The GIT! wrote:

Another point - I notice that the Requirement lists do not mention the option of Group Rituals (ie the cultists all gathered around the sacrifical victim, chanting unmentionable, abominable and evil incantations while the sorcerer proceeds with summoning the demon from the pits of hell). Surely it would be worthwhile adding that in and coming up with a simple formula (maybe based on numbers and relative abilities) to help reduce the costs of AC and Difficulty as well.

I would have sworn that this was in the list. yeah, using that as a potential Requirement for sure

About the monthly recovery of AC, well I would say that a PC sorcerer would be more than willing to perform a 3rd magnitude ruitual form time to time. In fact, for some reason, it seems that is is *precisely* when they have PCs around that they try to perform those rituals. Dunno why In any case the sorcerers are likely to spend 3-6 months living out of their Evil Sorcerer (TM) adventure earnings when the adventure ends, more than enough to recover all their AC, like the PC do. I would say that NPC would do the same. We are playing the high starring light moment sof the life of the characters.

During the downtime they are also likely to spend some of their earned XP in recovering their lost attributes. If tthey have a strength of 0, for example, getting it back to 0 (fell to -1 after the ritual) only costs 1 XP. Not difficult. [Actually, rising the attribute from -1 to 0 *earns* you 1 XP if you apply the RAW, but that sounds so stupid that let's assume it costs 1 XP instead]

All this is precisely because NPCs *are* threated as player characters, and this is why they would not care much about the needed time to recover their AC. Not the other way around. And well, you always have the option of recovering 1 AC by sacrificing an innocent in a level 1 ritual. House rule territory, but suitably evil and sorcerous enough

That might be relevant for PCs, but in general NPCs are unlikely to care much about AC recovery. And well, if you just blasted a city out of existance you ar eunlikely to find many eople retailating during the next 2 or 3 months anyway xD
The potential (fairly easy) failure of the BIG Ritual of Death (TM) due to a bad die roll is what makes me believe that a way to improve the success chances should be paramount for the guys casting the spell. Otherwise it seems difficult to understand some of the preparations being performed by the sorcerers in S&S stories if they could simply fire away and damn the world.

Hi there!

I have to say that I got Legendary BoL from a friend around a week ago with the one order: "Read it. Now". I complied and I have to say that I just LOVE it! Fantastic piece of rules-light rulebook. :D Great work here. I can only say that I would have put the info on backgrounds before the careers (it sounds more natural that way to me) and to express my somewhat puzzlement at the magic system. The rest is just plain amazing.

Now on magic.

I think magic works, and works well as a system. What I fail to see is how it related to the stories of Thongor and Conan. Basiucally, a fairly low level sorcerer (level 1 or 2) seems able to cast the BIG spells (2nd and third magnitude) without relying much in the extra perks. If he is powerful like the enemies of these heroes tend to be, the bad guy could reasonably cast the ritual without perks at all. As such, him waiting for the full moon, the virgin to be wrought in, the psycophants to chant for 2 months and the altar to be smeared in black goat blood seems somewhat unnecessary. He could cast it anyway without all these things to lower his energy requirements.

And then, he has a fairly large chance of failing miserably by rolling average and not reaching the target number. Even if our heroes are just stitting around doing nothing.

This is not what we see in the (great and cheesy) sword and sorcery genre. There we see months of preparation and all those perks being ABSOLUTELY IMPRESCINDIBLE (or a huge boon) to cast the spell. Reducing power is certainly adviseable (and mandatory if you do not have enough Arcane Power in your reservoir) but to a certain point. Maybe reducing the difficulty of the spell could be considered as a secondary bonus you could get from the extra perks? Like, -1 per perk that you do not dedicate to reducing the AC requirement. That would make the madman accumulation of perks something worthwhile, especially for the big spells.

Or maybe I am missing something?

ANy other alternative magic