Magician spells

[Kaleph]

Hallo everyone, I'm new to the forum and to Birthright. I was having a look to the 3.5 conversion, to see if it's maybe worth it using it in a future campaign.

I was checking out the magician class, and I noticed that, in the newest version, it may cast spells up to level 6, while the spell list includes also 9's (I believe because it was never updated to 3.5). Which spell list should I use for the magician?

[AndrewTall]

I hadn't noticed that before, as you say it is clearly inconsistent.

Barring use of rituals and so on I can't see how the magician could use the higher level spells, which does fit with the general ethos of the class.

Rituals were a house rule I had ages ago that loosely said that if you took longer to cast the spell, had assistants, etc you could cast at a higher level, it fitted the campaign where I wanted priests who could heal (rarely) serious illnesses without having lots of high level clerics around. Magicians would do something similar with casting times of hours, days or even weeks to let them cast a needed spell - useless in battle of course but not out of place in Cerilia given battle spells and realm spells in my opinion.

I would go with what sounds like it should work best in your campaign, and tell players it may change if it doesn't work.

[Sorontar]

If we agree that there should be no 7/8/9 level spells in the Magician's spell list, that will need to be added to http://www.birthright.net/forums/sho...le=BRCS:Errata for Chapter 3.

[Kaleph]

Barring use of rituals and so on I can't see how the magician could use the higher level spells, which does fit with the general ethos of the class.

Thank you; I also see 6th level spells maximum more appropriate for the class.

If we agree that there should be no 7/8/9 level spells in the Magician's spell list, that will need to be added to http://www.birthright.net/forums/sho...le=BRCS:Errata for Chapter 3.

It also looks like the spells list is obsolete/never updated to 3.5 (and somehow it doesn't have that much flavor IMHO). Probably it's best to homebrew one...

[Thelandrin]

There's certainly precedent for restricting a class to six spell levels - Paizo did it a lot in Pathfinder and Starfinder currently has no 7th-9th level spells at all.

[Fizz]

I don't have the document handy, but i guess in my head i thought the magician could cast spells of higher levels only if they were divinations or illusions.

I've not played 3.5 in a while, so clearly i need to have a look at it again. Heh.


-Fizz

[masterdaorin]

Magicians are restricted to 6th level spells.

However, priests of Ruornil are able to cast 7th and 8th level "magician" spells. I would keep those lists.

However, the 9th level magician spell list is still an error. Of course, a couple of those spells are erroneously listed as 9th level spells, whereas they properly belong in the 7th and 8th level lists... Don't know them off the top of my head, but I noticed them as I was editing the 3e rules for my own copy.

[Osprey]

I wrote most of the Magician class for the 3.5 BRCS, but in truth I have always been unhappy with it. To me the Magician just feels like a watered-down and colorless version of the Bard class, with similar spells except for Enchantment (the Bard's most powerful weapon) and bardic music.

I believe the 3.5 6-level Magician spell list was never completed. It's damnably hard to make that kind of thing in a community setting and create a list most folks find acceptable.

The BRCS project was very challenging -too challenging, I'd say - when it came to creating content that needed to be drastically changed from the original 2e material. The Magician class was a prime example. It was never very attractive to play as a PC in the original 2e game, and even adding extra class abilities for the 3.5 version did not bring it up to par with core PC classes in my view.

The weakness of a 6-or 9-level spell list that only allows divination and illusion spells is that the core spell lists for wizards, sorcerers and bards simply does not provide nearly enough spell choices to make a decent spell list at 9 levels. The community here agreed that compressing it down to 6 levels would help, but it still provided a very narrow and woefully underpopulated list that desperately needs more than 2 schools to fill it out.

This then leads to a debate that (as I recall) became a very difficult-to-solve problem:
How do we reinvent the Magician spell list to become roughly equivalent to a Bard's spell list in providing a similar number of spell options per level?

This debate was never resolved as far as I know.

[masterdaorin]

I wrote most of the Magician class for the 3.5 BRCS, but in truth I have always been unhappy with it.

You mean that you wrote the chapters for the "Rich Baker lost files" for converting 2e to 3.5?

This then leads to a debate that (as I recall) became a very difficult-to-solve problem:
How do we reinvent the Magician spell list to become roughly equivalent to a Bard's spell list in providing a similar number of spell options per level?

I'm not sure that we can. The magician class I think is just there for campaign setting flavor, as a way of illustrating how specialist wizards should look like in Birthright. Those spell groups (divination and illusion) have always been limited in that regard, since the beginning of D&D.

My first instinct would be to leave it as is - I think the magician class is more like an "advisor" class than a true base class. I suspect their strength lies in skills, with some spells to provide support for that purpose.

However, I need to finish reading the 3.5 core rulebooks cover to cover, and discover if specialist wizards are treated any differently, then make some decisions regarding any revisions to the lost files chapters, complete them, before if I can offer a "fix".

[Sorontar]

You mean that you wrote the chapters for the "Rich Baker lost files" for converting 2e to 3.5?
...

However, I need to finish reading the 3.5 core rulebooks cover to cover, and discover if specialist wizards are treated any differently, then make some decisions regarding any revisions to the lost files chapters, complete them, before if I can offer a "fix".

I am not sure what you mean Masterdaorin. We are normally talking about the BRCS 3.5e as being the BRCS 3e rules developed here at br.net, where we have also editted the first 5 chapters to switch to 3.5e. While we have had copies of various discussions with Rich Baker over the years (for instance, http://www.birthright.net/forums/sho...tle=Interviews ), I am not sure what you mean by Richard Baker's lost files. The only lost files I can remember are those like his map of Aduria ( http://www.birthright.net/forums/showthread.php?t=1989 http://www.birthright.net/forums/showthread.php?t=2939 ). There was however a Dragon magazine article that discusses an 3.5e approach to the Bloodlines - http://www.birthright.net/forums/sho...or_D_and_D_3_5

Sorontar