Anyway, you might want to cap penalties you can take. It'd likely end up extremely broken if you could just take -24 to a school of magic you have no interest in, and then apply +6 bonuses to four schools you want to use. (Also, what happens if you roll a 6 at max level?)
Hmm. Yes, you're right. Breaking the system through traits alone will render all the other wonderful ways of breaking the system irrelevant, so I'll impose a following rule:
The penalties and bonuses within traits have to be either -1 or +1. The apprentices with unduly exaggerated traits will be suspected of being older than they look, accused of being a body-snatcher and hunted down by the city guard the moment they are found out.Everyone who wants to be all-powerful from the beginning will have to either fight a hopeless battle against wave upon wave of wizard-hunters or keep low profile. Either way, their short, short lives will be filled to brim with Fun and slaughter.
I would jump into it, and here are my thoughts:
2- That could face some resistance from players that don't like their characters depicted as drunkards, although you could just say they wake up with a headache and make them decide the specific cause.
3- You could limit the number of items and their cathegories so they don't find their Wand Of Infinity Plus One inside a dumpster.
- And what are our limits? I suppose you'll constantly balance the power of each school, right?
- I have to agree the wound system is slightly confusing and the healing skill sounds like it can vary from tricky to outrageously difficult.
- Those bonuses derm asked are for the roll or knowledge level?
2) - Well, the Introduction implies the apprentices aren't even supposed to know about such a thing as 'hangover', so they're not
drunkards, they're just young people who got drunk out of curiosity or under peer pressure.
If someone's character actively opposes the idea of losing control while drunk, then what they did during the Graduation Night will be shown in a different light or, in case of some events, not shown at all.
3) - No, but people lucky enough to find The One Wand in a dumpster will inevitably lose it during the Graduation Night. If they wish, they can try to find the Wand and get it back; I'll be more than happy to provide a convoluted plot that will culminate in an epic battle with the Wand as the prize.
- Please elaborate. What limits are you speaking about? A sufficiently skilled mage can cast whatever he wants as long as it is within his school's limits, which are defined in the schools' descriptions.
The Magnitude Levels system will define which of his spells will work and which of them will fizzle: for example, 'crush all buildings around me to dust' will only work on a Level 6, and anything lesser than that will only result in partial destruction of the buildings.
- The healing skill will only be outrageously difficult if you don't have a healing item - something like a bandage for scratches, a tourniquet for serious bleeding and a splint for broken bones. If you do have a required item, Healing will be about as difficult as spellcasting or swordfighting.
Furthermore, each of the successes out of the three healing rolls will be considered a success for the Healing skill, which will allow for faster levelling of that rarely-used but vital ability.
- He asked for the roll bonuses. However, as I have pointed out, if he rolled a 1 on the fifth and higher Magnitude Levels of Flesh Magic, the results wouldn't be pretty. In the best traditions of ironic retribution, Derm's hypothetical mess-up would create a boss with a -4 to attacking trained soldiers and a +4 to attacking squishy wizards.