Greetings
I'm currently rereading a lot of my old RM material including RM2, RMSS and HARP. I bought RMX a couple of years ago and this looks like a reasonable basis with a couple of EA additions and some tweaks.
I've looked at categories in relation to this - primarily in relation to 'secondary skills' and am working on the basis of making some RMSS skills that would be useful for what I am contemplating into single merged secondary skills with the possibility of additional focus.
I have two potential groups of players. One is my son's friends who are at university stage now who play a mix of D20 games with me GMing occasional games of RQ and Dresden Files. The other is a group of friends of mine from university who play a range of things including Ars Magica/Call of Cthulu - many of us used to play RM - but more SM - decades ago. Neither of these groups is going to spend much time on development (so premades beckon) but more importantly in time spent in game finding one out of a large number of skills. If the key details can't be seen on one side of a sheet of A4 paper (equipment, background, spell details etc can be on the back) then I don't think it wll work for them. This either means using categories as skills with the potential for drilling into specialised aspects or just a limited list of skills.
On a slightly related note, one aspect that struck me last night was the difference in PP acquisition - RM2/RMX 10+x/lvl (where x = 1 for stat 75-94 etc) without any cost vs RMSS with PP development skill and progession - looking at the NPC charts this leads to widely disparate PPs between the two with similar PP expenditure on spells (albeit with RMSS exhaustion rules). What do people think an appropriate middle ground is here?
Regards
Edward
I prefer skill based pp's.
It provides a little extra punch for beginning spell users. If they survive long enough, those points become far less abundant in appearance and reality.
Of course, thats the spell users primary limit: sooner than later they run out of power. Like a loaded gun, no one wants to take the first bullet, but once out of bullets, spell users are so very easy to tackle and stomp to death.
To few power points undermines the often dramatic releationship between spell users and mundanes. A spell user needs mundanes. The fewer pp's, the more the need and the more the spell user will be beholden to the mundanes. To many pp's and mundanes will have wizzard kings instead of the typical mundane king and spell user advisor.
PP skill also eliminates the essential need for multipliers and abundant spell items. A lack of pp drives the mass market magic item industry that seems to develop in many game worlds. If the spell user can cast sufficient spells, the lack of magic items won't be mised. When the spell user is forced by the necessity of survival to hoard his pp, then players clamor for potions, scrolls, daily items, wands, etc.
The ability to learn how to collect power rather than it being a reflection of only innate talent means there will be a lot more spell users in the world, which increases the ready availability of spells and further reduces the need of magic items. With lots of spell users, suddenly the item of magic becomes rarer and more precious.
