Fate Points

Fate Points are a mechanic that in some ways simulates the control an author has over his heroes by placing a certain amount of that control in the hands of the players. Each player starts with however many fate points you want to give them. Three is a good number, and gains that number of points every time they reach a new level. A fate points is essentially a get out of jail free card for the PC’s. When it is played they get to survive. If their character has just reached negative 10 HP and died, it was actually just that his wounds looked worse than they were to his concerned friends. He is really on zero hit points, stable and just about to recover. Fate points can also be played in those inevitably fatal situations such as falling of cliffs onto jagged rocks. Somehow there is a pool of water in the middle of the rocks that they just manage to dive perfectly into, or the branches of a bunch of trees clinging to cliff face break their fall just enough for them to survive. The sorcerer king who is just about to execute the PCs with his howling black runesword suffers a sudden compulsion to explain his plans to our hero, then lock him up in the dungeon to be sacrificed to his patron demon at midnight, naturally the dungeon has a faulty lock or an incompetent jailor. I am sure you get the picture.

In a chainmail bikini style of campaign (see below) fate points can have an even wider application. They can be spent to justify the most fantastic coincidences if need be and the players so desire (and of course, if the DM allows). In one Thongor story for example, a huge pterodactyl carries our hero off to feed its young. Not only does he manage thus to escape certain death, but it turns out that the beast’s nest is located on the very island where the evil Dragon Kings are going to perform their sinister world-conquering ritual. This enables our hero to arrive just in time to rescue his captured friends and save the day. It’s not very plausible but it can be fun if you are in the right mood, just like the stories are.

Low Magic 

In S&S worlds you don’t usually see magic shops or if you do they are a sign of great danger as in Fritz Leiber’s wonderful The Bazaar of the Bizarre. Magicians are relatively rare in society and very often feared. They tend to be powers behind the throne and keep themselves out of the public eye as much as possible. This does have the great advantage of allowing you to stick fairly closely to normal historical models if you so desire. It also means that players won’t be able to rely on their trusty +3 blade to get them out of trouble.

Magic items should be rare and I do mean rare. Characters may well be able to go their entire careers without ever seeing a +1 sword. Players really do have to rely on their wits and their abilities and whatever they can con any PC wizard into making for them.

Learning magic should be a long painstaking and sometimes dangerous process. It should not simply be a case that the sorcerer pays his 100 XP times spell level and gains the spell. You really should know where he learns it from. It might take him weeks or months in the Great Library translating ancient manuscripts, he may have to spend days learning it from a crazy old hermit. If he wants to be able to do his own research, you should use the rules on p198 of CR II. The sorcerer still has to pay the XP cost to learn the spell as well as the research costs. He does not have to do this until he succeeds in the spellcraft roll and learns the spell.