Mercurial Magic

[Sir Bedivere]

Here are new descriptions for the three mercurials I think I'll keep. Bite is the same, but Distract and Heat have both changed a bit:

Bite
Range: 30 ft.
Mercurial
Duration: instantaneous

This mercurial strikes a living or undead target in the caster’s line of sight with a thin magical bolt of energy. It causes d3 damage and can affect incorporeal creatures such as specters. Being ‘bitten’ feels like taking a sharp, electrical jolt. A successful save vs. magic means the mercurial has no effect.

Distract
Range: 30 ft.
Mercurial
Duration: 1 round

One target in the caster’s line of sight believes he sees or hears something in a different direction and automatically turns to look, causing a -2 to all rolls for one round. This is effective even in combat, when the ‘something’ might be (if it were real) an enemy or some other danger, and it will disrupt spell casting. The target gets a save vs. magic to negate the effect. Afterward, magic using targets will know they have been the target of magic. Others will not realize they have been the victims of a magical attack. However, if the mercurial is maintained for more than one round, intelligent targets might logically conclude that it is a magical attack.

Heat*
Range: 30 ft.
Mercurial
Duration: 1 round

When cast, the magician must choose to focus the effect tightly, on a single point, or broadly, on a one foot diameter sphere. A tightly-focused effect cannot be used on moving targets. In both cases, it causes the target to be magically heated.

If tightly focused, Heat will cause pain to a living creature and result in a distraction giving -1 to all rolls for the round. It can also set one flammable object the size of a candle wick on fire. It will make non-flammable objects hot to the touch, though not hot enough to cause damage.

Broadly focused, Heat will cause a living creature to experience excessive warmth, sweating, and possibly momentary dizziness or heat exhaustion in the right circumstances (GM’s discretion). If the target is suffering from ongoing cold-based conditions such as hypothermia, it will return the body to its normal temperature, ending the effects of hypothermia, frost bite, etc. Ice or ice-based creatures will take d3 damage from a broadly-focused application of this mercurial, though a save vs. magic negates any damage. Non-living targets will become very warm to the touch.

This mercurial can be sustained and is reversible as Cool. The broadly-focused use of Cool can extinguish tiny fires such as those of candles, and it can put out a torch for a round, or as long as the mercurial is sustained. It has no effect on larger fires.

[Sir Bedivere]

Two new mercurials (kinda sorta):

In thinking about things a magician should be able to do whenever he needs to, two spells that could be converted to mercurials are Read Magic and Detect Magic.

I know, in BF it's Read Languages, and that should remain as a spell. But the ability to read spellbooks and scrolls should be intuitive. A logical problem with requiring that a magician, one, only be able to memorize spells by reading magic, and, two, to have to cast a spell in order to be able to read a magical text, is that he could never have read the text to memorize Read Magic. Making Read Magic a mercurial solves this problem. For those who want to use mercurial magic, the rules could be changed to require a magician to use the mercurial (and thus not have his concentration broken) in order to memorize his spells each day and to use magical scrolls.

For Detect Magic, making it a sustainable mercurial gives the magician another way to be useful to the party at low levels, where memorizing Detect Magic doesn't make any sense in a normal adventure. It also makes sense if we accept the idea of ambient magic and that magical items and creatures would create ripples in the environment.

[Sir Bedivere]

New Rationale:

(The old one was even wordier, I'm sorry to say. I've tried to keep this shorter and more to the point.)

There are two main goals in introducing mercurial magic into the BFRPG system. While I understand many Old School gamers are quite happy with the class capabilities and concept of the standard magic-user, many gamers are not. My first goal with mercurial magic is to increase the magic-user's capabilities at very low levels, especially first and second. My second goal was to offer an alternative class concept, an different way to envision the magic-user character. These two goals are equally important to me as a designer.

In addition to these two primary goals, I have tried to keep in mind that high-level magic-users can be too powerful. This is why the targets get saving throws and why the effects are so slight. As magic-users gain levels, their opponents will be more likely to make those saves, and the effects of mercurials are so small as to be worth very little in high level adventures.

For the first goal, in terms of increased capabilities, mercurials give the magic-user a new combat ability as well as some powers that should prove useful in supporting the party in an adventure. These should directly contribute to survival and success in adventuring.

For the second goal, the concept of the magic-user has traditionally been one of an academic whose deep studies give him the ability to embed magical formulas into his brain. When released, those formulas have powerful effects on the world. The training required is so exclusively mental that the magic-user has no real physical capabilities. This concept is a well-loved one among many Old School players. However, it is also a very frustrating one for those who do not share that vision.

Mercurials change the traditional view of the magic-user by removing some of the emphasis on the intellect and turning it toward intuition and the magician's connection to the forces of magic inherent in the campaign world. In a campaign that uses mercurial magic, the magician learns his first powers intuitively and needs intuition (in the form of the mercurial Read Magic) in order to memorize spells. He still needs those books, but there is more of the artist in him now, more of the emotions and forces of nature. If his spell book were eaten by a dragon (and he survived), he would still have some powers that he could use.