Forums of the Megaverse®

Powered Magic / Psychic OCC's - Are they Necessary?

Okay so I have been looking at a fair few different RPG's of late - what can I say other than lock down has brought with it a heap of boredom.

Having reading through Sabre (a fantastic D100 derived game), Age (Fantasy, Modern & Threefold - you have to get this one), but also Savage Worlds. And as I went through them i kind of noticed an overall theme whether they were called Talents, Specialisations, or Edges and what have you, they were all quite similar. Even the recent iteration of Pulp Cthulhu has talents, granting low level street abilities! While it was a surprise, it also kind of wasn't - I just was not surprised by this kind overall sameness. And it is this that got me thinking.

Do we need all the OCC's in Rifts, Phase World etc?

My answer was simple - "No."

They all have bonuses to hit, parry etc. Why? They are either trained in HTH or they are not. If so, pick one whether Assassin, Martial Arts etc;don't over complicate things!

So this kind of got me stepping back, and deconstructing things even further. So what if the areas of knowledge on magic - going to use the Age designation Arcana from hereon in, mainly because i prefer it, but let's take a prime example.

Ley-Line Walker the OCC has all these abilities, and bonuses, but if you stripped it down. They have Ley-Line Arcana so they can all kinds of funky stuff with LL. As towards using the LL powers, use what is in the book as a guide - feel free to let players mess around and try to use them for other stuff. In essence let players be inventive. This is the Walker, plain and simple allowing the removal of all the extra nonsense in the class.

This would also allow normal mages to harness any arcana they want, whether fire, space, whatever. If you feel it conflicts with Warlocks who have pacts with elemental beings - just give them extra spell strength strength.

For instance, using this system it is plausible for a Ley-Line Walker, or normal magic-user to being to have Life-force magic too - if you throw out the bit about having no energy of their own. LF magic is essentially draining someone of life. Simple as that. We see it in the media, usually the individual is depicted as evil, but it need not always be the case.

This is kind of leading me down a path of creating a possible points based chargen at the moment...

Rules for posting in this - no BS or sniping - take those comments elsewhere.

Constructive feedback or comments only.

for normal human talents
Check out the Rifts world book Lonestar.
And if you can find them the RT2 books.

For magical talents, check out the NB;Thought the Glass Darkly book. (there is also a Rifter that has a bigger list, Kant remember which of the top of my head.)

I've worked on projects like this... stripping classes out of a classed system, making something more modular, and they are a PITA, but can feel very worth it.

Mark Hall wrote:I've worked on projects like this... stripping classes out of a classed system, making something more modular, and they are a PITA, but can feel very worth it.

moduler?

Like the HU system? Where the skills are not a part of the abilities.

Thou I could wish for more varied skill programs....

drewkitty ~..~ wrote:

Mark Hall wrote:I've worked on projects like this... stripping classes out of a classed system, making something more modular, and they are a PITA, but can feel very worth it.

moduler?

Like the HU system? Where the skills are not a part of the abilities.

Thou I could wish for more varied skill programs....

Modular... like taking 2nd edition AD&D and making it a system where you build your class from pretty much the ground up. Want to be a spell-casting sword-fighter? Build it that way. Figure out what your maximum spell level is, how many spell points you get, etc., etc.

drewkitty ~..~ wrote:for normal human talents
Check out the Rifts world book Lonestar.
And if you can find them the RT2 books.

For magical talents, check out the NB;Thought the Glass Darkly book. (there is also a Rifter that has a bigger list, Kant remember which of the top of my head.)

But yeah, definitely going to check out Lone Star - sounds interesting.
Yeah I have all the NB setting, it is like my favourite one! Although i have renamed talents in that respect as gifts although that is mainly as my training templates have talents, as per the below-

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=158911&p=3053973&sid=3fdd445ab33b1e61dd818cefec2d839e#p3053973

As you can I have essentially enabled some of those with high level training to acquire low level super powers, in order to level the playing the field. in essence I used the Arrowverse, and to some extent Titans, mainly the former though, to enable me to write up some templates. This is mainly geared for a heroes type game, but if I run a fantasy type game I would do the same as above. Even stuck Shih under Hero training really, although I renamed them Dragons.

Mark Hall wrote:Modular... like taking 2nd edition AD&D and making it a system where you build your class from pretty much the ground up. Want to be a spell-casting sword-fighter? Build it that way. Figure out what your maximum spell level is, how many spell points you get, etc., etc.

Yeah, that is kind of my next level with this.
I will likely go something akin to Savage Worlds - you buy professions and automatically get the skill set, also reducing the need for massive skill lists. So someone could be an Ancient Master, and a Spy - but the latter would overshadow the former meaning no guns although some techno-widgets would be fine.

Mark Hall wrote:I've worked on projects like this... stripping classes out of a classed system, making something more modular, and they are a PITA, but can feel very worth it.

I can well imagine it can be hard work - but yeah it is certainly fun
Even created some kind of orderly cosmology too - but that is for a different thread.

So at the moment I am kind of separating them into templates, each with particular set of talents / gifts that players can choose from.
This allows some degree of each player bespoking their character as they wish.
Long process though.

Mark Hall wrote:

drewkitty ~..~ wrote:

Mark Hall wrote:I've worked on projects like this... stripping classes out of a classed system, making something more modular, and they are a PITA, but can feel very worth it.

moduler?

Like the HU system? Where the skills are not a part of the abilities.

Thou I could wish for more varied skill programs....

Modular... like taking 2nd edition AD&D and making it a system where you build your class from pretty much the ground up. Want to be a spell-casting sword-fighter? Build it that way. Figure out what your maximum spell level is, how many spell points you get, etc., etc.

So... like GURPS?

Killer Cyborg wrote:

Mark Hall wrote:Modular... like taking 2nd edition AD&D and making it a system where you build your class from pretty much the ground up. Want to be a spell-casting sword-fighter? Build it that way. Figure out what your maximum spell level is, how many spell points you get, etc., etc.

So... like GURPS?

A bit of Champions, too, but yes.

Mark Hall wrote:

Killer Cyborg wrote:

Mark Hall wrote:Modular... like taking 2nd edition AD&D and making it a system where you build your class from pretty much the ground up. Want to be a spell-casting sword-fighter? Build it that way. Figure out what your maximum spell level is, how many spell points you get, etc., etc.

So... like GURPS?

A bit of Champions, too, but yes.

I always liked that kind of system.

Killer Cyborg wrote:

Mark Hall wrote:

Killer Cyborg wrote:

Mark Hall wrote:Modular... like taking 2nd edition AD&D and making it a system where you build your class from pretty much the ground up. Want to be a spell-casting sword-fighter? Build it that way. Figure out what your maximum spell level is, how many spell points you get, etc., etc.

So... like GURPS?

A bit of Champions, too, but yes.

I always liked that kind of system.

Check it out, then.

When I started it 20+ years ago, it was going to be a version of 3rd edition AD&D, before WOTC announced they were doing their own 3rd edition. If you look at the original stuff, I made what I consider some truly regrettable design decisions (trying to fit everything into a more rigid class structure... and I thought I was being so CLEVER by making it 3 classes... fighter, rogue, magic-user), but was also working towards a slightly different system... differences between armor and defense scores, for example.

The new stuff (at the blog) is designed to more or less drop into an ongoing 2e game, letting you either make whatever character you want, and damn the cost, or set limits as a GM and give the players freedom of a point selection.

Mark Hall wrote:I thought I was being so CLEVER by making it 3 classes... fighter, rogue, magic-user

That is Fantasy Age - exactly. They ten dropped them in Modern Age, replacing them with specialisations.
Then you have Novice, Expert and Master.