Spellcasting skill
Posted: Tue Nov 05, 2019 5:05 am
In Earthdawn 1st ed., Spellcasting was available as a skill.
This allowed non-magician adepts to cast spells in a (very) limited way. As a magician can reattune any spellmatrix (and not only their own), the non-magician adept could weave a thread to a spell matrix object (or any thread item with matrices, like a spell sword or a doll) using her dicipline-specific thread weaving talent. Then, she could request a magician to attune the matrix with a spell known to the magician ; the spell circle had to be less than the matrix object thread rank, of course. If, and only if, the spell didn't have any filaments, the non-magician adept could then cast it using her spellcasting skill.
This allowed non-magician adepts to have a taste of spell magic, thus gaining an edge if they were ready to pay the legend points cost (cost of the threaded item, plus cost of progressing the skill). Magicians could cast some spells of other disciplines without going full blown multidiscpline. Generally speaking, everyone could gain some flexibility and be more self-sufficient, with enough prior teamwork and foresight. The inherent costs of this method (especially for a non-magician adept), and the fact that nearly all high circle spells required additional threads, kept imho the power of this little-known trick in check.
In my experience, I found that learning the spellcasting skill generally made non-magician players more involved in magic related intrigues ; as a GM, I saw them participate more in arcane related problem solving, thus lessening the kind of behaviour like "oh, a ritual? let's do the magician do his thing then while I don't pay attention for a while".
However, Spellcasting seems no longer to be available as a skill, so this option would sadly not be legal anymore.
Humans can always resort to versatility as usual, but ... it's not the same, I guess.
Of course, it is trivial to house-rule this to make mundane spellcasting a thing again.
But, what I would like to know is : from a game designer's point of view, was there any reason for this to be undesirable in ED4 ?
This allowed non-magician adepts to cast spells in a (very) limited way. As a magician can reattune any spellmatrix (and not only their own), the non-magician adept could weave a thread to a spell matrix object (or any thread item with matrices, like a spell sword or a doll) using her dicipline-specific thread weaving talent. Then, she could request a magician to attune the matrix with a spell known to the magician ; the spell circle had to be less than the matrix object thread rank, of course. If, and only if, the spell didn't have any filaments, the non-magician adept could then cast it using her spellcasting skill.
This allowed non-magician adepts to have a taste of spell magic, thus gaining an edge if they were ready to pay the legend points cost (cost of the threaded item, plus cost of progressing the skill). Magicians could cast some spells of other disciplines without going full blown multidiscpline. Generally speaking, everyone could gain some flexibility and be more self-sufficient, with enough prior teamwork and foresight. The inherent costs of this method (especially for a non-magician adept), and the fact that nearly all high circle spells required additional threads, kept imho the power of this little-known trick in check.
In my experience, I found that learning the spellcasting skill generally made non-magician players more involved in magic related intrigues ; as a GM, I saw them participate more in arcane related problem solving, thus lessening the kind of behaviour like "oh, a ritual? let's do the magician do his thing then while I don't pay attention for a while".
However, Spellcasting seems no longer to be available as a skill, so this option would sadly not be legal anymore.
Humans can always resort to versatility as usual, but ... it's not the same, I guess.
Of course, it is trivial to house-rule this to make mundane spellcasting a thing again.
But, what I would like to know is : from a game designer's point of view, was there any reason for this to be undesirable in ED4 ?