Magery 0 w/modifiers

[kirbwarrior]

Why is it you apply the modifiers to only magery 1+? What if the mage is only capable of fire magic? Any thoughts?

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by kirbwarrior

Why is it you apply the modifiers to only magery 1+? What if the mage is only capable of fire magic? Any thoughts?

There's about a page worth of discussion about modifying Magery 0 in Thaumatology.

[kirbwarrior]

Oh, of course, so many of my questions have answers in other books. Is there any simple explanations though?

[Not another shrubbery]

The short explanation is that it is assumed in Basic that even an aspect limited mage can still detect magic and use mage-only items. Thaumatology allows for the possibility that aspects (or other limitations) might also limit those abilities, and thus reduce the cost of Magery 0.

[kirbwarrior]

So it's as simple and not needlessly complicated as it should be. Cool, that just what I needed.

[David Johnston2]

Personally I prefer to not modify Magery 0. If you have a +3 or +4 bonus only to fire magic, it's not unlikely that you'll only learn fire magic anyway.

[kirbwarrior]

True, but the capability is there. For instance(in a specific campaign), fire can learn non fire spells, but are completely incapable of casting them. They have a nice bonus, though; they can fire magery up to 5, as opposed to 3. This is one of those situations i'd like to modify it.

[Bruno]

The big thing with not modifying Magery 0, is that you can still detect non-Fire magic, even if you've got only Fire Only magery, and you can still use non-Fire items, and you can still detect mana level changes, not just changes in Fire aspected areas.

Limiting Magery 0 to (for instance) Fire Only removes all those options. Using something like Dance Magery as the limitation means that all those abilities only work when dancing, and so forth.

There are a lot of really useful spells that don't require Magery 1 as a prerequisite, but you still need Magery to cast them in a Regular mana area - the mage with unlimited Magery 0 can still learn and cast them.

Generally loosing ALL of that is not what players have in mind, but as long as everyone is really clear what saving those one or two points sticks you with, I think it's pretty fair.

And of course you could have one or two levels of regular magery, plus more Fire-only magery - in that situation I definitely wouldn't allow limited magery 0 at all.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by kirbwarrior

True, but the capability is there. For instance(in a specific campaign), fire can learn non fire spells, but are completely incapable of casting them. .

That would of course require a world that had no high mana areas. Frankly though that kind of absolute prohibition might be better represented with powers-based magic.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

That would of course require a world that had no high mana areas.

Not an uncommon idea - at least for RPGs, but also for a lot of fiction as well. The idea of "regular folks" being able to learn and perform magic is hardly universal.

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Frankly though that kind of absolute prohibition might be better represented with powers-based magic.

This, I don't follow at all. Why? Especially if you have a mix of fully-talented mages and restricted mages in the same setting, who are supposed to be "doing the same thing", only one group are more limited? Or one group gets highly limited magery as part of their racial template and the ability to buy it up from there - classic D&D gnomes come to mind as a race that's supposed to be heavily inclined to being "illusionists" but not full fledged wizards.