From:	sfeley@*****.com (Stephen Eley)
Subject:	SR4: Incompetent
Date:	Fri, 4 Nov 2005 11:42:29 -0500

On 11/4/05, Lars Wagner Hansen <l-hansen@*****.tele.dk> wrote:
> I'm in the middel of creating a character. The character is a Mystic Adept,
> but he is only ever allowed one spell, and will not be able to counterspell,
> cast ritual spells, summon, banish or bind spirits.

First: when I saw your Subject line, my first thought was to reply
"Don't worry, many people are." >8->

On your character concept, that sounds very specialized to me. If I
were the GM I wouldn't allow the "Incompetent" quality for skills the
character never has any intention or need of using, even if it's just
to balance the books for Magic Rating.

I think the simpler approach might be to invent some sort of a "Magic
Knack" quality that lets you intuitively cast one single spell for,
say, 10 BP. For purposes of that one spell, assume a Magic equal to
Intuition. You can't apply sorcery skills to this spell -- it's just
something you "know how to do" -- so your spellcasting roll defaults
to the Intuition attribute as well. You cannot take more than one
Knack, and it should never be common in the world at large.

That makes it relatively cheap since you don't have to buy into any
skills or attributes, but still a non-trivial cost. You won't be
*good* at the spell -- you'll roll (Intuition - 1) for it all the time
-- but to me that's a feature. People who want to be good at spells
really ought to study them and take the whole suite of skills and
Magic.

--
Have Fun,
Steve Eley (sfeley@*****.com)
ESCAPE POD - The Science Fiction Podcast Magazine
http://www.escapepod.info