(TFT) wizards spending ST

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When we used to play we found the original rules best for us , of course
others obviously disagree - but we liked the original rules precisely
because they limited wizardry in what we thought of as a more logical
manner.
Magic requires energy and it has to come from somewhere in most games it is
unlimited and comes from la la land with no penalties for "machine gun"
spell casters. We prefered the original TFT rules because the energy came
from the spell caster himself, his very life's essence - -so indeed if he
was daring enough (or foolish enough depending on your point of view) to
cast too many spells or too powerful a spell then he did indeed leave
himself open to attack from something as small as a hobbit with a sling -
thus keeping the annoying and boring demigod characters so often seen in
D&D type games from ever coming into being. Without risk there is no value
in doing. We found that someone willing to play a full Wizard character a
rarer thing and that made it a heck of a lot more fun when they were good
at it!  And until they learned the in's and out's of wizardy they often had
to apply the often heard famous words of Monty Python ..........."RUN
AWAY!"
Wizardry like any good science should take a lot of time and effort in role
playing to create a powerful character. There will always be those who have
enough magic to cast a small glowing light or make a fire but there are
rarely those who can summon demons or create magic items. Plus the benefits
of keeping wizards more "at risk" was obvious for us - it requires a wizard
to play with a diverse group - relying on fighters, etc  to keep him from
harm should he leave himself weak from casting  - and that keeps the group
playing together as a team thinking about what they are going to do in
their adventures instead of a bunch of loners who do everything themselves
without much group interaction or thought. 
I mention all this to simply state a different point of view which I do not
note being put forth yet - I try to read all the messages when I can but I
miss some sometimes and have to go back later to read them.
I do see a lot of people who like to change it to make wizards more common
and easier to play- not that that's bad necessarily if that's what u want, 
but that's not what we wanted - there never is a right or wrong, but we
found that sticking more closely to the original guidelines is simply "what
worked best for us" when we played because for us it gave things a lot more
"flavor".

Also we did use "Strength Batteries" as AW called them but we simply called
them "Life Stones". A wizard could embue his life's essence in them to call
on at a later time to cast with, allowing him to have a reserve energy so
to speak - BUT it had to be a rare precious gem over $1000 in value and we
created a bell curve chart to keep the likely hood of large strength
batteries a rare thing. You could create small ones with say up to 10str in
them fairly easily but after that it got much much harder to create. Also
we felt that since the spell caster was putting "pieces of himself" into
the "life stone" the items could not be used by other wizards as the life
force stored inside did not belong to them.

Anyway that's more than enough from me - hope someone might find this info
useful :)



----------
> From: Dave Kohr <kohr@aeon.engr.sgi.com>
> To: tft@brainiac.com
> Subject: (TFT) Re: wizards spending ST
> Date: Friday, August 14, 1998 9:08 PM
> 
> One solution would be for the GM to allow wizards to carry powerstones
(or
> whatever they were called), magic items from which a wizard could draw
> spellcasting ST points.  If the GM makes moderate-sized stones fairly
> common (i.e. wizards you encounter have them too), but big ones rare,
they
> shouldn't be too unbalancing.
> 
> Dave
> ====
> Dave Kohr     Silicon Graphics, Inc.    Mail Stop 41U-178    
(650)933-8694
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