Blinding Flash spell

[JohnK]

Hullo, Bosper,

Indeed, it's not. Of course, I've noticed that damage spells cost a lot more in terms of AE expenditure. Damage spells tend to be overrated in my opinion, as it's a lot more fun to find a more subtle way of using spells for combative purposes, but still...

Damage spells are only really viable if you focus on them.

I think this is true of game systems that don't use levels, where spells tend to be separate "skills" (like in TDE) or "abilities", and have to be learned very independently of one another. One can take groupings of spells that make one more...focused on certain aspects, like combat, or healing, or travel related or whatever. That said, I like the spell set-up in TDE. Magic in the game comes across as more subtle than in other rpgs, at least from the materials in the Core Book (and some of the stuff I've glanced at in the Almanac). That may likely change, depending on what's in the Magic sourcebooks, of course.

There are a few different kinds of battle mages which got interesting ways to make them unique and useful. Warmages with enormous range, Battlemages that increase the damage and others that reduce the cost. My very experienced fire-elementarist casts 2d6+14 Ignifaxius spells for 2-3 ASP every second turn without penalty. Thats 20 spells until he is drained, with increased regeneration of 6-8 ASP a night. Thats a battlemage. But on the other hand, he is really bad up to incapable in everything that isnt burning targets.

Being relatively new to The Dark Eye, I don't know whether players more often than not deliberately go out to make the characters battle mages or non-battle mages, or whether they try to get a more balanced approach to magic. I like to think that most roleplayers in the game would choose their spells and rituals with some leaning and bearing from the personality and background they want to play for the character, but that may be incorrect or misguided on my part.

I gather there is more information on "focused" mages in this respect in the Magic supplements?

[Bosper]

Mages are trained in academies, those are usually highly specialised in certain kinds of magic. There are a few allrounders, but most are experts on their fields. So they will start with the spells that are taught in their academy. Usually academies offer a basic version (combining its fields of expertise) and two specialist branches to choose from.

The privately owned Stoerrebrandt Kolleg in Riva (the private school of Stover Regolan Stoerrebrandt, richest of merchants) for example is a school focusing on clairvoyance and damage. So you can expect a freshly graduated mage to know almost exclusively spells from those schools and one or two widely known utility spells like creating light with a flim flam.
The Branches of the school are Councelor and Bodyguard/"Personal Mage" (Leibmagier is hard to translate) The Councelor will know mostly clairvoyance (and some sneaky spells like Impersona [assuming the apearance of someone else]) while the "Bodyguard" knows the most important ones to detect threats, some damage and some protection.
Both mages are usefull for a merchants empire, thats why they are trained like that. there is only little personal choice in the training. There is a small list of spells that can be learned additionally for every academy though.

Each school looks like this (still stoerrebrandt as example)

Guideline: open minded
Spells of choice: Accuratum, Eagle Eye, Analys, See Personality, See Thoughts, Duplicatus, Flim
Flam, Foramen, Fortifex, Fulminictus, Dispell Clairvoyance, Ignifaxius,
Ignisphaero, Impersona, Manifesto, Memorans,
Odem, Penetrizzel, Psychostabilis, Sapefacta, Sensibar
Spell Limitations: no borbaradianian Spells,
no demonic oder summoning spells

Councelor Branch (319 AP)
CHanges in Spells: Accuratum 6 instead Horriphobus 6,
Dispell Clairvoyance 4 instead Armatrutz 4, Impersona 6 instead
Gardinaum 6
Skills (+): Trade 6 instead 5, Fast Talk 5 statt 4
Skills (–): Survival 2 statt 3
Bodyguard Branch (343 AP)
Changes in Spells: Duplicatus 4 instead Blinding Flash 4, Ignifaxius
6 instead Custodosigil 6, Ignisphaero 6 instead Horriphobus 6
Skills (+): Warfare 2 statt 0
Skills (–): Trade 3 statt 5


The Guideline is seperated into several degrees of restriction from
Conservative 0
Traditional 1
Down to Earth 2
Open Minded 3
Tolerant 4
Free Spirited5
and it determines how many spells can be changed to other spells of choice (known in said academy) in creating a graduate from a certain academy. Some very harsh academies follow a stright line of teaching and wont allow any alteration, others are just offering their knowledge for the students to choose.
So if you want to create a believable mage from a certain academy you know exactly which spells you will learn and which you can learn additionally or instead.

Other kinds of spellcasters arent that "restricted" in choice. But thats the academical nature of being a wizard.

[Bosper]

Hullo, Bosper,


Being relatively new to The Dark Eye, I don't know whether players more often than not deliberately go out to make the characters battle mages or non-battle mages, or whether they try to get a more balanced approach to magic. I like to think that most roleplayers in the game would choose their spells and rituals with some leaning and bearing from the personality and background they want to play for the character, but that may be incorrect or misguided on my part.

In my experience it starts out with allrounder mages, there are a few to chosse from, or they create a private teacher of their own to pick and choose a variety of useful spells of any kind. Later on most find a liking in the fluff of certain academies and play specialists.
TDE 5 does support the specialist mage with Casting Styles taught at every academy. A small tree of 4 special abilities that offer unique bonuses to their field of expertise.
The Illusionist mages of zorgan for example all get a passive ability that they dont have a -2 on spells of the sharlatan tradition, they also can unlock abilities to get a bonus +1 on every illusion spellcheck, make them harder to be recognised as illusion and last longer. Making them the best specialist on this field.

They do the same with Fighters and Priests in compendium and aventurian gods. A specialist will always be better than an allrounder could get in a certain field, no matter how many AP he spends.

[Flash]

Snipped a good overview of a Focus I rule

Just because it should mentioned: All that Bosper wrote here is something called a Focus I rule. That means it is totally optional. You only use them when you group decides that they want to use them.

By default Guild Mages in TDE 5 have no restrictions on what spells they can learn in their guilds or by their teachers.
These restrictions on their spells by guild are something that was backed in by hard and non optional rules in in prior editions. TDE 5 did away with this stuff (I was so happy about this ) to make the game more accessible and then reintroduced them as Focus rules for those that want to recreate the feel of older editions.

The spells lists per school are something akin to the professions. You can use them a guideline to help you building a character but you can also just can ignore them and build your Guild Mage however you want him to be.

My group for example went "Hell No" when they saw that focus rule. But I also have seen groups who place huge importance on it.

[Bosper]

I like the fluff of the academies, and why choose an academy that is known for healing and telepathy if you want to summon demons and throw fireballs? There is always the option to create a private teacher of your liking, no reason to create a grey faceless mess out of the guilds. There is no reason to make the world less interesting.

[Flash]

I like the fluff of the academies, and why choose an academy that is known for healing and telepathy if you want to summon demons and throw fireballs? There is always the option to create a private teacher of your liking, no reason to create a grey faceless mess out of the guilds. There is no reason to make the world less interesting.

It is the difference between having a corset or having a general suggestion. If I choose a guild with focus on healing and telepathy then I will build a mage that has some healing and telepathy focused spells. But will take that demon summoning I learned from a forbidden book found in the cellar of said guild as well with no regards to a fixed "learning plan".

Two or three sentences on what a guild focuses on and you will be pretty spot on with spell choices anyway. TDE 5E frankly wastes too much space on list upon lists for Guild Mages. I get that the tradition is popular here in Germany but imho they currently have overdone it somewhat with the focus on that tradition. It wasn't a problem in AM I but in AM II it very much was an issue. But then I don't think this thread is the place to discuss AM II problems...that book is rather far off yet

[JohnK]

Hullo, Bosper,

Mages are trained in academies, those are usually highly specialised in certain kinds of magic. There are a few allrounders, but most are experts on their fields. So they will start with the spells that are taught in their academy. Usually academies offer a basic version (combining its fields of expertise) and two specialist branches to choose from.

Ah, in other worlds, the main Core Rules presents spellcasters that are very much generalists or just "all rounded" (for lack of a better term), and future supplements for the game will present either some new "general" magic types or more specialised aspects of magic (detailed guilds, I would guess). Heck, I'd even call these Focuses (if I understood the term properly from the preview of the Compendium).

The privately owned Stoerrebrandt Kolleg in Riva (the private school of Stover Regolan Stoerrebrandt, richest of merchants) for example is a school focusing on clairvoyance and damage. So you can expect a freshly graduated mage to know almost exclusively spells from those schools and one or two widely known utility spells like creating light with a flim flam.

Very nice, and helpful in explaining the rationale for the various guilds and all.

The Branches of the school are Councelor and Bodyguard/"Personal Mage" (Leibmagier is hard to translate)

That term translates literally as "Physical Magician", but I can see where it would be interpreted as "personal mage". So yes, it should be interesting to see how they've translated it for the game. I really like that concept for a magic user in the game, and definitely can see the uses for it.

The Guideline is seperated into several degrees of restriction from
Conservative 0
Traditional 1
Down to Earth 2
Open Minded 3
Tolerant 4
Free Spirited5
and it determines how many spells can be changed to other spells of choice (known in said academy) in creating a graduate from a certain academy. Some very harsh academies follow a stright line of teaching and wont allow any alteration, others are just offering their knowledge for the students to choose.
So if you want to create a believable mage from a certain academy you know exactly which spells you will learn and which you can learn additionally or instead.

This is the most interesting aspect of the whole idea of the guilds of magic and the guidelines, to be honest. There's food for thought there, to be sure.

Other kinds of spellcasters arent that "restricted" in choice. But thats the academical nature of being a wizard.

Interesting stuff, Bosper. Thanks for posting this.

[JohnK]

Hullo, Bosper,

Being relatively new to The Dark Eye, I don't know whether players more often than not deliberately go out to make the characters battle mages or non-battle mages, or whether they try to get a more balanced approach to magic. I like to think that most roleplayers in the game would choose their spells and rituals with some leaning and bearing from the personality and background they want to play for the character, but that may be incorrect or misguided on my part.

In my experience it starts out with allrounder mages, there are a few to chosse from, or they create a private teacher of their own to pick and choose a variety of useful spells of any kind. Later on most find a liking in the fluff of certain academies and play specialists.

That's reasonable to assume, as becoming a specialist mage would have a lot to do with personality and the like, though it depends on whether one's players take that approach to playing the mage or not. The Core Rules provide a decent selection of magic users to begin with, I guess, but with (game) experience, players will want more narrow concepts or more specialised elements to their mages/whatever. So this makes sense.

TDE 5 does support the specialist mage with Casting Styles taught at every academy. A small tree of 4 special abilities that offer unique bonuses to their field of expertise.
The Illusionist mages of zorgan for example all get a passive ability that they dont have a -2 on spells of the sharlatan tradition, they also can unlock abilities to get a bonus +1 on every illusion spellcheck, make them harder to be recognised as illusion and last longer. Making them the best specialist on this field.

Oh, I like that Casting Style stuff, and can see it being useful in the campaign. That said, this is really sounding like Focuses (the stuff from the first Compendium preview that was posted on the USNA website).

They do the same with Fighters and Priests in compendium and aventurian gods. A specialist will always be better than an allrounder could get in a certain field, no matter how many AP he spends.

I should hope so.

Thanks again for all the information.

[JohnK]

Hullo, Flash,

Snipped a good overview of a Focus I rule

Just because it should mentioned: All that Bosper wrote here is something called a Focus I rule. That means it is totally optional. You only use them when you group decides that they want to use them.

Ah, so I was right about this...they are Focus rules. Hmm...

By default Guild Mages in TDE 5 have no restrictions on what spells they can learn in their guilds or by their teachers.
These restrictions on their spells by guild are something that was backed in by hard and non optional rules in in prior editions. TDE 5 did away with this stuff (I was so happy about this ) to make the game more accessible and then reintroduced them as Focus rules for those that want to recreate the feel of older editions.

The spells lists per school are something akin to the professions. You can use them a guideline to help you building a character but you can also just can ignore them and build your Guild Mage however you want him to be.

It should be interesting to see how this stuff works when the supplements in question come out for the game. That said, even more interesting will be how one goes about implementing this Focus kind of approach to magic with player characters already created.

My group for example went "Hell No" when they saw that focus rule. But I also have seen groups who place huge importance on it.

Eek! I hadn't thought about how my three gaming groups will approach this. Oy vey!

[Bosper]

It should be interesting to see how this stuff works when the supplements in question come out for the game. That said, even more interesting will be how one goes about implementing this Focus kind of approach to magic with player characters already created.

We just allowed our Mages to get their casting style (or focus if thats the term) of an academy of their choice, with their next AP and just assumed they are from there. And of course they picked academies whose bonuses benefit their known spells, which automatically made them fit into the academy.