Cactus Game Design Message Boards

could be where it isnt magic that the Heros use, but where Angels bless their weapons so that they work on the Supernatural, but not where they have to use Magic for it.

Or you can pull what Doctor Who said in the episode where they meet Shakespeare, and magic is advanced Science that isn't understood by humans yet.

Van Helsing has been dealing with that kind of thing for a long time with just crossbows and holy water.

Maybe but what I recall from the movie (which is the only version I've seen) he does things that are beyond normal.  Didn't he have supernatural help of some form in that movie?  Frankenstein, a werewolf, ?  been a while. 

Part of the issue here is balancing that idea with the mechanics given in the rulebook.  This is from memory but the vampires get something like Damage Reduction of 15, regenerate 5 Hit points a round, get large bonus to strength and dexterity, have a paralyzing gaze, have a "vapor" form that can fit through cracks and not take damage, and a couple other abilities I can't remember.  Crossbows might do 12 damage on a good shot.  If the heros only have that and holy water then I think the heros would be very likely to die anytime they confronted a vampire.  The vampires do have a couple weaknesses but they would still have a pretty good chance of killing the heros before they could exploit them enough.  Keep in mind that the monster manuals also have lots of enemies that would be a lot more dangerous than a vampire.  The story should have a somewhat dangerous dark feel to it but not so much that they stand no chance or if they live they know it is because the GM cheated for them.

The d20 games seem to deal with this by having options like the wizard, sorcerer, cleric, druid, paladin, monk, etc with various very powerful "magical" abilities available to the heros.  The fighters have a chance to keep up because they get magical weapons/armor.  The other part is that if the heros do die, they have several ways to keep bringing them back from the dead like your character "dying" in WoW or other video games.  Since this will be a semi-realistic story and there is only one ressurection power, that won't be happening here.  For the other stuff I'm not sure.  I could potentially see the cleric and monk making sense but I haven't found a way for socerers, etc to fit for the heros (no problem with that for the villains). 

I also plan on taking advantage of advanced science and techno-babble but coming up with that stuff is not so easy.  I want it to be plausible or at least sound scientific.  I hope to get a couple of the supplemtal books like Future Tech to help with that but I'm not sure if they have what I want. 

magic is advanced Science that isn't understood by humans yet.

The apparent problem here is that could make sense to me with very advanced science but with near future stuff?  The list of Wizard spells include things like fireballs, lightning bolts, teleportation, transmutation, etc.  I've seen that idea with characters in books or comics but they were supposed to be from thousands of years in the future.  If a guy walks in throwing those abilities around without a huge lab then it seems pretty hard to explain even in sci-fi Fringe like way. 

If you want to try to pull the technological approach, it could be like top secret Military Technology or something like that. Or where time is irrelevant to the angels, so they have more futuristic Technology because they can go wherever they want in time.