An ancient rant written before our subsequent conversion of magic and supernatural to x3 SDC and tech gear to x3-7SDC depending on size. I find the new way works better but as you can see from this old essay I was frustrated at magics ineffectiveness compared to tech at the time. Perhapse I was a bit naive in my treatment of magic...
This introduces the idea of overcharging magic spells at a detriment to the user, like the people charging up in anime... also see the following in game books which are the inspiration for research into this area by the original "Forcers" of Rifts Earth... "http://wot.wikia.com/wiki/Forcing"
Rumor has it possession of one of the Wheel of Time novela of ancient pre-rifts era can shred insight into the process of forcing which may unlock abilities mentioned later.
Magic In Rifts Earth
11-19-97
Magic: This force has been used in many games other than Rifts, the major one being Dungeons and Dragons. In that game, Mages started out one of the weakest classes, but once they reached higher levels, they were easily the strongest. Is this the case in Rifts? Well, after presenting some view points, I'll let you decide.
The world of Rifts Earth is supposed to be alive with magic energy. It is criss-crossed with ley-lines, and abounds with beings of supernatural and magical power. So, from the many quotes and such from the Main Book, it would make sense that magic is a force to be reckoned with, correct? However, in comparison to some other new developments in Rifts earth, I am sad to say that this is simply not true.
I have always like the idea of magic, it really can be pretty neat and mysterious, but in Rifts? No way, a Mage gets his ass beat hands down in nearly any encounter. Maybe in a medieval setting they are powerful, but in Rifts Earth, the technological equivalents are always much better.
Wana throw a lightning bolt? A commonly available energy weapon can shoot farther, has a higher payload, can be used more than 2 times per melee, and frequently will do more damage than an average Mage's lightning.
Need some armor? Armor of Ithan really does give crap protection, not much more than light armor at the medium levels. Plus, it has a duration, and requires attacks to cast. Mages never truly rely on this spell, it's only backup, or supplementary, they always wear real armor too.
Transportation? Magic does have it's teleport and mystic portal spells, but they require large amounts of PPE and are usually pretty limiting. The flight movement spells are nice, if only for the bonuses, but modern vehicles are what you really need to get from point A to point B.
Now, out of those three main categories, Magic can also do many other things, but most of them are really quite trivial. Magic's sensory abilities are OK, but a Psionic is MUCH better, and decent optics are more useful and long-ranged than anything magic has to offer. The "cantrip" spells, they're mostly amusing or annoying, but never really too useful.
What is my point here? Well, as long as I've been playing Rifts, I've always been vastly amazed at just how much Magic sucks in comparison to its technological equivalents. I mean, sure magic can do some things that tech can't, but does that really matter most of the time? No. I hate the fact that in combat, a Mage is really a joke. He can only cast 2 spells per melee! Common men of arms have at least twice that many attacks. Plus, their weapons usually do MORE damage, and have a HIGHER range. What is a Mage to do against any targets sitting at 301ft away? Nothing with magic, that's for sure. And it's cheesy as hell that Mages should be forced to carry mere energy weapons around with them, they should be mighty enough not to need such toys. So, as you can see, Magic just isn't up to par with anything remotely technological.
Now, I understand that Mages on Ley-Lines and Nexuses DO usually kick ass somewhat (except for range, even doubled or tripled spell ranges still suck). However, off a Ley Line, Mages just don't have the power of most other modern things. Is this how it was meant by Palladium? Well, here is my thoughts on what they think.
Palladium's magic in Rifts has basically just been transported out of their previous books (like a lot of things). Thus, it was originally designed for the Palladium fantasy game, and in that genre, it really was pretty fun to play. Then, they re-released Palladium (2nd addition). The release did help match the older game to Palladium's new rule style (SDC, and PPE, you know). However, they also toned magic and Psionics do wn A LOT. Why? Why? Why? That always bugged me. They just hurt some of the coolest classes in the game. But even then, in the fantasy world, magic was still cool.
The next usage of magic was in Heroes Unlimited (I think...). Here, magic is in a relatively modern world, but it still fit pretty well. Most HU games aren't so violent as Rifts ones, and the world itself presents Mages with certain advantages. But, then came Rifts. Palladium made the world full of magic, but they didn't make the magic worth using. Kurt summed up my disgust in the current state of Magic with these words: "it's like they just put magic in to explain why the Rifts happened". This r eally does seem to be true in some ways.
The world of Rifts earth is truly TEEMING with magical energy and beings, and I hate to see all of those cool possibilities going to waste, powering TW plows, and other lame crap. So, my solution? MAKE MAGIC KICK ASS LIKE IT SHOULD. I want my Mages to look at SAMAS and go: "Just one? No matter, I'll burn it to cinder with a thought." I mean, HOW THE HELL did the federation of magic ever significantly threaten the Coalition? With Fire Bolt? No way, the CS has had some of their bots since that fi rst battle between them, and even a high level Mage would be blown to crap against any power armor or robot pilot with half a brain. If anything, because the Mage could only do 2 attacks, and the Bot pilot gets around 6!!! Even against normal armored fo es, Mages just don't have the same raw offensive abilities. So how did the Mages actually put fear of annihilation into the CS? Not with the standard Fire Ball, Fire Bolt, and Call Lightning, that's for sure. Here's how I think magic should have always been, and then you'll see why the Coalition was scared shitless.
I advocate making magic more powerful in a few different ways. The first is finding a way to make up for Magic's basically crappy range and overall damage capabilities. One method of doing this has already been thought of by someone else (who? I can' t remember). The method is the "stacking" of spells, which allows a Mage to cast a spell multiple times over, to increase the effects, range, and duration. The ruling I saw penalized the Mage for doing so, but why? Even stacked, magic isn't overly powe rful, and I don't think that any penalties are needed. Now stacking magic can use attacks in two ways. Either you can say each stack takes an additional attack, or do what I think is cooler, where the stacking doesn't take longer, it's just like a more powerful, and higher PPE draining kind of the spell. Now, when it comes to stacking magic, Mages do have the ability to cast some pretty powerful magics. The other major problem with magic is it's utterly horrible range. My solution? Well, for most sp ells, I just take the original range, and make that what it increases by per level. With nearly all of the spells, this makes them a little better, but even then most of their ranges are still below that of an average energy rifle (1600ft). The third pr oblem is the pitiful number of magic attacks. I have seen tables devoted to this, but my rule of thumb is that low level magic attacks (1-6) count as normal physical attacks, while mid level ones (7-10) count as two, and high level (11-15)ones count as 3 . Spells of legend usually suck too much to waste all that PPE on, but if you want, I guess they could take 3 attacks too. Even though magic probably should take longer to cast, if it did, mages would be at too much of a disadvantage in any kind of batt le.
Now, looking at the rule changes that I propose, let me outline just what this will (and has in my games) do to magic. A 3rd level Mage can cast a lightning bolt 900ft doing 3d6 MD normally, not bad, but crappy in comparison to an energy rifle. Now s tacked, the same Mage could spend say 30PPE for a respectable 6d6MD going 1800ft. Pretty good, with a worse payload than a normal gun, but as he increases in level, he'll gain PPE, and won't NEED to stack things as much. The other attack spells also get better, and now a Mage can significantly increase the effects and duration of his spells just by using more PPE at the time of their casting. Thus, with these ruling in effect, maybe a Mage can't quite take out a SAMAS too easily, but at least at the higher levels he has a chance in hell.
Update
OK, we have been playing with these rules for awhile, and I have thought of some more things that need to be added in. One is some clarification on what stacking does to effects and such. On spells that do damage or give armor, just add up the damage /MDC. For spells that grant special abilities (invisibility, climb, flight, etc.), just add to the duration of the spell for each stacking. Casting a stacked spell only takes the melee action, but I have put limits on the stacking. A Mage can stack spells at X times his level, for example at first level you can't stack safely, at second you can stack 2 castings into one, etc. A Mage can stack over his level, but he will suffer damage because of his inexperience in channeling so much magical energy at once, a Mage will take either SDC or MDC damage according to how much PPE is spent over the "safe" ammound for the stacked spell. Plus, there are physical penalties according to how much damage is taken from such a "burn".
Burn Table
For SDC creatures only, MDC ones can over-flow four times more before they get penalties (their bodies are much more resilient).
1-20PPE burn -The mage is scalded, he feels tired, and sore. -1 on initiative, -2 to strike/parry/dodge
21-50PPE burn - The Mage is burned pretty badly, and feels like crap. -3 on initiative, -4 to strike/parry/dodge, -1 attack, -15% on skills, -25% to speed
51-100PPE burn - The Mage is broiled alive. He survives, has -6 to initiative, strike/parry/dodge, -2 attacks, -30% on all skills, -50% to speed, looks really red and tender (he is!).
100-300PPE burn - The Mage is horribly charred. He needs medical treatment for his burns, and is at -9 to initiative, -8 to strike/parry/dodge, has 1 attack, -75% to speed, and cannot cast magic for 48 hours.
300PPE+ burn - The Mage is burnt to a crisp. Dead. If he was revived, he would have had his magic burnt out of him forever (a greater god/healer *might* be able to help though.) A save vs. death requires 2 out of 3 rolls...
The penalties are not cumulative unless the mage casts another spell that burns him higher than his current injuries (like after a 15pt burn, he later casts a spell with a 30pt burn, he now has the higher penalties). The penalties go away in 1d4 days per stage, even when the damage is healed (his inner body/soul has also been burned too).
For example: Halgron the Mage is being attacked by a powerful demon. Knowing he has to take it out quickly before he's overwhelmed, he decides to stack a call-lightning onto the demon. Halgron is a 3rd level Ley-Line Walker, so he could cast up to a triple stacked call lightning, for 45PPE. That would be the equivalent of 3 castings at once, and do 3 times the damage and have 3 times range (at his level, 9d6MD, going up to 1800ft away). But Halgron doesn't think that will take down this demon, and needs to kill it quickly. So he decides to go past his "safe" limit of stacking, and cast a five-stacked call-lightning instead. This does 15d6MD at 4500ft, and costs 75PPE. Now, Halgron takes 30 (75 total PPE - 45 PPE maximum "safe" value=30)damage, and is glad he worked out at the gym in training, because now he's smoking and only has 14 hit-points left. But the demon is also reduced to a charred crater, was it worth it? Halgron's body is telling him no, he feels like he's been broiled alive as the barely controlled magic energies ravaged his body, but such is the price of casting magics to strong for his level of experience...
Stacking on Ley-Lines, nexuses, or at other places of power is a more dangerous thing to try. The number of available stacks is reduced as per the increase of power the point of higher magical energy provides, rounded down. For example, if Haldon tried to stack his magic on a Ley-Line, he would find the the extra magical energy was too much for him to handle safely (3 stacks divided by the Ley-Line's double damage equals 1.5 stacks, so he can only cast single spells at double power). A higher level Mage (say tenth) could only stack his spells 5 times on a Ley-line, or 3 times on a nexus. Yes, this means that a Mage will actually miss out on some damage at these places, but the energy flowing around them is more difficult to control than their own personal PPE. Besides, the increased energy reduces the need to stack anyway. Plus, at Ley-lines and Nexuses, the damage is still good, and the Mage can draw on the ambient power to fuel the stacked spells easier (plus the lesser stacks are more potent for less PPE anyway. A 10th level Mage may be able to stack 10 times for 1d6x100, but does he have 150PPE all the time? On a Nexus he could just stack 3 times for 45 PPE and do 9d6x10MD, magic battles at places of power tend to take longer because of this, the mages can cast more defensive and offensive magic. Note that damage taken from "overstacked" spells at places of power is also increased respectivly (due the the higher ammounts of channeled energy)
Another neat thing about these rules is that it allows a Mage to go out "in a blaze of glory". It also explains why Mages can't all just cast the powerful magics, their bodies have to become accustomed to channeling all of that energy. Plus, now a Dragon Mage is better still than a human one, as he can take the burn damage more easily than a frail human, and god's now definitely have magic to be feared (and they can take LOTS of burn damage!)
These rules also tend to make the higher-level mages much more powerful. So now Mages do become the strongest class at higher levels, sort of like in AD&D, which is cool I think. Is this munckin? Pretty much so, but all of the tech stuff is too, and magic needs to catch up damnit.
Remember, magic teachers would try to show their students how to stack intelligently, so as not to kill themselves, but to supplement their magical power.
Update #2
The Federation of Magic Book eases the pain...
That's the only way I can describe it. I bought this new book recently, and after reading it I realized two things. One, the new magic is now more powerful, if you still want to stack spells, only do it with the old ones. Two, while magic still does suck in some aspects, with this new books mages do have a chance. The new tactics, spells, items, etc. help even the playing field some. While mages still can't quite stand up to a frontal assalt, the new stuff lets them use other ways of getting ahead. This is an excelent book, finally some fleshing out of ideas that have been around from the start of the game.
With the new book in use, there are only a few changes I am keeping in place. for one, range increases per level on many of the spells (but not the already long-range ones). Plus, I'm still not sure how to fix mages lousy casting-rate, but some of the new OCC's get the ability to cast more spells per melee as they gain experience. Sounds like a good idea, but why not with the other more conventional mages? I'm working on that.
