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MERP (Middle-Earth Role Playing) by I.C.E. (Iron Crown Enterprises) was a slimmed-down version of I.C.E.'s Rolemaster, making it so that you could use MERP stuff in a Rolemaster game.
I own a whole slew of MERP and Rolmaster books, but I only played a handful of times.
Much to my delight, many of the changes that were made to D&D between AD&D 2.0 and D&D 3.0 make it much more similar to Rolemaster.
The only big change that I wished for back in my days of reading Rolemaster but playing AD&D 2.0 is the magic system, much as has been described here.
I really like the idea of the point system, but in all honesty, I don' I don't really know how well it works in play. I liked that the three magic types (arcane, divine, and psionics) are all tied to different stats (intelligence, wisdom, and charisma, or whatever they were called. In fact, when D&D 3.0 tied Cha to some magic, I jumped up and down for joy), and I like that they all pretty much use the same ruleset.
Psionics in D&D has always had a "tacked on" feel. It sometimes works like magic, sometimes doesn't, and its rules are completely different. It's no wonder that so many games disallow psionics, but I wish it weren't so.
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Yeah, but in five years I have never had a player choose cleric so the first time I made one I missed the domain limits, so I let it ride, treating it like an bonus to become a cleric, In the end it is a bad example, since I am allowing it, for the one guy who is willing to play one after all, I might 'discover' the rule later if it becomes popular, I will also allow a domain for every point of wisdom bonus even then...
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Mentalism, Channeling and Essence in Rolemaster. There were some flaws though, I think the spell system for healing was brutal, you had to find a bone specialist for a break, an cut man for wounds and so on. Crazy complex.
Editing out the psionic combat and turning all the attacks and defenses into powers was the end of the last of the problems with psionics. It was really a hold over from the Nerds who invented D&D wanting to merge it with Sci-fi. Rolemaster did many things better but they had a real love of complexity for its own sake.
The Monster Summoning progression is a good example of how Rolemaster looked. I wonder how hard it would be to blend all the D&D spells into lists like that and then bring the Role Master lists over... Hmmm
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quote:I will also allow a domain for every point of wisdom bonus even then...
Egad. With wizards casting multiple spells per turn and clerics with eight domain abilities PLUS the bonus spells, what are you doing for fighters and rogues? I assume that fighters can kill creatures by looking at them fiercely enough? Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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I like the idea of having little to no magic at all in campaigns-- making magic very rare and special.
I like the idea of magicians' laboratories, where they work out their magic through weeks and months, instead of turns-- but those spells have vastly greater effects.
I like skill based games rather than feat based games; I like playing ordinary people (or super-ordinary people) thrown into major events. I like plot; I like characterization.
If I could remove the dice and trust everyone to tell the best story-- that'd be perfect.
quote:Originally posted by Counter Bean: The fighters and rogues make very careful plans, very, very careful plans.
Yup. You have to level the playing field for those wizards who aren't smart enough or have enough tools to make or execute careful plans.
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If I had PC spell casters it would be an issue, I more often have the opposite problem, what do you do with a players whose sheet says 18 intelligence but who is more of a barbarian in reality. I do not consider tactics to be beyond anyone.
Really when have you ever said, you are too dumb to have come up with that plan, you have to do something stupid to a PC?
In their fiction, Greenwood and Grub have taken the position that in the Realms the balance is maintained because wizards negate and oppose each other. The fighters and rogues are beneath notice so they slip in under the radar. My players tend to be sponsored by mages and clerics but not have any along, just enough magic protection to get close and do the ugly.
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Why even have melee classes in your game world, I have to wonder? It's so drastically tilted the other direction that it would seem suicidal to play a fighter or a rogue.
Edit:
quote:Really when have you ever said, you are too dumb to have come up with that plan, you have to do something stupid to a PC?
I've done it more than once. And in a game I'm playing in, a character just did that deliberately to himself when he knew it was foolish, and nearly died at it-but that's what his character would've done.
quote:In their fiction, Greenwood and Grub have taken the position that in the Realms the balance is maintained because wizards negate and oppose each other. The fighters and rogues are beneath notice so they slip in under the radar. My players tend to be sponsored by mages and clerics but not have any along, just enough magic protection to get close and do the ugly.
Which is exactly my point-it's balanced for wizards and sorcerers and casters. The other classes are left under the cold.
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If you want your non-PC spellcasters to be much more powerful than your PCs, why not just make them a higher level?
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I cannot in good conscious let any wizard with ninth level spells be beaten by anyone if he has time to settle in and build up his supplies. I run them as I would play them and that means carefully and patiently. Just coming within twenty miles of such a wizard with hostile intent or strong spells is going to set off some alarms.
Still it is not really about parity, I am not a big advocate of fairness at high levels, I like unfairness really, it is more dramatic. The reason for the rules changes are because they smooth out lumps in the game, continuity flaws. More experienced spell casters should cast faster, however... I do not think I will be extending the ability to clerics, after all, their skills are borrowed not the product of practice.
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That's true...but within the system you describe, wouldn't their deities grant them increased abilities to better face their enemies and do their work?
I mean, in a world where wizards and sorcerers get to cast, without feats, more spells per round...wouldn't the deities--in standard D&D 3.5 very heavily involved in the world--not want their clerics to be overmatched in the field, so to speak?
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I have long reasoned that clerics can heal and wizards cannot because of the complexity of the problem. This implies that clerical spells have a 'detail in fine' that wizard spells do not. They are the products of a gods mind after all. It is reasonable since the mind can never create a cleric spell that it cannot influence the casting rate.
As for spell casters being gods... There are several major threats that spell casters face, one is that they eat their own, two is that even a level one mage is an obvious target even though a typical barroom bouncer could kill him. Mages are carried too level five then they walk too level nine, jog through the mid levels and run at the high. Once a wizard gets up to speed he is like a sea turtle at full size. I just killed off the level one mage tonight in a new party. Goblin spear... The rest of the party survives. So most wizards are going to take a long apprentice route, reach fifth or so, adventure a bit and then settle into the scroll, potion and charging items business in some major town bringing in far more then they can risking life and limb. So PC adventuring mages are all some kind of crazy and always have a bullseye on themselves. If they reach the upper levels anywhere in the realms it is either join the machine/club/secret society/school or have the man come down like a bag of bricks. My mages graduate from adventuring four to six levels before any other class and get swallowed up by politics. It is a natural progression. When the party thief is still cutting purses the mage is the mayor...
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Okay, I definitely agree with MPH and Tom and Rakeesh and... just about everyone. This seems utterly bonkers, CB. Casters are *already* better than non casters. Divine casters have been the best classes in the game since 3.0 came out; first Clerics and with 3.5 Druids were brought up to an equally absurd level. Arcane casters clocked in a close second (arguably first, if they get enough planning in). How could they possibly need a boost? I can't even wrap my head around that.
The magic system is inherently broken, because magic power increases and improves exponentially. A 9th level spell is not worth 9 first level spells. It's worth about fifty.
Imagine if the number of fighter bonus feats doubled every few levels, or if rogue sneak attack doubled every few levels. That would be the equivalent to the current spell system. How could a system like that need to be made better?
Also, discussion of Rolemaster is bringing back some major childhood flashbacks. And I agree with you, MPH, that point-based casting systems are interesting (at least in theory).
This conversation has great timing; I've spent the last couple weeks struggling to hammer out a bunch of rules for a D20, point-based spell system that doesn't improve exponentially. It's challenging, but it's been fun so far.
Anyway, yeah. I think this is probably my favorite thread now.
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The best non-exponential, point-based spell systems are component-based ones, in which you combine things like "short-range/fire/single target/3d6 dice of damage" to establish criteria for point cost. IMO, of course.
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quote:I have long reasoned that clerics can heal and wizards cannot because of the complexity of the problem. This implies that clerical spells have a 'detail in fine' that wizard spells do not. They are the products of a gods mind after all. It is reasonable since the mind can never create a cleric spell that it cannot influence the casting rate.
What does it say about the campaign you're designing, where clerics have a higher degree of fine control, but are not-even at high levels-granted as much raw power as wizards and sorcerers have? It certainly seems to me that given that, 'godlike' would be an appropriate label for W/S. And it's not 'the mind' that would be influencing the casting rate of divine-based spells. Since they're power from the gods, it would be the deity granting that power, which returns to my original question: why wouldn't deities grant higher power to their higher level clerics, to match the higher powers of W/S?
quote:As for spell casters being gods... There are several major threats that spell casters face, one is that they eat their own, two is that even a level one mage is an obvious target even though a typical barroom bouncer could kill him.
OK, so the gods face threats from other gods. And when they're baby gods, they're weaker.
quote:Mages are carried too level five then they walk too level nine, jog through the mid levels and run at the high.
I'm not really sure why you think this. You're describing level progression as though it were an MMORPG, in which such things are fairly predictible because there are a limited number of threats the character can face, and a precise number of methods he can use to deal with those threats. It's not like that in a tabletop RPG, where the GM is in charge of deciding what threats are faced and in what quantities.
quote:I just killed off the level one mage tonight in a new party. Goblin spear... The rest of the party survives.
Not by much, though. The only character who is going to survive with total reliability a goblin spear to the guts at level one-critical hits included-would be a barbarian with a high constitution, and thus looking at >14HP. The rest would die after two goblin spears, perhaps. And when do they face one goblin?
quote:When the party thief is still cutting purses the mage is the mayor...
This sums it up right here. I'm not sure why you're shying away from admitting what is plain, that you like casting classes quite a bit more than non-casting classes. This is shown in the way you're drastically altering the rules to make the game easier for them-even when they face other casters, because your party will typically have more spells/better items than your opposition, just to make sure they don't get wiped out and end the game. You prefer a much more gamist/munchkin approach to RPGs than suits my tastes, but different strokes for different folks and all. But it is what it is.
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quote: why wouldn't deities grant higher power to their higher level clerics, to match the higher powers of W/S?
It is the same reason you never get rich working for a corporation as opposed to working for yourself. Gods do not give out the profits from their enterprise freely.
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Sure...but when you start working for the corporation and rise to the highest ranks, you can eventually become CFO or something, and extreme wealth.
I'm talking a L20, committed-his-whole-life, cleric here. Deities as involved in the world as they are in 3.5 would of course grant them greater powers to keep them in competition with high-level wizards. Deities are not fans of their powers and influence-as exhibited by their clerics, paladins, and rangers-become marginalized.
What you're really saying is that in your campaign, a high level wizard whose powers come from his own learning has more strength and knowledge than a cleric, whose powers and knowledge come directly from a god.
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If there is a one thing that doesn't match up well with fantasy as stated earlier, the daily spell casting cycle is very fast, If I had to design a magic system it would allow certain 'simple elemental' effects to be cast using no preparation and raw power points. More complex effects would fill up higher level spell slots and they would be 'Hung' on the wizard sign (arcane mark) much as Roger Zelasney had in his Merlin Chronicles. The sign would keep them fresh but they would require hours in advance to cast into the spell stack. A wizard would painstakingly create magical effects (limited only to imagination, space available, and the GM rating on the difficulty of the spell, and then horde them for the moment they are intended. That would give things that Hyperborian feel with wizards only intervening at the last moment. However since the spell is pre cast just waiting to be unleashed sending it on its way would just require a word and a hasty unlocking sigle drawn in the air to release it.
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quote: What you're really saying is that in your campaign, a high level wizard whose powers come from his own learning has more strength and knowledge than a cleric, whose powers and knowledge come directly from a god.
Which makes perfect sense, a cleric of whatever level is a child of an entity with a single minded obsession, perhaps several, they are not God's in the sense that we hold our God to be, all wise or knowing, they are just powerful. I would be far more reluctant to have my characters receive a miracle then a wish, a miracle would have so many strings on it that it would be the equivalent of a life sentence.
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quote:Which makes perfect sense, a cleric of whatever level is a child of an entity with a single minded obsession, perhaps several, they are not God's in the sense that we hold our God to be, all wise or knowing, they are just powerful.
This is just another way of saying that the powers wizards have are more potent than the ones gods give in your campaign settings. Remarking that this makes your W/S godlike is thus pretty fair.
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In Rolemaster the introduction says that essence and mentalist spell casters are 'little gods' mucking about with the powers of the universe. It is really a difference in degree not kind.
Perhaps my views are influenced by the Basic-Expert-Companion-Immortals box set rules that I started with. (a very good system by the way) So my AD&D is corrupted.
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Wizards and Sorcerers are supposed to have more potent capacity to wield magic, since they are specialized in that field.
To a degree, this is true: arcane magic is the best field of magic in the game, and provides a superior body of spells by level, with more variety.
Unfortunately, its advantage is rendered somewhat negligible after the Wish/Miracle spells come in to play. It also doesn't make up for the other advantages Clerics have over arcane spellcasters (e.g., all).
But it's something of a moot point. What you initially proposed is not actually a solution to the spellcaster issue; it just makes later game spellcasters more powerful. Nobody thinks they need to be.
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Bean, I think your bizarre ideas about what wizards and clerics should be like would work much better in a system like AD&D 2.0, where each class has its own XP progression table.
For example, the thief was under-powered per level, so to balance it out, it took less XPs for the theif to advance levels than any other class. On the other end of the spectrum was the paladin, which was (supposedly) overpowered per level, but since it took so many XPs to gain levels, they tended to be a lower level than the rest of their party.
That way, you could make certain classes too powerful, but counterbalance that somewhat by making it much harder to advance in those classes. Of course, that would break all sorts of things in D&D 3.x.
The AD&D 2.0 world of Darksun used this mechanic to deal with different types of magic. There were two very different methods of weilding arcane magic -- one was ecologically destructive and had pretty normal XP requirements, while the other one was ecologically friendly but took about twice as much XP to advance.
Needless to say, the ecologically destructive type was much more popular, causing all sorts of problems to the planet.
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quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: The best non-exponential, point-based spell systems are component-based ones, in which you combine things like "short-range/fire/single target/3d6 dice of damage" to establish criteria for point cost. IMO, of course.
Don't warlocks from Complete Arcana kinda work like this?
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Kinda -- but warlocks are pretty "meh" compared to the component options available in, say, GURPS, Shadowrun, or Mage/Ars Magica.
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quote:For example, the thief was under-powered per level, so to balance it out, it took less XPs for the theif to advance levels than any other class.
And for another example: the thief was useless at higher levels, so to balance it out, people dropped 2.0 like a rock.Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Counter Bean: I just killed off the level one mage tonight in a new party. Goblin spear... The rest of the party survives.
I'm glad you're not my DM. I probably wouldn't play with you if you killed off first-level characters. As a DM, your philosophy should be that the game is fun first- even if you're playing with people who are rule-mongers.
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Hey, I kill off first-level characters, on the rare occasions that I have my PCs start at first level. Part of the whole "first-level" experience is dying before you get too attached. Why play at the lower levels if you aren't going to take advantage of one of the two unique aspects of those levels, namely the fragility of the PCs?
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quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: Kinda -- but warlocks are pretty "meh" compared to the component options available in, say, GURPS, Shadowrun, or Mage/Ars Magica.
Tom, there are scores of books for those systems. Do you know the names of the "core" books for me to check out, the equivalent of PHB and DMG?
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For GURPS, you'd want the core book and GURPS Magic. Shadowrun has one core book, but The Grimoire is a good expansion for its magic system. And the core Mage book is all you need to play.
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I don't know what we're talking about right now in this thread, but personally it bugs me that wizards (in D&D) have to memorize their spells in advance (at the start of the day). This would seem to result in very specialized spells never getting memorized, and therefore never being required by a fair DM.
I actually don't play D&D much lately. Would it really be unbalancing to just let a wizard cast so many spells of each level per day without having to memorize them ahead of time?
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quote:I actually don't play D&D much lately. Would it really be unbalancing to just let a wizard cast so many spells of each level per day without having to memorize them ahead of time?
It would add a lot of power to the wizard class, which would be unbalancing.
In 3.x D&D, there's a new class like that called the "Sorcerer" who doesn't have to memorize spells beforehand. The big drawback is that they have far fewer spells they can cast. A wizard can have a million spells to draw on, as long as he has enough spell books. A sorcerer only has a set number of spells of each level that they can cast.
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quote:Originally posted by Omega M.: I actually don't play D&D much lately. Would it really be unbalancing to just let a wizard cast so many spells of each level per day without having to memorize them ahead of time?
Sounds like a Sorceror to me.
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I think one death in six for first level characters is pretty good actually. It makes the game more fun on average by raising the level of risk for the rest. If the dice rolls a twenty then the character takes the spear in the guts. I am pretty free with magical options so the death rate drops a good deal as the characters gain levels and options. But that is why the common man doesn't go adventuring. The only other DM I trust to run may group would have probably killed three of the six. The good thing is that those characters that survive make third level really fast and can Shepard the new first levels along. No game is fun if you have a certainty of success...
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There are two classes that have 'spontaneous' casting: Sorceror and Bard. Each has a number of spell slots per day that can be spent on whatever spells they know from that spell level. The number of spells they know are based on their level.
Sorcerers are mostly equivilant to wizards, appearing to just be a Charisma-based spontaneous casting version. There's a number of differences, though: They end up with a larger pool of spells per day, and gain spell levels slower. They get no wizard bonus feats. They need no spellbook. They are much more straightforward. There are furious arguments brimming with nerd rage and theorycraft as to which of the two full-arcane classes are stronger.
There's a good way to figure out whether or not you definitely want to be a sorcerer. It's a simple question.
Q: Does your DM allow you to take metamagic feats and build up a library of self-made scrolls?
If the answer is "No," "Yes, but s/he makes it insanely difficult," "Uh, how do you do that?" or "I don't bother with that stuff ^_^" then the choice is clear. Be a sorcerer. A wizard is not for you.
Also, if your DM is stingy and gimps your spell selection in any way (like preventing you from obtaining fly because they don't know how to handle a flying character), be a sorcerer and pick your own spells. If the DM insists on picking your spells for you, give up and be a cleric, which recieves ALL spells from ALL available spell levels ALWAYS.
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Right on Samp. I find the average wizard player isn't doing anywhere near what he could be, because he tends to overlook the free item creation feat wizards get (and one of the best): Scribe Scroll!
It enables all the limited usefulness "is this really going to come in handy?" spells to be available, all the time. You don't need to memorize spells like knock, water breathing, halt undead (unless you know ahead of time you're going into a particular situation)... but you can have a scroll handy for virtually every occasion. They're unbelievably cheap in both gold and XP.
Certainly, metamagic and other item creation feats can come in handy. But I Scribe Scroll has saved my bacon more times than any other feat out there.
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Its not just the players missing that feat, look at R A Salavatore's 10000 Orc Series, a strong mage with years to prepare is limited to a few daily spells in his own tower, I would have enough maximized fireballs to kill 10000 orcs myself in that time.
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Okay, I didn't realize that wizards had ways to get around having to memorize spells ahead of time. That makes them seem more useful to me.
Can't DMs disallow certain cleric spells in-game simply by having the cleric's god refuse to give the cleric the spells?
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