Good points, Cameron. I personally wouldn't mix the spell point system with the current system; I think spell points are effectively superior.
The values for the spell points emerged from a chapter in ACKS Auran Empire Campaign Setting, discussing the nature of divine power. See below. They aren't balanced or anything - just mathematically derived from the underlying system.
The “psychic energy” cultivated and harvested by the gods is identical to the divine power detailed in Chapter 7 of ACKS. While the rules discuss divine power in the context of clerical magic, all magic in the world of Cybele is, in effect, a form of divine power, i.e. psychic energy. The difference between arcane and divine magic is that mages use their personal psychic energy to channel power from elemental sources, while clerics use their personal psychic energy to channel it from divine sources. For Judges who, like Pythagoras, believe that numbers constitute the true nature of things, here are the actual costs in divine power to cast each level of spell in ACKS: | ||
· 1st: 0.1 / 0.5 · 2nd: 0.3 / 1.5 · 3rd: 0.6 / 3 |
· 4th: 1 / 5 · 5th: 1.5 / 7.5 · 6th: 2.1 / 10.5 |
· 7th: 735 / 3,500 · 8th: 840 / 4,000 (ritual) · 9th: 945 / 4,500 (ritual) |
The number before the slash is how much of his own psychic energy the spellcaster must expend to channel the spell’s magic, while the number after the slash represents the total psychic energy consumed to fuel the spell. How much divine power do the gods have access to? From ACKS, we know that sacrificing a normal man to a god will yield 5 points of divine power. Sacrificing 50 normal men will yield 250 points of divine power. Alternatively, 50 average peasants will yield 4 points of divine power per week (out of a maximum of 10), or 1.6% of their sacrificial value. Given its global population of about 150 million normal men, the world of Cybele yields around 12 million points of divine power per week. There are around 2.7 million clerics in Cybele; fueling their spells only costs about 8 million divine power per week. That leaves the gods with 33% of their power available for other purposes, like creating new pocket universes, exploring the Multiverse, or annihilating troublesome PCs who dare to oppose them. (And of course the gods have more worlds than just Cybele to draw on.) |