Zed's Magic Thread

[zedturtle]

Hey, Zed, I'm probably a bit late, but I'm re-reading your document in this days (as much as I can, with two children on vacation from school...).

I'll try to post the small things that I can see in the document that leave me thinking for some reason.

p.4

The Hunt Threshold
may modified as indicated on page 114 of Rivendell

A "be" is needed between "may" and "modified", right?

Absolutely! Thanks for the catch.

p.5

Moving between different regions. Each time the
heroes enter a region of higher difficulty (as shown
on page 158 of the revised rulebook) than the one
they started the Adventuring Phase in, they increase
their Eye Awareness by one.

I like the idea, but shouldn't it be "from a region to another with a higher difficulty"?
Is it your intention that, if a party starts an Adventuring Phase in, let's say, a Dark Land, they'll never increase Eye Awareness during that Adventure?

Well, my thought is that if they started in a Dark Land, the 'engaging the forces of the Enemy' and 'dwelling in a place where the Shadow was strong.' would be sufficient to raise Eye Awareness. I will have a bit more of a think about this, though.

p.6

The Hidden Place
Given sufficient time to prepare a small area, you may
use your arts to make that place hard to find for others.

What is "sufficient time" for you? Maybe you don't need a rule like "30 minutes for every 5m square", but something like "one hour for a campsite, one day for a cottage" could work.

Huh. I'll play with that, but I think that's something that would be left to LM discretion (based on similar rules structures in RAW).

p.9 The Way of Healing

I should see this Practices in play, but they look too weak to me, at least by reading them.
I'm not very good at seeing the importance of rules by just reading them (unlike Glorelendil or Angelalex), but here's what I think:
Battle Leech-craft: A dying companion has 12 hours to recover, right? There's no need to stabilise him during battle, as far as I can see. Maybe allowing an Unconscious character recover as many Endurance points as the caster's Wisdom (enough to stand up again, but probably just bare to sustain another hit) could be a nice effect.

An interesting thought... it is probably ranked too high in cost now, but it does provide an automatic success, which is nothing to sneeze at.

The Easing of Pain: I am not very happy with tying the recovery with Body: Hobbits will always profit less from this, and Beornings/Dwarves more. Maybe Body or Heart? Or, again, relate the recovery to the caster, not to the character. The Wisdom of the caster, or his Heart, or his Wits (Elves and Woodmen make for the best healers).
And, if the extra Endurance allows to recover from the Weary or the Wounded state, why don't you allow it? Just asking.

I think Wisdom might be best. The not recovering from Weary/Wounded is to parallel the RAW and to also not make someone regress backwards when the temporary points go away.

The Hands of the Healer:

The wound
now counts as treated.

Shouldn't this "wound" begin with a capital W?

The effect is just the same as using the Healing skill, right? Maybe a bit weak? Usually every group has someone with a decent Healing skill, so this Practice might become useless or unnecessary.
I think it would be nice to affect Poison, since you need the weapon that inflicted the Wound.
And it could be used to stabilize a Dying companion even if a prior Healing test was failed during the same day.

It is free and automatically successful, without even spending Hope. I keep going back and forth on whether or not poison should be affected; I don't want to rob Woodmen of one of their signature abilities.

[zedturtle]

And...

p.11 The Guiding Light

The light will last until the next
prolonged rest period, after which it must be recast.

Isn't it too long? Maybe the effect could last for one Scene (one Combat, one Encounter, one Travel leg,...).

Eh. This whole Way is the most powerful one in the rules... you have to have a minimum Wisdom of 4 and have given up all other opportunities (in terms of Cultural Virtues and Magical Virtues other than your starting one and Fire) in order to get it. Plus the affected person will have to spend Hope... itself very precious when the party is Miserable and Weary!

p.11 The Shadow Test
I guess the Shadwo Test is design to, usually, be failed by the Shadow creatures, right?
Otherwise, it needs a very powerful adversary against a weak hero to succeed (unless an Eye is rolled).
On the other hand, why not try to stick to the usual rule of "make players do the rolling"? The caster could do a Wisdom test with a TN of 10 (or 8 if you want it to be easier) + Attribute level of the adversary. Hope points can be used to improve the outcome of the roll.

Actually, one of the goals of the rules is to provide reliable benefits to casters that they don't have to make tests for. That's actually what's driving my Hope/EA economy... a Lesser Magic spell should be equivalent to what you can get by making a roll and spending Hope, etc. So I'm not so invested in making the heroes roll more. That said, I probably will tweak things... you should get something for 1 Hope and 2 EA, but it might be too powerful.

[zedturtle]

p.11
A Commanding Voice

I can't see the difference between using this Practice and using the Persuade skill. Am I missing something? Only the fact that you don't need to roll? Then it's too similar to a Trait for my taste. I think it should be a bit more powerful.

Huh. Do you allow successful Persuade rolls to make LMCs act out of character and do the heroes' bidding? Myself, I might allow Persuade to get Beorn to up his Treasure offer or to loan out some ponies, but not to make him go to Thranduil hat in hand, begging for assistance (which I think Commanding Voice could do, if you were able to get away with it. (With AL 9, it's not going to happen.)

p.12 The Knowing Mind

Acting on the knowledge gained from this spell may
cause Corruption Tests or even an automatic point of
Shadow if used for evil intent.

Using it to know if an Adversary is going to use a Special Ability or something like that, in order to kill it easier, is considered an "evil intent"? I think whatever you decide, it should be specified.

In combat? No, I wouldn't think so... but also I would think that Mercy would be the guide here, not to strike without need. I think that it is so core to the game that I'm not certain that it needs to be spelled out as such, but I'm willing to be convinced otherwise.

The Truthful Gaze
Again, as is, seems like the same as an Insight test [see Commanding Voice]

In general terms, I think that "The Way of Men" should be a second tier Way, one that needs the mastery of another Way to be learned (like Way of the Fire or Way of Command). And then, it should be a little more powerful... and more dangerous towards Shadow gain. Mastery of another's mind is in the limits of Sorcery.

I think perhaps we could strength The Truthful Gaze, with a corresponding increase in cost. Or it could continue as an automatically successful series of Insight tests with no cost.

As for increasing the power of the entire set, I'm not sure... I think there is room for more powerful things in this category, but also that they would definitely count as Sorceries.

[zedturtle]

p.12

Noble Mien
Note that
some beings of immense age and experience (such as
a Dragon, a Wizard or certain Noldor) may see the
glamour for what it is and dismiss it.

This exceptions should be specified, I think. NPCs with an Attribute level higher than the caster's Wisdom? Or with some special ability? I can't come with any specific criteria right now, sorry...

I hate to sound like a broken record, but I really do think that LMs should be free to choose what limits they want to put on this power. Everyone will have different thresholds for what they think is appropriate.

p.13
Silent Speech

The number of
participants is limited to no more than the Wisdom
rating of the participant with the lowest Wisdom score

I'd add a +1 to the Wisdom rating. Otherwise, if someone has a Wisdom of 1 (quite possible), only the caster can speak... and noone else can listen.

Hah! Or it could explain why Gandalf didn't use this ability with the larger Fellowship, even when it would have come in handy...

Tongue of the Heart

lf
the participants in an Encounter represent two or more
distinct Backgrounds,...

Why Backgrounds? I would see Races (or Cultures) as a more "middle-earthish" theme for this Practice. Besides, we don't have Backgrounds for NPCs, but we do have their Race.

Totally right... it should be Cultures at least. Error on my part.

p.14

Circle of Wrath~
With this spell, you may become like to a terror to
your enemies. To cast this spell, you must forfeit your
preliminary Battle roll and any Opening Volleys you
would be eligible for. ln combat, an adversary must first
pass a Shadow Test (see page 11) in order to engage you.
Once that particular opponent has succeeded, it may
continue to attack you without further penalty.

This Practice seems egoistic for the rest of the Company: they don't get the benefit of your Bonus die, any harm you could do during Opening Volleys, and they get to engage the adversaries you're scaring!
If it benefited the whole group, it would be more profitable for everyone.

Okay, I will clarify that it affects an enemies who attack the Company.

p-14
Guarding and Guiding

Once per Journey, if the number of Gandalf runes equals
or exceeds the number ofSauron runes, you may ask the
loremaster to negate the Hazard that would have been
faced by the company.

Why not allow, for one leg of a Journey, Gandalfs to negate Eyes?
Otherwise, I think the description should be changed: "to negate the Hazard". What if more than one Hazard was triggered? You mean "negate just one Hazard if Gandalfs exceed Eyes"? Or "negate one Eye for every Gandalf only if Gandalfs exceed in total the Eyes"?

Hah. In internal development, this was the way that it worked. Then I reduced the cost and the effect, since it was too powerful.

I will clarify that it is any number of Hazards generated by the roll. But do remember that this is a 'free' benefit, so there's no cost to it.

p.15
A Fair Wind

whomever is the beneficiary of the spell is considered to
have a bonus die for their roll.

Why not the whole party. It seems better connected with the quote. After all it affects just one roll for one Fatigue test.

Well it could be multiple people, since the caster could either spam EA or Hope in order to give bonus dice to everyone. But between TBHC, Ranger abilities and everyone knowing that Travel is king, I think that the chances of it being extraordinary useful is relatively low.

- - -

EVERYONE: Please give me feedback! Maybe I'm way off... tell me.

[Falenthal]

p.13
Silent Speech

The number of
participants is limited to no more than the Wisdom
rating of the participant with the lowest Wisdom score

I'd add a +1 to the Wisdom rating. Otherwise, if someone has a Wisdom of 1 (quite possible), only the caster can speak... and noone else can listen.

Hah! Or it could explain why Gandalf didn't use this ability with the larger Fellowship, even when it would have come in handy...

Oh, that's why Gandalf kept telling Pippin to spend his XP in raising the Wisdom score to 2. Fool of a Took!

[Robin Smallburrow]

Haven't commented on the whole text yet because I'm waiting for that really nice copy I saw you use at GenCon!!
Please put it up here!
Me wants it....it's mine, my precioussss....

Robin S.

[zedturtle]

Haven't commented on the whole text yet because I'm waiting for that really nice copy I saw you use at GenCon!!
Please put it up here!
Me wants it....it's mine, my precioussss....

Robin S.

While that particular version won't see the light of day (having several typos in it, and other issues), I'm ready to release it's successor:

Here are the most up-to-date (dare I say Final?) versions of The Ways of Magic:

The Ways of Magic - Standard
The Ways of Magic - Less Ink version
The Ways of Magic - High Quality version - note that this is a very large file.

These incorporate some of the suggestions above... I promise that I thought long and hard about each of the concerns raised... sometimes I made a change, sometimes I left things as they were. In any case, I think that this is about the last version of the magic rules (unless something dramatically changes).

[Ghorin]

Very nice job, i like it a lot. And this will probably be the only house rule i will use in my TOR sessions. I want to start playing with RAW but this magic option is so closed to my own vision of what is magic in Tolkien's books that i cannot start without it. I may have to translate it to french first if you don't mind (i'll send you the french version).

[zedturtle]

That would be awesome!

[tomfish]

Very nice job, i like it a lot. And this will probably be the only house rule i will use in my TOR sessions. I want to start playing with RAW but this magic option is so closed to my own vision of what is magic in Tolkien's books that i cannot start without it. I may have to translate it to french first if you don't mind (i'll send you the french version).

Please send me the french version as well when you're done !
More seriously, I could help with the translation, depending on how fast you want to go.

Tom