In my noble quest to turn my young cousin into a gamer I have decided I need art that could appeal to a younger player. Things like monsters and characters, things of that nature. any artist or book suggestions are welcome. thanks

I was Wondering as (currently posting this message on a 7 minute old account) a new RPer if anyone would tell me quickly how everyone here does everything, for example what my book entries are for, so I can get used to it.

Thanks to anyone who helps out

Your Pal Shock

hgf

Nice

Well it was bound to happen, when different points of view mesh some times you offend. It seems I did so. I had no intent to be offensive, just want some point of view from any who have use the sites I was looking at. Be that as it may I can only conclude from the small on-pour of "WTF is wrong with you"s that I was asking something wrong. While I will not be stopping in my attempts at writing C.O.R.P.S. as well as posting it here, I can not but feel hesitant in asking anymore questions.

thank you for your time.

Magic
Spell casting is a fairly complex set of rules, and while every effort has been made to streamline them in order to make magic work the way it was intended in this game we have had to make some trade offs in the ease of use area.

To begin there are two broad classifications of Magic these are indicated by the key Base Skills: Magic:Natural and Magic:Symbolic. Natural Magic is the powerful magic of the Magi, it has no real boundaries as far as potential only limitations based on the experience of the caster and the imagination of the player. Symbolic magic is more in line with the traditional fantasy RPG style of magic where spells are learned and cast, indeed these spells are in themselves skills that the character can learn. We will first break the conversation down into the two types of magic and discuss only the rule mechanics that you will need to understand to play a magic powered character in the game; Then we will discuss magic as a force on elakore and why it works as it does, this is not technically necessary in order for you to cast a spell but will assist you in navigating the whys and wherefores of magic in the game world.

Natural Magic
Magic flows into Elakore from a central point: this is called the ‘Life Pole’ or to the Magi, simply ‘home’ from the pole magic prisms out into the various energies that make up the magic used by mundane or ‘symbolic’ casters. The symbolic casters grope blindly at magic and pull it into use with spells and symbols. Magi see magic as it is and move it directly to achieve effect.

Flows
There are eight flows after the prisming, each has a color and an area of influence in magic:

Life white
Dimension black
Time purple
Sound blue
Light red
Matter brown

Character Growth and Advancement
As your character adventures and experiences it will gain knowledge and skill and improve itself in a variety of ways. This will be represented by Points that are assigned by the GM after every game session, you might get from 5 to 10 points per session depending on the evening. These points will typically reflect the types of activities your character did in the evening’s game. You can spend these points immediately or hold onto them to spend later the choice is yours.

Points come in five types Physical, Mental, Mystical, Social and Misc. The points that be long to one of the four skill categories can only be spent on skills or stats in that category. Misc points can be spent on skills or stats in any category or spent during game play to effect die rolls.

Symbolic Magic

The various methods used to cast pre-defined spells on Elakore, each of these methods is termed a ‘Path’ (although hedge wizardry is often termed the lack of one) each path has it’s strength and weaknesses depending on it’s style of magic and where it originates. All paths have access to the same spells, however the learning and techniques for one path to another are completely different, such that a Rune Mage finding a spell book from a Ritual Mage would not be able to learn the spells of that path and visa versa.

The primary rules are the same for all Paths Though: The mechanics work the same as all skill use, a percentile die is rolled any roll under the total of (base skill)+(the spell skill)+(CTL)is a success any roll above is a failure.

Character Creation
Character creation in Mystic is a backwards experience from most RPG’s, in a good way. Let’s run down the standard character creation for most games first.

Step 1: Choose a Race
Step 2: Roll Stats
Step 3: Choose a Class
Step 4: Choose Feats
Step 5: Choose Skills
Step 6: Gear up and go

The basic issues with this are that stats are completely random rather than a mixture of birth and lifestyle. So you roll a lot of 10’s and you’re hosed (or just toss it all and start again…) Races in and of them selves are fine if a little less than important in most situations. You get a few perks and a few quirks but a character of race A is in the grand scheme of things very similar to one of Race B presuming they have selected a similar Class the class is an attempt to give the character a sense of training and skill in a given area in early versions of the most popular role playing game, class made perfect sense as it was how you did things; in the current versions of the game, with the addition of skills, however, it is a far less useful construct, and far too limiting. Skills are great; however, they are not in anyway tied to the life experience of the character or indicative of anything in particular. Feats are basically “super” skills.