The theme of 2017

I have been looking back at a few posts from this year. One of the recurring themes seems to be that none of us are in love with Channelling magic. I have stated that you could do away with it and roll the spell lists into mentalism and essaence very easily. The very core concept that Channelling magic is an act of god makes no sense at all when you take Shadow Worlds gods into account as they are not divine beings, just very powerful mundane ones.

Brian’s rewrite of the respective clerical base lists really shows what Channelling could have been but isn’t.

Does channelling magic need more love?

I think the problem with the Channelling realm is twofold. The first is Life Giving. If it is in your campaigns and generally available then it takes a major element of threat out of your games. If you don’t allow it then you have taken the one thing that Channelling can do that no one else can out of the game.

The other problem is the Paladin. This the ultimate icon of the Channelling realm. The pin up boy of heroines everywhere. To make the Paladin work in off the shelf Rolemaster required all sorts of patches and fixes. The RoCo1 profession is generally considered overpowered and without the ‘transcend armour’ skill potentially non functioning. If you play with fully featured encumbrance rules then the Paladin is in trouble again.

On the other hand a Mentalism Paladin works just fine and there is already a profession. I mean of course the Noble Warrior, that is a Paladin without gods.

The Forgotten Realms is the setting for my campaign. In this setting the idea of clerics Raising Dead is not a problem. It cuts both ways in that dead characters can be brought back but so can evil villains and an arch Nemesis. (Do you reckon the plural of Nemesis is Nemesi? Spell Check doesn’t like it!)

I have a game running right now that is RMC pretty much Rules As Written (RAW). That game has professions and all three realms. I am hoping to start a game later this year with my profession-less, level-less, Realm-less and with emphasised Stats. If that test game works as well as I had hoped and the players have fun then that could be the death of the Channelling Realm for me!