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Old 03-23-2022, 02:10 AM   #11
Steve Plambeck
 
Join Date: Jun 2019
Default Re: The reverse of a mundane background advantage

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Originally Posted by hcobb View Post
Have you considered requiring that every wizard character spend the two memory points to learn Literacy and Aid, as any teacher would have required this?
So glad you asked.

I required every wizard to have our house Wizardry Talent (cost 5). It's prerequisites were Literacy (cost 1), and our equivalent of the Sorcerers Tongue (cost 1). That's 7 "talent points" to become a wizard.

To balance that, we did not charge wizards double for other talents, and spells were considered a separate memory track: a wizard could still learn as many as their IQ level, just as in original Wizard. (When Advanced Wizard and original ITL came out, my group at the time wasn't about to make all our existing wizards forget spells we'd been using for years to make room for talents.)

Aside from that, our wizards practically never used the Aid spell, and some didn't even bother to learn it. None of them ever felt they had enough ST to share -- I know I didn't.
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Old 03-23-2022, 02:27 AM   #12
Steve Plambeck
 
Join Date: Jun 2019
Default Re: The reverse of a mundane background advantage

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Originally Posted by Shostak View Post
Instruction that uses an oral tradition instead of writing would be a better description, since hedge schools often did include reading and writing (in Ireland, anyway) and have a connotation of being illicit.
Used to call that "Backwoods magic" and we had a short list of "Backwoods spells" in our house rules. No literacy or formal training required. I think they were only IQ 7 required.
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Old 03-28-2022, 07:09 PM   #13
David Bofinger
 
Join Date: Jan 2018
Location: Sydney, Australia
Default Re: The reverse of a mundane background advantage

I think making every wizard from a wizard's guild background spend points to buy Literacy, Sorcerers' Tongue and Aid has a lot to be said for it. It's certainly a lot cleaner than having the language appear at some IQ level.

Some wizards might come from some other traditions and have other requirements or limitations: hedge witches and barbarian shamans probably can't cast spells from books, priest-mages might need Priest instead, Confucian scholar-mages might need to learn Poetry and Calligraphy. Such matters can be detailed in an expensive supplement.
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