Thursday, December 18, 2014

HiBRiD Spellslingers Part One: Creating Your Spellslinger

Over the years, I have been asked to write a spell system for HiBRiD. But as I have been focusing my attention between refining and streamlining the rules, editing the final version of the book, and playtesting at the various GenCons, I have not really had the resources to give it the attention it deserves. There are even several people who have taken to working on such a monumental tasks and are still working on the project! 

But you don't wanna wait, do you? You wanna put one or more of your old OSR/d20 game books or issues of Gygax or Dragon magazine to use! You wanna call down the thunder from the skies! You wanna conjure crazy feats of the darkest Chinese Black Magic! You wanna lob a fireball!

In order to help you arcane ass-kickers out, I have decided to take inspiration from the FADAD document by Peter Mikelsons. In that document, he did a really nice set of conversions for Advanced Dungeons and Dragons® for his campaign so that players and directors could use their published materials with the FUDGE® gaming system. In these next few entries, you will find a quick and dirty conversion of your favorite old-school edition of Dungeons and Dragons®- (Basic®- or Advanced®-, any edition) or any of its derivatives (including OSRIC, Pathfinder®-, Hackmaster®-, et cetera) to the HiBRiD game system for all you itching to sling mana HiBRiD-style. O. K., enough with the background...get your game handbook of choice and let's do it! 

So let's begin wIth Part One: Building Your Spellslinger

Step One: Giving Your Character “The Gift”

The first thing you need to do to create a character that can cast spells is purchase the Spellslinging Aspect. The aspect only enables your character to cast spells of a certain level; it does not imbue your character with any specific spell. If you buy 1 Grade of Spellslinging, for example, your character may learn spells of any level but only has the ability to cast first level spells.

Spellslinging
Cost: 10
Graded?: G
Activation: Constant

This aspect imbues your character with the rare ability to cast magical spells of the Wzard/Mage/Sorceror/Illusionist character class. Each grade enables your character to cast spells of a level indicated in the Reference Book required by the game director equal to the grade. This aspect does not have an effect on learning a spell; only your character's ability to cast it.


Providence
Cost: 10
Graded?: G
Activation: Constant

This aspect imbues your character with the rare ability to cast magical spells of the Priest/Cleric class. Each grade enables your character to cast spells of a level indicated in the Reference Book required by the game director equal to the grade. This aspect does not have an effect on learning a spell; only your character's ability to cast it.


Step Two: Picking Spells

Next, you need to pick your character's spells. Each spell is treated as a separate skill in HiBRiD and follows the standard skill rules. In HiBRiD standard rules, each spell is considered a Concept Skill, which allows characters only a few spells that define the character). In certain Genre Descriptions such as Anachronism Whisper that use a more complicated, age and INTL-based  skill system, each spell is treated as an individual skill and costs one Skill Point to purchase for your character

Because spells in the game are treated as separate skills, each spell will have a number of Action Levels associated with it, just like any other skill in the game. The relevant attribute to each spell is determined by the corresponding attribute in the HiBRID system. Mage spells, for instance, use INTL as the relevant attribute, priest spells use the WILL attribute. Spells that use the Charisma attribute default to the WILL attribute, as charisma is treated as a Concept Skill in the HIBRiD game.


Once you have determined the action levels your character possesses in each skill, you are ready to play.

Podcast Complete. Game Complete. Art In Progress. Platform Change once agian.

Well, I finished the podcast. While I got a few listens, the amount of effort required to produce did not equate to either enjoyment or incr...