Blue Magic Options

[Ancient History]

Blue Magic
Bonus: 10 BP
Blue magic is a rarely seen sorcery in the Sixth World, most often cropping up amongst younger magicians who lack formal schooling. So-called Blue Magicians often seek out critters with innate spells and other magicians to expand their repertoires.

A magician with the Blue Magic negative quality cannot learn, research, or teach spells. Instead, when a spell is successfully cast on and affects a blue magician, the blue magician gains the Innate Spell critter power for that spell. If the blue magician is not affected by the spell (i.e. if the damage from a spell is completely resisted, if the character is an inappropriate target for the spell, if the blue magician wins the Opposed Test when the spell is cast, or if the Absorption or Reflecting metamagics are used successfully to protect the character), they do not gain the spell as an Innate Spell. The maximum Force for a blue magician's Innate Spells is capped at the highest Force of that spell that spell that has affected them. If a blue magician is affected by a limited spell (i.e. fetish dependent), then the Innate Spell power they gain is likewise limited.

The shaman Docta Bones casts a Force 5 firewater spell at Simon Magus, a blue magician. Docta Bones rolls 8 dice on his Spellcasting Test against Simon Magus' Reaction of 3, achieving two net successes - the spell hits. With a Body of 3, 2 points of Impact Armor and Counterspelling 2, Simon Magus rolls 6 dice to reduce the damage and achieves two hits, reducing the DV from 5 to 3. Simon Magus takes 3 points of Physical damage, and his blue magic kicks in. The player writes "Innate Spell (firewater) [5]" on her character sheet, indicating that Simon Magus now has the Innate Spell (firewater), with a maximum Force of 5. Docta Bones better look out...

[Dashifen]

That is quite cool. Why "blue" though? And do they get spellcasting x2 spells at character generation just like a normal magician or do they start without spells and must "learn" them during game. 'Course, it's probably most useful as a weird NPC threat, but it's got PC potential, I suppose.

[Ancient History]

Dude, it's a Final Fantasy port. I've been reading too much 8 Bit Theatre lately.

[FrankTrollman]

Considering the costs involved to get NPCs to cast Health and detection spells on your behalf, Blue Magic is actually stupidly powerful. The fact that your character will probably never know a decent Manabolt is beside the point when their repetoire of temporary incapacitation spells (stunbolt, turn to goo) and buff spells are so tremendously high.

While they are seemingly tragically incapable of using spells like Barrier and Shadow at all, the fact that they live in a world where magicians are normally expected to know six or less total spells puts them on a crazy threshold of crazy.

But funny. I will give you that.

-Frank

[Dashifen]

[hyzmarca]

But do they get the Scan ability?

[Ancient History]

Yeah, but every time they call assensing that the other magicians slap them upside the head.

[DireRadiant]

3 BP per learnable spell "slot"?

[Ol' Scratch]

So... basically a free magician who doesn't have to waste BP on spells and has full conjuring abilities? Mmmkay.

[Big D]

Meh. I prefer Red Mage. :)

[deek]

Limit the total amount of innate spells by Magic, and I am thinking this is viable. I would also say that if they are already at their limit, and another spell is cast successfully, that it randomly replaces a "known" innate spell.

To really balance it, I would also say that each spell, regardless if it is already "known" gets added. This could mean a blue magician with Magic of 4 has a Stunball (4), a Heal (3), a Heal (6) and Knockout (5). And if another Heal was cast on them, it would have a chance to replace one of those four.

Also, remove the ability to overcast and choose a variable Force and I think it comes back to a reasonable power level.