[BIRTHRIGHT] Magic Reform

[irdeggman]

Originally posted by kgauck

----- Original Message -----
From: "irdeggman" <brnetboard@BIRTHRIGHT.NET>
Sent: Sunday, June 15, 2003 3:26 PM


> Again, caster levels from different spellcasting classes don`t stack
> with regards to prerequisites for feats that require a certain spellcaster
> level. For example bard spellcasting levels don`t stack with wizard
> ones even though they are both arcane casters.

Can you explain why this is related to the topic?

Kenneth Gauck
kgauck@mchsi.com

I was responding to your statement

"> That only applies to the spell progression. Multiclassing with a wizard
> forces the character to lose out on the bonus feats that a wizard gains
> when leveling up.

The whole point of introducing classes like Alchemist, Herbalist,
Astronomer, and any other were specifically to provide all of those bonus
feats, with new spells to learn, as well as penty o`skill points. Its
better than all of those lost levels of wizard, its all of that plus some
considerable compensation for losing the rapid spell progression.

Kenneth Gauck
kgauck@mchsi.com"



:)

[kgauck]

----- Original Message -----
From: "irdeggman" <brnetboard@BIRTHRIGHT.NET>
Sent: Sunday, June 15, 2003 7:03 PM


> I was responding to your statement
>
# The whole point of introducing classes like Alchemist, Herbalist,
# Astronomer, and any other were specifically to provide all of those bonus
# feats, with new spells to learn, as well as penty o`skill points. Its
# better than all of those lost levels of wizard, its all of that plus some
# considerable compensation for losing the rapid spell progression.

What is the point of making a hammer to use screws? If I specifically make
Alchemist to compensate for the fact that I am forcing wizards to begin
multi-classing, why would I specifically make them incompatable. Alchemist
or the rest don`t provide castor levels, so castor levels not stacking isn`t
a problem. Skill ranks stack, metamagic and class feats stack. And if a
class is designed to broaden spellcasting by providing new spells to learn,
it only follows that they are usable by the character for which it is
created for.

Kenneth Gauck
kgauck@mchsi.com

************************************************** **************************
The Birthright Homepage: http://www.birthright.net
Birthright-l Archives: http://oracle.wizards.com/archives/birthright-l.html
To unsubscribe, send email to LISTSERV@ORACLE.WIZARDS.COM
with UNSUB BIRTHRIGHT-L in the body of the message.

[Ariadne]

Originally posted by kgauck

Nonsense. I could just run the game as one of many no-spellcaster allowed games, like AEG`s Swashbuckling, or one of the heavily restricted campaigns like Rokugan or Soveriegn Stone. The amount of magic is part of the setting, not imposed by the core rules.

Why nonsense? I thinks it's not good to FORCE your players to choose something special. If they WANT to be single class, LET them, if they want to be multiclass, so O.K. I would never force a player to choose a class they don't want to play...

[Azrai]

Welcome to Kenneth's Joke Lesson. What? No joke?

Ok, but you must be joking! ?

Seriously: You kill the spellcaster class for the Birthright setting if you do it like that.


I could just run the game as one of many no-spellcaster allowed games, like AEG`s Swashbuckling, or one of the heavily restricted campaigns like Rokugan or Soveriegn Stone. The amount of magic is part of the setting, not imposed by the core rules.

The setting you mentioned have different game mechanics with balanced character classes. Best example for an alternative magic system is IMO the Dark Sun setting. It makes no sense to cripple one character class, the only way is to modify it whithout making it weaker. By the way, Magic is a mighty tool in the Sovereign Stone Campaign....

[kgauck]

Since when did it become impossible to deviate from the standard assumptions
of D&D in forming a campaign? Why does my campaign have to satisfy anyone`s
sense of how much magic there should be other than my own? If I can attract
players in a low, or a no-magic campaign, who is anyone to say its wrong?
In 2e I largely kept the game low magic by leeping it low level. Its easy
to do this by simply not inflating CR as characters gain levels. 2e was
largly incremental. You only gained more of the same abilities as you
gained levels. 3e adds new and interesting abilities as you gain levels and
I don`t want to continue to run a low level campaign. This produces a
conundrum regarding magic. A low level campaign is by default low magic.
To allow higher levels without powerful magics, I need to make adjustments.
I think that`s well within my pervue as DM. My players are already nearly
all barbarians, fighters, and aristocrats. Interestingly, when I advertised
a campaign in which a viking-like people lived near a late medieval knightly
society people wanted to play vikings and knights, not powerful wizards.

The only people complaining aren`t playing.

Kenneth Gauck
kgauck@mchsi.com

************************************************** **************************
The Birthright Homepage: http://www.birthright.net
Birthright-l Archives: http://oracle.wizards.com/archives/birthright-l.html
To unsubscribe, send email to LISTSERV@ORACLE.WIZARDS.COM
with UNSUB BIRTHRIGHT-L in the body of the message.

[ConjurerDragon]

Gary schrieb:

> At 04:54 PM 6/15/2003 +0200, Michael Romes wrote:
>
>> A while ago many people were upset when I suggested that, like in 2E,
>> clerics did not get access to all spells, but were restricted to a
>> selection of "schools" or "domains". This diversification that
>> was so fantastic in 2E Birthright was completely lost in 3E
>> Birthright as all clerics had the same spell list.
>> Now even more people complain that spellcasters have to many, too
>> high-level spells.
>
>
> These are two different issues. Access to schools or domains equals
> versatility and theme. Access to higher level spells equals powering
> up. One could have characters with broad spellcasting ability (access
> to a lot of spells) that weren`t necessarily all that powerful (access
> to high level spells) in a way that`s viable.

Versatility is also power. To be more versatile means a caster can adapt
to more problems.
Restricting clerics for example similar as in 2E, could mean that a
priest of Haelyn might have no access to spells listing the "Knowledge"
description in the Level info, e.g. True Seeing, Knowledge 5.
A priest of Haelyn would, like in 2E not be able to cast this spell, and
be more vulnerable to invisible enemys.
It also would prevent him from ever casting the spells of higher levels
as Legend Lore, Discern Location or Foresight.

So not only versatility (less broad access to spells) and theme (priests
of different gods actually have different spells and are DIFFERENT
besides the 2 chosen domains) but also less power, as he has no access
to certain highlevel spells.

If the limit is set that a priest of a god might lose an entire domain
list of spells (like if in 2E the god gave no access to a sphere) or
only to spells up to 3rd level (=2E minor sphere) or the full list is
open to discussion.

And that all by simply saying which god grants which domains to his
followers, without new classes or forcing players to multi-class :-)

>> In most games this should not be a problem: Even the Ruins of Empire
>> has only a handful of wizards and another handful of clerics above
>> level 10 in Anuire - if you have a handful of wizards of level 20
>> which are all PC´s in your campaign then the problem is not in the
>> rules, but in your campaign.
>
> A wizard and a cleric in a party is not at all unusual. Any long
> lasting campaign is going to eventually level those characters up, so
> the problem is pretty much inevitable.


Wizards are much rarer in Birthright than in other worlds. If for every
party in Birthright a wizard is readily available, then how are they
rarer? How fast and if at all the characters level up is up to you. If
you set your campaign in the Birthright setting but use only the core
standard hack´n´slay dungeon crawl with lots of dead monsters and XP
then certainly they will level up fast and gain higher levels. However
the settings magic rarity need not change - simply have the NPC Highmage
Aelies die and one of your PC´s replace him. Same level of power as far
as I see it. The problem for you seems not to be that there are
highlevel characters, but that your players can become highlevel
characters - then simply give minimum amounts of XP to delay their
ascension for years or at least so long that they do not gain "too high"
levels for your game in the time your game still runs ;-)

(most PBEMS don´t run that long at all, so I, playing sadly only in
PBEMS may fail to see the problem)

>> The low-magic setting is no problem either: Birthright is no
>> low-magic, but a rare and high-magic setting. Wizards are supposed to
>> be powerful (if they ever achieve high-levels). What the armys of
>> other regents are, Wizards have in personal power
>
>
> Doesn`t that illustrate the problem pretty well? What armies are to
> other regents wizards have in personal power.

Yes, exactly. A wizard should be able to overcome a few units of
expendable, 1st level commoners and warriors - EVERY character of
sufficient level can do that.

However guilders (guilds), clerics (temples) or fighters (most landed
regents) gain not only RP but also GB as they rule (and in 2E the first
two get "free" actions). Wizards do gain only RP.

So the other players can use their RP to bid against the Wizard, but
additionally they can muster armies to do their bidding. The wizard
can´t hire armies as he has no gold (Alchemy is useless, as he then
loses his RP power for bidding). So the wizard needs to be personally
powerful to be able to counter the military units of other players with
his magic.

As long as he can get a draw against another player of the same
resources, the game is balanced even when the wizard can destroy an army
unit or two alone in my opinion.

>> Simply raising the value of magical items to 150% or more of that
>> given in the DMG should stop mass-production of magical items.
>> Placing only few in treasure hoards and then mostly one-charge
>> potions or scrolls will reduce the amount of magic also.
>
>
> This is also a different issue. When it comes to magic items we
> really have some very odd rules in 3e, and the BR playtest tweak is
> really pretty minor. 3e`s magic item creation rules are better than
> 2e, but the numbers of magic items available doesn`t have much of a
> connection to those rules. Magic items exist in the charts in the DMG
> without any relationship to the amount of effort that characters would
> have put into making them. From what I can tell the amount and
> variety of such items has no real connection to the costs and purposes
> for which they would be created. Magic item dispersal in D&D is
> largely part of an adventurer-centered reward system, not part of any
> holistic thinking on how the ability to create such items among a
> populace would lead to X items of Y power.

Why should it? There are so many magical items in treasure hoards as the
DM wishes his players to be able to conquer, not more, not less.

> Regardless of that, controlling the spellcaster levels of characters
> needs to be addressed first before one thinks about how many magic
> items are available in a campaign since those items come from those
> spellcasters. Exactly how one might gauge that production is
> debatable, but if one is trying to connect them up that`s how you`d
> have to do it.

Then do not connect it :-)
You try to conclude the amount and type of magical items by counting the
people able to produce them and their resources and whatnot - but this
is useless. I for my part do not even want to know how much magical
items could be realistically produced in Cerilia in a year from the
current population - I do not care about that. Important is that the
number of magical items found is approbiate to the level of magic you
want in your campagin. If you want reasons then simply assume that the
other magical items of the last centuries have been eaten by dragons...

>> However requiring players to multi-class because else their character
>> would have to much spellcasting power is ridiculous. In 2E Birthright
>> even the possible multi/dual-class options fo the PHB were further
>> restricted. Now in 3E Birthright you want to FORCE a player who
>> wishes to advance as a spellcaster to multi-class?
>
>> A much better way is to require special components for all spells
>> that are dangerous for gameplay and restrict their availability. e.g.
>> yes, your wizard CAN memorize 5 Meteor Swarms, but you need a piece
>> of a meteor as material component - the only known pieces are
>> currently spread among a crater in the monster infested mountains of
>> the Five Peaks and require an adventure of a month to get them...
>
>
> I don`t know.... That seems like it would grow tiresome pretty
> quickly and winds up being something of a "gotcha" kind of rule. If
> you`re going to give a character a class ability it seems like a
> pretty nasty quibble to tack on "but only with these amazingly rare
> components that I`m going to highly restrict your access to" as the
> basis of controlling their powering up.

It is the whole point of material components that spellcasting is not
simply memorizing and casting but also caring for resources.
If a wizard has no "Everful Component Pouch" then from 1st level the
thing he cares most about are his material components for many of his
spells, just as important as his spellbook.
bye
Michael

************************************************** **************************
The Birthright Homepage: http://www.birthright.net
Birthright-l Archives: http://oracle.wizards.com/archives/birthright-l.html
To unsubscribe, send email to LISTSERV@ORACLE.WIZARDS.COM
with UNSUB BIRTHRIGHT-L in the body of the message.

[Birthright-L]

So many of you are arguing as if whole worlds are full of adventuring hero
bands. The truth of the matter, in just about any world save the Forgotten
Realms, adventurers are rare. Since they are rare, it doesn`t hurt that
there may be a powerful wizard among them.

This is even more true in Cerilia. Nearly every culture outlined in the
setting seems very much content to have their young men fight in wars and
their young women to help make more men (not a view that needs debating as I
don`t hold this opinion). Adventurers are oddities that are sometimes in
the wrong place at the right time and spoil a powerful regents plot/plan or
completely by ill fortune stumble upon the lair of some Awnsheigh; or maybe
even find the ruins of some ancient city of the Elves.

I`ve always taken this view to be honest: my players control characters that
are for the most part a very rare breed in Cerilia. How many dwarves do you
think would normally be willing to travel away from home in the company of
short-lived humans? How many elves could stand the company of humans?
Adventurers are a rare breed; simple as that. Adventurers mind you.....not
mercenaries. Even mercenaries stay in civilized lands looking for
"respectable" work as hire-swords and battle-fodder.

So it stands to reason that if one of the party becomes a powerful wizard or
cleric, then that makes them much more rare. If for some reason they reach
level 20 with seemingly no time elapsing, then that in total truth...with NO
exception...lays squarely at the feet of the Dungeon Master.

The magic is fine....leave it be.


Tony

P.S.- and as a fellow said earlier, if the players don`t mind the way he has
organized the restraint of magic in his campaign, then none of us are right
to nay-say him.....it`s his game.

__________________________________________________ _______________
The new MSN 8: advanced junk mail protection and 2 months FREE*
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail

************************************************** **************************
The Birthright Homepage: http://www.birthright.net
Birthright-l Archives: http://oracle.wizards.com/archives/birthright-l.html
To unsubscribe, send email to LISTSERV@ORACLE.WIZARDS.COM
with UNSUB BIRTHRIGHT-L in the body of the message.

[Birthright-L]

From: "Azrai" <brnetboard@BIRTHRIGHT.NET>

>
> The setting you mentioned have different game mechanics with balanced
character classes. Best example for an alternative magic system is IMO the
Dark Sun setting. It makes no sense to cripple one character class, the only
way is to modify it whithout making it weaker. By the way, Magic is a mighty
tool in the Sovereign Stone Campaign....
>

Well, so does Birthright!

And those characters would still progress, not just as fanatically
single-midedly as spellcasters usually do. Having the abilities of a second
class is not so bad.

And you are not forcing anyone to choose anything - you are merely setting
the limitations of a campaign. It`s like saying that in this world, there is
no plate mail - it sure changes the life of fighters, but it doesn`t take
away choices, really.

Not that I`m using this option personally, but I think it is good and valid.
Not that I think it is so good that it should be a rule in the conversion
document, however.

************************************************** **************************
The Birthright Homepage: http://www.birthright.net
Birthright-l Archives: http://oracle.wizards.com/archives/birthright-l.html
To unsubscribe, send email to LISTSERV@ORACLE.WIZARDS.COM
with UNSUB BIRTHRIGHT-L in the body of the message.

[ryancaveney]

On Mon, 16 Jun 2003, Michael Romes wrote:

> Gary wrote:
>
> > Magic item dispersal in D&D is largely part of an
> > adventurer-centered reward system, not part of any holistic thinking
> > on how the ability to create such items among a populace would lead
> > to X items of Y power.
>
> Why should it? There are so many magical items in treasure hoards as the
> DM wishes his players to be able to conquer, not more, not less.

You say "why should it?" and I say "how could it not?" We appear to have
very different ideas about what to concentrate on as a DM. I personally
do not give a fig for adventures -- I`d really rather not run them at all
in Birthright, just domain turns. However, I am very interested in
understanding Cerilian demographics, and having some mechanism -- equally
applicable to both PCs and NPCs, because I personally see no meaningful
difference in-game -- to describe the interaction of game rules with the
sociology and economics of large-scale magic use. Those anthropological
issues are precisely the part of magic items I find by far the most
entertaining.

> Then do not connect it :-)

That appears to work for you, which is fine, but I cannot do that myself.

> You try to conclude the amount and type of magical items by counting
> the people able to produce them and their resources and whatnot

Yes, exactly. That`s the part of game-world design I enjoy most!

> I for my part do not even want to know how much magical items could be
> realistically produced in Cerilia in a year from the current
> population - I do not care about that.

And I care passionately about it. To each his own.

> Important is that the number of magical items found is approbiate to
> the level of magic you want in your campagin.

To me, that is exactly the same thing as the international magic item
economy. I want reasons that satisfy me, and reflect the kind of things I
personally like to simulate -- which means designing rules for use in a
one-player context based upon what I want their consequences to the
geopolitics of the entire game world to be.

> > I don`t know.... That seems like it would grow tiresome pretty
> > quickly and winds up being something of a "gotcha" kind of rule. If
> > you`re going to give a character a class ability it seems like a
> > pretty nasty quibble to tack on "but only with these amazingly rare
> > components that I`m going to highly restrict your access to" as the
> > basis of controlling their powering up.

Yes, I always hated spell components. IMC, I have decided that blooded
characters don`t need them but unblooded ones do -- which I abstract with
a gp cost per spell level, and occasional skill check to acquire rather
rare things. Taking the whole party on a grand adventure to get a spiffy
spell component works once, maybe twice, but is just annoying after that.


Ryan Caveney

************************************************** **************************
The Birthright Homepage: http://www.birthright.net
Birthright-l Archives: http://oracle.wizards.com/archives/birthright-l.html
To unsubscribe, send email to LISTSERV@ORACLE.WIZARDS.COM
with UNSUB BIRTHRIGHT-L in the body of the message.