A couple of quick Freebooters rules questions.
1) I’m assuming that for the fighter’s Signature Weapon and the Thief’s Tricks of the Trade starting moves, the player can opt to take an additional weapon/trick in place of an advanced move any time they reach an odd numbered level. Is that true?
2) This one’s not really a rules question, but I see that the Magic User has a move to inscribe a new spell into their spell book. Any suggestions on how often often the Magic User should get access to new spells to copy?
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1) You are correct, sir.
2) I tend to make spell acquisition challenging, emphasizing the idea that magic is volatile, crazy, secret stuff. I would say for us it’s somewhat rare for Magic-Users to acquire new spells, but their seeking out magic and magical knowledge can be a driving part of the game.
In our current campaign, we’ve established that wizards are deeply possessive of their knowledge, and value their spellbooks more than anything else, taking great pains to encode the contents. The only new spell our Magic-User acquired was from an NPC wizard, as part of a deal for doing a favor for her. And even then she demanded to learn one of his spells in return.
In our previous campaign, the Magic-User went into a curiosity shop and searched for magic scrolls. I had her roll to Get Lucky, and she did. We rolled up a spell (“Voltuva’s Dart of Fire”), but then she had to Defy Danger with INT to transcribe it successfully. She rolled a 10+, so there were no ill effects other than the scroll bursting into flame after she transcribed it. It felt a little common to find a scroll in a shop, but the incident did serve to illustrate that you had to be careful around magical stuff.
Jason Lutes Thanks for the description of how you handle new spells! It’s very much along the lines of how I was planning to approach it as well. I sort of equate finding a new spell with gaining a new move, and wanted it to be a fairly big deal, but the group has already planned their first dungeon expedition and during setting generation, when I asked “What great treasure was recently found there?” they said “a spell book”, so I know they are hoping to gain some new magical knowledge. Of course, they’ll have to get past the iron golems, the abomination, and maybe even the Lich to do so…
…and then of course the spellbook itself might be warded, if the wizard who owned it was worth his brimstone. Perhaps the spells are tattooed on his corpse, carved into the stone walls, or written in the smoke that rises from a magical brazier.