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Character Creation | Spell Penalty | Damage with Conjure | Xambrian Spiritblade
My players and I prefer a more Cinematic quality to our fantasy roleplaying, and
so have adopted the following House Rules.
Keep in mind that we like a lot of action and a slightly magic-heavy game world.
Character Creation
- Starting characters receive +100 xp to spend on skills the archetype already has or to aquire new skills. No skill rating may start higher than 15.
- All characters receive +15 hit points.
The 100 extra xp raises our characters to the ability level of the average movie action hero, which is right where we want them. It also lets players personalize their characters a little by adding a skill or two they think they should have due to a unique background choice.
The extra hit points are there because, like I said, we love action and combat. 15 points of padding lets even weaker types soak up the trivial broken plate-glass windows and three story falls that all action heroes have to deal with.
Spell Penalty
In order to create a more high-magic world, we changed the standard spell penalty system to the following:
If the Spellcasting result is a Success or better, no Spell Penalty is taken. If the Spellcasting result is a Partial Success or worse, a -1 penalty is taken.
This lets magicians sling spells about as often as the warriors can swing their swords (as in all the time). I'm not thrilled with this fix so far, but the players love it. When I come up with something I like more, I'll post it here.
Doing Damage with Conjure
The Conjure mode is open to all kinds of abuses, and mega-damage dealing is one of them. For example, our friendly local Geomancer could conjure a few square feet of molten lava in the room, neatly killing off all the baddies and remaining unscathed himself. Nasty huh? I had a PC try this stunt in a game... I'm sure I turned an ugly shade of nofuckinway.
It wasn't that I was worried for the NPCs... I was worried for the PCs when the enemy Pyromancer pulled this kind of thing later! If they could do it, I knew he would too. Yikes.
So we ruled that, in general, Conjure spells can deal no direct damage in the game.
Sure, you can Conjure a sword and donk someone on the head... no problem. But you cannot make direct (or in some cases even indirect) attacks while using the Conjure mode. If you want to do such a thing, you can keep the same spell description but you must cast an Attack mode spell.
A house-rule like this is obviously pretty vague, so we handle it on a case-by-case basis. The PCs can circumvent the rule if they want, but must allow NPC magicians to do the same. No one has taken me up on that offer yet.
Xambrian Spiritblades
A discussion on the Tal email list prompted me to come up with some semi-specific rules for handling how a Xambrian's magical weapon, the Spiritblade, functions in the game world. Here are those rules:
Xambrian Spiritblade
Longsword: DR 8
+2 DR vs. extradimensional entities and spells of magical protection.
When the blade comes into contact with a magical field or aura, it permanently cancels a number of Spell Levels equal to its DR (8), + the Willpower of its wielder. Only Xambrians may wield these weapons.
So, if we decide that Zahur's "black magic" that keeps the Reincarnator coming back is a Level 100 Spell (about right, I think, considering it *is* cheating Death's power), the average Wizard Hunter needs to whack a Reincarntor about six or seven times with his Spiritblade to cancel the magic.
Killing the host at that point is moot. In fact, skilled Xambrian Hunters can manage to get rid of the Reincarnator without harming the host too much (I did say *skilled*).
Of course, the problem is, while you're whacking this Reincarnator 7+ times, it's whacking you back. AND, it might decide to switch bodies at any moment (provided there's a body around... another reason why Xambrians often hunt alone).
In the new edition, Xambrians also have Anti-Magic powers that are not a part of their weapon, but having an empowered Spiritblade certainly makes them more effective.
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