[Tywyll]

Originally Posted by GianniVacca

I'm not sure I've understood your quandary. Is your problem 'how can I prevent my players from all choosing a spell casting character?'?

Mostly. Its also, "If players have a concept, such as street-wise rogue, or grizzled combat veteran, what happens down the line when the mages are schtumping the opposition and the only real advantage those concepts maintain is simply a few more points in a few skills, which the casters can be developing as well?"

Well.... What can I say? This is a hard one. And there are many ways to tackle the problem, depending on personal taste/campaig background/rules fiddling.

1/ You could go the D&D way. Magic-users are not allowed to learn swordfighting. Period. Obviously a party will need fighters as well as magic-users.

Never liked this option.

2/ You could say that only characters from a certain caste/from a very wealthy family are allowed/can afford to learn magic.

this works, to a degree, but essentially leaves the problem of the non-caster eventually being in danger of being bored by lack of things to do (besides say "I attack") while the casters are dripping with tons of options. It also doesn't help with the balance issue... a wizard can learn sword-fighting later on, but the non-casters really can't.

3/ You could say that magical studies are so long that all starting spell-casting characters are 50 years old. This may have some disadvantages in terms of physical skills.

Doesn't work for my setting.

4/ Any characters could be allowed to have magic and fighting skills. The line between 'fighters' and 'magic-users' would be completely blurred (like in all RQ2 games I've played).

Also doesn't work. Its also not really an option for most 'traditional' fantasy/Sword&Sorcery settings. This isn't a knock on RQ, but for most people coming to BRP, this style won't be familiar or necessarily favored.

But in the end buying magic skills is expensive, and a lot of players want to be able to have more than just one group of skills over 50%. I am running a MRQ GodLearner campaign and although all PCs had access to magic, not all players decided to invest heavily in magic skills.

Its expensive in MRQ, wherein level ups are limited by 'improvement rolls'. However, in more traditional BRP, improvement is solely based on use, so that doesn't necessarily hinder the player. If the skills are there, they can take them as they wish.

I guess my issue is two fold. The player of casters have lots of different options and things they can do in combat, in addition to having the same set of options that non-casters have (weapon and skill use). They aren't prevented from being as good or even better than the character that begins the game as the dedicated 'heavy' simply because improvement is random and use based. After awhile, I'm concerned that the players who failed to pick magic as a concept will end up with little to do compared to their mystic companions.

Now, MRQ handles this issue with a limited amount of improvement, which is one means of balancing the issue. the other would be providing some sort of special or focused abilities that are either incompatible with magic, or simply require a lot of extra focus from a character (preventing most cases of 'double dipping').

Or, I'm sure there are other options I've not considered.