Beyond Warriors and Wizards: The Clerical Character

[zot]

Along the lines of Guy's "re-themable religion" article, I made a separate Theurgy Toolkit document to make it easy (very easy, I hope) for people to create their own religions based on ceremonial magic. Here is the home-brew thread on my theurgy system.

[Wayne]

Originally Posted by philreed

Guy McLimore brings us his first in a series of articles looking at other possibilities for characters in The Fantasy Trip.

http://thefantasytrip.game/news/2018...cal-character/

FYI: At least on my web browser the front page version of this article http://thefantasytrip.game has what looks like a link (more) but it doesn't do anything.

[schoon]

I like the way you think Terquem , but I think there's a possible middle ground.

This is just me brainstorming, but you could say "Clerics" have -1DX in both the wizard and fighter realms in exchange for being able to fight effectively both ways.

[larsdangly]

Not only have I always ignored the DX penalty for non wizard spell casters, but I also totally ignore the extra armor penalty for wizards. I rationalized the former by introducing a half dozen 'gate keeper' talents that you have to have to be able to learn various sorts of spells. So, there are no 'wizards' and 'heroes', just characters who either invested in a magic enabling talent or didn't. The latter rule I just never liked and didn't pay attention to. Armor is already its own penalty because the normal DX reductions diminish your chances at spell casting rolls by an amount that feels like a fair exchange for its protective value. I always thought the extra armor penalty for spell casters was just a punitive rule to discourage magicians who wear armor, presumably for some sort of genre preservation or something. But Elrik of Melnibone is part of my view of the genre, and he never had any trouble running around in armor and using sorcery!

[Anomylous]

Originally Posted by larsdangly

I rationalized the former by introducing a half dozen 'gate keeper' talents that you have to have to be able to learn various sorts of spells. So, there are no 'wizards' and 'heroes', just characters who either invested in a magic enabling talent or didn't.

I've thought of using a similar concept, having several different "gatekeeper" talents for different "schools" of magic, in an attempt to encourage wizards to specialize, to fix the "generic Swiss army wizard" syndrome. Haven't had an opportunity to playtest this system much if at all, though.