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How to Handle Magic

A topic by Thronewolf created Mar 17, 2024 Views: 277 Replies: 3
Viewing posts 1 to 2

I'm prepping for a new campaign and am curious how magic is handled by others. Not mechanically per se, but how do the PCs learn about magic and how to wield it? What is the intended experience for how magic and its components are revealed to them? Do you allow PCs to see the spell list at all? Would Druids (or others) ever have a reason to share their magical knowledge with the PCs? Would the PCs ever start with any Druidic or magical knowledge at all, even by chance?

I know that's a lot of questions in there, I'm just a little unsure how PCs would come to understand the nature of magic and wield it for themselves.

Developer

when i've run it magic is mostly discovered by doing work for existing magic users, or learning it from any of the grimoires found.  there is also the possibility of learning some magic from one of the demon-faced coins. 

i've heard some tables leave the spell lists accessible to the players so they are instead actively seeking the ingredients rather the knowledge of the spells. personally i prefer having it all hidden, but you know your table best.

similarly, i'd shy away from starting with knowledge of magic but as above - you know your table best.

Thanks for your insight! I've continued to read all the handouts and am continually impressed how it all fits together. I see some strange ingredient or ritual and think "well how the heck are they gonna find/figure that out?" only to find a hex with a character or the item itself right there. I'm growing to trust that it has all been carefully assembled. I think my only feedback thus far is I do wish there was a way to combine all the island/land area PDFs into a single document. But I think I only say that as somebody prepping for a campaign and not one actively running it yet. I may change my tune.

Developer

the download includes all the .md files for the documents, as well as the html versions. if you spend some time getting used to pandoc you could very quickly make a pdf that combines all of them! some people have also had good experiences importing the content into obsidian.