They made the (IMO) mistake of trying to adopt the D20 magic system into BC. If you look at DCs and likely wizard-level-to-DC-range spreads, you'll see that what wizards can do at various levels matches regular D20 spellcasters, with a bit of a fudge factor (either juice up a few levels for one big spell, or throttle back and spread out your abilities). Unfortunately, in practice a few kinds of magic are overwhelmingly effective in comparison to other kinds. After some consideration, I was glad they didn't try to convert all of the Taken into write-ups, as the job they did wasn't very good. Most of the Taken they wrote up are missing at least one Talent (spell) which they actually cast in the series. In some cases (like Limper), their example text for the spell features the Taken casting it, but the Taken write-up omits that spell from their list! I think the big problem is that Black Company magic doesn't lend itself well to a traditional level-based RPG. You'd almost need a story-based approach. Alternately, you'd need a loose set of rules combined with a very watchful GM. The best way to run such a game is probably for nobody in the party to have spellcasting ability. Then the GM can handle all the magic mysteriously behind the scenes. David Richard Chilton wrote:
Here's the link to a brief article I posted on the wiki about the Black Company game.
http://en.glencook.org/index.php/Review_d20
In summary: A good attempt, but it fails when it comes to the magic system. Think Warhammer meets D20.
Richard
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