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Post by Doomy on Jan 28, 2005 20:06:18 GMT
If you are playing all books in sequence and reach the Grandmaster Series, would it be "legal" to award yourself whichever Lore-Circle bonus you do not already possess? As the GM series assumes you have ALL Magnakai Disciplines, this would seem to make sense - another hidden "loyalty bonus" perhaps?
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Post by Sol on Jan 28, 2005 20:20:03 GMT
Doomy,
I never have any problem doing this. If you have played all the books of the Magnakai Series, it would only make sense for you to award yourself the final Magnakai Discipline at the end of Book 12.
On the other hand, if you had only played a handful of the Magnakai adventures and then skipped to Book 13 (ie Book 6, 7, 9, 11, then 13) I would guess that you should only get the bonuses for 7 different disciplines of your choice. That would be my opinion, anyway.
Sol
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Post by Peregrine on Jan 28, 2005 20:29:56 GMT
This one is a loyalty bonus, yes. Only if you gain a Lore-circle bonus by playing the Magnakai series can you use it in the Grand Master series.
Note, though, that completing book 12 lets you take another Magnakai Discipline. If you've completed all the previous books, this is the last Discipline, and so you also get the last Lore-circle bonus at this point (or the last two if the Discipline you left out is Huntmastery).
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Post by Doomy on Jan 28, 2005 20:54:43 GMT
Exactly what I thought- I just wanted another opinion since there's nothing explicitly stated in the books. Thanks!
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Post by Sol on Feb 1, 2005 19:36:56 GMT
Don't you ever wonder about the Grand Master Skills of Kai-Alchemy and Magi-Magic? I mean, how is it that these count as Grand Master disciplines? Banedon knew left-handed magic in Flight From the Dark, so wouldn't Lone Wolf start out at a low level of training with Kai Alchemy?
The suggestion seems to be that it is *just* as powerful as Lone Wolf's other Grand Master skills, such as the power to turn invisible, spirit-walk, protect armies with his Kai-Screen, etc.
Is it just me?
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Post by Peregrine on Feb 1, 2005 21:45:01 GMT
Yes. I've never necessarily seen them as 'just as powerful'. What really makes them powerful is the fact that Lone Wolf is already a Kai Grand Master, so adding some magical punch to his Kai abilities really pushes up his potential. It's like multiclassing, if I may be forgiven the d20 allusion. (And if I may be forgiven a minor digression, it's also the biggest flaw I've seen in most attempts at converting the Kai Grand Master to d20 rules. Though I think most of these fall down on trying to integrate the Grand Master and New Order rules. It'll be interesting to see how Mongoose do it if/when they publish epic rules...) As for internal explanations, it's probably because Lone Wolf was sort of on his own once he got to Grand Master. The ranks before that were known, codified, and set in tradition. Once he was into unknown territory, he probably found that branching out into magic not only added to his versatility, it... enhanced his own abilities, or something. That explains why he needed to get both the magic Disciplines to reach Supreme Master (which isn't just an arbitrary now-I've-learned-it-all point, Kai actually bestowed new powers on Lone Wolf when he got this far).
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Post by Nathan P. Mahney on Feb 2, 2005 2:22:43 GMT
I think that in some ways the Left-Handed Magic and the magic of Dessi are almost as powerful as the Grand Master Disciplines, even at their lower levels.
Think about the basic Kai Disciplines. Apart from the psychic abilities, they're things that a regular person can learn. Tracking, Hunting, Weaponskill and even Camouflage are nothing out of the ordinary. If anything, all of the Kai Disciplines are just primers for the Magnakai stuff.
In contrast, Banedon at this level is flinging lightning bolts around. Sure, it's limited by his Endurance Points, but he can do a lot of stuff that a Kai Master couldn't even dream of, and that the Magnakai Disciplines are just starting to touch upon in their initial stages.
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Post by BenKenobi on Feb 2, 2005 11:07:01 GMT
There's a limitation to the power of wizards. Fight against them in one-on-one combat at a short distance... I just wanna see who is the strongest !!! It would win the Kai warrior, of course. ;D
Wizards have limitations: they cannot launch an infinite amount of spells. In book 1, it says that Banedon is "depleting his energy", or something similar, and he needs help before it's too late.
The magic that Lone Wolf learns is just the "Battle" Magic, spells that can be used in battle. Lone Wolf doesn't learn "all" the magic, but just that kind of spells that could be useful to a warrior. Like the Vakeros: they learned from the Magi the battle spells, they're not wizards.
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Post by Ghost Bear on Feb 2, 2005 17:43:37 GMT
The power levels of the spell schools was never the problem I had. My big problem was that they counted towards achieving Kai Supreme Mastership. For a long while, I thought that these 'outsider' skills (IE: Not those internal to the Kai Monastery) shouldn't be a requisite of achieving Supreme Mastership, and all the benifits (Kai Weaponcraft, for instance) that this meant.
Then I came to realise that it made perfect sense. To achieve the ultimate goal of true knowledge and power, it makes sense to me that a Kai has to learn some of the skills of other Good aligned organisations throughout Magnamund. After all, it makes sense that the Magi and the Brotherhood have been touched by the gods too.
-GB
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Post by Sol on Feb 2, 2005 17:51:02 GMT
Ghost Bear,
Well put! Outsider skills, yes, that's exactly how I felt. I suppose if you wanted to pursue the idea of Oneness being the way to Enlightenment, well, that could make sense as a way to extend one's skills even further.
I see now, my brother
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Post by Peregrine on Feb 2, 2005 20:07:13 GMT
Yes, well put, GB. That's the sort of idea I had, but I think I lost it in amongst all the other stuff I was trying to say in my post. Plus it explains why the New Order Grand Masters have several more skills to learn from, all of a 'magical' nature. (Though I think a better system might have been to keep the ranks from the GM series and only require two, again, to be a Grand Master.)
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Post by Sol on Feb 2, 2005 20:31:29 GMT
Also weird: not many will have seen this, but I noticed that the Grand Master Ranks are different in the New Order series - different than those shown in the Grand Master series! This seemed a little unsettling to me. Also weird: there are even MORE than 12 Grand Master disciplines to choose from - I don't know what to think of this either.
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Post by Peregrine on Feb 2, 2005 20:45:06 GMT
My point exactly. Though the ranks aren't different themselves - it's just the number of Disciplines required that changes. There are four more 'magic' Disciplines to acquire (Herbmastery, Elementalism, Bardsmanship, Astronomy, as I recall), and you start at Kai Grand Master Senior... with four Disciplines! A lot of people have wondered about the fact that you reach Supreme Master with only fifteen out of sixteen Disciplines, but it's the jump to four from the start that bewilders me.
As I said, I think the best system would be if New Order Grand Masters still only needed twelve Disciplines, but could pick and choose from among the 'magic' ones. (Whether they'd need ten Kai + two magic, or fewer Kai + more magic, I don't know. I'd favour the former though.)
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Post by BenKenobi on Feb 5, 2005 10:58:30 GMT
The new skills of New Order are some of the new powers the god Kai gave to Lone Wolf, after he became a Supreme Kai Master, I suppose. So you must learn them, in order to become a "real" Supreme Kai Master. Lone Wolf had them directly from Kai, as a gift. This doesn't apply to his students ! Two of them remind me of the lesser magic of the Shianti... like the magical powers of Grey Star. Herbmastery = Alchemy Elementalism = Elementalism The other 2 skills... well, the author just wanted to create some new skill, and he had poor ideas about Bardmanship and Astronomy... why a Kai needs to play musical instruments to become a Supreme Kai Master ? I've found that Astronomy is the most useless of all the powers of a Kai Grand Master, in the New Order books. It is used very few times, and almost always it is useless. If you see well... you can become a Supreme Kai Master with just 15 disciplines. You always play the final book of a serie without one discipline !
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Post by Peregrine on Feb 6, 2005 6:52:06 GMT
I disagree. They don't strike me as being the sort of things Kai would bestow upon Lone Wolf for becoming a Supreme Master ("Here, my beloved son, I shall give you the gift of song--because frankly, you kick arse and all that, but your hymns give me a Naar-sized headache."), and I doubt that Lone Wolf would then go and teach those special gifts to his students. They'd have to attain them the hard way, as he did--no shortcuts!
The similarity to Shianti powers isn't coincidence, I say. The four extra powers are, like Kai-alchemy and Magi-magic, just non-Kai powers which the Grand Masters branch out into to round out their abilities.
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