Alternative magic systems

[trs31]

Hi,

I'm sorry if this has been discussed elsewhere but several forum searches didn't bring anything up. I have been using Hero Lab to run a pathfinder game for quite a while. I recently bought the trailblazer RPG. I love the "base magic bonus" mechanic and would really like to add something similar to my pathfinder game. Has anybody added this to Hero Lab already? If not has anybody any idea how I might go about doing this?

I had thought that I could duplicate all the existing spell casting pathfinder classes. Take away spell casting from them. Create a bonus feat called "Spell casting" for these classes that adds a Class/template that has a spell casting progression and then modify the existing classes to add spell caster levels to that class at different rates (like prestige classes do). Would this work? If not could anyone suggest anything that might?

Cheers.

[Aaron]

Well first, let me say that I'm not familiar with the mechanic you mention, so this might not be perfect advice.

You can pretty easily remove spellcasting from a class (archetypes have a mechanism to do so), but some of the classes are in books other than the core, so copying them would be a lot of work, thats 1 hurdle. So if I were attempting this I would make it a series of archetypes for each of the classes (similar to how wordcasting works).

I don't think a feat would be the best thing here. I think what you mean by "class/template" is a configurable, which adds its own tab. you could bootstrap the configurable directly to the archetype. I assume that you would be adding spells known or spells memorized to this configurable?

The only issue with that is that as far as I remember, the various tables in the template don't take spells by default, so you'd have to overwrite the standard candidate expressions for that. Even then, I'm not sure if spells lack any of the fields used for display on the tab. And since there are a limited number of tables on any particular configureable, if you wanted to put 9 levels of spellcasting, each with their own table, you might run out.

Final verdict, maybe doable, certainly a lot of work.

[ShadowChemosh]

Originally Posted by Aaron

The only issue with that is that as far as I remember, the various tables in the template don't take spells by default, so you'd have to overwrite the standard candidate expressions for that.

Unless the Configurable logic was changed this won't work. I tried when doing the Paths of War and even with the expression changed it won't display. Something prevents the Configurable from only displaying Racial Abilities or Abilities.

That was a few months ago when I tried so maybe something could have been changed...

[Aaron]

Ah. It's probably the List expression.

Candidate expressions determine what can be added to a table, but list expressions determine what is shown in that table.

I wonder if that can be tied to a field like the candidate expression can? I'll check into it with Colen on Monday, see if I might be able to make Configureables more... configurable.