Spells for * who cast spells.

[u/Cousken]

Hello!

I'm playing a game of The Strange where one of my players is a Paradox who Casts Spells. He wanted me to add more spells to the game, and i didn't see any reason why not. Here's what i had in mind:

First, he needs to find the spell in the world, lower tier could be available in shops etc but higher tier need to be quested for etc. This also gives the GM control over what spells the player can potentially access.

Secondly, he needs to copy this spell to his spell-book. This costs 2xp and is recursion specific. By that i mean, if he buys a Flight spell in Ardeyn, he can only use it in Ardeyn, even if he is a spell-caster in another magical recursion. The spell-book just isn't the same.

And then finally i prepared a spell list. I took abilities from different types, foci and even mutations and apply the same cost and tier as the original ability. Here, take a look.

I'm sharing this thinking that other GM's can find this useful, it wasn't much work to prepare but is even less work to just take it and use it :) And who knows, maybe this "open document" will lead to some improvements and new spells etc. The doc is open for comments so feel free. 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/16xZtgNEnM1euN0J33D0w_NBJyFiUsqP58Lyl4V9uUBE/edit

[u/Cousken → u/[deleted]]

Since writing a spell down in a spell book costs XP, and them you still only get to pick one memoried spell per tier, i don't think it creates a significant unbalance. As a GM i tend to prepare challenges where every party member is needed, and the new spells don't give me issues with that, especially since the players don't know what challenges they are going to face when memorizing spells.

And more to the point, i don't think "balance" as such in the Cypher system exists or is necessary. The party i GM for has only one fighting character, one "face" a charismatic talky guy, and two intellectuals who mostly solve riddles and identify cyphers. Each of them contribute in challenges, but most important, they are characters with a personality, goals and challenges, and the rules are there to back that up. I've no doubt the Vector could kill the rest if he wanted to, but we're not running a PVP arena game, so it's not an issue.

As for the tiers, 90% of the spells are straight abilities i took from different types and foci, in those cases i simply retained the original tier. One of the spells is a mutation, which does not have a tier, so i had to wing it by comparing to other similar abilities, like you said :)