Q&A with the new BRP Author

[Nightshade]

As I recall, Jason said you could now parry or dodge the damage spells. That makes a big difference. You still potentially can get splattered, but at the point there's a trade-off in intensity to risk; a Mage can only do that sort of thing a few times, while a fighting type can do it all day.

And to be honest, it wasn't like RQ Sorcery couldn't clobber someone perfectly well; it just took a fairly high level of skill to do it.

[Trifletraxor]

But, sorcery was quite difficult to learn. I don't know how the MW magic works, but if you're a warrior, can you still learn the blast spell f.ex.? Just the blast spell? Then you could fight the critters and blast the Boss. It would be somewhat unsatisfying to GM. I had a ogre talon, with vomit acid and 28 POW - we had a house rule that you could max put POWx2 MP into divine spells - so I could vomit 56 points of acid. I know the GM found this very difficult - as that spell was a sure-to kill. (especially since I had two! used it against Ralzakark once, but he teleported away before the second stream of acid).

SGL.

[Nightshade]

Originally Posted by Trifletraxor

But, sorcery was quite difficult to learn. I don't know

Not really. A single spell and intensity--which you both could bet as your free magic in RQ3--weren't that hard to improve. The only reason you didn't see more problems with it was because of the way encumberance negatively impacted it.

how the MW magic works, but if you're a warrior, can you still learn the blast spell f.ex.? Just the blast spell? Then you could fight the critters and blast the Boss. It would be somewhat unsatisfying to GM. I had a ogre talon, with

Assuming you had it at a high enough skill to be reliable. Given you had to learn it in play, that's a pretty big assumption. And at that point you've spent a lot of training time on essentially, a one-shot trick that may not work, can be dodged, and takes extra time to cast. Keep in mind that 12 Int fighting type could only do 6d6 that way (and likely only once), so I'm not sure that's all that much of a killer, honestly. Yeah, its a nice trick, but if its not going to be a nice trick some of the time, why even bother?

[Jason Durall]

Originally Posted by Trifletraxor

But, sorcery was quite difficult to learn. I don't know how the MW magic works, but if you're a warrior, can you still learn the blast spell f.ex.? Just the blast spell?

The GM is the arbiter of whether a character is able to start with magic or sorcery.

Learning magic later is up to the GM again. He may say "nope" outright. If he allows it, it's not exactly a massive tactical advantage.

For magic, let's say your non-magician has an INT 13. It'll first take (30-INT) weeks to learn a spell (Blast). It may be expensive, if he can even find a tutor, and it's dedicated training time.

At the end of those 17 weeks, your warrior can now use Blast at 13% (starting skill % = INT) and is limited to 3 levels in it (INT/4, rounded down) for a whopping 3D6 damage. Each level of Blast costs 3 power points to cast, so he's likely to only be able to cast 5, maybe 6 levels of it, tops, before slumping into unconsciousness from being out of power points.

Now your warrior has a missile attack that is slower than a regular attack, costs power points, can be dodged, and begins at a lower percentile than picking up a random missile weapon.

More incentive to leave the spellcasting to specialists.

[Trifletraxor]

That's a balancing touch yes! :-)

SGL.

[Jason Durall]

I should emphasize once again that Basic Roleplaying is not Generic RuneQuest. Many of the questions seem to be aimed at that nonexistent product rather than the one that's been created, playtested, and promoted.

Basic Roleplaying provides a rules framework for any setting, and calls for a lot of decision making by the GM to determine what should fit or not fit in each setting.

A BRP-based fantasy setting would present more guidelines on what the specific costs for learning spells, and might further limit spellcasting characters.

As it stands, BRP simply presents rules for creating characters, says "a starting-level character might have this level of power", and presents a list of powers. There's a bit more detail than that, but not a ton more.

[TRose]

So are there going to be penalties for casters that walk around encumbered ? Or will Wizards be able to go around in Plate armor? Or for melee types for that matter? And if so will they be the same penalties
But it sounds that for a warrior type perhaps spending 13 weeks learning Arbalast might be better then learning blast

[badcat]

As an example of what Jason is saying, I can offer the following. I have run a BRP swords and sorcery game for years with a magic system based specifically on the Magic World booklet. Some of the limiting factors I used were: having a requirement of POW 16 to be able to use magic (mageborn), basing resistance attacks on current POW (the more you use, the less effective many spells become), sticking to the 'untrained' rule (non-mages can only cast one quarter of INT level spells, rounded down). In addition I made a houserule that required knowledge of other magic disciplines to cast some spells so that the more effective the spell, the more had to be invested in terms of experience and skills. For instance, the Wards spell is a spell that allows a defensive field to be set up that warns against intruders and blasts them in a preset area if they intrude there. The material component is a set of enchanted stones that are set out to define the area. I just required a certain expertise in Enchantment as well as Sorcery to use the spell.

One thing that is really neat about this system is that you can have spells of a defensive nature that a hostile mage must then overcome to harm you...a fighter is not necessarily going to be toasted by a spell directed at him (assuming he has learned some of those defensive spells, like Countermagic and Protection). It's very flexible and flavorful, very much like a D&D style magic system with more options. A PC can have a few spells and a mage can have any weapons, but neither is as good at the secondary ability as the one trained in it. Using it is sort of like RQ without the cultural flavor, that you can tailor to taste.

[Nightshade]

I'd not even remembered the quarter cap on levels of spell (I thought it was a quarter of your Int in _spells_); was that a change, Jason, or am I just misremembering Magic World?

[Jason Durall]

Originally Posted by Nightshade

I'd not even remembered the quarter cap on levels of spell (I thought it was a quarter of your Int in _spells_); was that a change, Jason, or am I just misremembering Magic World?

For non-magicians who dabble, you're limited to 1/4 INT in the number of spells you can cast, and the levels of each. (If I recall correctly.)

If you're a trained magician, you can know more spells, and the limit of levels you can cast raises to 1/2 INT.