Re: ORCS (FIRST BLOOD) campaign (magic)

["dbarrass_2000" <david.barrass@ed.ac.uk>]

--- In dq-rules@yahoogroups.com, Esko Halttunen <esko.halttunen@l...>
wrote:

> 
> > magic begins to shift from elemental to a
> > more entity form.  So how do I go about draining ranks from elemental
> > magic from high (10+ ranks) to a lowered rank entity.  I thought
every week an
> > adept would lose 1 rank in their highest / expensive elemental
spell and
> > gain a rank in an entity spell.  Dunno really???
> 
> Sounds like you need to implement a multi-mage system where it is
possible to know more than one College simultaneously with some
College as primary and the other(s) secondary. If the magic drain
affects elemntal schools, it should probably start out by first
increasing the fatigue cost of casting an elemental spell and then by
reducing the effectiveness of the spell. The Adept need not lose ranks
in the spell, it can work in the way that the drain effect causes
spells to be cast at -X ranks where X is how many ranks you subtract
from the effects. This would have the additional benefit of preventing
new practicioners of elemental magic emerging, because how do you
learn a spell at rk 0 if the drain modifier is e.g. -5?
> 
> Simultaneously the Entities could become easier if the Exp
multipliers were reduced by the same factor of X and learning time
would be reduced. It works easiest if you make the time required to
learn spells a function of the experience multiplier instead of the
ordinal number (this is what I do in my campaigns, I think I used the
formula of (XPM/100 x 2) weeks to learn the spell and (XPM/100 x 2) x
Rank days of practice to increase rank, or something in that
direction. I really should write it down somewhere... That way spells
regardless of ordinal number will be learnt in a time that reflects
the difficulty of the spell (as indicated by the XPM).

All good ideas
Another way of doing it would be to split mana into the various forms
ie elemental, entity etc and say this is a low mana area for
Elemental, high for entity.  As time went on these areas would expand
and you'd get very low and even no elemental mana areas.  Of course
there'd be islands of higher elemental mana where there'd still be
powereful elemental mages holding on

Take your pick of what suits

David