Maritime POD now available

My little book is now available on Print on Demand at DriveThruRPG for those that prefer hardcopy. If you get the POD version the pdf is bundled pretty cheap.

Spell Memorized and Q Branch

So in every James Bond movie you have an opening scene with amazing stunts and then Bond meets with M and Q where he gets a cool gadget. He only gets one or two gadgets per movie and he never gets to take gadgets that worked well before (except the Lotus). Then at some point later in the movie Bond gets into some sticky business but it turns out the cool gadget is exactly what he needs to get out of it. How did Q know? Because the screenwriter knew.

Spell Memorization works something like that, except the player have to pick spells without the screenwriters help. They have to guess what spell might be useful today which is a somewhat impossible task and promotes more generic dungeon-useful spells. 

For Clerics, selecting spells for the day seems silly. They have no real idea what they are getting into. Clerics worship a god, and that God is represented by the GM who knows what they'll run into during the adventure. The GM should pick the Clerics spells based on the challenges they are likely to run into. Yes the Cleric should have a wider range of spells available to pick from but the GM should pick. Let the Cleric wonder why they woke up knowing Resist Cold and Lower Water this morning when they are in the desert. The GM can fill out the list with generic ones as well.

This would give the Cleric a bit more mystery, a bit more 'God' and possibly foreshadow things coming up. It acts as a really vague augery. The GM can build a few encounters specifically with spells in mind. Not rooms that require the spell as they will be fired off too soon in many cases, but even then the Cleric will knock their forehead and go that's what my God meant.

This would also work for Warlocks in 5E but does nothing to remove spell slots which are another matter entirely. Anyway just a though, maybe players would hate it.