Memorizing Common Magic Spells

[alex_greene]

Not to mention some of them would pronounce "Puissant" with a silent U ...

Au contraire... We have no native English speakers

"Puissant" is not a native English word. It's a loan word from French. As is the phrase "Au contraire."

 

[sdavies2720]

Not to mention some of them would pronounce "Puissant" with a silent U ...

Au contraire... We have no native English speakers

"Puissant" is not a native English word. It's a loan word from French. As is the phrase "Au contraire."

Yup, that's right. "Huitzilopochtli" is a native English word, so no one will have trouble with it. :roll:

 

[jwpacker]

Yup, that's right. "Huitzilopochtli" is a native English word, so no one will have trouble with it. :roll:

Well, you got the "native" part right...

Has anyone done anything different than "everybody gets six common magic spells at character creation" to vary things up a bit?

I've been toying with "you start with INT/3, round up free magnitude worth of Common Magic" as a way to keep things a bit more interesting...

 

[Simulacrum]

Has anyone done anything different than "everybody gets six common magic spells at character creation" to vary things up a bit?

I've been toying with "you start with INT/3, round up free magnitude worth of Common Magic" as a way to keep things a bit more interesting...

6 points of Common Magic at start is a Gloranthan standard, and most game worlds are less magic rich. One way of controlling it is to make a Free Skill Point charge for the starting magic - say 10 per point. Personally I like starting characters to be low level and have to work for something, unless there's a specific reason to roll up a more advanced adventurer, and I think a couple of points is enough. In my games characters may start with no spells at all. However the size of the party matters. If you have 6 player characters with 6 points each, that's a lot of magic to throw around right off the bat. If on the other hand you start with just a couple of characters, you may want to be more generous to give them more resources and survivability.

 

[RangerDan]

You're concerned with "Puissant" when I picked the most difficult to pronounce war god I could?

Difficult? Huts Low Pitch Lee? What's the problem?

On to your more serious question, the six levels of Common magic at character creation is certainly very Gloranthan, and I have kept it out of my less magically-intense settings.

Having said that, if you want all your PCs to start with magic, INT / 3 is certainly acceptable and more interesting as you say.
Personally I would go with POW / 3 or even CHA / 3 instead. INT is already a good to excellent stat (due to CAs and character advancement), no need to further reward players for loading on INT over other stats.
It's certainly easy enough to justify why high POW (teach magic to the magically potent) or CHA (teach magic to the most popular guy/gal) should determine the number of starting spells.
(Of course if you're rolling purely random stats this may not apply)

Further, just noticed Simulacrum's post on party size & survivability... in short, I agree

 

[alex_greene]

Give each character one Common Magic spell that none of the others can do, usually something that doesn't have a huge impact on the game. Something like Warmth, Understanding, Water Breath, Spirit Bane, Lucky, Abacus or Golden Tongue. Something they uniquely can do. No other character has that, unless they are replacements for a soon-to-depart character or something. That more or less defines what their character is all about

They get one or two Common Magic spells which all of them learn once they join the group, or that they can already do - something that unites them as a group. Second Sight and Mindspeech are probably the best combination here.

Finally, give them a Common Magic spell which will define their role within the group. Protection or Heal, the guy's the team cleric; Golden Tongue, Glamour, Fate, Entertainer's Smile, and he's the team's Face, and so on.

In all cases, look at spells other than that blighted cliche Bladesharp. Goodness' sakes, who but chefs and woodsmen would want to learn that spell outside of adventuring?

 

[Mixster]

In all cases, look at spells other than that blighted cliche Bladesharp. Goodness' sakes, who but chefs and woodsmen would want to learn that spell outside of adventuring?

Gladiators and soldiers.
Possibly blacksmiths who want to fool their customers
Men who need a sharp razor?

 

[alex_greene]

In all cases, look at spells other than that blighted cliche Bladesharp. Goodness' sakes, who but chefs and woodsmen would want to learn that spell outside of adventuring?

Gladiators and soldiers.
Possibly blacksmiths who want to fool their customers
Men who need a sharp razor?

But not everybody on the surface of the planet, surely?

Spells Seeing Common Use

Abacus (just about everybody)
Armoursmith's Boon (craftsmen working metal, blacksmiths)
Beast Call (animal herders of all kinds)
Becalm (Mothers with kids - perhaps disguised as lullabies)
Cauterise (medics)
Chill (people preparing food for storage)
Clear Path (woodsmen, people who work outdoors in the countryside)
Co-Ordination (steeplejacks, roofers, people who have to scale heights to do their work)
Endurance (Nightwatchmen, soldiers on duty, law enforcers on stakeout, students, journalists, medics, farmers, parents)
Entertainer's Smile (street entertainers, courtiers, people putting on some sort of show)
Extinguish (fire fighters - they'd learn this at as high a Magnitude as possible)
Fate (gamblers, mothers putting the blessing on kids on their way to school)
Glamour (entertainers, courtiers, courtesans, prostitutes)
Golden Tongue (if you've got past the prostitutes above, anyone in any kind of commercial venture whatsoever, such as markets, shops or buying or selling goods)
Heal (physicians, some parents)
Ignite (just about anyone who has firelighting as one of their regular duties - servants, the help)
Lucky (gamblers, mothers putting the blessing on kids on their way to school)
Mason's Boon (labourers, ditch diggers, gravediggers, actual masons)
Mobility (people drafted in to keep the peace; criminals who disturb the peace)
Repair (all manner of craftsmen)
Strength (labourers, people who have to handle large animals)
Understanding (merchants in frequent contact with customers of different cultures; wanderers in frequent contact with stay-at-homes on their long route)
Vigour (the same people who use Endurance, above)
Warmth (night watchmen, indigents with a bit of initiative, officers of the law, people who have to work in a place where they cannot have naked flames, such as in and around barrels of spirits, volatile perfumes or oil)

These probably give the lives of ordinary people a bit of an edge, but they do not go overboard as, say, Mindspeech or Multimissile would.

Like i said, characters should learn ordinary and mundane Common Magic spells, like those from the above list. They don't have the pull of Bladesharp, but they would reflect the adventurer's origins - a former firefighter who knows Extinguish 4, an older sibling whose mother taught Becalm and Lucky to in order to delegate the task of casting those spells on his younger siblings, a canny merchant with a keen eye for the value of everything, a gilded entertainer with a winning smile and a way with girls and boys, an erstwhile shepherd who really knows his sheep and his dogs and so on.

Some Common Magic spells are pretty exotic - Bandit's Cloak, Bearing Witness, Bestial Enhancement, Befuddle, Boon of Lasting Night, Countermagic, Countermagic Shield, Darkwall, Demoralise, Detect X, Dullblade, Fanaticism, Light, Mindspeech, Push/Pull, Second Sight, Slow, Spirit Bane, Water Breath - they would not find much use in common life. However, they could appear as the defining, signature spells of the strange kids.

That kid who can make things brighter or darker, who can gather shadows about him and is always lurking somewhere; the kid who can see spirits and spot a wizard by his POW; the telekinetic firestarter; the kid who seemingly lives in the local river and who has no trouble locating a dropped dagger at the bottom of the river by the taste of the iron of the blade in the back of his mouth as he heads for the bottom with seemingly infinite endurance for the cold ...

Thinking that way brings Common Magic to life. It gives character to the people who possess these spells, and lets the magic shape their natures.

Note: I have avoided all of the distinctly destructive combat Common Magic, specifically Bladesharp. Perhaps, as adventurers, the characters can get to learn those kinds of spells as basic training - but there is no general common use in ordinary life for Disruption or Skybolt or Fireblade unless the people wielding them belong to a travelling circus or some sort of street show, or they are criminals of some sort. Frostbite, Hand of Death and Disruption would probably be learned only by the most sick, twisted people - and they would be leaving their handiwork all over town, frozen and mutilated bodies of animals and people.

 

[sdavies2720]

In all cases, look at spells other than that blighted cliche Bladesharp. Goodness' sakes, who but chefs and woodsmen would want to learn that spell outside of adventuring?

Gladiators and soldiers.
Possibly blacksmiths who want to fool their customers
Men who need a sharp razor?

But not everybody on the surface of the planet, surely?

Spells Seeing Common Use

Abacus (just about everybody)
Armoursmith's Boon (craftsmen working metal, blacksmiths)
Beast Call (animal herders of all kinds)
Becalm (Mothers with kids - perhaps disguised as lullabies)
Cauterise (medics)
Chill (people preparing food for storage)
Clear Path (woodsmen, people who work outdoors in the countryside)
Co-Ordination (steeplejacks, roofers, people who have to scale heights to do their work)
Endurance (Nightwatchmen, soldiers on duty, law enforcers on stakeout, students, journalists, medics, farmers, parents)
Entertainer's Smile (street entertainers, courtiers, people putting on some sort of show)
Extinguish (fire fighters - they'd learn this at as high a Magnitude as possible)
Fate (gamblers, mothers putting the blessing on kids on their way to school)
Glamour (entertainers, courtiers, courtesans, prostitutes)
Golden Tongue (if you've got past the prostitutes above, anyone in any kind of commercial venture whatsoever, such as markets, shops or buying or selling goods)
Heal (physicians, some parents)
Ignite (just about anyone who has firelighting as one of their regular duties - servants, the help)
Lucky (gamblers, mothers putting the blessing on kids on their way to school)
Mason's Boon (labourers, ditch diggers, gravediggers, actual masons)
Mobility (people drafted in to keep the peace; criminals who disturb the peace)
Repair (all manner of craftsmen)
Strength (labourers, people who have to handle large animals)
Understanding (merchants in frequent contact with customers of different cultures; wanderers in frequent contact with stay-at-homes on their long route)
Vigour (the same people who use Endurance, above)
Warmth (night watchmen, indigents with a bit of initiative, officers of the law, people who have to work in a place where they cannot have naked flames, such as in and around barrels of spirits, volatile perfumes or oil)

These probably give the lives of ordinary people a bit of an edge, but they do not go overboard as, say, Mindspeech or Multimissile would.

Like i said, characters should learn ordinary and mundane Common Magic spells, like those from the above list. They don't have the pull of Bladesharp, but they would reflect the adventurer's origins - a former firefighter who knows Extinguish 4, an older sibling whose mother taught Becalm and Lucky to in order to delegate the task of casting those spells on his younger siblings, a canny merchant with a keen eye for the value of everything, a gilded entertainer with a winning smile and a way with girls and boys, an erstwhile shepherd who really knows his sheep and his dogs and so on.

Some Common Magic spells are pretty exotic - Bandit's Cloak, Bearing Witness, Bestial Enhancement, Befuddle, Boon of Lasting Night, Countermagic, Countermagic Shield, Darkwall, Demoralise, Detect X, Dullblade, Fanaticism, Light, Mindspeech, Push/Pull, Second Sight, Slow, Spirit Bane, Water Breath - they would not find much use in common life. However, they could appear as the defining, signature spells of the strange kids.

That kid who can make things brighter or darker, who can gather shadows about him and is always lurking somewhere; the kid who can see spirits and spot a wizard by his POW; the telekinetic firestarter; the kid who seemingly lives in the local river and who has no trouble locating a dropped dagger at the bottom of the river by the taste of the iron of the blade in the back of his mouth as he heads for the bottom with seemingly infinite endurance for the cold ...

Thinking that way brings Common Magic to life. It gives character to the people who possess these spells, and lets the magic shape their natures.

Note: I have avoided all of the distinctly destructive combat Common Magic, specifically Bladesharp. Perhaps, as adventurers, the characters can get to learn those kinds of spells as basic training - but there is no general common use in ordinary life for Disruption or Skybolt or Fireblade unless the people wielding them belong to a travelling circus or some sort of street show, or they are criminals of some sort. Frostbite, Hand of Death and Disruption would probably be learned only by the most sick, twisted people - and they would be leaving their handiwork all over town, frozen and mutilated bodies of animals and people.

Maybe (combining these and several other great ideas): With each starting profession, you get one Common Magic Spell, with little or no choice ("Oh, you're a Hunter? Can you Call a deer for us, we're starving!"). That might mean we need some more Common Magic spells (I'd want a Breeze spell or similar for sailors, as an alternative to Water Breath).

If starting players want more magic, they can pick it up for 10 Free Skill Points per Magnitude. I'd probably also limit it to CHA/3 total Magnitude (great suggestion that, it gives CHA another important function, and makes some sense -- the starting player is going to have to charm someone other than their master to teach him or her additional spells).

This is a pretty high-magic approach: Everyone starts off with a spell, a spell of their profession rather than an adventure-maximized spell. This gives a connection to people they meet -- without having to stay forever, they can cast a helpful spell for people in the communities they travel through.

Steve

 

[alex_greene]

Maybe (combining these and several other great ideas): With each starting profession, you get one Common Magic Spell, with little or no choice ("Oh, you're a Hunter? Can you Call a deer for us, we're starving!"). That might mean we need some more Common Magic spells (I'd want a Breeze spell or similar for sailors, as an alternative to Water Breath).

And Inhale Fire for fire fighters, to allow them to breathe the hot air in a burning building without suffering the effects of smoke inhalation ...

Edit: I changed the name "Fire Breath" to "Inhale Fire" just in case anyone thought I referred to the spell where the character blows a stream of fire from his mouth. I was referring to the fire analogue of "Water Breath."

If starting players want more magic, they can pick it up for 10 Free Skill Points per Magnitude. I'd probably also limit it to CHA/3 total Magnitude (great suggestion that, it gives CHA another important function, and makes some sense -- the starting player is going to have to charm someone other than their master to teach him or her additional spells).

This is a pretty high-magic approach: Everyone starts off with a spell, a spell of their profession rather than an adventure-maximized spell. This gives a connection to people they meet -- without having to stay forever, they can cast a helpful spell for people in the communities they travel through.

Exactly.

The hunter might have Bandit's Cloak and Clear Path rather than Beast Call, for instance; it might be more sporting for the hunting club he belongs to to give him the tools to help him track down and stalk, but not make things easy for him by making the prey come to him.

The psychic moon child type would have Second Sight, Countermagic and Spirit Bane and be taken from village to village as a kind of circuit exorcist, while the Detect X specialist learns "Detect Water" and becomes a kind of travelling dowser, locating new spots to dig wells when the villages run dry, while another guy creates a water evaporator and casts Chill on it to cause lifegiving atmospheric water to condense into liquid form.

 

[duncan_disorderly]

In all cases, look at spells other than that blighted cliche Bladesharp. Goodness' sakes, who but chefs and woodsmen would want to learn that spell outside of adventuring?

Bladesharp? Oh, you mean Ploughsharp!

 

[alex_greene]

In all cases, look at spells other than that blighted cliche Bladesharp. Goodness' sakes, who but chefs and woodsmen would want to learn that spell outside of adventuring?

Bladesharp? Oh, you mean Ploughsharp!

Cheesegratersharp.

 

[Marrethiel]

...the Detect X specialist learns "Detect Water" and becomes a kind of travelling dowser, locating new spots to dig wells when the villages run dry...

An awesome spell.
Can you imagine a judge not having Detect Lie or a police seargent not making use of Detect Murder? Okay they are limitted in that you aren't necesarily detecting the murder you are investigating but still very potent. I'd even go with Detect Scry Block so I could detect that someone is blocking my Detect!
:?