Eleventh Hour Preview: Wizard

[bleeding]

[Utsukushi]

[etherial]

Two comments on your very well written and thought out post, Utsukushi:

1) While Spell Matrices are required, raising them is not. I usually see one Spell Matrix at 2, one at about 4, and the other two at Circle. Once you start getting Fancy Matrices, one of the regular Matrices also stops advancing. A quick glance through my gmail history shows an electronic copy of a Third Circle Elementalist from my last Campaign. He's got 4 Elementalist Talents at 4 or higher, so he's on his way to Fourth Circle and one of his Spell Matrices is at 2.

2) Talent Options, while not named as such, were introduced in the Earthdawn First Edition Corebook. No Talent, not even Karma Ritual, was explicitly mandatory until Redbrick came along.* We used to have lots of fun arguments about whether it was even possible to go up to Sixth Circle if you refused to buy either of the Fifth Circle Talents, what you spent your Training Time doing if you weren't learning any Talents, and what confluence of events would have to occur for you to survive long enough to get 100 Legend without Karma Ritual.

I'm gonna get on my Talent Options soapbox one more time and then probably give up on beating this particular dead horse:

In ED1/ED2, a Seventh Circle Warrior had access to 19 Talents, barring things like Versatility and Magic Items. Every Warrior had these same 19 Talents, and though 10 of them were at Rank 7 (or higher), some of them could have been at Rank Zero. This was problematic because your options on which ones to raise to go up to Circle 7 were very limited. It was not just likely, but common, that you were raising a Talent just to meet the requirements to Circle. This was especially unfun when you raised a Fifth Circle Talent to Rank 6 just to Circle and then never touched it again because raising a useless Novice Talent was cheaper than raising a useless Journeyman Talent. It also made it relatively easy to predict what a Seventh Circle Warrior would do in combat.

Redbrick introduced the concept of having a larger pool of optional Talents and a small pool of mandatory Talents. This meant that every Seventh Circle Warrior had the same 10 Talents at Rank 7 (or higher), but, besides Crushing Blow, their remaining 7 Talents could be from a wide pool of 21 Talents. Though this gave you a much wider array of customization, it brought with it the even more unfun prospect of having to raise Journeyman Talents you found useless in perpetuity. This also left you with the non-choices of when, not if, to purchase Durability and extra Spell Matrices. I also remain skeptical that it actually increased the variety of Warrior builds under GMs not using optional rules.

Redbrick fixed the downsides of ED1/ED2 but added new downsides resulting from the mandatory Discipline Talents (easily fixed by the Optional Rules in the ED3PG) and also the downside of the non-choice of when to purchase Spell Matrices and Durability. The new downside is also easily fixed, however.

Don't have ED4 restrict the number of Talent Options characters buy to one per Circle. If you want your First Circle Wizard to start game with 8 Talents at Rank 1, I say go for it. You may find you Circle slower because you're spending more Legend on Talents that don't count towards Circling, but so what? You can choose Power in the form of higher Rank in your Talents or you can choose Power in the form of higher Circle Spells and Discipline Talents. Earthdawn's System is all about Choices and that sounds like a great Choice to get to make to me.

This suggestion particularly solves the problem of what to do about Spell Matrices. If you want to have lots of Spell Matrices at First Circle, you'll advance behind everyone else. If you want to advance faster, you'll have to limit yourself on how many Spell Matrices you buy and raise.

You more conservative GMs and LDs may want to limit it to two Talent Options per Circle, but, especially if Durability remains a Discipline Power and not a Talent, I expect most PCs will be reluctant to just buy up Talent Options and never Circle. Especially Spellcasters.

*I just went into the basement to double-check my hyperbole on this one. ED1 says to assign 1, 2, or 3 Ranks to your starting Talents and to not write down Talents in which you have no Ranks. When Circling, it says you may buy new Talents, not must.

[Sundahk]

Maybe Spell Matrices should just be removed as Talents altogether? They were introduced as a solution to problems brought on by the Scourge and aren't really Talents but rather constructs, so why are they classed as part of Spellcasting Disciplines? Why can't they be something outside of the Discipline which magicians can spend LP on to increase their Rank in? (like Group Pattern Threads or Spell Matrix Objects, which in story terms is what the Spell Matrix Talent is based off anyway).

That way it would bring the structure of the magician Disciplines more in line with all the others and they would have more choice: do I sink LP into Talent Options? Or do I buy more Spell Matrices to increase my options to access my spells safely?

[Natael]

[Utsukushi]

[Telarus_KSC]

I think in my game I'm going to resolve the Talent Options thing by having low-rank Thread Items which grant thematic Talents out of the Novice pool be very common among Discipline practitioners. So, if you, as a Wizard choose not to grab Haggle, you may end up @ Journeyman Circles with a Brooch of Haggle +3 anyway, etc. I think Enchanting it going to play a much wider role in ED4 for me, with the new Weaponsmith Forge rules the go-to magic for straight damage increases, and making people make rewarding choices about Thread Weaving seems good. Found a new Legendary Item? Which of your Thread items (& thus extra talents) are you going to drop?

This, I think, shows you how good the blend of settings + mechanics are in Earthdawn. I like figuring out in-game ways characters would deal with these repercussions of the world-mechanics.

[Sundahk]

[etherial]

[kosmit]

I like the idea of using Matrix steps for reattuning rolls. I am not really sure about giving them for free or dropping them since they were essential part of being spellcaster.

People tend to think that matrices are obligatory but think about for example throalic mages. They don't need them because they are casting spells in a safe place so why would they waste their resources on something that is unnecessary and uncomfortable to use. They wouldn't take them as options.

I had a player in campaign which started in Ardanyan without matrices. After his character learnt about dangers he acquired Spell-Matrix-objects and was fine with that through whole campaign. (player knew setting and from the start he had known how dangerous it was but he acted in character and it was fun)