[PnP] my first post - a few very noob questions

[Dan Abbott]

    1) Can magic users wear armor and does it affect their ability to cast
spells? From my reading so far, I assume magic users can wear whatever
they like with no penalty. That seems strange to me.
   
  There's one answer here that I have notably not yet seen, and that is that Sidh mages cannot wear iron armor.  The game master for our group placed one solid limitation on each form of magic, basically so that if the mages are captured the captors have some way to disable their magic without killing them.  Sidh magic can't be done while touching iron.  Wizardry requires hand movement so binding or breaking the hands and fingers disables them.  Shaman's have to use an instrument of some kind for centering, usually a drum.  Taking it away prevents them from casting.
  

2) Are there any house rules to take OCV/DCV or the target's
agility/dex (or anything) into consideration when targeting them with
ranged weapons? It seems that an active person should be harder to hit
than say, a tree. So far it seems the only difference between
targeting a human and a tree, is that a human could choose to use his
shield if he has one (although I suppose he could dodge if he wanted
to give up his turn).
   
  Generally you can add the PMR moved that round as a modifier, but, as has been pointed out, the DCV has no bearing.  DCV is based on combat skill, but the person isn't in combat.  They're being shot at.  Dodging an arrow from a bow with a decent draw weight is only slightly easier than dodging a bullet.  Someone else pointed out that the tree has penalties for being imobile, and of course shield EL can be added if the character sees the shot coming.

3) Are there any house rules to keep the all-mighty Status roll from
making or breaking a new character? It seems that so long as you make
a status of 3 or higher, you don't really need to spend any initial
increases on cash. So now you have both a cash advantage and a
skill/character point/experience point advantage over characters with
a status of 1 or 2.
   
  Status gives your character a starting point, but don't look on it as a make or break point.  Having different levels of initial wealth and influence can make for interesting differences and character interactions.  For instance, the Station 0 guy who basically buys a loin cloth, rips a branch off a tree, and says "Okay, I'm clothed and armed" is going to have some very different perspectives and experience to draw on from the pampered noble.  He'll almost certainly be better equipped to survive in the wild or when they're crawling through the underbelly of Trillas because the noble ignorantly flashed some magic and there's now a nationwide manhunt for the party.  As the saying goes, it takes all kinds.  That said, you can conciously make a group decision to play a limited social class group: an all-noble campaign, an all-merchant campaign, an all-soldier campaign, an all-pauper campaign, etc.  That is entirely up to you though I would urge you to consider carefully the
 ramifications of the decision given the area your campaign is going to be set in.

4) Can I assume that most P&P GMs are VERY liberal with spell success
modifiers? It sure seems like the players can romp all over the NPCs
without them. As an example, "Abandon"; I like to assign a 5 to 10
penalty if the target is already leery of the caster, up to 25 if they
are already in combat. Meanwhile, I would consider a bonus of around
10 if the caster can cajole the target into a discussion to at least
consider "forgetting all your woes" before casting his spell.
   
  Most spells give plenty enough modifiers/limits, but magic IS very powerful in this game.  One of the things that took me a long time to get through my head is just how powerful and how little you should trifle with it.  If you feel your players don't appreciate the gravity of the magic system then you should start dropping the bombs on them.  I actually made the mistake of playing a young but powerful elder mage who didn't know her own strength for my first character and after more than a year of gameplay with her having died in the first 3 months our party is STILL encountering her aftermath.  We've had to clean up everything from a party of pissed off villies cursing a city to the equivalent of a Sidh Bore Tonah.  The villies she pissed off because in transporting soldiers to the city to head off an invasion she tore up their land with a Whirlwind spell.  The Sidh Bore she bound with a ward pact to protect her belongings.  It was still protecting her belongings from
 beyond the grave which included a slice of prime farm land in a very poor area.  It would show up anytime anyone tried to take anything as small as a rock or twig from the land.

5) I do see ambush rules, but are there any rules (House or otherwise)
that dictate how soon two groups of travelers will see each other in
the wilderness? Or who will see each other first? The skills don't
seem to account for sensory perception very much – is that generally
ignored in games that you folks run?
   
  This is generally a Survival roll for the appropriate terrain with a multiplier to the skill for success chance based on distance.  At extreme distance you might give them an EL or EL/2 chance of noticing each other. At close range ELx8 or ELx10.  It depends on the type of terrain and how far ahead they can see.  At one kilometer it is unlikely one person could pick out another person unless they are in a salt flat type desert.  Even then heat rising off the sand might make it impossible to see beyond a half kilometer.  In moderately thick forest they couldn't realisticly see one another beyond 75 feet.  As has been pointed out, the GM has to do some brain work on this one.
  
By the way, I live in Tarpon Springs, Florida and am always looking
for interested gamers. We're going to the Necronomicon in October 5,
2007 at the Hyatt in downtown Tampa. A bunch of gamers get together
there each year. No P&P so far, but you never know what might show up
on the schedule.

  For the record, I live on the Illinois side of the river just NE of St. Louis.  We game in Maryville, IL.

       
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