Author Topic: Why Hennet Kan't Reed: Illiteracy and Spellcasting  (Read 1637 times)

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InnaBinder

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Why Hennet Kan't Reed: Illiteracy and Spellcasting
« on: December 15, 2008, 04:03:22 PM »
How important is Literacy to Arcanists in the grand scheme of things?  I know, technically, the answer is 'it's worth 2 skill points."  I'm talking about a setting where Literacy isn't available, which happens to be one of the regions in a homebrew setting I've been working on for a while. 

PCs from that region are, as of this writing, limited to Barbarian, Totemist, Savage Bard (UA variant), Wilderness Rogue (UA variant), Wilder, and Druid.  Wilder fits the theme, and I added Ride and Handle Animal as available Class Skill choices as a more-than-even exchange.  Wilderness Rogue I simply added Illiteracy to the Class description; if this is a significant hardship to the character in some way, I'm interested to hear opinions on shoring it up.  Druid is included as thematically appropriate and strong enough that Illiteracy isn't a hindrance in any appreciable way when you can run around all day as a Fleshraker and cast spells besides.

That gives the setting a couple melee types, a couple skillmonkeys, Divine casting, and support casting, but no go-to Arcanists.  Warmage might make a reasonable fit, I suppose, but requires a substantial rewrite of the Warmage training methods.  Sorcerer is another reasonable fit, but would I need to boost them to offset their inability to use scrolls, and if so, by how much?

Thoughts?
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Bozwevial

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Re: Why Hennet Kan't Reed: Illiteracy and Spellcasting
« Reply #1 on: December 15, 2008, 05:42:49 PM »
Don't tweak the class. All you have to do is provide an alternative to scrolls, themed appropriately. After all, a scroll is basically the energy for one or more spells bound up in an object, usable once and only by someone with skill in magic or UMD. That's a pretty broad definition--you could have magical rocks that fit that category.

Besides, people learn Common all the time. It aren't that hard.