Hot answers tagged magic
41
That depends on your definition of "illogical." While I've personally never been a fan of Vancian magic due to cognitive dissonance ("It's like only being able to use the quadratic formula once on a test!"), there are in-fiction explanations for it.
Spell Preparation
What's important to understand is that the spells are not simply memorized, recalled, and ...
24
All Summon spells fall under the Conjuration school, which imposes additional restrictions.
Specifically:
A creature or object brought into being or transported to your location by a conjuration spell cannot appear inside another creature or object, nor can it appear floating in an empty space. It must arrive in an open location on a surface capable of ...
24
No, not generally. Spellcasting in D&D or Pathfinder is a routine process -- you select the spell, and then cast it. The character is presumed to be so proficient at this process that there is no chance of failure under normal circumstances.
However, there are some special cases where there is a random chance of failure. Two of them require the ...
20
Looking at the cleric as a bundle of resources for a moment:
Both wells and clerics generate water. A well accesses underground aquifers* and can generate larger and smaller volumes of water depending on local circumstances. Furthermore, most liquid intended for human consumption is vaguely alcoholic as a purifying measure.
A human will consume 3-4 liters ...
20
From my experience, your number 3 is key: Availability to PCs. If something is supposed to be mythical, it gets scientific automatically. Once players know the mechanics behind it, their brain will do calculations in their head. Thats not even a conscious process. People cannot "un-know" things.
Example: D&D, the party encounters some random guy, he ...
19
Pre-4E D&D's magic system, ignoring sorcerers, is best explained by a visualization of spells as "knots" of mana.
For wizards, these knots are made using the spellbook page as a form; the spell literally can't be shaped without its assistance. The shape of the knot determines its function. Further, a wizard can only hold a few at first, but as they ...
17
According to "Introduction: Current Cross-References" (GURPS Thaumatology, p. 5), the book is designed to stand alone and doesn't need GURPS Magic. The book presents alternatives to the spell system provided in the Basic Set, as well as some modifications of the default spell system.
If you are using the spell-magic rules from the Basic Set, then GURPS ...
17
Most everybody else is focusing on the cleric creating water; I'll focus on the military tactics then. Especially since I played not too long ago in a 3.5 campaign that heavily used -- in my opinion -- rather clever and realistic tactics that made use of spell casters.
Basically, it all boils down to one simple principle: Think of offensive mages as siege ...
17
I was in exactly the same boat as you a year ago: introduced to Fate with Diaspora, loved it, and then wanted to capture than in a fantasy setting. This is where I went with it:
Dresden Files RPG has a comprehensive, flavourful, flexible, and very Fate-like magic system that easily translates to a fantasy setting. For an incredibly-good explanation of its ...
17
The best way to make healers fun to play is to make their profession matter in the culture of the setting and in the conflicts the group faces.
Is the character merely "Joe, with a Great-level Healing skill and a Good Herbalism skill"? If yes, why? Wouldn't it be more interesting to have the character be "Joe, an Adept of the Scarlet Order", with contacts ...
15
You may find this interesting...
I once took a type of personality test that had four "axes" of classification:
http://www.personalitytest.net/types/index.htm
(I was taking a paper version, but it looks like the same test.)
The categories are:
Extraverted (E) or Introverted (I)
Sensing (S) or iNtuitive (N)
Thinking (T) or Feeling (F)
Judging (J) or ...
15
1930
Air Transport: Not much civil aviation. but rapidly growing; the 1932 DC3 will revolutionize air travel. Military aviation branching into three fields: Bombers, Transports, and Fighters; scout planes also used. Airships (Zeppelins, mostly) provide commercial long distance air travel.
...
14
I think the most likely explanation of the phenomenon is that fantasy is normally in a medieval setting, and when we think "medieval", we think of kings, not of theocrats or magocrats. In other words, what limits clerics and wizards is our imagination.
If you're looking for in-game explanations, I can think of three
Tradition: If the people are used to ...
14
There's a few different things you can do here, from either the game system side or the game master side.
Systems: Give natural healers more potent long-term healing. The idea here is that you may be able to bring someone from near death to fighting fit in a few seconds with magic, but that kind of healing reduces long-term viability. Maybe magical ...
13
In 5th edition, it's fairly simple.
Rego moves matter around. This includes splitting stone (not perdo, as you're not destroying, just rearranging and moving. You're also not changing the nature of the stone, so not muto).
The following are from the Covenants book and a few other official books. Check the spell index for references.
As per crafting with ...
13
Given the fallout setting, where there's no 'psionics' or magic as such (at least as far as anything appearing the games so far). Broadly speaking you've got a few options:
Introduce psionics or magic into the game (this isn't part of the fallout canon).
Go with mutation (this does appear in the canon setting).
Tell the player no
I think that the first ...
13
There is no solid definition of the term of the sort that you're suspecting there might be: there is no agreement across RPGs for what exactly Thaumaturgy is or means, though outside RPGs it does have a solid (though pedestrian) English definition.
As KRyan and Simon Gill's answers have pointed out in excellent detail, the word itself, prior to ever being ...
13
Ah, finally found the Pathfinder FAQ. (It's weirdly hard to locate, as a little tab at the bottom of the core rulebook product page.) It contains the following:
Darkness: Can adding additional sunrods to the area of the spell (Core Rulebook page 263) increase the light level?
No, sunrods can never increase the light level of an area of darkness ...
12
From an Ars Magica and Aristotelian perspective, mind is divided into five elements. (Doing this bit from memory) Common Sense, Imagination, Memory, Cognition, and Estimation.
The 5 wits are: Common Sense (The ability to perceive the world), Imagination (The ability to composite images over time and store them) Memory (the ability to store concepts), ...
12
No.
"Magical Beast" means that the species is not a product of natural processes, but is rather the result of something fantastic: weird wizard experiments, development in a naturally high-magic environment, or merely being a fantastic and bizarre creature that defies the knowable laws of nature. They are not made of magic or something like that, and aren't ...
12
The word “thaumaturgy” is Greek for “miracle worker,” and was originally applied to several Christian saints, specifically those for whom miracles were not a rare or occasional thing, but a matter of course.
Starting in the 16th century, the word was generally associated with occult secret societies; this is where most fantasy RPGs ...
12
When special abilities modify the enhancement bonus, you use the total enhancement bonus to determine cost. This applies to weapons, armor and shields.
Special abilities count as additional bonuses for determining the market value of the item, but do not modify attack or damage bonuses (except where specifically noted). A single weapon cannot have a ...
12
This is not the way to do this
Wanting balance between caster and non-caster classes is as noble goal; however, adding mechanics that punish players for choosing to be spellcasters is not how to bring them in line. Random mechanics like Wild Magic just make the game unfun for spellcasters or those with spell-like abilities; sanity rules are difficult to ...
11
You will have to make magic non-quantifiable. That implies that the mechanics of your magic system can't fully describe how magic works and what it can do.
Designing such a system isn't impossible. The trick is that you must leave substantial parts of the how magic works in the realm of the fiction, untouched by the mechanics. For an example of a game that ...
10
The question in the title is a little different than the question in the body. As a result, I'll answer both.
Can powers do Suppressive Fire?
Sure, if the description of that power allows it.
Can the Bolt Power do Suppressive Fire?
No, not as written in the core rules. A GM would probably be more than willing to work with a PC who wanted to create a ...
10
Not sure which edition you are playing and what exact spell is in play - I don't know of any "spreading" silence spell, the normal second level one just hits one place or person and those within the radius are silenced but they don't spread it.
Your general counters to a technique like this are:
Mobility. Make Will saves and get out of the silence ...
10
Along the same lines as others who speak of scarcity, we play a campaign where magic is pretty much out of reach of the player characters. We originally started with the idea that nobody plays a wizard (and wizards are incredibly scarce in the world of NPCs.) The player characters didn't lay hands on their very first magic item until about 10 sessions into ...
10
This has come up in one of the campaign I currently run. Comprehend languages, like most spells, has a limited duration and is therefore only useful as long as:
You don't encounter more than one piece of foreign-language text over the course of the day.
The foreign-languages you do encounter can be completely interpreted before the duration runs out.
Of ...
10
No, under optimal circumstances there is not a check. However there are a long list of situations that involve a check:
Strong Wind
Situations where you can speak but cannot hear yourself
In grapple
While being stabbed
etc
Note that while the spell may succeed under normal circumstances, spells that negatively affect other creatures may well fail or ...
10
If you're not in a hurry, one of the expansions for the new Fate Core kickstarter includes a Magic System Toolkit.
In one of our earlier incarnations of the Fate system, Evil Hat co-founder Rob Donoghue lost his damn mind and included a chapter of over half a dozen different magic systems for use with the game. With this stretch goal, Rob will create a ...
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