Hallo everyone, I’m new to the forum and to Birthright. I was having a look to the 3.5 conversion, to see if it’s maybe worth it using it in a future campaign.
I was checking out the magician class, and I noticed that, in the newest version, it may cast spells up to level 6, while the spell list includes also 9’s (I believe because it was never updated to 3.5). Which spell list should I use for the magician?
I hadn’t noticed that before, as you say it is clearly inconsistent.
Barring use of rituals and so on I can’t see how the magician could use the higher level spells, which does fit with the general ethos of the class.
Rituals were a house rule I had ages ago that loosely said that if you took longer to cast the spell, had assistants, etc you could cast at a higher level, it fitted the campaign where I wanted priests who could heal (rarely) serious illnesses without having lots of high level clerics around. Magicians would do something similar with casting times of hours, days or even weeks to let them cast a needed spell - useless in battle of course but not out of place in Cerilia given battle spells and realm spells in my opinion.
I would go with what sounds like it should work best in your campaign, and tell players it may change if it doesn’t work.
If we agree that there should be no 7/8/9 level spells in the Magician’s spell list, that will need to be added to BRCS:Errata - Birthright.net for Chapter 3.
Thank you; I also see 6th level spells maximum more appropriate for the class.
It also looks like the spells list is obsolete/never updated to 3.5 (and somehow it doesn’t have that much flavor IMHO). Probably it’s best to homebrew one…
There’s certainly precedent for restricting a class to six spell levels - Paizo did it a lot in Pathfinder and Starfinder currently has no 7th-9th level spells at all.
I don’t have the document handy, but i guess in my head i thought the magician could cast spells of higher levels only if they were divinations or illusions.
I’ve not played 3.5 in a while, so clearly i need to have a look at it again. Heh.
-Fizz
Magicians are restricted to 6th level spells.
However, priests of Ruornil are able to cast 7th and 8th level “magician” spells. I would keep those lists.
However, the 9th level magician spell list is still an error. Of course, a couple of those spells are erroneously listed as 9th level spells, whereas they properly belong in the 7th and 8th level lists… Don’t know them off the top of my head, but I noticed them as I was editing the 3e rules for my own copy.
I wrote most of the Magician class for the 3.5 BRCS, but in truth I have always been unhappy with it. To me the Magician just feels like a watered-down and colorless version of the Bard class, with similar spells except for Enchantment (the Bard’s most powerful weapon) and bardic music.
I believe the 3.5 6-level Magician spell list was never completed. It’s damnably hard to make that kind of thing in a community setting and create a list most folks find acceptable.
The BRCS project was very challenging -too challenging, I’d say - when it came to creating content that needed to be drastically changed from the original 2e material. The Magician class was a prime example. It was never very attractive to play as a PC in the original 2e game, and even adding extra class abilities for the 3.5 version did not bring it up to par with core PC classes in my view.
The weakness of a 6-or 9-level spell list that only allows divination and illusion spells is that the core spell lists for wizards, sorcerers and bards simply does not provide nearly enough spell choices to make a decent spell list at 9 levels. The community here agreed that compressing it down to 6 levels would help, but it still provided a very narrow and woefully underpopulated list that desperately needs more than 2 schools to fill it out.
This then leads to a debate that (as I recall) became a very difficult-to-solve problem:
How do we reinvent the Magician spell list to become roughly equivalent to a Bard’s spell list in providing a similar number of spell options per level?
This debate was never resolved as far as I know.
You mean that you wrote the chapters for the “Rich Baker lost files” for converting 2e to 3.5?
I’m not sure that we can. The magician class I think is just there for campaign setting flavor, as a way of illustrating how specialist wizards should look like in Birthright. Those spell groups (divination and illusion) have always been limited in that regard, since the beginning of D&D.
My first instinct would be to leave it as is - I think the magician class is more like an “advisor” class than a true base class. I suspect their strength lies in skills, with some spells to provide support for that purpose.
However, I need to finish reading the 3.5 core rulebooks cover to cover, and discover if specialist wizards are treated any differently, then make some decisions regarding any revisions to the lost files chapters, complete them, before if I can offer a “fix”.
I am not sure what you mean Masterdaorin. We are normally talking about the BRCS 3.5e as being the BRCS 3e rules developed here at br.net, where we have also editted the first 5 chapters to switch to 3.5e. While we have had copies of various discussions with Rich Baker over the years (for instance, Interviews - Birthright.net ), I am not sure what you mean by Richard Baker’s lost files. The only lost files I can remember are those like his map of Aduria ( http://www.birthright.net/forums/showthread.php?t=1989 http://www.birthright.net/forums/showthread.php?t=2939 ). There was however a Dragon magazine article that discusses an 3.5e approach to the Bloodlines - https://birthright.net/wiki/index.php/Bloodlines_for_D_and_D_3_5
Sorontar
Sorry for the confusion. It’s been over 20 years since the first heady days of the BR mailing list that I was a part of and, just coming back, I’m unfamiliar with all the stuff you guys have been doing here since then! By “lost files” I meant the nine chapters available on this site that convert to 3e rules for BR.
In any case, in the chapter that discusses classes, I’m happy with the magician class as it is presented, so far - but I haven’t sat down and really attempted to digest the perceived limitedness of the class, as Osprey expressed.
When I do, if I have any suggestions on changing the magician class, I’ll come back to this thread and post them, if anyone is interested. I’m attempting right now to collect all the information into one document, and edit it as best I can to fix any errors. I have just finished, last night, before the power went out, the rough draft of my Birthright Campaign Sourcebook.
Glad to see that my Royal College of Sorcery stuff is still around! Thanks, guys! (I had lost that information… although I think I’m going to revamp the CoS in my new campaign)
I think proper credit for the 3.0 BRCS goes chiefly to Travis Doom, who was the principle author of that document.
The BRCS 3.5 project used that conversion as the basis for the 3.5 update. As Sorontar mentioned, there was very, very limited contribution or consultation by Rich Baker.
However, I think WOTC (but not Rich Baker) did sanction the BR.net community to make an official 3.5 conversion for the Birthright setting, but did not extend that permission to later D&D versions (4th and 5th ed).
Re. the Magician class, I agree that it works far better as an NPC class than trying to balance it as an equal to other PC core classes.
Ah, that makes sense now. Travis Doom - now there’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time…
Thanks for the info!
Just curious: why was it felt that an official 3.5 conversion was needed? Were the nine chapters by Travis missing information?
Oh, I think it’s fine as a PC class, too. I think these specialty spell-casters are meant to be narrowly-defined regarding their spell lists.
The magician makes for a fine counter-balance to the bard, I suppose; sorta of a “non-musical” version of the bard.
I’ve also always liked the idea of having a lower-powered PC class, as well, so that not every PC is a superhero regarding special powers and abilities.
If it’s any consolation to you, Osprey, I like the magician class that is presented in the 3.5e word document (although whether you wrote it as is, or Travis, I’m still not quite clear on now…). Can I ask you any questions regarding the 3.5e word docs that may arise?
I believe the history of the conversions is:
Dr Travis Doom wrote his version of a conversion of Birthright for 3ed - see discussions at http://www.birthright.net/forums/downloads.php?do=file&id=21 , http://www.birthright.net/forums/downloads.php?do=file&id=67 , http://www.birthright.net/forums/downloads.php?do=file&id=66
The BR.net community used that as a starting point/inspiration and sought to correct various issues about the 2ed version and created the 9-chapter-long BRCS 3e (with the consent of WotC).
When 3.5e came out, the BR.net community started to amend the BRCS 3e so it could work with 3.5e as BRCS 3.5e, but only completed the first draft of chapters 1-5. For this reason, the BRCS 3.5e chapters are only available as individual chapters, not as a combined document. The BRCS 3e is available as a combined document though.
There are still various editorial and technical errors in the BRCS 3e/3.5e. The version of the BRCS 3e/3.5e that is echoed on the wiki is exactly the same as that released as pdf files (3.5e having preference over 3e). The known errors are listed on the errata wiki page instead. This was a policy decision so there is consistency between the copies of the BRCS 3e/3.5e that are available, which will make corrections easier (if we ever do them).
There is no BR.net conversion for 4e or 5e, though there are links to various attempts by individual members of the community.
The wiki contains information about NPCs, locations and organisations that is based around the BRCS 3e/3.5e but can often easily be reconverted to other systems/versions.
Sorontar
Thanks, Sorontar! That clears things up for me.
If the community is interested, I’m going through the 3.5e chapters and fixing all of the technical/grammatical errors that I can find, and adding some new info to it, and collating it all into one document. I don’t have access to 3.5e, so that’s why I’m doing a 3e version of 3.5e chapters. I have 5e, but I think I prefer 3e… mostly because I have never played 5e yet, though it looks very similar to its predecessor.
I’m on my final draft. It should be done in a couple of weeks, barring work schedules. However, I’m adding my own stuff to it (minor though they are), so I’m not sure it will be amenable to the communities’ rules on converting the BR stuff to later editions (or earlier, I suppose, in this case - LoL) and posting it here.
As mentioned on the BRCS:Errata page, some of the corrections are not decided upon due to contradictions. Just because we know there something that needs fixing doesn’t always mean we know how to fix it (or haven’t come to an agreement yet). The Downloads page has copies of the Word docs that I think relate to the 3.5e BRCS chapters. For the 3e BRCS I think you need to convert the 3e BRCS pdf.
A lot of the Ch 6-9 content isn’t that specific to 3e but there are still issues about how warfare etc could be managed better.
IIRC a number of the changes made between 3e and 3.5e were things to character creation like feats and classes, as well as a rebalancing of the bloodline scores. I can’t remember whether anything changed related to the Scion and Guilder classes.
Sorontar
The BRCS Scion classes were all redone for 3.5. A few features were added to each, and some rebalancing was done IIRC.
I’m surprised the Scion classes weren’t made into prestige classes…
What was the purpose of giving Magicians Decipher Script and Use Magic Device?
Conceptually - especially in terms of arcane abilities - they were similar to bards, who had those skills, as did rogues.