Games Night Supplemental

Rather than edit my last post, I just wanted to add two points that were really good about the house rules last night IMO. These both came via Patrick who was GMing.

First was our equipment; I've mentioned before, and Patrick has too, this idea of using a certain number of syllables to generate your equipment. Last night he tied it into a person's Charisma stat, which seemed to work really well I think. My Charisma of 11 was enough to get me

• Long knife
• Blow gun
• Cloak
• Kit bag
• Specialist tools

I.e., whatever a person who was escaping from a sinking ship might actually have on them (their most valuable and useful possessions and nothing more).

Second was the rules for unmemorised magic that I did mention in the AP post. The magic user had their one Level 1 spell as normal, which they could use as and when they wished, but then had the option of trying to perform "unmemorised magic" - it may work, it may not, you might get the magic missile that you want or you might cause your hands to turn to cheese. Using 2d6 plus a person's Intelligence modifier gave a fast and useful way to keep the magic user pivotal, but not overpowered. With a modifier of +1, as my nephew had last night, the character has about a 28% chance of total success, and still has a pretty good chance of getting a lesser success (getting the desired outcome but also something unfortunate happens). Not too powerful, but powerful enough to really help turn the tide.

Patrick showed me these rules a few months ago, and I thought they were great at the time - especially with the section full of names for what a person is as a magic user - Magician, Wizard, Incantrix, etc.