Druids, shamans, and witches oh my

[Thirsty Viking]

I have a sorcerous Campaign  developing as I first told you here last week.   6 players, 5 gifted

Here are some House Rules I used on my gifted Party members.  And one I am Considering  now that I want some comment on.

House Rule:

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Wizard start with up to MA in formallized spells,  no more than two may be Spells from the Book,  Others must be Created By the player and Approved by the GM.  (especially in a Group with 5 mages I wanted to encourage more individuality).

House Rule:  Wizards Starting Ages

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Wizards minimum Starting age of 20 + 1d10.  In all cases this increased the age of thier charachters from the callendar ages they had chosen,  I Ruled thier calendar ages were correct,  the diffrence was Magic based Aging.

This was kind of arbitrary,  but I wanted the Idea of magical aging reinforced for them.  In Retrospect,  I might do #months = Vagaries known + CTN's of formalized spells + 2d10 months.  This would be 2-4 years and fall more heavily on charachters with more magic training.

House Rule under Consideration:  New SA advancement costs for Vagaries

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The last Item I'm looking at is the advancement Cost of Vagaries.  Given the power of magic, and the way the vagaries intertwine one with another to unlock vast numbers new spells,  I'm considering the following Advancement rule.   Instead of SA costs as written in the book,   I'm looking at Basing the costs off TOTAL # Vagaries known.  My though was that it would take [
1 + (Vagary Level being Obtained)/3 * total # vagaries To be known]

Example 1, A Mage with skills in 5 different Vagaries  learns :
an apprentice level in a 6th vaguary 3 SA
A Journeyman Level for 4 SA
A Master Level for   6 SA's

I had Origianlly Concieved this formula using   LevelSought/3 * (total Ranks in vagaries) but decided this was too Expensive.

All advancement costs remain doubled without Teacher/Arcane Library.

While this Rule has some game balance features,  It also hels to maintain the Individuality of mages in a Group, and encourages narrow depth as opposed to width in the Spell casters.   The Philosophical reasons  being that As a Mage diversifies his knowledge of magic, he has to integrate his new knowledge with increasingly complex magical framework of all the other knowledge.  (in the game once he knows Aprentice level movement he can cast it in conjunction with all other Vagaries he has knowledge of)
This is to prevent the Vanilla mage from appearing as rapidly in Heavily Gifted Groups.

I'm sending out an email to this effect to my Group of Players for comment.


Brian Gave me a house Rule for his games that I liked,  but the ponies were already out of the barn for me...    only 1 charachter above race level D.

[Brian Leybourne]

My though was that it would take [
1 + (Vagary Level being Obtained)/3 * total # vagaries To be known]

Example 1, A Mage with skills in 5 different Vagaries  learns :
an apprentice level in a 6th vaguary 3 SA
A Journeyman Level for 4 SA
A Master Level for   6 SA's

Hmm.. aren't those numbers wrong? Unless I'm not reading your formula right. As I see it, there are 3 ways to read what you wrote and no option comes up with the answers you have given :-)

You either meant ((1 + newlevel) / 3) * newtotalvagaries, which gives results of 4, 6 and 8 respectively;

Or you meant (1 + (newlevel/3)) * newtotalvagaries, which gives 8, 10 and 12 respectively;

Or you meant 1 + ((newlevel/3) * newtotalvagaries), which gives results of 3, 5 and 7 respectively.

Which is it? :-)

Brian.

[Thirsty Viking]

My though was that it would take [
1 + (Vagary Level being Obtained)/3 * total # vagaries To be known]

Example 1, A Mage with skills in 5 different Vagaries  learns :
an apprentice level in a 6th vaguary 3 SA
A Journeyman Level for 4 SA
A Master Level for   6 SA's

Hmm.. aren't those numbers wrong? Unless I'm not reading your formula right. As I see it, there are 3 ways to read what you wrote and no option comes up with the answers you have given :-)

You either meant ((1 + newlevel) / 3) * newtotalvagaries, which gives results of 4, 6 and 8 respectively;

Or you meant (1 + (newlevel/3)) * newtotalvagaries, which gives 8, 10 and 12 respectively;

Or you meant 1 + ((newlevel/3) * newtotalvagaries), which gives results of 3, 5 and 7 respectively.

Which is it? :-)

Brian.

Or you meant 1 + ((newlevel/3) * newtotalvagaries), which gives results of 3, 5 and 7 respectively.

Have 5 vagaries add a 6th at apprentice level

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1 + ((1/3)* 6)
1 + (2)
3
Have 5 Vagaries raise one from apprentice to Journeyman level

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1 + ((2/3) *5)
1 + (10/3)
1 + 3 + 1/3  (rounding in players favor always)
4
Have 5 Vagaries Raise one from Journeyman to Master Level

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1 + ((3/3) *5)
1 + 5
6

The confusion I think is you looked at the following:

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now to have 6 vagaries and raise one from Apprentice to journeyman
[code]1 + ((2/3)*6)
1 + 4
5
now to have 6 vagaries and raise one from journeyman to Master

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1 + ((3/3)*6)
1 + 6
7
[/code]

As you can see,  the most eficient way under this method is to master your current vagaries before you learn another.

In the book system It only requires 36 points to play a gifted swordsman with NO Vagaries, to master level in all nine,  72 if no teacher.

Weaponskill 7 to WeaponSkill 11 costs  34 points.  
Weaponskill 7 to WeaponSkill 14 is 70 points

But this wasn't my main reason,   I don't want all my PC mages (5 at last count) turning into Vanilla Archmages. at a rapid pace,  I want them to remain different.  I have a group of Very good role players,  in 6 weeks I'd probably have 4 of the mages at master level in 7-9 vagaries under the book system.