This didn't go to the list.

In my opinion, the Complete Sha'ir's Handbook is one of the few great books
published by TSR. It gave so many different mage kits. The best were the
Ghul Lord and the Mystic of Nog(it is even better as a new priest class:
Mystic). You have many good ideas for the ghul lord and I am intending to
print your post to use as a reference. The ghul lord should never be made a
PC kit in my opinion. It is way too powerful. As a rule though, I only let
the ghul lord use manipulations that are up to two levels above his own
spellcasting ability. This effectively puts a limit on the ghul lord's
ability to destroy things at low levels. Personally though, I am going to
wait and see what comes out in the official material later this year before
using the lost.

Robert Patera
patera@teleport.com

- ----------
> From: Tim Nutting
> To: birthright@MPGN.COM; brecska@mail.matav.hu
> Subject: [BIRTHRIGHT] - The Sorcerer (relates to the Lost) - Very Long
> Date: Thursday, April 09, 1998 2:35 AM
>
> While the word Sorcerer has been claimed in other game systems in essence
> refers to a specialist of the mage class, I am going to coin it for the
> particular class of magic used by the Lost as described by the Viper's
Eye
> in the Book of Priestcraft.
>
> In writing a post a bit ago responding to some of the ideas raised by the
> "Concept of Deismar..." an idea hit. El-Seighul is the "Lord of the
> Ghouls" or at least he presides of the land of the ghouls. The idea is
so
> simple it just amazes me I missed it for so long. Hence:
>
> The "Sorcerer" is really essentially a Ghul Lord from the Complete
Sha'ir's
> Handbook (Al-Qadim) with a few modifications (Kudos to Sam Witt - the
> writer of the book). A Ghul Lord, for those unfamiliar with the concept,
> is a kit for a wizard in the lands of Al-Qadim that directly channels
> energy from the Negative Energy Plane and manipulates it.
>
> BTW - this class bears the distinction of Stumping the Sage. My brother
> wrote a letter to Dragon asking about the "leeching" power of the Ghul
> Lord. Skip's response was more or less: "I have no idea." He did
however
> make a suggestion that works well, but we came up with our own to use.

>
> If you have the CSH you will recognize quite a few bits out of here.
I've
> been kicking it around most of the day (spent my entire lunchbreak
thinking
> pros and cons and the like)
>
> Problems as the Ghul Lord is presented.
>
> 1) It is a kit. While most people probably do not see this as much of a
> problem, I do not run with them as I feel them to be mostly just packages
> of freebies (compare the Ranger's book to the Thief's book and you'll see
> what I mean - they changed - a lot)
> 2) It is unbalancing and can very well be a "super-class". If you use
> Skills and Powers the ghul lord player can make a stinking AWESOME
> supercharacter that can wield swords, cast spells, and wear armor all at
> the same time. I found this out much to my sorrow.
> 3) The flavor is a little bit off and some of the rules don't mesh well
> with the rest of the gaming milieu
>
> Some minor fixes are as follows - the Sorcerer is a class unto itself.
If
> taken by a human, it must be as a dual class, and the human MUST find a
> teacher. While this is of course very close to the original kit, there
are
> a few modifications, particularly with the way bloodlines affect the
> abilities.
>
>
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