In Response to:
From: stan rydzewski <srydzews@ix.netcom.com> Subject: Re: (TFT) Rule of Five Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 09:24:00 -0400 John Paul Bakshoian wrote: > > You guys even bother with the rule of five at all? > > Your characters must be packin' heavey. Not at all. Say perhaps: +1 armor, +1 shield, +1 weapon, and an Immunity to Trip ring -- presto, you're one item away from the Rule of Five limit, and the items listed cost $4,000, less if you hire a town wizard to make them. Not a trivial amount, but nothing outrageous, either.
and from Rick Smith 15 Oct.
Hi all,
You have to understand that some of my players have been playing the same character in my campaign for over 15 real years. They have had a LOT of time to accumulate money, wealth and power. Any campaign that runs long enough will hit a 5 magic item limit, and then the rule of 5 will force them to buy more expensive items with enchantments doubled and tripled up. I think that the Rule of 5 is a great idea. It also is a boon to weak or young GM's that are a little too generous in the magic department. Soon the players have to pick what items to keep and which ones they want to replace with combo items.
The reason you're "packin' heavy" makes sense to me now that you mention a long campaign history or a number of armor/weapon items. That could add up. Which is why I am glad to see Rick's (15 Oct) clarification to the 'rule of 5.' This not only helps determine 'what is on' for the 'rule of 5,' but also lets the player know when something is activated and enabled.
I agree with Michael (16 Oct), though. 'Activation Points' confuses things. 'Activation Ritual' would be good. I would guess an modern example of how this concept works would be a car. The activation ritual would be sitting in the driver's seat with the key in the ignition. "Equipped" or "Enabled" would be to turn the ignition on. At that point, you could drive.
Question: If you have 5 enabled items and are carrying 3 exploding gems, if you get hit in such a way that the gem could explode, can it? It wasn't able to be enabled. Are there similar magical philosophical dilemnas?
And lastly, Mack Brewer's (17 Oct) cool concept of magical 'gravity' where use of magic really is outside the world's physics and that using it in a concentrated area causes material risks.
I have a similar concept in my gameworld: that magic is like a radiation and its nearly reached its saturation point on the gameplanet. When heavy spells are used in an area, a leak in the seperation between the magic sphere and the corporal planet may cause magical radience to pollute an area. The pollution is the equivellant of radiation poison, which can't be seen, felt, smelled, etc., but the effects are obvious several days/hours later. These disasters are being hushed up by the Wizard's Guild. They know that somehow this death zone is somehow related to powerful magic, but haven't begun to figure out how to handle or clean it up. [using more magic just releases more radiation]. In the meantime, the Church has encountered these death zones, given it an entirely religious interpretation, and performed neo-ritual miracles, and have had success in cleaning it up. They wear special white lead-lined vestiments when purifying the area.
I especially liked Mack's concept of why there are so many cursed items. I agree that a magician wouldn't make a cursed item unless it was for revenge or a very elaborate trap. I might work in this style of curse into my game system: with this type of unintentional curse, lighter sillier curses could be done. GURPS Magic Items' Quirks is a good source.
John Paul ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ===== Post to the entire list by writing to tft@brainiac.com. Unsubscribe by mailing to majordomo@brainiac.com with the message body "unsubscribe tft"