Welcome to the second part of the playtest of Ultimate Magic, a new sourcebook for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, due to be released early next year.
We received a great deal of valuable feedback on the new magus class, but now we are going to take a look at something quite a bit different. This section of the playtest takes a look at a new way of using magic in the game with Words of Power. This system allows spellcasters to "build" their own spells, creating variable and versatile effects. Since the system is so different and new, it is not part of the Pathfinder Society organized play program, but you should give it a try in your home game or maybe in a game designed specifically to test these rules.
In this playtest, we are just giving you a small part of a greater system, representing the basic pieces needed to play a sorcerer or wizard using Words of Power. These elements can and will be applied to other classes, and indeed many of the "words" are tagged for classes outside the scope of this playtest, for now we are just focusing on the wizard and sorcerer. Once you've had a chance to play with these rules, you can post your results to the playtest messageboards. If you just want to give some general feedback or ideas, you can also check out the feedback messageboards.
This playtest cycle will last two weeks, until Monday, December 6th. We also hope to release another draft of the magus in the coming days, for a bit of additional playtest based off the feedback from the first round.
So, get a copy of the Words of Power system and use it in your game. We look forward to seeing your constructive feedback and playtest reports. See you on the boards.
...I dig it. I haven't had enough time to really get into the mechanics of it and figure stuff out, but it looks great (really reminds me of Elements of Magic) and I'm psyched for it. I'll be playtesting it later this week, and I'm really thankful that after the last playtest you folks are letting us touch it at all.
i've downloaded the pdf and looked at it briefly and while i think it's very cool and personally love systems like this i just want to warn GM's who are going to let players test this... even if they know the system (or say they do) systems like this can slow the game down tremendously! before i moved, i used to play a lot of hero with my old gaming group, and while it is an awesome system (i so love point-buy systems) having a player or two with variable power pool (essentially allowing a character to come up with ANY power within the limitations of his pool, which could be crippling to cosmically powerful) the game would slow to a crawl as the player in question would draw up a power for the situation. this would only really apply to spontaneous casters but it can be a problem. so be forewarned!
that being said, it doesn't look as cosmically powerful as a hero system cosmic power pool when used with a sorcerer, so it may not be much of a drag on the game. though it does look cool and i look forward to testing it and seeing how it plays out.
p.s. i also realize there are players out there who take FOREVER to go when they're playing a simple fighter..... a 3.5 fighter..... with nothing special...... 3... 2...... 1........ 1/2.......... alright next player :P
Kevin Mack
