Topic: Where've I seen this spell before?

[Karizma]

So I'm working on some major overhaul of the magic organization in HARP.  My short-term goal is to make Profession Templates similar to the Clerics but for Magic users and Semi-casters.  My long term goal (though unimportant at the moment) is to organize magic into "Schools" reminiscent of That One Game, You Know, Oh The Name Escapes Me.

So as I pooled all the spells together, I noticed that Stoneskin, Barkskin, Steelskin, and Mage Armor are all (essentially) the exact same spell.  So I'm a bit disheartened to find that I'm going to have to go through and weed out these copies.

Anyone care to help me identify similar spells?  Additionally, identifying Universal/Specialized pairs (like Minor Healing/Major Healing) would also be appreciated!

Thanks for the help!

[RandalThor]

I think they have them in there to represent the fact that you have A) different "methods" of achieving the same result, and 2)* to give some of the same capabilities to different spelluser types (i.e. mages, clerics, bards, etc).

If you haven't already, you should check out College of Magic, it has ideas similar to yours. I just wish they would put out a book on High Magic for HARP - they only touch upon it in CoM.

*Yes, I did A and 2 on purpose! 

[Karizma]

I own College of Magics, and we have had many passionate nights together discussing the nature of magic and debating what to and what not to allow in my campaign.

I'm sure they were put in with good intentions, but for the purposes I am using, copies of spells are not desired.

Also, my "Template" goal is still in the planning stages, but I'm thinking of having four Templates: Magic User (Mage, Cleric), Fighting Man (Fighter, Monk), Magic Dabbler (Ranger, Harper, Warrior Mage), and Skill Specialist (Thief, Rogue).

These Templates will be for *me* to then create Professions from them, and give myself a method for making new professions in the future, or giving the players a profession if they have that idea.

Post-Script: I must give Tim credit for my template idea, as it is essentially a HARP version of "Irregular Realms".  So thank you, Tim!

[RandalThor]

To take this idea even further, I have worked on boiling all the professions down to pure DP costs so that a player could be given a number of points at chargen, and completely decide what their character will be by distributing the points as they see fit. Unfortunately, some things - like tha basic ability to use magic - has no set DP cost so it has been hard going. Also, if you look in the CoM you will see that the Elementalist gets a bonus talent (in the form of an elemental affinity) over the base mage.

In this method, the player would get a pool of points and spend them on their race, profession/professional abilities, talents, & skills. How many on each area is totally up to them. If they want to have their character be young and inexperienced, but with great potential (i.e., high attributes and/or talents) then they will put few in skills and more in attributes and/or talents. Their choice. That allows them to make their character from the ground up, much like Shadowrun 4e and other games. I like this method.

Now all I have to do is finish making it. Some input from HARP designers would be nice.........

[Fidoric]

As for the additional talent that the elementalist, I think it is balanced by their narrower spell focus. Something difficult to account for with point-based mechanism.

[RandalThor]

It seems as though quite a few professional abilities fall under that umbrella. For me, I can assign the point costs that I deem appropriate for my game (if I had one  :'(), but it would be nice to know what the designers had in mind.

[Karizma]

I think that'd be a neat Guild Companion series; "Building the HARP: A Designer's Story".  Jokes aside, it's always great to see how ideas come to life.

But I'm sure Tim's currently focused on getting all his tasks at ICE out of the way so he can finally start Critical Table Law!

[lorenen]

Why don't you check Cyradon? there "magician" spell users are organized in tradition. Basically each race/culture have a magical tradition, that is a "different" kind of mage: lists came from all those that exists.

With the Order of d100 (the webzine i created with other guys) we used the same approach to create "traditions" not only for mages but also for Ranger and Harper.

This is very similar to creating a Cleric template, you keep using the professions and create several traditions for them.

A tradition change the lists and also the way to cast spells (wand, words, dancing, singing, focusing your will).