Dog

WHFRP Dwarven Runesmiths had the limitation that they could never duplicate their own work.

Is that 1st edition WHFRP, 2nd edition, or both?