Official ICE Forums
Systems & Settings => Rolemaster => Topic started by: Thot on October 08, 2023, 01:38:33 PM
-
Power points derived from Power Development skill is a tried and true method for balancing magic, but sometimes, you may want to vary things. So here are a few options that I came up with, some of which I have even tested in campaigns:
- Unlimited Mana (but not really): This comes originally from GURPS. The basic idea is that you can cast as much as you want, but instead of spending "power points", you have to roll your Power Development skill after you have cast something. If that roll is bad, bad things happen: You may be confused, you may be magically marked in some way, you may be even killed... or worse things might happen to you, your friends, or even the whole land. Now, you accumulate penalties to that roll as you cast more, and that penalty "cools off" over time.
- Material power points: You don't regenerate power points, but you collect them from the environment in some way. Maybe you cast with gemstones, or black burning stones from the Earth, or the Black Water from the River Styx. Maybe the Druid needs to sacrifice living things for their magic, or the Mentalist requires brain matter from other sapient beings... or maybe it's just pebbles that everybody uses, resulting a rather stone-poor environment after a few thousand years. Power Development skill maybe just helps you finding the material source of your power.
- Lifetime Pool: You don't regenerate your power points at all! Instead, you have a fixed amount that you will have to use for your whole life. That's probably a high number, like maybe 10,000 points (maybe 100 times your Realm stat potential) or so, when you are low-levelled, but you might be getting miserly at higher levels. Thousand-year-old Elven Wizards don't rule the world because... well. Hehehe. No use for Power Development skill here... or can you think of one?
- No limits: You don't need Power Development, because you always have all the power you need. Magic is so universal in this type of game world that spellcasters can just cast as much as they like all the time. Their only limits are the time required to cast and all the prerequisites for casting (like being able to see the target, etc.). This makes magic a lot more powerful, obviously, and anyone who isn't a spellcaster may be seen as a disabled person in this world. This can become especially fun when conditions change, and suddenly, after millennia of spellcasting, power isn't unlimited any more...
Many other options are possible, but the above are the ones I have tried, or will try in the future.
How do you approach variety in that field? How do you vary your magic in other ways? Or do you just feel compelled to point out how bad all the above options are? Looking forward to your thoughts (and I am not on Youtube here, so I am not fishing for your engagement out of financial need… I really just want to know).
-
Personally I have always liked Shadowrun’s approach. You have unlimited PowerPoints but using magic has a chance of tiring you as there’s drain. The most powerful the magic the higher the drain, but if you keep resisting the drain there’s nothing to stop you.
PP development could in this case be used to resist drain with the difference between rank/level of caster and the spell could act as a modifier to the static maneuver roll. You could use modifiers for armor as well of course.
-
I happen to like the shadowrun approach as well. It is basically a variant of the GURPS approach with less impact and more predictable side effects. I would say that, the more you want to have magic be a significant force in your game, the less dramatic the side effects. Warhammer's (or, in a way, Call of Cthulhu's) effects of magic gone wrong are meant to show that only the idiots, the overly ambitious, and the insane play with magic.
I think the material power point was used in a way in an old FGU game called Swordbearer - I'd have to look it up to be sure but I seem to remember something like that. It's the "charm magic" kind of control, in which magic is less something people *do* than something people *point at other things* (or other people) -the magic is in the focus, the caster is just releasing it. You can even be more specific and state that you need a specific kind of focus to perform a specific kind of magic (a spell), resulting in casters being loaded down with charms, runestones, and other paraphernalia. Very visual, very conducive to natural and craft magic.
The lifetime pool I don't like at all, even if I think it was actually used in an earlier version of Warhammer FRP as well. It sounds too much like a delayed death sentence for mages, and they know it. But it makes a good background for a setting where mages are enslaved to provide their power to other people - mages are literally 'living batteries', except you don't recharge them, you discard them when they're burnt out. Very atmospheric, but not something I would like to play except for "uprising" campaigns where the goal is to fight against the tyranny of those who enslave the mages - but in that particular setting, I think it could be great. This is the kind of setting where magic is a curse for a person (because it means a short life of slavery), but it's a curse desperate people can use as a weapon.
The unlimited one I could use easily, because my games do not use the attrition factor much - I don't set up "dungeons" or similar where daily attrition is a factor, so the only limit for casters is how much power points they have - basically, they can spend it all in one encounter, because the pace of the game is such that, in all likelihood, the next one will be several days, or weeks, later. Which typically is what the NPCs are doing, if you think about it.
Of course, doing it by way of setting the pace of the game is a trick - once in a while, you *can* change the pace of the game and have them face two encounters in close succession. And see how they fare with depleted resources. But it's rare. Rare enough that they know it won't happen most of the time. Rare enough that thy can often prepare for it because it happens only in specific situations. But not never, which means it's always in the back of their mind.
One of the variants I tend to use nowadays is that a caster can reduce the power cost of a spell they cast by increasing the difficulty of the spell casting. Since I use a one-roll resolution (the casting roll integrates the resistance factor), increasing casting difficulty tends to reduce the statistical effectiveness of spells, so it's something you can do but you have to choose when to do (being a miser has it's drawbacks). Since I don't use mandatory prep time anymore, you can use prep time as a prop to reduce spellcasting difficulty.
What I don't do anymore: use power points as they are described in the original game, with a "standard tomb delver" pace (D&D dungeon delve kind of adventure). I don't do dungeon delve at all, I don't have fast-paced games, and I don't have a slow power regeneration rate.
-
Your "unlimited pool (but not really)" and "Lifetime Pool" are very inspiring.
I might give them a try.
-
There was a variation on the GURPS unlimited mana option that used their fright check system. That reflects settings where magic is performed by using powers Man Was Not Meant To Know, and going too far could leave you mentally scarred or insane.
-
I'm currently using a homemade variation on Call of Cthulhu. Magic use carries a risk of insanity, but it's fairly low (1 in 50 or so) and it's still curable. Plus the way I have things set up, the loopier you are the more effective spellcaster you are. True, you might one day lose your spellcaster character to insanity, but you also might get to play through losing him as a seriously badass boss monster that your former friends have to kill off.
-
Thanks guys, all very cool perspectives and ideas!
-
Mage: The Ascension & Mage: The Awakening had magic is unlimited, but if you make it too flashy or get it wrong, reality comes and hits you round the head.
Strongly recommend that as an influence.
/me notes however Mage's in that setting are still absurdly powerful in the hands of creative players.
-
Awakening 2e especially: very impressive system and concept.
(I've played and/or Gmed every Mage game and edition, so I know them all pretty well.)