Official ICE Forums
Systems & Settings => Rolemaster => Topic started by: B Hanson on October 08, 2015, 09:38:17 PM
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I rewrote Spell Law for my own RM campaign over the last few years and recently updated it with some changes coming through RMU--specifically Size Rules, Fatigue Rules, Breakage Rules. However it's probably best suited for the older versions of RM and easily adapted if some of the rules don't fit your game style. It includes:
1. Alternative rules for SCR's and spell acquisition.
2. Spell lists are grouped by similarity and not by profession (but includes a chart to assign these new lists to current, companion and RMU professions).
3. Expanded lists: 60 Essence lists, 54 Channeling and 45 Mentalism, plus another 30 lists for alchemy(investiture), written magic(runes, symbols, glyphs, signs, sigils), performance magic(songs, tales, music, dance and art).
4. Consolidated spells that eliminate redundancy and filler spells. I added a lot of new spells--around 4000 total spells.
5. Created greater power/ability distinctions between the different realms.
6. Includes over 50 "cantrips"
7. New rules governing magic items.
For now I'm going to leave out most of the alternate rules and just start posting up spell lists starting with the realm of Essence....
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Essence Spell List Summary. Attached is a summary of spell lists. We have disconnected professions and spells--characters can take spells they want but there are pre-requisite lore skills needed before spells can be learned. What we call Greater, Lesser and Minor "Paths" are really the same as Base, Closed and Open.
However our Essence Realm is more akin to physics--spells relate to the elements and the raw manipulation of physical qualities of objects and things. "Sleep", "charm" etc are no longer Essence powers. This is part of the strategy to group spells by similarity and create better distinctions between realms.
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Minor Path (Open) List part 1.
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Minor Path (Open) List pt. 2
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I have a fair amount of stuff on my plane ATM so I when ahead and approved the files as I know B Hanson has posted ICE approved stuff in the past.
If anyone finds anything offensive please report the post or PM me and I will take care of it, ASAP.
MDC
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Lesser Path lists (Closed) pt. 1
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Lesser Path lists (Closed - Essence) pt. 2
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Thanks for posting these. I'm sure I can find some things I can adopt...
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Transformation Law. Essence - Greater Path (Base) Spell Lists
3 lists: Living Enhancements, Living Change, Living Augmentation
Note-- Greater Path (Base) are the most difficult to learn but represent true focus and specialization in a type of Essence Magic. For Pure Essence users GM's may want to limit casters access to 2-3 Greater Paths.
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Shield Law. Essence - Greater Path (Base) Spell Lists
3 lists: Elemental Shields, Weapon Shields, Spell Shields.
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Spell Law. Essence - Greater Path (Base) Spell Lists
3 Lists: Spell Disruption, Spell Reigns, Spell Mastery
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Delving Law. Essence - Greater Path (Base) Spell Lists
3 Lists: Physical Analysis, Detections, Power Analysis
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Dimension Law. Essence - Greater Path (Base) Spell Lists
3 Lists: Gate Mastery, Phase Mastery, Time Mastery
Note: these should be very difficult spells to obtain!!!!
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Demonic Law. Essence - Greater Path (Base) Spell Lists
3 Lists: Demonic Summons, Demonic Protection, Demonic Forms
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Since the characters can gain access to base lists later on, do you have a way you deal with substantially overlapped lists? E.g. character has developed Physical Enhancements and later gains the Living Enhancements spell.
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I think your asking about the overlap between the single "lesser path" list and the similar "greater path" spell group?
Yes, most of the Lesser Paths (and a few Minor) are less powerful distillations of the Greater Path groups, so potentially a player could develop a lesser path list and then decide later to learn a greater path and would have some spell overlap. Or a Minor path and later want the Lesser. We haven't found that to happen. A few thoughts:
We aren't just renaming open, closed and base and assuming the same spell acquisition style--it's a different process. So a pure isn't going to take a one or two "base", a few "closed" and some "open". It's less of a top down and more of a bottom up. Someone who wants to be a powerful spellcaster is going to need to focus most if not all of his DP's on acquiring 1-2 Greater Paths. They MIGHT have some DP's to grab a few spells off of a Minor list. Non or Semis won't be able to commit the DP's to the Greater Path and probably not even a Lesser. A "Warrior Mage" type would probably take 1-2 Lesser Elemental Spells. The remainder of the DP's would be needed for combat skills.
There are 4 basic Spell development sinks (pre-req's dP's, spells acq DP's, PP dp and casting skill DP) A player will end up naturally falling into the basic archetypes: non, semi or pure. On top of that Pures really have to decide if they want to specialize (focusing on a Greater Path) or have a wide range of spell abilities (focus on many of the Lessers and Minor). We have one player who would be considered a Magician under RM rules--but rather than have 1 or 2 Greater Path (Base) elemental groups he wanted spells in all the elements. He ended up focusing on learning all of the Lesser Path Elemental Spells. Sort of a "Jack of all Elementals".
At 10th lvl most of spellcasters are going to have half or less the spells they would under RM Spell Law (40 versus 80 or more) I tried to eliminate all the filler/low utility spells and fill in blanks (still working on that) which in SL is probably about 25% of the material so you could argue they have the same amount of useful spells. I prefer my players have a manageable amount of high utility spells with specialization rather than the fireball/fly/sleep/charm magic-user trope. It creates distinct flavors for spell casters--common in fantasy literature but less so in RM. "Learning" what an opposing spellcaster specialization is becomes part of the player strategy. We had a player who focused on just 2 Greater Path: Spell Law and Shield Law and called himself a Magehunter. He didn't have any real offensive spells but he was a wrecking machine against other spell casters. He hired 2 bowmen as retainers who would pick away at the other Mage. It was pretty cool.
For now I'm not going to put up all of our optional rules or spell notes for each list--there is enough new rules analysis going on! Just going to plug away at posting spell lists for anyone interested. Still have 30+ Essence lists to go up and then I'll start on Channeling...
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Wind Law. Essence - Greater Path (Base) Spell Lists
4 Lists: Defensive Winds, Controlling Winds, Attacking Winds, Moving Winds
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Water Law. Essence - Greater Path (Base) Spell Lists
4 Lists: Call Water, Water Commune, Water Forms, Command Water
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Earth Law. Essence - Greater Path (Base) Spell Lists
4 Lists: Earth Forms, Earth Mastery, Earth Attacks, Earthly Reigns
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Sonic Law. Essence - Greater Path (Base) Spell Lists
2 Lists: Sound Control, Sound Waves
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Light Law. Essence - Greater Path (Base) Spell Lists
4 Lists: Summon Light, Light Attacks, Light Manipulation, Light Veils
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Fire Law. Essence - Greater Path (Base) Spell Lists.
4 Lists: Fire Forms, Fire Travel, Fire Mastery, Fire Attacks
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Cold Law. Essence - Greater Path (Base) Spell Lists
4 Lists: Ice Attack, Ice Form, Cold Mastery, Call Cold
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Dark Law. Essence - Greater Path (Base) Spell Lists
2 Lists: Summon Dark, Master of Dark (these need some work)
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All above spells compiled into 2 files.
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While I was digging around for my Charon base lists I found about 10-20 Essence lists I hadn't posted up yet plus a few more I've added that my group have discovered.
This is "Desert Law" that I had for a side adventure against some Desert Mages. (inspired by Sword Dancer trilogy YEARS ago)
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00A4VMLFC/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
I never finished the higher level spells but it's good till lvl 20!
This is 1 of 3. "Sand Mastery". Also includes "Sand Attacks" & "Sand Forms" which I will post up the next few days.
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"Sand Attacks" from Desert Mastery.
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"Sand Forms".
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"Physics Mastery" from "Dimension Law" http://www.ironcrown.com/ICEforums/index.php?topic=16681.msg203208#msg203208 (http://www.ironcrown.com/ICEforums/index.php?topic=16681.msg203208#msg203208). I'll post "Force Mastery" next.
I think this spell list needs some technical work--but it certainly allowed for a spirited physics debate when it was used the one time in our campaign.
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Interesting stuff.
For Sand Forms, is it assumed that the caster will develop skill in another list in order to be able to control the sand elementals it summons?
For Physics Mastery, the Inertia spells, it might be fun to require the RR not just to start in motion, but to stop motion. That is, if you fail the RR while you're in motion, you have to keep moving.
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Interesting stuff.
For Sand Forms, is it assumed that the caster will develop skill in another list in order to be able to control the sand elementals it summons?
For Physics Mastery, the Inertia spells, it might be fun to require the RR not just to start in motion, but to stop motion. That is, if you fail the RR while you're in motion, you have to keep moving.
1. For Elemental Summons the spell(s) do both creation and caster control. We use different spells for summon/control Demons (and other planar entities) which are sentient thinking creatures but Elementals are basically formed elements powered by Essaence.
2. That's interesting. I think there is a lot of aspects to these spells that could be further fleshed out. Especially by someone with more physics background then me.
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Force Mastery. Part of Dimension Law Base Lists.
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1. For Elemental Summons the spell(s) do both creation and caster control. We use different spells for summon/control Demons (and other planar entities) which are sentient thinking creatures but Elementals are basically formed elements powered by Essaence.
It might be helpful to specify that somewhere in the spell description. The elemental Control spells on Gate Mastery (Closed Essence) give quite a detailed description of the rules for controlling elementals, and these spells are separate from the summons spells. So the spells on your list are much stronger, allowing casters to summon and control with a single spell, and one that is usually lower level as well.
The Force Mastery spells are fun and I think pretty balanced. It would be great if someone wanted to recreate the old Forcemage class from Companion V.
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Both physics mastery and force mastery fit my magic system pretty well...
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For non-forum members you can download the spell files here:
http://www.rolemasterblog.com/project-basil-channeling/
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Digging around and cleaning up files and found this old one I used for a module. Need to add a few higher level spells...maybe an Acid Elemental!
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I had these up over at the Rolemasterblog, but couldn't find that I posted them here. In fact, it looks like I missed a bunch of spell lists.
Here is the updated Master File with links.
https://www.rolemasterblog.com/master-spell-list-reference/
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Fun stuff! Thanks for posting.
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Looks like a lot of work on an alternate Spell Law.
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Looks like a lot of work on an alternate Spell Law.
Yes, lots of work, and I end up tinkering with them all the time! It is meant to be a rewrite to adapt better to Shadow World and we've used these lists exclusively in my own campaigns for the last 7-10 years. I'm rewriting Arcane lists for the Earthwardens and will have those posted up in the near future.
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I posted this up on the Rolemasterblog back in the winter of 2020, but hadn't posted it here. Given the theme of "Ice Elves" it seems seasonally appropriate!
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Arctic Law is a good idea. However, I don't like the spell Ice Ball. Maybe reflavour it as snow ball?
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A minor utility list to 10th lvl. I was going to expand it into a full list a while back but never got around to it. Allowing a caster to change the colors of the spheres seems festive. Merry Christmas!