Another balancing act - OG Myth-Weavers

Notices


GM Workshop

A community-created and maintained place for Game Masters of all systems to bounce ideas around. It's a place for inspiration and sharing tips.


Another balancing act

   
Another balancing act

So a while back I posted a topic asking for some help with balancing a magic heavy game. And when I say magic heavy, I mean a Harry Potter-ish world where pretty much everyone can use magic, from peasants and fighters to your regular wizards. I was given plenty of ideas, and it did help me balance some things out, but I've run into a small issue concerning Professions obtaining spells.

I wanted to give professions access to specific spells that would make working in that profession easier. I.E. farmers gaining the Enrichment version of Plant Growth, cooks gaining Create Water or Goodberry, alchemists getting Detect or Neutralize Poison, that sort of thing. My problem comes in though when I try to balance out when people gain these spells. I want to tie it all into the amount of ranks someone puts into their Profession, and I've come up with a few things. For example:

To cast a spell gained from your profession, you need a number of ranks equal to the spell level+5. So a 0 level spell needs 5 ranks, a 1st level spell needs 6 ranks, and so on.


At first glance that looks ok, and from spell levels 0-4, it works just fine. You gain new spell levels at a rate that's on par with a wizard. Yes, there are a few fluctuations, such as getting no spells at level 1 and gaining 4th level spells one level earlier then a wizard. But those are balanced out by the fact that the spell choices are very limited to things that would make sense for your Profession to have, and the fact that to get a 4th level spell you'd need to sink 9 skill points into your Profession. However, for any spell that's above level 4 it becomes completely unbalanced. Case in point, with the above rule you can gain 9th level spells by level 11 just by maxing out the ranks you have in your Profession.

Now, I figured I could keep things balanced this by saying that your Profession can only give you up to 4th level spells, and I think that would work. What do you guys think?

How to balance magic-heavy: Don't use D&D or other simulationist systems. Use something like Fate and describe doing something as being magical. "Okay, so my Fight is +5 and his Def is +3... Alright, so my levitation spell lets me jump up and over the guard, and as I land on the other side of him I turn and blast him point-blank with a spray of fire!"

That's because you've got something which normally scales with level/2 scaling instead with level. Make it 3 ranks + 2*spell level, say, and you're golden. You need 5 ranks (so L2+) for a L1 spell, and 21 ranks (so L18) for a L9 spell. The spells can be acquired, at their earliest, one level later than a Wizard or Druid could get them. If you want them a bit earlier, subtract a rank or two.

Capping spell levels would be fine. I mean, if you're talking minor magic ability, it probably makes more sense to exclude the higher level/very potent spells. If they want access to those, formal magic training should be necessary (in the form of a true spellcasting class). Alternatively, just tweak the formula as Fred suggested.





Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.8
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.
User Alert System provided by Advanced User Tagging (Lite) - vBulletin Mods & Addons Copyright © 2024 DragonByte Technologies Ltd.
Last Database Backup 2024-03-28 08:21:26pm local time
Myth-Weavers Status