6 hours ago, Forgottenlore said:

Didn’t think that really provided much info at all. Ok, you basically build spells you want, but no info on how many qualities there are, what the various "magic skills" they keep talking about are. Just "oh, you can get drawbacks if you roll threat". Gee, really? Couldn’t have figured that out without the article. Oh, wait, we did.

Basically, still need to read to full system before I have any idea how any of it works.

I suspect this is very deliberate, since I made a similar observation about their social encounters article. They're getting Sam to explain it conceptually and philosophically, avoiding any concrete references to rules or talents or skills.

My belief is this is to give nothing away, rather than assuming they think it's a dud (as some have suggested).

For Shape shifting:

Animal Form (Primal)
Effects: Change Silhouette, Flight, Increase Characteristic, Empowered, Enhanced Senses, Ethereal.

This sounds a lot like the Mutants and Masterminds powers system (which is great). You could customize the power, effects, and level, with an easy to understand rules system.

Yeah I see a similar philosophy to HERO, WOIN, Spheres of Power, and other spell systems. But not exactly the same as any of them. The spell system in WOIN is probably the closest.

Pretty much what I was expecting to see for the magic system. This makes me very happy.

It's rare I ever want to play magic users but it looks like I'd do it with this system.

I'm curious if you purchase an effect as a self-contained bit of meta-magic. In other words, you buy the ability to add a particular effect to any spell that can accept that augmentation. Or do you instead buy the ability to add the effect to one spell in particular.

I was hoping for the former, and will be delighted if that's the case. You essentially buy new blocks and then you can build stuff with them.

To take the block analogy further, I'd be a little less enthusiastic if the blocks all belong to a particular model and, while you can build it a few different ways, those blocks don't fit other models. The latter seems like it would lead to low level casters that are one-trick ponies for quite a long time unless they neglect everything other than purchasing new specialized blocks. That seems pretty much what FFG already did with Force powers.

7 hours ago, Silverfox13 said:

IMBUED STRIKE
Magic Action: Attack
Additional Effects: Close Combat, Deadly
Imbued strike is a magic attack, and follows all the normal rules for a combat check. Choose a target Leoric is engaged with and makes an Average Arcana check If the check succeeds, the attack deals 4 damage + 1 damage per success, with a Critical Rating of 2 and the Vicious 3 quality.
ADDITIONAL EFFECTS
Before Leoric casts this spell, you may choose to add any of the following additional effects, increasing the difficulty of the check correspondingly.
Fire(+1 Difficulty): The attack gains the Bum 3 quality.
Manipulative (+1 Difficulty): If the attack hits, you may spend an advantage to move the target up to one range band in any direction. .

I would have read the first instance of "Additional Effects" as the short-form list and the second occurrence as more detail, but the lists are actually different within the same spell for a few of the spells. Can anyone clarify?

16 minutes ago, Dragonshadow said:

I would have read the first instance of "Additional Effects" as the short-form list and the second occurrence as more detail, but the lists are actually different within the same spell for a few of the spells. Can anyone clarify?

Some of the "Additional Effects" directly affect the base spell without any difficulty increases and require no advantage to activate. An example may be reduced Crit rating, increased Damage or increased Range.

In the above mentioned spell the Deadly effect adds Vicious 3, this is added for free due up Loerics book

11 hours ago, Dragonshadow said:

Again my only fear is the cost of each of the building blocks. If it's quite high, casters won't have many spell options. Based on the demo game stuff for Terrinoth, it looks like the mage only has three core spells with some interesting augmentations (so a couple nice variations like AOE or additional damage, or reduced cost). Since the characters are in the 200xp range, that's a little underwhelming in the utility department. All niche protection arguments to the contrary, casters (especially those whose magic is their main ability) should be able to produce a decent variety of effects.

Still, I'd rather have a solid magic core that could benefit from some XP cost tweaks than a fundamental aspect of the game engine that has to be replaced in full.

I have simplified options on many convention game characters to prevent overwhelming them with choices and keep the game going. That could be all this is. There was no mention of anything costing xp except presumably the relevant magic skill. They didn't NOT mention xp costs either, but I'm willing to wait and see and not fret over it now.

9 hours ago, DarthDude said:

With the fiery effect and one two more effects/qualities, you could cover a lot of fire spells like flame arrow, wall of fire, light.

What I am also interested to know how ongoing spells will be handeled and if they are dependend on keeping concentration or such.

Fiery affect could also be re skinned as acid, radiation, nanite swarm, chaos energy and have all use the Burn effect...

In the gencon module, effects could be continued with concentration (1 maneuver) i believe theoretically indefinitely if you got the strain.

3 hours ago, Dragonshadow said:

I'm curious if you purchase an effect as a self-contained bit of meta-magic. In other words, you buy the ability to add a particular effect to any spell that can accept that augmentation. Or do you instead buy the ability to add the effect to one spell in particular.

I was hoping for the former, and will be delighted if that's the case. You essentially buy new blocks and then you can build stuff with them.

To take the block analogy further, I'd be a little less enthusiastic if the blocks all belong to a particular model and, while you can build it a few different ways, those blocks don't fit other models. The latter seems like it would lead to low level casters that are one-trick ponies for quite a long time unless they neglect everything other than purchasing new specialized blocks. That seems pretty much what FFG already did with Force powers.

If they handle it like meta-magic feats in D&D 3.5 it could be universal. But then the Range quality was, at least in this Runebound case, tied to a single signature spell. But it could be setting related.

3 hours ago, Dragonshadow said:

I would have read the first instance of "Additional Effects" as the short-form list and the second occurrence as more detail, but the lists are actually different within the same spell for a few of the spells. Can anyone clarify?

I understood that the first occurrence covers the base effects already included in casting the spell and the casting difficulty. The second covers the optional additional effects.

This all looks very promising.

I'll be running a short, story driven campaign with a group of players sometime early next year. They've all played various editions of DnD as well as FFG games like Imperial Assault and Descent. This system looks like a lot of fun and might end up the system of choice for my campaign. The goal is to limit the campaign to a specific number of sessions and a single overarching story arc.

11 hours ago, Dragonshadow said:

I'm curious if you purchase an effect as a self-contained bit of meta-magic. In other words, you buy the ability to add a particular effect to any spell that can accept that augmentation. Or do you instead buy the ability to add the effect to one spell in particular.

I was hoping for the former, and will be delighted if that's the case. You essentially buy new blocks and then you can build stuff with them.

To take the block analogy further, I'd be a little less enthusiastic if the blocks all belong to a particular model and, while you can build it a few different ways, those blocks don't fit other models. The latter seems like it would lead to low level casters that are one-trick ponies for quite a long time unless they neglect everything other than purchasing new specialized blocks. That seems pretty much what FFG already did with Force powers.

It is my belief that the magic system in the rule book will be generic and broad and used as a framework that is tailored to the setting. Just like skills, careers, equipment, etc.. you are going to pick what you want to use al a carte style.

In it's broadest strokes it looks like the Magic Skill is assigned a selection of Magic Actions. Magic Actions have a defined list of effects that can be added at the time of spellcasting. If your setting needs to get more fine grained then you just define it that way.

In the case of Leoric, maybe the setting makes you define each spell, or maybe it is free form at the time of using the Magic Action. It stands to reason that if you do include a Signature Spell that it may need more definition than a generic Magic Action check.

12 minutes ago, Silverfox13 said:

It is my belief that the magic system in the rule book will be generic and broad and used as a framework that is tailored to the setting. Just like skills, careers, equipment, etc.. you are going to pick what you want to use al a carte style..

This would be perfect, a broad sandbox system. The respective setting will define the limits. If you want to "simulate" a D&D style campaign with fixed spells, you can always recreate the spells with the building blocks of the framework.

And if you don't want a "magic can backfire" feel to it, you just turn the setback and despaire to "normal" kinds of results rather than magic backlash. No major change, and all of sudden magic feels vastly different.

1 hour ago, Silverfox13 said:

It is my belief that the magic system in the rule book will be generic and broad and used as a framework that is tailored to the setting. Just like skills, careers, equipment, etc.. you are going to pick what you want to use al a carte style.

In it's broadest strokes it looks like the Magic Skill is assigned a selection of Magic Actions. Magic Actions have a defined list of effects that can be added at the time of spellcasting. If your setting needs to get more fine grained then you just define it that way.

In the case of Leoric, maybe the setting makes you define each spell, or maybe it is free form at the time of using the Magic Action. It stands to reason that if you do include a Signature Spell that it may need more definition than a generic Magic Action check.

I'm sort of assuming that we'll get a framework with a set of core actions followed by a bunch of modifying keywords. I'm also assuming that we'll get a list of sample spells, but have the option of creating our own on the fly. I would imagine that adventure modules and campaign settings will have lists of pre-made spells with short descriptions that we could have created ourselves had we wanted to.

For a high fantasy setting...

Merlako's Spectral Fist - Magic Attack - Keywords Range, Manipulate - Choose a target within short or medium range, deal X damage and move the target X distance directly away from you.

For a scifi setting...

Telekinetic Shove - Magic Attack - Keywords Range, Manipulate - Choose a target within short or medium range, deal X damage and move the target X distance directly away from you.

I'm very excited about this and want to know more. When does this come out?

13 minutes ago, KrisWall said:

Telekinetic Shove - Magic Attack - Keywords Range, Manipulate - Choose a target within short or medium range, deal X damage and move the target X distance directly away from you.

In cases of non-magic settings one could call the Telekinetic Shove even a psionic attack or in case of Mass Effect Throw - biotic attack . That's the beauty of this magic system, it is truly generic and setting agnostic.

While I am liking what I see from the system tremendously. It doesn't seem like it would work well with a tree system, a la Star Wars?

I did notice that Leor

2 minutes ago, TrainedMunkey said:

While I am liking what I see from the system tremendously. It doesn't see, like it would work well with a tree system, a la Star Wars?

The extra keywords you have access to could unlock as part of a tree system. Fire could lead to Blast, etc. Who knows. I'd be happy to see more information.

23 minutes ago, TrainedMunkey said:

While I am liking what I see from the system tremendously. It doesn't seem like it would work well with a tree system, a la Star Wars?

Frankly I wish they'd do away with a rigid 5 x 4 tree structure that's 25% filler abilities common to all trees. There's nothing wrong with dependent talents, but some trees should have some variety in all their dimensions. Smaller ones that are more focused and much easier to buy into would be better.

Talking about the magic system and the keywords has a bunch of us excited. When I start seeing those keywords materializing into a tree structure, I get less excited. This doesn't need to be a genericized Star Wars.

WOIN (Whats old is new) the career path based system that Russ Morrisey put out (the guy that runs ENWorld) has a magic system that is a noun-verb system. Evoke you can have then if you have fire you can Evoke Fire, then you learn ICe and you can Evoke Ice. One of the bits they do is that you have a number of "signature spells" (which the playtest looked it did too), that you set up all the parameters beforehand (all drawbacks and enhancements) then you could cast that spell, at that exact same power level, as 1 action instead of 2.

I plan of modifying that for the magic system here (depending on what the whole system is like, when we see it) - the ability to have a few specific set ups that are a little easier to cast (by difficulty or strain cost or something). Another thing to help differentiate spellcasters from each other.

7 hours ago, KrisWall said:

The extra keywords you have access to could unlock as part of a tree system. Fire could lead to Blast, etc. Who knows. I'd be happy to see more information.

I personally hope it's not a tree system as that was my main gripe with Force powers. I understood the necessity of keeping the different powers as separate silos so that Force users didn't overshadow other characters but it still felt weird.

Considering that using magic gets harder as you add more keywords, I'm hopeful that keywords can be universally applied to different spells once you acquire the basic spell form. Tying the keywords to specific spells just means that spellcasters will be either one trick ponies with a single awesome spell or just competent with a variety of spells.

It's probably been stated already, but I think the book will provide building blocks. It will have a set of stats simple called "Attack Spell" or similar. It will have the base difficulty, damage, range, etc., a list of upgrades and how they modify the difficulty, and a list of suggested flavors, like "fireball," "icicle," "thunderbolt," and so on.

If the GM wants to create three or four attack spells, they all use the same basic template (attack spell), but then pick and choose which modifiers go with which spells. So fireball may get Burn and Blast, while ice may get Pierce or Concussive, while thunderbolt may get Stun and Ensnare, as examples.

Wash, rinse, repeat for the other spell types (healing, buffs, defense).

It's not an example of a player saying "well it's in the book, so I can buy it," but it's whatever the GM designs and allows in the game.

58 minutes ago, Blackbird888 said:

It's probably been stated already, but I think the book will provide building blocks. It will have a set of stats simple called "Attack Spell" or similar. It will have the base difficulty, damage, range, etc., a list of upgrades and how they modify the difficulty, and a list of suggested flavors, like "fireball," "icicle," "thunderbolt," and so on.

If the GM wants to create three or four attack spells, they all use the same basic template (attack spell), but then pick and choose which modifiers go with which spells. So fireball may get Burn and Blast, while ice may get Pierce or Concussive, while thunderbolt may get Stun and Ensnare, as examples.

Wash, rinse, repeat for the other spell types (healing, buffs, defense).

It's not an example of a player saying "well it's in the book, so I can buy it," but it's whatever the GM designs and allows in the game.

I did that in a fantasy hero game I ran. I built about 200 spells, and those were available to the characters to learn, rather than just turning them loose on the power system. I've also gone the other way. And sometimes both in one game.

I was thinking about a system for modern day mages, where the characters must discover different magical techniques and then build their spells. No spontaneous magic, but they can create any spell using the rules and techniques they know. The magic is dark and dangerous.

Have been pondering the idea for a while, so maybe when I'm done with my current project. All depends on Genesys being OGL or not. Otherwise I'll use my own system. There is CoC where magic is bad and cultists are evil, WoD Mage is a bit too flashy and dresden files isn't really my cup of tea, with the modern component approach to magic. Would just be nice to just do a setting book without heavy system work... and math