Open Quest Magic Point Store - House Rule

Being that the first Chapter of our Open Quest PBEM game just finished and my players were eagerly ready to spend some improvement points I thought it was a good time to drop in this house rule, intended to fill in a big hole I spotted in the rules system:


A spell caster must bind themselves to a magic point store in order to use it.  

The process takes 1d20 hours to complete (and a successful skill check). Once this is complete the caster has access to the magic points in the item. PC's and NPC's can have no more than 3 bound magic point stores at any 1 time.

This rule will stop PC's (and enemy NPC's) from having endless magic point stores (granting them pretty much unlimited magic points).

This rule only applies to magic point stores that a caster can use to fuel his  own spells. If an item has the ability to cast a certain spell (wand of flame arrows) then the caster can use it until it runs out of points and it doesn't count against his 3 bound magic point stores.


Next up I'm coming back to my work on S&W house rules.  I'm working on Clerics and Wizards next.  I don't think I'm actually going to make many changes here, just new spells and different flavors that would be realms specific. 




*Pricelessly awesome bonus quote from the website where I found the picture:


 "crystals are on the "dew line of consciousness," meaning that they are going to assist us in bringing in the New World which everybody in the New Age community knows is destined to be. That's why so many crystals that went to sleep after Atlantis was destroyed, are now waking up and reemerging, and finding their way back to their keepers. In Atlantis, crystals had a much different role than they do now. There, they functioned as these huge monoliths that powered cities. Nowadays, crystals also power our world, not as these huge monoliths, but rather as small silicon chips in our computers and our time pieces."


This quote was not from an RPG gaming website, real live people actually seem to believe in the power of these crystals and that the crystals are alive and are somehow communicating with them...  


I really can't say any more about magic point stores in Open Quest or about crystals.  This quote is so awesome, I will let it stand on it's own. 


All your stupid crystals R belong to us!!!

Landing on OpenQuest

So why did I pick OpenQuest for my go to d100 gaming system over all the other competition?

1.  I ruled out the Mongoose Runequest and Legend systems due to their use of hit locations.  I really didn't like that option.  I thought it was unnecessary complexity.  They do have some really nice templates in their SRD that I think would be nice to show players of any of these fantasy d100 systems since the ideas are mostly transferrable.

2.  I actually pitched the use of the Stormbringer games to my players but none of them were familiar with the Moorcock's work and so I decided it wasn't really worth pushing the issue.  I'm also not really a fan of the Elric type magic system.  It is really great in the novels, but I'm not sure it would play out the same in a tabletop RPG.

3. I thought about starting from Chaoisium's BRP system and customizing it to what I wanted, but then I really read through the Open Quest rules and realized almost all the options they went with would be what I would probably try.

So that was how I navigated through about 9 very similar d100 systems and landed on Open Quest.

There are a few things I would add to Open Quest if I was to play it at the table (instead of over PBEM which is how I'm running my Greyhawk game).  I would definitely bring in the armor dice ruling from Stormbringer. The idea that your armor could fail you if your opponent finds the right spot is really neat to me.  Of course I would institute the same system for monsters.

In addition, the magic system in Open Quest seems to have a few small holes that if I played this game at the table I think would come up.  First of all, I would heavily restrict the use of Magic Point stores (maybe a wizard could only be "attuned" to perhaps 3 magic point stores at any one time?  And it would take ~ 1 week to attune yourself to a new one?  That would stop the obvious hole whereby a wizard with substantial $ resources could easily create tons of magic point stores that would give them 100+ magic points at their disposal...  I'm already planning to institute this rule for my PBEM game if anybody decides to try and "game" the system.

But that would be about it.  Otherwise, the Open Quest is a fully stripped down, fast and furious version of the game that allows for excellent PC customization, but also good "balance" in which most characters can do a bit of everything which is really good for small gaming groups where you don't have enough people to cover all the bases for a game requiring high levels of specialization.