[RMU] Realms of Magic limitations

[Thot]

Every RMU character has to have one, two or three Realms Of Magic - being able to learn from more than one realm requires being part of a special profession.

I see the balance rationale behind that, but it does make me ask questions. Sure, it's magic, and thus you can literally justify anything. But in a system that prides itself  for being so flexible that even  dumb fighter could learn anything, wouldn't it make sense to also allow everybody to learn magic from any realm?

Now, of course I could just recreate any class with all three realms of magic as per Core Law, and solve it that way. But that'd be rather tedious.

Instead, maybe one could just allow people to learn magic from other realms, but at a greater cost? Something like "the Magician learns spells  from essence as

Spells

Base/Open................. 1/2

Ritual Magic ............. 1/3

Closed ....................... 2/4

Arcane ....................... 5/7

Restricted .................. 6/8

But spells from Channeling and Mentalism, they can learn as

Base/Open................. 3/4

Closed ....................... 5/7

Restricted .................. 15/20


So on the aptitudes scale for creating professions from page 250 Core Law, you go up 4 levels for your "alien" realms of magic, and use your usual power points. If you end up beyond 15/20 that way, it's just 15/20.

But maybe that's too harsh, or too lenient? Did you ever use similar ideas in your campaign, or do you have an alternative solution?

[pastaav]

Getting to learn another realm for a slightly increased price is a massive boon in my book due to opportunity cost. Low level characters will not have the DP to spare, but at high levels things change a lot. If every character follows the same rules there is some notion of balance, but the balanace between arms and spell users shifts a lot if those characters that can afford spell lists in the first place have access to lots of more powerful spells.

From another perspective the hybrid professions pays more for every spell they learn to handle the lost 5 aptitudes for access to 2 realms. A character having access to 3 realms should by logic mean 10 aptitudes lost. Considering that spells costs 3 aptitudes for each step the multirealm profession would have about 3 steps higher costs for spells from all realms, including their native realm.

At the end of the day I suggest your best option is to do one multirealm hybrid professsion by the book and build a spell caster using that. If you compare the result against a ordinary pure caster you get a proper benchmark. The outcome of that experiment should tell you if you can do a shortcut or if you need to rebalance all professions to get what you want in a balanced fashion.

[Thot]

From another perspective the hybrid professions pays more for every spell they learn to handle the lost 5 aptitudes for access to 2 realms. A character having access to 3 realms should by logic mean 10 aptitudes lost. Considering that spells costs 3 aptitudes for each step the multirealm profession would have about 3 steps higher costs for spells from all realms, including their native realm.

Very valid approach. Spinning this further: Access to 2/3 of the spell lists is equivalent to 10 aptitudes, and spellcasting in general costs 3 aptitudes per "cost tier". Therefore, making those 2/3 of the spell lists accessible should cost 3/2 of 10 aptitudes, or 15 aptitudes. As each spell list aptitude is worth 3 aptitudes, it follows that foreign-realm casting MUST be 5 aptitudes more expensive than learning spells in your own realm (not 4 as proposed above).


(That does not take into account the two-step discount on Arcane lists that hybrid casters get for 5 aptitudes (which they pay for access to another realm). 2 steps on one of 5 skills is basically 2/5 aptitudes, or 0.4 aptitudes, so we can safely round that down to zero, though.)

For our example Magician from the OP, that would mean they learn foreign-realm spells as:

Base/Open................. 3/5

Closed .......................6/8

Restricted .................. 15/20

[pastaav]

For our example Magician from the OP, that would mean they learn foreign-realm spells as:

Base/Open................. 3/5

Closed .......................6/8

Restricted .................. 15/20

Not sure if I follow your math. It is correct that 15 lost aptitudes equals 5 increases of cost, but the costs templates already includes the initial realm so I don't understand why you would charge for those again.

Using the core rules single realm pure spell users pay 1/2 for Base/Open while the hybrid pure spell casters pay 1/3 for Base/Open (and have 2 aptitude changes that raises the cost of different things to handle the 5 aptitudes lost for hybrid access). When building a multirealm Magician with 10 lost aptitudes you have the option to raise the costs for all Base/Open to 2/3 and find a way to handle the remaining 4 lost aptitudes or raise the cost for Base/Open to 2/4 and have one remaining lost aptitude to deal with.

On the flip side the fighter pays 7/10 for Base/Open so if they get 3 increases for their spell cost they would max out at 15/20 for Open/Base and have to deal with assigning 1 extra aptitude cost increase. If you make them pay for the initial realm so they cost increases are 5 steps you out of steps to increase the price and it seems to me you force the fighter to pay twice for the initial realm access.

As for the idea to charge extra for foreign realm access you really need to benchmark the results. A hybrid caster that double buy 10 open lists will pay 10 * (1+3) = 40 DP while the single realm pay 10 *(1+2) = 30 DP. A three realm profession with 3 costs increases for spells would pay 10 * (2+4) = 60 DP. Your foreign cost of 3/5 would imply 80 DP so the magician with spells from all realms would pay 30 + 80 = 110 DP for 10 own lists and 10 foreign lists compared to 120 DP spent by true tripple realm spell caster. When building a true character the assumptions about always double buying spells are obviously faulty so you need to build a character to learn what happens.

At the end of the day my hunch is that foreign costs will be game breaking at high level due to diminishing returns, but you won't know for true until you make your benchmark.

[Thot]

[...]
 It is correct that 15 lost aptitudes equals 5 increases of cost, but the costs templates already includes the initial realm so I don't understand why you would charge for those again.

The adjustment of course does not include the initial realm, just the two non-native realms. Basically I am just deducing what the assumption is for the cost of the foreign realms that is inherent in the profession creation rules from RMU Core Law.

For the Magician, since 2/3 of the realms are NOT "accessible", and changing that would costs 10 aptitudes, that means those two realms are 3/2 as expensive in aptitudes, and 3/2 of 10 is 15.

So coming from that, changing the profession of the Magician to 3 realm access (with no other changes) is equivalent to making the 2 previously inaccessible realms 15 aptitudes cheaper. Since this only affects 2/3 of the spellcasting category cost, you only need to pay 10 aptitudes for that, and boom, that fits the existing rules - except for the discounts to Arcane (would those be 2 aptitudes PER additional REALM, or just 2 aptitudes?).