First off, welcome to the forums!!!
I'm just getting into Novus a bit more seriously, as it looks like it might provide a shorter path for my current conversion that the mass of HERO house rules and powers I'm using right now, and hitting some of the same sweet spots at the same time (I think there's some Champions/HERO influence, right?).
Among many other sources yes. For example, there are also influences from d20, HarnMaster, The Arcanum (old rpg by Bard Games), and Talislanta, just to name a few. Since I had just come off working on Rolemaster/HARP when I wrote Novus, there is likely influence from it as well, though I specifically tried to minimize it.
One of the bigger problems with any rules/setting conversion tends to be the magic system. That's actually a major selling point for Novus, as I really like what I found in Libram #1. But, of course, a few questions remain and if anyone has suggestions for possible house rules, this would be much appreciated.
That was often the major criticism against MERP back in the day, that the RM magic system didn't fit Middle Earth (or many other settings). So I wanted a flexible system that could be adapted
1) There aren't that many limiters (i.e. negative modifiers) in the spell bases, so it's a bit hard to judge how much they'd be worth. Are there some that could be "reverse engineered" from existing spells?
Let's use invisibility spells as an example, what would it be worth if you turn visible when you attack (like bog-standard D&D)? How much would you get back if only you turn invisible, not your clothing or equipment?
I would consider "turning visible when attacking" to be a core component of invisibility, mainly because it is a balancing factor, to keep characters from turning invisible and simply walking through the dungeon slaying everything from behind. As such, I would not allow that component to be removed.
Now as for the idea of only making the body invisible, not the items, the guideline to use is the cost of the core ability, and the subtraction should never be as great as the core ability cost. So, to make just the body invisible, I would say that about halves the power, so we halve the cost (rounding up), so a +3 for codified becomes +2, and the +5 for Improv becomes +3
2) Healing has no "scaled healing" option, but judging from the core spells, I assume it's +2/+4?
Yes, +2/+4 should be considered the standard for any option not specifically listed (or priced, though sometimes, I used the costs of the nearest applicable option as well -- if I remember correctly, it has been about 4 years since I wrote most of that).
3) Some mages, witches etc. might have personal magical items -- staffs, cauldrons, scrying globes. These are progressively imbued with special abilities that are only usable to the enchanter, i.e. it's not a generic magical item. I'm not quite sure how I would model this. I could just do a bunch of talents. On the other hand, I could take a hint from the Summon Familiar spell and just make them all spells. Possibly even as a separate school ("ritual magic"?), although . I think in both cases there'd be lots of hand-waving regarding the costs...
4) Now what about alchemy? Sounds a lot like #3 to me.
Yes, the Alchemy rules ARE the item creation rules. In fact, I just recently (and finally) finished writing them, so I will be releasing them in the next couple of weeks, once I finish a another pass through them to check them, and make sure I haven't missed them. They actually include rules for things that are not mentioned in the core rules, such as rune stones and enruned items.....
5) Would using SP to lower the CTN break thing noticeably, as a general adept ability? Any ideas about the ratio?
Using Spell Points to lower the Casting TN? Considering that the Spell Point cost is based upon the Casting TN, that is kind of counter-intuitive to my way of thinking, especially since the casting TN also represents the difficulty level of the spell as well.
I am not sure if it would break things, but if you do that for your game, I would definitely recommend not using a 1 to 1 ratio. More like 2 or 3 Spell Points for each CTN point that is removed (since the casting options increase CTN 3 points for every additional SP increase).
