I recently read the Trus20 book, True Sorcery. It is a skills based magic system built off of the OGL. Spells have a DC and are cast by a Spellcraft check. The spells deal fatigue damage to the caster. As a caster gains levels they acquire a pool of magic power points. Passively they function like energy resistance to the fatigue damage. So if you have 5 power points you would subtract that from the fatigue dealt by casting a spell. Used actively each point grants a one time bonus of +10 to a Spellcraft check for casting. You regain one point  a day through rest. So long as you have hit points you can keep casting. This is the system in a highly simplified nutshell.

   Now for my question. Has anyone here used it? Because after a read, I can't grasp how it is superior to the base OGL system. You can create *any* spell you can think of which is nice. There are a handful of basic spells (Fire Lore for example) that can be augmented in many ways. Each augmentation driving up the DC level. Lots and *lots* of flexibility. But some of the examples given (recreating classic OGL spells) have insanely high DC ratings. Like absurdly high. So high I can't grasp how you cast them.

   The other issue I see is that the system looks like it would be used in one of two ways: A caster creates a new spell for any given situation. Tailoring his casting to the encounter perfectly. Which would cause the scene to grind to a complete halt while the player designs their spell on the fly OR they create a handful of 'go to' spells and cast them over and over. Which doesn't seem any better than the base OGL system to me.

   Does anyone have any personal experience with this system? Because it just seems like a whole lot of work for not enough gain to me. I would like to get a few opinions before I do a review. TIA.

Quote from: Tetsubo;435816I recently read the Trus20 book, True Sorcery. It is a skills based magic system built off of the OGL. Spells have a DC and are cast by a Spellcraft check. The spells deal fatigue damage to the caster. As a caster gains levels they acquire a pool of magic power points. Passively they function like energy resistance to the fatigue damage. So if you have 5 power points you would subtract that from the fatigue dealt by casting a spell. Used actively each point grants a one time bonus of +10 to a Spellcraft check for casting. You regain one point  a day through rest. So long as you have hit points you can keep casting. This is the system in a highly simplified nutshell.

   Now for my question. Has anyone here used it? Because after a read, I can't grasp how it is superior to the base OGL system. You can create *any* spell you can think of which is nice. There are a handful of basic spells (Fire Lore for example) that can be augmented in many ways. Each augmentation driving up the DC level. Lots and *lots* of flexibility. But some of the examples given (recreating classic OGL spells) have insanely high DC ratings. Like absurdly high. So high I can't grasp how you cast them.

   The other issue I see is that the system looks like it would be used in one of two ways: A caster creates a new spell for any given situation. Tailoring his casting to the encounter perfectly. Which would cause the scene to grind to a complete halt while the player designs their spell on the fly OR they create a handful of 'go to' spells and cast them over and over. Which doesn't seem any better than the base OGL system to me.

   Does anyone have any personal experience with this system? Because it just seems like a whole lot of work for not enough gain to me. I would like to get a few opinions before I do a review. TIA.

I used it once, and it went pretty much as you described. The wizard player had to calculate on the fly until getting a few combos that seemed pretty effective, then would spam them, maybe tweaking them slightly.

I haven't tried it yet, as I used it with true20, and have ended up not using true20 much anymore, but it seems to me the book would be much better to be used for creating a custom magic system for one's campaign, rather than having wizard players create spells on the fly. Have them research and devise spells during down time, and then when the dookie hits the fan put a real world time limit on how long they can spend creating and/or tweaking spells. They can still create custom magic for non-combat situations, with the character in-game getting out their books of magic and muttering around as the other PCs spar or give the wizard hell, but in the intense action of combat the wiz just doesn't have the time to improvise unless they're really good at it. The system with fatigue and such isn't bad in and of itself, it's just trying to come up with custom spells to use. That's what magical laboratories are for IMO. If I use such a system again, that's how I'll approach it.

What a waste of good potential that game turned out to be.

RPGPundit

I agree. They took a great incarnation of the d20 system and then made it bland, with bland settings and uninspiring support. I really like the actual system itself, and still have all my stuff for it, but I find GD3 to be easier and quicker to prepare for modern settings, Trav and SC3 much better suited and more interesting for sci-fi, and MRQII, older versions of D&D, or even AO and IG much easier and more fun to use for fantasy. I originally wanted to use True20 for modern/espionage games, but I find GD3 much better suited.

Bland would be the central defining word, yes.  You'd almost think they wanted it to fail.

RPGPundit

Quote from: Tetsubo;435816Does anyone have any personal experience with this system? Because it just seems like a whole lot of work for not enough gain to me. I would like to get a few opinions before I do a review. TIA.

I've never used it in actual play, but after reading the book a couple of times I tend to agree with your thoughts: This is a whole lot of work for too little gain.

Sounds pretty similar to the casting system in Slayers d20. You roll a check vs. spell DC, and took less "drain" (nonlethal damage, or lethal if you want to boost the spell) the better you succeeded. Having levels of a casting class gave you a bonus on such checks, and you could add to that by doing things like reciting an appropriate invocation (changing the spell to a full round action).

Quote from: Sigmund;436102I agree. They took a great incarnation of the d20 system and then made it bland, with bland settings and uninspiring support. I really like the actual system itself, and still have all my stuff for it, but I find GD3 to be easier and quicker to prepare for modern settings, Trav and SC3 much better suited and more interesting for sci-fi, and MRQII, older versions of D&D, or even AO and IG much easier and more fun to use for fantasy. I originally wanted to use True20 for modern/espionage games, but I find GD3 much better suited.

What's GD3? SC3?

Quote from: Blue Seraph;437067What's GD3? SC3?

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