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Systems & Settings => HARP => Topic started by: Johan WÃ¤rlander on March 11, 2008, 10:39:50 AM

Title: Adjusting balance of magic in HARP?
Post by: Johan WÃ¤rlander on March 11, 2008, 10:39:50 AM: Hello!

I've just started out on a HARP campaign - we created characters yesterday, then spent 20 mins on a brief tracking / combat encounter to let everyone try some skill rolls and get a feeling for the system. However, there are a couple of things I'd already like to tweak ;) Mostly it's about magic for now.

As it stands, if I've understood the rules correctly, it's a bit too easy (for my taste) for a supporting spellcaster to aid the others as they're fighting. Healing spells, enhancements, etc..

What I'd like to do is adjust that balance a bit by making it so that all healing spells, for instance, would cause stun and/or fatigue in the target. The more you heal, the worse the effect would be - conceptually, what I imagine is that as you're "prematurely" healed you get a small glimpse of the pain that your wounds would have caused during their natural recovery process, but compressed into just a second or so. Yes - healing a broken bone would probably cause you to pass out!

For utility spells in general I'm thinking about making it so that you have to actually be aware and focused on what's happening in order to accept a spell cast on you as being "benign", if that's not the case then it will be treated as an attack spell and resisted accordingly. Furthermore I'd probably say that any spell being cast on you in the middle of things, like a fight for example, would cause some temporary confusion as it takes effect. Possibly affecting you as a single round of stun, or just forcing you to parry for a round.

What do you guys think? Has anyone else done something similar?
Title: Re: Adjusting balance of magic in HARP?
Post by: GMLovlie on March 11, 2008, 05:34:53 PM: This might, mind you I say, might, be something like what you?re looking for in healing spells, then again it might not.
http://www.ironcrown.com/ICEforums/index.php?topic=4986.0

This is something I?m thinking of using for my upcoming campaign.
Title: Re: Adjusting balance of magic in HARP?
Post by: Johan WÃ¤rlander on March 12, 2008, 04:42:01 AM: It certainly looks interesting! As a matter of fact, being generally mean and stuff I think I'll just *add* all that to my thoughts above.