Magic

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When in the playtest the rules for magic were introduced, people liked them. Especially the idea that the use of magic was only curbed by how much risk a wizard was willing to take, and that he could decide that by how many dice the player wanted to roll (influencing the risk of Tzeentch' Curse). However, people pointed out that under the playtest rules, wizards could cast spells with a target number under ten as often as they liked, with no risk at all. So a second rule was introduced; if you roll all ones, you fail. However, this second rule worked against the first one. And now it doesn't matter very much anymore if you roll many dice or a few; if you roll many, you have a larger risk of Tzeentch' Curse, if you roll fewer, you have a larger risk of getting all ones.

Another complaint was that Tzeentch' Curse was rather weak; it didn't have much of a bite. Only in a few instances is it important whether milk goes sour. Then there was the issue of hedge wizards. Still another mechanic, that of the hedge die, had to be invented to give them their place. So what we ended up with was a cool idea, that got marred in its execution by too many mechanics and patches, some of which were opposed to each other. I think that WFRP deserves better.

Following a discussion on the BI forums, the rule for Chaos Dice has been changed. Just adding an extra Chaos Die to every spell cast makes life much more difficult for a wizard than he'd like. In particular, the chance that Tzeentch's Curse is triggered, was increased significantly with this new rule. In order to reduce the risk to somewhat similar to the original rules, the Chaos Die rule has been modified; in the current text, Tzeentch's Curse only comes into effect when a chaos die doubles a casting die.

Chaos dice

Here is my mechanic (with thanks to Clive Oldfield, who saw the potential of the Hedge die):
When people use magic, they are playing with a force from Chaos, and that is always dangerous. To represent that in the mechanic, whenever someone casts a spell, he rolls a bunch of normal dice, but will roll at least one Chaos die along with them. Chaos dice do not count toward a spell's Target Number. Instead, they trigger Tzeentch's Curse when they match the result on one or more casting dice. So when doubles, triples, and so on are rolled with at least one casting die and one chaos die in it, Tzeentch's Curse is triggered. Collegiate Wizards and Priests will roll at least one Chaos die, while Hedge Wizards, Witches and Warlocks roll two. If the characters are in a place or time where Chaos is strong, more dice may be added to the roll.

With the above rule, the Rule of Ones is cancelled. We don't need it anymore, because wizards will not be rolling just one die (see sidebar).

Corruption

Using magic is dangerous. You are working with chaos stuff, after all, and chaos tends to corrupt. This is reflected in corruption points.

You get corruption points:
- every time when you cast a spell, and the Chaos die rolls a 10. If more than one Chaos die comes up 10, you get a corruption point for every one of them.
- when you take part in a Chaos ritual. How many Corruption Points you get depends on what sort of ritual is performed. As a rule of thumb, a character gets one point for every hour, or part thereof, the ritual lasts.
- when you come into contact with warpstone. Again, the number of corruption points obtained is variable. It depends on the size of the stone and the length of exposure. As a rule of thumb, a character would get six corruption points is he had been in contact with a fist-sized piece of warpstone for a full day.

As long as a character has less than 10 corruption points, there is no danger yet. When the character receives more corruption points, however, the player has to make a corruption test every time he gets those points. He rolls a d100, trying to roll higher than his corruption point total. If the player fails the test, he will get a mutation (rolled randomly or decided by the GM. See the page on corruption). However, when he gains a mutation, he loses d10 corruption points.

If a character's corruption point total ever exceeds his WP score, that character is lost to Chaos. It becomes an NPC; the player must create a new character.

Spell variations

These optional rules allow a wizard to vary his spells. They are modeled after the Alternative Magic Rules in Liber Fanatica II.

The spells as given in the rulebook and RoS are very specific in their effect. But these are just the default spells; with a bit of work, the wizard can modify the effects. In order to do so, the wizard must make a Channelling roll. He can then choose one of the effects in the table below. If he wants to use more effects, every additional effect lowers the roll by 10.

Effects:

Except for the first effect, all effects can be taken several times.

Spell Mastery

A wizard (with which any magic user is meant) can master spells. This costs 100 XP per spell. Several levels of mastery are possible; each level costs another 100 XP per spell.
Advantages of spell mastery:
- When casting the spell, the wizard rolls one fewer Chaos die for each level of mastery.
- When using a variation of the spell, the wizard can ignore as many -10 modifiers on the channelling roll as he has levels of mastery.

On the character sheet, record mastered spells with an asterisk for each level of mastery.

Whymme, 2006