Magical powers, usually, do not just happen. Here are some of the ways you can have them develop in your game.
Here the candidate for the power undergoes the equivalent of a short adventure, undergoing a series of trials to determine their worthiness. At the end of this adventure the initiate undergoes a mystical conversion that confers whatever powers are being sought.
It is a key point that the power gained through an initiation is now a part of the character. There can be a series of initiations, each with increasing levels of difficulty and increasing levels of power. This option lends itself to the development of new initiation ceremonies designed by the player to acquire powers that they create for their characters (subject to GM approval of course).
Speak with the Spirits of the Dead: This magical tradition requires a death and rebirth initiation ceremony before gaining the ability to speak with spirits. It is decided that this initiation requires the candidate to explore a cave that has a spiritual foe within it. The candidate will be ritually killed by this spirit, and then brought back into a new existence. The manifestation of this new existence would be the skill Speak with Spirits of the Dead (MP) (d).
The magician is instructed by a master magician. This requires that the GM develop a list of the available master magicians. Eventually, you will exhaust the master's training, but that should take a long time. Check to see if you can develop new powers once you have exhausted the spells of the master and how this can be done.
Speak with the Spirits of the Dead: A magician teaches the power Speak with Spirits of the Dead (MP) (d) to your character. This is a difficult power, so it costs 4 HP to acquire it at the MP of your character. This will take 180 days to learn less the MP of the character in days, assuming the character is doing other things during the day; focusing on this and nothing else will reduce the time to 60 days.
The power is inherited from some other magician. You must check with the GM to determine if this option is available and what requirements exist for the transfer of power.
Speak with the Spirits of the Dead: A magician who is nearing the end of her life passes on the power Speak with Spirits of the Dead (MP) (d) to your character, rather than allowing it to die with her.
The power is transferred from a magician, or magical device, by magical means. The magician can possibly use magic to learn new powers on their own. Such powers exist only for the duration of the magical effect. In either case the level of success will be split between the duration and the effect. Here the effect is a number, these are treated as though they are history points. Such powers can be improved by spending HP, though once the duration ends the powers will be lowered to that of the HP spent. It is possible for specials to be acquired in this way, but only by improving the ability in the normal way (spending HP to increase the level of the power).
Speak with the Spirits of the Dead: A magician who wants the power Speak with Spirits of the Dead (MP) (d) finds a magical ring with this power. She researches a magical ritual to transfer the power and overcomes its duration in the ring.
This is identical to Transfer of Power, except in this case the power is granted by a spiritual or divine power.
Speak with the Spirits of the Dead: A spirit is conjured and grants the power Speak with Spirits of the Dead (MP) (d) to your character. You split the level of success between the number of HP and the duration. Let us say that the result is 51; resulting in a duration of 6 allowing the character to keep it for a year, and the remainder is 45 HP. This is a difficult power so you divide by 4 to get 11 difficult power pips. At the end of a year this power will go away, unless the character has increased the level of the power through the expenditure of HP.
Some races have intrinsic magical powers. More can be found on this in the description of Spontaneous Magic in the section on Natural Magic Powers.
Speak with the Spirits of the Dead: Your character's race has the power Speak with Spirits of the Dead (MP) (d). This will require a set of gestures be made over four seconds to use. Then you must speak aloud, though only you will hear the spirit of the dead speak to you.
To return to the Borigon home page.