[RQ-Rules] Wizardry

[Andrew O.Mellinger]

I've been looking at it and thinking about it for a while and here's my 
two cents.

Overall it looks intriguing, however I'm not sure I'd want to be a 
player using it.  And for me that is often the acid test of whether 
something is good or not.

Here's my basic problem:  It takes way too long to memorize a spell, 
and much of it isn't worth the time.

  As a starting 'Magic User' (regardless of what other skills someone 
has) they won't have a very high memorization.  So that means that they 
are going to fail on most of the rolls to study a spell.  Let's say I 
start off with a 35%.  (Or were you thinking of much higher? If so, 
then why even bother to roll?)  I was looking at most spells, and even 
the low end D&D style ones are about four points. (The cantrip-ones are 
one, but most are 4 or more.)  So for a starting character that is 40 
minutes and with an average number of failures, learning something like 
Acid Arrow would take 2 hours.   Then to cast it I make another 
memorization (once again 35%) so we are looking at another 1 in 3.

So basically I have to spend 120 minutes to learn the spell the first 
time, then cast it three times to even get the chance to make a DEX x 3 
roll (even with a dex of 15 that's only a 45%) to do only 2d4 points of 
damage to a guy.  Not really worth it.

Even for the much more interesting and useful spells (like air walk) it 
takes much longer time to learn (it is an 8 point spell.)

So the problem is that I can't see someone trying this without a 
meditation skill of 75% or higher.  Which is going to be hard to get 
I'd imagine.  Then a person has to acquire the spells, etc.  And if we 
are always assuming meditation of 75% or higher, I'd recommend getting 
rid of the roll altogether.

Taking ideas from old D&D campaigns: Maybe it takes a long time to 
*learn* a new spell, but it refreshing one isn't that hard.  For 
example: To fill one of my slots with an Air Walk would be even 20 
minutes per point, but if I'm just refreshing it would be only 2 
minutes per point.

Echoing what Michael said:  If you've got MP why do you need forgetting 
the spells?  It seems like a double penalty to me.  Sure the caster 
gets some flexibility but that means the spells have to be in the spell 
book, and the caster has sufficient time learn the spell.  In most 
campaigns I've been in, people would benefit from the time in other 
ways.

-Andrew







On Aug 2, 2005, at 8:02 PM, Leon Kirshtein wrote:

> I have been looking for a long time for a way to
> integrate D&D type magic into RQ. This is what I have
> come up with so far:
>
> http://68.197.33.44:8245/Wizardry/rules.asp
>
> Some converted spells are at:
>
> http://68.197.33.44:8245/Wizardry/default.asp
>
> I would really like to hear your opinions on these
> rules and of course any suggestions are welcome.
>
> Leon
>
>
> 		
> ____________________________________________________
> Start your day with Yahoo! - make it your home page
> http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs
>
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
> http://mail.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> RQ-Rules mailing list
> RQ-Rules at crashbox.com
> http://www.crashbox.com/rq-rules
> http://www.crashbox.com/mailman/listinfo.cgi/rq-rules
>