Balancing Blaster Wizards (Design Philosophy)

[Talakeal]

(This thread is about my own system, link in sig, but it is conceptual and close enough to D&D or similar fantasy adventure games that you don't need any specific knowledge).


One of my players is unhappy with playing a wizard in my system.

In short, spells are powerful, but limited, you get to cast a dozen or so each mission. (The equivalent of D&D's 4-6 encounter adventuring day).

There is a feat that, each time it is taken, allows you to choose one spell to cast an unlimited number of times.

Spells that require a roll to hit deal roughly as much damage per round as a martial character would.

There are spells that don't require a roll to hit, but they typically deal less damage, are situational, and aren't available to every school.

My player doesn't like using ranged to hit roll spells because there are too many penalties, primarily cover and shooting into close combat.

At the same time, they don't like using melee to hit roll spells because they are a delicate little cloth wearer and don't want to get close to the monsters. (This isn't an innate part of the system, but rather part of the player's build and the wizard "class fantasy").



So then, my player:

Doesn't want to take a damaging spell as an unlimited cast because they feel like they would be doing no better damage than a martial archer and less than a martial melee.
Doesn't want to take a non-damage spell as an unlimited cast as there are no utility spells that are useful every round in every combat.
Doesn't want to cast damaging spells using spell slots because spell slots are better spent on utility spells when the situation is right.
Wants me to buff damaging spells so that casting a damaging spell (in combat) is always as useful as casting the optimal utility spell for that situation.


My philosophy is:

A "batman" wizard is balanced against a martial character by their limited number of spells, otherwise they are clearly superior to other characters.
A "blaster" wizard has much greater utility than a martial character, and so should not be able to exceed a martial character when it comes to dealing consistent damage in combat. (Equal is ok, as are spikes.)
An archer needs to have situational penalties or lower consistent damage; otherwise there is no reason to ever make a martial character who is constrained in only being able to deal damage while adjacent to the enemy.



Thoughts?

[JNAProductions]

The main thing that strikes me is that ranged combat is only superior if you have a front line or distance advantage.

If you have a front line of brutes to hold enemies back, ranged combat is better.
If you can start the combat from 400' away, ranged combat is better.
If you only have ranged peeps and get swarmed by melee mooks, you should be at a heavy disadvantage.

I'd be hesitant to put too many penalties on ranged combat, especially if the game is supposed to have teamwork.

[Pauly]

It depends a lot on HP, especially HP bloat as PCs/enemies level up.

A martial cans wing his or her sword all day. A blaster wizard only gets a limited number of shots.
Going on 4-6 fights and 12 spell spots that means wizards get to cast 2-3 spells per encounter. If a martial typically only swings their sword or looses an arrow 2 or 3 times an encounter then that seems roughly balanced.

Assuming a blaster wizard/martial comparison the aim should be comparable damage per encounter or comparable damage per adventuring day not comparable damage per attack.

The trouble is of course if the caster’s damage output per turn is set too high to offset their limited number of actions per encounter then it inevitably leads to the 5 minute adventuring day.

[Xervous]

One interesting detail you’ve overlooked is that archers generally get shafted (pun intended) in terms of options even when compared to melee martials. Trip, disarm, grapple and the like have their own valuations and may just suck. Good, situational or bad they only tend to present as special options for archers, rather than baseline ones. Many games (D&D like or war games) implement some mechanics that either penalize ranged units in melee, or are only available to melee units for use in melee.

An important question to ask on the ranged / melee topic is whether the system expects melee only, and ranged only units to avoid getting caught in pinch points (and how frequently at that).

Conversations on build resources split across combat and noncombat investments are extremely hard to settle. Even within a campaign the valuations will vary adventure to adventure.

The phrasing of archers having to deal with downsides is a little vague. It’s far better to observe that ranged gameplay has easy to access counterplay and interaction. Melee exists in a binary of CAN or CANNOT attack, they are all or nothing on positioning. Ranged units interact with cover and range intervals at the very least. They have more available targets generally, but those targets have a greater say in how vulnerable they are.

The GM needs to take action for cover and positioning to matter, the balance of ranged units is partly tied up in tactics.


On blaster wizards: hard to quantify because of variable resting patterns.


Edit: my opinionated closing note is that anything built to only do straightforward damage all day deserves to be underwhelming. Mix in a curse that increases damage on the target and transfers to nearby enemies on death? Mix in an attack that imposes conditional damage if the victim does or doesn’t do X? That’s where things get interesting. It’s not direct apples to apples anymore, and it makes things play and feel differently. Opportunity attacks accomplish this, a conditional free attack for melee that provides a tradeoff to encourage enemies staying in melee or avoiding certain actions in melee.

[Talakeal]

It depends a lot on HP, especially HP bloat as PCs/enemies level up.

A martial cans wing his or her sword all day. A blaster wizard only gets a limited number of shots.
Going on 4-6 fights and 12 spell spots that means wizards get to cast 2-3 spells per encounter. If a martial typically only swings their sword or looses an arrow 2 or 3 times an encounter then that seems roughly balanced.

Assuming a blaster wizard/martial comparison the aim should be comparable damage per encounter or comparable damage per adventuring day not comparable damage per attack.

The trouble is of course if the caster’s damage output per turn is set too high to offset their limited number of actions per encounter then it inevitably leads to the 5 minute adventuring day.

This is more or less the same logic my player is operating off of.

Of course, for the price of a single feat, you can now cast said direct damage spells all day every day, and still have the same full suite of utility spells. This is how it currently stands, and such a character is already, arguably, better than a martial.

If the damage of the spells was balanced off of limited casts per day so that they could do a days worth of damage in a few rounds, but then still had the option for unlimited casting of the high damage spell, as well as full utility, that is, imo, a grossly OP character.


Basically; my player feels that a wizard's direct damage spells need to be either as plentiful as arrows OR as powerful as the (more limited) utility spells.


One interesting detail you’ve overlooked is that archers generally get shafted (pun intended) in terms of options even when compared to melee martials. Trip, disarm, grapple and the like have their own valuations and may just suck. Good, situational or bad they only tend to present as special options for archers, rather than baseline ones. Many games (D&D like or war games) implement some mechanics that either penalize ranged units in melee, or are only available to melee units for use in melee.

That's an interesting point that I hadn't considered.

I don't believe it holds true in my system, as there are a few melee only maneuvers, and a few ranged only maneuvers, but most can be used in either case.

Spells, of course, have a full suite of metamagics that dwarf them both.


An important question to ask on the ranged / melee topic is whether the system expects melee only, and ranged only units to avoid getting caught in pinch points (and how frequently at that).

Pardon my ignorance, what exactly is a "pinch point"?

[Xervous]

Pardon my ignorance, what exactly is a "pinch point"?

Generally, a pinch point is a region where something might hurt you if you don’t avoid it, like getting your fingers hurt by the gears in a manual hedge clipper or closing the drawer on your fingers.

In terms of games, it’s a place (typically outside the intended use case) where something undesirable and potentially avoidable happens. For a melee only character it could be flying monkey archers. For a ranged only character it could be surrounded on all sides by kobolds, or automatons that always teleport adjacent to the archer. In other words, I’m talking about a time when the X only character will be wishing they could also do Y where X and Y are a pairing of MELEE/RANGED.

[NichG]

Putting aside the specific player, I would say:

- Martials shouldn't be defined as not having utility. They should just have different kinds of utility.
- Rather than making numbers balance and using limited ammo per day as an extra factor, I'd rather focus design on the decisions someone has to make during an encounter, and have classes be differentiated by the different sorts of decisions they're making.
-- Ideally the structure of combat is paced in such a way that characters built around versatility and correct decision making are too busy doing other things to want to do their standard pewpew.

So for example, the questions that a melee player has to answer are:
- Can I take out this enemy before they take me out, given that we will be exposed to each-others full force?
- How can I get to or be where I need to be in order to actually deploy my damage?
- Where should I focus fire?

A ranged blaster normally is answering very similar questions, except that they swap 'how do I position myself so as to not draw fire?' in place of the first question. So that's not all that different really, maybe not the best line to draw between classes especially if a melee fighter can also pick up a bow and use it competently.

As an example of one alternative: I might make the blaster different by having their damage have a different profile over time, which requires a bit more intelligent target selection and coordination with the rest of the party. For example, a ranged blaster with a one-two punch sort of setup: the first round they can start a targeting sequence on a specific enemy (dealing no damage), and in the second (and third, and fourth...) rounds they do 3x the per-round damage that a sword or bow based character would deal but only to that target (so basically 50% more damage on average by the second round, and 100% if they can continue on the same target on a third round). Or even they do a single pop at 4x, but then they need to put up the targeting sequence again. Or even just simply something like 'if they pull off the targeting sequence and it isn't invalidated, they auto-hit with their followup at 2x normal' so its beneficial for them to prioritize the enemies that are hardest for the others to hit, but they're not doing more damage on average against an easy-to-hit enemy. On the one hand, their average damage is significantly higher, but on the other hand they suffer the costs of 'that enemy still gets an extra action to damage/kill/etc us or to negate my targeting effect' as well as the issue that someone else dropping that enemy or making the enemy an invalid target in the mean time means they wasted their charge-up. You could make this gentler by e.g. letting them tag multiple potential targets as they level (from which they still need to pick one) or letting them get abilities that permit them to swap targets when one becomes invalid, at the cost of a damage reduction down to the normal per-round damage of a per-round attacker (which still means they wasted an action, so this is effectively half-normal-DPR when they misjudge).

Another example would be spells that create suppressive fire zones by creating 'turrets' that can stack action economy as the fight progresses, but can't move. So for example the spell could create a fixed turret with a 90 degree any cone of fire out for 120ft, which each round can attack a target within that cone for 'normal DPR' damage, including the round that its summoned. However, the caster can keep summoning turrets up to an eventual maximum of 4 or 5. But since the turrets are fixed, if enemies are mobile, they can prevent that buildup by moving in such a way that the turrets can't layer - if they can afford to cede that ground, and if someone else isn't pinning them in place somehow.

That's a simple pattern, but the idea is to create interesting decisions which can be made correctly or incorrectly, and let that modulate the effective power so it can either be weaker or stronger than another character based on how well the player understands making that particular kind of decision. The important thing is what kinds of considerations and decisions the abilities introduce in order to be used well. Then when those decisions are made correctly, its fine if it results in something more powerful than a minimal decision baseline (which would e.g. be an archer plinking away from safety).

[Spore]

My two cents but only because I recently got into Dark Souls/Elden Ring and spells are viable in these games but often only as a supplement. First of all, spells use ressources so their damage must always be higher than an arrow or a sword.

Secondly, you have to have the time to actually cast it. Some sort of reverse initiative (fastest person goes last, but can attack casters making their powerful spell fail). Thirdly adjust the majority of spells to be at medium range, the range that can easily be traversed if no hindrances are in the way. Long range spells get "penalties" from that, either your hit rolls, less damage, or no side effects above a certain threshold (say a fireball does not inflict burning status).

Lastly give the player options to "protect" their casts. Be it other defensive spells that reduce incoming damage and dont allow for interruption. Maybe an incantation circle that makes spells almost instant. And of course give rider effects to your blasts. Fireballs do more damage on burned victims, acid does periodic damage, cold slows and lightning staggers (halves actions each turn with a chance).

Part of why I never/always see Fireballs in D&D is because they are easy and boring. Roll damage, apply damage, done. There is nothing interesting about them.

[Talakeal]

First of all, spells use ressources so their damage must always be higher than an arrow or a sword.

Out of curiosity, do you value versatility at all?

Because IMO, even if spell slots are more limited than swords, a sword is just a sword all day long, while a spell slot can do practically anything.

[King of Nowhere]

(This thread is about my own system, link in sig, but it is conceptual and close enough to D&D or similar fantasy adventure games that you don't need any specific knowledge).


One of my players is unhappy with playing a wizard in my system.

In short, spells are powerful, but limited, you get to cast a dozen or so each mission. (The equivalent of D&D's 4-6 encounter adventuring day).

There is a feat that, each time it is taken, allows you to choose one spell to cast an unlimited number of times.

Spells that require a roll to hit deal roughly as much damage per round as a martial character would.

There are spells that don't require a roll to hit, but they typically deal less damage, are situational, and aren't available to every school.

My player doesn't like using ranged to hit roll spells because there are too many penalties, primarily cover and shooting into close combat.

At the same time, they don't like using melee to hit roll spells because they are a delicate little cloth wearer and don't want to get close to the monsters. (This isn't an innate part of the system, but rather part of the player's build and the wizard "class fantasy").



So then, my player:

Doesn't want to take a damaging spell as an unlimited cast because they feel like they would be doing no better damage than a martial archer and less than a martial melee.
Doesn't want to take a non-damage spell as an unlimited cast as there are no utility spells that are useful every round in every combat.
Doesn't want to cast damaging spells using spell slots because spell slots are better spent on utility spells when the situation is right.
Wants me to buff damaging spells so that casting a damaging spell (in combat) is always as useful as casting the optimal utility spell for that situation.


My philosophy is:

A "batman" wizard is balanced against a martial character by their limited number of spells, otherwise they are clearly superior to other characters.
A "blaster" wizard has much greater utility than a martial character, and so should not be able to exceed a martial character when it comes to dealing consistent damage in combat. (Equal is ok, as are spikes.)
An archer needs to have situational penalties or lower consistent damage; otherwise there is no reason to ever make a martial character who is constrained in only being able to deal damage while adjacent to the enemy.



Thoughts?

I assume that feat to cast a spell for free has limitations? I don't think you'll let your wizard cast banshee's wail all day.

And it's very hard to judge. my experience in balance to the table is that only the table is qualified to assess it. there are too many variables. really, when i was less experienced I tried to get advice from the forum for balance; I got a worse deal than I could have done myself. there is just too much stuff that only applies to your table that you intimately know, and nobody else here knows.
so the best advice on how to balance I can give on this forum is: don't trust forums in regard to balance.

So, once established that I cannot tell you what to do, I can give you an additional factor to consider: can the fighter get buffed to increase his damage? Can the wizard do the same?

because using buffs correctly makes a world of difference.

[Kane0]

Sounds like your player doesn't want to (overly) risk his magic not working, but also doesn't want to be penalized in damage/effectiveness for deciding that.

Assuming your system is actually balanced and he hasn't legitimately hamstrung himself through no fault of his own, you may just need to plant the foot and say no, with the appropriate explanation from both the in game and out of game viewpoints.

If the player is actually in a poor position mechanically speaking, or has (appropriate) thematic goals that are not being matched by the mechanics, then it is on you as the game dev to correct that. This will mean getting additional data from the player, and potentially reading between the lines of that feedback to correct a root cause rather than the symptoms.

[Talakeal]

Sounds like your player doesn't want to (overly) risk his magic not working, but also doesn't want to be penalized in damage/effectiveness for deciding that.

Assuming your system is actually balanced and he hasn't legitimately hamstrung himself through no fault of his own, you may just need to plant the foot and say no, with the appropriate explanation from both the in game and out of game viewpoints.

If the player is actually in a poor position mechanically speaking, or has (appropriate) thematic goals that are not being matched by the mechanics, then it is on you as the game dev to correct that. This will mean getting additional data from the player, and potentially reading between the lines of that feedback to correct a root cause rather than the symptoms.

That's how I feel. But "balance" is such a subjective and negative term that I thought it would be best for me to float his opinions by the forum to see if they actually have any merit or are just kvetching.

[Kane0]

That's how I feel. But "balance" is such a subjective and negative term that I thought it would be best for me to float his opinions by the forum to see if they actually have any merit or are just kvetching.

We cannot speak for a system you have tailored yourself. In the end it becomes a question of 'is overall game balance more important than the experience at this particular table, this particular time'

I'm inclined to prioritize harmony in the given instance rather than a theoretical use case, even if I were publishing my own system ironically enough.

[GeoffWatson]

Most wizard players hate balance. To them wizards have to be the best and smartest and most powerful and most versatile.
Other characters can be better at mundane, boring **** like swinging a sword, but that's not really important.
(Unless there's a spell like Tensers Transformation so the wizard can be best at that too.)

[MetroAlien]

sorry for starting with a tangent, but your description reminded me of a browser flash game (remember when those were a thing?)

TL;DR
don't underestimate squishiness/tankiness. I say that because you only talk about damage output in your examples.

basically the game was a turn-based RPG without positioning, distance etc... just click on an action to use it, then the enemy acts.

Wizards dealt elemental damage, flavoured as spells that use mana with each attack, and some utility, like shields, stuns, buffs, debuffs.
Fighters had higher health, flavoured as wearing armour.

This all sounds reasonable, if a bit cliche, by itself.
On paper, the wizard sounds "obviously better" than the fighter, given the higher potential for damage when hitting an elemental weakness and added utility.

In practice, wizards had to use both health and mana potions, and do so more often than the fighters due to having lower health.
This significantly decreased their damage output over multiple turns, making turns a precious resource, which in turn (pun intended) meant it was impractical to "waste" turns on utility spells.

So wizards were weaker, while simultaneously costing more money than fighters, despite potentially dealing more damage with each individual attack.

----

going back to your example,
you say that ranged attacks are "simply better" but is that really the case?
How many ranged hits (not just attacks) can a character get in your system before they are forced into close-quarters combat?

If the answer is closer to 5 than 20, then we're not talking about a primary ranged character. We're talking about a squishier, weaker melee character, who has a situational opportunity to sometimes deal "normal" damage.

You say utility makes wizards "simply better" than a pure martial class,
but are there ample chances for your wizard to use said utility, while gaining the same benefit as dealing damage?

Martial characters are not devoid of utility either.
They can position themselves and use zone of control to manipulate the flow of battle. They can distract enemy rangies and keep enemy assassins at bay through sheer presence.
Basically, the majority of tactics in D&D like games plays around martial characters, rather than pure damage wizards.
And they do all that while also still getting to swing their sword!
For free!
Forever!

Can your wizard get similar utility as a martial character?
Without sacrificing damage output?
without risking more than the fighter in terms of % of health in damage to themselves? (5 dmg to a wizards health is more than 5dmg to the fighter!!!)
Without locking themselves out of other options for the rest of the encounter due to resources?
Without locking themselves out of other options for the rest of the campaign due to level progression?

[Dasick]

Depending on how frequently it happens, having an innate feat to be able to shoot fire out of your hands has it's own advantage over using a ranged weapon - you can't be disarmed and you can't run out of ammo, and you can easily conceal your weapon.

I think there is a deeper issue with how "wizards" are played in role playing games. Chucking fireballs and taking names, with intelligence only really being useful for that modifier. I think it's pretty cool how much the magic users in your system are defined by their utility, and casting the right spell for the situation, and that your player recognizes how powerful the utility spells can be.

None of this would convince your player of being wrong I'd wager though

A possible solution to satisfy "fireball chuckers" would be to add more powerful damaging spells that require several spells or extensive set up to cast. Either through set ups (you use a spell to douse enemies in flammable grease, then you chuck a fireball) or because casting "meteor shower" requires you to cast several specific spells as part of the larger spell ritual. Having to burn through several spell slots will give the unlimited casting feat utility as it would be reducing the number of spell slots you need to burn through and give you a back up. It would also be something that will be denying your player those utility spells that they don't want to burn through.

Another possible solution would be to allow magic users to put temporary enchantments on weapons they use that make the magic user decent enough to deal consistent damage with it or to mitigate certain penalties (depending on school), or give themselves "fireball hands" that allow the player to chuck fireballs for the duration of the cast. If the enchantment lasts a mission, it's using a spell slot for a consistent damage output, which is not the same as using a feat for that. "Why not just be an archer that can cast spells and those enchantments?" - the enchantment should give the magic user decent rolls, but nothing compared to a dedicated martial player, be vulnerable to disenchantment and spell protection and losing that specific enchanted item, it might be just barely enough to last a mission, or be situational or dependent on other spells being cast to really excel and surpass the martial build in terms of damage output.

[MrStabby]

(This thread is about my own system, link in sig, but it is conceptual and close enough to D&D or similar fantasy adventure games that you don't need any specific knowledge).


One of my players is unhappy with playing a wizard in my system.

In short, spells are powerful, but limited, you get to cast a dozen or so each mission. (The equivalent of D&D's 4-6 encounter adventuring day).

There is a feat that, each time it is taken, allows you to choose one spell to cast an unlimited number of times.

Spells that require a roll to hit deal roughly as much damage per round as a martial character would.

There are spells that don't require a roll to hit, but they typically deal less damage, are situational, and aren't available to every school.

My player doesn't like using ranged to hit roll spells because there are too many penalties, primarily cover and shooting into close combat.

At the same time, they don't like using melee to hit roll spells because they are a delicate little cloth wearer and don't want to get close to the monsters. (This isn't an innate part of the system, but rather part of the player's build and the wizard "class fantasy").



So then, my player:

Doesn't want to take a damaging spell as an unlimited cast because they feel like they would be doing no better damage than a martial archer and less than a martial melee.
Doesn't want to take a non-damage spell as an unlimited cast as there are no utility spells that are useful every round in every combat.
Doesn't want to cast damaging spells using spell slots because spell slots are better spent on utility spells when the situation is right.
Wants me to buff damaging spells so that casting a damaging spell (in combat) is always as useful as casting the optimal utility spell for that situation.


My philosophy is:

A "batman" wizard is balanced against a martial character by their limited number of spells, otherwise they are clearly superior to other characters.
A "blaster" wizard has much greater utility than a martial character, and so should not be able to exceed a martial character when it comes to dealing consistent damage in combat. (Equal is ok, as are spikes.)
An archer needs to have situational penalties or lower consistent damage; otherwise there is no reason to ever make a martial character who is constrained in only being able to deal damage while adjacent to the enemy.



Thoughts?


Firstly, kudos to you for being open minded about this. Its easy for the creator of a system to see that players have different expectations and think the player is wrong, or to think they don't understand balance - just because they have a different view to you.

There are a few things that I would start by asking/saying:

1) What actually happens in play? Now what could happen or is expected to happen - what actually happens. If there are great utility elements for casters but they don't get used because the players jump to violence every time, or if the utility elements are used but out of a three hour session those utility uses take 6 minutes whilst combat takes 100 minutes then you sense of the importance of things is going to be quite different to that of your players. Balancing utility and combat and then hand-waving away utility will rarely work. One of the other things to flesh out and might be a game style thing, is consequences. Consequences for failure in combat is frequently death. Consequences for not getting a message through in time might be a a big plot twist, but the consequences might not fall on the players... or frequently there is another way to get a message through or another way to circumvent the consequences. DMs tend to give a lot of second chances when it comes to utility rather than "well you didn't find the treasure map. Your characters insead live out their lives in relative obscurity in their local village We will now spend the next 8 sessions playing PnP Farm Simulator". It may be metagamey, but realistically the immediate, experienced dramatic consequences for a failure to be good at something is not always that deep.

2) What does the player want gameplay to be like for them? What is their balance of risk and reward and how does their character choice reflect that? You seem to have a sense of what they want to be good at, but how deep does that go? Damage - yes, but single target or crowds? Do they want some iconic spell they frequently use - or is part of the experience they desire to be picking the right tool for the job? How do they measure success - peak damage, average damage, turns they contributed on?

3) Versatility is cool, but only if people want it. I have played games where I have had a character in mind that focusses on specific things, then the DM gives out loads of magic items to help them do other things... and then argues that my character shouldn't do the tings it was actually focussed at being good at because it was so "versatile". Its a tough call in a class based sysem - each class will have beloved abilities and more peripheral abilities that just don't mean as much to the players. Some features just wouldn't be bought in a point-buy system. Thise are all opportunities - if an ability/capability is of low value to a player but other players feel it encroaches on their role, then it is a grea one to change.

4) Others have mentioned defence, but its worth emphasising a bit more. Not even just defence but a lot of passive abilities. Can speed be related to athletic prowess? Can you use an injury system based on toughness so more delicate characters suffer penalties more easily? Can saves be better for martial characters (I am not saying that things like academic study are not sometimes hard, but the sheer will to keep going in the moment isn't like what is needed to run a marathon - D&D's pushing of will saves to casters for example might be a bit odd). A tweak of the system to allow somewhat debilitating but not catastrophic debuffs more readily might make DMs more comfortable using them and therefore allowing a martial's ability to resist them to come up much more often.

5) If you are using spell slots, measure what isn't done as much as what is. A wizard that has enough spells for 5 encounters and only faces 5 encounters isn't actually going to feel very limited. If the wizard faces 10 encounters but 5 of them are pretty trivial, then they still won't miss their resources much. As long as the marginal value of that extra spell slot is high, the caster can feel that their limitations are meaningful. Wizards tend to be very powerful as whilst they might not be able to turn around every encounter, they can frequently choose which ones to do - dominating encounters is ok if it isn't systematic, but dominating the most epic, fun and generally importnt encounters is an issue. Justifying greater spell power on the basis of limited useage can work for a pretty abstract notion of balance, but realistically not every encounter is as important.

6) Your impact is what you actually do. Any option you might have had for a turn that you didn't actually use has no particular value. Versatility adds power over specialism where doing something more appropriate is better than doing something inappropriate but better. I think that a real balance here is great - to enable both to be viable. I would suggest that most of this is not just about classes but fundamentally about game srtucture. As an example I look to D&D 5e where hitting 0HP is a bit of a big deal (in terms of incapacitated is a powerful status effect) but anywhere else your remaining HP doesn't matter - as a result healing is unlikely to be a great thing to do even if you get massive bonuses to healing. The bonuses from good positioning are modest compared to Ensuring your game has the right balance of rewards

I think that it would be useful to make sure your sustem supports a baseline capability for most classes for different functions - utility, damage, control, crowds... whilst there might be some suplimentary strengths and each would deliver on these roles in their own and very different ways, it would at least ensure there is a cost to specialising. Exchanging being worse at something you were so bad at that you would never do anyway, in exchange for being better at something you would like to do as much as possible is a bit of a trivial no-brainer.


Spells that are better or worse at hitting than martial attacks - even if they use similar mechanics does sound interesting. It may make one option better vs high AC enemies, and others better vs low AC enemies (or whatever equivalent to AC is in your system).

[Talakeal]

Most wizard players hate balance. To them wizards have to be the best and smartest and most powerful and most versatile.
Other characters can be better at mundane, boring **** like swinging a sword, but that's not really important.
(Unless there's a spell like Tensers Transformation so the wizard can be best at that too.)

Lol. True that.

Although in this case it pretty much is the wizard wanting to be better at swinging a sword than the swordsman, its just that the sword happens to also be magic.


don't underestimate squishiness/tankiness. I say that because you only talk about damage output in your examples.[/I]

Absolutely true.

But squishiness is not an innate part of being a spell-caster in my game. Most players do choose to play traditional feeble-bodied robe clad wizards or knights in shining armor, but that isn't a requirement of the system, and a reckless fragile duelist or heavilly armored tank-mage are both possible builds, so I didn't balance offense against defense at this level, although some schools of magic are slanted one way or the other.

The closest thing is that wizards need both their hands free to cast spells at full effectiveness so cannot easily use a shield, but I already balanced their offensive abilities against two handed weapons to account for it.


How many ranged hits (not just attacks) can a character get in your system before they are forced into close-quarters combat?

If the answer is closer to 5 than 20, then we're not talking about a primary ranged character. We're talking about a squishier, weaker melee character, who has a situational opportunity to sometimes deal "normal" damage.

Couldn't give you a precise answer. Could be zero, could be infinity.

Depends so much on numbers, builds, terrain, etc.

But, I will say, the unless you are in 1:1 with a fast, sticky, opponent, you are still going to be able to use ranged attacks in melee, even if it isn't optimal.


You say utility makes wizards "simply better" than a pure martial class, but are there ample chances for your wizard to use said utility, while gaining the same benefit as dealing damage?

There is almost always going to be a spell that is better for the current situation than dealing damage. Whether or not a given wizard knows the right spell or is willing to expend the spell slot...


Martial characters are not devoid of utility either.
They can position themselves and use zone of control to manipulate the flow of battle. They can distract enemy rangies and keep enemy assassins at bay through sheer presence.
Basically, the majority of tactics in D&D like games plays around martial characters, rather than pure damage wizards.
And they do all that while also still getting to swing their sword!
For free!
Forever!

None of that is exclusive to a martial character though.

Wizards can do all of that, often better than a martial.

Most of them don't, however, because they typically have better things to do, both in terms of build choices and how to spend their turns in combat.


Can your wizard get similar utility as a martial character?
Without sacrificing damage output?
without risking more than the fighter in terms of % of health in damage to themselves? (5 dmg to a wizards health is more than 5dmg to the fighter!!!)
Without locking themselves out of other options for the rest of the encounter due to resources?
Without locking themselves out of other options for the rest of the campaign due to level progression?

Depends on how you build the character.

As I said in the OP, for (the equivalent of) a single feat, a wizard can choose a spell to be able to cast unlimited times.

With this feat, they deal ~ the same damage as a martial character without losing out on any of the above without sacrificing any of the utility or resources of their other spells.

IMO this is a balanced trade off, but my player, on the other hand, thinks I should balance a caster to be significantly better at damage dealing than a martial to balance out the spell slots lost without this feat.


Depending on how frequently it happens, having an innate feat to be able to shoot fire out of your hands has it's own advantage over using a ranged weapon - you can't be disarmed and you can't run out of ammo, and you can easily conceal your weapon.

For sure.


A possible solution to satisfy "fireball chuckers" would be to add more powerful damaging spells that require several spells or extensive set up to cast. Either through set ups (you use a spell to douse enemies in flammable grease, then you chuck a fireball) or because casting "meteor shower" requires you to cast several specific spells as part of the larger spell ritual. Having to burn through several spell slots will give the unlimited casting feat utility as it would be reducing the number of spell slots you need to burn through and give you a back up. It would also be something that will be denying your player those utility spells that they don't want to burn through.

A dedicated evoker is basically going to out-damage everyone as is because they have so many different direct damage spells that they will almost always have just the right spell for the occasion. Whether or not they are willing to expend the spell slot on any given round though, that is the question.


Another possible solution would be to allow magic users to put temporary enchantments on weapons they use that make the magic user decent enough to deal consistent damage with it or to mitigate certain penalties (depending on school), or give themselves "fireball hands" that allow the player to chuck fireballs for the duration of the cast. If the enchantment lasts a mission, it's using a spell slot for a consistent damage output, which is not the same as using a feat for that. "Why not just be an archer that can cast spells and those enchantments?" - the enchantment should give the magic user decent rolls, but nothing compared to a dedicated martial player, be vulnerable to disenchantment and spell protection and losing that specific enchanted item, it might be just barely enough to last a mission, or be situational or dependent on other spells being cast to really excel and surpass the martial build in terms of damage output.

Those are already options in my system.


We cannot speak for a system you have tailored yourself. In the end it becomes a question of 'is overall game balance more important than the experience at this particular table, this particular time'

Maybe not in specifics, but we can certainly try and quantify just how valuable things like power, versatility, and endurance / consistency stack up against one another as a general design principle.


I assume that feat to cast a spell for free has limitations? I don't think you'll let your wizard cast banshee's wail all day.

There are limitations, but not that one.

My system doesn't use vancian casting, rather a set number of casting attempts per mission, and more powerful spells are less likely to go off successfully. So unlimited attempts to cast banshees wail aren't innately more powerful than infinite attempts to cast magic missile.

The actual limitations are that you have to wait until the previous spell's duration expires before casting it again and that spells which simply create resources out of thin air are intelligible.

Not that this has too much bearing on this discussion.


So, once established that I cannot tell you what to do, I can give you an additional factor to consider: can the fighter get buffed to increase his damage? Can the wizard do the same?

because using buffs correctly makes a world of difference.

Both characters can get buffed. I will say that buffer wizard + buffed fighter is probably a more effective combo than self buffed wizard and unbuffed fighter though.


- Martials shouldn't be defined as not having utility. They should just have different kinds of utility.
- Rather than making numbers balance and using limited ammo per day as an extra factor, I'd rather focus design on the decisions someone has to make during an encounter, and have classes be differentiated by the different sorts of decisions they're making.

-- Ideally the structure of combat is paced in such a way that characters built around versatility and correct decision making are too busy doing other things to want to do their standard pew-pew.

So for example, the questions that a melee player has to answer are:
- Can I take out this enemy before they take me out, given that we will be exposed to each-others full force?
- How can I get to or be where I need to be in order to actually deploy my damage?
- Where should I focus fire?

A ranged blaster normally is answering very similar questions, except that they swap 'how do I position myself so as to not draw fire?' in place of the first question. So that's not all that different really, maybe not the best line to draw between classes especially if a melee fighter can also pick up a bow and use it competently.

This is all true.

I am not making the stupid "guy with a pointy stick vs. guy who can rewrite reality by will alone" argument you often see in these threads, but I will say that they are fundamentally different sorts of utility. Violence is the ultimate form of conflict resolution, and swordsmen and gunslingers make for really cool action heroes and fun gameplay, but at the end of the day, each school of magic allows you to rewrite 1/15th of all natural laws; that is a whole different level of utility than can conceptually be attributed to a weapon skill.

Note that I am talking about skills here, not characters. There are very few things a wizard can do that a martial simply can't, but they aren't all based around skill with a weapon.

Most characters can do both melee and ranged, but are typically only specialized in one. Likewise, all casters have atleast one form of direct damage, although they aren't all optimal for all situations.


Generally, a pinch point is a region where something might hurt you if you don’t avoid it, like getting your fingers hurt by the gears in a manual hedge clipper or closing the drawer on your fingers.

In terms of games, it’s a place (typically outside the intended use case) where something undesirable and potentially avoidable happens. For a melee only character it could be flying monkey archers. For a ranged only character it could be surrounded on all sides by kobolds, or automatons that always teleport adjacent to the archer. In other words, I’m talking about a time when the X only character will be wishing they could also do Y where X and Y are a pairing of MELEE/RANGED.

I see.

I would say its really more of a spectrum than a singular point, and that most players will be feeling "the grass is always greener" in any encounter where their build isn't optimal, but obviously some are more extreme than others.

This bears further thought.


Firstly, kudos to you for being open minded about this. Its easy for the creator of a system to see that players have different expectations and think the player is wrong, or to think they don't understand balance - just because they have a different view to you.

There are a few things that I would start by asking/saying:

1) What actually happens in play? Now what could happen or is expected to happen - what actually happens. If there are great utility elements for casters but they don't get used because the players jump to violence every time, or if the utility elements are used but out of a three hour session those utility uses take 6 minutes whilst combat takes 100 minutes then you sense of the importance of things is going to be quite different to that of your players. Balancing utility and combat and then hand-waving away utility will rarely work. One of the other things to flesh out and might be a game style thing, is consequences. Consequences for failure in combat is frequently death. Consequences for not getting a message through in time might be a a big plot twist, but the consequences might not fall on the players... or frequently there is another way to get a message through or another way to circumvent the consequences. DMs tend to give a lot of second chances when it comes to utility rather than "well you didn't find the treasure map. Your characters insead live out their lives in relative obscurity in their local village We will now spend the next 8 sessions playing PnP Farm Simulator". It may be metagamey, but realistically the immediate, experienced dramatic consequences for a failure to be good at something is not always that deep.

2) What does the player want gameplay to be like for them? What is their balance of risk and reward and how does their character choice reflect that? You seem to have a sense of what they want to be good at, but how deep does that go? Damage - yes, but single target or crowds? Do they want some iconic spell they frequently use - or is part of the experience they desire to be picking the right tool for the job? How do they measure success - peak damage, average damage, turns they contributed on?

3) Versatility is cool, but only if people want it. I have played games where I have had a character in mind that focusses on specific things, then the DM gives out loads of magic items to help them do other things... and then argues that my character shouldn't do the tings it was actually focussed at being good at because it was so "versatile". Its a tough call in a class based sysem - each class will have beloved abilities and more peripheral abilities that just don't mean as much to the players. Some features just wouldn't be bought in a point-buy system. Thise are all opportunities - if an ability/capability is of low value to a player but other players feel it encroaches on their role, then it is a grea one to change.

4) Others have mentioned defence, but its worth emphasising a bit more. Not even just defence but a lot of passive abilities. Can speed be related to athletic prowess? Can you use an injury system based on toughness so more delicate characters suffer penalties more easily? Can saves be better for martial characters (I am not saying that things like academic study are not sometimes hard, but the sheer will to keep going in the moment isn't like what is needed to run a marathon - D&D's pushing of will saves to casters for example might be a bit odd). A tweak of the system to allow somewhat debilitating but not catastrophic debuffs more readily might make DMs more comfortable using them and therefore allowing a martial's ability to resist them to come up much more often.

5) If you are using spell slots, measure what isn't done as much as what is. A wizard that has enough spells for 5 encounters and only faces 5 encounters isn't actually going to feel very limited. If the wizard faces 10 encounters but 5 of them are pretty trivial, then they still won't miss their resources much. As long as the marginal value of that extra spell slot is high, the caster can feel that their limitations are meaningful. Wizards tend to be very powerful as whilst they might not be able to turn around every encounter, they can frequently choose which ones to do - dominating encounters is ok if it isn't systematic, but dominating the most epic, fun and generally importnt encounters is an issue. Justifying greater spell power on the basis of limited useage can work for a pretty abstract notion of balance, but realistically not every encounter is as important.

6) Your impact is what you actually do. Any option you might have had for a turn that you didn't actually use has no particular value. Versatility adds power over specialism where doing something more appropriate is better than doing something inappropriate but better. I think that a real balance here is great - to enable both to be viable. I would suggest that most of this is not just about classes but fundamentally about game srtucture. As an example I look to D&D 5e where hitting 0HP is a bit of a big deal (in terms of incapacitated is a powerful status effect) but anywhere else your remaining HP doesn't matter - as a result healing is unlikely to be a great thing to do even if you get massive bonuses to healing. The bonuses from good positioning are modest compared to Ensuring your game has the right balance of rewards

I think that it would be useful to make sure your sustem supports a baseline capability for most classes for different functions - utility, damage, control, crowds... whilst there might be some suplimentary strengths and each would deliver on these roles in their own and very different ways, it would at least ensure there is a cost to specialising. Exchanging being worse at something you were so bad at that you would never do anyway, in exchange for being better at something you would like to do as much as possible is a bit of a trivial no-brainer.


Spells that are better or worse at hitting than martial attacks - even if they use similar mechanics does sound interesting. It may make one option better vs high AC enemies, and others better vs low AC enemies (or whatever equivalent to AC is in your system).

I will reply in more detail later, but two things:

1: When I say utility / versatility, I don't just mean out of combat stuff. Summons, buffs, terrain manipulation, mind control, etc. are all utility effects that have tactical in combat benefits.

2: My game is not class based. I am comparing martial skills vs. magic skills, not whole characters. Although, as I said above, most people do tend to stick to classic archetypes.

[gbaji]

Well. This is one of the reasons why I'm not a huge fan of Vancian style magic systems. It artificially creates very different use/balance points for magic verus non-magic combat (and utility for that matter).

I much prefer some form of mana cost system for spellcasting (and I knew a guy who implemented such a system for 1e D&D waaaay back in the day). If you think about it, a melee characters ability to perform in combat is more or less gated by an expendable stat: HPs. The longer they are in combat, the more damage they do, and the more damage (encounter balance specific) they will take. And as their HPs wane, they must require some sort of healing to offset it, which comes from some sort of magic (or something with a "cost" anyway). Which becomes a very scalable granular resource.

Spells are trickier. Especially spells with slots and levels attached. Tie them to mana points, which act similarly to HPs and must be regained similarly to HPs, and a lot of the problems with balance disappear (or at least are somewhat more easily balanced). Instead of having a specific number of specific type/power/utility spells, you have a whole list of spells you "know" or "have memorized", and just cast them. More powerful spells cost more mana and/or take more time to cast. Just as more powerful melee attacks may have some costs associated with them which may likely be paid for via more HPs lost (higher damage usually means less defense in melee combat, right?).

Yeah. More of a game system concept than a mere adjustment. But this kind of system allows for much greater flexibility for spell casters, which can allow them to make better choices "on the fly" about spell use. IME the biggest frustration for primary spell casters (especially arcane casters in D&D) is the requirement to prepare spells ahead of time. And yes, in that system, there is a balance in that if you have the right spells prepped you are godlike, but if you have the wrong ones, not so much. It's the reason they came up with sorcerers in the first place, but even that is tied to "X spells of Y level" dynamics. You have to balace spells a bit differently in a mana point system, but it's quite doable. Again though, that's likely a bigger change than you are looking for.

[Dasick]

I was thinking about this in "math" terms

So a spellcaster has about a dozen spell attempts per mission, there are 4-6 encounters per mission.

Which means that the spellcaster has about 2-4 spell attempts per encounter, which can fail. Within those 2-4 spell attempts the caster has to output enough damage to match what the martial characters are doing throughout the combat encounter. If that isn't happening, it's an issue of balance. If that can be happening, but the player isn't choosing to do so, then it could be an issue of communication.

Is it possible that the caster is cagey with the spell attempts because they can (and frequently do) fail? Because if all of your damage output per fight is going to be 2-4 rolls, it's pretty easy to blow two rolls. Whereas if the ranged martial character has a couple dozen arrows, that's more consistent


"Another possible solution would be to allow magic users to put temporary enchantments on weapons...blah blah blah"
"Those are already options in my system."

Which leads me here. Seems like there are already options for spellcasters to output similar levels of damage to other builds. But for some reason the wizard player isn't using those options. Does the player know about it? It could be that players are coming in with ideas from other RPG systems, namely pathfinder and dnd, and what playing a wizard feels like there, whereas your rulebook does mention that you want it to be more of a low magic kind of system.

[NichG]

This is all true.

I am not making the stupid "guy with a pointy stick vs. guy who can rewrite reality by will alone" argument you often see in these threads, but I will say that they are fundamentally different sorts of utility. Violence is the ultimate form of conflict resolution, and swordsmen and gunslingers make for really cool action heroes and fun gameplay, but at the end of the day, each school of magic allows you to rewrite 1/15th of all natural laws; that is a whole different level of utility than can conceptually be attributed to a weapon skill.

Note that I am talking about skills here, not characters. There are very few things a wizard can do that a martial simply can't, but they aren't all based around skill with a weapon.

Most characters can do both melee and ranged, but are typically only specialized in one. Likewise, all casters have atleast one form of direct damage, although they aren't all optimal for all situations.


Sounds like the equivalent of a 'weapon skill' should be a 'spell skill' rather than a school of magic skill then. E.g. 'rapier' and 'magic missile' are the same sorts of thing, rather than like 'rapier' and 'transmutation'.

Or instead of a 'weapon skill', it could be a 'martial school' skill. So e.g. the Aikido skill would encompass grappling, counter-grappling in response to grabs, counter-disarm in response to weapon attacks, general balance, reactive movement (e.g. rolls), and general ability to avoid being harmed or forced prone when falling, as well as even some social uses like de-escalation negotiation.

[Kane0]

Oh yeah, is all his damage output dependant one roll, or fewer rolls than the weapon equivalent? Putting a limited resource like a spell attempt into something that can fail entirely on a poor roll is a pretty good incentive to try something else that is more reliable.

To use a 5e equivalent, its like choosing to cast bless or cure wounds over guiding bolt. Guiding bolt is a good spell with solid damage and utility, however youre using an action and casting on an attack roll that can miss and be entirely wasted. While there is no guarantee that bless or cure wounds will have an equal or greater impact, they wont be a complete waste of your casting and turn.

[gbaji]

I was thinking about this in "math" terms

So a spellcaster has about a dozen spell attempts per mission, there are 4-6 encounters per mission.

Which means that the spellcaster has about 2-4 spell attempts per encounter, which can fail. Within those 2-4 spell attempts the caster has to output enough damage to match what the martial characters are doing throughout the combat encounter. If that isn't happening, it's an issue of balance. If that can be happening, but the player isn't choosing to do so, then it could be an issue of communication.

This also assumes we're measuring a "mission" in terms of encounters. The issue can come up with utility as well. Rogues can search for traps as many times as they want. Fighters can bend/break things as often as they want. This applies to pretty much any utility ability. But casters (assuming we're talking about "pure" spell casting class like situations) are stuck either being left out of that entirely, or using utility spells to do this, but then detracting from their combat encounter capabilities.

No other classes are reduced in terms of combat capability because they used their non-combat utility abilities. I mean, we could suppose that if those abilities carried risks (like being damaged if you fail), then they do take HP resources maybe, but then that's often translated into spell capability anyway in terms of healing. So... Same deal. But there's no real correlation to spending a spell slot to bypass that trap, or levitate someone up over a wall, or whatever other utility spells you might use. And yeah, you would think most spell casters would see the value in spending spell slots more or less trivializing some obstacles that might otherwise be extremely diffciult and/or dangerous, but some just don't.



Which leads me here. Seems like there are already options for spellcasters to output similar levels of damage to other builds. But for some reason the wizard player isn't using those options. Does the player know about it? It could be that players are coming in with ideas from other RPG systems, namely pathfinder and dnd, and what playing a wizard feels like there, whereas your rulebook does mention that you want it to be more of a low magic kind of system.

That does seem to maybe be the case here. My understanding of the game system is that it's very flexible in terms of spell casting versus other abilities. There's no need to be a "glass cannon" spell caster, but apparently this one player insists on playing that trope anyway. And to be honest, it's sometimes tricky to get long time "wimpy robed wizard" players used to the concept that "Um... yeah. You have spells if you take these sets of skills, none of which preclude you also taking some non-combat utility skills/abilities, nor some combat skills/abilities, nor maybe wearing some armor maybe, or having good HPs, etc..."

So this could very well just be a failure of imagination by the player. I don't know how much time/effort I'd spend bending to a player really really wanting to play a character type that doesn't really fit into the game system itself. Maybe just point out to the player that there's nothing preventing them from taking a few skill points in <some weapon skill> and putting on some armor, and then going in and fighting in addition to their spell casting? Ok. So maybe they'll have a few fewer spells per day. Maybe. Not sure of the specifics, but assuming there's some tradoff here. But trying to play a pure spell caster in a game system that doesn't require that to be a spell caster just seems silly.

I play a RQ varient in my regular game. I have a number of characters who are primarily arcane type spell casters. Every single one of them has some pretty decent combat skills as well. Heck. One of them is very very skilled at fighting (and that spell system really is designed more for "combat buffs" instead of "direct damage magic" anyway). Sorcerers in RQ are basically folks with some combat enhancement magic, and a ton of utility spells as well. You *can* play a "robed wizard" type character, but you actually really do have to go out of your way to do that and make it work.

And what's better than having a character who can stand in the back of the party and cast spells at the enemy? A character who can do that and *also* kick butt against any enemy who decides to run up and attack them. Why artificially limit yourself?

[Talakeal]

To clarify, "magic missile" is the generic term in my system for spells which require a roll to hit and then deal damage. There are eight of them across various schools, and they are more or less the equivalent of the direct damage cantrips in 5E.


Sounds like the equivalent of a 'weapon skill' should be a 'spell skill' rather than a school of magic skill then. E.g. 'rapier' and 'magic missile' are the same sorts of thing, rather than like 'rapier' and 'transmutation'.

Or instead of a 'weapon skill', it could be a 'martial school' skill. So e.g. the Aikido skill would encompass grappling, counter-grappling in response to grabs, counter-disarm in response to weapon attacks, general balance, reactive movement (e.g. rolls), and general ability to avoid being harmed or forced prone when falling, as well as even some social uses like de-escalation negotiation.

The three combat skills are melee, unarmed, and marksmanship and cover all weapons of those types.

Individual spells and individual weapons are both specialties within the skills.

Your idea for Aikido is interesting, but I think it works better in a game like FATE with less concrete rules about what falls under a different category and less tied into the other mechanics of the system.


I was thinking about this in "math" terms

So a spellcaster has about a dozen spell attempts per mission, there are 4-6 encounters per mission.

Which means that the spell caster has about 2-4 spell attempts per encounter, which can fail. Within those 2-4 spell attempts the caster has to output enough damage to match what the martial characters are doing throughout the combat encounter. If that isn't happening, it's an issue of balance. If that can be happening, but the player isn't choosing to do so, then it could be an issue of communication.

Is it possible that the caster is cagey with the spell attempts because they can (and frequently do) fail? Because if all of your damage output per fight is going to be 2-4 rolls, it's pretty easy to blow two rolls. Whereas if the ranged martial character has a couple dozen arrows, that's more consistent

Which leads me here. Seems like there are already options for spell casters to output similar levels of damage to other builds. But for some reason the wizard player isn't using those options. Does the player know about it? It could be that players are coming in with ideas from other RPG systems, namely pathfinder and dnd, and what playing a wizard feels like there, whereas your rulebook does mention that you want it to be more of a low magic kind of system.

This is all more or less correct, but do keep in mind that martial characters can also miss their attacks, and there are ways to build for more endurance (such as the feat which allows you to cast a spell an unlimited number of times which this character has).

A caster who isn't tied to a single spell is in a pretty bad spot casting the same thing every round, but they have the luxury of choosing precisely the right spell for the right situation, and there are plenty of situational spells that damage enemies without needing a roll to hit and minimal chance of failure.


Well. This is one of the reasons why I'm not a huge fan of Vancian style magic systems. It artificially creates very different use/balance points for magic verus non-magic combat (and utility for that matter).

I much prefer some form of mana cost system for spellcasting (and I knew a guy who implemented such a system for 1e D&D waaaay back in the day). If you think about it, a melee characters ability to perform in combat is more or less gated by an expendable stat: HPs. The longer they are in combat, the more damage they do, and the more damage (encounter balance specific) they will take. And as their HPs wane, they must require some sort of healing to offset it, which comes from some sort of magic (or something with a "cost" anyway). Which becomes a very scalable granular resource.

Spells are trickier. Especially spells with slots and levels attached. Tie them to mana points, which act similarly to HPs and must be regained similarly to HPs, and a lot of the problems with balance disappear (or at least are somewhat more easily balanced). Instead of having a specific number of specific type/power/utility spells, you have a whole list of spells you "know" or "have memorized", and just cast them. More powerful spells cost more mana and/or take more time to cast. Just as more powerful melee attacks may have some costs associated with them which may likely be paid for via more HPs lost (higher damage usually means less defense in melee combat, right?).

Yeah. More of a game system concept than a mere adjustment. But this kind of system allows for much greater flexibility for spell casters, which can allow them to make better choices "on the fly" about spell use. IME the biggest frustration for primary spell casters (especially arcane casters in D&D) is the requirement to prepare spells ahead of time. And yes, in that system, there is a balance in that if you have the right spells prepped you are godlike, but if you have the wrong ones, not so much. It's the reason they came up with sorcerers in the first place, but even that is tied to "X spells of Y level" dynamics. You have to balace spells a bit differently in a mana point system, but it's quite doable. Again though, that's likely a bigger change than you are looking for.

Agreed. My system is not vancian, and is actually a bit more fluid than most spell-point systems.

I will say that I don't see why HP is necessarily a melee resource though; as unless they are very smart of very sneaky, everyone takes damage sometimes.


Oh yeah, is all his damage output dependant one roll, or fewer rolls than the weapon equivalent? Putting a limited resource like a spell attempt into something that can fail entirely on a poor roll is a pretty good incentive to try something else that is more reliable.

Direct damage spells require a roll to hit and then roll for damage. They are almost exactly as effective as an equally skilled archer attacking with a bow.

[NichG]

The three combat skills are melee, unarmed, and marksmanship and cover all weapons of those types.

Individual spells and individual weapons are both specialties within the skills.

Your idea for Aikido is interesting, but I think it works better in a game like FATE with less concrete rules about what falls under a different category and less tied into the other mechanics of the system.


The broader point is just that the difference in versatility between martial and magical options is a matter of choosing the level of abstraction for both of them, not something unavoidable because of thematic constraints. I could for example make a breakdown that causes martial stuff to be way more versatile than magic stuff but have it still feel like martial and magical stuff respectively thematically, by changing how I set that level of abstraction.

E.g. under magic if instead of using schools in the D&D sense, I had a skill for 'each kind of effect': a skill for causing damage, a skill for healing, a skill for changing the shape of material, a skill for creating material, a skill for summoning, a skill for movement, etc, then that wouldn't reduce what 'magic as a whole' is capable of, but it would mean that becoming an all-rounder who can arbitrarily rewrite the laws of reality means a lot of horizontal investment.

Similarly, if at the same time instead of organizing martial stuff by specific effect, but instead by competencies like 'sword: this lets you do anything one might do with a sword - parry, counter, strike, feint, disarm' (much less if you expand that to a fantasy context with stuff like sending out vacuum blades or cutting the un-cuttable or honing the edge so that you can divide a boulder with a stick or other such things), then I'd have weighted things to make the martial stuff more versatile than magic in the end, at least with the metagame bound of asking about investment into a single solitary skill.

So like, if you have one thing where there's a skill to a category and multiple things you can do under it (a school and its spells), you can organize other things the same way to make it easier to have parity in versatility - e.g. pick as the martial skills things where it makes sense for there to be multiple different things you can do under them, which can all be quite specific to the same level that spells within a school of magic are quite specific and not just 'narrate how the spell school helps you solve this problem' that you'd get if you went full FATE.

[icefractal]

It sounds like part of the issue is that if a blasting spell is balanced for unlimited use then it's weak-sauce in limited use. And the other spells that can be taken with the unlimited use feat get around this by not being repeatable for credit in most situations.

So maybe the answer is that blasting spells should have X effect when taken with the unlimited use feat, and X+Y effect when they're using up a slot.

Of course, given prior info about your group, chances are high that this wouldn't make the player in question happy because really he wants the "big" effect every round. But it would at least make them more worthwhile in general usage.

[Talakeal]

It sounds like part of the issue is that if a blasting spell is balanced for unlimited use then it's weak-sauce in limited use. And the other spells that can be taken with the unlimited use feat get around this by not being repeatable for credit in most situations.

So maybe the answer is that blasting spells should have X effect when taken with the unlimited use feat, and X+Y effect when they're using up a slot.

Of course, given prior info about your group, chances are high that this wouldn't make the player in question happy because really he wants the "big" effect every round. But it would at least make them more worthwhile in general usage.

IMO they can already do that by picking exactly the right spell for the job at hand; for example a fire spell against a flammable target, a poison spell against someone with a low fortitude, a psychic spell against someone with low willpower, an aoe spell against a tightly packed group, etc.

[Kane0]

IMO they can already do that by picking exactly the right spell for the job at hand

But is he? Is he a 'just fireball' mage, and/or is that all he *wants* to be while you keep pointing to things that arent fireball and saying 'all this stuff addresses your problems with fireball not being as amazing as you want it to be' ?

[Talakeal]

But is he? Is he a 'just fireball' mage, and/or is that all he *wants* to be while you keep pointing to things that aren't fireball and saying 'all this stuff addresses your problems with fireball not being as amazing as you want it to be' ?

If he wants to just be fireball guy, that is absolutely fine, build fireball guy.

But then that swings back around to the initial question, why does fireball guy deserve to be inherently better than sword guy or arrow guy?

[Anonymouswizard]

Most wizard players hate balance. To them wizards have to be the best and smartest and most powerful and most versatile.

Ah, ye olde Mage* philosophy. Although to be fair to Mage (both Ascension and Awakening) they never expected willworkers to form parties with anybody but other mages, so it might be better to call it the Monte Cook philosophy. But yeah there's pretty good arguments for wizards not teaming up with other character types, and honestly all-mage games can be fun when you get to start at the cosmic level.

Of course that's not to say that magicians shouldn't be in mixed groups, but IMNSHO they should always be 'Xs who also do magic'. When you're not playing an all-mage setup it can be very tempting to fall upon magic as a character's 'thing', leading to disappointment when magic isn't the optimal solution.


So going to the player, he's a combat mage. What does this mean? If they served in a war then in addition to their magic they probably know how to set up a camp, do basic field medicine, have the stamina to march for extended periods, and possibly even have knowledge of tactics, strategy, and logistics. If they trained to be a monster hunter they should have a decent knowledge of biology (to help use the optimal spell), probably tracking skills, maybe even some social skills to gather information from weaknesses. If they've gone all-in on casting spells, only get a dozen a mission, and have to sit around being useless when they don't have a relevant spell, then I'd argue that feeling useless when their spells are no better than a warrior's bow is pretty justified (if at least partially their own fault).

How do you balance a blaster wizard? The same way you balance a Big Stupid Fighter: make them more than just a wizard.

* Which amusingly does come down pretty hard on damage spells. Dice pools for casting raise pretty slowly, and you generally lose out on the extra damage weapons grant. IIRC they can also be resisted, whereas guns ignore Defence. Probably better to just turn your enemies into fire hydrants instead.

[Kane0]

If he wants to just be fireball guy, that is absolutely fine, build fireball guy.

But then that swings back around to the initial question, why does fireball guy deserve to be inherently better than sword guy or arrow guy?

He doesn't. But he does deserve to have a good fireball, at least equal to the sword or gun guy investing the same resources/build options.

The discrepancy might hinge on that definition of 'good' between you and he.

[icefractal]

IMO they can already do that by picking exactly the right spell for the job at hand; for example a fire spell against a flammable target, a poison spell against someone with a low fortitude, a psychic spell against someone with low willpower, an aoe spell against a tightly packed group, etc.I'm curious about this point - since this is a different system it may truly be the case, but in D&D I've found the "perfect spell for the job" factor not nearly as big as memetic lore presents it.

I mean, don't get me wrong, having the right spell for the job is often important. But in the field of blasting specifically? Outright vulnerabilities are rare. Generally "having the exact right spell" just means it has the full normal effect. So if that normal effect is good, the spell is good, but if it's weak then being 'ideal' isn't usually enough to save it. And in 3.x, the blasting spells are mostly pretty anemic.

So it sounds like either the player just wants to be OP (very possible), or they want to fill a niche your system doesn't currently support - big rare signature spell usage.

That is, the limited use but greater power aspect of non-unlimited spells, but primarily using a limited set of spells rather than maximizing versatility. In 3.x, this would be a Mailman type.

Not that it's imperative that you do support that niche, but I don't think it's impossible to balance either.

[MetroAlien]

There is almost always going to be a spell that is better for the current situation than dealing damage. Whether or not a given wizard knows the right spell or is willing to expend the spell slot...


I'm not sure what you mean by 'better'.
Would using said utility spell win the encounter in fewer turns?
In most games, the shortest path to victory is to deal as much damage as possible.
Unless using these spells allows your wizard to deal at least x2.1 times the normal damage on the next turn, it's not 'better', at least not in the sense of speed.

If your game is different (for example, an encounter can end without dealing damage), then this needs to be communicated clearly to the players.
Does your player know their non-damage spells can win encounters just as well?

Maybe it's a question of flavour/aesthetic.
For example, ending the encounter through incapacitation:
option A:
the wizard uses the black coffin spell from BLEACH (https://bleach.fandom.com/wiki/Kurohitsugi).
The enemy suffers existential trauma and surrenders.
It felt f***ing epic to do.
The player is wearing a satisfied grin :biggrin:

option B:
the wizard conjures handcuffs on the enemy's hands.
After failing a few swings of their weapon, the enemy surrenders.
It felt anticlimactic for all sides.
The player felt like they cheated the party out of a fun fight :frown:



As I said in the OP, for (the equivalent of) a single feat, a wizard can choose a spell to be able to cast unlimited times.

With this feat, they deal ~ the same damage as a martial character without losing out on any of the above without sacrificing any of the utility or resources of their other spells.

IMO this is a balanced trade off, but my player, on the other hand, thinks I should balance a caster to be significantly better at damage dealing than a martial to balance out the spell slots lost without this feat.


it may be the wording, but it sounds like the wizard needed to expend a resource (a feat) to get to the same level that the fighter was at for free.
The fix could be as simple as offering this feat during character creation as an alternative to the 'regular' build.

If that's already an option, then this is a pure misunderstanding that needs to be communicated better to the player.

[Anonymouswizard]

I'm not sure what you mean by 'better'.
Would using said utility spell win the encounter in fewer turns?
In most games, the shortest path to victory is to deal as much damage as possible.
Unless using these spells allows your wizard to deal at least x2.1 times the normal damage on the next turn, it's not 'better', at least not in the sense of speed.

If your game is different (for example, an encounter can end without dealing damage), then this needs to be communicated clearly to the players.
Does your player know their non-damage spells can win encounters just as well?

More games need to remember that a combat doesn't end because the other guy is dead, it ends because one side is unwilling or unable to continue fighting. This is something more games should be willing to acknowledge via stuff like stated goals, combat timers, measurement of cost, viable alternatives to the combat system, some version of simplified combat for when the other team is completely out classed, and so on.

Once you start adding these ideas in things start getting interesting. My favourite is Glitch where once conflict times out victory goes to the survivor who paid the most for it, which heavily incentivises acquiring Cost, when then plays into the game's character retirement mechanics. But honestly as RPGs get pushed more and more as a storytelling medium it's a shame to see so many sticking to the same basic ideas regarding combat.

Disabling or mind control powers can sometimes be better than direct damage because they straight up allow you to stop fighting someone. Which at the lower end generally tips the current battle in your favour because that's one less character inflicting Cost on you, and at the higher end just straight up stops the battle altogether. Dominate in Vampire doesn't let you fight better, but can still be more useful than Potence/Vigor in a fight.

[Talakeal]

He doesn't. But he does deserve to have a good fireball, at least equal to the sword or gun guy investing the same resources/build options.

The discrepancy might hinge on that definition of 'good' between you and he.

As it is, he has the exact same accuracy and damage as someone who invested equal resources into using a bow or two handed sword.

But, again circling back to the OP, he feels that he is too fragile for melee and doesn't enjoy accuracy penalties for range / cover / firing into close combat.


I'm curious about this point - since this is a different system it may truly be the case, but in D&D I've found the "perfect spell for the job" factor not nearly as big as memetic lore presents it.

I mean, don't get me wrong, having the right spell for the job is often important. But in the field of blasting specifically? Outright vulnerabilities are rare. Generally "having the exact right spell" just means it has the full normal effect. So if that normal effect is good, the spell is good, but if it's weak then being 'ideal' isn't usually enough to save it. And in 3.x, the blasting spells are mostly pretty anemic.

Right, actual vulnerabilities are not terribly common, but you can also target the weakest defenses as well, which means that while the martial guys are having to roll to hit, you can more or less go straight to rolling for damage.


That is, the limited use but greater power aspect of non-unlimited spells, but primarily using a limited set of spells rather than maximizing versatility. In 3.x, this would be a Mailman type.

Not that it's imperative that you do support that niche, but I don't think it's impossible to balance either.

Oh, if you want to do that, you can do that! A blaster mage can pull of damage numbers that a martial could never dream of if they want to go nova or take a gamble on a hard to pull off spell, they just can't do it reliably all day long.


it may be the wording, but it sounds like the wizard needed to expend a resource (a feat) to get to the same level that the fighter was at for free.
The fix could be as simple as offering this feat during character creation as an alternative to the 'regular' build.

If that's already an option, then this is a pure misunderstanding that needs to be communicated better to the player.

The player already has said feat, which puts him on the same level as a martial character for reliable resource free accuracy and damage.

But, as I said above, he feels he is too squishy for melee, and doesn't like suffering accuracy penalties for rolling to hit at range.

Unless you meant I should give him the feat for free, in which case, I feel that would be unfair to the martials to give someone full martial damage dealing capabilities on top of the existing mage powers.


I'm not sure what you mean by 'better'.
Would using said utility spell win the encounter in fewer turns?
In most games, the shortest path to victory is to deal as much damage as possible.
Unless using these spells allows your wizard to deal at least x2.1 times the normal damage on the next turn, it's not 'better', at least not in the sense of speed.

Well yeah, there are lot's of "save or lose" type spells that kill, incapacitate, banish, or brainwash the enemy outright without needing damage.

There are also plenty of buffs, debuffs, damage over time spells, and summons that will do atleast double the overall damage of a direct damage spell if cast early enough in the fight.

And something like a defensive spell or terrain manipulation can make a fight much easier and less resource intensive to win even if it doesn't directly deal damage or take any enemies out.

[Quertus]

But, again circling back to the OP, he feels that he is too fragile for melee and doesn't enjoy accuracy penalties for range / cover / firing into close combat.


The player already has said feat, which puts him on the same level as a martial character for reliable resource free accuracy and damage.

But, as I said above, he feels he is too squishy for melee, and doesn't like suffering accuracy penalties for rolling to hit at range.

C’mon, Wizard, you’ve spent the feats and stat points to be just as good as a Commoner in this antimagic field, why are you complaining?

I can absolutely see “as good as an archer” not being terribly reassuring to someone who thinks that archers are bad, doubly so if archers don’t suffer the feat tax to get there.

As a broader point, from your descriptions, I doubt I’d enjoy your system’s “penalties to ranged attacks”, either. And that’s the key word: enjoy.

I think one consideration is, what chance of success should a boring standard action have? I think there was a recent thread where the answer seemed to be about a 2-in-3 chance of success was the average answer. If your average Ranged attack (which I’d wager as “fire into melee with cover”) suffers so many penalties that it falls below this rate, then it’s probably not enjoyable to the average player.

I can see unusual actions (trick shot with an arrow to cut a rope, or to disarm someone around a corner seen in a mirror) still producing good feels with lower success rates, but “I shoot the monsters our tanks are holding back” seems like the kind of generic action that wouldn’t feel good to the player who waited for it to come around to their turn, only for the action to have substandard chances of success.

So that’s feel. Balance is another story.

So, you’ve been running this system for a while - what’s the actual, in play, Average DPS for melee, archer, and blaster archetypes, grouped by investment? What is the average in play cost of melee, archer, and blaster archetypes, measured in resources (including HP lost)? What is the average “up time” for melee, archer, and blaster characters?

[Talakeal]

C’mon, Wizard, you’ve spent the feats and stat points to be just as good as a Commoner in this antimagic field, why are you complaining?

I can absolutely see “as good as an archer” not being terribly reassuring to someone who thinks that archers are bad, doubly so if archers don’t suffer the feat tax to get there.

If you feel that the other PCs are bad or no better than a commoner, I can see why you might have an issue. But that's really more of a player attitude issue than one of game balance.


As a broader point, from your descriptions, I doubt I’d enjoy your system’s “penalties to ranged attacks”, either. And that’s the key word: enjoy.

I think one consideration is, what chance of success should a boring standard action have? I think there was a recent thread where the answer seemed to be about a 2-in-3 chance of success was the average answer. If your average Ranged attack (which I’d wager as “fire into melee with cover”) suffers so many penalties that it falls below this rate, then it’s probably not enjoyable to the average player.

I would say that under normal circumstances you will have less than a 2/3 chance of a hit when firing into melee.

The thing is, it should feel bad, because its not a situation you want to be in. Firing into (or out of!) a melee scrum is a terrible idea, just like a melee fighter against an opponent whom they can't reach, a wizard in a null-magic zone, or a rogue in the spotlight. IMO the best thing to do in those situations is either get out of them or fall back on your backup skills. IMO, it is bad for game balance to allow some characters to ignore bad spots, and it hurts verisimilitude (and makes for a bland game) to just waive all restrictions away and let everyone act at full efficiency regardless of circumstances.


So, you’ve been running this system for a while - what’s the actual, in play, Average DPS for melee, archer, and blaster archetypes, grouped by investment? What is the average in play cost of melee, archer, and blaster archetypes, measured in resources (including HP lost)? What is the average “up time” for melee, archer, and blaster characters?

That's quite a big question. Care to narrow it down at all? I can give you answers about specific situations or white room principles, but there are so many possible character builds its impossible to give a succinct answer to a question like that.

[Pauly]

.

I think one consideration is, what chance of success should a boring standard action have? I think there was a recent thread where the answer seemed to be about a 2-in-3 chance of success was the average answer. If your average Ranged attack (which I’d wager as “fire into melee with cover”) suffers so many penalties that it falls below this rate, then it’s probably not enjoyable to the average player.

I can see unusual actions (trick shot with an arrow to cut a rope, or to disarm someone around a corner seen in a mirror) still producing good feels with lower success rates, but “I shoot the monsters our tanks are holding back” seems like the kind of generic action that wouldn’t feel good to the player who waited for it to come around to their turn, only for the action to have substandard chances of success.

So that’s feel. Balance is another story.


Shooting into melee is a trick shot, on par with cutting a rope. It probably is more difficult to actually hit the target you are aiming for than to hit a stationary rope.

Most serious games don’t allow shooting into melee.
Those that do require hits to be randomized amongst combatants.
Some games only allow evil aligned, or their in universe equivalent, to attempt to do it because the evil don’t care if they accidentally hit on of their guys.

The ‘standard’ shot with a roughly 65% chance of success should be to hit an enemy taking cover. It is assumed in melee that combatants are parrying, using shields etc. as in built passive defense. Hitting an opponent standing in clear ground for an archer should be roughly as difficult as a melee fighter hitting someone in their sleep. Many game designers forget this and set archery difficulty too high, although they do compensate by making archery easier in other ways such as rate of fire, not linking damage to the user’s strength and so on.

The fallacy that you can shoot into a melee safely is mainly brought about by 2 factors. The static positioning of figures on the battlemap and the IGO-UGO turn system. Which leads to the unconscious belief that the rest of the world is in perfect stasis while the player takes their turn.

[gbaji]

I will say that I don't see why HP is necessarily a melee resource though; as unless they are very smart of very sneaky, everyone takes damage sometimes.

The point isn't what can cause you to take HP damage. The point is that when you run out (or even get low if you are planning a bit ahead) your ability to fight stops. That is, therefore, the primary resource being expended by characters in a fight.

Of course, if you have fast healing spells/abilites in the game, then those become substituted for HPs and become the actual resource you are tracking (which can push this back into the spells/mana/whatever category). But at the end of the day, the decision to forge forward into a battle is going to be dependent on the ability for the party to survive the damage they are going to take fighting it.


Direct damage spells require a roll to hit and then roll for damage. They are almost exactly as effective as an equally skilled archer attacking with a bow.

Which means that they either need to be as ubuquitous as arrows fired from a bow *or* need to do more damage *or have some other offsetting factor/cost. Probably some combination of the three. If an archer can carry 20 arrows and restock them easily after the battle, and can fire 2-3 times per round and do X damage per hit, then an equal spell needs to be equal in terms of number of uses per combat, number of uses per day, rate of attack, odds of hitting, and damage done per hit. If any of those are adjusted, some other component needs to be adjusted. If rate of fire is slower, then either it needs to be more accurare or do more damage. If cost per use (ie: how many uses per combat and/or uses per day) is different then other factors need to be adjusted. If I can only blast someone 3x/day, that blast better do significantly more damage than an arrrow and be significantly more accurate, or it's not worth using.

On the flip side, if I can use my missile spell at the same firing rate as an archer, but with unlimited ammunition, then maybe the damage should be a little lower.

And again, this also assumes that the archer has other things they can also do in addition to just fire arrows, since presumably the spell caster has other spells as well. I guess the point here is to balance "fast/cheap" versus "slow/big" effects. And yes, this also becomes problematic when we get into the whole "X encounters per day dynamic". If that is too rigidly applied, then the spell caster never "runs out" of spells, and effectively will always have sufficient "big guns" available to use. Which IMHO makes things overpowered.

Then again, I don't use that form of calculation. I will absolutely hit players with encounters (or a required series of encounters) that will stretch their resources, so that they have to really think about when and how to use their bigger "X/day" use abilities and spells. On the flip side, when they are just wandering around, they are unlikely to run into anything close to their "limit" in terms of resources. Trivial encounters are just that: trivial. They're free to blast away as they wish and be pretty safe that they wont run into 5 or 6 more encounters that day while walking through random hills somewhere. Of course, if they're smart, they'll still only use what they "need to win" anyway, cause you never know which day is the day they run into something big...


Disabling or mind control powers can sometimes be better than direct damage because they straight up allow you to stop fighting someone. Which at the lower end generally tips the current battle in your favour because that's one less character inflicting Cost on you, and at the higher end just straight up stops the battle altogether. Dominate in Vampire doesn't let you fight better, but can still be more useful than Potence/Vigor in a fight.

Yeah. I think that many players, especially coming from the "blaster wizard" mentality lose sight of the fact that other spells can often be far far more effective in combat than just blasting someone.


Just ran a combat this weekend where this came up. They were fighting a fairly well armed and skilled squad of soldiers working for an evil ruler that has been a thorn in their side (even though they're currently working to remove the curse on his family that's actually part of why he's such a evil guy in the first place, but whatever). He's got these hit squads he's been training up, and they were being tracked by one of the more elite versions. The squad had some spell support (remote guy using spirits to follow the squad and provide spells), and the leader was *really* tough. And they had a smaller group of sneaky assassin types coordinated to ambush the party while the bigger guys hit from the rear a couple rounds later. Ambush worked well. Several folks got hit with crossbow bolts with some poison on them. Some more got hit with spells and temporarily taken out. Just about when they started to recover a bit from that (and the assassins engaged from the front), the big guys hit from the rear and more or less smashed through them.

It was a pretty big struggle, but the party was slowly turning things around in the battle. The NPC leader was more or less one shotting people though, which was a problem. As it turns out, one of the PCs had one casting of a spell that basically forces the target to mimic their actions. And despite the leader having some higher defense against mental attacks, she managed to overcome him. Now, as it happened the round she affected him was a round in which he only had one target in front of him, and that PCs still wasn't able to hurt the leader anyway. And by the end of the round, the spell support guy dispelled the effect, so it basically just stopped him for a round. What's interesting is that you could have said "wait a few rounds for us to clear out some of the other (tough but manageable) soldiers and whale on him while he's defenseless" (offensive strategy). But, had she done that, he likely would have whacked the one person facing him, torn right through the center of their ranks, and then possibly started whacking on people who were already engaged and just overwhelmed them. So this one round of holding him back, didn't take out the big guy, heck, didn't do a single point of damage to him, but ultimately really turned the tide of the entire battle.

It gave the rest of the party a round to take out a couple of the other bad guys, and reposition folks to have more help out with the main leader guy. So despite him being really skilled and doing silly amounts of damage with his evil weapon, they were able to more or less dogpile on him a couple rounds later. The point is that a well timed spell that merely delays or slows down an opponent can have significant effects on the battle. I've found that a lot of battles tend to go in a pattern of "hold ground first, then take out weaker opponents, then gang up on stronger ones". And often, control type spells are a lot more useful than just blasting folks. Sure. Eventually, you have to do damage to defeat opponents, but it's often more effective as a spell caster to do things that leverage and maximize the damage output of the melee characters in the group than to just do direct damage yourself. Had that same character used a spell action to just try to hit this guy with some damage, it might have hurt him, but not have stopped him, and he'd have waded through their line. By using spells that gave the melee folks an attack/defense ratio advantage, that effect lasts several rounds and becomes more powerful. Disable one person, and the melee who would have had to fight that person is free to attack someone else, which double up on that opponent, which potentially frees up another melee character, who can now go help out someone else, etc, etc. A few rounds later, that minor initial effect has a massive effect on relative damage done versus damage taken each round.

IMO. That's how you more effectively use spell casters. But a lot of people can't get past the "I want to do damage and defeat opponents directly" mentality.

[PhoenixPhyre]

IMO. That's how you more effectively use spell casters. But a lot of people can't get past the "I want to do damage and defeat opponents directly" mentality.

On the flip side, it's almost memetic on these forums that "dealing damage is for peasants (aka martials)". Which also doesn't hold up as a general rule. Being capable of both is where it's really at. And knowing which to use in what circumstance.

Of course, I am coming around to disliking more and more the idea that you should/can balance things effectively at more than a casual level based on "ammunition" (whether that's spell slots/castings, real ammo, limited consumables, etc) across more than one combat at a time. Because that form of balance is super fragile to changes in playstyle, which isn't really well constrained. Something as simple as splitting one "ten turn" encounter into two separate "five turn" encounters can often radically change the balance considerations--a single ability use that lasts 10 turns covers all of the first but only one of the second. So it's sensitive to how many encounters, spaced how far apart, of how long. If all you care about is rough balance (ie U-shaped curves with a wide "acceptable" region), it can work. But once you want tight (v-shaped, with a narrow acceptable region) balance, you find that it's V-shaped in the wrong way--a maximum not a minimum. An unstable equilibrium.

The solutions are to balance around the encounter and use arbitrary durations (ie this lasts until the end of the encounter), with attrition happening at other-than-ability measures (like 4e's restricted Healing Surges), go flat out MMO and assume full resources on every significant fight, or give almost everyone the same (or similar) structure of abilities (aka homogenization).

Allowing people to pick abilities a la carte also throws a wrench in this whole balance thing[1], but that's a separate conversation I think.

[1] most point-buy systems rely heavily on GM whitelisting/oversight to balance things, rather than try to a priori balance the combinatorial explosion of factors that otherwise results.

[Kane0]

As it is, he has the exact same accuracy and damage as someone who invested equal resources into using a bow or two handed sword.

But, again circling back to the OP, he feels that he is too fragile for melee and doesn't enjoy accuracy penalties for range / cover / firing into close combat.

I would suggest giving the ability to expend or sacrifice the utility aspect of casting in order to counteract those penalties, if you haven't already.

[MoiMagnus]

What's the range of those ranged spells?

Usually in a game, ranged attacks are of two kinds:

+ The ones that are used before the melee starts, or in situations where melee is impossible. Those are supposed to have long range but be significantly constrained by covers/etc. Notably, as soon as the enemy is "one movement away" from you or from your allies, it's time to consider changing of attack type.
=> The problem here is that by virtue of being squishy, the wizard might not have any backup plan available. And by "backup plan" I actually mean "main plan", because combats that are entirely won before melee starts are usually the exception and not the rule in D&D.

+ The ones that just glorified reach weapons (with longer reach but no opportunity attack). Those attack don't have long range, and if they technically have long range the gameplay style of the RPG means that combat never starts with character far away from each other. But those attacks should not suffer from cover/etc, because their standard use case will be in a situation where there is a big melee with allies and enemies everywhere.
=> If you don't already have such short range attack spells, you might want to design some.

[Quertus]

Huh. Maybe my own experiences with "firing into melee" (which mostly amount to things like throwing pillows or drinks) are abnormal, and most people, or most situations, result in a lower success rate than I've experienced? Even so, I know I'd feel uncomfortable taking the shot with a gun or bow in most melee situations.

However, that ultimately doesn't really matter, as I wasn't talking about Simulationist concerns, but Gamist ones. Simply put, if this is an action you're likely to take often in the course of your adventures (which it sounds like the current party's composition and tactics makes that a "yes"), it should have a certain rate of success (probably at least about 2-out-of-3), else it will feel bad.

They do it often, they have a low rate of success, it feels bad. That's the simple equation here. It's part of this party's normal standard operating procedures, yet it lacks adequate success, so it feels bad.



The thing is, it should feel bad

Yes, I'm quite confident you believe that. And, with enough data, as a Simulationist, I might agree. But the question for this thread is, is that a good design principle, to make that experience feel bad? Specifically, look at this statement:



its not a situation you want to be in. Firing into (or out of!) a melee scrum is a terrible idea,

and ask yourself, what alternatives do they have? What actions does the system encourage them to take in order to feel good?

(and the answer as far as your players can tell is, summon incorporeal monsters to clear the dungeon for them, then go behind them to pick up the loot. Is there some better answer that your system is trying to guide the archer and blaster archtypes towards? Or does it just say, haha, standard encounters, where your front line actually engages monsters, you should feel bad about yourself?)

And there's certainly some room to debate about what good design principles look like here, and the extent to which it is answerable in a modular state, vs the extent to which the rest of the system plays a role in what good design for this set of features looks like.

Personally, I think that, regardless of what good design principles may look like in the general case, when designing a game that is played primarily or exclusively with groups where some or all members have depression and/or ego issues, maybe erring on the side of "feeling good" might be a good design decision.

But I'm not a licensed psychologist, nor do I play one in an RPG. :smallbiggrin:

[Hrugner]

We've heard a bit about what the player wants, and what they won't do, but what are they actually choosing to do during play?

Since your system is classless, I assume spells are available to all players somewhat. Are there any particular spells that your martial focused characters are taking, or are spells going unused entirely?

Does casting or shooting into an area do anything beneficial on a miss? Melee generally at very least provide a defensive line or hold choke points even if their attacks don't land, so it could make ranged play feel better if their presence on the field still did something even when they fail at their aggressive action. It could be something as simple as turning missed shots into covering or suppressing fire, or leaving the spell effect on the map for the martials to knock targets into, use as cover, or make more specialized use of like channeling into a weapon or bouncing off a shield. Nothing too crazy numbers wise, it's supposed to compete with the innate battlefield control of taking up space not deliberate actions.

[Pauly]

However, that ultimately doesn't really matter, as I wasn't talking about Simulationist concerns, but Gamist ones. Simply put, if this is an action you're likely to take often in the course of your adventures (which it sounds like the current party's composition and tactics makes that a "yes"), it should have a certain rate of success (probably at least about 2-out-of-3), else it will feel bad.

They do it often, they have a low rate of success, it feels bad. That's the simple equation here. It's part of this party's normal standard operating procedures, yet it lacks adequate success, so it feels bad.


Yes, I'm quite confident you believe that. And, with enough data, as a Simulationist, I might agree. But the question for this thread is, is that a good design principle, to make that experience feel bad? Specifically, look at this statement:



and ask yourself, what alternatives do they have? What actions does the system encourage them to take in order to feel good?



Excellent point.
From a simulationist/versimiltude POV the correct answer is firing into a melee is a bad thing, carrying a huge risk of hitting your allies.
From a gamist POV the question of what else of value can you do is important. If all the bad guys are locked up in melee and you suck at melee and you can’t shoot into melee you only have bad choices. In wargames this is solved to some degree by allowing the archers to take objectives or by contributing to morale states, but RPGs generally don’t feature these as common components of a fight.

[Kane0]

Some sort of suppression mechanic is something you could try.

[gbaji]

Excellent point.
From a simulationist/versimiltude POV the correct answer is firing into a melee is a bad thing, carrying a huge risk of hitting your allies.
From a gamist POV the question of what else of value can you do is important. If all the bad guys are locked up in melee and you suck at melee and you can’t shoot into melee you only have bad choices. In wargames this is solved to some degree by allowing the archers to take objectives or by contributing to morale states, but RPGs generally don’t feature these as common components of a fight.

If we're still talking about spells, one way to get around this is to have some spells act like "missiles" and others be "target only". And perhaps have direct damage stuff be more likely to act like missiles and other utility buff/debuff stuff not suffer from the "firing into melee" issue. Which can actually encourage spell casters to use direct damage where it's appropriate (clear line of sight, just like archery, but maybe with more "boom!"), but then do things to help out the melee folks once melee is actually engaged.

Beyond just spell casting discussions, yeah, that's always an issue. It's actually a bit of a trick from a GMing point of view. It's quite often most effective for the PCs to bottleneck the combat, having their best 2 or 3 fighters up front, facing just a similar 2-3 opponents, while the rest of the party hangs back, heals, casts support spells, etc. The problem is that this can be very boring for the PCs that aren't in the front. And if you have a number of fights, and it's always the same folks fighting and the same folks supporting, this can become a big issue. And of course, "firing into melee" rules can make this problematic as well.

As a GM you have to balance the fact that the players obviously should be able to take advantage of terrain where possible with the need as a GM to make sure everyone is having "fun". I can usually manage to finagle some encounters into positions where I can make sure to engage more of the party if it's an issue. Having the NPCs charge into a room after the party is halfway into it works. Hitting the party in a hallway from both the front and back (and foreshadowing this by having them pass multiple side passages along the way). Setting up some sort of defensive position for the NPCs where the party has to come out a bit and be exposed works as well. Lots of ways around this IMO. Basically, anything I can do to "spread out" the fight works, but just not too much.

Obviously, this is less of an issue with small parties. But once you get into parties of 6 or more, this can become a real issue.

[icefractal]

The thing is, it should feel bad, because its not a situation you want to be in. Firing into (or out of!) a melee scrum is a terrible idea, just like a melee fighter against an opponent whom they can't reach, a wizard in a null-magic zone, or a rogue in the spotlight. IMO the best thing to do in those situations is either get out of them or fall back on your backup skills.So, IME, in D&D -
Null-magic zones are quite rare. If 10% of the encounters were in null-magic ones, most people would think "Wow, that GM really hates casters".

Rogues being "in the spotlight" - what does that mean? Unable to sneak attack? Yeah, people kinda hate that too, avoid it when they can, and if it happens more than ... IDK, 20% of the time? They're going to get irritated. Note how Rogue guides have a lot more about "how to get Sneak Attack as often as possible" than they do about other alternatives. And how PF1 changed Sneak Attack to work against almost all types of foe.

Melee vs flying (or otherwise out of reach) characters? This happens the most of the the three, but still not that often. Not because it couldn't, but because most players will get pissed off if it happens too much and most GMs will avoid using it too much. There's a fair amount of GM advice along the lines of "Just because a dragon could strafe the party and never land for melee, doesn't mean you should run it like that. Give the warriors something they can hit!" And if you look at recommended magic items for melee types, getting a source of flight is high on the list, specifically so they don't have to switch to non-melee.

And now we come to "shooting into melee". It happens more than any of those others. All it takes is "the enemies were all melee, and they engaged our front line", which is IME a pretty common scenario. And what exactly are the archers supposed to do to "get out" of that situation? Heck, if it's a chokepoint they might not even be able to get into melee (and might be a liability if they do, depending on their defense).

Now yes, you could accurately say that if the front line is packed then ranged attacks are good, because even at 30% accuracy they're better than nothing. But most players (IME) don't just want to be "an efficiently performing part of a well-oiled machine", they want to be "a star, doing something impressive, who the camera focuses on" - at least when it's their turn. Being technically effective in a way that's only apparent in post-fight analysis is not a win for them!

Of course, just because other systems are more generous in "you can use your primarily abilities almost all the time", doesn't mean yours has to be. But I'd say that you're swimming upstream a bit in that case, in terms of player taste.

TBH, your system is slightly a paradox to me. In threads like this, and about resource management, it sounds like it's too tightly-tuned / stingy for my tastes. But then in recap threads, the characters often have interesting-sounding abilities that seem a lot better than what most D&D characters get (particularly in the out-of-combat department), so my interest is perked up. Is "more generous out-of-combat than in-combat" an accurate description?

[Talakeal]

He doesn't. But he does deserve to have a good fireball, at least equal to the sword or gun guy investing the same resources/build options.

Out of curiosity, you say "at least" equal.

That's interesting to me, as it implies that it is ok if the fireball guy is better than the archer, but not if the archer is better than the fireball guy. Why is that?


Which means that they either need to be as ubuquitous as arrows fired from a bow *or* need to do more damage *or have some other offsetting factor/cost. Probably some combination of the three. If an archer can carry 20 arrows and restock them easily after the battle, and can fire 2-3 times per round and do X damage per hit, then an equal spell needs to be equal in terms of number of uses per combat, number of uses per day, rate of attack, odds of hitting, and damage done per hit. If any of those are adjusted, some other component needs to be adjusted. If rate of fire is slower, then either it needs to be more accurare or do more damage. If cost per use (ie: how many uses per combat and/or uses per day) is different then other factors need to be adjusted. If I can only blast someone 3x/day, that blast better do significantly more damage than an arrrow and be significantly more accurate, or it's not worth using.

On the flip side, if I can use my missile spell at the same firing rate as an archer, but with unlimited ammunition, then maybe the damage should be a little lower.

And again, this also assumes that the archer has other things they can also do in addition to just fire arrows, since presumably the spell caster has other spells as well. I guess the point here is to balance "fast/cheap" versus "slow/big" effects. And yes, this also becomes problematic when we get into the whole "X encounters per day dynamic". If that is too rigidly applied, then the spell caster never "runs out" of spells, and effectively will always have sufficient "big guns" available to use. Which IMHO makes things overpowered.

Then again, I don't use that form of calculation. I will absolutely hit players with encounters (or a required series of encounters) that will stretch their resources, so that they have to really think about when and how to use their bigger "X/day" use abilities and spells. On the flip side, when they are just wandering around, they are unlikely to run into anything close to their "limit" in terms of resources. Trivial encounters are just that: trivial. They're free to blast away as they wish and be pretty safe that they wont run into 5 or 6 more encounters that day while walking through random hills somewhere. Of course, if they're smart, they'll still only use what they "need to win" anyway, cause you never know which day is the day they run into something big...

Again, this looses sight of the caster's incredible versatility.

With her admittedly limited spell slots, the mage in question can not only fire blasts of energy, she can reroll dice (either proactively or retroactively), conjure objects and minions out of ectolplasm, summon tentacles to grapple foes, curse people with bad luck, change shape, disable all technology, nullify divine powers, confuse foes, rewrite reality, and cause chaotic surges that can rewrite reality with somewhat unpredictable effects. I feel like she doesn't also need to be able to out shoot the marksman or outfight the swordsman, especially when a single feat allows her to do so all day long without worrying about running out of spells or ammunition or being disarmed.

Its like saying that a guy who has +10 with swords, a guy with +10 with bows, and a guy with +10 to fireballs are all equally good as a guy with +10 to bows, +10 to swords, and +10 to fireballs because the latter doesn't have higher numbers.

And again, I am talking about skills, not character classes. Both the mage and the archer should absolutely have other things to do.


I would suggest giving the ability to expend or sacrifice the utility aspect of casting in order to counteract those penalties, if you haven't already.

If you want to just play a supernatural blaster you can do that, but it isn't really a wizard anymore; more Cyclops than Doctor Strange.

At that point though, you are basically spending the same resources and have more or less the same effectiveness as a mundane archer.

There are ways to bypass the firing into melee penalties, but they are a fairly heavy character investment as without them ranged characters are flat out superior to melee characters.


What's the range of those ranged spells?

Usually in a game, ranged attacks are of two kinds:

+ The ones that are used before the melee starts, or in situations where melee is impossible. Those are supposed to have long range but be significantly constrained by covers/etc. Notably, as soon as the enemy is "one movement away" from you or from your allies, it's time to consider changing of attack type.
=> The problem here is that by virtue of being squishy, the wizard might not have any backup plan available. And by "backup plan" I actually mean "main plan", because combats that are entirely won before melee starts are usually the exception and not the rule in D&D.

+ The ones that just glorified reach weapons (with longer reach but no opportunity attack). Those attack don't have long range, and if they technically have long range the gameplay style of the RPG means that combat never starts with character far away from each other. But those attacks should not suffer from cover/etc, because their standard use case will be in a situation where there is a big melee with allies and enemies everywhere.
=> If you don't already have such short range attack spells, you might want to design some.

All spells have a default range equal to the caster's perception score in paces. That's the equivalent of 25-50' in D&D. Shooting attacks (including magic missiles) can fire at longer ranges at a cumulative -2 penalty per, and spells (including magic missiles) can be cast at 10x this range for a cumulative -4 penalty.


Huh. Maybe my own experiences with "firing into melee" (which mostly amount to things like throwing pillows or drinks) are abnormal, and most people, or most situations, result in a lower success rate than I've experienced? Even so, I know I'd feel uncomfortable taking the shot with a gun or bow in most melee situations.

However, that ultimately doesn't really matter, as I wasn't talking about Simulationist concerns, but Gamist ones. Simply put, if this is an action you're likely to take often in the course of your adventures (which it sounds like the current party's composition and tactics makes that a "yes"), it should have a certain rate of success (probably at least about 2-out-of-3), else it will feel bad.

They do it often, they have a low rate of success, it feels bad. That's the simple equation here. It's part of this party's normal standard operating procedures, yet it lacks adequate success, so it feels bad.




Yes, I'm quite confident you believe that. And, with enough data, as a Simulationist, I might agree. But the question for this thread is, is that a good design principle, to make that experience feel bad? Specifically, look at this statement:




and ask yourself, what alternatives do they have? What actions does the system encourage them to take in order to feel good?

(and the answer as far as your players can tell is, summon incorporeal monsters to clear the dungeon for them, then go behind them to pick up the loot. Is there some better answer that your system is trying to guide the archer and blaster archtypes towards? Or does it just say, haha, standard encounters, where your front line actually engages monsters, you should feel bad about yourself?)

And there's certainly some room to debate about what good design principles look like here, and the extent to which it is answerable in a modular state, vs the extent to which the rest of the system plays a role in what good design for this set of features looks like.

Personally, I think that, regardless of what good design principles may look like in the general case, when designing a game that is played primarily or exclusively with groups where some or all members have depression and/or ego issues, maybe erring on the side of "feeling good" might be a good design decision.

But I'm not a licensed psychologist, nor do I play one in an RPG. :smallbiggrin:

One could throw simulation to the wind and ignore penalties, but doesn't that feel bad for the melee characters? The ranged guys can run around the board hitting whomever they like wherever they like whenever they like, while the sword guy is still limited to the guys he can physically reach.


I will admit that they are actually doing surprisingly well for their party composition. They have little to no synergy, and the two big tanky guys backed up by two small shooty guys is an exceptionally poor group composition for a dungeon crawl. And of course you have one player deliberately anti-optimizing trying to make the weakest character she can.


We've heard a bit about what the player wants, and what they won't do, but what are they actually choosing to do during play?

Typically, she does one or more of the following at the start of the fight, depending on how difficulty she judges it to be:

Summon tentacles for area control.
Summon a minion to fight.
Curse an enemy with bad luck and a penalty to rolls.

Then she hides in the back firing magic missiles, and either a: complains that the accuracy penalties for shooting into melee are two high if the front line holds off all the monsters or b: complains that I am picking on her if the monsters get past the front line to attack the back ranks.


Since your system is classless, I assume spells are available to all players somewhat. Are there any particular spells that your martial focused characters are taking, or are spells going unused entirely?

In this party, two of the characters are not spell casters.

The fourth made the typical mistake of trying to replicate a D&D cleric and pulling themselves too thin, so she basically casts one small healing spell a session.

In the last campaign there was a fair amount of gish characters. The primary spells cast were haste, invisibility, dimension door, and vampiric touch. (Or my games' equivalents).




Does casting or shooting into an area do anything beneficial on a miss? Melee generally at very least provide a defensive line or
hold choke points even if their attacks don't land, so it could make ranged play feel better if their presence on the field still did something even when they fail at their aggressive action. It could be something as simple as turning missed shots into covering or suppressing fire, or leaving the spell effect on the map for the martials to knock targets into, use as cover, or make more specialized use of like channeling into a weapon or bouncing off a shield. Nothing too crazy numbers wise, it's supposed to compete with the innate battlefield control of taking up space not deliberate actions.

All of that is possible, but it isn't a default, and it isn't really practical when you are in the back row with the big beefy fighters between you and the monsters.


If we're still talking about spells, one way to get around this is to have some spells act like "missiles" and others be "target only". And perhaps have direct damage stuff be more likely to act like missiles and other utility buff/debuff stuff not suffer from the "firing into melee" issue. Which can actually encourage spell casters to use direct damage where it's appropriate (clear line of sight, just like archery, but maybe with more "boom!"), but then do things to help out the melee folks once melee is actually engaged.

This is indeed how the system is intended to work.


Excellent point.
From a simulationist/versimiltude POV the correct answer is firing into a melee is a bad thing, carrying a huge risk of hitting your allies.
From a gamist POV the question of what else of value can you do is important. If all the bad guys are locked up in melee and you suck at melee and you can’t shoot into melee you only have bad choices. In wargames this is solved to some degree by allowing the archers to take objectives or by contributing to morale states, but RPGs generally don’t feature these as common components of a fight.

Ideally there will be a clear line of fire you can move into and / or an unengaged target to shoot.

If that isn't the case, the simplest answer is do something else; ideally you can do things besides shooting.

But, depending on character builds, you might well still be most effective firing into melee, and there are enough maneuvers, build options, and weapon types / modifications that it is fully possible to contribute by shooting into melee. A guy who is in the back lying prone with a scoped rifle on a bipod will actually have a net accuracy bonus shooting into melee compared to your standard gunslinger firing from the hip.


So, IME, in D&D -
Null-magic zones are quite rare. If 10% of the encounters were in null-magic ones, most people would think "Wow, that GM really hates casters".

Rogues being "in the spotlight" - what does that mean? Unable to sneak attack? Yeah, people kinda hate that too, avoid it when they can, and if it happens more than ... IDK, 20% of the time? They're going to get irritated. Note how Rogue guides have a lot more about "how to get Sneak Attack as often as possible" than they do about other alternatives. And how PF1 changed Sneak Attack to work against almost all types of foe.

Melee vs flying (or otherwise out of reach) characters? This happens the most of the the three, but still not that often. Not because it couldn't, but because most players will get pissed off if it happens too much and most GMs will avoid using it too much. There's a fair amount of GM advice along the lines of "Just because a dragon could strafe the party and never land for melee, doesn't mean you should run it like that. Give the warriors something they can hit!" And if you look at recommended magic items for melee types, getting a source of flight is high on the list, specifically so they don't have to switch to non-melee.

And now we come to "shooting into melee". It happens more than any of those others. All it takes is "the enemies were all melee, and they engaged our front line", which is IME a pretty common scenario. And what exactly are the archers supposed to do to "get out" of that situation? Heck, if it's a chokepoint they might not even be able to get into melee (and might be a liability if they do, depending on their defense).

I agree that it is the most common, but its also the least punishing. The difference between a marksman taking -4 to hit for shooting into melee and a swordsman having to stand around with a thumb up her bum because the dragon refuses to land is huge.


TBH, your system is slightly a paradox to me. In threads like this, and about resource management, it sounds like it's too tightly-tuned / stingy for my tastes. But then in recap threads, the characters often have interesting-sounding abilities that seem a lot better than what most D&D characters get (particularly in the out-of-combat department), so my interest is perked up. Is "more generous out-of-combat than in-combat" an accurate description?

True that.

Of course, that's really more on working out tactics / synergy with your party than it is on the GM / System design.


TBH, your system is slightly a paradox to me. In threads like this, and about resource management, it sounds like it's too tightly-tuned / stingy for my tastes. But then in recap threads, the characters often have interesting-sounding abilities that seem a lot better than what most D&D characters get (particularly in the out-of-combat department), so my interest is perked up. Is "more generous out-of-combat than in-combat" an accurate description?

Players have a lot more freedom and control, and there are a lot more non-magical and / or out of combat abilities than there are in D&D.

As far as tuning and stinginess, its more balanced as a game. D&D tends to run as a railroad with the illusion of difficulty, where you rest when the DM lets you rest. My system is a lot less stingy with resources than an old school "One night of player is one adventuring day" style setup or even the recommended 4-6 encounters per adventuring day, but is a lot less stingy than the 15 MWD / One big encounter style that modern D&D often devolves into.

[gbaji]

Again, this looses sight of the caster's incredible versatility.

With her admittedly limited spell slots...

It's the "limited spell slots" that I was talking about. If the archer can fire arrows every single round, of every single combat, for as many combats as occur in any day, but the spell caster can only do a limited number of spells per day (with an unknown number of encounters per day), that's a balancing point that has to be considered.

This has always been an issue with primary spell casters, going all the way back to 1e D&D. They are overpowered compared to other characters. Right up until they run out of spell slots, and then they are severely underpowered. And yes, this makes balancing them somewhat difficult, since it also includes some sort of "how often does the number of encounters we have to deal with between spell recovery periods exceed the number of useful spell slots the caster has?" calculation.

And yes, if you do run into such situations commonly, the spell caster player will complain bitterly about it. But if you don't, then the rest of the PCs may feel underpowered. There is, unfortunately, not a good answer to this problem, doubly so if you have players who lack sufficient self awareness and balance to understand that this is a necessary part of balance for that kind of character. Some players will expect to blast hard every single round of every combat, and then expect that the days encounters will end when they run out of spell slots, so that they effectively "never run out".

If you have a game system with that sort of balance effect in play (which it sounds like this does, at least to some extent), then you *must* have this effect occur. Even if the player complains, tough cookies. Deal with it. It does also sound like your game system allows for more balanced spell casting and "other" effects, such that PCS should be able to have "some spells" while also having "some non-magic capabilities". If they choose to do so. Which maybe, if they don't like the whole "you are gimped once your main spell slots are consumed" bit, they should consider utilizing.

[Jakinbandw]

One could throw simulation to the wind and ignore penalties, but doesn't that feel bad for the melee characters? The ranged guys can run around the board hitting whomever they like wherever they like whenever they like, while the sword guy is still limited to the guys he can physically reach.

I agree that it is the most common, but its also the least punishing. The difference between a marksman taking -4 to hit for shooting into melee and a swordsman having to stand around with a thumb up her bum because the dragon refuses to land is huge.


A -4 penalty is huge. Ouch. I can see why any ranged character would be frustrated. For my own system, I actually reversed this whole mess to great effect. Unless a character has an opponent in melee with them, then they can completely negate any ranged action targeting them (more complex then this, but it's the basic idea). Suddenly the melee fighter facing the dragon isn't suffering because he can't fly, instead he is safe until the dragon lands and actually engages them in melee combat. Archers now rely on big tanky bois up front to allow their attacks to work, and the entire party suddenly starts to function more as a cohesive unit.

And it even makes sense. You can dodge out of the way of arrows/hide behind a giant shield unless you have someone in your face distracting you.

[Talakeal]

A -4 penalty is huge. Ouch. I can see why any ranged character would be frustrated. For my own system, I actually reversed this whole mess to great effect. Unless a character has an opponent in melee with them, then they can completely negate any ranged action targeting them (more complex then this, but it's the basic idea). Suddenly the melee fighter facing the dragon isn't suffering because he can't fly, instead he is safe until the dragon lands and actually engages them in melee combat. Archers now rely on big tanky bois up front to allow their attacks to work, and the entire party suddenly starts to function more as a cohesive unit.

And it even makes sense. You can dodge out of the way of arrows/hide behind a giant shield unless you have someone in your face distracting you.

That seems odd to me.

Now, I don't know how it actually functions or what the rules / setting are like, but that seems to defeat the whole purpose of ranged attacks.

Likewise, I am getting images of cowboys having a showdown and high noon and neither one of them being able to touch one another, or a dragon strafing a village and the townsfolk just shrugging and going about their business. It also means that a lone ranged character is in really dire straights.


It's the "limited spell slots" that I was talking about. If the archer can fire arrows every single round, of every single combat, for as many combats as occur in any day, but the spell caster can only do a limited number of spells per day (with an unknown number of encounters per day), that's a balancing point that has to be considered.

This has always been an issue with primary spell casters, going all the way back to 1e D&D. They are overpowered compared to other characters. Right up until they run out of spell slots, and then they are severely underpowered. And yes, this makes balancing them somewhat difficult, since it also includes some sort of "how often does the number of encounters we have to deal with between spell recovery periods exceed the number of useful spell slots the caster has?" calculation.

And yes, if you do run into such situations commonly, the spell caster player will complain bitterly about it. But if you don't, then the rest of the PCs may feel underpowered. There is, unfortunately, not a good answer to this problem, doubly so if you have players who lack sufficient self awareness and balance to understand that this is a necessary part of balance for that kind of character. Some players will expect to blast hard every single round of every combat, and then expect that the days encounters will end when they run out of spell slots, so that they effectively "never run out".

If you have a game system with that sort of balance effect in play (which it sounds like this does, at least to some extent), then you *must* have this effect occur. Even if the player complains, tough cookies. Deal with it. It does also sound like your game system allows for more balanced spell casting and "other" effects, such that PCS should be able to have "some spells" while also having "some non-magic capabilities". If they choose to do so. Which maybe, if they don't like the whole "you are gimped once your main spell slots are consumed" bit, they should consider utilizing.

This is all more or less correct.

In my system a caster is a balancing act between power, versatility, and endurance, and you can balance more heavily into one than another, but you aren't ever going to be able to beat a martial character at their own game in all three at once.

[gbaji]

A -4 penalty is huge. Ouch. I can see why any ranged character would be frustrated. For my own system, I actually reversed this whole mess to great effect. Unless a character has an opponent in melee with them, then they can completely negate any ranged action targeting them (more complex then this, but it's the basic idea). Suddenly the melee fighter facing the dragon isn't suffering because he can't fly, instead he is safe until the dragon lands and actually engages them in melee combat. Archers now rely on big tanky bois up front to allow their attacks to work, and the entire party suddenly starts to function more as a cohesive unit.

And it even makes sense. You can dodge out of the way of arrows/hide behind a giant shield unless you have someone in your face distracting you.

Yeah. I'm going to agree with Talakeal here. That would suggest that two lines of archers facing eachother on a battlefield and firing arrows at eachother will never actually hit anyone or ever get injured themeselves? Or yeah, a dragon can't actually breath fire on random people walking down a street?

I get the concept from a very "video gamey" point of view. Melee folks engage, and this alllows the missile folks to target the same targets. And it does allow for a party synergy and "gang up on targets" kind of thing. But that's incredibly non-realistic.

But IMO, if you want to give unengaged folks some means to block arrows, then provide that in the game. And yeah, you can make that not be an action you can take while actively engaged (I actually have something like this in my game). But you really should have some penality for firing into melee. In my game, it's not a minus to hit, but a chance that if you do hit, you may hit the wrong person (more or less a random roll amongst anyone in melee with your target, or in line of sight to the target). I do allow for skill to be applied to "hit the one person I'm aiming for", but you have to be quite skilled to fire into melee and consistently hit the correct target and it will always reduce your chance of getting a better hit (more damage whatever). Basically, you choose to apply some of your "chance to hit" to mitigate the "chance to hit the wrong target".

Obviously, different game systems can handle this in different ways. But while I do agree that bottlenecking and "blocking" ranged folks out of the combat is a problem, just allowing them to fire freely right through their tanks is not a great solution, and giving them actual bonuses to doing so is even worse. And yes, in many cases, it's the players who are choosing these tactics in the first place. If they want to allow their ranged characters to be more involved, then by all means, they can change their tactics to allow for that. Don't change the game rules to allow for them to gain the benefits of blocking out melee opponents while still allowing ranged PCs free reign. IMO, that's usually part of the balance of ranged (I can do damage to you, while you can't do damage to me) attacks in the first place.

[Jakinbandw]

That seems odd to me.

Now, I don't know how it actually functions or what the rules / setting are like, but that seems to defeat the whole purpose of ranged attacks.

Likewise, I am getting images of cowboys having a showdown and high noon and neither one of them being able to touch one another, or a dragon strafing a village and the townsfolk just shrugging and going about their business. It also means that a lone ranged character is in really dire straights.

It really depends what you think the purpose of ranged attacks is. For most players I've seen it's either a thematic choice for their character, or a defense mechanism. Does it still work as a defense mechanism? Only if they are fighting foes much weaker then them, or they have an ally willing to go into melee. Does it work thematically? Absolutely! They aren't punished for their choice, and can even enter into melee if they want without penalty. The only downside is that going ranged minorly lowers their damage potential, but even then, there isn't anything stopping them from having a backup melee weapon.

So in a group they get the same benefit as normal, while solo in a white room, they are very slightly weaker in melee. I don't feel that my system invalidates them at all.

As to your second concern, while I won't go over the rules too much, trust me, dules happen just fine, as does a dragon's ability to toast a town. I'd argue that dragon's in my system are far deadlier to towns and cities in my system than they are in dnd. Basically, all characters have a kill threshold that if an attack rolls higher than, they are defeated, and they can't protect against it. Civilians have an incredibly low threshold, so a dragon can't fail to kill all the villagers within range of their attack. PCs are special and their threshold is infinitely high, though this is easy to undo if the party wants to play something more OSR.




Yeah. I'm going to agree with Talakeal here. That would suggest that two lines of archers facing eachother on a battlefield and firing arrows at eachother will never actually hit anyone or ever get injured themeselves? Or yeah, a dragon can't actually breath fire on random people walking down a street?

As I said above, neither of these things happen for reasons that aren't really too important here.


I get the concept from a very "video gamey" point of view. Melee folks engage, and this alllows the missile folks to target the same targets. And it does allow for a party synergy and "gang up on targets" kind of thing. But that's incredibly non-realistic.

A fighter in 5e can load and fire a crossbow 9 times in 6 seconds while moving 30 feet, opening a door, and possibly even casting a spell. In fantasy games with flying, fire breathing lizards and wish granting rings, I personally feel that trying to appeal to reality is rather silly. To me, it makes perfect sense that an archer can be skilled enough to shoot safely into melee. Especially when they are already superhuman in so many other ways.


But you really should have some penality for firing into melee.
Why? How does it make the game more fun? How does it allow a character that wants to play Robin Hood better? I'm really curious here, because to me, I don't see any good reason for it, other than to make characters waste feats on removing that penalty, at which point it's just a pointless feat tax that everyone hates.


Don't change the game rules to allow for them to gain the benefits of blocking out melee opponents while still allowing ranged PCs free reign. IMO, that's usually part of the balance of ranged (I can do damage to you, while you can't do damage to me) attacks in the first place.

I think you're missing that neatest interaction here. Ranged characters can't block out melee characters unless they have an allied melee character engaged with them. That means that if they are using range against a melee opponent, and that opponent can down the melee character, than that opponent is safe from the ranged characters. This makes it so that there is never a situation where one side of a battle is completely unable to react to their opponents, and only has the option of eating damage. There is always something a character can do to make the situation better for them.

This is important when my RPG system allows for some fairly absurd feats from it's characters. A mid level archer can attack a foe up to a mile away, ignoring all cover. If they are fighting something without super speed, that would normally be an automatic victory (I've seen it before in the OSR game Godbound).

That said, having played with these rules at low levels (equivalent to a level 2-4 5e character) I find I'm having more fun with how battles play out then I did in 5e. And really, I write and play games for fun.

[Quertus]

Out of curiosity, you say "at least" equal.

That's interesting to me, as it implies that it is ok if the fireball guy is better than the archer, but not if the archer is better than the fireball guy. Why is that?




I agree that it is the most common, but its also the least punishing. The difference between a marksman taking -4 to hit for shooting into melee and a swordsman having to stand around with a thumb up her bum because the dragon refuses to land is huge.



One could throw simulation to the wind and ignore penalties, but doesn't that feel bad for the melee characters? The ranged guys can run around the board hitting whomever they like wherever they like whenever they like, while the sword guy is still limited to the guys he can physically reach.


I will admit that they are actually doing surprisingly well for their party composition. They have little to no synergy, and the two big tanky guys backed up by two small shooty guys is an exceptionally poor group composition for a dungeon crawl. And of course you have one player deliberately anti-optimizing trying to make the weakest character she can.

That doesn’t answer the question of what the system wants then to do, and ignores / belittles / need a word how this makes them feel.

Also, comparing yourself to others is a recipe for feeling bad.

Yes, as a game designer, you have to compare character design choices. But since you had to ask about the obvious “The guy with limited spell slots should do at least as well as the archer with (perhaps incorrectly) presumed functionally unlimited ammo”, I reiterate my call for in play DPS stats from the current party.

As far as “won’t that feel bad for melee?”, well, to take a page from your book, and balance Power, versatility, and endurance. In this example, make melee more versatile, able to trip / disarm / feint / debuff more easily than Ranged, giving Ranged attacks penalties to those more versatile suite of options that don’t apply to their male counterparts. Ranged is versatile on targets, melee is versatile on effects. For example.

Different, but equal. And both feel good.

As for the melee combatant who feels bad when the dragon didn’t land… I mean, yeah, they should feel bad. My training says that the Fighter who doesn’t carry a bow or one-shot rocket launcher for just such an occasion, and who doesn’t have a means of flight or even take cover, is an idiot who deserves to feel bad about themselves.

Whereas the archer or blaster who is helping keep things off their tank is doing their job, and should feel good about themselves.

Thus my question of, “why, what does your system want them to do?”.


A -4 penalty is huge. Ouch. I can see why any ranged character would be frustrated. For my own system, I actually reversed this whole mess to great effect. Unless a character has an opponent in melee with them, then they can completely negate any ranged action targeting them (more complex then this, but it's the basic idea). Suddenly the melee fighter facing the dragon isn't suffering because he can't fly, instead he is safe until the dragon lands and actually engages them in melee combat. Archers now rely on big tanky bois up front to allow their attacks to work, and the entire party suddenly starts to function more as a cohesive unit.

And it even makes sense. You can dodge out of the way of arrows/hide behind a giant shield unless you have someone in your face distracting you.

That’s a really cool concept. If I have no reason not to, of course I can take cover and negate ranged attacks. It actually matches my experiences better than giving a penalty to ranged attacks for firing into melee, tbh. Kudos!

Sure, it only makes sense is there’s appropriate cover (including things like tower shields), but I like the “by default, characters are assumed to be competent, and take cover” mentality. That’s a great example of a “feel good” rule.

[MetroAlien]

"magic / martial" is inherently easier to balance than "ranged / melee"
looking at the grossest oversimplification, the "magic / martial" duality exists only in flavour.
Ideally, in the scope of combat, they should be able to achieve similar goals with similar efficiency. It's just up to players' preference.

the "range / melee" duality is weird, because it's so obviously and inescapably one-sided in reality.
Ranged is just better.
Not only does it do more damage than melee IRL, but can actually achieve a similar rate of attack speed.
And it's, well, at range!

Yes, firing into a melee scuffle is risky.
But does your encounter design take into account that archers are trained to hit targets 4~5 times as far away as typical areas of encounter reach in D&D?
Or that good bows had a decent chance to outright pierce armour (thus ignoring enemy armour's AC value)?
Or that one good hit will cripple you for the rest of combat, if not the rest of your life, and that's on the already low chance it wasn't a 1-shot-kill. (admittedly, this also applies to melee)
I never see anyone argue for that particular realism...

Therefore, imho, it's a bit counterproductive to try and insert too much realism into balancing the two.
We're already operating under the unrealistic , but fun, assumption that the orcs didn't stick Boromir full of arrows before he even had a chance to reach them.


That said, I don't necessarily think being unable to shoot into melee is such a debilitating drawback.
Maybe magic has lower range, but more options to hit into melee.
Then it will become the archers' job to take out enemy magic users.
As long as enemy groups have a strong rear line-up, archers will have plenty to do.

Going on a tangent, I always used to think that Runescape had rock-paper-scissors combat:
Fighters are strong against archers, because armour blocks arrows
BUT archers are strong against mages, because mages have no protection from arrows
BUT mages are strong against fighters, because armour doesn't block magic!

[Pauly]

A -4 penalty is huge. Ouch. I can see why any ranged character would be frustrated. For my own system, I actually reversed this whole mess to great effect. Unless a character has an opponent in melee with them, then they can completely negate any ranged action targeting them (more complex then this, but it's the basic idea). Suddenly the melee fighter facing the dragon isn't suffering because he can't fly, instead he is safe until the dragon lands and actually engages them in melee combat. Archers now rely on big tanky bois up front to allow their attacks to work, and the entire party suddenly starts to function more as a cohesive unit.

And it even makes sense. You can dodge out of the way of arrows/hide behind a giant shield unless you have someone in your face distracting you.

I like this approach very much. It does make some assumptions, but I think reasonable assumptions, for the type of skirmishes that fantasy RPGs depict.

Sometimes it is the counter-intuitive or counter-standard expectations approach that gets best results. A simple examp,e is that as characters get more experienced that their defence should level up faster than their offense. This has been shown to ge true in analysis of combat casualties and sports combat such as boxing, HEMA or BJJ. A very simplified version is going from untrained to trained improves your offense. Going from trained to veteran improves your defense. Going from veteran to elite improves both. But Every RPG I’ve ever read says as you gain XP it is primarily your offense that improved.

[Dasick]

"magic / martial" is inherently easier to balance than "ranged / melee"
looking at the grossest oversimplification, the "magic / martial" duality exists only in flavour.
Ideally, in the scope of combat, they should be able to achieve similar goals with similar efficiency. It's just up to players' preference.

I honestly disagree quite hard, but also agree.

I'm very much a "tactical wargame" enjoyer, so for me magic should obviously be different from martial skills. AoE focused, debuffs, summons, etc. Imo if a magical equivalent of a bow or a gun exists it's bad design.

HOWEVER many people into RPGs don't really like the tactical wargaming experience, which might be what OP's issue boils down to. A lot of people playing RPGs just want different flavours of the same thing. How much one wants to cater to one or the other is a matter of design philosophy, which I think HoD is meant to be more tactical in it's approach?


the "range / melee" duality is weird, because it's so obviously and inescapably one-sided in reality.
Ranged is just better.
None of this is true.


Not only does it do more damage than melee IRL, but can actually achieve a similar rate of attack speed.

According to statistics, you're more likely to survive being shot with a pistol than the equivalent amount of knife stab wounds.

Melee damage IRL is absolutely brutal. A single bad (or good I suppose) fist punch can kill a person, and routinely does in drunk/street fights. "Clerics use maces cause they dont draw blood" LMFAO



And it's, well, at range!

Yes, firing into a melee scuffle is risky.
But does your encounter design take into account that archers are trained to hit targets 4~5 times as far away as typical areas of encounter reach in D&D?
The corollary to "dont bring a knife to a gunfight" is "dont bring a gun to a knifefight".

Dungeon crawls are all "knifefight" territory. Which might be the issue here actually.

The last recorded successful melee charge was during Iraq war, ie, this century. British soldiers (highlanders to be specific) did a bit of the ol' bayonet charge. Before that, I think it was Falkalands, where again it was massively successful.

Yeah, guns and bows reach far. This is a moot point. There's a reason why warfare was dominated by melee shock troops and shock cavalry with few exceptions, and up until 19th century, soldiers were trained to use bayonets as much as they shot. Battlefield conditions and tactical maneuvering frequently create situations where its a massive knifefight.



Or that good bows had a decent chance to outright pierce armour (thus ignoring enemy armour's AC value)?

In reconstructor tests, arrows don't penetrate decent quality period armour such as plate or maile when its made to period specifications. Bodkin arrowheads were still used but idk if it was for lower quality armour, or for easier hits on unarmoured parts, or if just getting hit with a pointy thing from a massive warbow is still going to take the wind out of you even if it never penetrates the metal.

Plus you know

Shields.


Or that one good hit will cripple you for the rest of combat, if not the rest of your life, and that's on the already low chance it wasn't a 1-shot-kill. (admittedly, this also applies to melee)
I never see anyone argue for that particular realism...

There's a funny story about the Colt 1911 handgun. The story goes that it was developed with a slightly larger ammo caliber (which according to FBI studies, doesn't actually have any real stopping power and the handgun with smaller caliber with more per weight ammo is better in their opinin) because United States was having a lot of issues with locals in the Phillipines. What they would do is, take a sword, place tourniquets on their limbs, drive themselves into a frenzy and go charge a column of US troops. The guy would be "lethally wounded" within seconds of doing that and poked full of holes. Being lethally wounded isn't the same as being killed dead in your tracks as they show in games and movies though. What a gun/arrow does is it make a hole through which blood leaks out. Which still gives a lethally wounded person a minute or so to lethally wound a dozen or so people.




Therefore, imho, it's a bit counterproductive to try and insert too much realism into balancing the two.
We're already operating under the unrealistic , but fun, assumption that the orcs didn't stick Boromir full of arrows before he even had a chance to reach them.

That movie was just a terrible case of giving plot armour to hero units


Edit:

to go back to OP

I think it seems like there's a couple of core issues here that don't really connect to balance of "blaster wizards" but are part of the system design as a whole

The description makes it seem like it's a brutal, realistic, gritty kind of system.

DnD is not that, DnD is the opposite of that. A lot of things that DnD balances around, for example, dungeon crawls, make no sense if you think of it in realistic terms. Dungeon crawls are staple of RPGs, and yet the idea just falls apart under scrutiny, as many webcomics have pointed out in excruciating detail.

On one hand, your system is leveraging 3.5 rules and mechanics which is good cause it helps people learn the system. On the other hand, it creates expectations about how the game will play, similar to 3.5 DnD. Which, it seems like your system is the opposite of it in design philosophy.

It sounds based on what you say that your party is just incredibly poorly optimized because they expected something similar to DnD, and also they are doing a dungeon crawl which, in realistic terms, a ranged character has no business being in tactically speaking.

I like classless system because of the freedom they offer, but they also create a guiderail for the players to understand their roles in the party and how the game plays. I feel like a lot of the issues you're talking about are a matter of communication, or flipping the narrative. Sort of how for example WoW introduced the XP gain loss mechanic at first, everyone hated it, then they replaced it with "rested" XP gain increase, and everyone loved it, but the numbers were basically the same.

And also dungeon crawls in your system should probably be seriously reworked/reconsidered or removed in principle. Either that, or you need to figure out a way for the melee and ranged characters to have synergy when fighting together in a tactical manner.

Extra edit:

Possible solutions

Two points

When people are engaged in melee they rarely stay engaged for long. They exchange blows and then back out at 'safe-ish' distance because its mentally and physically taxing to stay in engagement for long. So you can create a system where after a round of combat, melee characters have to pass a test to stay fighting, otherwise they move back to just outside the combat range (whoever scores higher can keep pushing the opponent naturally)

Second point is, most shots fired miss. But they still are important because they provide "suppression". Psychologically, being shot at is really scary.
Imo its scarier to be shot at with magic than regular weapons especially if magic is rare. So maybe missed shots or missed/failed spells should require a roll, and "break up" melee frequently cause they cause both combatants to flee reflexively. One can balance the spells being scarier for suppression by making spellcasters scarier to helpful NPCs.

[Talakeal]

A fighter in 5e can load and fire a crossbow 9 times in 6 seconds while moving 30 feet, opening a door, and possibly even casting a spell. In fantasy games with flying, fire breathing lizards and wish granting rings, I personally feel that trying to appeal to reality is rather silly. To me, it makes perfect sense that an archer can be skilled enough to shoot safely into melee. Especially when they are already superhuman in so many other ways.


1: This is a classic example of the "but dragons" fallacy. I only bring it up because a few months ago we had a thread where people were claiming to have never seen it used in this manner.
2: I think it is more realistic and mathematically elegant to simply have a highly skilled guy have a higher accuracy modifier rather than ignoring penalties.
3: My system isn't D&D, and it assumes PCs are human rather than the quasi superheroes you get in modern D&D.


As far as “won’t that feel bad for melee?”, well, to take a page from your book, and balance Power, versatility, and endurance. In this example, make melee more versatile, able to trip / disarm / feint / debuff more easily than Ranged, giving Ranged attacks penalties to those more versatile suite of options that don’t apply to their male counterparts. Ranged is versatile on targets, melee is versatile on effects. For example.

Different, but equal. And both feel good.

Sure, you could go this way. But IMO it feels less realistic and more forced.

Also, I doubt ranged characters would feel good, I can guarantee they would be complaining about lack of ranged maneuvers.


Yes, as a game designer, you have to compare character design choices. But since you had to ask about the obvious “The guy with limited spell slots should do at least as well as the archer with (perhaps incorrectly) presumed functionally unlimited ammo”, I reiterate my call for in play DPS stats from the current party.

In the current party the caster has more ammo than the marksman.

I can try and get you stats, although I need to wrangle down character sheets, this group is pretty weird about not letting me see them. But it really depends on what they are attacking and in what circumstances. And none of them are really built for damage, they are all more or less troll characters and I imagine a single character in a more optimized party could out damage the lot of them.


Why? How does it make the game more fun? How does it allow a character that wants to play Robin Hood better? I'm really curious here, because to me, I don't see any good reason for it, other than to make characters waste feats on removing that penalty, at which point it's just a pointless feat tax that everyone hates.

Ranged weapons can shoot at anyone from anywhere. Melee weapons are limited to people right next to you.

Barring some other factor, ranged is just better, which makes the melee characters feel bad.

Thus, everyone will be playing ranged characters, which is less fun because it is more homogenous and tactical position becomes an afterthought.\



As for the melee combatant who feels bad when the dragon didn’t land… I mean, yeah, they should feel bad. My training says that the Fighter who doesn’t carry a bow or one-shot rocket launcher for just such an occasion, and who doesn’t have a means of flight or even take cover, is an idiot who deserves to feel bad about themselves.

Why the double standard?

Why is the melee guy expected to have a backup ranged weapon, but the marksman not expected to have a backup melee weapon?



That’s a really cool concept. If I have no reason not to, of course I can take cover and negate ranged attacks. It actually matches my experiences better than giving a penalty to ranged attacks for firing into melee, tbh. Kudos!

Sure, it only makes sense is there’s appropriate cover (including things like tower shields), but I like the “by default, characters are assumed to be competent, and take cover” mentality. That’s a great example of a “feel good” rule.

You really think archers being wholly helpless without a melee guy to help them and then being limited to targeting what that melee guy is fighting feels good?

That's way more punitive and limiting than any of the accuracy penalties in my system.


Whereas the archer or blaster who is helping keep things off their tank is doing their job, and should feel good about themselves.

Very curious about what you actually mean by this, as that is directly opposite of my experiance.


Thus my question of, “why, what does your system want them to do?”.

Deal front loaded damage before the sides have clinched.

Move to a position with clear line of fire and then target enemy archers / casters / leaders / artillery / support.

If those don't exist, join in the melee, preferably with a spear, sawed off gun, or a bayonet.

If you don't have a melee weapon, are too delicate for melee, or are so good with your shooting that you are still better with accuracy penalties than you would be switching to a melee weapon:

If you have a bow and are outdoors, switch to a reckless stance, aim, and volley over your allies heads.
If you have a grenade and are indoors, switch to a reckless stance, aim, and volley over your allies heads.
If you have a rifle, aim, use a scope, deploy a bipod if you have one and go prone, switch to a reckless stance, and fire into the melee.
If you have a pistol, aim, switch to a reckless stance, and then strafe the combat, preferably with a martial technique.

If you are a caster, stop blasting and either buff your allies or debuff your opponents, or switch to a blasting spell which doesn't roll to hit.

[Dasick]

I can try and get you stats, although I need to wrangle down character sheets, this group is pretty weird about not letting me see them. But it really depends on what they are attacking and in what circumstances. And none of them are really built for damage, they are all more or less troll characters and I imagine a single character in a more optimized party could out damage the lot of them.

Seems kinda moot to be talking about balance when their characters are so far from being optimized

The real question is *why* they're so poorly optimized.

If they're just troll characters to troll you or goof around, it's one thing. You can't expect a system to be "balanced" if people deliberately make poor choices.

If they're troll characters because they didnt know how to build better, it's a different issue





Deal front loaded damage before the sides have clinched.

Move to a position with clear line of fire and then target enemy archers / casters / leaders / artillery / support.

If those don't exist, join in the melee, preferably with a spear, sawed off gun, or a bayonet.

If you don't have a melee weapon, are too delicate for melee, or are so good with your shooting that you are still better with accuracy penalties than you would be switching to a melee weapon:

If you have a bow and are outdoors, switch to a reckless stance, aim, and volley over your allies heads.
If you have a grenade and are indoors, switch to a reckless stance, aim, and volley over your allies heads.
If you have a rifle, aim, use a scope, deploy a bipod if you have one and go prone, switch to a reckless stance, and fire into the melee.
If you have a pistol, aim, switch to a reckless stance, and then strafe the combat, preferably with a martial technique.

If you are a caster, stop blasting and either buff your allies or debuff your opponents, or switch to a blasting spell which doesn't roll to hit.

Historically speaking, that's what archers/skirmishers were supposed to do in field engagements more or less. Added goal of disrupting enemy formations and maneuvering.

It also seems like in your system, characters are meant to have both melee and ranged skills (and keeping a few grenades as well). Sort of how Vermintide / Darktide works if you played those. It might make sense to incentivize that somehow, or make it clearer, or even to buff unskilled use of these weapons in certain tactical situations (for example, the squishy wizard getting really good rolls with 0 skill investment if she is flanking an opponent one of the fighters is already engaging in, or buffing a purely defensive posture to a point where she can hold off an enemy meleer rushing her while the fighters peel - and vice versa, blasting someone in the face with a sawed off shotgun should be a cakewalk for pretty much everyone )

[gbaji]

It really depends what you think the purpose of ranged attacks is. For most players I've seen it's either a thematic choice for their character, or a defense mechanism. Does it still work as a defense mechanism? Only if they are fighting foes much weaker then them, or they have an ally willing to go into melee. Does it work thematically? Absolutely!

The purpose of ranged attacks is to have the ability to do damage to people at range, hopefully in situations where they cannot damage you back. That's literally the entire point of ranged attacks. A mechanism that removes the ability to do damage to someone at range unless you also have someone in melee (so someone on your "side" must be in risk of taking damage for you to do damage), completely nullifies that purpose.


As I said above, neither of these things happen for reasons that aren't really too important here.

I think that if you are proposing a rule that prevents ranged attackers from actually doing damage at range, clarifying what conditions cause that restriction on ranged damage would seem to be extremely important. So far, all you've stated as the condition is "not be in melee with someone else". So I'm somewhat forced to assume this is what you are proposing here.

If there are other conditions (must have a tower shield or hide behind cover, can't advance while defending against missile attacks, can only defend/block/whatever X number of attacks per round, etc), it may change my assessment. But how you have described it more or less flies in the face of why folks use ranged attacks in the first place.


A fighter in 5e can load and fire a crossbow 9 times in 6 seconds while moving 30 feet, opening a door, and possibly even casting a spell. In fantasy games with flying, fire breathing lizards and wish granting rings, I personally feel that trying to appeal to reality is rather silly. To me, it makes perfect sense that an archer can be skilled enough to shoot safely into melee. Especially when they are already superhuman in so many other ways.

I'm not questioning the ability of archers to fire into melee. Although, if we're on the subject, if they have "superhuman" abilities, then applying a modest to-hit adjustment to allow their superior abilities to actually matter should not be an issue. Can "non-superheroic" people in this game also fire into melee with no problems? A 10 year old kid who's never picked up a bow can fire into a melee scrum and only hit the folks he's trying to hit, and will never accidentally hit a friend? We're talking base rules here. I'd rather have rules that make sense for the "normal folks", but then have the same rules allow for extremely skilled people to do things outside that norm.

Anyway. I'm not really questioning that. I'm questioning the "archers can't do damage to targets unless that target is also engaged in melee with someone else" bit.



Why? How does it make the game more fun? How does it allow a character that wants to play Robin Hood better? I'm really curious here, because to me, I don't see any good reason for it, other than to make characters waste feats on removing that penalty, at which point it's just a pointless feat tax that everyone hates.

Because Robin Hood has a high enough archery skill that he can eliminate the risk of hitting a friend when firing into melee. Or he's taken a feat which allows him to do this. Either of which makes him actually "special", instead of "just like everone else in this game world". If everyone has the same "special" and "superhuman" abilities, then no one does. There's a lot of value in the PCs actually feeling like their chacters are special, or have abilitiies/skills/whatever that allow them to do things that not everyone else can do. Even among different classes or skill focuses, having the highly skilled archer in the party able to fire into melee safely (for whatever game rule reasons), but if the party tank picks up a bow, he can probably hit things, but firing into melee is a risk. This gives the archer character a reward for focusing on archery.

Sure. It's your game, so do what you want with it. I'm just suggesting that giving stuff like this to "everyone" isn't always going to have the positive outcome you may want. Or it could? Dunno.



I think you're missing that neatest interaction here. Ranged characters can't block out melee characters unless they have an allied melee character engaged with them. That means that if they are using range against a melee opponent, and that opponent can down the melee character, than that opponent is safe from the ranged characters. This makes it so that there is never a situation where one side of a battle is completely unable to react to their opponents, and only has the option of eating damage. There is always something a character can do to make the situation better for them.

Except that unless I'm just totally misunderstanding you here, I'm not sure how this is "neat" for the archer character. He's basically being prevented from doing things like attacking melee folks at range before they can close that range (so what? He just stands there with his bow doing nothing while the enemy walks up and attacks him?). If he's got a friend fighting an enemy, and his friend goes down, he can no longer attack? You've certainly got a "side" that is unable to react to opponents here. And how about an encounter where there's a melee scrum in one location, and maybe additional bad guys up on a hilldside, or wall or whatever? Normal tactics is to have the archery folks take out (or at least pin down) that part of the enemy forces, while the melee folks fight their way through. Your rules (at least as they've been explained to me) seem to remove that as a tactical option.


Again. The "normal" use of archery is to attack unengaged people at range. The hoped for result is that you can eliminate some of them *before* they get into melee range and start doing damage to your side. And there are a whole host of tactics available to take advantage of this fact.


I'm also going to second much of what Dasick said. Everything else being equal, melee damage is higher than archery damage (often much higher). Yes. Lightly armored opponents are vulnerable to archery. But they're also super vulnerable to melee damage too (leather armor doesn't do much to a sword or axe or mace either). But when we get to more heavily armored opponents, arrows fall short while melee damage still works. Shields become the key determinant in both cases, but the force of a melee attack is much greater than the impact force of an arrow (but in theory arrows are harder to block unless you are using a really big shield).

At Agincourt, the victory is often attributed to the English Longbow (and rightly so). But it wasn't actually the damage done by the arrows. Those bowmen did very little against the French heavy foot on the field. All it did was force them to march across the field, with their visors down (so limited ability to get fresh air) and shields raised. And when they could not actually break thorugh the English lines they were stuck there, holding that position, while the arrows rained down on them. Again, not killing very many of them, but forcing them into a tight formation in the hot, humid, muddy (cause of foolishly failed previous cavalry charges) conditions. The archers literally ran out of arrows. Then picked up hand axes and charged down the hillside and just started chopping the exhausted (and too tightly packed) French soldiers. And it was a massacre from that point on.

The point is that the archers backup weapons (hand axes) were able to kill the heavily armored men at arms, while the arrows just bounced off their helmets and shoulderpads and shields. To be fair, by the time they got attacked this way, they were too tired to defend themselves against melee attacks, but that's part of the point. Melee attacks do so much damage, that you can't just count on your armor causing them to glance away like you can against all but really lucky arrow hits (and to be fair in the other direction, this was at a time period when the pendulum of "armor versus missile" was slanted towards "armor").

And yes. We could argue that this fits with your model. But it's not that the arrows could not hit, but that they could not penetrate and do damage. If the French foot had been wearing light armor, they would have been ripped apart by the same set of archers. So whether a person at range is "safe" from missile fire is not at all a function of whether they are engaged in melee, but whether the armor they are wearing is sufficient to resist the damage being done. And yeah, this gets us into questions about the game system and whether it makes a distinction between "hit but not damaged" versus "all hits are hits that do damage". And yes, also back to the function of shields, and how different sheiles work for different things (especially missile versus melee).

[Dasick]

The point is that the archers backup weapons (hand axes) were able to kill the heavily armored men at arms, while the arrows just bounced off their helmets and shoulderpads and shields. To be fair, by the time they got attacked this way, they were too tired to defend themselves against melee attacks, but that's part of the point. Melee attacks do so much damage, that you can't just count on your armor causing them to glance away like you can against all but really lucky arrow hits (and to be fair in the other direction, this was at a time period when the pendulum of "armor versus missile" was slanted towards "armor").

Its worth pointing out that the arrows don't just "bounce off". They transfer the kinetic energy, often with enough force to break an arrow.

Warbow arrows for a 100+ pound bow are no joke. They are chunky boys. Even if it doesn't penetrate the armour, being hit with one sucks majorly. It can even break bones through armour, or cause concussions. There are battlefield remains of people with broken necks, through their armour is intact (although its more likely this was done with an axe or a hammer). I imagine even blocking a shot like that with a shield is going to make your arm very sore.

Hand axes also don't pierce armour generally speaking, but yeah, you just deliver enough kinetic force to break bones and smash skulls through the armour, or knock someone down to get trampled or get a thin dagger slipped through the cracks or a helmet taken off.

[gbaji]

Its worth pointing out that the arrows don't just "bounce off". They transfer the kinetic energy, often with enough force to break an arrow.

Depends on the style of armor. Later plate designs were specifically shaped to maximize the odds of deflecting arrows. That's why you see pointy breastplates, and not round, but sharply angled pieces on the head, shoulders, arms, legs, hips, etc. Every surface is designed so that an arrow hitting it is almost never going to hit a straight flat surface.

And in the scenario I was speaking to, we're also talking about indirect fire, so really the only vulnerability was gaps between the helm and shoulders, and maybe lower down along the back of the legs. Which was why they were holding their shields over their heads (which, combined with the press of bodies, just maximized the amount of heat trapped around them). Ironically, the exhaustion effect might have actually been less if they'd been suffering more direct fire from a closer range. Would have probably lost more from the actual arrow fire though, so hard to say. Of course, we'd have to speculate completely different field positions for the various troops involved, different marching orders, etc, so the whole thing kinda goes out the window as an example at that point.


Warbow arrows for a 100+ pound bow are no joke. They are chunky boys. Even if it doesn't penetrate the armour, being hit with one sucks majorly. It can even break bones through armour, or cause concussions. There are battlefield remains of people with broken necks, through their armour is intact (although its more likely this was done with an axe or a hammer). I imagine even blocking a shot like that with a shield is going to make your arm very sore.

Hand axes also don't pierce armour generally speaking, but yeah, you just deliver enough kinetic force to break bones and smash skulls through the armour, or knock someone down to get trampled or get a thin dagger slipped through the cracks or a helmet taken off.

Yeah. It's a physics issue. Even with direct fire, it's still velocity times mass. And arrows don't have much mass. That's not to say they can't penetrate some armor completely, and really bruise you up even if they don't (and there's always that chance of hitting a weak point). But everything else being equal, if I was wearing heavy armor with good coverage and had to pick between standing still and letting an arrow hit me versus standing still and letting someone hit me with a sword, or hammer, or axe? I'll take the arrow every single time. There's a massive (pardon the pun) difference between what you are actually being hit with. Again, this is armor type specific. But I'm actually struggling to think of any time period or type of armor that is less capable of reducing injury from an arrow than it is from a directly swung melee weapon.

And yeah. This gets more complex when we factor in shields. If we assume someone actively defending themselves, then different armor/shield combos can skew the results. I can think of a fair number of cases (light/medium armor and small to medium shield typically), where I'd much rather take a melee attack and block it with the shield than stand there hoping my shield will block an incoming arrow (which is very likely to perforate me if it doesn't hit the shield instead).

But that kinda gets to my earlier point about melee engagement versus not. If I was wearing light armor and a medium shield, and there's a horde of archers "over there" who are going to loose volley after volley at me and my company, our best option is to fast march and engage in melee with an enemy force. Standing there just taking it is a bad idea. And typically, once engaged, the archers will stop firing because they may hit their own people. That's how "real world battlefield tactics" would work. But this is exactly the opposite of the "can only fire effectively at targets engaged in melee" concept. With that rule, you are better off holding position, since if you engage, you'll come under not only the melee attacks of the enemy force but also start taking archery fire. Which, again, seems completely backwards to me. You should be "taking archery fire" the entire time you *aren't* engaged, and not taking archery fire when you are.

Again. Unless I'm missing some key element to this rule.

[Slipjig]

The main thing that strikes me is that ranged combat is only superior if you have a front line or distance advantage.

Part of this also depends on the sverity of the aforementioned penalties for firing into melee. It's absolutely realistic that it would be harder to hit your target AND you would have a real chance of hitting your allies.
However, realistic isn't always fun, and if most rounds of combat involve the majority of enemies being in melee with the frontliners, that's going to be frustrating for archers and some casters. You might want to create a "Precise Shot" feat that reduces the penalty and eliminates the possibility of hitting an ally.

If your ranged characters are annoyed by enemies who take cover, well... yes, an opponent who only has only 10% of themselves exposed is tough to hit. Frontal assaults on targets in cover are very much a losing proposition, the ranged characters may need to change tactics (or at least relocate to a spot with a better angle). On the flip side, if you are the GM, give the players some opportunities to take cover, too. And the squares where the players take cover should be seeded with traps no more than 25% of the time.

[Jakinbandw]

1: This is a classic example of the "but dragons" fallacy. I only bring it up because a few months ago we had a thread where people were claiming to have never seen it used in this manner.
2: I think it is more realistic and mathematically elegant to simply have a highly skilled guy have a higher accuracy modifier rather than ignoring penalties.
3: My system isn't D&D, and it assumes PCs are human rather than the quasi superheroes you get in modern D&D.

Ranged weapons can shoot at anyone from anywhere. Melee weapons are limited to people right next to you.

Barring some other factor, ranged is just better, which makes the melee characters feel bad.

Thus, everyone will be playing ranged characters, which is less fun because it is more homogenous and tactical position becomes an afterthought.

Ever play XCom? Even with all ranged, characters, positioning is never just an afterthought.

The issue with giving bigger bonuses is that it then makes archers even better then melee characters when they aren't shooting into melee. I don't know what type of games you're running, but in my experience, if fight generally start in a close enough range that melee characters are useful then archers will spend most fights without opponents that aren't in melee.

And sure, when someone is talking about a wizard throwing magic fireballs around all the time, I assume that means that characters in your game can do things that normal people can't. Maybe I just haven't been initiated into the real world mage guild, but being able to cast magic seems pretty superhuman to me.

At the end of the day though, you have a problem: Your game isn't fun to some of your players. You can either figure out how to fix that problem, or you can ignore it and blame the players. One will make your game more enjoyable, and one won't. You have to choose what is more important to you: a game that is fun and engaging to play, or proper exact modeling of the world to your preferences.


The purpose of ranged attacks is to have the ability to do damage to people at range, hopefully in situations where they cannot damage you back. That's literally the entire point of ranged attacks. A mechanism that removes the ability to do damage to someone at range unless you also have someone in melee (so someone on your "side" must be in risk of taking damage for you to do damage), completely nullifies that purpose.

I disagree that ranged combat only has a purpose if it allows you the ability to kill those helpless to fight back. I totally get that. I play XCom, and my favorite strategy is squadsight snipers and invisible scouts. The thing is, while it's fun for a while, it can kill all tension in a game. I've played and optimized Godbound, and that game is a far lower level of power than what I'm aiming to hit with my own system. As an example: In my recent high level playtest, I had a PC sit on the sun and throw bolts of plasma at the final boss that was located deep underground, burning through the dungeon above to strike them. The player wasn't bothered that they just didn't automatically win the fight, and that the melee fighter had to keep it distracted for the tactic to work. And because they were so far away, they could focus on their offence in place of their defense.

I also want to clarify that I wasn't saying to use my system exactly. I was pointing out that sometimes you can get good results by throwing out the obvious options, and instead implementing something outside the box.



I think that if you are proposing a rule that prevents ranged attackers from actually doing damage at range, clarifying what conditions cause that restriction on ranged damage would seem to be extremely important. So far, all you've stated as the condition is "not be in melee with someone else". So I'm somewhat forced to assume this is what you are proposing here.

If there are other conditions (must have a tower shield or hide behind cover, can't advance while defending against missile attacks, can only defend/block/whatever X number of attacks per round, etc), it may change my assessment. But how you have described it more or less flies in the face of why folks use ranged attacks in the first place.

Okay then, clarifications: Melee range means within a specific distance where a characters bubble of reality warping belief has effect. This is generally a single move action away, so in dnd terms, in melee means having an opponent within 30'. It also requires that the character be able to freely move out of the way. Thus armies consisting of thousands of characters can't evade as their movement speed as a group is too slow to move them out of the line of attack. It requires that the character to be high enough level to not be one shot by the attack. For two soldiers shooting at each other, this means that around 20% of the time, one will just die without any option to evade, even at long ranges. It requires a character to be within their favored Terrain, and to actually have a favored terrain (not something everyone has). Note that there are six times of favored terrain with them being such things as 'Lots of cover,' 'Wide open to allow easy dodging,' and similar.



I'm not questioning the ability of archers to fire into melee. Although, if we're on the subject, if they have "superhuman" abilities, then applying a modest to-hit adjustment to allow their superior abilities to actually matter should not be an issue. Can "non-superheroic" people in this game also fire into melee with no problems? A 10 year old kid who's never picked up a bow can fire into a melee scrum and only hit the folks he's trying to hit, and will never accidentally hit a friend? We're talking base rules here. I'd rather have rules that make sense for the "normal folks", but then have the same rules allow for extremely skilled people to do things outside that norm.

The base rules make no distinction for that. It is such a fringe edge case that I'm not concerned by it. I honestly can't think of the last time I've seen a 10 yo kid make an attack with a bow in any game I've played or heard about. I could add such a rule easily enough, but it feels... actively harmful? It's another rule that a GM and players need to learn, for a situation that doesn't come up.

For the record, let's say a kid does try to help the PCs in combat. He would be rolling a 2d10, keeping the lowest result, and discarding any result higher than a 5. Meanwhile the level 1 PCs would be rolling 2d10+1 keeping the highest result (at a minimum), and most threats they would be facing would be rolling 3d10+2 and keeping the highest result. These are opposed rolls, so the kid would have maybe a 1% chance of making a successful attack. The kid is already pointless in combat, why add another mechanic to make them more useless? Sure it could be realistic, but I don't feel the cognitive load is worth it.



Because Robin Hood has a high enough archery skill that he can eliminate the risk of hitting a friend when firing into melee. Or he's taken a feat which allows him to do this. Either of which makes him actually "special", instead of "just like everone else in this game world". If everyone has the same "special" and "superhuman" abilities, then no one does. There's a lot of value in the PCs actually feeling like their chacters are special, or have abilitiies/skills/whatever that allow them to do things that not everyone else can do. Even among different classes or skill focuses, having the highly skilled archer in the party able to fire into melee safely (for whatever game rule reasons), but if the party tank picks up a bow, he can probably hit things, but firing into melee is a risk. This gives the archer character a reward for focusing on archery.

Sure. It's your game, so do what you want with it. I'm just suggesting that giving stuff like this to "everyone" isn't always going to have the positive outcome you may want. Or it could? Dunno.

Trust me, my system gives players many options to make themselves stand out, I'm just against feat taxes. Some example of Low level archer feats increase their range, allow them to spend actions aiming for an extra high damage/high accuracy shot, cause a failed ranged attack to ricochet back at the target during the next round, shoot everyone withing a (DnD adjusted) 30' radius of a location within their bow's range, and other fun things. At higher levels they unlock feats that allow them to shoot spells and other ranged attacks out of the air, attack every single opponent within range, Fire off swords and spears instead of arrows, Or shoot an arrow at a target when only the existence of that target is known, but not their location (and at this tier of play, archers can have infinite range). I've got 24 Archer only feats, and that doesn't touch on the fact that my game has innate multiclassing (thing gestalt from 3.x) that allow players to grab some interesting options to enhance archery from other classes.

Removing a penalty on an attack, or just allowing firing into melee to be viable at all (talking about systems where you have to randomly determine the target as part of the attack)? I feel they are boring in comparison. I'd rather use my feat space to give players things, rather that just have them reach baseline competence for play. And for GMs building opponents, this means they can actually just grab a dragon and place them in front of the party, without having to worry about giving the dragon a feat allowing them to use their flame breath in melee.



Except that unless I'm just totally misunderstanding you here, I'm not sure how this is "neat" for the archer character. He's basically being prevented from doing things like attacking melee folks at range before they can close that range (so what? He just stands there with his bow doing nothing while the enemy walks up and attacks him?). If he's got a friend fighting an enemy, and his friend goes down, he can no longer attack? You've certainly got a "side" that is unable to react to opponents here. And how about an encounter where there's a melee scrum in one location, and maybe additional bad guys up on a hilldside, or wall or whatever? Normal tactics is to have the archery folks take out (or at least pin down) that part of the enemy forces, while the melee folks fight their way through. Your rules (at least as they've been explained to me) seem to remove that as a tactical option.


Again. The "normal" use of archery is to attack unengaged people at range. The hoped for result is that you can eliminate some of them *before* they get into melee range and start doing damage to your side. And there are a whole host of tactics available to take advantage of this fact.

In my experience, most players enjoy an interesting fight where there is a chance of winning and losing (at least the ones I play with). They also enjoy the aesthetics of the character archetype they wish to play, and want them to be effective in combat. The advanced form of archery is Scry and Fry from 3.x dnd and pathfinder. It works really well, but when I ran a game where play like that was an option, it quickly became boring and frustrating for my players. It's like turning on godmode in skyrim, fun for a short time, and then boring.


I'm also going to second much of what Dasick said. Everything else being equal, melee damage is higher than archery damage (often much higher). Yes. Lightly armored opponents are vulnerable to archery. But they're also super vulnerable to melee damage too (leather armor doesn't do much to a sword or axe or mace either). But when we get to more heavily armored opponents, arrows fall short while melee damage still works. Shields become the key determinant in both cases, but the force of a melee attack is much greater than the impact force of an arrow (but in theory arrows are harder to block unless you are using a really big shield).

And yes. We could argue that this fits with your model. But it's not that the arrows could not hit, but that they could not penetrate and do damage. If the French foot had been wearing light armor, they would have been ripped apart by the same set of archers. So whether a person at range is "safe" from missile fire is not at all a function of whether they are engaged in melee, but whether the armor they are wearing is sufficient to resist the damage being done. And yeah, this gets us into questions about the game system and whether it makes a distinction between "hit but not damaged" versus "all hits are hits that do damage". And yes, also back to the function of shields, and how different sheiles work for different things (especially missile versus melee).

Honestly, damage is only one way to win a battle in my system. The most common option is breaking the opponent's form, making them unable to effectively defend themselves. Sound like exactly what happened here. So while melee attacks tend higher on damage, allowing them to apply conditions on hit easier, ranged weapons aren't at too much of a disadvantage, because either option is about as good at breaking an opponent's form. They also tend to have an easier time with battlefield control, for reasons I'm not going to get into, other than to say, the fact that they are out of melee range makes it safer for them to ignore their defense, which makes it easier for them to place debuffs.

[gbaji]

Part of this also depends on the sverity of the aforementioned penalties for firing into melee. It's absolutely realistic that it would be harder to hit your target AND you would have a real chance of hitting your allies.
However, realistic isn't always fun, and if most rounds of combat involve the majority of enemies being in melee with the frontliners, that's going to be frustrating for archers and some casters. You might want to create a "Precise Shot" feat that reduces the penalty and eliminates the possibility of hitting an ally.

I think a lot of that can be mitagated as a GM by creating more dynamic combat encounters. Have opponents approach from multiple directions, or be positioned on different levels, or have some enemy combatants take cover and fire at the PCs instead of marching in a line/horde directly into melee every single time. This is difficult to do if every fight is in a dungeon delve type situation, with 10' wide hallways and flat empty 10' tall rooms of various sizes so they all fit on a simple graph paper map. When you start varying the terrain, creating vertical encounters (and no, I don't mean flying creatures, although that's possible too), and having opponents who move around and use the environment as well, you find that there is more potential for different combat tactics than the stock "put our fighters up front while the ranged folks stand in the back and fire through them at the same enemies".

A relatively basic example of this: Party travels down a tunnel entrance and comes into a chamber. It's roughly bean shaped, with a roundish end just to the left, and a longer roundish end to the right. To the right is a group of enemies who have heard them and are gathering weapons to come fight them. Past them to the right is short tunnel leading to another small chamber with more enemies who will enter in a couple rounds. To the left on the opposite wall is another tunnel that leads deeper into the tunnel complex. There's an enemy priest there with a couple of big nasty zombies. He's going to spend the next round or so buffing them and then send them in, while he runs off to raise the alarm. A bit further to the left of that tunnel, there is a sloping ledge that runs along the back wall, traveling upwards from left to right to a gallery that runs 15' wide or so along the opposite side of the chamber they enter. Up there are a number of smaller enemies who will line up attack any unengaged party members with javelins and slings (they're somewhat low tech enemies here).

Note what this does. The party has to deal with the immediate threat, which is positioned off to the right in the form of armed opponents. That's where their melee folks will have to go. There is a little bit of a bottleneck here (the "bean shape" of the room narrows a bit to the right). The rest of the party, if they just stand around will be subject to attack from the gallery on the opposite side of the chamber. They can run up the sloped ledge to get to them, but only one at a time (it's a narrow ledge). Alternatively, they can counter fire with their own archers back (which is what they actually did when I ran this. quite successfully, given they had two elves with good archery skills). So the main fight focuses to the right, but there's some missile weapon exchange to the leftish. Sufficient reserves come from farther to the right to keep the focus there, but then these two zombies show up, which have to be dealt with. If they leave just spell casters and archers there, they may have some issues (hey. No free ride here, right?). Which, as it happened when played out was frankly hillarious, since in this game system, arrows do like minimal damage to zombies, so these two poor elves, holding up the rear and wiping the floor with the wimpy folks and their thrown weapons, suddenly find themselves face to face with a couple seriously buffed up zombies.

In my game, we run combat scenarios like that all the time. Very very rarely is it as simple as "group of opponents attack from a single direction, just in melee, and you can just line up and fight them". I mean, it does happen. But not very often.


If your ranged characters are annoyed by enemies who take cover, well... yes, an opponent who only has only 10% of themselves exposed is tough to hit. Frontal assaults on targets in cover are very much a losing proposition, the ranged characters may need to change tactics (or at least relocate to a spot with a better angle). On the flip side, if you are the GM, give the players some opportunities to take cover, too. And the squares where the players take cover should be seeded with traps no more than 25% of the time.

Yup. Allow for and use cover. Don't have fights occur in featureless rooms. Put stairs on one side leading to a balcony and put opponents up there. Have them walk into a courtyard and find that there are folks up on the walls, and in towers who are now firing down at the party from various directions, while the party also has to fight there way to <whatever>. And yeah. Let them fire back (with cover effects of course). Make the floor uneven. Put slopes in, that have to be clambored up (or around). Put in pillars and ceiling supports that may provide cover as well.

And yeah. If you want to be really evil, have the bad guys trap the obvious cover locations in the room. Sheesh! :smalleek:

[sithlordnergal]

So, I feel like we should know just how much of a penalty someone has for firing into melee. You mentioned earlier it causes you to miss around 1/3rd of the time. That is, quite frankly, way too harsh of a penalty. Would you expect a person in melee to miss 1/3rd of the time?

And being able to fight "at range" is not a balancing factor. Its a non-issue unless all of your combat encounters start at a range where it takes a few rounds for the melee people to get into melee combat.

3.5 had a firing into melee mechanic. It was a -4 penalty. That penalty was virtually non-existent because of how many bonuses you can stack to your attack in that game. Plus it had Precise Shot which removed all penalties to firing into melee that you could get at levels 1 or 3, depending on your class and race.

You might want to look into lowering the penalty, or removing it entirely. If you still want there to be some kind of penalty, go the 5e route and have it be something the player can control. A character within 5 feet of an enemy has disadvantage on ranged attacks, but that character can normally move 5ft away from an enemy, even if they provoke an attack of opportunity.

The penalty is placed squarely in the player's hands. They get to decide if they want to take the penalty or not, which is a lot more reasonable to a player.

[gbaji]

I disagree that ranged combat only has a purpose if it allows you the ability to kill those helpless to fight back.

Didn't say "helpless to fight back". I said "hopefully in situations where they can't damage you back". I'm not descrbing some insane scenario here. Just "I'm have a bow, and there's an enemy 100' away, so I get to shoot at him until he either takes cover, or move close enough to attack me in melee". That's it. You use ranged combat when things are... at range.


Okay then, clarifications: Melee range means within a specific distance where a characters bubble of reality warping belief has effect. This is generally a single move action away, so in dnd terms, in melee means having an opponent within 30'.

That's not remotely what I would consider "melee range" (not sure what sort of consensus there would be on this). To me, "melee range" means "within range to attack with melee", not "within range to move to someone and *then* attack in melee". What this means for an archer is that folks who are standing right next to someone else at the moment they fire, are "at risk" of being hit. Someone standing 30' away at that moment? Not so much. Assuming this game system uses a standard "take turns, make a move and an attack each round" (or something similar), then if, after moving, the melee character is 30' away from someone to the left, and 30' away from someone to the right, and 5' away from someone in front of them, they are only "in melee range" with the one person in front of them, and not the other two. I'm not sure why archery would work differently against those two people, and yet not another person 35' away instead. From the point of view of the archer, all of them (except the guy right next to the other party member) are well well well outside of the "could hit your friend instead" distance.

They're also presumably out of actual ability to be hit with melee weapons (without taking another move action next round). Unless your game system also allows for PCs to strike everyone within 30' of them without actually tracking where they are at any given moment or something (which I'm not discounting btw, given your descriptions so far).


It also requires that the character be able to freely move out of the way. Thus armies consisting of thousands of characters can't evade as their movement speed as a group is too slow to move them out of the line of attack. It requires that the character to be high enough level to not be one shot by the attack. For two soldiers shooting at each other, this means that around 20% of the time, one will just die without any option to evade, even at long ranges. It requires a character to be within their favored Terrain, and to actually have a favored terrain (not something everyone has). Note that there are six times of favored terrain with them being such things as 'Lots of cover,' 'Wide open to allow easy dodging,' and similar.

Ok. That's a lot more restrictions than just "in melee range". Not sure I'd go with all of those choices, but it's your game, so whatever. If it works, it works. I would not at all consider what you are playing even a remote attempt at anything close to a "realistic combat simulation" though, so...



The base rules make no distinction for that. It is such a fringe edge case that I'm not concerned by it. I honestly can't think of the last time I've seen a 10 yo kid make an attack with a bow in any game I've played or heard about. I could add such a rule easily enough, but it feels... actively harmful? It's another rule that a GM and players need to learn, for a situation that doesn't come up.

Forget 10 year old. It's just an example. Someone who isn't specifically skilled. Just a random person. Whatever.


For the record, let's say a kid does try to help the PCs in combat. He would be rolling a 2d10, keeping the lowest result, and discarding any result higher than a 5. Meanwhile the level 1 PCs would be rolling 2d10+1 keeping the highest result (at a minimum), and most threats they would be facing would be rolling 3d10+2 and keeping the highest result. These are opposed rolls, so the kid would have maybe a 1% chance of making a successful attack. The kid is already pointless in combat, why add another mechanic to make them more useless? Sure it could be realistic, but I don't feel the cognitive load is worth it.

Trust me, my system gives players many options to make themselves stand out, I'm just against feat taxes. Some example of Low level archer feats increase their range, allow them to spend actions aiming for an extra high damage/high accuracy shot, cause a failed ranged attack to ricochet back at the target during the next round, shoot everyone withing a (DnD adjusted) 30' radius of a location within their bow's range, and other fun things. At higher levels they unlock feats that allow them to shoot spells and other ranged attacks out of the air, attack every single opponent within range, Fire off swords and spears instead of arrows, Or shoot an arrow at a target when only the existence of that target is known, but not their location (and at this tier of play, archers can have infinite range). I've got 24 Archer only feats, and that doesn't touch on the fact that my game has innate multiclassing (thing gestalt from 3.x) that allow players to grab some interesting options to enhance archery from other classes.

Going to repeat my earlier assessment that this system is in no way attempting to simulate anything like actual combat. Which is fine, of course. But maybe not the best example to use when trying to talk in general about how to handle ranged combat in a game system. I mean. You've got feats that allow people to fire swords out of their bows? Hit everyone in an area? Fire bows from infinite range?

I'm going to repeat my "extremely videogamy" observation from earlier and just leave it at that. Perfectly valid for a game btw. And sure, in a game like this, worrying about firing into melee is a bit silly (you've literally got people sitting on suns and firing down at other folks through the planets crust or something, so... yeah). But anything not in that sort of theme/powerlevel isn't going to benefit much from rules suggestions based on this sort of game IMO, and I think in a lot of game systems and settings many players and GMs are going to actually care about at least some level of realism, even in an other wise fantasy setting.

[Kane0]

Out of curiosity, you say "at least" equal.

That's interesting to me, as it implies that it is ok if the fireball guy is better than the archer, but not if the archer is better than the fireball guy. Why is that?

Because I don't know the intricacies of your system, there's leeway in either direction.



If you want to just play a supernatural blaster you can do that, but it isn't really a wizard anymore; more Cyclops than Doctor Strange.

Are you saying that as a player, or as a dev? You don't get to determine another player's fantasy. 'Pyromancer' is not particularly uncommon a trope. 'Wizard' might be carrying more baggage for you than the player in question, where you are thinking all the utility is an important aspect and they don't.



At that point though, you are basically spending the same resources and have more or less the same effectiveness as a mundane archer.

There are ways to bypass the firing into melee penalties, but they are a fairly heavy character investment as without them ranged characters are flat out superior to melee characters.

Ah, right. So is the mage investing equal or more, to be less or more effective? What happens if they don't (or can't) put in that heavy character investment? From a player-facing perspective, are those penalties adding to the enjoyment of the game, or are they purely there for dev-facing game balance reasons?

[Talakeal]

So, I feel like we should know just how much of a penalty someone has for firing into melee. You mentioned earlier it causes you to miss around 1/3rd of the time. That is, quite frankly, way too harsh of a penalty. Would you expect a person in melee to miss 1/3rd of the time?

3.5 had a firing into melee mechanic. It was a -4 penalty. That penalty was virtually non-existent because of how many bonuses you can stack to your attack in that game. Plus it had Precise Shot which removed all penalties to firing into melee that you could get at levels 1 or 3, depending on your class and race.

You might want to look into lowering the penalty, or removing it entirely. If you still want there to be some kind of penalty, go the 5e route and have it be something the player can control. A character within 5 feet of an enemy has disadvantage on ranged attacks, but that character can normally move 5ft away from an enemy, even if they provoke an attack of opportunity.

The penalty is placed squarely in the player's hands. They get to decide if they want to take the penalty or not, which is a lot more reasonable to a player.

The penalty is -4 (which on average, is also the same as disadvantage in 5E). It is not a 1/3rd miss chance, although I could see it reducing overall accuracy by 1/3 in some situations. You are probably thinking about Quertus' statement upthread that a player should succeed 2/3 of the time.


Seems kinda moot to be talking about balance when their characters are so far from being optimized

The real question is *why* they're so poorly optimized.

If they're just troll characters to troll you or goof around, it's one thing. You can't expect a system to be "balanced" if people deliberately make poor choices.

If they're troll characters because they didn't know how to build better, it's a different issue

Good question.

I am not sure if they are deliberately trolling, or they are just too proud to admit they need help with their characters and would rather look malicious than incompetent.


I know Bob originally said he wanted to play a wild mage to get everyone else's goat, but didn't realize that he is more competitive than we are and that his wild surges would actually come back and bite him in the butt.


At the end of the day though, you have a problem: Your game isn't fun to some of your players. You can either figure out how to fix that problem, or you can ignore it and blame the players. One will make your game more enjoyable, and one won't. You have to choose what is more important to you: a game that is fun and engaging to play, or proper exact modeling of the world to your preferences.


This is a pretty big false dilemma.

No game is 100% enjoyable to 100% of the people 100% of the time.

I don't think it is even theoretically possible to make such a game, as many things players want are in direct conflict, and delayed gratification is almost always more rewarding.

For the record, every game I have ever played has some prohibition or penalty for shooting into melee, and most of these are massively popular multi-million dollar games in spite of it.


3.5 had a firing into melee mechanic. It was a -4 penalty. That penalty was virtually non-existent because of how many bonuses you can stack to your attack in that game. Plus it had Precise Shot which removed all penalties to firing into melee that you could get at levels 1 or 3, depending on your class and race.

You might want to look into lowering the penalty, or removing it entirely. If you still want there to be some kind of penalty, go the 5e route and have it be something the player can control. A character within 5 feet of an enemy has disadvantage on ranged attacks, but that character can normally move 5ft away from an enemy, even if they provoke an attack of opportunity.

Oh, there are plenty of ways to negate the penalty or even turn it into a net bonus if you want to play risky. Worst case scenario, just get a bayonet or sawed off barrel and join in on the melee without penalty!


Trust me, my system gives players many options to make themselves stand out, I'm just against feat taxes. Some example of Low level archer feats increase their range, allow them to spend actions aiming for an extra high damage/high accuracy shot, cause a failed ranged attack to ricochet back at the target during the next round, shoot everyone withing a (DnD adjusted) 30' radius of a location within their bow's range, and other fun things. At higher levels they unlock feats that allow them to shoot spells and other ranged attacks out of the air, attack every single opponent within range, Fire off swords and spears instead of arrows, Or shoot an arrow at a target when only the existence of that target is known, but not their location (and at this tier of play, archers can have infinite range). I've got 24 Archer only feats, and that doesn't touch on the fact that my game has innate multiclassing (thing gestalt from 3.x) that allow players to grab some interesting options to enhance archery from other classes.

Removing a penalty on an attack, or just allowing firing into melee to be viable at all (talking about systems where you have to randomly determine the target as part of the attack)? I feel they are boring in comparison. I'd rather use my feat space to give players things, rather that just have them reach baseline competence for play. And for GMs building opponents, this means they can actually just grab a dragon and place them in front of the party, without having to worry about giving the dragon a feat allowing them to use their flame breath in melee.


I would be interested to hear what your definition of a "feat tax" is.

I personally vastly prefer feats that make you better at something rather than giving you new abilities, and most everything in my game can be attempted by anyone.


Because I don't know the intricacies of your system, there's leeway in either direction.

Ok.

I am probably just being too literal; but when you say "atleast as good" that implies to me that a wizard can be as good or better than an archer, but never worse.

I am shooting for "roughly as good" with neither one being a clear winner.


Are you saying that as a player, or as a dev? You don't get to determine another player's fantasy. 'Pyromancer' is not particularly uncommon a trope. 'Wizard' might be carrying more baggage for you than the player in question, where you are thinking all the utility is an important aspect and they don't.

As a developer.

If you have only a single supernatural power, you aren't a wizard in this setting.

Pyromancer is indeed an awesome concept. Bob played one in my last campaign, it was amazing. But pyromancers are a type of wizard, they aren't just someone who casts the same spell over and over game.


What happens if they don't (or can't) put in that heavy character investment?

Then you take a -4 penalty for shooting into close combat.


Ah, right. So is the mage investing equal or more, to be less or more effective?

Are we talking about a mage or a guy with an innate ability to cast magic missile?

In both cases, the answer is "roughly the same" although I suppose I could go into a deep dive of all the minute differences.


From a player-facing perspective, are those penalties adding to the enjoyment of the game, or are they purely there for dev-facing game balance reasons?

In my experience, imbalanced options make everyone feel bad.

It feels unfair when the enemies use them against you.
You're allies feel like dead weight when they don't use them.
You get jealous of your allies when they do use them.

[sithlordnergal]

The penalty is -4 (which on average, is also the same as disadvantage in 5E). It is not a 1/3rd miss chance, although I could see it reducing overall accuracy by 1/3 in some situations. You are probably thinking about Quertus' statement upthread that a player should succeed 2/3 of the time.

Oh, there are plenty of ways to negate the penalty or even turn it into a net bonus if you want to play risky. Worst case scenario, just get a bayonet or sawed off barrel and join in on the melee without penalty!


Ah, yeah I probably did see his comment then and mistake it for yours somehow. That said, what are the ways to remove those penalties? What are the ways a spellcaster can remove those penalties? How many of those ways are directly in 100% control of the caster, and are not reliant on allies or npcs? And how easy are they to pull off? And "Swapping to melee", like using a bayonet, does not count.

As I mentioned, 3.5 also has a -4 penalty...but you can completely remove at at level 1 or level 3, for good. That's a super simple way to get around that penalty. 5e has it so the person making the attack can choose if they want the penalty for attacking while in melee or not, they just have to risk an opportunity attack.

If the methods required are tricky/difficult to pull off, then they're effectively worthless and can't actually be considered ways to get around the penalty. If they require another player to do something on their turn to let you get around it, then its better then the difficult version...but not by much.

[Jakinbandw]

Going to repeat my earlier assessment that this system is in no way attempting to simulate anything like actual combat. Which is fine, of course. But maybe not the best example to use when trying to talk in general about how to handle ranged combat in a game system. I mean. You've got feats that allow people to fire swords out of their bows? Hit everyone in an area? Fire bows from infinite range?

I'm going to repeat my "extremely videogamy" observation from earlier and just leave it at that. Perfectly valid for a game btw. And sure, in a game like this, worrying about firing into melee is a bit silly (you've literally got people sitting on suns and firing down at other folks through the planets crust or something, so... yeah). But anything not in that sort of theme/powerlevel isn't going to benefit much from rules suggestions based on this sort of game IMO, and I think in a lot of game systems and settings many players and GMs are going to actually care about at least some level of realism, even in an other wise fantasy setting.

Two things:

1) I disagree with the 'videogamy' description. I have yet to see a video game that goes as hard as my game does, and many games of the biggest names in gamming (CoD for example) try to make things feel realistic. Even something like Elden Ring doesn't go as hard on what characters can do. If you do know a video game that allows for the level of power that I'm trying to accomplish, please let me know.

I am specifically aiming for Anime style fights, with things like Dead Fantasy being a key referance point for low level play.

2) As I said, I was giving an example of how not doing the obvious thing can lead to really fun gameplay. I wasn't trying to suggest the Tal copy me one for one. I'm a great fan of examining expectations, and trying experimental things. To me, mechanics need to be fun first, and after that is achieved, lore and explanations can be made to allow them to work. While you an Tal both find it unrealistic that a character at a far enough distance could dodge a ranged projectile, for a couple other posters, they find it more realistic. In my experience, having something feel realistic in ttrpgs is all about justifications and explanations, rather than about the core rules themselves.


If you have only a single supernatural power, you aren't a wizard in this setting.

So there would be room for fighters with supernatural abilities?


I would be interested to hear what your definition of a "feat tax" is.

A feat tax is when I have to spend a character building resource to reach an expected level of competence. If I have a +6 to hit at range as an archer, but 90% of rounds in battles I only have a +2 because of penalties, then to have access to the bonus listed on my character sheet, I need to spend a resource I could be using the expand my options, just to be able to roll what I have listed on my character sheet.

It also applies when the developer does balance passes making certain assumptions. If the numbers are balanced around me picking certain options, then I don't really have a choice. I can either pick those options and be operating as expected, or not pick those options and become increasingly useless. A good example of this is the Wrath of the Righteous pathfinder videogame (it's just pathfinder 1e in videogame form). It's got nearly limitless options, but the foes are balanced that unless you turn down the difficulty, you can reach a point where you can't even hope to finish the game, because you took the wrong options instead of the right ones.


I personally vastly prefer feats that make you better at something rather than giving you new abilities, and most everything in my game can be attempted by anyone.

Can anyone attempt to cast magic spells or just magic users?

I guess I'm just not a fan of the numbers race. I prefer wide design over tall design. https://youtu.be/BoGrTWEt7y8

[stoutstien]

I think you can answer the question of "is it a feature tax" by asking the question, "is this approach the only valid way to overcome challenges?"

In other words if your game has a high combat focus where it is expected to solve challenges via violence more often than not, then features that are needed to maintain a level of competence to keep up with growing challenges are a tax. Furthermore if this opportunity cost is not explicitly stated that means you also have trap options. Two bad designs for the price of one.

However, if the game has a more open ended resolutions then the same options wouldn't be. If the same character decided not to be fully invested in X and instead decided to diversify in Y that are equally applicable then it's just an opportunity cost. This potentially could be a very good design though it gets difficult to maintain a lot of free floating choices like this. The lower you overall variances in your core math the easier it gets.

[Talakeal]

So I have another player complaining about my system. Its a different, but related issue. Not sure if its worth talking about here or maybe starting a new thread.

Basically, he said that he will never play a "tank" again because he can't single handedly hold off a horde of enemies because I don't have monsters "trip up" on one another and wait in line for their turn to attack the front line once it is fully engaged, instead they lap around and attack the back line.

I don't know of any other RPGs that allow a character to hold off an entire horde or which force monsters to stand around and ignore the blaster wizards and archers while they wait in a que to attack the fighters.

Is this a system problem? A GM problem? A player problem? Not a problem at all?



If the methods required are tricky/difficult to pull off, then they're effectively worthless and can't actually be considered ways to get around the penalty.

That's an odd philosophy.

Why shouldn't players who take the time to get good at the game / characters who devote resources to something see the benefit?


So there would be room for fighters with supernatural abilities?

Oh absolutely.



I think you can answer the question of "is it a feature tax" by asking the question, "is this approach the only valid way to overcome challenges?"

In other words if your game has a high combat focus where it is expected to solve challenges via violence more often than not, then features that are needed to maintain a level of competence to keep up with growing challenges are a tax. Furthermore if this opportunity cost is not explicitly stated that means you also have trap options. Two bad designs for the price of one.

However, if the game has a more open ended resolutions then the same options wouldn't be. If the same character decided not to be fully invested in X and instead decided to diversify in Y that are equally applicable then it's just an opportunity cost. This potentially could be a very good design though it gets difficult to maintain a lot of free floating choices like this. The lower you overall variances in your core math the easier it gets.



Can anyone attempt to cast magic spells or just magic users?

To walk back my statement at bit, anyone in my system can attempt anything that a RL human could, potentially, do.

Supernatural powers or abilities requiring body parts humans don't have are more limited.

That being said, anyone can develop supernatural powers, and wizards can attempt to cast any spell without needing to learn it first.


I think you can answer the question of "is it a feature tax" by asking the question, "is this approach the only valid way to overcome challenges?"

In other words if your game has a high combat focus where it is expected to solve challenges via violence more often than not, then features that are needed to maintain a level of competence to keep up with growing challenges are a tax. Furthermore if this opportunity cost is not explicitly stated that means you also have trap options. Two bad designs for the price of one.

However, if the game has a more open ended resolutions then the same options wouldn't be. If the same character decided not to be fully invested in X and instead decided to diversify in Y that are equally applicable then it's just an opportunity cost. This potentially could be a very good design though it gets difficult to maintain a lot of free-floating choices like this. The lower you overall variances in your core math the easier it gets.

My system is a lot more straightforward than D&D.

Most abilities are just bigger numbers; if I want to be a good swordsman, I put more points into swordsmanship.

I guess that makes everything a feat tax? I don't know.

[stoutstien]

My system is a lot more straightforward than D&D.

Most abilities are just bigger numbers; if I want to be a good swordsman, I put more points into swordsmanship.

I guess that makes everything a feat tax? I don't know.

It's a question of variance. If you *need" the number to remain relevant compared to having the numbers is *nice* will have completely different feels. You also have to factor in if bigger numbers have a linear cost/return compared to weighted values.

[tyckspoon]

So I have another player complaining about my system. Its a different, but related issue. Not sure if its worth talking about here or maybe starting a new thread.

Basically, he said that he will never play a "tank" again because he can't single handedly hold off a horde of enemies because I don't have monsters "trip up" on one another and wait in line for their turn to attack the front line once it is fully engaged, instead they lap around and attack the back line.

I don't know of any other RPGs that allow a character to hold off an entire horde or which force monsters to stand around and ignore the blaster wizards and archers while they wait in a que to attack the fighters.

Is this a system problem? A GM problem? A player problem? Not a problem at all?


Player has dumb opinions and can be ignored, and your player group in general is kind of bad at.. um, everything. (I am guessing this is related to the behavior you've described where their default 'strategy', such as it is, is to try to have tankier characters stand in front and the ranged characters stand behind them while making no effort to either locate or create a situation where this actually works, so of course the player blames you for 'tanking doesn't work' because they made absolutely no effort to stop the enemy from implementing the highly complex 'walk around them' strategy.)

Charitably, your player has an overly-simplistic concept of what a Tank is, probably just 'can absorb a lot of damage.' But that's just being tough. Tanking is -preventing the rest of your party from suffering damage.- If they don't have any abilities that allow them to do that - area control, some way to compel enemies to focus on them, redirecting hits on their party to themselves, whatever (I assume your system provides some way they could do at least one or several of these things) they aren't a tank.
Uncharitably, your player made build or play errors that don't allow them to function as a tank, and because they are entirely incapable of self reflection and acknowledging that they could be wrong, then it must be your fault that the world doesn't work the way they want it to.

(This is, ideally, a problem that class-based games address - if you want to tank, you take the designated tank class, and the package of abilities provided there ensures you have what you need to do so effectively. When you go point based/build-your-own you are much more reliant on your players having the mechanical knowledge needed to find and take the abilities that let them do what they want correctly instead.. and since they refuse to take advice or even apparently let you review their sheets to figure out what they actually can do so you can adjust your encounter design accordingly, there isn't a whole heck of a lot that you can do about this.)

[NichG]

So I have another player complaining about my system. Its a different, but related issue. Not sure if its worth talking about here or maybe starting a new thread.

Basically, he said that he will never play a "tank" again because he can't single handedly hold off a horde of enemies because I don't have monsters "trip up" on one another and wait in line for their turn to attack the front line once it is fully engaged, instead they lap around and attack the back line.

I don't know of any other RPGs that allow a character to hold off an entire horde or which force monsters to stand around and ignore the blaster wizards and archers while they wait in a que to attack the fighters.

Is this a system problem? A GM problem? A player problem? Not a problem at all?

The concept of a tank doesn't really work organically, it usually needs something supernatural to support it or specific combinations of terrain and objective. So a dedicated tank is not really viable realistically - instead one might choose to e.g. turtle in a fortification to preserve the threat of being able to go from defense to attack if you aren't dealt with. But defense without the potential to cause more harm if ignored doesn't work.

Some games use aggro mechanics for this, some games might have powers that let you share your HP pool or maintain a shield, others might let you jump in and take attacks for someone else, others might have models of suppression - 'tanking' with a rain of bullets.

So the question comes down to whether you want 'tanking' to be a viable role in your system. It's not the case that it has to be!

But if not, the system should also not try to suggest that archetype is intended either.

[gbaji]

Two things:

1) I disagree with the 'videogamy' description. I have yet to see a video game that goes as hard as my game does, and many games of the biggest names in gamming (CoD for example) try to make things feel realistic. Even something like Elden Ring doesn't go as hard on what characters can do. If you do know a video game that allows for the level of power that I'm trying to accomplish, please let me know.

I am specifically aiming for Anime style fights, with things like Dead Fantasy being a key referance point for low level play.

That's pretty much how I define 'videogamey'. If the combat sequences look like I'm watching people play Mario Smash Bros? It's videogamey. Big flashy attacks, powerups, things exploding out of nothing, extra stuff appearing and doing "things" on the battle field? All videogamey to me. If the combat is more about positioning of PCS and opponents, using terrain to advantage, and more subtle application of combat choices (so using an ability that allows you to tumble past an opponent to get into a better position is "normal". One that allows you to sprout firey wings that incenerates all enemies within 200' is "videogamey").

And yeah, pretty much anything that looks like a sequence in an anime? videogamey.

Again. Nothing wrong with that if that's what you and your players enjoy. Just saying that when I say "videogamey', what you are describing is pretty much exactly what I'm talking about.


I think you can answer the question of "is it a feature tax" by asking the question, "is this approach the only valid way to overcome challenges?"

In other words if your game has a high combat focus where it is expected to solve challenges via violence more often than not, then features that are needed to maintain a level of competence to keep up with growing challenges are a tax. Furthermore if this opportunity cost is not explicitly stated that means you also have trap options. Two bad designs for the price of one.

I don't think having a game system that applies penalties to specific and consistent (and frankly logical) combat situations, but then allows a character who focuses on that sort of situation to take a feat to remove the penalty is a "feat tax". If all attacks were ranged attacks, and everyone had to "fire into melee" all the time, then yeah, it's just a feat to avoid an arbitrary negative. But in this case? I don't think it applies. Being able to use full skill against targets standing out in the open, but having minuses for cover or for crowded conditions (other people in the way), is "normal". Requiring a feat to avoid those penalities is also perfectly acceptable.

If you don't have things like this in a game, then players have no reason to actually bother with things like positioning, tactics, terrain, etc. So yeah. It's not a bug, it's a feature IMO.


However, if the game has a more open ended resolutions then the same options wouldn't be. If the same character decided not to be fully invested in X and instead decided to diversify in Y that are equally applicable then it's just an opportunity cost. This potentially could be a very good design though it gets difficult to maintain a lot of free floating choices like this. The lower you overall variances in your core math the easier it gets.


And this is another aspect of this. If there are different feats, some of which make people more capable in melee combat, and some which make them more capable in ranged, or spell casting, or whatever, then that gives characters variation, and makes them "special" in whatever they've chosen to focus on. That should be the case. My archer should be better at hitting things than some other random character the same level who just picks up a bow for the first time. And yeah, this can be difficult in level based games, where there is an expectation and "range" of AC/DC vesus skill from a balance perspective. And I can see how this can be difficult for game designers to manage (some feats become too powerful and have to be tuned down, while others are relatively worthless).

But yeah. That's still another conversation.



So I have another player complaining about my system. Its a different, but related issue. Not sure if its worth talking about here or maybe starting a new thread.

Basically, he said that he will never play a "tank" again because he can't single handedly hold off a horde of enemies because I don't have monsters "trip up" on one another and wait in line for their turn to attack the front line once it is fully engaged, instead they lap around and attack the back line.

I don't know of any other RPGs that allow a character to hold off an entire horde or which force monsters to stand around and ignore the blaster wizards and archers while they wait in a que to attack the fighters.

Is this a system problem? A GM problem? A player problem? Not a problem at all?

Its a problem with a player who has played too much MMORPGs and thinks that's how a TTRPG should work.

In a lot of those games, "tanks" are given special powers that allow them to force opponents to engage them in melee combat and ignore everyone else. There's a whole lot of complex reasoning for this (a heck of a lot of which has to do with limited clipping rules/calculations for a lot of older games). So there's an expectation that the NPCs should behave the same way in a TTRPPG.

This is really a player education moment IMO. You let the player know how the "rules of the world" work, and that if the PCs can run around NPCs to attack the vulnerable spellcasters, then so can the NPCs. Heck. Make a point of putting them into that exact situation. Have a single really powerful melee guy standing up front. Then have some wimpy spellcasters standing a bit behyind, using magic to buff/heal the melee guy. But put this in a 30' wide room, with plenty of space for the party to just run around. Watch as the party does the "normal" thing of haivng one person engage the big melee guy while everyone else moves around or uses ranged stuff to attack the weaker casters.

Try to highlight to the player *why* these tactics exist, and that... yeah... the NPCs get to use them too. Then maybe ask the player "Wouldn't the NPCs have done better if they'd put the melee guy in a 5' wide doorway instead of a 30' wide room?". Get them to actually think about this stuff, and why you do specific things in combat the way you do them. And then maybe it'll occur to him that if he really wants to "tank", he has to also think about positioning and not just "I'm a tank, why isn't everyone running over and attacking me instead of the robe wearers?".

[sithlordnergal]

That's an odd philosophy.

Why shouldn't players who take the time to get good at the game / characters who devote resources to something see the benefit?


So I think you misunderstand. I'm not talking about systems mastery when I say "tricky/difficult", I mean "If the steps required to bypass the -4 penalty to ranged attacks requires a bunch of setup, and everything to go exactly as planned, then that method is too difficult to realistically use".

As an extreme example, lets say in order to avoid the -4 penalty the target needs to be Restrained, you have to be behind them, and you have to fire from Stealth to catch them off guard. That method would not be very good because it would be difficult to just have all those conditions met at one time, unless you specifically dedicated a full turn to set it all up. And even then, there's no guarantee that your target would remain restrained or that you'll remain hidden until your next turn comes around to get your shots off.


As for the design philosophy, it actually comes from a fallacy where programmers will occasionally make some ability for a game that is better than normal, but requires an extremely high level of skill/precision to use, and just expect players to use the new ability because its better.

[Witty Username]

So, my opinion changes depending on the paradigm.
If mages and martials have similar resources in terms of at will, and per day. Then they should roughly match in things they are expected to participate in.
If mages use primarily a limited per day resource, and martials are primarily at will abilities, the mage should trend stronger on a per action basis. While the appeal of martials should be values that are per action lower but more consistent.

It sounds like from the players complaints, that either, martial at will damage is overtuned (eh, unlikely) or spells don't have the expected Impact for their investment (if a martial can out damage a spell in a similar time frame, very likely this is the case).




As for the design philosophy, it actually comes from a fallacy where programmers will occasionally make some ability for a game that is better than normal, but requires an extremely high level of skill/precision to use, and just expect players to use the new ability because its better.
That isn't so much a fallacy as much as an appeal to a particular type of player, some players like to expend effort to get more value, or more accurately the feeling of compelling choice, options that are less intuitive or require greater skill to use effectively tend to appeal to this kind of player.
Some just want to pick up the game and have fun, experience the story, etc. Which these kind of features are not the intended audience for.

[Telok]

Ok Tak, so I've actually read the system before (although not deeply) and just downloaded it again. I'll start making characters from a novice (to the system) point of view and, after a couple, you tell me anything I'm massively misunderstanding or missing or such. Meanwhile try to get a look at Bob's character, give a bit of semi-numeric description, and then I'll try to build something like it and we'll see what you say.

That might ought give a better readout than just a bunch of D&D based guesstimates.

[Talakeal]

Ok Tak, so I've actually read the system before (although not deeply) and just downloaded it again. I'll start making characters from a novice (to the system) point of view and, after a couple, you tell me anything I'm massively misunderstanding or missing or such. Meanwhile try to get a look at Bob's character, give a bit of semi-numeric description, and then I'll try to build something like it and we'll see what you say.

That might ought give a better readout than just a bunch of D&D based guesstimates.

Wow. Thanks for doing that! I would love to see what you come up with!

I have Bob's character sheet on my right now. I will have the other three tomorrow if you want to see them.


Attributes:
5 Agility
5 Charisma
5 Dexterity
5 Endurance
7 Intelligence
5 Perception
4 Strength
10 Willpower

Skills:
Resolve (Major)
Science (Major)
Wyrd (Major)
Academics
Acrobatics
Athletics
Business
Fortitude
Gaming
Insight
Reason

Traits:
Deformity (Shifting Hair Color)
Dweomer Mastery (Empower)
Enlightened 10 (Minor)
Meditation IV
Meek
Poltergeist
Priest (Dionysus)
Relic (Symbiotic Staff of Power - Entropy Bolt)
Vice (Gambling)

Equipment:
Armored Clothing +1
Boots +1
Cauldron +1
Gaming Pieces +1
Grimoire +1
Seer's Crystals +1
Various potions and periapts




So, my opinion changes depending on the paradigm.
If mages and martials have similar resources in terms of at will, and per day. Then they should roughly match in things they are expected to participate in.
If mages use primarily a limited per day resource, and martials are primarily at will abilities, the mage should trend stronger on a per action basis. While the appeal of martials should be values that are per action lower but more consistent.

It sounds like from the players complaints, that either, martial at will damage is over-tuned (eh, unlikely) or spells don't have the expected Impact for their investment (if a martial can out damage a spell in a similar time frame, very likely this is the case).

My philosophy is that spells don't need to be innately stronger than martial abilities as you can always use the right spell for the job, guaranteeing that they will have more of an effect.

My player is mad because he is using the wrong spell for the job (in the case, one that needs a roll to hit when he is firing over the shoulder of his massive buddy into a melee in a tightly confined dungeon corridor).

[Telok]

Haven't finished the whole read through yet to start characters. System seems well balanced, better than DtD40k7e.

Mmo style tank is totally doable, charisma, one primary charisma skill, minor artifact. Might actually better than mmo style.

Also may have found a mana battery exploit. Ally is a fated chatacter and thus gets full character build right? Does that include ability to take things like the nexus place ownership. Because every pc starts with a home/house you take two allies & soulmate trait all three of you. Allies stay home on defense & crafting, sink points into nexus. PC uses soulmate to siphon mana for casting while allies trade off meditating to regain ftom the nexus. Does that work?

[Talakeal]

Haven't finished the whole read through yet to start characters. System seems well balanced, better than DtD40k7e.

Mmo style tank is totally doable, charisma, one primary charisma skill, minor artifact. Might actually better than mmo style.

Their big complaints is that taunting suffers huge penalties if the enemy can't reach you or is harmed by attacking you; whereas in an MMO the mobs will just stack ontop of you in infinite numbers and then kill themselves in your AOE aura / damage shield.


Also may have found a mana battery exploit. Ally is a fated chatacter and thus gets full character build right? Does that include ability to take things like the nexus place ownership. Because every pc starts with a home/house you take two allies & soulmate trait all three of you. Allies stay home on defense & crafting, sink points into nexus. PC uses soulmate to siphon mana for casting while allies trade off meditating to regain from the nexus. Does that work?

It does, yeah.

I have never quite been happy with Nexus and am looking to rework it before release.

Allys are always a bit of a thorny situation; I would just keep in mind that the GM should RP them as having thoughts and desires of their own, and also count them as members of the team when calculating the difficulty of missions.

[Telok]

Their big complaints is that taunting suffers huge penalties if the enemy can't reach you or is harmed by attacking you; whereas in an MMO the mobs will just stack ontop of you in infinite numbers and then kill themselves in your AOE aura / damage shield.

It does, yeah.

I have never quite been happy with Nexus and am looking to rework it before release.

Allys are always a bit of a thorny situation; I would just keep in mind that the GM should RP them as having thoughts and desires of their own, and also count them as members of the team when calculating the difficulty of missions.

Well in table top the npcs run as people who can be faked out, which is another charisma based skill anyways. In a mmo they're code that can see pc stats. So all the pc in your game has to do is appear hittable/reachable until they're locked down. And... I don't see anything restricting wing clipper (I was wrong on cheapness though, that's still doable on starting char though?) to melee weapons?

Nexus is fine probably. Points are limited, needs meditation, takes another item to 'acorn of far whatev' access it. It's the combo with taking an ally at near the cost of that remote access item, who lives there, provides move immedate mana, and offloads the cost of stuff like 'unmappable locale' plus does crafting while not particularly actively participating in the mission.

Yeah, ally/leadership has potential issues. I don't think your players will ever touch allies though? It probably sings to them of "dependent weak npc for the gm to kill and laugh at me". In DtD40k7e I solved it for myself in that there's 5 ranks, so rank 1 is a 1st level char available 20% of a mission or 1/5 missions (gains xp at 1/2 pc rate onscreen & 1/5 pc rate offscreen). As rank increases either level of the ally or availability of the ally increases. A rank 5 ally would be a 5th level character with 20% availability or a 1st level ally always available. Biggest thing is I'll ask who/what the player want the ally to be and then I as gm create it. I still give the player what they asked for. I just explain ahead of time the ally is their own person who is a friend with their own life and, importantly, links to the setting like being part or organizations and having enemies/hunted (a specific disadv in the game).

It's a mixed blessing really. Last ally they had was a member of the Cocain Wizards Guild. So there we a couple times they left him behind because he was higher than a kite and a coked up caster is a bad thing with the 40k Warp in play. On the other hand one time he showed up with a bear. A blue, six legged, cyborg chainsword legs, armored, drug sniffing bear. It immedately became the partys' mascot.

[Jakinbandw]

So I somehow missed a link to the system in Tal's signature, so I'm reading through it now. I'll update this post as I go, but first things first:

Talakeal - Can you Please add an outline to to your pdf? Without it moving around is going to be much slower than it has to be, and I'm seeing nearly 600 pages to search for information through.

[Talakeal]

Well in table top the npcs run as people who can be faked out, which is another charisma based skill anyways. In a mmo they're code that can see pc stats. So all the pc in your game has to do is appear hittable/reachable until they're locked down. And... I don't see anything restricting wing clipper (I was wrong on cheapness though, that's still doable on starting char though?) to melee weapons?

Wing-Clipper is absolutely not limited to melee weapons. Creating one use arrows of wing-clipper is a great way to deal with highly mobile monsters.


Nexus is fine probably. Points are limited, needs meditation, takes another item to 'acorn of far whatev' access it. It's the combo with taking an ally at near the cost of that remote access item, who lives there, provides move immedate mana, and offloads the cost of stuff like 'unmappable locale' plus does crafting while not particularly actively participating in the mission.

The problem with a nexus is that it really isn't interesting. Right now its more or less an alternate way to buy mana.

I would much prefer if it were something that replenished mana steadily over the course of the mission, but I have no idea how to square the rules and the fiction in that regard.



Yeah, ally/leadership has potential issues. I don't think your players will ever touch allies though? It probably sings to them of "dependent weak npc for the gm to kill and laugh at me". In DtD40k7e I solved it for myself in that there's 5 ranks, so rank 1 is a 1st level char available 20% of a mission or 1/5 missions (gains xp at 1/2 pc rate onscreen & 1/5 pc rate offscreen). As rank increases either level of the ally or availability of the ally increases. A rank 5 ally would be a 5th level character with 20% availability or a 1st level ally always available. Biggest thing is I'll ask who/what the player want the ally to be and then I as gm create it. I still give the player what they asked for. I just explain ahead of time the ally is their own person who is a friend with their own life and, importantly, links to the setting like being part or organizations and having enemies/hunted (a specific disadv in the game).


I need to look at ally. Right now its just too broad and open to DM interpretation. Thanks for the ideas!


So I somehow missed a link to the system in Tal's signature, so I'm reading through it now. I'll update this post as I go, but first things first:

Talakeal - Can you Please add an outline to to your pdf? Without it moving around is going to be much slower than it has to be, and I'm seeing nearly 600 pages to search for information through.

Sure. I would love to.

To be clear though, what exactly do you mean by an outline?

A more detailed table of contents? Hyperlinks?

[Jakinbandw]

Sure. I would love to.

To be clear though, what exactly do you mean by an outline?

A more detailed table of contents? Hyperlinks?

I should have said bookmarks, but I was busy trying to find things. Here is an example of what I'd really like:
https://i.imgur.com/pQAxH5C.png

[Talakeal]

I should have said bookmarks, but I was busy trying to find things. Here is an example of what I'd really like:
https://i.imgur.com/pQAxH5C.png

Shouldn't be a problem, although I recreate the .pdf fairly frequently so I need to figure out a way to save it between versions.

[Telok]

Shouldn't be a problem, although I recreate the .pdf fairly frequently so I need to figure out a way to save it between versions.

Bookmarks persist, at least in all the pdf software I've seen. If you're exporting out a Word/OpenOffice doc I'm not sure but wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't a way.

Edit: still reading... went "ewww" at a beastiary entry, it was the nymph... do your players ever make use of cooperative casting?...monsters don't have derives stats listed, yeah its another line and if you don't need it its ok for your use... defenitely needs a "mini books" version with items, monsters, spells, setting split out... glyph is spell grenades? or quick & dirty potions?... got spare colons in the feats of strength table...

[Talakeal]

Brian ran a session of his game yesterday.

I just want to say, all of this issues about miscommunication and players doing stupid things and then whining about the game being to hard are all present, and indeed so much worse, when someone who isn't used to it is running the game.


Bookmarks persist, at least in all the pdf software I've seen. If you're exporting out a Word/OpenOffice doc I'm not sure but wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't a way.

Edit: still reading... went "ewww" at a beastiary entry, it was the nymph... do your players ever make use of cooperative casting?...monsters don't have derives stats listed, yeah its another line and if you don't need it its ok for your use... defenitely needs a "mini books" version with items, monsters, spells, setting split out... glyph is spell grenades? or quick & dirty potions?... got spare colons in the feats of strength table...

Yes, I am exporting out of office, so I need to find some way to preserve it.

As for the edit: What exactly made you say ewww?
No, the players have never really had the opportunity as there has never really been overlap with schools they use.
By derived stats what exactly do you mean? Like a full write-up for what the finished stats on a monster would be? I plan to do that eventually as a supplement, but it would be almost as long as the main book.
I plan on having a rules only SRD. I generally print spell books separately and maneuvers out separately for the players who use them.
Glyph is very versatile, it can be used as a trap or a scroll.
Thanks for pointing out the colons!

[Telok]

Yes, I am exporting out of office, so I need to find some way to preserve it.

MS Office is evil jank poop. /opinion


As for the edit: What exactly made you say ewww?
!
Um, proportions. They're... its like a weird reverse barbie doll mutant. It might just being hitting an 'uncanny valley' effect for me.

[Talakeal]

MS Office is evil jank poop. /opinion

I agree, but its served me well enough so far and I don't have the time or incentive to learn a new program at this point.

I plan on having the whole thing redone in Indesign or the like once editing / playtesting is finished and I am on my way to finalizing the layout.

Adding bookmarks is super simple; still need to figure out how to copy them between versions.


Um, proportions. They're... its like a weird reverse barbie doll mutant. It might just being hitting an 'uncanny valley' effect for me.

Ok. I wasn't sure if it was the art or the description.

Yeah, I had the same reaction. It's on my list of art to get redone if I have the time and money.

[Telok]

Questions.
Order of operations in taking traits?
Prodigy & sagaciius apply to occult skills?
Can you choise occult skills from your Int or does that happen after taking enlightened?
Traits table: meaning of he star in the ranks column?

[Talakeal]

@ Quertus:

Here is a damage assessment of my PCs as you requested. These are the percent chance of a given attack injuring a human of various skill levels wearing mail and a helmet without a shield; my system doesn't use "HP" like D&D, but rather tracks injuries, and 2 injuries generally take someone out of a fight.

Amateur Journeyman Adept Expert Master Paragon
Kumiko .45 .33 .22 .14 .08 .03
Feurlina .33 .22 .14 .05 .03 .01
Miles .48 .35 .24 .15 .08 .03
Miles -2 .42 .3 .2 .12 .06 .02
Miles -4 .36 .25 .16 .09 .04 .01
Miles -6 .3 .2 .12 .06 .02 .01
Miles -8 .24 .15 .08 .03 .01 -
Miles -12 .12 .05 .02 .01 - -
Flossie .64 .49 .36 .25 .16 .09
Flossie -2 .56 .42 .3 .2 .12 .06
Flossie -4 .48 .35 .24 .15 .08 .03
Flossie -6 .4 .28 .18 .1 .04 .01
Flossie -8 .32 .21 .12 .05 .01 -
Flossie -12.16 .07 .03 .01 - -

-2 For shooting out of melee or into melee with a large target
-4 For shooting into melee with medium target or with a large target and blocked LoS
-6 For shooting into melee with a small target
-8 For shooting into melee with a medium target and blocked LoS
-12 For shooting into melee with a small target and blocked Los

Close combat will often be getting a small bonus for flanking or a small penalty for using a maneuver.
Miles will often be getting a small bonus from aiming or taking a reckless shot, but has to reload every six turns.
Flossie can engage in melee to ignore the above accuracy penalties, but is unlikely to do so due to lack of defenses.


Questions.
Order of operations in taking traits?
Prodigy & sagaciius apply to occult skills?
Can you choise occult skills from your Int or does that happen after taking enlightened?
Traits table: meaning of he star in the ranks column?

You can select traits in whatever order you like. The numerical effects are applied in whatever order is most advantageous.

Occult skills are skills, traits apply to them normally and you can train in them even if you aren't enlightened.

There should be a footnote to the table explaining *; in short it means you can take as many ranks as you want so long as you don't take yourself above an effective 10 or below an effective one in the key attribute.

Thanks for taking the time to look this deeply!

[tyckspoon]

.. so is armor pretty good, or are most of them.. kinda bad at their chosen combat method? I would expect better than 50/50 odds of hitting an 'amateur' target for anybody who is meant to be good at some form of fighting, and they're mostly less than that.

[Telok]

Ok, first test character. Post then I'll look at Bob's char. Think on it and maybe post a bit more tonight.


attributes: agility 5, charisma 5, dexterity 4, endurance 5, intelligence 5, perception 3, strength 3, willpower 10
cost: 80/100

aspects/figured stats: animus 1, chakras 1, concentration(focus) 9, destiny(rerolls) 5, dodge(10+dodge=to-be-hit) 11, encumbrance 4, initiative 7, mana(spells) 11, wealth(debits) 10, might(cbt maneuvers) 4, resilience(vs dmg) 5+armor & helm=12(+4/+10), speed = 4, tenacity(vs disabled by dmg) 10, vitality(wounds) 5

Skills: @ -5 w/out tool out trait
primary skills: mysticism & necromancy (enlightenment+5+grimoire), resolve (will 5+5+obstinate)
secondary skills: business (cha 5+3), expression (cha 5+3), insight (per 3+3), fortitude (end 5+3)

flaws: weak arm (left = str 1), harsh voice (performance -5), shy (leadership -5), color blind (yellow/orange)
cost: -6+80=74

traits: unbalanced strength (str @ -1 might & +1 encumbrance), unbalanced dexterity (dex @ -1 melee & +1 marksman), unbalanced willpower (will @ -1 concentration & +1 mana), unbalanced agility (agl @ -1 speed & +1 dodge)

merits: obstinate, dragon blooded (on success of resolve vs most creature targeted spells gain the mana the opponent spent on the spell), enlightened (+10 enlightenment), rich (+2 quality grimoire & +2 wealth)
cost: 24+74=98+2=100

gear: heavy armor & helm (+7(+4/+10) resilience, 3 encumbrance, value , +5 alertness, -6 acrobat, -6 athletic, -6 stealth), pistol (+1 accuracy, +6 damage, value 6, ammo 6, TODO=sawed off & scatter), grimoire (+2 quality mysticism), grimoire (necromancy), furnished home in <city>, clothing, 1 week food & drink, 1 week lamp oil, 1 week matches, coin purse (8 coins), rucksack, diary & pencil, riding horse

Edit: forgot we need seer's crystals, maybe trade out the horse and downgrade to medium armor for weight? Unsure.

fighty:
punch, atk +8, dmg +4
pistol (odd/even fire/normal ammo), atk +6, dmg +2 & on fire/+6, short range 3 paces, long range ???

magic:
mysticism +17, necromancy +13, others +10 (-5 for no grimoire?)

notable spells:
* Last breath, +17 vs 20, refund mana on successful cast, target corpse, create "zen tonics" (mana) = mana at death & "serendipity tonics" (destiny) = destiny at death.
* Sacrifice, +17 vs 20, refund mana on successful cast, target dying person & kill, gain periapt = 1 mana for any spell TN 20 or lower.
* Absorb, +13 vs 20, refund mana on successful cast, target any being, vamp off 1 destiny or 1 mana (need a caster victim for spell usable mana)
* Anti-magic shell, +17 vs 25, area, null zone, prismatic = that spell school & demiurges only
* Bind Soul = hilarity, need to carry punch & judy puppets for sick puppy action
* Cantrip of Sun, +17 vs 10, refund mana on 13+, roll 2 take best next resolve or anti-magic roll
* Deep Water, +17 vs 20, area with water, temporary all water in area is holy water
* Mana bolt, +17 vs DODGE, any target, wound unless resolve save vs 20 (if I understand correctly)
* Blood Ritual +13 vs 20, target being with blood, target tests vs damage & if fail caster vamp-heals 1 wound
* Cantrip of the grave, +13 vs 10, refund mana on roll 17+, roll 2 take best next damage roll
* Chill, +13 vs 15, target any, target resolve vs test for cold damage
* necromancy TN 35 auto-kill spell
* Find weakness, +13 vs 10, target anything, refund mana on roll 17+, know biggest vulnerability
* Flensing, +13 vs 20, target person or corpse, target test fortitude vs 20 or gains DYING condition (combo Sacrifice)
* necro wall of ice spell
* fake death + invis to thrall undead spell
* 24 hour block of ice someone
* cold based damage shield
* void damage magic missile
* destroy all oxygen in area, auto suffocation tests

You can Bane and reverse a cantrip on people for no increase in target number. For a +10 you can increase the cantrip dice, roll 3 & take best. +10 to cantrip a complex task & +20 to cantrip a laborious task, that's worth dumping a lot of end-of-mission mana into making something. Unsure of glimmer, need to find out 'dedication' it doesn't seem keyworded. Ah, cantrips take up chakras, missed that on the first two reads but persist could be nice. Hey, touch metamagic, +3 target number to safe-cast in melee and make the spell an unarmed attack roll.

TODOs: get a sawed off & scatter pistol + training in marksman then go full incendiary ammo for that "so you though you'd melee the caster eh?", get the business trait if we want to buy lots of stuff, get more +encumberance, train lots of magic skills, get perception up to increase our ranges for guns/magic if it seems we need to.


Well, I still have some uncertainty about how resisting magic & dealing/taking damage work but those are minor details (like of it's cast vs dodge do they get to try to dodge as well?). Plus it's unclear if skills that lack tools take the -5 'no tool' penalty if they don't have the trait that's listed under the tool column, so I don't know if the character has +10 or +15 to resolve tests. Are grimoires universal or per occult skill? Occasional examples would be nice. Um, this seems like a fairly decent armored mage caster template with +5 or +10 to cast all spells (I think). I'm also not certain, but it sounds like the starting mission mana/destiny/concentration is a count and not a cap, thus you can exceed that number during the mission.

Since mana can be used to add to rolls it seems that a target number 35 spell is potentially doable even with only a +13. This character would need to siphon mana off the dead/dying to prep for it but bane+cantrip to negative a target's resist roll then destiny(reroll) + casting roll + extra mana to hit 35 and we can cast that 'they just die' spell at a climatic moment. And geeze, take a 4 point relic to refund you the mana when you successfully cast any one spell. Tag it to Blood Ritual at a +20 or more (by focusing only on necromancy) and you're basically all "give me your HP" forever.

[Kane0]

Brian ran a session of his game yesterday.

I just want to say, all of this issues about miscommunication and players doing stupid things and then whining about the game being to hard are all present, and indeed so much worse, when someone who isn't used to it is running the game.


May need to make it a bit more idiot-proof so the dev isnt required to be in the room to sort things out during play

[Talakeal]

May need to make it a bit more idiot-proof so the dev isnt required to be in the room to sort things out during play

Its not really about rules issues. Its mostly about nobody ever listening to anybody else and the players being too arrogant to use basic tactics.


.. so is armor pretty good, or are most of them.. kinda bad at their chosen combat method? I would expect better than 50/50 odds of hitting an 'amateur' target for anybody who is meant to be good at some form of fighting, and they're mostly less than that.

They are fairly new characters, yes. Amateur represents a town guard, militia men, or thug. Someone who knows the basics of combat bat isn't a trained soldier.

I would say everyone but Flossie is "bad" at offense. Kumiko and Feurlina both have defensive builds, and miles is just an absolute mess.

Note however, that this isn't the chance to hit. This is the chance to injure and opponent with an attack. The system isn't like D&D were you have a boatload of HP to whittle down, on average 2 injuries is enough to take a given character out of the fight.


snip

Thank you again for taking the time to do this.

The only big issue with the build I see is that it appears like it is built around Last Breath. The problem with that spell is that most of the things you are fighting will be extras, the equivalent of a minion in D&D, and most extras don't have any mana or destiny to steal; that spell is more for enemy wizards, big bads, and recouping some of the resources of a fallen PC. You can, however, take a soul gem as an artifact that is *almost* as good.

With a 5 endurance and agility, you might also be a little squishier than you think you are, although with the helmet and heavy armor you can sure take a hit better than Flossie (or most of Bob's characters for that matter).

Rich gives you an extra item, it doesn't improve the quality of existing items. You want heirloom for that.

Skills don't suffer a penalty for being without a tool. Certain tasks (of which spell-casting is NOT one) have the *implement* tag. These abilities are the only things that suffer that penalty.

You do add your strength to your damage with guns.*

You do start out with tools for your secondary skills, so you should already have seer's crystals.

Weapons don't have a maximum range, they just stack -2 accuracy penalties for long range until hitting is impossible.

Magic missiles have a casting difficulty opposed by the opponent's dodge score. If you successfully cast, proceed to rolling for damage, they may not dodge, resist, or evade.

Grimoires are per skill, although their weight is not cumulative as the same book can contain multiple schools.

Correct, mana and destiny are starting values, not caps.

Blood ritual is a very good choice for a staff of power. In my last game one of the characters had one, and she basically never cast another spell again for the rest of the campaign.

*I know this feels a bit odd. I used to have a much more in depth "caliber" system for determining the damage of firearms, but it was clunky to write out and boils down to the same thing in the end, so I decided to go for simplicity.

[Duff]

(
At the same time, they don't like using melee to hit roll spells because they are a delicate little cloth wearer and don't want to get close to the monsters. (This isn't an innate part of the system, but rather part of the player's build and the wizard "class fantasy").
Thoughts?

A point to note, if those limitations aren't compensated, the "class fantasy" is not supported by the game.
Which is fine if it's a design choice
But a player who's making character choices not supported by the system has a shortage of legs to stand on if they underperform in combat.

[Telok]

The only big issue with the build I see is that it appears like it is built around Last Breath. The problem with that spell is that most of the things you are fighting will be extras, the equivalent of a minion in D&D, and most extras don't have any mana or destiny to steal; that spell is more for enemy wizards, big bads, and recouping some of the resources of a fallen PC. You can, however, take a soul gem as an artifact that is *almost* as good....

...Rich gives you an extra item, it doesn't improve the quality of existing items. You want heirloom for that....

...Skills don't suffer a penalty for being without a tool. Certain tasks (of which spell-casting is one) have the *implement* tag. These abilities are the only things that suffer that penalty.....

Cool, cool. Ok. Good to know about the extras. I admit to not having read all the pages of misc. magic items. Then the character may well have dropped Rich for two more secondary training in other magics to get more books.

So with the base target number being 20 what's a decent attack or general skill bonus? Here's a character who runs at +8 to +11 in a bunch of stuff. Ok or going to be gimp?


Looks like a fat happy Buddah statue come to life.

attributes: agility 5, charisma 5, dexterity 5, endurance 5, intelligence 5, perception 5, strength 5, willpower 5
cost: 80/100

aspects/figured stats: animus 1, chakras 1, concentration(focus) 3, destiny(rerolls) 3, dodge(10+dodge=to-be-hit) 7= 17, encumbrance 5, initiative 10, mana(spells) 3, wealth(debits) 4, might(cbt maneuvers) 10, resilience(10+rsv=to-be-hurt) 21= 31, speed 6, tenacity(vs disabled by dmg) 5, vitality(wounds) 5

Skills
primary skills: unarmed (dex +11), fortitude (end +10), expression (cha +10)
secondary skills: acrobat (agl +8), domestic (int +8 & house), reason (int +3), marksman (dex +8), alertness (+9), athletics (+9), insight (+9), stealth (+9)
untrained: perform (+0 & instrument), larceny (+6), ride (+6), survival (+6)

flaws: absent minded, amputee(r.arm), attention deficit, blase, color blind (purple/blue), fat, harsh voice, hollow (-2 spell damage), impoverished, poor hearing (-2 audio), unlucky
cost: -16+80=64

traits: unbalanced dexterity (dex @ -1 dodge & +1 speed), soulless (untargetable by supernatural abilities)

merits: chi (+animus to alert athletic insight larceny resilience ride stealth survival unarmed & unarmed damage while not using tools/armor), bionic arm (r.arm & +2 str) with wing clipper & shooting, +16 resilience, sagacious x4 (stealth, alertness, athletics, insight)
cost: 20+64=84+12=96+4=100

gear: orange robes (long sleeves), bucket of fried chicken, kind of furnished cell in <monastery>, 1 week food & drink, 1 week lamp oil, 1 week matches, coin purse (4 coins), rucksack, indestructible smile of perfect teeth, shaving kit (not naturally bald), gloves

fighty:
punch, atk +11, dmg +8, can do at range (increment 5 paces)
- note: can combo strikes -> surgical + maiming + reckless or 3x wild strike
- gruesome blow, -2 accuracy & wounded makes morale test
- kai, -2 accuracy & expression vs resolve to inflict vulnerability to EONT
- maim, -2 accuracy & on wound target fortitude vs 15+(dmg over resil) or crippled limb
- reckless, +2 accuracy & -4 dodge to EONT
- subdue, -2 accuracy & on hit target resolve vs 20 +/- (diff damage test from resil) or stunned
- sweep, +2 accuracy & -4 damage
- WILD STRIKE, -1 accuracy & apply effect of (roll on table) strike

TODO: buy more resilience & sagacious & unarmed combat, maybe think about raising some stats?


Maim maneuver has a typo, last sentence "might blow" -> "mighty blow"

[Talakeal]

Cool, cool. Ok. Good to know about the extras. I admit to not having read all the pages of misc. magic items. Then the character may well have dropped Rich for two more secondary training in other magics to get more books.

So with the base target number being 20 what's a decent attack or general skill bonus? Here's a character who runs at +8 to +11 in a bunch of stuff. Ok or going to be gimp?


Looks like a fat happy Buddah statue come to life.

attributes: agility 5, charisma 5, dexterity 5, endurance 5, intelligence 5, perception 5, strength 5, willpower 5
cost: 80/100

aspects/figured stats: animus 1, chakras 1, concentration(focus) 3, destiny(rerolls) 3, dodge(10+dodge=to-be-hit) 7= 17, encumbrance 5, initiative 10, mana(spells) 3, wealth(debits) 4, might(cbt maneuvers) 10, resilience(10+rsv=to-be-hurt) 21= 31, speed 6, tenacity(vs disabled by dmg) 5, vitality(wounds) 5

Skills
primary skills: unarmed (dex +11), fortitude (end +10), expression (cha +10)
secondary skills: acrobat (agl +8), domestic (int +8 & house), reason (int +3), marksman (dex +8), alertness (+9), athletics (+9), insight (+9), stealth (+9)
untrained: perform (+0 & instrument), larceny (+6), ride (+6), survival (+6)

flaws: absent minded, amputee(r.arm), attention deficit, blase, color blind (purple/blue), fat, harsh voice, hollow (-2 spell damage), impoverished, poor hearing (-2 audio), unlucky
cost: -16+80=64

traits: unbalanced dexterity (dex @ -1 dodge & +1 speed), soulless (untargetable by supernatural abilities)

merits: chi (+animus to alert athletic insight larceny resilience ride stealth survival unarmed & unarmed damage while not using tools/armor), bionic arm (r.arm & +2 str) with wing clipper & shooting, +16 resilience, sagacious x4 (stealth, alertness, athletics, insight)
cost: 20+64=84+12=96+4=100

gear: orange robes (long sleeves), bucket of fried chicken, kind of furnished cell in <monastery>, 1 week food & drink, 1 week lamp oil, 1 week matches, coin purse (4 coins), rucksack, indestructible smile of perfect teeth, shaving kit (not naturally bald), gloves

fighty:
punch, atk +11, dmg +8, can do at range (increment 5 paces)
- note: can combo strikes -> surgical + maiming + reckless or 3x wild strike
- gruesome blow, -2 accuracy & wounded makes morale test
- kai, -2 accuracy & expression vs resolve to inflict vulnerability to EONT
- maim, -2 accuracy & on wound target fortitude vs 15+(dmg over resil) or crippled limb
- reckless, +2 accuracy & -4 dodge to EONT
- subdue, -2 accuracy & on hit target resolve vs 20 +/- (diff damage test from resil) or stunned
- sweep, +2 accuracy & -4 damage
- WILD STRIKE, -1 accuracy & apply effect of (roll on table) strike

TODO: buy more resilience & sagacious & unarmed combat, maybe think about raising some stats?


Maim maneuver has a typo, last sentence "might blow" -> "mighty blow"

Most starting characters will have +12-+14 in their area of expertise, so he is a bit on the gimp side. He seems a very jack of all trades character though, which tends to work better in a very small or a very large party. If he specialized a bit more he is pretty solid, the bionic arm + wing-clipper build is really cool.

I don't believe you can take Hollow without Enlightenment though.

Wait, do you have a trait for +16 resilience? That shouldn't be...

[Telok]

I don't believe you can take Hollow without Enlightenment though.

Wait, do you have a trait for +16 resilience? That shouldn't be...

I may have missed the name... toughness. Scrolling around through full pdfs on a phone is annoying. Not taking hollow without enlighten makes sense, also in some cases of the 'can cast just one spell' trait. I haven't looked into nonhumans & mutants yet, or all the spells + items.

Next char lets see how far i can push one spell.

[Talakeal]

I may have missed the name... toughness. Scrolling around through full pdfs on a phone is annoying. Not taking hollow without enlighten makes sense, also in some cases of the 'can cast just one spell' trait. I haven't looked into non-humans & mutants yet, or all the spells + items.

Remember those *s you asked me about earlier?

Both Toughness and Hollow have them, which means Toughness can't push you beyond an effective 10 endurance and Hollow can't bring you below an effective 1 enlightenment.


Next char lets see how far i can push one spell.

Looking forward to it!

(The big trick to powering up spells involves making pacts with spirits using Cacodaemon and Kismet, but its a bit tricky and probably not immediately apparent).

[Telok]

Remember those *s you asked me about earlier?

Both Toughness and Hollow have them, which means Toughness can't push you beyond an effective 10 endurance and Hollow can't bring you below an effective 1 enlightenment.


Ah, that's interesting. It is not apparent because those read as derived stats that are set by the base attribute but do not themselves affect that attribute.... that means you can't get a toughness, skill rating, mana, etc., higher than 15 before of equipment bonuses. How does that interact with the chi, unbalanced, and legendary skill traits?... Wait, does that mean the +5 skill boost merits are also hitting that +15 cap? There's spells that add +number to stats for a while, does it cap them too? Vulnerability and resistance shouldn't be affected by that (+/-4 to resilience for resisting damage), but now I'm uncertain.

Hmm... it cuts down on extreme numbers. Pushes you into looking to stack gear and miscellaneous bonuses. The base target number 20 is never a sure roll without quality+ or relic gear.

Not having read every single item, monster, religion bit, and spell I'd have no idea about your spell power thing with the summons. But the 15 cap does mostly stop the idea I had. That was... well now capped it's +15+heirloom book+staff of power for alacrity celerity circles of protection (would need dewormer master stacking now... and I'm leaving that typo there). Just spam circles to make a safe zone for the party to shoot out of. Sure, intelligent creatures will back off or try to get around it. But unlimited at-will 2/turn+reaction=3 "no wood can reach us" + "no life can come closer than that" + "no bullets can come within 15 feet" is pretty good. At least until you get into the cast/counter duel with another caster but that's what the old Shadowrun saying about magical supeority is for. There might be a more metamagic efficent way to get there but big lists without summaries (like the ones for traits & skills) make it slow going.

Oh, and enchantment duration is nebulous. I think spamming circle of protection or empowered protection (invulnerability to ghasts!) would work, but I'd really want to have a nice talk with the GM to nail things down before plopping down a character. Do enchantments last the whole scene by default? There was a bit about the subject of a water breathing spell continuing it beyond the end of the duration by paying mana each turn, that's what brought it up.

Last note, aggrivating because I didn't write it down when I noticed it last night. Left hand column in the beastiary, in one of the sections before undead, in a description that continues over from the next page, it talks about how rare a creature/species is. But the descriptor is flipped. It's something like where it should read 'extremely uncommon' but actually says 'extremely common'. Not those words either. Good luck.

[Talakeal]

Ah, that's interesting. It is not apparent because those read as derived stats that are set by the base attribute but do not themselves affect that attribute.... that means you can't get a toughness, skill rating, mana, etc., higher than 15 before of equipment bonuses. How does that interact with the chi, unbalanced, and legendary skill traits?... Wait, does that mean the +5 skill boost merits are also hitting that +15 cap? There's spells that add +number to stats for a while, does it cap them too? Vulnerability and resistance shouldn't be affected by that (+/-4 to resilience for resisting damage), but now I'm uncertain.

Hmm... it cuts down on extreme numbers. Pushes you into looking to stack gear and miscellaneous bonuses. The base target number 20 is never a sure roll without quality+ or relic gear.

Traits with a * can't take you beyond an effective ten. Magic / racial modifiers can't take you beyond an effective 15. Traits that aren't either of those things have no limits.

Generally you can get up to +30 in any given score, although that isn't a hard cap, and is pretty tough to do for a starting character without heavy relic and heirloom.

Up to ten from base levels or traits with *.
Up to fifteen from magic or species modifiers.
Then up to +5 from proficiency, +5 from tool quality, and +5 from legendary skill.

Traits like Chi or Beauty tend to replace the tool bonus.

Mana, Destiny, and Concentration have no caps at all.


Not having read every single item, monster, religion bit, and spell I'd have no idea about your spell power thing with the summons. But the 15 cap does mostly stop the idea I had. That was... well now capped it's +15+heirloom book+staff of power for alacrity celerity circles of protection (would need dewormer master stacking now... and I'm leaving that typo there). Just spam circles to make a safe zone for the party to shoot out of. Sure, intelligent creatures will back off or try to get around it. But unlimited at-will 2/turn+reaction=3 "no wood can reach us" + "no life can come closer than that" + "no bullets can come within 15 feet" is pretty good. At least until you get into the cast/counter duel with another caster but that's what the old Shadowrun saying about magical supeority is for. There might be a more metamagic efficent way to get there but big lists without summaries (like the ones for traits & skills) make it slow going.

Oh, and enchantment duration is nebulous. I think spamming circle of protection or empowered protection (invulnerability to ghasts!) would work, but I'd really want to have a nice talk with the GM to nail things down before plopping down a character. Do enchantments last the whole scene by default? There was a bit about the subject of a water breathing spell continuing it beyond the end of the duration by paying mana each turn, that's what brought it up.

Yeah, that is a pretty effective strategy. The party used it extensively in the last campaign.

Yes, enchantments last the whole scene by default. You can use metamagics to make them longer or shorter though, and anti-magic can cause them to end prematurely.


Last note, aggravating because I didn't write it down when I noticed it last night. Left hand column in the beastiary, in one of the sections before undead, in a description that continues over from the next page, it talks about how rare a creature/species is. But the descriptor is flipped. It's something like where it should read 'extremely uncommon' but actually says 'extremely common'. Not those words either. Good luck.

Thanks. I will try and find it.

[Telok]

All right. With that explanation and another rereading it makes more sense. I think that I, personally, would be tempted to replace the * with... I don't know... 'att. capped'? Maybe '10-stat'? Hmm... Maybe it's just preference. I like being as explicit as possible within the given bounds of word count, layout, etc. It works as it currently, I think I was just going fast or distracted and not thinking through implications.

[Jakinbandw]

Okay, I'm sitting down to write out a character, but my initial reaction is that the main issue with the whole thing for me was organization and clarity. There are a lot of options, but nothing to guide me down which ones to take. I'm trying to replicate the blaster caster that was having issues, but I have no idea if my end result is good or not. I feel like I must be missing some options or something.



attributes: agility 2, charisma 3, dexterity 2, endurance 1, intelligence 6, perception 3, strength 2, willpower 8, Occult 15 (Mutant)
cost: 74/100

aspects/figured stats: animus 1, chakras 1, concentration(focus) 6, destiny(rerolls) 3, dodge 7, encumbrance 2, initiative 5, mana 8, wealth ?, might 4, resilience 1, speed 2, tenacity 8, vitality 1

Skills
primary skills: Evocation 20, Restoration 20, Conjuration 20
secondary skills: Academics 9, Technology 9, Chronomancy 18
untrained (Lowered by Ignorance): Charm 3, Illusion 1, Necromancy 1, Technomancy 5, Mysticism 5
Untrained (Lowered by Flaws): Social 1, Business 1, Leadership 1

flaws: Honest, Naive, Shy, Deep Sleeper, Ignorant x30
Cost 68/138

Quirks: Inept Social x3, Inept Business x3, Inept Leadership x3

Merits: Wise x3, Mutant (Occult) x5, Heirloom (Grimoire +5), Flame Staff of Power + Rod of Supremacy (Phantom) + Symbiotic, Golden Fleece + Symbiotic, Evocation Fetish + Symbiotic x2
64



If I'm reading this right, this character could cast the Flame spell every round, with a +25 to hit rolling 3d20 and taking the best result. They would also be able to ignore all penalties from firing into a melee. On the downside I think they would have to be close to the front, but I could probably buy down a few more skills to buff my character's perception if that turns out to be a major issue. I could have also taken Legendary skill for another +1 to my attack, so I hope that isn't gimping the character too much. It just felt a little much to invest in before Animus hit 2.

[Talakeal]

Okay, I'm sitting down to write out a character, but my initial reaction is that the main issue with the whole thing for me was organization and clarity. There are a lot of options, but nothing to guide me down which ones to take. I'm trying to replicate the blaster caster that was having issues, but I have no idea if my end result is good or not. I feel like I must be missing some options or something.



attributes: agility 2, charisma 3, dexterity 2, endurance 1, intelligence 6, perception 3, strength 2, willpower 8, Occult 15 (Mutant)
cost: 74/100

aspects/figured stats: animus 1, chakras 1, concentration(focus) 6, destiny(rerolls) 3, dodge 7, encumbrance 2, initiative 5, mana 8, wealth ?, might 4, resilience 1, speed 2, tenacity 8, vitality 1

Skills
primary skills: Evocation 20, Restoration 20, Conjuration 20
secondary skills: Academics 9, Technology 9, Chronomancy 18
untrained (Lowered by Ignorance): Charm 3, Illusion 1, Necromancy 1, Technomancy 5, Mysticism 5
Untrained (Lowered by Flaws): Social 1, Business 1, Leadership 1

flaws: Honest, Naive, Shy, Deep Sleeper, Ignorant x30
Cost 68/138

Quirks: Inept Social x3, Inept Business x3, Inept Leadership x3

Merits: Wise x3, Mutant (Occult) x5, Heirloom (Grimoire +5), Flame Staff of Power + Rod of Supremacy (Phantom) + Symbiotic, Golden Fleece + Symbiotic, Evocation Fetish + Symbiotic x2
64



If I'm reading this right, this character could cast the Flame spell every round, with a +25 to hit rolling 3d20 and taking the best result. They would also be able to ignore all penalties from firing into a melee. On the downside I think they would have to be close to the front, but I could probably buy down a few more skills to buff my character's perception if that turns out to be a major issue. I could have also taken Legendary skill for another +1 to my attack, so I hope that isn't gimping the character too much. It just felt a little much to invest in before Animus hit 2.

This seems like an excellent attempt to out Bob Bob. An absolutely monstrous glass cannon that is immune to conventional damage.

A symbiotic golden fleece is brilliant, but you are really going to suffer against any form of attack that bypasses it; mind control, suffocation, grappling, etc, and if you are caught in a null zone or otherwise have the artifacts suppressed you won't last long at all.

I agree, legendary skill is generally not worth it in the first arc.

I think you are confusing "score" and "proficiency level" for a lot of extra CP.

[Jakinbandw]

This seems like an excellent attempt to out Bob Bob. An absolutely monstrous glass cannon that is immune to conventional damage.

A symbiotic golden fleece is brilliant, but you are really going to suffer against any form of attack that bypasses it; mind control, suffocation, grappling, etc, and if you are caught in a null zone or otherwise have the artifacts suppressed you won't last long at all.

I agree, legendary skill is generally not worth it in the first arc.

I think you are confusing "score" and "proficiency level" for a lot of extra CP.

Yeah, well, mage right? The fighters go up front, so the mage can stay out of grappling distance, and be aware of null zones instead of accidentally stepping into one. As for mind control, I'd bet this character could pull off a mean counterspell with their default check of +20.

As for the rest, it's an interesting trade, because it forces this mage to be more generalist and less specialized. I think I'd drop the two fetishes (as cool as they are) and the wisdom, and pick up a few extra flaws to balance the rest out. Grab the Child Quirk, and then the Tiny, Civilian (x3), Slow Metabolism, and Follower Flaws. Call them Perry Haughter or something.

There is a part of me that feels that a different set of spell schools would work better for this character. Going evocation was just to match what the player had intended, but since magic missiles exist in all schools, I feel there could be some interesting other options. On the other hand, switching the free spell to Meteor Swarm would be an interesting alternative, allowing for better crowd control vs single target damage (Assuming that the Phantom Armament would allow the meteors to not target allies, which seems to be implied, but isn't explicit).

Probably would still want to grab Wise as soon as possible, but eh.

[Talakeal]

On the other hand, switching the free spell to Meteor Swarm would be an interesting alternative, allowing for better crowd control vs single target damage (Assuming that the Phantom Armament would allow the meteors to not target allies, which seems to be implied, but isn't explicit).

I hadn't considered that. I am not sure if a Phantom would ignore allies when it came to AoE effects.

[Jakinbandw]

So I quickly want to talk about why designing an unbreakable base system is important. Remember how people said they found my system Videogamey? It's because I went in knowing what I wanted, and knowing the pitfalls. The main issue with games like 3.x and the like is that their power stems from unintended interactions (Also that they involve screaming special attacks like 'Fireball' while not being considered videogamey, but that's a personal nitpick).

So let me share with you an artifact that a player can start the game with that completely breaks most of the assumptions of the game (and is stronger than anything my system allows until players reach level 19):

Bow of Shadows: Huntsman (4+2), Penetrater (4x2+2), Phantom (4x2+2), True Flight (4x2+2), Sacred (1+2), Anointed x3, Imperishable x5 - CP: 39

Expensive, but purchasable. This bow can hit anyone the user is aware of, from anywhere in the world, ignoring any and all protections including antimagic zones. This could allow a character to sit a ways away from a dungeon, and just repeatedly target the closest foe that exists within the dungeon. This could also be used as part of a Rod of Supremacy, which would free up about 10 points (as there is no need for the ability to shoot into an antimagic zone).

Unless I'm very mistaken, this sort of breaks the game. That story I told about a character in my game sitting on the sun firing blasts of fire down through the world to strike the final boss? Fairly doable, as an Empowered Body of Fire allows them to exist next to the sun, while a teleport with a DC of 70 would allow them to teleport to the sun (This may sound unreasonably high, but it's very doable at higher character point limits. A high level character can be rolling with an average of +50 to their chosen skill, and with a bunch of spare mana, the Fortune roll can be bought up to 20 using mana).

Of course sitting on the sun isn't even really necessary. Considering how slow characters move in this game, sitting even a few miles away will likely be more than enough. I'm just using it to illustrate a point. You've created a system that allows for a huge amount of freedom for your players, but I don't see any balancing mechanisms to handle the level of power you give them.

And worst of all in my opinion, is the variance in character power that system mastery gives. I'm not a master of your system, but I did sink about 3 days into character creation. The character I built was far stronger than my initial idea of just going for a 5 in all stats other then one that I would buy up to 10, and then taking a few traits. To build these characters I needed to read hundreds of pages to find small things like the Anointed Meta artifact power. It was fun building a character, but this level of disparity is too high in my opinion.

Building the character was fun and compelling. And I'd likely enjoy playing them, or any other character that I can build now. But if I played with your other players, I feel that they would get frustrated with my level of power very quickly. And that is completely understandable, because Perry Haughter above isn't even as optimized as I could make him now, but he would still out perform the rest of the players in combat. Flossy would be shooting into a melee combat with a +11 (If I'm reading her character sheet -penalties right). Perry would be rolling with a +25 (14 points higher), and would be rolling with a +20 for damage. I think with some messing around, I could change Perry so that his average attack result would be 50+, allowing most of his attacks to crit, making his damage rolls would have a +35 modifier.

To me, this is the failure point of your game. It's complex, and system mastery makes an incredible difference in characters power levels. It also breaks when moderate levels of optimization are applied. Basically, this is like a more interesting, cool, and flavorful version of Mutants and Masterminds. I think it's really neat, but desperately needs to give players guidance on how to build their character. A section with dedicated lists of builds and options for modifying them would be a good start, as it would give PCs a baseline level of competence.

[Telok]

Well I think I solved the thing about extras not having mana. It's expensive and you're crap at anything but 2-4 schools of magic but it'll keep the caster in mana.


3s in all attributes, which hurts. 48 pt.
Sagacious x2 for 4 primary occult skills. 2 pt.
Deformity (heart & ticking), eerie (bad animal karma), frail (-4 might), colorblind (yellow orange), harsh voice (-perform), meek (-1 physical damage), mutant (-1 size), poor hearing (-2), shy (-leader), weak arm (left -1 str). -13 pt.
Mutant (relentless - never disabled), clockwork heart (clockwk symbiotic phylactracy - immortal & returns from death), soul gem (on kill trap soul for 1 limited mana), enlightened x10 (+10 all casting), heirloom grimorie (+5 mysticisim), prodigy mysticisim (+5), phial of moonlight (+1 all rolls 1/task), staff of power (Righteousness), staff of power (some blasty or damage spell - maybe Orb). 63 pt.
A bunch of unbalanced traits to +/- 1s between derived attributes.

The theme is to zap an extra with Righteouness to give them mana & destiny (roll 4+ & no mana cost), kick them down to dying any way we can (maybe cast Eye For An Eye), tag them with Sacrifice (dc 20 & no mana on success) which kills them and charges the soul gem. Any periapts left after a fight get turned into mana with Cannibalize Magic (& Calcify Magic from the soul gem). Should have, I think, +26 mysticisim and +16 in three other schools (abjure, restore, ???). Seriously considered dewomer keeper x4 for the alacrity metemagic to quick cast Sacrifice or take that and the other +5 to get it as a reaction. I think it works.

Edit: had to sudden stop. So char is still vulnerable, likely needs immunity to suffocation and is physically & skill-wise inept. But strong magic with improved recharge. If I'm reading the spells right it's possible to transfer artifact powers between items, meaning the cgar quickly has all artifact effects transferred to the clockwork heart.

On that huntsman bow, I think you're still limited by knowledge (need to know what or exactly where to shoot), ammo, attack & damage rolls, plus the occasional 'return to sender' ability. It's a strong theory build, but at the actual table you'd be racking up enemies who really really want your toy and will likely try to rush into melee.

This system feels, in a way, closer to a lot of supers systems where the discussion between GM & players is important during char gen and play. This isn't a D&D AL thing where you show up with a random "book legal" character and the GM is obligated to let you do anything you want.

@Tak, speaking of jack of all trades. How viable is a character with 7s in all stats, no merits, really minor flaws, and some unbalances to tweak a few skill points around? Say +13s melee & marksman, two other primary skills, six skills at +10. Although I guess you might juggle the uneducated thing & sagacious to get total 7 primary skills. Reasonable character or not specialized enough to be particularly useful?

[Jakinbandw]

On that huntsman bow, I think you're still limited by knowledge (need to know what or exactly where to shoot), ammo, attack & damage rolls, plus the occasional 'return to sender' ability. It's a strong theory build, but at the actual table you'd be racking up enemies who really really want your toy and will likely try to rush into melee.

It depends on how you read the 'Some amount of Knowledge' bit. Considering it explicitly allows attacks against targets you don't know the location of, I feel like that plus the divination coin could give you enough info to start shooting, but it's GMs call. I guess having people after you is a decent reason to go to the moon or some other far away place.

I'm sitting down to work on the strongest mage build I think I can manage. This one might be extra spicy!

[Talakeal]

Well I think I solved the thing about extras not having mana. It's expensive and you're crap at anything but 2-4 schools of magic but it'll keep the caster in mana.


3s in all attributes, which hurts. 48 pt.
Sagacious x2 for 4 primary occult skills. 2 pt.
Deformity (heart & ticking), eerie (bad animal karma), frail (-4 might), colorblind (yellow orange), harsh voice (-perform), meek (-1 physical damage), mutant (-1 size), poor hearing (-2), shy (-leader), weak arm (left -1 str). -13 pt.
Mutant (relentless - never disabled), clockwork heart (clockwk symbiotic phylactracy - immortal & returns from death), soul gem (on kill trap soul for 1 limited mana), enlightened x10 (+10 all casting), heirloom grimorie (+5 mysticisim), prodigy mysticisim (+5), phial of moonlight (+1 all rolls 1/task), staff of power (Righteousness), staff of power (some blasty or damage spell - maybe Orb). 63 pt.
A bunch of unbalanced traits to +/- 1s between derived attributes.

The theme is to zap an extra with Righteouness to give them mana & destiny (roll 4+ & no mana cost), kick them down to dying any way we can (maybe cast Eye For An Eye), tag them with Sacrifice (dc 20 & no mana on success) which kills them and charges the soul gem. Any periapts left after a fight get turned into mana with Cannibalize Magic (& Calcify Magic from the soul gem). Should have, I think, +26 mysticisim and +16 in three other schools (abjure, restore, ???). Seriously considered dewomer keeper x4 for the alacrity metemagic to quick cast Sacrifice or take that and the other +5 to get it as a reaction. I think it works.

Edit: had to sudden stop. So char is still vulnerable, likely needs immunity to suffocation and is physically & skill-wise inept. But strong magic with improved recharge. If I'm reading the spells right it's possible to transfer artifact powers between items, meaning the cgar quickly has all artifact effects transferred to the clockwork heart.

On that huntsman bow, I think you're still limited by knowledge (need to know what or exactly where to shoot), ammo, attack & damage rolls, plus the occasional 'return to sender' ability. It's a strong theory build, but at the actual table you'd be racking up enemies who really really want your toy and will likely try to rush into melee.

This system feels, in a way, closer to a lot of supers systems where the discussion between GM & players is important during char gen and play. This isn't a D&D AL thing where you show up with a random "book legal" character and the GM is obligated to let you do anything you want.

@Tak, speaking of jack of all trades. How viable is a character with 7s in all stats, no merits, really minor flaws, and some unbalances to tweak a few skill points around? Say +13s melee & marksman, two other primary skills, six skills at +10. Although I guess you might juggle the uneducated thing & sagacious to get total 7 primary skills. Reasonable character or not specialized enough to be particularly useful?

Jack of all trades characters tend to do well in a small party where they will be called upon to fulfill a lot of rolls or a big party where they can provide redundancy wherever it is needed. In a medium sized party they tend to get overshadowed by specialists and feeling like a fifth wheel.

That righteousness trick is an interesting one. I would probably rule that the mana and destiny still faded away when the enchantment ended though, even if it had been transferred to someone else or stored in an item, but I am not sure. Good catch!


So I quickly want to talk about why designing an unbreakable base system is important. Remember how people said they found my system Videogamey? It's because I went in knowing what I wanted, and knowing the pitfalls. The main issue with games like 3.x and the like is that their power stems from unintended interactions (Also that they involve screaming special attacks like 'Fireball' while not being considered videogamey, but that's a personal nitpick).

So let me share with you an artifact that a player can start the game with that completely breaks most of the assumptions of the game (and is stronger than anything my system allows until players reach level 19):

Bow of Shadows: Huntsman (4+2), Penetrater (4x2+2), Phantom (4x2+2), True Flight (4x2+2), Sacred (1+2), Anointed x3, Imperishable x5 - CP: 39

Expensive, but purchasable. This bow can hit anyone the user is aware of, from anywhere in the world, ignoring any and all protections including antimagic zones. This could allow a character to sit a ways away from a dungeon, and just repeatedly target the closest foe that exists within the dungeon. This could also be used as part of a Rod of Supremacy, which would free up about 10 points (as there is no need for the ability to shoot into an antimagic zone).

Unless I'm very mistaken, this sort of breaks the game. That story I told about a character in my game sitting on the sun firing blasts of fire down through the world to strike the final boss? Fairly doable, as an Empowered Body of Fire allows them to exist next to the sun, while a teleport with a DC of 70 would allow them to teleport to the sun (This may sound unreasonably high, but it's very doable at higher character point limits. A high level character can be rolling with an average of +50 to their chosen skill, and with a bunch of spare mana, the Fortune roll can be bought up to 20 using mana).

Of course sitting on the sun isn't even really necessary. Considering how slow characters move in this game, sitting even a few miles away will likely be more than enough. I'm just using it to illustrate a point. You've created a system that allows for a huge amount of freedom for your players, but I don't see any balancing mechanisms to handle the level of power you give them.

And worst of all in my opinion, is the variance in character power that system mastery gives. I'm not a master of your system, but I did sink about 3 days into character creation. The character I built was far stronger than my initial idea of just going for a 5 in all stats other then one that I would buy up to 10, and then taking a few traits. To build these characters I needed to read hundreds of pages to find small things like the Anointed Meta artifact power. It was fun building a character, but this level of disparity is too high in my opinion.

Building the character was fun and compelling. And I'd likely enjoy playing them, or any other character that I can build now. But if I played with your other players, I feel that they would get frustrated with my level of power very quickly. And that is completely understandable, because Perry Haughter above isn't even as optimized as I could make him now, but he would still out perform the rest of the players in combat. Flossy would be shooting into a melee combat with a +11 (If I'm reading her character sheet -penalties right). Perry would be rolling with a +25 (14 points higher), and would be rolling with a +20 for damage. I think with some messing around, I could change Perry so that his average attack result would be 50+, allowing most of his attacks to crit, making his damage rolls would have a +35 modifier.

To me, this is the failure point of your game. It's complex, and system mastery makes an incredible difference in characters power levels. It also breaks when moderate levels of optimization are applied. Basically, this is like a more interesting, cool, and flavorful version of Mutants and Masterminds. I think it's really neat, but desperately needs to give players guidance on how to build their character. A section with dedicated lists of builds and options for modifying them would be a good start, as it would give PCs a baseline level of competence.

I agree, more examples and guidelines are much needed.

The problem with spending dozens of character points on relics is that you are a starting character with more wealth than an end game character, and you really only keep your powers through DM mercy. In fiction, there is no reason why people much more powerful than you are wouldn't track you down and steal your powers. Its a lot like the fable of the golden goose.

One of my very old horror stories involved a character starting play with a weapon much like that bow. The DM started the game, immediately told the player to make an impossible resolve test, and said that an enemy arch-mage cast seize on him from a mile away. That's a lot more passive aggressive than I would have handled it, but the principle is the same.

On a broader note, freedom in character creation is the big hinge of my system, but a lot of it is protecting players from themselves. Most "broken" characters are just characters who have put all of their eggs in one basket and can only really do one thing. Then they get bored and feel useless when their "one thing" isn't applicable, and worse, they then make trouble for the rest of the party and get reprimanded / threatened in or out of character. Same with defenses, putting all your eggs into one defense works good for most stuff, but then if you run up against something that can bypass it, you can lose the character in the blink of an eye.

In have never had a player come in with a character that I felt broke the game; although there have obviously been a few "infinite loops" and other rules exploits that needed fixing over playtesting. Your Perry Haughter is actually very similar to Bob's character in my previous game (save the Golden Fleece, Bob prefers to use meta-defenses to protect his character) and while she was certainly a great blaster, the group still ended most sessions having used up most of their resources and whining that the game was too hard.

[Jakinbandw]

The problem with spending dozens of character points on relics is that you are a starting character with more wealth than an end game character, and you really only keep your powers through DM mercy. In fiction, there is no reason why people much more powerful than you are wouldn't track you down and steal your powers. Its a lot like the fable of the golden goose.

The Symbiotic Meta artifact power means that they can't be stolen. Also, in the example of the bow, stealing it is pointless, as the Attunement cost is completely beyond what anyone other than the person it was created for could pay. In your example below, the mage could take the bow, but they could never use it, and neither could anyone else. Now if you feel the game is balanced because a GM can just kill a PC at any time, I personally disagree that is what balance means.



On a broader note, freedom in character creation is the big hinge of my system, but a lot of it is protecting players from themselves. Most "broken" characters are just characters who have put all of their eggs in one basket and can only really do one thing. Then they get bored and feel useless when their "one thing" isn't applicable, and worse, they then make trouble for the rest of the party and get reprimanded / threatened in or out of character. Same with defenses, putting all your eggs into one defense works good for most stuff, but then if you run up against something that can bypass it, you can lose the character in the blink of an eye.

Freedom in character creation only matters if the players have the tools to make use of that freedom. It's very complicated right now.

That said, I think I have a mage that should have a lot of options during gameplay. I'm sure it's weak to 'Rocks fall', and it needs a few rounds at the start of each adventure to be able to cast a few self buffs, but assuming that the GM doesn't immediately kill it, it should be a reasonable option.



Tom cast a spell to make him into the greatest illusionist in the universe. Doing so cost him almost everything but his soul. He starts the game wasted, and a feathers breath from dying.


attributes: agility 1, charisma 1, dexterity 1, endurance 1, intelligence 2, perception 1, strength 1, willpower 5, Occult 10

Skills
primary skill: Illusion

flaws: Ignorant, Absent Minded, Arthritic, Deep Sleeper, Dull Witted, Follower, Harsh Voice, Honest, Naive, Shy, Slow Metabolism, Tiny, Ugly

Quirks: Unbalanced Willpower (+mana)x5

Merits: Lucky x3, Ka x2, Dweomer Master (Empower), Dweomer Master (Extend), Chaotic (x10) Symbiotic Heirloom +5, Symbiotic Illusion Fetish x4, Symbiotic Cataract Staff of Power, Symbiotic Imperishable Cataract Wand of Bubble of Hope with Anointed Wand of Empower

This characters first action is to to cast an illusion of a person, and then make it real with Cataract. Then they target the empty body with a Cataract casting of Genesis with Bind+empowerx2 (+wand enchantments). This allows them to build a character with 160 character points. They then create a second one, and fuse the two together Cataract casting Fusion with their own mana, This fusing is special, as they increase the DC up to 52 by adding an extra copy of the empower metamagic, and two copies of the Extend Metamagic (This keeps the fusion going for the rest of the adventure). They then do the same the fuse the fusion with themselves, again spending mana. This allows them to ditch their negative traits and pick up some better ones, becoming an occult mutant to add +5 to their Occult score, and pick up other schools of magic. This also bumps up their number of Chakras.

Finally, with their new level of skill, they can Cataract cast Presence of the Master +5 on themselves with Extend x2 using Mana. By my calculations, this has a DC of 60 which means they have an 83% chance of success, which isn't great, but as this is the last major enchantment they will cast, they can spend some mana if they roll a little low to boost their result.

With this done, they are rolling their Illusion checks with a base mod of +30, and have an over 95% chance of getting an additional +20 on the roll, with the second roll being made with 5d20 keeping the highest 1.

So now with these few actions taken, let's look at Tom. They have a 10 in every attribute except occult where they have a 15. They have lots of primary skills (11 by my count), and like 40 secondary skills, along with a bunch of traits giving them +5 in a number of different areas. With this insane level of illusion magic, they can quick cast any illusion one round, then make it real the next, not having to spend any mana as they crit succeed on pretty much any illusion (giving them a refund). Cataract would cost mana to use, but the staff of power can refund any use of it that doesn't rely on an enchantment.

This means they can make any amount of wealth, and maybe artifacts or more depending on how rulings are made. They have access to every spell in the game, which can even allow them to leave the game and enter another one, or alter the rules of the system itself.

And finally, because you bring it up, if a mage does try to mind control them from a mile away at the start of the game, since they are a mage themselves, they can counterspell, even while being completely helpless.


So, does that manage to not be a one trick pony?

[Talakeal]

The Symbiotic Meta artifact power means that they can't be stolen. Also, in the example of the bow, stealing it is pointless, as the Attunement cost is completely beyond what anyone other than the person it was created for could pay. In your example below, the mage could take the bow, but they could never use it, and neither could anyone else. Now if you feel the game is balanced because a GM can just kill a PC at any time, I personally disagree that is what balance means.

Its not that the GM could kill you, its that the GM has to actively protect you.

I don't want to go back to the victim blaming discussion from a few weeks ago, but a starting character with that bow is the equivalent of a taking a nap on a park bench in the worst part of town while wearing the crown jewels of the British Empire.

He doesn't have the means to fight off the people for whom that is still life changing money.

Without a miracle, natural cause and effect is going to see him robbed.

Symbiotic artifact powers can still be transferred or have the ambrosia ripped out of them. Likewise, one can still partially attune to an artifact.

[tyckspoon]

Freedom in character creation only matters if the players have the tools to make use of that freedom. It's very complicated right now.

That said, I think I have a mage that should have a lot of options during gameplay. I'm sure it's weak to 'Rocks fall', and it needs a few rounds at the start of each adventure to be able to cast a few self buffs, but assuming that the GM doesn't immediately kill it, it should be a reasonable option.


.. I'm assuming this works, because I don't have the time to try to go through everything fine tooth right now (looks like base loop is - make an illusion of a body that has traits you'd prefer to have. Cataract [spell turns illusions real] to make it a real.. corpse, presumably, at this point? Genesis [spell turns things into actual creatures] to animate it. Fusion to join yourself with it, thus overwriting all of your terrible stats with the new body's. Repeat until the DM throws books at you/until all of your stats and traits are as high as you can get at your current power-scale stat.) This is.. almost inevitably a result of any ability in any game that lets you merge stats and take the best of whatever.

[Jakinbandw]

Its not that the GM could kill you, its that the GM has to actively protect you.

I don't want to go back to the victim blaming discussion from a few weeks ago, but a starting character with that bow is the equivalent of a taking a nap on a park bench in the worst part of town while wearing the crown jewels of the British Empire.

He doesn't have the means to fight off the people for whom that is still life changing money.

Without a miracle, natural cause and effect is going to see him robbed.

Symbiotic artifact powers can still be transferred or have the ambrosia ripped out of them. Likewise, one can still partially attune to an artifact.

In the curse section, you mention that an artifact can have a curse to only work for one person, but that still brings up the question, why does everyone in the setting know about this character having an artifact? Like based on the scaling I see, it doesn't matter if they were animus 1 or animus 5, they would still auto loose to that attack, and they would be weaker without the bow than with it at any power level.

At that point, why adventure? If any artifacts or treasure are all automatically known of by foes that can cast mind control from a mile away with no chance of failure, why adventure if anything you get is going to be stolen. Likewise, what is the point of giving characters the option to purchase these artifacts if they will just get taken away at the start of the game. That's a false choice. It seems like they are following the rules, but because everyone in the setting knows about their weapons, they can just be instantly stolen.

I guess that's why Wise exists? So that a player can get around such things? The mage tries to mind control them, so they go back in time before the mage was within range to mind control and use the bow to kill them?

[Talakeal]

In the curse section, you mention that an artifact can have a curse to only work for one person, but that still brings up the question, why does everyone in the setting know about this character having an artifact? Like based on the scaling I see, it doesn't matter if they were animus 1 or animus 5, they would still auto loose to that attack, and they would be weaker without the bow than with it at any power level.

At that point, why adventure? If any artifacts or treasure are all automatically known of by foes that can cast mind control from a mile away with no chance of failure, why adventure if anything you get is going to be stolen. Likewise, what is the point of giving characters the option to purchase these artifacts if they will just get taken away at the start of the game. That's a false choice. It seems like they are following the rules, but because everyone in the setting knows about their weapons, they can just be instantly stolen.

Its not about everyone automatically knowing. Its not about using the trait to have an artifact or two.

Its about a starting character having more wealth than most end game characters. At that point your character is just a collection of artifacts. News is going to get out, and powerful people are going to try and take it from you.

To use a D&D analogy, if your GM gave your mid-level party the option of going after two NPCs, a level 1 guy with all +5 gear or a level 20 guy with all +1 gear, you are going to choose the former every time. The risk vs. reward ratio is just too great.


I guess that's why Wise exists? So that a player can get around such things? The mage tries to mind control them, so they go back in time before the mage was within range to mind control and use the bow to kill them?

Its not divination. I can't imagine a GM actually letting someone use it in that way.


...Tom the Wishmaster...[/SPOILER]

This seems to be a variant of my "brain in a jar" build. Like most D&D TO builds, this requires the enthusiastic consent of the GM, as both Genesis and Cataract are spells that require the GM to work with you on what is appropriate.

Are you just stacking a ton of levels of Ka on your creations? Otherwise this build seems to run out of chakras well before it gets up to steam.

Keep in mind though if you are casting difficulty 60+ spells, every enlightened being on the planet is going to immediately know exactly who you are, where you are, and what you are doing, so this is actively putting a beacon on your head for every world power to come and harvest the ~50 odd ambrosia you are carrying around on you.


Chaotic + Fetish is indeed a potent combo. I have been thinking about limiting it for a while. Honestly, that alone is pretty much all you need for this build.

Neither chaotic nor heirloom can be innate, so having your fetish spellbook stolen / destroyed / disarmed is still a liability, and you are still fairly vulnerable to anti-magic.

[Jakinbandw]

News is going to get out

How exactly? Lets look at Tom. None of his artifacts are visible, and none have any effect other than increasing his rolls for spellcasting. How does that look different than any other high level caster? Especially to the point where the game starts with all of it being stolen from him before he can take an action?

Because being completely honest, after he manages to take his 8 or so actions, Tom will be stronger than most endgame characters. Is it really easier to steal from Tom then it is to steal from any other high level character?



Its not about everyone automatically knowing. Its not about using the trait to have an artifact or two. Its about a starting character having more wealth than most end game characters. At that point your character is just a collection of artifacts.

Yeah, because in this system, artifacts are where most of a character's power lies. And why would you be safer with one artifact instead of having 4? You're weaker, and people actually can use those artifacts, while a super artifact isn't fully usable. It's more dangerous to attack a character with a stronger artifact, and you can't even fully use the resulting reward.

Would you rather fight a level 1 fighter in 3.5 that has access to unlimited wealth to buy magic items, or would you rather face a level 5 fighter without any magic items at all? I know which one I would choose to face if I was a party. (And yes, this comparison is accurate. Consider the shooting potential of a animus 1 character in your system without any magic items, vs their shooting potential at animus 5 without magic items. I bet it hasn't gone up that much has it?)




Honestly, I really see why you have so many complaints. With your clarifications on how the game is meant to be GMed, with the GM being this antagonistic, I wouldn't find it any fun. The assumption that GMs should send in GMPCs to destroy uppity players is pretty antithetical to what I want out of a game, both as a player, and as a GM.

Honestly, for the players that are complaining? I'd suggest they switch to a different system, like Pathfinder 2e, and try having a different GM. They probably won't get along with your system, just as I wouldn't.


It's a shame, because there are a lot of really cool things in the system that I'd be interested in playing around with. But being told that they are only there as traps to punish players who want to play with them... It really feels like it's ruining something that looks like it could've been cool. I was going to offer to write up some characters because the character building was interesting enough to be fun, but now I know that if I build a PC slightly wrong then they will get mind controlled at the start of the game before they can act, and that is expected play. Well, I don't really see the point. Might as well just put a 5 in every stat, because otherwise the world will see you as a threat and kill you.

Ugh. This just really ruins my day.

[Talakeal]

So, you’ve been running this system for a while - what’s the actual, in play, Average DPS for melee, archer, and blaster archetypes, grouped by investment? What is the average in play cost of melee, archer, and blaster archetypes, measured in resources (including HP lost)? What is the average “up time” for melee, archer, and blaster characters?

If you are still hanging around, I finally got everyone's character sheets and ran the numbers. Here you go:

Here is a damage assessment of my PCs as you requested. These are the percent chance of a given attack injuring a human soldier wearing mail and a helmet without a shield; my system doesn't use "HP" like D&D, but rather tracks injuries, and 2 injuries generally take someone out of a fight.


Kumiko 33%
Feurlina 22%
Miles 35%
Miles -2 30%
Miles -4 25%
Miles -6 20%
Miles -8 15%
Miles -12 5%
Flossie 49%
Flossie -2 42%
Flossie -4 35%
Flossie -6 28%
Flossie -8 21%
Flossie -12 7%

-2 For shooting out of melee or into melee with a large target
-4 For shooting into melee with medium target or with a large target and blocked LoS
-6 For shooting into melee with a small target
-8 For shooting into melee with a medium target and blocked LoS
-12 For shooting into melee with a small target and blocked Los

Close combat will often be getting a small bonus for flanking or a small penalty for using a maneuver.
Miles will often be getting a small bonus from aiming or taking a reckless shot, but has to reload every six turns.
Flossie can engage in melee to ignore the above accuracy penalties, but is unlikely to do so due to lack of defenses.

[Jakinbandw]

This seems to be a variant of my "brain in a jar" build. Like most D&D TO builds, this requires the enthusiastic consent of the GM, as both Genesis and Cataract are spells that require the GM to work with you on what is appropriate.

Are you just stacking a ton of levels of Ka on your creations? Otherwise this build seems to run out of chakras well before it gets up to steam.

Keep in mind though if you are casting difficulty 60+ spells, every enlightened being on the planet is going to immediately know exactly who you are, where you are, and what you are doing, so this is actively putting a beacon on your head for every world power to come and harvest the ~50 odd ambrosia you are carrying around on you.


Chaotic + Fetish is indeed a potent combo. I have been thinking about limiting it for a while. Honestly, that alone is pretty much all you need for this build.

Neither chaotic nor heirloom can be innate, so having your fetish spellbook stolen / destroyed / disarmed is still a liability, and you are still fairly vulnerable to anti-magic.

Nothing in my version of the rules doc suggests that Cataract needs any GM input. Neither does Genesis. If the DC of the spells is that big an issue, I could do the setup in timestop.

I suppose making the grimoire faithful would have to do.

Not sure why you think this build is weak to antimagic when it is fairly unique in that it can cast all it's spells and enchantments just fine in antimagic zones.

(Edit): Also if casting a strong spell makes every strong opponent in the world come running, then wouldn't the mage that mindcontrolled the PC into giving up their bow have been then ganked by all the other high level characters showing up at the same time? Seems like it might be a good reason to not go around casting high level mind control spells at low level PCs!

[Talakeal]

Because being completely honest, after he manages to take his 8 or so actions, Tom will be stronger than most endgame characters. Is it really easier to steal from Tom then it is to steal from any other high level character?

Easier? Probably not much. But 2-3 times more rewarding.


Honestly, I really see why you have so many complaints. With your clarifications on how the game is meant to be GMed, with the GM being this antagonistic, I wouldn't find it any fun. The assumption that GMs should send in GMPCs to destroy uppity players is pretty antithetical to what I want out of a game, both as a player, and as a GM.

Honestly, for the players that are complaining? I'd suggest they switch to a different system, like Pathfinder 2e, and try having a different GM. They probably won't get along with your system, just as I wouldn't.

It's a shame, because there are a lot of really cool things in the system that I'd be interested in playing around with. But being told that they are only there as traps to punish players who want to play with them... It really feels like it's ruining something that looks like it could've been cool. I was going to offer to write up some characters because the character building was interesting enough to be fun, but now I know that if I build a PC slightly wrong then they will get mind controlled at the start of the game before they can act, and that is expected play. Well, I don't really see the point. Might as well just put a 5 in every stat, because otherwise the world will see you as a threat and kill you.

Ugh. This just really ruins my day.

Is this an actual good faith argument? Because it doesn't sound like it.

This is like a Bob argument on steroids.

Make a ridiculously one sided character, and then blame the GM for picking on you when natural consequences occur.


Like, if you were running a D&D game, and my character was "Sarah the hoard stealer". She is a level 1 commoner who runs into the monster's lair shouting "give me treasure" and then proceeds to loot. But if any of the monsters dare to attack her, or trap their lair, then clearly you are a killer DM who is only out to ruin my fun and the entire D&D system is broken.

Like, you really think putting a 1 of your base stats and spending over half your starting CP on a single merit is "slightly wrong"?

[Talakeal]

Nothing in my version of the rules doc suggests that Cataract needs any GM input. Neither does Genesis. If the DC of the spells is that big an issue, I could do the setup in time stop.

Genesis specifically says you work with the GM to assign traits as appropriate. Likewise, cataract requires a "suitable facsimile to build upon" and I can't imagine what half of these illusions would even look like. Especially when crafted by someone with a 1 perception and 2 intelligence and no artistic skills.


Nothing in my version of the rules doc suggests that Cataract needs any GM input. Neither does Genesis. If the DC of the spells is that big an issue, I could do the setup in timestop.


Probably. If you dropped a sixty point artifact into the world (though the big question is where did it come from?) it would result in a big scrum trying to own that much undefended wealth.

The difficulty to yank the bow is only low to mid 30s. That's a full d20 span harder to detect.

I never said anything about mind controlling you at creation or anything, I said that is a way to get around golden fleece. I specifically said that the archmage seizing your bow is passive agressive DMing that I don't approve of, but something like it is the natural result of giving that much wealth to a starting character. People who are much stronger than you for whome it is still life changing money are going to try and take it.


Not sure why you think this build is weak to antimagic when it is fairly unique in that it can cast all it's spells and enchantments just fine in anti-magic zones.

Not null-zones. Regular dispel magic. The whole character is a house of cards of stacked enchantments.

[Jakinbandw]

Like, you really think putting a 1 of your base stats and spending over half your starting CP on a single merit is "slightly wrong"?

I honestly don't see anything wrong with it at all.

If you do see something wrong with it, maybe it shouldn't be an option in the system you made?


Is this an actual good faith argument? Because it doesn't sound like it.

This is actually a Bob argument on steroids.

Make a ridiculously one sided character, and then blame the GM for picking on you when natural consequences occur.

Maybe the problem is that the game itself pushes players to make optimized characters (players are complaining about their lack of effectiveness), but then you the GM want to punish them for doing so. If a player makes a character that's not optimized enough, it's their fault for making one that's too weak. If they make one that's too strong, then it only makes sense that they would be immediately killed. There is no winning without being able to read the GM's mind.

And that's why I feel I would hate this game. Not because I want everything with no effort (I spent a long time studying your system to build Tom. Multiple days of my life), but because the only way to make a character that can be played in it, is if I as a player know exactly the level of power you want me to have. You say player freedom is everything, but in reality, I have less freedom in your system then I do in a game like 5e, because in 5e I don't need to guess the level of power I need to be at to be allowed play the game.

If freedom for players is truly important to you, then you need to make your system work with whatever the players can legally build in it, without arbitrarily punishing them when they take the character to the table.


Like, if you were running a D&D game, and my character was "Sarah the hoard stealer". She is a level 1 commoner who runs into the monster's lair shouting "give me treasure" and then proceeds to loot. But if any of the monsters dare to attack her, or trap their lair, then clearly you are a killer DM who is only out to ruin my fun and the entire D&D system is broken.

This is a false argument. I'm not asking for monsters to not attack the party, or to be given anything more than what anyone else is. I'm asking that what you allow a character to take at character creation not be ripped away from them immediately on starting the game.

It's more like in 5e if I picked a character with pole-arm mastery, you started the game with a dragon killing me. You said it makes sense, because dragon's are aware of the Greatweapon master /polearm mastery combo, and thus should take the time to remove those threats when they are low level, before they can become dangerous. Dragons are smart after all.

Sure, you can make that argument. I still think that doing that is unreasonable.

In the system I'm working on, there is no combination of abilities that a character can take that will make them unplayable. They can be rich, and start with powerful artifacts (though admittedly, not as powerful as the ones possible in your system), and be good at using them. This doesn't take away their ability to be well rounded characters, and it doesn't break the game to the point where I have to murder their characters the moment they spawn in to prevent the game from breaking.




I guess at the end of the day, I don't see a player spending the points that they are given at character creation to be equivalent to wanting extra free stuff. It's stuff they paid for with the character points you give them, and the rules you provide. Saying that using them is equivalent to wanting to steal a dragons horde for free feels like a bizarre take from where I'm standing.



Not null-zones. Regular dispel magic. The whole character is a house of cards of stacked enchantments.

Ah, but you can dispell dispells. And since my checks should be 20 points higher on average, I don't see how that is a big threat.

[JNAProductions]

Easier? Probably not much. But 2-3 times more rewarding.



Is this an actual good faith argument? Because it doesn't sound like it.

This is actually a Bob argument on steroids.

Make a ridiculously one sided character, and then blame the GM for picking on you when natural consequences occur.


Like, if you were running a D&D game, and my character was "Sarah the hoard stealer". She is a level 1 commoner who runs into the monster's lair shouting "give me treasure" and then proceeds to loot. But if any of the monsters dare to attack her, or trap their lair, then clearly you are a killer DM who is only out to ruin my fun and the entire D&D system is broken.

Like, you really think putting a 1 of your base stats and spending over half your starting CP on a single merit is "slightly wrong"?

If multiple people have the same complaint, perhaps it’s worth giving credence to.

The people here, best I can tell, are legitimately doing what a playtester should-stress the system, see where it can break, so it can be fixed.

[Talakeal]

Ah, but you can dispell dispells. And since my checks should be 20 points higher on average, I don't see how that is a big threat.

How are you doing this?


If multiple people have the same complaint, perhaps it’s worth giving credence to.

The people here, best I can tell, are legitimately doing what a playtester should-stress the system, see where it can break, so it can be fixed.

What is the multiple people have the same complaint?

That the system doesn't go out of its way to protect people from themselves?

Its not like D&D where they intentionally gimp certain feats and spells, this is people intentionally giving themselves the minimum possible score in multiple areas and then being shocked that their weaknesses are in fact weaknesses.

Again, I don't consider the NPCs in the setting acting rationally given their motivations and knowledge to be antagonistic GMing, and I certainly don't consider all high level villains in the setting to be "GMPCs".

[Kish]

If you do see something wrong with it, maybe it shouldn't be an option in the system you made?
Yes, this. Of course it's a legitimate option; if it wasn't the rules wouldn't support it. "You should know, without being told, that this is bad and the GM will punish you if you do it" is no part of any functional rules system. If you don't want newly created PCs to have artifacts, the appropriate response is to take out the part of the rules that says "you can have artifacts at level 1," not to go straight to personal attacks on the people who point it out to you.

[tyckspoon]

I honestly don't see anything wrong with it at all.

If you do see something wrong with it, maybe it shouldn't be an option in the system you made?


I feel like there's maybe some disconnect here because as best as I can gather you have mostly been drilling in on what the mechanics say, while Talakeal is responding from the viewpoint of all the in-world background and setting information that naturally lives in their head? Eg, the build rules may let you cast what is intended to be a mythically difficult spell as a focused starting character, but Talakeal knows that as a setting conceit magic is actually pretty rare and that every act of magic is visible to those who know how to see.. so of course casting a spell of legendary difficulty and power is equivalent to lighting a beacon to be seen to the horizon, let alone doing so four times in a row to build a buffstack/long term effect, and carrying around an item that matches or exceeds the most desired existing relics of the world is shortly going to get somebody's attention. Which is not something that is going to show up in character building rules, but probably is mentioned somewhere in the other 300-odd pages of text that is not specifically a character build option.

@ Talakeal - if a starting, animus rank 1 character is just flat -not supposed to- be able to perform a DC 40+ spell, or not devote 1/3rd of their points to artifacts.. your build rules clearly need either more relevant soft limits to discourage that, or explicit hard limits on the factors that allow people to bypass the existing trait/skill caps. Or I suppose a hard to ignore disclaimer stating 'the following things often produce undesirable results when taken to extremes, ensure your Gamekeeper is ok with your intended (magic schools/artifact builds) before entering play with them.' Which IIRC is basically how Mutants & Masterminds handled some of its power options - they had to have rules to represent tropes of the desired setting, but they also pretty much threw it on the GM to deal with the ramifications if they let a player have reality warping powers or similar.

[Talakeal]

Yes, this. Of course it's a legitimate option; if it wasn't the rules wouldn't support it. "You should know, without being told, that this is bad and the GM will punish you if you do it" is no part of any functional rules system. If you don't want newly created PCs to have artifacts, the appropriate response is to take out the part of the rules that says "you can have artifacts at level 1," not to go straight to personal attacks on the people who point it out to you.

Its not that I don't want PCs to start with artifacts. They absolutely can. Its that taking the majority of your starting points as artifacts and leaving yourself with 1s in your remaining stats is both putting a huge target on your back and also leaving you with plenty of vulnerabilities to exploit.

To use another D&D example, it is perfectly legal to make a fighter with 8s in all of their physical stats and 18s in all mental stats or a wizard with straight 8s in mental stats and straight 18s, but I don't think its a good idea, nor do I think its out of line for someone to point out that it isn't a good idea. But I don't think the game would be improved by putting a hard NO into it.


Also, I didn't mean to go into any personal attacks, and certainly didn't intend to react to any rules discussion as such. I was dismissive of what I perceived to be personal attacks against me, as I felt that Jack's response was a bit extreme and unwarranted, but if something I said come across as a personal attack I apologize and if you want to point it out I will edit it away.

I am very grateful for all feedback and people taking the time to read my game, and I am more than happy to actually have a good faith discussion, but it really seemed like Jack wanted to rant at me rather than actually discuss the nuances of his build.




I feel like there's maybe some disconnect here because as best as I can gather you have mostly been drilling in on what the mechanics say, while Talakeal is responding from the viewpoint of all the in-world background and setting information that naturally lives in their head? Eg, the build rules may let you cast what is intended to be a mythically difficult spell as a focused starting character, but Talakeal knows that as a setting conceit magic is actually pretty rare and that every act of magic is visible to those who know how to see.. so of course casting a spell of legendary difficulty and power is equivalent to lighting a beacon to be seen to the horizon, let alone doing so four times in a row to build a buffstack/long term effect, and carrying around an item that matches or exceeds the most desired existing relics of the world is shortly going to get somebody's attention. Which is not something that is going to show up in character building rules, but probably is mentioned somewhere in the other 300-odd pages of text that is not specifically a character build option.

This is more or less correct.



@ Talakeal - if a starting, animus rank 1 character is just flat -not supposed to- be able to perform a DC 40+ spell, or not devote 1/3rd of their points to artifacts.. your build rules clearly need either more relevant soft limits to discourage that, or explicit hard limits on the factors that allow people to bypass the existing trait/skill caps. Or I suppose a hard to ignore disclaimer stating 'the following things often produce undesirable results when taken to extremes, ensure your Gamekeeper is ok with your intended (magic schools/artifact builds) before entering play with them.' Which IIRC is basically how Mutants & Masterminds handled some of its power options - they had to have rules to represent tropes of the desired setting, but they also pretty much threw it on the GM to deal with the ramifications if they let a player have reality warping powers or similar.

Relic and Mutant used to be optional traits that said more or less that. Maybe I need to return there.

[Telok]

Yeah, I noticed some subtle restraints in the magic semi-fluff and the skill that governs detection. Spells and links are, if I read it right, traceable back to the source and noticable even after immediate effects fade. Plus I'm not absolutely sure about ranges. The magic missiles ahould be running on the shooting rules but the rest are maybe capped at perception paces without metamagics?

All in all the setting and the mechanics this game are a bit intertwined. It's not as theoretically setting agnostic as D&D is advertised. Its more like if you took a D&D 3rd level wizard cheesed out to cast prismatic spray 1/day into Dark Sun and then complaining that a team of the local Sorcerer King's 9th level enforcers dropped a scry & die on you 6 hours after your first spray while the entire city ran around in lynch mobs trying to kill you. Perfectly reasonable in Dark Sun, just that harsh reality of "you aren't the big fish in the pond" meeting a theory op whiteroom power build.

Champions has a similar issue and a section in the character building that directly addresses it. Plus there was a form in another place the GM could look at and fill out that described the desired guidelines & limits & some setying details.

Last shot at a character, seeing what I can do. Not, of course, going full cheese.


p.210 it looks like the curved blade weapon modification isn't in the mod list at the end of the section.
p.145 'cut periapt' has the difficulty spelled out as 'twenty' unlike the others that are numbers.

Still uncertain how the Unbalanced and Inept quirks should work. Taking them to extremes is iffy. Like getting, oh say 3 rolls take best on an Inept (quirk so it's no point cost) 5 + stat 5 + primary skill 5 + prodigy 5 is your +20 for only an average stat, a skill choice, and 5 character points. If that still fumbles on 1s & 2s it's probably too good, but if it's fumbling on 1s to 7s that's... about a 4% fumble rate, less than natural 1s with a single die.

You may consider doing something about amputee flaw (-4pt) + clockwork bionic arm (+4pt) that nets you +2 strength in that limb.


last check, this one is designed to try to be moderately balanced-ish and a sort of one shot kill gunner.

All attributes 4s (64pt)
Big piles of unbalanced traits (-1s leader melee speed mana insight ride athletic concentration larceny fortitude perform & +1s tenacity encumbrance resolve & +2s marksman expression dodge initiative) gives dex as 6 for marksman, agility as 6 for dodge, cha as 6 for expression. (0pt)
Prime skills; marksman & expression. Secondary; acrobat, business, fortitude, & resolve
Prodigy x9 for marksman & martial technique x3 (fatal, kiai, & setup) (12pt+64=76)
Amputee + clockwork bionic right arm (+2 str) + symbiote clockwork in the arm celestial fire & true flight & ray gun heavy pistol + symbiote clockwork in the arm necromatic fetish for attack rolls (20pt+76=96)
Soulless quirk to screw with casters targeting us with spells
The +5 expression trait and +2 shooty damage (4pt+96=100)
There are no flaws taken. options include tanking less used or unused skills for +attributes.

Function: kiai = expression at +20 vs resolve to inflict vulnerability (-4 resilience === +4 damage rolls) until the end of our next turn, setup fatal strike for -6 accuracy and if we wound the target is at -4 fortitude/resolve/might vs us on their next turn plus at the end of their next turn they make a fortitude vs 24 or take an extra wound from blood loss, ray gun is silent & unlimited ammo, true flight ignores ranges, celestial fire is if they take a wound they're set on fire and test fortitude vs 20 or take another wound.

Shoots at roll twice take best +13 (optional +2 reckless for +15) to hit and str 4 + arm 2 + gun 8 + talent 2 = +16 to wound, effectively +20 because of vulnerability. They have to have both first aid and larceny tests or make crits on their fortitude rolls to stop the extra damage (plus they're all lit up). And if you're having a hard time hitting you can settle for just lighting them on fire.

The concept is you just wear a long sleeve shirt and gloves a bunch, then occasionally blaze away with your gun finger (style points for saying "bang! bang!"). not totally terrible at too much and you're character advancement is mostly training the skills & derived attributes you care about.

html/javascript code to copy paste into text file, rename <name>.html, run in browser, tests hit & damage probabilities
Hope the copy/paste worked. Hard to tell on phone.


<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<body>
<form>
<div>
<button type="button" onclick="HODshow(this.value)">Show/hide Heart of Darkness</button>
<div id="HODdiv" style="display:none">
<div>
Attack bonus (-10 to +50) <input id="HODatk" type="number" min=-10 max=50 step=1 value=10></input>
</div>
<div>
Damage bonus (-10 to +50)<input id="HODdmg" type="number" min=-10 max=50 step=1 value=10></input>
</div>
<div>
Might bonus (-10 to +50)<input id="HODmight" type="number" min=-10 max=50 step=1 value=10></input>
</div></br>
<div>
To Hit TN (dodge+10) (1 to 50)<input id="HODhit" type="number" min=1 max=50 step=1 value=20></input>
</div>
<div>
To Wound TN (resilience+10) (1 to 50)<input id="HODhurt" type="number" min=1 max=50 step=1 value=20></input>
</div>
<div>
Target Might TN (on wounding @ might+10) (1 to 50)<input id="HODoppose" type="number" min=1 max=50 step=1 value=20></input>
</div></br>
<div>
Reroll attack if die is under 11<input id="HODrerollATK" type="checkbox"></input>
</div>
<div>
Roll 2 attacks & take best<input id="HODadvATK" type="checkbox"></input>
</div>
<div>
Fumble attack on 1s & 2s<input id="HODunluckATK" type="checkbox"></input>
</div></br>
<div>
Reroll damage if die is under 11<input id="HODrerollDMG" type="checkbox"></input>
</div>
<div>
Roll 2 damage & take best<input id="HODadvDMG" type="checkbox"></input>
</div>
<div>
Fumble damage on 1s & 2s<input id="HODunluckDMG" type="checkbox"></input>
</div></br>
<div>
Reroll might if die is under 11<input id="HODrerollMT" type="checkbox"></input>
</div>
<div>
Roll 2 might & take best<input id="HODadvMT" type="checkbox"></input>
</div>
<div>
Fumble might on 1s & 2s<input id="HODunluckMT" type="checkbox"></input>
</div>
<div>
<button type="button" onclick="HODcalc()">check probability</button>
</div>
<div>
<textarea cols=80 rows=30 id="HODout" style="display:block">0</textarea>
</div>

</div>
</div>
</form>
</body>
<script>
function HODshow(tf){
var el = document.getElementById('HODdiv');
if (el.style.display == "block"){
el.style.display = "none";
}
else{
el.style.display = "block";
}
}

function roll1dAnything(inNumber){
return (Math.floor((Math.random()*inNumber))+1);
}

function HODcalc(){
var atkBonus = parseInt(document.getElementById("HODatk").value); // number
var atkTN = parseInt(document.getElementById("HODhit").value); // number
var dmgBonus = parseInt(document.getElementById("HODdmg").value); // number
var dmgTN = parseInt(document.getElementById("HODhurt").value); // number
var mightBonus = parseInt(document.getElementById("HODmight").value); // number
var mightTN = parseInt(document.getElementById("HODoppose").value); // number

var ATKroll2IfLow = document.getElementById("HODrerollATK").checked; // boolean
var ATKroll2TakeBest = document.getElementById("HODadvATK").checked; // boolean
var ATKFumbleOn2 = document.getElementById("HODunluckATK").checked; // boolean
var DMGroll2IfLow = document.getElementById("HODrerollDMG").checked; // boolean
var DMGroll2TakeBest = document.getElementById("HODadvDMG").checked; // boolean
var DMGFumbleOn2 = document.getElementById("HODunluckDMG").checked; // boolean
var MTroll2IfLow = document.getElementById("HODrerollMT").checked; // boolean
var MTroll2TakeBest = document.getElementById("HODadvMT").checked; // boolean
var MTFumbleOn2 = document.getElementById("HODunluckMT").checked; // boolean

var bigNum = 1000000;
var resultArray = [0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0, 0];
// 0= hit 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10
// 1= hitCrit = +20 damage roll
// 2= hitFumble
// 3= wound
// 4= woundCrit = 2 wounds
// 5= woundFumble
// 6= mortalWounds = on +40>TN
// 7= destruction = on +60>TN
// 8= mighty success
// 9= mightyCrit
//10= mightyFumble

for (var a = 0; a < bigNum; a++){
var i**** = false;
var isCrit = false;
var isWound = false;
var roll1 = 0;
var roll2 = 0;
var loopLimit = 0

// ATTACK
roll1 = roll1dAnything(20);
//console.log("a", roll1, i****, resultArray);
if (ATKroll2IfLow && roll1 < 11) { roll1 = roll1dAnything(20); }
if (ATKroll2TakeBest){
roll2 = roll1dAnything(20);
if (roll2 > roll1) { roll1 = roll2; } // replace
}
//console.log("b", roll1, resultArray);
if (ATKFumbleOn2 && roll1 < 3 || roll1 == 1){ // fumble
loopLimit = 10;
roll2 = (-20); // use roll2 for the sum
while (loopLimit > 0 && (ATKFumbleOn2 && roll1 < 3 || roll1 == 1)){
roll1 = roll1dAnything(20);
if (roll1 == 1) {roll2 = roll2 - 20;}
else {roll2 = roll2 + roll1;}
loopLimit = loopLimit - 1;
}
roll1 = roll2;
//console.log("c", roll1, resultArray);
}
else if (roll1 == 20){ // crit
loopLimit = 10;
roll2 = roll1; // use roll2 for the sum
while (loopLimit > 0 && roll1 == 20){
roll1 = roll1dAnything(20);
roll2 = roll2 + roll1;
loopLimit = loopLimit - 1;
}
roll1 = roll2;
//console.log("d", roll1, resultArray);
}

roll1 = roll1 + atkBonus;
//console.log("e", roll1, resultArray);
if (roll1 <= atkTN-20){ // fumble
resultArray[2] = resultArray[2] + 1;
}
else if (roll1 >= atkTN && roll1 <= atkTN+20){ // regular hit
resultArray[0] = resultArray[0] + 1;
i**** = true;
}
else if (roll1 > atkTN+20){ // critical hit
resultArray[0] = resultArray[0] + 1;
resultArray[1] = resultArray[1] + 1;
isCrit = true;
i**** = true;
}

//DAMAGE
if (i****){ // is miss
roll1 = roll1dAnything(20);
//console.log("f", roll1, isWound, resultArray);
if (DMGroll2IfLow && roll1 < 11) { roll1 = roll1dAnything(20); }
if (DMGroll2TakeBest){
roll2 = roll1dAnything(20);
if (roll2 > roll1) { roll1 = roll2; } // replace
}
//console.log("g", roll1, resultArray);
if (DMGFumbleOn2 && roll1 < 3 || roll1 == 1){ // fumble
loopLimit = 10;
roll2 = (-20); // use roll2 for the sum
while (loopLimit > 0 && (DMGFumbleOn2 && roll1 < 3 || roll1 == 1)){
roll1 = roll1dAnything(20);
if (roll1 == 1) {roll2 = roll2 - 20;}
else {roll2 = roll2 + roll1;}
loopLimit = loopLimit - 1;
}
roll1 = roll2;
//console.log("h", roll1, resultArray);
}
else if (roll1 == 20){ // crit
loopLimit = 10;
roll2 = roll1; // use roll2 for the sum
while (loopLimit > 0 && roll1 == 20){
roll1 = roll1dAnything(20);
roll2 = roll2 + roll1;
loopLimit = loopLimit - 1;
}
roll1 = roll2;
//console.log("i", roll1, resultArray);
}

roll1 = roll1 + dmgBonus;
//console.log("j", roll1, isCrit, resultArray);
if (isCrit) { roll1 = roll1 + 20; }
if (roll1 <= dmgTN-20){ // fumble
resultArray[5] = resultArray[5] + 1;
}
else if (roll1 >= dmgTN && roll1 <= dmgTN+20){ // regular hit
resultArray[3] = resultArray[3] + 1;
isWound = true;
}
else if (roll1 >= dmgTN && roll1 <= dmgTN+40){ // critical hit
resultArray[3] = resultArray[3] + 1;
resultArray[4] = resultArray[4] + 1;
isWound = true;
}
else if (roll1 >= dmgTN && roll1 <= dmgTN+60){ // mortal wound
resultArray[3] = resultArray[3] + 1;
resultArray[6] = resultArray[6] + 1;
isWound = true;
}
else if (roll1 >= dmgTN && roll1 > dmgTN+60){ // destruction hit
resultArray[3] = resultArray[3] + 1;
resultArray[7] = resultArray[7] + 1;
isWound = true;
}
//console.log("k", roll1, isWound, resultArray);
// MIGHT TEST
if (isWound){
roll1 = roll1dAnything(20);
//console.log("l", roll1, resultArray);
if (MTroll2IfLow && roll1 < 11) { roll1 = roll1dAnything(20); }
if (MTroll2TakeBest){
roll2 = roll1dAnything(20);
if (roll2 > roll1) { roll1 = roll2; } // replace
}
//console.log("m", roll1, resultArray);
if (MTFumbleOn2 && roll1 < 3 || roll1 == 1){ // fumble
loopLimit = 10;
roll2 = (-20); // use roll2 for the sum
while (loopLimit > 0 && (MTFumbleOn2 && roll1 < 3 || roll1 == 1)){
roll1 = roll1dAnything(20);
if (roll1 == 1) {roll2 = roll2 - 20;}
else {roll2 = roll2 + roll1;}
loopLimit = loopLimit - 1;
}
roll1 = roll2;
//console.log("n", roll1, resultArray);
}
else if (roll1 == 20){ // crit
loopLimit = 10;
roll2 = roll1; // use roll2 for the sum
while (loopLimit > 0 && roll1 == 20){
roll1 = roll1dAnything(20);
roll2 = roll2 + roll1;
loopLimit = loopLimit - 1;
}
roll1 = roll2;
//console.log("o", roll1, resultArray);
}

roll1 = roll1 + mightBonus;
//console.log("p", roll1, resultArray);
if (roll1 <= mightTN-20){ // fumble
resultArray[10] = resultArray[10] + 1;
}
else if (roll1 >= mightTN && roll1 <= mightTN+20){ // regular might
resultArray[8] = resultArray[8] + 1;
}
else if (roll1 > mightTN+20){ // critical might
resultArray[8] = resultArray[8] + 1;
resultArray[9] = resultArray[9] + 1;
}
}// end might
}// end damage
} // end for loop

// 0= hit
// 1= hitCrit = +20 damage roll
// 2= hitFumble
// 3= wound
// 4= woundCrit = 2 wounds
// 5= woundFumble
// 6= mortalWounds = on +40>TN
// 7= destruction = on +60>TN
// 8= mighty success
// 9= mightyCrit
//10= mightyFumble
var outStr = "ATTACK \r";
outStr = outStr + " Total Hit rate: " + 1000*parseFloat(resultArray[0]/bigNum).toFixed(3)/10 + "% \r";
outStr = outStr + " Fumble rate: " + 1000*parseFloat(resultArray[2]/bigNum).toFixed(3)/10+ "% \r";
outStr = outStr + " Crit rate: " + 1000*parseFloat(resultArray[1]/bigNum).toFixed(3)/10 + "% \r\r";

outStr = outStr +"WOUNDS per attack \r";
outStr = outStr + " Total Wound rate: " + 1000*parseFloat(resultArray[3]/bigNum).toFixed(3)/10 + "% \r";
outStr = outStr + " Fumble rate: " + 1000*parseFloat(resultArray[5]/bigNum).toFixed(3)/10+ "% \r";
outStr = outStr + " Crit rate: " + 1000*parseFloat(resultArray[4]/bigNum).toFixed(3)/10 + "% \r";
outStr = outStr + " Mortal Wound rate: " + 1000*parseFloat(resultArray[6]/bigNum).toFixed(3)/10 + "% \r";
outStr = outStr + " Destruction rate: " + 1000*parseFloat(resultArray[7]/bigNum).toFixed(3)/10 + "% \r\r";

outStr = outStr +"WOUNDS per hit \r";
outStr = outStr + " Total Wound rate: " + 1000*parseFloat(resultArray[3]/resultArray[0]).toFixed(3)/10 + "% \r";
outStr = outStr + " Fumble rate: " + 1000*parseFloat(resultArray[5]/resultArray[0]).toFixed(3)/10+ "% \r";
outStr = outStr + " Crit rate: " + 1000*parseFloat(resultArray[4]/resultArray[0]).toFixed(3)/10 + "% \r";
outStr = outStr + " Mortal Wound rate: " + 1000*parseFloat(resultArray[6]/resultArray[0]).toFixed(3)/10 + "% \r";
outStr = outStr + " Destruction rate: " + 1000*parseFloat(resultArray[7]/resultArray[0]).toFixed(3)/10 + "% \r\r";

outStr = outStr + "MIGHT per attack \r";
outStr = outStr + " Total Success rate: " + 1000*parseFloat(resultArray[8]/bigNum).toFixed(3)/10 + "% \r";
outStr = outStr + " Fumble rate: " + 1000*parseFloat(resultArray[10]/bigNum).toFixed(3)/10+ "% \r";
outStr = outStr + " Crit rate: " + 1000*parseFloat(resultArray[9]/bigNum).toFixed(3)/10 + "% \r\r";

outStr = outStr + "MIGHT per wounding \r";
outStr = outStr + " Total Success rate: " + 1000*parseFloat(resultArray[8]/resultArray[3]).toFixed(3)/10 + "% \r";
outStr = outStr + " Fumble rate: " + 1000*parseFloat(resultArray[10]/resultArray[3]).toFixed(3)/10+ "% \r";
outStr = outStr + " Crit rate: " + 1000*parseFloat(resultArray[9]/resultArray[3]).toFixed(3)/10 + "% \r";

document.getElementById("HODout").value = outStr;

}

</script>
</html>

[Talakeal]

Yeah, I noticed some subtle restraints in the magic semi-fluff and the skill that governs detection. Spells and links are, if I read it right, traceable back to the source and noticable even after immediate effects fade. Plus I'm not absolutely sure about ranges. The magic missiles ahould be running on the shooting rules but the rest are maybe capped at perception paces without metamagics?

This is all correct.


p.210 it looks like the curved blade weapon modification isn't in the mod list at the end of the section.
p.145 'cut periapt' has the difficulty spelled out as 'twenty' unlike the others that are numbers

Thank you. I will correct them tonight.



You may consider doing something about amputee flaw (-4pt) + clockwork bionic arm (+4pt) that nets you +2 strength in that limb.

Its fine IMO. A little boost for the tradeoff of having your arm potentially being stolen / rendered inactive.



Still uncertain how the Unbalanced and Inept quirks should work. Taking them to extremes is iffy. Like getting, oh say 3 rolls take best on an Inept (quirk so it's no point cost) 5 + stat 5 + primary skill 5 + prodigy 5 is your +20 for only an average stat, a skill choice, and 5 character points. If that still fumbles on 1s & 2s it's probably too good, but if it's fumbling on 1s to 7s that's... about a 4% fumble rate, less than natural 1s with a single die.

Unbalanced is just 1 for 1, but with the caveat that the GM has to agree they are equally useful.

Inept is you increase your proficiency level by 1, but also increase the chance of bad fortune by one. Both are cumulative. If you take Inept six times, you will be checking for a fumble on a 1-7.



Character

Looks pretty good. Up to the GM to approve all those unbalanced attributes of course.

As with all relic heavy builds, you run the risk of being robbed, but this guy is a lot more subtle about it than the last couple.

Are all of those armaments meant to be used together? If so you aren't paying enough CP AFAICT (actually you seem to be under budgeting either way, but I could be mistaken).

Whether or not a ray gun can use fatal strike is a GM call, but I would allow it.

All in all it seems a pretty solid build, although it is fairly one note out of combat.



Thank you for the code, you are making me jealous and curious.

[tyckspoon]

I notice what feels like a bit of mixed messaging between the world description and the actual text focus, as well - mages are uncommon, players aren't expected or really supposed to be magicians, you want a Conan-esque feel where the sinister magicians are the enemies to be overcome by the brilliant wit, low cunning, bold bravado, and mighty brawn of the players.. but also there are 80 pages worth of spell effects and ways to modify spells, which is an awful lot of content to tell players 'no, this isn't really meant for you.' (although you could probably save about two pages by finding a way to condense all the Magic Missiles to like one 'Magic Missile' spell with notes about what the special trait of each school is.) Similarly although a bit less egregiously artifacts are rare, beyond value, don't expect to buy them and have to do great deeds or exchange things of similarly uncountable value for them.. but then nearly 30 pages of example artifacts, which is about the same as the entire mundane equipment section. Again, a lot of text spent on listing out fancy toys for an item category you don't apparently actually intend the players to have very many of (and some of which are really super trivial and don't seem like they're worth spending a limited chakra selection to make use of, or justify being considered a super rare and beyond valuing artifact.)

[Telok]

Inept is you increase your proficiency level by 1, but also increase the chance of bad fortune by one. Both are cumulative. If you take Inept six times, you will be checking for a fumble on a 1-7...

Thank you for the code, you are making me jealous and curious.

Hmm. So Inept works like you take it 4 times for two more primary skills at +5s but roll bad fortune on 1 to 5 with those two skills? Or on 1 to 3 on those skills? Obviously you can go all in on a single skill for... secondary is +3... prime +5... five more as faux-prodigy totals to stat+10 but bad fortune on 1-8, which is getting hairy. I do take it they work like regular bad fortune, the -20 then roll again and another -20 in the same range to theoretical infinity.

The calc I wrote actually threw me for a loop one time. It rolled a 1, so -20, then a 19 for a total of -1 and it still made the (admittedly low) target number with its high bonus.

You're welcome to the code, that was just a lunch hour. I built a whole page of 19 similar calculators while working on my Dungeons the Dragoning rewrite. Used them to nail down how I wanted stuff like traveling the warp, balancing different shield recharges, and how dangerous overcasting magic was. It took three different ones in tandem to convert the tarrasque over, but that's because it needed to fit a very particular window of danger (kills tons of mooks with assault rifles & grenades and dozens of space marines with full auto plasma guns but can be taken down by a competent mid level PC party). It's really easy now to take the base template and tweak it to different games. I have bits for Lancer, Dinosaur Cowboys, and a jank little d20 opposed roll calculator.

One thing I'd be looking at (and asking for a good example) if I, personally, were making a character, would be the precise steps & spells through making permanent glyphs/runes and relics. Because there's a spell in there to mask the auras/detection if I'm not mistaken. It would cost those character points for ambrosia or mega wealth + business, but you could start with a quite minor implanted relic (or more likely the soul stone) and pump more effects onto it while using a long lasting spell to mask it.

One thing you may consider is someone throwing down a +20 business character who can also pump out a good multi-empowered & the long duration metamagic Cantrip of the Heart. That's one where the stacked Inept could be rough on the game because the best-of-rolls will quickly cut down the chance of bad fortune. Especially if they have a staff of power for it and can spam the spell near the limit of their skill until they stick it before going shopping. Or, hilarity, doing similar with the attack roll cantrip and then throwing 10 ranks of Wild Strike on an attack.

[Talakeal]

Hmm. So Inept works like you take it 4 times for two more primary skills at +5s but roll bad fortune on 1 to 5 with those two skills? Or on 1 to 3 on those skills? Obviously you can go all in on a single skill for... secondary is +3... prime +5... five more as faux-prodigy totals to stat+10 but bad fortune on 1-8, which is getting hairy. I do take it they work like regular bad fortune, the -20 then roll again and another -20 in the same range to theoretical infinity.

You would have bad fortune on a 1-3 when using either of those skills.

[Telok]

Ok ok. Things not to do:

All stats 4 (64)
Necro fetish (2 keep best damage) (8)
Evoke fetish (3 keep best attack) (16)
Marksman primary skill, inept x6, prodigy x5 (5)
Martial thingy: wild strike (1)
Martial thingy: aim (1)
Rich 2 (long barrel & sawed off mods) (2)
Ambidexterous (2)
-5 leadership & performance (-10)
Deadeye x11 (11)

Twf, aim, heavy pistols at +23 attack & +23 damage, three rolls attack & two rolls damage.
-7 wild strike (roll twice & choose each one) to +16/+23 vs 25 target numbers (victim dodge & resil of 15s) is... slight mod to calculator... 93.6% hits, less than 0.1% fumbles, 7.8% all attacks are crits for 99.8% wounding on hit, 15.1% hits are crits, 1.1% hits are mortal, 0.1% hits are destruction. Per attack damage 93.4% wounding, 14.2% attacks crit damage, 1% attacks are mortal, 0.1% attacks are destruction...

Oh! Add wild strike sillies to calc... put a 50 roll limit on it because it said 68%... by the chart in order (because typing): 1.5%, 4.5%, 7.6%, 10.6%, 13.6% 16.7%, 22.7, 25.8, 28.7, fatal strike 31.8%, 34.8, 37.8, 44.1, 44, 46.9, 50, 53, 56, and 0% roll twice because they got rerolled. Chance of each result per hit by the number of times result was rolled divided by number of hits.

Hmm... check with a basic +0/+5 sword... 90% hits, 99% wounds on hit, 90% wound per attack, no change in wild strike because on-hit. With +2/+3 light weapons its 96% hit, 92% wound per attack, 96% wound per hit.

Silly

[icefractal]

Mark me as also a little confused about the artifact / target-on-the-back thing. Mainly that it's being presented as purely an IC thing, but it's hard to evaluate how quickly information flow would occur in practice.

Like in 3.x, the "noticeability" of an item-based character depends a lot on what the items are, and on who happens to have observed them. If you're using items with highly visible effects, that's one thing. If your items just give you passive bonuses, or you use them subtly, then that's not going to stand out unless someone who can discern magic and is a good judge of skill observes you. And then there's the question of how fast information spreads, whether it remains accurate, whether people are using general divinations like "is there anyone within a half-days travel that I could easily and lucratively defeat?", etc.

And for that matter, if there are powerful amoral mages going around divining weak targets and taking their stuff ... why stop at their stuff? Got a character with excellent skills in some areas but poor mental defense? Sounds like someone an amoral robber-mage would enslave with mind control.


All that said, it seems like Artifact has the same balance quandary as the Independent limitation in Hero system. It gives a large discount, on the basis that the item can be permanently lost. So if the GM never does so, then it's a large discount for no reason. But if they do then the player is likely unhappy, and (if this was heavily used) the character may now be too weak to contribute much. As a result, many GMs don't allow that particular limitation.

It may be worth making an option (or even the default) version of Artifact where it costs more and/or has a lower cap, but is also "soul bound" (aka can't be permanently lost).

[Telok]

Mark me as also a little confused about the artifact / target-on-the-back thing. Mainly that it's being presented as purely an IC thing, but it's hard to evaluate how quickly information flow would occur in practice.

Anyone who casts any spells or has one of several other traits can use insight skill at standard dc to detect, identify, & trace magic & other people with those traits. Basically just a perception check, modified I presume by the usual range mods and the power level of the stuff going on. Usually it's an active perception check with a tool but as usual a big enough thing you might just notice (-5 to roll when not using the tool).

Looks like all casters, dragons, fey (includes elf gnome & hobgoblin), giants, ghosts, almost all stuff d&d would call 'extraplanar', and random others (shogghoths have one of the trait).

So yeah. If you're a low end crook who happens to be part elf you can sit on a street corner scanning the crowds for loose artifacts & magic users.

[Talakeal]

Ok, so long editorial about player freedom.

I generally run my games in a fiction first manner. Plausibility and setting consistency normally come first. The setting is designed as more of a low-magic gritty fantasy game where PCs and their powers are rare and special, but they will still have to grapple with the consequences of their choices.

I have designed my system in a like manner; but I am not so arrogant to think that I can tell people how to play it, nor would I want to if I could. I am not one of those 90s White Wolf developers whining about how people turned their beautiful game of personal horror into a super-heroes with fangs power fantasy.

IMO there are two types of players of characters, and maybe players as well.

To illustrate my point, let me share an anecdote.

Someone once complained you can't make Superman in Heart of Darkness. I responded by creating a character who was an orphan from a mysterious past, raised by good natured farmers, was a mild mannered bespectacled reporter by day and a crime-fighting hero wearing a red cape by night, and who had the powers of superhuman strength, invulnerability to bullets, flight, and x-ray vision. He also had a debilitating allergy to a rare green mineral.

They responded by saying that character was nothing like Superman because it misses out on his most important traits; Superman is the most powerful person in the world, Superman's powers are unlimited, Superman is always stronger than any of his allies, Superman never loses.


Likewise, when I create a character, I expect their strength and their weaknesses to come up.

Bob, on the other hand, expects his strengths to come up, but for his weaknesses to just be free character points. He will, for example, make a character with a two strength and then say the GM is picking on him when the orc barbarian grapples him, or put all of his points into mental defenses and then claim killer DM when he encounters a giant spider and almost dies from the poison. Both real examples by the way.

And sure, antagonistic GMing can exist, but simply having intelligent NPCs who act according to their own self interest or a diverse world with lots of different sorts of challenges in it isn't that.


So when I see a character with straight ones and millions of times the normal starting wealth, I can look at it from one of two perspectives:

1: You are trying to break the system and "win" the game.
2: You want to explore what it would be like to give the most pathetic wretch in the world undreamt of riches and powerful hardware.

In real life when someone wins the lotto, scammers and deadbeat relations come out of the woodwork to take their money. Athletes and musicians are often scammed out of their entire fortunes. And these are talented people in a world of laws and civilization. These are not people with the body of Stephen Hakwking and the mind of Lenny from of Mice and Men dropped down into the middle of a post apocalyptic wasteland where the strong take what they want.


And of course, it just raises so many questions. How did such a pathetic person survive to get here? Why was he bestowed with undreamt of power and riches when there are so many people in the world better able to make use of it? How does a person with a two intelligence know how to use all of these artifacts to their maximum potential and come up with crazy schemes to combine spells into the most efficient build? If these combos are possible, why has nobody else made use of them before?

I mean, this is fairly common TO thinking, and has all been discussed to death over on the 3.5 boards, but its not really a game I am interested in anymore, and although I am sure you can do it in my system, wasn't really my intent. But again, there is no wrong way to play, so if you want to take inspiration from my rules or setting and then go gonzo with it, I applaud you for the effort.


Now, you can have a game where one person has game-breaking wealth, so long as the GM and the other players are on board with it and you agree on a "gentleman's agreement" for what sort of behavior is acceptable. I picture it working something like He-Man or Stranger Things, or maybe the 2019 Shazam movie. You have one ordinary person who is gifted with incredible and inexplicable power, a supporting cast of their friends who are trying to help them and keep them safe, and a sinister villain who is using their resources to steal the power for their own nefarious ends. And that's a fine game that can be great fun for everyone involved, but if you just drop such a setup into a standard game of orcs in dungeons or bandits besieging a small town on the frontier you might get into some real trouble.



Mark me as also a little confused about the artifact / target-on-the-back thing. Mainly that it's being presented as purely an IC thing, but it's hard to evaluate how quickly information flow would occur in practice.

Like in 3.x, the "noticeability" of an item-based character depends a lot on what the items are, and on who happens to have observed them. If you're using items with highly visible effects, that's one thing. If your items just give you passive bonuses, or you use them subtly, then that's not going to stand out unless someone who can discern magic and is a good judge of skill observes you. And then there's the question of how fast information spreads, whether it remains accurate, whether people are using general divinations like "is there anyone within a half-days travel that I could easily and lucratively defeat?", etc.

It does depend very much.

In the case of Tom, he is throwing around difficulty 60 or 70 spells, which is magic that pushing the upper bounds of what a god can pull of by drawing upon the power of chaos.

When a spell is cast, sensitive characters can make a reflexive insight check. The difficulty is increased by range, but decreased by the power of the spell. At such high DCs, everyone in the world who is trained at insight is going to have at least a fifty / fifty chance of sensing the spell and learning its source, and a god number of them will also learn the exact details of the spell and who is casting it. Every BBEG, every god, every devil, every eldritch cultist, every wizard who is too powerful to be bothered with the affairs of humanity.

They are going to scry to see what all this powerful spells being cast in quick succession are about, and then notice that this guy is combining the power of more artifacts than most parties of epic level heroes have access to. At this point, this is a global event that is going to shake up the foundations of power as there as a mad scrum for possession of all these artifacts. Its basically the Infinity Gauntlet.

An example of someone who would be aware of Tom and what he is doing is the Warlord Khornal (page 573). An established villain of the setting, he is extremely covetous and ruthless, and would totally be in for mercing some nobody with super artifacts. He has two major trump cards over Tom though; he is wielding an avenger, which dispels against every enchantment on anything it hits, and since Tom's entire build is dozens of enchantments, each hit is going to exponentially weaken him. But further, he is a chronomancer, which means that he can actually choose to initiate his attack *before* Tom casts a single buff, at which point he is all but helpless with his array of almost straight ones.

Of course, depending on how the GM rules the Wise trait and whether or not they actually agree to provide infinite chakras using Genesis (which is never explicitly stated in Jak's post but I think is the exploit this is all built around), you are more likely to enter D&D style 5D temporal wizard chess, which might be a fun game, but is probably not the one that GM or the other players signed up for, and is probably not one that Tom will end up winning.



And for that matter, if there are powerful amoral mages going around divining weak targets and taking their stuff ... why stop at their stuff? Got a character with excellent skills in some areas but poor mental defense? Sounds like someone an amoral robber-mage would enslave with mind control.

Indeed.

Generally, starting characters do not have super exceptional skills, and once they have developed those skills they have the means to protect themselves and social connections to fall back on.

Honestly, the whole idea of "WBL" is kind of a gamist one, and in a realistic setting you would see all the worlds magic items concentrated into the hands of a few powerful individuals much like money in the real world. But, while I am a fiction first GM, I don't completely discount gamist concerns, and I am going to turn a bit of a blind eye to it if it isn't too flagrant.

But, when someone is trying to literally break the game with infinite exploits, I don't feel like it makes me an "antagonistic GM" to actually let the dice fall where they may and have NPCs react in their own best interests given their capabilities and knowledge.


All that said, it seems like Artifact has the same balance quandary as the Independent limitation in Hero system. It gives a large discount, on the basis that the item can be permanently lost. So if the GM never does so, then it's a large discount for no reason. But if they do then the player is likely unhappy, and (if this was heavily used) the character may now be too weak to contribute much. As a result, many GMs don't allow that particular limitation.

It may be worth making an option (or even the default) version of Artifact where it costs more and/or has a lower cap, but is also "soul bound" (aka can't be permanently lost).

Indeed, part of the weakness of artifacts is that they can be stolen.

There are ways to mitigate this; binding spells and curses, and symbiotic and faithful meta powers for instance.

But by making it too perfect at an increased cost, this actually makes the urge to "min-max" even worse and people will make even more one-note characters in the pursuit of their ultimate power.


Would you rather fight a level 1 fighter in 3.5 that has access to unlimited wealth to buy magic items, or would you rather face a level 5 fighter without any magic items at all? I know which one I would choose to face if I was a party. (And yes, this comparison is accurate. Consider the shooting potential of a animus 1 character in your system without any magic items, vs their shooting potential at animus 5 without magic items. I bet it hasn't gone up that much has it?)

Well... once you have unlimited anything the whole concept of game balance or setting consistency is out the window.

But the risk vs. reward of a level 1 fighter with the wealth of a level 10 fighter vs. a level 5 fighter with appropriate wealth is off the charts.


Generally, an end game character is ~30x that of a starting character, although that depends on how specialized and front-loaded your build is. I don't actually know how that stacks up to level in D&D, I imagine it varies a lot by edition and build. I doubt, for example a 5E fighter can face 30x as many orcs at level 5 as he could at level 1.



Because being completely honest, after he manages to take his 8 or so actions, Tom will be stronger than most endgame characters. Is it really easier to steal from Tom then it is to steal from any other high-level character?

Well, yes.
For one thing, he has three times the wealth of other end game characters, so he is a more lucrative target.
Second, he has a few crippling weaknesses that a smart enemy will exploit that a more well rounded character wouldn't.
Third, he doesn't have the social support network that an end game character would have amassed. Of course, the big X factor here is what the rest of the party looks like.


Also, it kind of ruffles my feathers that you are simultaneously claiming your character is stronger than most endgame characters but that it is unfair to put him up against end game threats.


How exactly? Lets look at Tom. None of his artifacts are visible, and none have any effect other than increasing his rolls for spellcasting. How does that look different than any other high level caster? Especially to the point where the game starts with all of it being stolen from him before he can take an action?

Because being completely honest, after he manages to take his 8 or so actions, Tom will be stronger than most endgame characters. Is it really easier to steal from Tom then it is to steal from any other high level character?


Now that we have cooled off, if you want to discuss the build without all the hyperbole and ad-hominin, I am down for it.

There is a lot of genuinely good ideas there, and it is probably one of the most powerful characters you can build in the system, its just that as is there are a few weaknesses and questionable rules interpretations, and mostly its just trying to do too much too quickly. I would be interested to see the same character build made over the course of a campaign rather than as a starting character.


Ok ok. Things not to do:

All stats 4 (64)
Necro fetish (2 keep best damage) (8)
Evoke fetish (3 keep best attack) (16)
Marksman primary skill, inept x6, prodigy x5 (5)
Martial thingy: wild strike (1)
Martial thingy: aim (1)
Rich 2 (long barrel & sawed off mods) (2)
Ambidexterous (2)
-5 leadership & performance (-10)
Deadeye x11 (11)

Twf, aim, heavy pistols at +23 attack & +23 damage, three rolls attack & two rolls damage.
-7 wild strike (roll twice & choose each one) to +16/+23 vs 25 target numbers (victim dodge & resil of 15s) is... slight mod to calculator... 93.6% hits, less than 0.1% fumbles, 7.8% all attacks are crits for 99.8% wounding on hit, 15.1% hits are crits, 1.1% hits are mortal, 0.1% hits are destruction. Per attack damage 93.4% wounding, 14.2% attacks crit damage, 1% attacks are mortal, 0.1% attacks are destruction...

Oh! Add wild strike sillies to calc... put a 50 roll limit on it because it said 68%... by the chart in order (because typing): 1.5%, 4.5%, 7.6%, 10.6%, 13.6% 16.7%, 22.7, 25.8, 28.7, fatal strike 31.8%, 34.8, 37.8, 44.1, 44, 46.9, 50, 53, 56, and 0% roll twice because they got rerolled. Chance of each result per hit by the number of times result was rolled divided by number of hits.

Hmm... check with a basic +0/+5 sword... 90% hits, 99% wounds on hit, 90% wound per attack, no change in wild strike because on-hit. With +2/+3 light weapons its 96% hit, 92% wound per attack, 96% wound per hit.

Silly

You shouldn't be able to have more than four ranks of deadeye.


I notice what feels like a bit of mixed messaging between the world description and the actual text focus, as well - mages are uncommon, players aren't expected or really supposed to be magicians, you want a Conan-esque feel where the sinister magicians are the enemies to be overcome by the brilliant wit, low cunning, bold bravado, and mighty brawn of the players. but also there are 80 pages worth of spell effects and ways to modify spells, which is an awful lot of content to tell players 'no, this isn't really meant for you.' (although you could probably save about two pages by finding a way to condense all the Magic Missiles to like one 'Magic Missile' spell with notes about what the special trait of each school is.) Similarly although a bit less egregiously artifacts are rare, beyond value, don't expect to buy them and have to do great deeds or exchange things of similarly uncountable value for them.. but then nearly 30 pages of example artifacts, which is about the same as the entire mundane equipment section. Again, a lot of text spent on listing out fancy toys for an item category you don't apparently actually intend the players to have very many of (and some of which are really super trivial and don't seem like they're worth spending a limited chakra selection to make use of, or justify being considered a super rare and beyond valuing artifact.)

It's not that players aren't supposed to have artifacts or to be magicians.

It's that magic, and by extent the characters who have it, are supposed to be special.

Having lots of options lets people be unique.

If every player character has a single magic weapon, you can play multiple campaigns and never see the same magic weapon twice. That's cool.

If everyone has a dozen magic weapons though, that becomes a bit silly and stops feeling special.


One thing I'd be looking at (and asking for a good example) if I, personally, were making a character, would be the precise steps & spells through making permanent glyphs/runes and relics. Because there's a spell in there to mask the auras/detection if I'm not mistaken. It would cost those character points for ambrosia or mega wealth + business, but you could start with a quite minor implanted relic (or more likely the soul stone) and pump more effects onto it while using a long-lasting spell to mask it.

What specifically do you need to know?

Glyphs and Runes are created by casting the spell and applying the meta-magics. One level and they last the rest of the act, two levels the mission, and three indefinitely. They are one use only, but for each mote of Ambrosia you throw in to the creation, they will recharge once per mission.

Artifacts cost an amount of mana equal to their power level, can be cast with any spell of the chosen school, and have the same duration as an enchantment, but ambrosia equal to their power level can be, and usually is, applied to make them permanent.

The erase meta-magic removes your ren from your spells so people cannot learn who cast the spell with insight, although they can still see / sense you casting it.
Likewise, the Cloaking metamagic increases the difficulty of insight tests made to sense the spell.

[Kish]

They responded by saying that character was nothing like Superman because it misses out on his most important traits; Superman is the most powerful person in the world, Superman's powers are unlimited, Superman is always stronger than any of his allies,
Guess they never heard of Green Lantern.

Superman never loses.

Or a whole lot of Superman works.


Likewise, when I create a character, I expect their strength and their weaknesses to come up.

Bob, on the other hand, expects his strengths to come up, but for his weaknesses to just be free character points. He will, for example, make a character with a two strength and then say the GM is picking on him when the orc barbarian grapples him, or put all of his points into mental defenses and then claim killer DM when he encounters a giant spider and almost dies from the poison. Both real examples by the way.

But here, my question is: Did he encounter a giant spider when he chose to go somewhere a giant spider would logically be and/or one was randomly rolled on a table, or, if he had maxed his Strength and dumped his Intelligence, would the same place have had an illithid expy?

Whether the answer is the former or not, does he believe it's the latter?


I mean, this is fairly common TO thinking, and has all been discussed to death over on the 3.5 boards, but its not really a game I am interested in anymore, and although I am sure you can do it in my system, wasn't really my intent. But again, there is no wrong way to play, so if you want to take inspiration from my rules or setting and then go gonzo with it, I applaud you for the effort.


Now, you can have a game where one person has game-breaking wealth, so long as the GM and the other players are on board with it and you agree on a "gentleman's agreement" for what sort of behavior is acceptable.
Relying on "gentleman's agreements" is a disastrously bad idea. No. You designed the system. If you don't want players doing a certain thing, either change the rules so no one can do that thing, or add house rules when you run it so no one can do that thing when you're the GM. Don't go "you violated a gentleman's agreement so now an invincible archmage will steal your literally unstealable bow."


Honestly, the whole idea of "WBL" is kind of a gamist one, and in a realistic setting you would see all the worlds magic items concentrated into the hands of a few powerful individuals much like money in the real world. But, while I am a fiction first GM, I don't completely discount gamist concerns, and I am going to turn a bit of a blind eye to it if it isn't too flagrant.Again--disastrously bad idea. "You can do things I don't want you to do, and I won't punish you as long as you don't cross the invisible lines that exist in my head" is no way to run a game. You don't get points for making a system that can be optimized and then punishing optimization.

If you want to run a White-Wolf style, "all your traits need to go with your character concept" game, do what competent White Wolf Storytellers do and disallow anything you don't want to deal with up front. When someone finds something that's more powerful than you wanted, say openly, "I'm sorry, I didn't anticipate what that would be able to do. I'm disallowing it, but you can respend the character points."

Will your group react well to this? Not if they're the insufferable, toxic players you've described. But they won't react well to you targeting them with distant archmages either, because no one would, and if you deal with it politely OOC instead of the overtuned IC smackdown they'll be the ones being unreasonable.


But by making it too perfect at an increased cost, this actually makes the urge to "min-max" even worse and people will make even more one-note characters in the pursuit of their ultimate power.

See, now. You couldn't be more overt that you hate any level of optimizing--so disallow it. Don't just seethe that your players aren't following a "gentleman's agreement" they never agreed to.


Also, it kind of ruffles my feathers that you are simultaneously claiming your character is stronger than most endgame characters but that it is unfair to put him up against end game threats.

If an endgame threat is "you suddenly get attacked from out of nowhere by an entirely unheralded distant enemy who is targeting your greatest weakness," that's...

I was going to say simply "a bad game," but actually, I can think of one context in which it would be appropriate. If that's truly fundamental to your game system, then my suggestion is to relabel its genre: it's not a fantasy game, it's a horror game, and should be labeled as such.


Now that we have cooled off, if you want to discuss the build without all the hyperbole and ad-hominin, I am down for it.


...

Does this mean "if you want to discuss [the build and by extension my game system] without actually criticizing its design"? Because I'm not seeing where anyone who's been talking to you used hyperbole or ad hominem.

[icefractal]

But, when someone is trying to literally break the game with infinite exploits, I don't feel like it makes me an "antagonistic GM" to actually let the dice fall where they may and have NPCs react in their own best interests given their capabilities and knowledge.That's reasonable, but it's also what makes it feel "squishy" because it's mixing IC and OOC in a vague way.

Pure OOC:
You can't stack artifacts to greater than X effect. If you do then it's not a legal starting character.

Pure IC:
Characters who can and will steal artifacts exist in the setting, and they may go after you if you draw their attention - whether or not your character is min/maxed or well rounded. A character with choices made for pure RP reasons is just as vulnerable.

Hybrid (which seems to be how you're saying you handle it):
Characters who can and will steal artifacts exist in the setting, but if your character is "reasonable" then I'll give you semi-protection from them - they won't notice you until you specifically do something to draw their attention. Where-as if you're cheesy AF, you get no protection and they'll notice you straight away.*

It's the non-definition of "reasonable" that I think is rubbing people the wrong way. I can't speak for everyone, but personally I'd be fine with a rule like:
"Having more than X points of Artifacts will draw attention - you'll need to be on guard for people trying to steal them sometimes.
Having more than Y points will draw major attention - you'll need to be on guard against powerful people chasing you down specifically to take them."

Because that's concrete, and if I exceed X or Y then I know what I'm signing up for. I don't have to wonder - "Is the end result I'm getting 'reasonable' by the GM's standard?"

TBF, I haven't seen a crunchy and flexible system that didn't need at least a little GM-player cooperation on power level. So it's not like I'm saying "tournament-grade rules or GTFO". But I do view it as something to aim for when possible.

* This is separate from the "DC 60 spell is an incredibly obvious beacon" thing, which I consider completely legit, because it's pure-IC - anyone who casts such a spell is putting a target on their back, whether it's for cheese reasons or not.

[Jakinbandw]

I will come back to this thread, but due to a family emergency I'm stuck traveling traveling cross country. I'll make a few comments when I can.

[Talakeal]

But here, my question is: Did he encounter a giant spider when he chose to go somewhere a giant spider would logically be and/or one was randomly rolled on a table, or, if he had maxed his Strength and dumped his Intelligence, would the same place have had an illithid expy?

In both cases the encounter was planned before the character was even made.

Obviously, changing encounters solely to defeat players is dirty pool.

Of course, sometimes it makes sense in universe. To go back to the Superman example, once Lex learns about kryptonite, he would be a fool not to use it in his traps.


Whether the answer is the former or not, does he believe it's the latter?

Hard to say. People are seldom honest, especially in matters of paranoia and ego stroking.

Sometimes people say's things like that, sometimes they don't, and something they seem to think it without saying it or say it without believing it.



Relying on "gentleman's agreements" is a disastrously bad idea. No. You designed the system. If you don't want players doing a certain thing, either change the rules so no one can do that thing, or add house rules when you run it so no one can do that thing when you're the GM. Don't go "you violated a gentleman's agreement so now an invincible archmage will steal your literally unstealable bow."

Again--disastrously bad idea. "You can do things I don't want you to do, and I won't punish you as long as you don't cross the invisible lines that exist in my head" is no way to run a game. You don't get points for making a system that can be optimized and then punishing optimization.

I didn't design a system that punishes optimization. I designed a system where your characters traits, both strengths and weaknesses, will come up.

I am saying that if it makes the game more fun for everyone, I might be willing to go soft on a player, but that isn't some sort of hard obligation.



If you want to run a White-Wolf style, "all your traits need to go with your character concept" game, do what competent White Wolf Storytellers do and disallow anything you don't want to deal with up front. When someone finds something that's more powerful than you wanted, say openly, "I'm sorry, I didn't anticipate what that would be able to do. I'm disallowing it, but you can respend the character points."


Which is what I told Jak I would do if he came to me with those characters in an actual game.

And again, the issue is not "more powerful than wanted" its "has glaring weaknesses that youdon't want to deal with."



See, now. You couldn't be more overt that you hate any level of optimizing--so disallow it. Don't just seethe that your players aren't following a "gentleman's agreement" they never agreed to.

What is your definition of optimization?

What I hate is when people make one note characters and then make everyone else miserable because they are bored OR when people take flaws and then make everyone else miserable when they actually come up.

That's not any definition of optimization I can think of, so I am not sure how it bears mention.


If an endgame threat is "you suddenly get attacked from out of nowhere by an entirely unheralded distant enemy who is targeting your greatest weakness," that's...

I was going to say simply "a bad game," but actually, I can think of one context in which it would be appropriate. If that's truly fundamental to your game system, then my suggestion is to relabel its genre: it's not a fantasy game, it's a horror game, and should be labeled as such.


...

Does this mean "if you want to discuss [the build and by extension my game system] without actually criticizing its design"? Because I'm not seeing where anyone who's been talking to you used hyperbole or ad hominem.

Ok, so let me ask you a question, is real life a horror setting?

If in real life I invented some nuclear bombs in my basement and then started detonating them in test explosions, I can guarantee that is going to get the attention of the world powers pretty quick.

Because that is essentially what he is doing, starting the game with a cache of ultra-powerful artifacts, and then firing them off for every world power to see.


Heck, the idea that an ordinary person with an incredibly powerful artifact needs to be careful about not using it and keeping it hidden lest powerful beings hunt him down and take it is pretty much the entire plot of Lord of the Rings, which is more or less the foundation of the modern fantasy genre.



Does this mean "if you want to discuss [the build and by extension my game system] without actually criticizing its design"? Because I'm not seeing where anyone who's been talking to you used hyperbole or ad hominem.

Specifically:

Honestly, I really see why you have so many complaints. With your clarifications on how the game is meant to be GMed, with the GM being this antagonistic, I wouldn't find it any fun. The assumption that GMs should send in GMPCs to destroy uppity players is pretty antithetical to what I want out of a game, both as a player, and as a GM.

Honestly, for the players that are complaining? I'd suggest they switch to a different system, like Pathfinder 2e, and try having a different GM. They probably won't get along with your system, just as I wouldn't.

It's a shame, because there are a lot of really cool things in the system that I'd be interested in playing around with. But being told that they are only there as traps to punish players who want to play with them... It really feels like it's ruining something that looks like it could've been cool. I was going to offer to write up some characters because the character building was interesting enough to be fun, but now I know that if I build a PC slightly wrong then they will get mind controlled at the start of the game before they can act, and that is expected play. Well, I don't really see the point. Might as well just put a 5 in every stat, because otherwise the world will see you as a threat and kill you.

Comes across as an extremely hyperbolic tantrum which was in response to being told that his build, which is essentially Pun-Pun lite, isn't actually rules legal and even if it was, it both has some glaring weaknesses and his going to put a big target on his characters head IC because it is both extremely unsubtle and an extremely high risk vs. reward target for anyone who is looking to murder-hobo.

[neriana]

People are seldom honest

This is false.

ETA: The One Ring corrupts whoever carries it. The problem is not that it's powerful. Maybe check the narrative again.

[Kish]

Hard to say. People are seldom honest, especially in matters of paranoia and ego stroking.

As neriana said, no.

As neriana didn't say, holy crap.


What is your definition of optimization?

Choosing traits in a game because "this is more powerful than not-this."


Ok, so let me ask you a question, is real life a horror setting?

Are you dead? No? Bad analogy then.


Because that is essentially what he is doing, starting the game with a cache of ultra-powerful artifacts, and then firing them off for every world power to see.

Last I checked, the artifacts section of your gamebook says nothing about "powerful NPCs watch for these and are likely to attack you if you have them."

And I mean. If they're equivalent to real-world nuclear missiles it makes no sense for anyone who isn't a country ruler to have any. How rare, dangerous, and conspicuous artifacts in your game are seems to shift depending on the question being asked: if it's "why is it so obviously no-one-should-need-to-be-told abusive to have them?" then they're nuclear missiles, if it's "why does your ruleset make them readily available?" they're something much more usable.


Heck, the idea that an ordinary person with an incredibly powerful artifact needs to be careful about not using it and keeping it hidden lest powerful beings hunt him down and take it is pretty much the entire plot of Lord of the Rings,

...the whole part where the ring was specifically "the most valued possession of the worst villain extant in the setting" is irrelevant in your view, huh?


Honestly, I really see why you have so many complaints. With your clarifications on how the game is meant to be GMed, with the GM being this antagonistic, I wouldn't find it any fun. The assumption that GMs should send in GMPCs to destroy uppity players is pretty antithetical to what I want out of a game, both as a player, and as a GM.

Honestly, for the players that are complaining? I'd suggest they switch to a different system, like Pathfinder 2e, and try having a different GM. They probably won't get along with your system, just as I wouldn't.

It's a shame, because there are a lot of really cool things in the system that I'd be interested in playing around with. But being told that they are only there as traps to punish players who want to play with them... It really feels like it's ruining something that looks like it could've been cool. I was going to offer to write up some characters because the character building was interesting enough to be fun, but now I know that if I build a PC slightly wrong then they will get mind controlled at the start of the game before they can act, and that is expected play. Well, I don't really see the point. Might as well just put a 5 in every stat, because otherwise the world will see you as a threat and kill you.

Comes across as an extremely hyperbolic tantrum which was in response to being told that his build, which is essentially Pun-Pun lite, isn't actually rules legal and even if it was, it both has some glaring weaknesses and his going to put a big target on his characters head IC because it is both extremely unsubtle and an extremely high risk vs. reward target for anyone who is looking to murder-hobo.
It only comes off as "a rant," "a tantrum," or "hyperbolic" when read through a fog of defensiveness. You owe Jakinbandw an apology. And where exactly did you say "isn't actually rules legal"? Because the closest I saw you get, was to say that the GM would be justified in smacking their character down for "word would get out," regardless of what they did or didn't do to keep their artifacts secret.

"A player can make Pun-Pun lite" is a problem with the system and thus the fault of the system designer; you should be directing all these insults to him, not to people who are trying to help you with what you're saying you want here.

[Telok]

You shouldn't be able to have more than four ranks of deadeye.
Is that from the math mistake I made with the flaws (top out with minors like color blindness, allergy, etc. back to the -10) or is there something I'm missing? It's not a good character. Not because of char build math or anything, but the **** wild shot rolls.

Misc. bits: I'm getting iffy on the whole staff of power thing, perhaps think about capping it at spell DC = 5x relic points,minimum 4 relic points.

Staff of power (rewind) + dewormer master (empower) x4 + prodigy x5 + chronomancy x10 + sagacious x2 = 25 character points but you roll at +20 vs 21 & no mana expenditure to undo any one bad thing per target that happened in the current scene/act/encounter, or vs 30 to return someone who died last round, or vs 35 to return someone who died this scene. Spam it until to works.

Ok, seriously, there's real abuse potential in Banish if you can access the top of a tall cliff or something and put down a permanent Familiar spell. Maze is easier but they could potentially come back, although you aren't tagged to the Familiar spell for detection either.

Sequester needs to be focus tagged. NEEDS it. Unless there's some seriously big drawback I'm not seeing.

Teleport at DC 25 is 1000 paces right? Anyone say "save vs you fall half a mile?"

Man, I haven't even hit up a third of the spells. Although I have to say, evocation is kinda boring. Size and range metamagics are important for a bunch of this. But Reaching is +5 to go from range 5 to range 50, and maximize is +2:+2 to affect larger stuff, so not bad at all.

Heh, Tie, for +5 you can make an enchantment on yourself last until dispelled or you're killed. Oh, wait, there's the chakra limit... or does that only apply to spells with the Augment tag?

Touch at +3 completely negates penalties for casting magic missiles in melee does it?

Right, Transfigure is the way around debuffs only having that "one instance of that enchantment spell at a time" limit, as well as making it a permanent non-magic effect. Geeze, weren't there some lower cost real screwball spells in illusion? Was there a DC 15 spell to set someone on fire? Would that count? Probably not. I haven't even looked at transmutation spells. Oh hey, Righteous, sure that kips it up to DC... 35?... but I'll make an extra a fated with mana & destiny permanently. Yup, staff-o-power that bad boy and retry in low danger fights, especially if you can trap/hedge the poor suckers with a circle. Probably should not be allowed on random mindless/thrall undead. "Lets stay a few hours and farm mana potions ftom this horde of zombies".

Hmm, mystic whatzit trait for one self-only spell then a 2pt relic fisher's ring to emulate cheap staff of power... casting ability is low at 5x anima though. Can we apply prodigy or something to boost the casting roll? What's the metamagic combo to make a cantrip apply to every roll during a scene?

Screamy, angry, often drunk, dangerously unlucky, 6 inches tall, oozing magic, mutant, purple, half-fairy, arrogant, stealth god, omni-wizard.

attributes: str 3, end 9, agl 9, dex 5, per 5, will 9, cha 5, int 5, enlightenment 10 (120pt)

quirks: unbalanced; will(-tenacity +mana), end(-vitality + resilience), dex(-speed +dodge),

aspects: animus & chakra 1, destiny 5, dodge 15, speed 8, encumbrance 3, might -6, initiative 10, concentration 5, mana 10, tenacity 8, vitality 8, resilience 0, wealth 14, size -10 (6" tall & zero reach)

flaws: tiny, mutant (small) x8, -5 reason, deep sleeper, deformity (bright purple), allergic (amethyst minor), -5 perform, -5 social, -5 leadership, -5 expression, impoverished x6, -4 concentration, mutant (vulnerable:silver) (120-36=84pt)

merits: changeling (because its appropriate), chi (forgot to add this into various numbers), manipulative (+5 business), staff of power (no idea what), sagacious x2 (business & enchantment) (84+16=100pt)

quirks: inept: sagacious x1 + prodigy x5 @ business & bad fortune 1-7, sagacious x1 + prodigy x5 @ technology & bad fortune 1-7, sagacious x1 @ ALL other magics & bad fortune 1-2, sagacious x1 @ melee+marksman & bad fortune 1-2

skills: abjuration+5=15, technomancy+5=15, mysticism+5=15, enchantment+3=13, other magics+3=13 (fumble 2-), resolve+3=12, fortitude+3=12, stealth+3=12, acrobatics+3=12, business+15=20 (fumble 7-), technology+13 (fumble 7-), reason-5=0, perform-5=0, leadership-5=0, expression-5=0, melee+3=+8 (fumble 2-), marksman+3=+8 (fumble 2-)

Yeah, I think it's a fun character who's great at technology 2/3 of the time and then the other 1/3 accidentally creates a clockwork death machine Chucky doll that goes on a murder spree.

gear: armor clothing(-quality & dump asap), light pistol(-quality atk+3 dmg+5 low-pen), small jagged hilt guard knife(atk+2 dmg+5 low-pen dodge+2), 12 high damage ammo (dmg+2 low-pen), grimoire for magics, camo clothing, buckler(-quality resil+1 dodge+1 1-hit), whip(-quality atk+0 dmg+4 long), purse(14 coins), bedroll, clothing, backpack, food, bottle of harsh rum(-quality), "furnished" literally-a-log house(-quality), tinkers tools, zen potion (1 mana), personal item

gun: atk +11(fumble 2-), range increment 5, damage +5, low armor penetration
knife & shield: atk +10(fumble 2-), zero reach, damage +8, low armor penetration, resilience+1=1(11), dodge+3=18(28)
whip & shield: atk +10(fumble 2-), reach 1, damage +7, resilience+1=1(11), dodge+1=16(26)
abj/tech/myst: +15 vs spell, dmg +15 or resist vs 20+(casting margin), may aim/reckless/cheap shot
stealth: +12 vs alertness-10 == +22 vs alertness
buying: +20 & fumble on 1-7.

Absolutely hilarious, he either likely manages to buy insane expensive stuff or loses all his money. "You don't know how it is! You're just a huge jealous freak! You can't handle my money!... No, really, you can't handle it. I **** gold dust and you haven't paid to play."

[Jakinbandw]

So when I see a character with straight ones and millions of times the normal starting wealth, I can look at it from one of two perspectives:

1: You are trying to break the system and "win" the game.
We have a winner. You're asking for feedback on your system, and that means looking at it critically and searching for it's breaking points.

Now to be fair, I now do this with any game I'm going to play for the first time. I've had too many bad experiences with poorly balanced games where each PC was playing a different power level, so now I test them ahead of time so I can help any fellow players build characters and get them all on the same level of optimization AFTER talking to the GM about what power level they want in their game.

I also enjoy the challenge of it. It's a solo gameplay experience.





And of course, it just raises so many questions. How did such a pathetic person survive to get here? Why was he bestowed with undreamt of power and riches when there are so many people in the world better able to make use of it? How does a person with a two intelligence know how to use all of these artifacts to their maximum potential and come up with crazy schemes to combine spells into the most efficient build? If these combos are possible, why has nobody else made use of them before?

Custom wish spell. Seriously, your book says that other spells exist, so the backstory I wrote said Tom had made a spell that could grant a wish, and then pulled it off, but doing so reduced him to the state he starts the game at.



You have one ordinary person who is gifted with incredible and inexplicable power, a supporting cast of their friends who are trying to help them and keep them safe, and a sinister villain who is using their resources to steal the power for their own nefarious ends.

Ugh, I do not want to play such games! Certainly not for me.



An example of someone who would be aware of Tom and what he is doing is the Warlord Khornal (page 573). An established villain of the setting, he is extremely covetous and ruthless, and would totally be in for mercing some nobody with super artifacts. He has two major trump cards over Tom though; he is wielding an avenger, which dispels against every enchantment on anything it hits, and since Tom's entire build is dozens of enchantments, each hit is going to exponentially weaken him. But further, he is a chronomancer, which means that he can actually choose to initiate his attack *before* Tom casts a single buff, at which point he is all but helpless with his array of almost straight ones.

Of course, depending on how the GM rules the Wise trait and whether or not they actually agree to provide infinite chakras using Genesis (which is never explicitly stated in Jak's post but I think is the exploit this is all built around), you are more likely to enter D&D style 5D temporal wizard chess, which might be a fun game, but is probably not the one that GM or the other players signed up for, and is probably not one that Tom will end up winning.

This sounds like a really interesting optimization problem. When I have more time I'll take a look and see how it plays out, because this sounds like an interesting fight. I do think you're missing something here though: Tom's power isn't from a dozen enchantments. It's from his ability to cast any number of any non-enchantment spell at a level that can't be matched without a similar level of optimization. For example, Tom could start with his first spell being to stop time himself and cast all the buffs in time stop. Or he could retroactively place himself inside an antimagic field, from which he could cast out of, but spells from outside couldn't be cast in. Or he could add a rule to the game saying that time travel can't be used to go into the past.

This is all without needing to have a single enchantment cast on himself.

All the self buffing does is boost his average result from a 55 to a 65, and fix up his stat block. If using genesis to make traits is off the table, it's not character breaking, he just looses the +10 from enchantments, but in return that would free up a bunch of character points.


On the other hand, another way to deal with Khornal would just be to make a deal with him. If he kills my character he can break it down and get some essence or whatever (I'm away from easy access to the book). Tom could give him that much up front, and then give it to him again every month, along with infinite wealth. He can make any illusion real an unlimited number of times. Even if Khornal is the greediest person, it would be a better deal for him to not fight Tom at all. As you say you have characters act in their best interests, it would make more sense for this guy to make a deal rather than start a fight.

This is also why I wouldn't ever bring this character to a game. Because they have no reason to adventure. They can make anything and do anything they want. What reason would they to want to fight a dragon?


Well... once you have unlimited anything the whole concept of game balance or setting consistency is out the window.
Tom has unlimited everything. I stand by my example



Generally, an end game character is ~30x that of a starting character, although that depends on how specialized and front-loaded your build is. I don't actually know how that stacks up to level in D&D, I imagine it varies a lot by edition and build. I doubt, for example a 5E fighter can face 30x as many orcs at level 5 as he could at level 1.
I don't know how you can make that generality. The closest thing I can see to a progression system would have a character go from+15 to hit at level 1, to +20 to hit at level 5. Now that is a decent increase, considering the system, but I wouldn't say 30 times deadlier.



so, it kind of ruffles my feathers that you are simultaneously claiming your character is stronger than most endgame characters but that it is unfair to put him up against end game threats.
Let's be clear here. I would love to send this guy up against end game threats, solo, to see how they did. The whole idea that every high level threat in the setting would come for the character at the same time is what I was feeling was unreasonable. It's the difference between facing Korne up there, and facing 30 of them at once. One is a high level threat, the other is passive aggressive PC murder by the GM.




Now that we have cooled off, if you want to discuss the build without all the hyperbole and ad-hominin, I am down for it.

There is a lot of genuinely good ideas there, and it is probably one of the most powerful characters you can build in the system, its just that as is there are a few weaknesses and questionable rules interpretations, and mostly its just trying to do too much too quickly. I would be interested to see the same character build made over the course of a campaign rather than as a starting character.

I don't find that as interesting of a challenge. In a more balanced game, I have enjoyed that type of optimization before(I did it for Worlds Without Number). Basically, I'm pretty sure that I could come up with a level 1 build, along with a sequence of actions that would allow the character to survive an adventure balanced for an endgame party themed around people trying to take his stuff. That's the level of optimization I think I can accomplish and would find fun as a solo experiment.



The difficulty to yank the bow is only low to mid 30s. That's a full d20 span harder to detect.
Ugh, either you're miscalculating, or I am. The Mage that did the mind control was a mile away. Since spells are limited to perception distance, and a Pace seems equivalent to a yard, this would mean the mage would be short by a factor of a thousand. That's three extend metamagics, pushing the spell well into the 40s (though as I said, away from book).

Also, I wasn't aware that each of those modifiers was Cumulative, either I'm not reading carefully enough (due to there being hundreds of pages of rules to memorize to understand how the game works), or the fact that they are cumulative isn't made clear enough on the table.



Not null-zones. Regular dispel magic. The whole character is a house of cards of stacked enchantments.
I disagree, obviously. It does give me an interesting idea to counter counterspells though. Attaching small antimagic field to my character would deactive most magic items targeting him, as well as making casting a dispell on him shoot up in difficulty. This would still leave him free to act as normal with just a few minor changes to the build.


What is your definition of optimization?
The increasing level of effectiveness that a character can have in a an aspect of a system by achieving system mastery.



Comes across as an extremely hyperbolic tantrum which was in response to being told that his build, which is essentially Pun-Pun lite, isn't actually rules legal and even if it was, it both has some glaring weaknesses and his going to put a big target on his characters head IC because it is both extremely unsubtle and an extremely high risk vs. reward target for anyone who is looking to murder-hobo.

Oh, I wasn't upset that you said my build wasn't rules legal (though, that's not my understanding of what you said, I thought you said it was GM dependant), it was that you were saying that a person who made a cool bow had it stolen from them with mindcontrol before the character could take an action in a game, and that you were coming down on the side of the gm. Even if you mildly condemned them as being 'passive aggressive' you also said that it made sense, and that it made sense, which was the most important thing in your game multiple times.

Also that you were saying that most, if not all, NPCs in your game are murder hobos who only hold back from killing others because it's either too much work, or too dangerous. That feels so viscerally wrong to me that I can't even articulate it, and it's why I said I wouldn't want to play in that game. The only way to deal with a setting like that would be to not play. I flat out wouldn't enjoy it.

Along with the implicit support of the GM that Mind Controlled a player as the start to a game, and that is why I wouldn't want to play, or suggest others play.

To allude back to the Lord of the Rings as you did earlier, out of all the powerful characters in the setting, only 2 go after the ring. Gandalf, the leaders of the elves, and many other powerful characters do not murder frodo at the first opportunity. The one character that does betray him does so because of mental influence from the ring. This feels reasonable. All the elves, Wizards, Kingdoms of men, dwarves, dragons, men, goblins, and demons marching on the shire, burning it down to claim the ring at the start of the story the moment frodo recieves the ring from Bilbo feels horrifically wrong to me.

[Mechalich]

Also that you were saying that most, if not all, NPCs in your game are murder hobos who only hold back from killing others because it's either too much work, or too dangerous. That feels so viscerally wrong to me that I can't even articulate it, and it's why I said I wouldn't want to play in that game. The only way to deal with a setting like that would be to not play. I flat out wouldn't enjoy it.

It's also a setting that simply doesn't function. The war of all against all is a massively unstable state that very rapidly resolves into some other, significantly more stable, one (the 'everyone is dead' state is one possible resolution). Basically any setting with extreme variance in personal power across large scales (meaning any D&D style or superhero setting, among others), relies upon an either implicit or explicit gentleman's agreement to avoid descending into the aforementioned war of all against all and resolving into something else (Dark Sun, one of the few such settings to grapple with the implications in any way whatsoever, represents something like a postwar status in its world divided up between a small number of mage kings).

[Talakeal]

This is false.

Ouch. That's some poor phrasing on my part.

Let me restate that:

"People seldom know why they feel the way they do, and rarely speak openly about their feelings, especially when matters of trust or ego are involved."



ETA: The One Ring corrupts whoever carries it. The problem is not that it's powerful. Maybe check the narrative again.

That's part of it, yes.

But Sauron absolutely wants to ring back because a large part of his power is locked up within it, and has sent out the Nazgul and many other agents to recover it. And when Frodo puts it on, it acts like a beacon for Sauron, who immediately sends said agents to the area to recover it.

And many of the wise absolutely believe that the ring will give them the power to defeat Sauron, and Tolkien has said that in atleast some of their cases they are correct.


And I mean. If they're equivalent to real-world nuclear missiles it makes no sense for anyone who isn't a country ruler to have any. How rare, dangerous, and conspicuous artifacts in your game are seems to shift depending on the question being asked: if it's "why is it so obviously no-one-should-need-to-be-told abusive to have them?" then they're nuclear missiles, if it's "why does your ruleset make them readily available?" they're something much more usable.

Difficulty 40+ spells are roughly as dangerous (and the those who are sensitive to such things roughly as visible as) as nuclear weapons. The difficulty 40 evocation spell holocaust is almost literally a nuclear weapon. And in the example of play Jak posted, Tom was casting spells in the difficulty 60 range.

By default, artifacts are rare enough that over the course of their career, the greatest heroes will amass 20 power levels of them.

A few of them won't break the game or the narrative; dozens of them might. But it's not necessarily artifacts that are the issue there, it's creating a one note character who spends half their CP on a single thing; that thing will warp the narrative around it. And this isn't a bad thing if that is the game everyone signed up for.

A min-maxxed or one-note character is not going to make for a rich game run as intended in almost any system I can think of; but if that is the game people want to play, I don't see any benefit in the rules system telling them no.


"A player can make Pun-Pun lite" is a problem with the system and thus the fault of the system designer; you should be directing all these insults to him, not to people who are trying to help you with what you're saying you want here.

Eh. Any system of significant complexity will have some "infinite exploit". Every edition of D&D certainly does. It's not really feasible to find and stamp them all out. IMO its much easier to just ask people not to use them in actual play. Heck, didn't this forum have an FAQ on the 3.5 board about optimization that explicitly said that TO builds were though exercises not meant for actual play?

Although again, I am fairly certain that the build Jak posted doesn't actually work on a mechanical level even in a white room that ignores opposition from the rest of the setting.

Again with the "all these insults" what insults are you talking about?


It's also a setting that simply doesn't function. The war of all against all is a massively unstable state that very rapidly resolves into some other, significantly more stable, one (the 'everyone is dead' state is one possible resolution). Basically any setting with extreme variance in personal power across large scales (meaning any D&D style or superhero setting, among others), relies upon an either implicit or explicit gentleman's agreement to avoid descending into the aforementioned war of all against all and resolving into something else (Dark Sun, one of the few such settings to grapple with the implications in any way whatsoever, represents something like a postwar status in its world divided up between a small number of mage kings).

This is explicitly the case in my setting.



It only comes off as "a rant," "a tantrum," or "hyperbolic" when read through a fog of defensiveness. You owe Jakinbandw an apology. And where exactly did you say "isn't actually rules legal"? Because the closest I saw you get, was to say that the GM would be justified in smacking their character down for "word would get out," regardless of what they did or didn't do to keep their artifacts secret.

What exactly do I owe Jack an apology for? What are these "personal attacks" you keep accusing me of making?

AFAICT all I said was that I felt like the below felt like it was made in bad faith and compared it to one of Bob's rants. I have since described it as a "rant" or a "tantrum", but do not that that was only after you made the accusation of me making personal attacks.

And this is a really weird situation, because you are a third party and I am actively trying not to get into it with Jak as I appreciate the time he is taking to look over my rules and the feedback he is giving me even if I don't agree with it, but I will go through this line by line:

Honestly, I really see why you have so many complaints.

I have never had a complaint about the world reacting to a TO build. I have never even had a player attempt to make a TO build.

With your clarifications on how the game is meant to be GMed, with the GM being this antagonistic, I wouldn't find it any fun.

This is hyperbole. There is nothing antagonistic about having NPCs using their in character knowledge to react to threats and work to increase their power. It is a fairly standard principle across all systems, fiction, and real life.

The assumption that GMs should send in GMPCs to destroy uppity players is pretty antithetical to what I want out of a game, both as a player, and as a GM.

Nobody said a word about GMPCs. This is hyperbole, and given the negative association with the term also reads as a dig at me. The term "uppity" also implies that having narrative consistency is some sort of battle of egos.

I'd suggest they switch to a different system, like Pathfinder 2e, and try having a different GM.

Saying that because you have a problem with one very specific aspect of my system, my players can't enjoy any of it and that it is obviously inferior to PF2E is obvious hyperbole. Saying they should also swith to a different GM is ad-hominim.

They probably won't get along with your system, just as I wouldn't.

Also hyperbole. They love my system and have been playing it for years and in some cases decades. It is literally the only game (aside from occasionally Changeling) that Bob will play!

But being told that they are only there as traps to punish players who want to play with them

This is hyperbole.

Every option is worthwhile. They are not traps. They are not punishment.

But taking one trait in excess at the expense of everything else is going to make for a wonky character and a wonky play experience.

But now I know that if I build a PC slightly wrong

More hyperbole. Or maybe reverse hyperbole?

Having 1s and 2s in all but one of your stats is not "slight", nor is spending 60+% of all build resources on a single merit.

then they will get mind controlled at the start of the game before they can act, and that is expected play.

More hyperbole and outright fabrication.

Nobody said anything about mind control (aside from me saying that it is one of the potential weaknesses of the golden fleece character).
Nobody said that you wouldn't get to act. Indeed, it is explicitly the players casting of multiple world shaking spells that draws attention to them.
No, it is not expected play. It is a very weird sort degenerate play resulting from a very unusual character adopting a very unusual strategy.

Well, I don't really see the point. Might as well just put a 5 in every stat, because otherwise the world will see you as a threat and kill you.

And more hyperbole.

I have never had a character with straight fives, yet I have had dozens, maybe hundreds, of characters survive the entire campaign. Many of them had scores of 10 or higher.



So there you go, an in depth guide to why it reads as hyperbole or a personal attack. But again, I was dismissive of it because it reads to me like Jak is upset and letting it out, and as I don't want to fight with him and appreciate the feedback, I chose to dismiss it as him venting rather than taking it as serious fighting words.


Because the closest I saw you get, was to say that the GM would be justified in smacking their character down for "word would get out," regardless of what they did or didn't do to keep their artifacts secret.

I said he doesn't have the chakras for this.
I also said that Genesis specifically says you work with the GM to assign appropriate stats to the new creature. Its not just take whatever traits you want.
Further, Cataract requires a "sufficient facsimile" which is, again, a GM judgement call. Some of these spells I don't even know what a facsimile would look like, and I especially would be suspect of a guy with a 2 intelligence and 1 perception trying to create them.

And again, the GM's job is to react accordingly. I know you can assign malice to it, but that's not what I said.

With Tom's build he is, by RAW, starting out the game by casting spells that can be sensed across the continent.

I did say, in response to his previous build, that if someone has a sixty-point magic bow (which is 5x more powerful than Excalibur and similar history shaping artifacts) and was using it to strike down every enemy he comes across, people would eventually figure out what was going on. I never said anything about it being "regardless of what they did or didn't do to keep it a secret".

And again, GM's don't need "justification" for "smacking a character down" because playing adversaries is a normal part of the DM's job. It's no different than going out to slay some orcs and then because you chose to, say, carry a two handed sword instead of a shield and that loss of AC caused a fatal blow to get through. There is no GM malice involved, its just playing the world, its just that the stakes are a bit higher when you talk about TO builds and world-shaking magic.

[Satinavian]

Ouch. That's some poor phrasing on my part.
That's part of it, yes.

But Sauron absolutely wants to ring back because a large part of his power is locked up within it, and has sent out the Nazgul and many other agents to recover it. And when Frodo puts it on, it acts like a beacon for Sauron, who immediately sends said agents to the area to recover it.

And many of the wise absolutely believe that the ring will give them the power to defeat Sauron, and Tolkien has said that in atleast some of their cases they are correct.Yes.

But there are other rings in the book. Several of the elven rings feature prominently and no one even considers going after them. Even though they are the most powerful artifacts after the One Ring. They also don't corrupt which is not presented as a matter of power. Furthermore, the 9 rings for the humans also come up often enough even if not that flashy. And when their most well known wielder dies on the battlefield, no one even bothers to try to loot his ring.

So no, LotR is not a good example of "powerful people will just go and steal powerful artifacts".

[NichG]

It's antagonistic GM-ing if character builds that make sense to you or suit your aesthetics get a pass from those natural consequences, but when someone brings something you don't like for metagame/gamist reasons you focus on finding ways to use those natural consequences to squash it.

If for example an end-game character is not getting chronomantically pre-empted from ten directions when they pull off a DC 40 spell as part of play, but an introductory character does get jumped by those ten NPCs during character creation when its part of their build.

The argument 'this build doesn't belong at my table because it warps the game' is fine. The problem is when that argument is being used to justify punitive in-character enforcement of that standard. It looks adversarial if in the discussion about 'why does this guy get jumped?' points like 'its bad for the game' or 'people's weaknesses should come up!' get raised. Even if you've constructed a natural logic to justify it, if your motivation for constructing that natural logic was to enforce these meta-game standards then that's adversarial.

Which is why communicating it explicitly in the character generation rules is better, because then you're resolving a metagame problem with a metagame discussion. If you want to leave it open for other people to play differently, make it an optional rule in a sidebar or something - every day there's a 1% chance per 1000 people within ten miles that someone with a build budget equal to X + 1dY * points worth of artifacts you possess notices that you have them.

Like, AD&D rules were really wonky and by no means what I'd call universally good design, but the way AD&D psionics worked explicitly tells you 'okay, its very unlikely you will have this - roll a bunch of random checks and you might - but if you ever use a psionic power there's like a net 20% chance you summon stuff from a non-leveled list including up to a prince of hell'. Its very much 'you are being a beacon' but it comes out and says it explicitly and informs the player exactly what they're risking if they choose to exercise that option.

[Talakeal]

It's antagonistic GM-ing if character builds that make sense to you or suit your aesthetics get a pass from those natural consequences, but when someone brings something you don't like for metagame/gamist reasons you focus on finding ways to use those natural consequences to squash it.

Is it?

Like seriously, is it?

This kind of reads to me like the justifications for "its what my character would do" sometimes it's best to just not take the wildly antisocial action because you want to keep playing and don't rock the boat.

I don't see anything wrong with the GM making a "gentleman's agreement" to allow for a game that is more fun for the players. But I also don't think the GM is obligated to do so for the sake of encouraging min-maxxing.

Like, if one of my players is arachnophobic, and I agree not to have giant spiders in my game, that's cool. But if one of my players wants to take a flaw "automatically drops dead at the sight of a spider" and then use the points it provides to buy a bunch of cool new powers, and then demands I remove all spiders from the game or else I am being antagonistic, that's a different story IMO.




The argument 'this build doesn't belong at my table because it warps the game' is fine. The problem is when that argument is being used to justify punitive in-character enforcement of that standard. It looks adversarial if in the discussion about 'why does this guy get jumped?' points like 'its bad for the game' or 'people's weaknesses should come up!' get raised. Even if you've constructed a natural logic to justify it, if your motivation for constructing that natural logic was to enforce these meta-game standards then that's adversarial.


I was critiquing the build itself, not giving GMing advice.

In my opinion, that character would not survive long with an impartial GM because they are too flashy, and the risk to reward ratio of some BBEG preemptively ganking their character is too great.


If someone tried to play that character at my table, I would have an OOC discussion about what they wanted out of the game and find a reasonable compromise. Of course, people in this thread seem to be implying that having to have a conversation about wildly unusual / disruptive characters is itself a form of adversarial GMing / mark of a flawed system, so idk.



If for example an end-game character is not getting chronomantically pre-empted from ten directions when they pull off a DC 40 spell as part of play, but an introductory character does get jumped by those ten NPCs during character creation when its part of their build.

An end game character has 1/3rd the wealth of the proposed character and is a heck of a lot better at defending it. The risk to reward ratio is drastically different.


You mention "during character creation" but that's not quite right. It's also a kind of a weird dance between character creation and in play. The character build relies on casting a more or less impossible custom magic spell to explain why they have all but straight ones and dozens of artifacts, but then immediately starts play entering into a cast sequence to cast a bunch of buffs without paying the costs. That's comes across as kind of antagonistic in itself; the game can't start any earlier because then narrative logic would win out over the character creation rules, but it can't start any later because then the character creation rules would win out over RAW spell effects, and the enemies cannot react until the process is finished because then it wouldn't be fair to the character.

Like most TO builds, its the weird sort of thing you see on forums but not in actual play. At least in my experience that is; maybe I have been blessed, but even the cantankerous munchkins I game with tend to just laugh at TO char op shenanigans.

[Mechalich]

The argument 'this build doesn't belong at my table because it warps the game' is fine. The problem is when that argument is being used to justify punitive in-character enforcement of that standard. It looks adversarial if in the discussion about 'why does this guy get jumped?' points like 'its bad for the game' or 'people's weaknesses should come up!' get raised. Even if you've constructed a natural logic to justify it, if your motivation for constructing that natural logic was to enforce these meta-game standards then that's adversarial.


I'd zoom out a little to the design perspective and say that builds that warp the game in such obvious ways really shouldn't be possible, especially not in a self-designed system with a single book of rules (which isn't vulnerable to D&D-style shenanigans of cobbling builds together out of 20 different sets of rules options written by people not considering each others stuff).

Game design that allows the creation of characters who are broadly unplayable - often because it requires startlingly twisted logic to explain how such a person survived to independent adulthood in their resident setting - should not be possible to create. Phrased another way, if the setting has 'must be this tall to ride' requirements in some field, character creation should force all possible characters to meet them. While it is probably impossible to design a character creation that players will attempt to 'win' and that will allow at least some success in this regard, every effort should be made to prevent players from 'losing' chargen.

In this specific case, wherein the setting is apparently controlled by god-kings who have a list of X things that will result in PC death, chargen shouldn't allow a potential PC access to anything that would trigger such a response, because all such characters are already dead.

[NichG]

Is it?

Like seriously, is it?


Yes, absolutely.



This kind of reads to me like the justifications for "its what my character would do" sometimes it's best to just not take the wildly antisocial action because you want to keep playing and don't rock the boat.

I don't see anything wrong with the GM making a "gentleman's agreement" to allow for a game that is more fun for the players. But I also don't think the GM is obligated to do so for the sake of encouraging min-maxxing.


A gentleman's agreement is an OOC construct and it should be enforced OOC. Saying 'oh by the way, Elminster comes and kills you' (because you broke the implicit gentleman's agreement) is antagonistic GM-ing. Saying 'you broke the gentleman's agreement, please correct your behavior' is not. You may have good intentions for wanting to regulate this, but the method you're using to do so is inherently an antagonistic one. Choose a different method.



Like, if one of my players is arachnophobic, and I agree not to have giant spiders in my game, that's cool. But if one of my players wants to take a flaw "automatically drops dead at the sight of a spider" and then use the points it provides to buy a bunch of cool new powers, and then demands I remove all spiders from the game or else I am being antagonistic, that's a different story IMO.

I was critiquing the build itself, not giving GMing advice.

In my opinion, that character would not survive long with an impartial GM because they are too flashy, and the risk to reward ratio of some BBEG preemptively ganking their character is too great.


It's antagonistic if, absent the player taking that flaw, you would have ended up running a game in which spiders didn't really feature but then when someone takes a flaw 'automatically drops dead at the sight of a spider' that gets you to start to think about ways that maybe spiders should be included 'because they took the flaw, so it has to come up'.

If your end-game characters aren't being jumped by chronomantic omniscient warlords for using high-end abilities, but start-game characters would be jumped for using the exact same abilities, that's antagonistic. Not just that, but its certainly not impartial GM-ing, its very much biased and unfair.

'Cast a DC 60 spell and get preemptively ganked' could be fine, but then with an impartial GM it wouldn't matter if its a newbie character, an endgame character, or a powerful NPC - they should all equally have the same chance to get preemptively ganked, and the consequences of that should be baked into the setting already. But they shouldn't get ganked 'because the character warps the game' or 'because of the gentleman's agreement'. Those are OOC reasons, not IC reasons!



If someone tried to play that character at my table, I would have an OOC discussion about what they wanted out of the game and find a reasonable compromise. Of course, people in this thread seem to be implying that having to have a conversation about wildly unusual / disruptive characters is itself a form of adversarial GMing / mark of a flawed system, so idk.


It's not adversarial to have that OOC discussion. But it is better if the system helps to explicitly establish expectations than if it doesn't. Certainly its better if the system just says 'hey, this setting has a bunch of powerful NPCs who can detect things about a certain level and aren't shy about dropping in when they do' up front for the players and GM to read in the location that prompts them to make decisions where that caveat would be very relevant, versus leaving it to the GM to work that out via the implications of stat blocks 400 pages later. Especially if as the system designer you're constructing the rules with the idea in mind that this will be an important balancing factor in determining the costs and options available!



An end game character has 1/3rd the wealth of the proposed character and is a heck of a lot better at defending it. The risk to reward ratio is drastically different.


In order to be fair this should at minimum be tested in play for both characters, and it should be done in a way that does not metagame things that you as the GM get to know about the characters that an NPC making the choice about whether or not to jump them would not know. If you just assume this to be the case and don't subject the end-game character to having to fight these jumpers, but do subject the starting character to that test, then that's certainly not being impartial. But even 'testing' like this is adversarial when it comes from the idea of looking at a character sheet and trying to figure out 'what could I do to undermine this build?' rather than just playing it straight and what happens happens.



You mention "during character creation" but that's not quite right. It's also a kind of a weird dance between character creation and in play. The character build relies on casting a more or less impossible custom magic spell to explain why they have all but straight ones and dozens of artifacts, but then immediately starts play entering into a cast sequence to cast a bunch of buffs without paying the costs. That's comes across as kind of antagonistic in itself; the game can't start any earlier because then narrative logic would win out over the character creation rules, but it can't start any later because then the character creation rules would win out over RAW spell effects, and the enemies cannot react until the process is finished because then it wouldn't be fair to the character.

Like most TO builds, its the weird sort of thing you see on forums but not in actual play. At least in my experience that is; maybe I have been blessed, but even the cantankerous munchkins I game with tend to just laugh at TO char op shenanigans.

Responding to an antagonistic player with antagonism doesn't make it not antagonism. If the problem with this is at the level of the fiction, the proper response is 'that build is not allowed', not 'here's how I punish it'. Once the way you run depends on how you feel about the player OOC, its certainly not impartial. And if the decisions about IC things arise from a desire to thwart the player from achieving what they're trying to do, its antagonistic.

Laughing and saying 'nah, that doesn't fly here, I'm not allowing it' is not antagonistic. Reserving setting logic that lets you have an NPC smush them IC but which only gets used when the character pisses you off OOC is absolutely antagonistic GMing. Don't do that.

[Local_Jerk]

Oh man, this system has issues. Hoooo boy! This whole spell accuracy is just one of what I anticipate to be many issues.

[Jakinbandw]

Did you miss my last post Talakeal?

[Telok]

In this specific case, wherein the setting is apparently controlled by god-kings who have a list of X things that will result in PC death, i].

Actually, yeah. Some of the Warlords, powerful spirits, etc., do read that way. There's pretty strong vibes of a Dark Sun world in the making, what with the place going through a slow but steady apocalypse while everyone with power is involved in either getting their mini-empire on, being a terrible ideological murder maniac, or doing thier best to force everyone to pretend everything is just dandy. Depending on location I wouldn't expect an overly flashy character to be DOA, but there's also aren't any places without people willing to try mugging you in a dark alley. There are definitely places in the setting that flashing the equivalent of a fancy watch and a hand grenade will get you attacked in under an hour by an end game bbeg plus minions.

While some people talk about the setting being "low magic" I think what's happening is people have different ideas of what that means. I've heard D&D Ebberon described as low magic because you don't have anyone regularly tossing high level spells or swinging artifact level swords. I've also heard it described as high magic because there's lots of spellcasting and piles of magic items laying around in shops. Likewise I've seen Zelazny's Amber series and Saberhagen's Book of Swords seried called low magic because there's little to no "traditional" rpg spellcasting in them. Or they've been called high magic because the main characters are practically wallowing in items that D&D would class as near god-level artifacts.

This setting has... it feels like a gap. There's not terribly uncommon fantastic stuff including people & creatures with lower end magics. Then there's this level where you get pretty strong but narratively 'rare' sorcerers, liches, fey, 400 year old "well nobody ever sees him cast spells" bishops, and half-demon half-cyborg berserkers who are the lieutenants of the major powers. And the PC start out in a sort of empty middle zone between the two. Its also apparently possible for half a dozen mages working in concert to probably put out a 4 point relic every 6 months to a year, if you're willing to fund that sort of thing. Mana comes back after about a month so I think one low/average npc caster could probably turn out a basic potion or three each month if that was their job.

It... almost a sort of uncanny valley I think. The PCs are intended to start with some toys and the 4 point artifacts aren't... amazingly over the top. They're good, but limited. But the system is set up to sort of tell a story that the PC's starting 5 gold & no reputation ends up at 50,000 and famous. Yet while that scales like the familiar D&D is supposed to, the mechanical 'oomph' of a character's focused specialty trick is moving more from +15 to +25 or +20 to +30. Which doesn't seem like much if you're used to D&D style "all the numbers go up at about the same rate", but is much more impactful when you realize most target numbers won't increase much and most of the top high end stuff really is around DC 40-45. Part of it looks superficially like familiar D&D, but it doesn't work that way.

That said, it does seem like while the scaling works in magic where you go from competent/good to really quite powerful, the non-magic scaling is... less impressive. Though I admit to being slightly fuzzy on exactly what you can accomplish with a +25 to +30 score in business, technology, or woodworking.

[Mechalich]

Actually, yeah. Some of the Warlords, powerful spirits, etc., do read that way. There's pretty strong vibes of a Dark Sun world in the making, what with the place going through a slow but steady apocalypse while everyone with power is involved in either getting their mini-empire on, being a terrible ideological murder maniac, or doing thier best to force everyone to pretend everything is just dandy. Depending on location I wouldn't expect an overly flashy character to be DOA, but there's also aren't any places without people willing to try mugging you in a dark alley. There are definitely places in the setting that flashing the equivalent of a fancy watch and a hand grenade will get you attacked in under an hour by an end game bbeg plus minions.

While some people talk about the setting being "low magic" I think what's happening is people have different ideas of what that means. I've heard D&D Ebberon described as low magic because you don't have anyone regularly tossing high level spells or swinging artifact level swords. I've also heard it described as high magic because there's lots of spellcasting and piles of magic items laying around in shops. Likewise I've seen Zelazny's Amber series and Saberhagen's Book of Swords seried called low magic because there's little to no "traditional" rpg spellcasting in them. Or they've been called high magic because the main characters are practically wallowing in items that D&D would class as near god-level artifacts.

Yes, this is a broad terminological problem, one that comes from comparing different fictional scenarios to each other without any sort of baseline. The thing is, we have a baseline: real life, in which there is zero magic. Low or high magic are comparable to reality at a given tech level. Low magic is, arguably, magic insufficient to completely transform the non-magical version of the society it is based on, while high magic is a setting that necessarily does. Now, the tricky part is that there are multiple parameters upon which this plays out.

For example, it's possible for magic (or whatever version of supernatural power is involved, this unfolds much the same way for supers, psionics, etc.) to be highly abundant but low power or high power but low abundance. A highly illustrative extreme case is a 'high magic' setting where everything is normal expect for the insertion of a single phenomenally powerful individual, who functions as a living god. Superman: Red Son, is exactly this scenario and, notably, is a setting in which said living god will zap you dead (well, mind controlled lobotomy, but same difference) pretty much instantly upon sensing any serious threat to his idealized society (I strongly encourage people to watch the DC Animated film, it's both very good and a powerful example of what happens when an OP setting fixture actually decides to get off their butt and do s***).


It... almost a sort of uncanny valley I think. The PCs are intended to start with some toys and the 4 point artifacts aren't... amazingly over the top. They're good, but limited. But the system is set up to sort of tell a story that the PC's starting 5 gold & no reputation ends up at 50,000 and famous. Yet while that scales like the familiar D&D is supposed to, the mechanical 'oomph' of a character's focused specialty trick is moving more from +15 to +25 or +20 to +30. Which doesn't seem like much if you're used to D&D style "all the numbers go up at about the same rate", but is much more impactful when you realize most target numbers won't increase much and most of the top high end stuff really is around DC 40-45. Part of it looks superficially like familiar D&D, but it doesn't work that way.

One of the problems here is that 'familiar D&D scaling' is in fact really bad design, at least from the side of consistent worldbuilding. D&D settings, insofar as they work at all, rely heavily on an implicit gentleman's agreement that all the high level people spend 99% of their time sitting on their thrones and never moving and during the 1% of the time they do act it's always to deal with some outside context new issue, not any of their rivals who've been around for centuries (ex. Elminster has, over the course of his lengthy career, saved the realms from numerous crises but's he's never fought Szass Tam so far as I can tell). The moment those high-powered characters break that compact, you take the 'so why doesn't the final boss just kill all the good guys in chapter one?' question that hangs over so many video games with this kind of scaling and answer it with 'they do' and the adventure is over before it can even begin.

[Telok]

I finally realized what this all reminds me of: Shadowrun.

Way back when you could theory build a character with a bunch of bound spell foci and maybe a spirit on you. Super strong in maybe a couple combat situations or a magic skill or two. But unusable in actual play because setting-wise in the astral you'd stick out like Liberace in a 3rd world kindergarden and everyone with any real security had a mage on staff to watch for that stuff. Likewise the PC are highly skilled with some expensive & illegal gear, but flashing it around too much gets entire organizations of rational and intelligent people hunting your ass down using more than just simple combat to isolate and neuter you.

Cool build. Totally impractical in actual play. Opposition is intelligent beings, not crpg mobs scripted to wait for an arrow to the knee before they notice you.

[Talakeal]

Did you miss my last post Talakeal?

I didn't no. It was just very late and your post and Telok's warranted more serious thought / discussion. I will respond to them sometime today.

I hope your family emergency turned out ok, and I really don't have any hard feelings and do appreciate the time you are putting into this.

[Telok]

More proofreading.
Business skill p127-128
Acquisition, para 2, end of 2nd sentence, "role"/"roll".
Barter, first line, "haggle ability (see below)" but haggle is a specialization of the skill?

Other places also reference haggle instead of acquire/barter.

Buying stuff: buying target number is either based on item quality or 20+(2x value), but it's not clear when to use which formula. Crafting is just based on quality which means poor = 10 to build an ornate double gatyling flamethrower rifle? Or are mods an increase like quality? And is that horror value 60 or 192? Should the Rich trait x4 really get you that thing?

Is a basic rifle, value 12, supposed to be harder to buy than ambrosia? Is it appropriate to have a character with a 76% chance to buy ambrosia (before extra wealth spends) each mission?

Wealth is equal to starting business score. Is that stat +proficency +prodigy/inept + business trait +legendary skill?

Cost to buy elixers? Target number to create elixers with science? Potions are bought at ???, 20 or 24 (value 2) or 15+quality?

Artifacts can be created as clockworks via crafting skills instead of magic skills. Target numbers? Same as with magic?

Also, unenlightened characters can use occult skills to cast subtle metamagic spells based on intelligence? You sure this is a good idea?

Edit: if crafting a potion/preipat is as hard or harder than buying and buying restocks on a recovery phase, then do crafted ones also restock or is it basically a trap?

[Talakeal]

Is that from the math mistake I made with the flaws (top out with minors like color blindness, allergy, etc. back to the -10) or is there something I'm missing? It's not a good character. Not because of char build math or anything, but the **** wild shot rolls.

It seems to be another case of not noticing that a trait with * being capped at an effective score of 1-10.



Misc. bits: I'm getting iffy on the whole staff of power thing, perhaps think about capping it at spell DC = 5x relic points,minimum 4 relic points.

That was how I originally had it, but then I realized this isn't like D&D where casting was automatic and therefore bigger spells weren't always better. Besides, failed rolls still take mana, so people are discouraged from putting too many meta-magics on it. I will keep that in mind though. Although looking at it, Rewind might have been intended to be a focus spell.


Sequester needs to be focus tagged. NEEDS it. Unless there's some seriously big drawback I'm not seeing.

Why do you say that?

I have some suspicions, but what specifically are you foreseeing?


Ok, seriously, there's real abuse potential in Banish if you can access the top of a tall cliff or something and put down a permanent Familiar spell. Maze is easier but they could potentially come back, although you aren't tagged to the Familiar spell for detection either.

Teleport at DC 25 is 1000 paces right? Anyone say "save vs you fall half a mile?"

I have thought about nerfing that myself, but honestly I am not sure if it is necessary considering some of the other nasty stuff you can do with a DC 25 spell. Many of them completely incapacitate the subject and leave them at your mercy.


Man, I haven't even hit up a third of the spells. Although I have to say, evocation is kinda boring.

Depends on how you look at it.

For a lot of people, dealing damage is the most exciting thing there is.


Heh, Tie, for +5 you can make an enchantment on yourself last until dispelled or you're killed. Oh, wait, there's the chakra limit... or does that only apply to spells with the Augment tag?

The Chakra cost for tie is in addition to that of an augmentation.


Touch at +3 completely negates penalties for casting magic missiles in melee does it?

Indeed it does.

But that goes back to the initial topic of the thread, that Bob doesn't want to do anything but sit in the back row and shoot because his character is too delicate to actually get into melee range.


Right, Transfigure is the way around debuffs only having that "one instance of that enchantment spell at a time" limit, as well as making it a permanent non-magic effect. Geeze, weren't there some lower cost real screwball spells in illusion? Was there a DC 15 spell to set someone on fire? Would that count? Probably not. I haven't even looked at transmutation spells. Oh hey, Righteous, sure that kips it up to DC... 35?... but I'll make an extra a fated with mana & destiny permanently. Yup, staff-o-power that bad boy and retry in low danger fights, especially if you can trap/hedge the poor suckers with a circle. Probably should not be allowed on random mindless/thrall undead. "Lets stay a few hours and farm mana potions from this horde of zombies".

Transfiguring debuffs is pretty hardcore, although generally they are more difficult than they are worth. Probably wouldn't apply to most illusion or evocation spells though as they are only things that transform someone, but edge cases are, as usual, up to the GM.

So, thanks for hammering on me with righteousness. That spell got almost completely rewritten from its previous version recently, and it still has a lot of bugs to work out.


Hmm, mystic whatzit trait for one self-only spell then a 2pt relic fisher's ring to emulate cheap staff of power... casting ability is low at 5x anima though. Can we apply prodigy or something to boost the casting roll? What's the metamagic combo to make a cantrip apply to every roll during a scene?

Prodigy doesn't apply to mystic gift. Although I do agree mystic gift scales a little poorly in a high op game, I was trying to think of some way to boost it. Persistent is the cantrip metamagic you are thinking of.


Screamy, angry, often drunk, dangerously unlucky, 6 inches tall, oozing magic, mutant, purple, half-fairy, arrogant, stealth god, omni-wizard.

Heh. This actually seems pretty close to the fairy in my current game.


Ugh, I do not want to play such games! Certainly not for me.

It's not exactly what I would call an ideal campaign either, but it is a well worn story structure that lends itself well to a super min-maxxed PC.

I actually did try and run such a campaign once, where Bob was playing a little girl with no backstory and rock bottom physical stats and top tier magic and nothing else. I set up the campaign so that she was the lost heir to a magical god-king who had been usurped and was on the run from the dark wizard cabal who needed her power to finish their scheme and the PCs were ordinary folks who happened upon her and were trying to protect her, in a sort of Anastasia setup. It seemed to work best with the characters I was given, but it fell apart pretty quickly due to IRL scheduling issues.


This sounds like a really interesting optimization problem. When I have more time I'll take a look and see how it plays out, because this sounds like an interesting fight. I do think you're missing something here though: Tom's power isn't from a dozen enchantments. It's from his ability to cast any number of any non-enchantment spell at a level that can't be matched without a similar level of optimization. For example, Tom could start with his first spell being to stop time himself and cast all the buffs in time stop. Or he could retroactively place himself inside an anti-magic field, from which he could cast out of, but spells from outside couldn't be cast in. Or he could add a rule to the game saying that time travel can't be used to go into the past.

This is all without needing to have a single enchantment cast on himself.

All the self-buffing does is boost his average result from a 55 to a 65, and fix up his stat block. If using genesis to make traits is off the table, it's not character breaking, he just looses the +10 from enchantments, but in return that would free up a bunch of character points.

On the other hand, another way to deal with Khornal would just be to make a deal with him. If he kills my character he can break it down and get some essence or whatever (I'm away from easy access to the book). Tom could give him that much up front, and then give it to him again every month, along with infinite wealth. He can make any illusion real an unlimited number of times. Even if Khornal is the greediest person, it would be a better deal for him to not fight Tom at all. As you say you have characters act in their best interests, it would make more sense for this guy to make a deal rather than start a fight.

This is also why I wouldn't ever bring this character to a game. Because they have no reason to adventure. They can make anything and do anything they want. What reason would they to want to fight a dragon?


I am still not quite sure how this build works.

It seems like it's just making a focused illusionist and then using the most permissible reading of cataract possible and just assuming it can replicate any other spell?

But then how are you also giving yourself infinite mana and infinite chakras?

And doesn't the base DC 40 for Cataract make it harder to pull off for the vast majority of spells even with your artifacts than it would be for a standard universalist mage just casting the spell directly?

How on earth can you generate infinite wealth and 60+ ambrosia? Let alone every month?

One of us is missing something big here.


In actual play this character has some potential for a high powered character who can engage in some good old 5-dimensional wizard chess, I just think it would be a heck of a lot more effective if you waited until you had a stronger baseline character so you weren't always one dispel away from having your stats dropped to straight ones.


I don't know how you can make that generality. The closest thing I can see to a progression system would have a character go from+15 to hit at level 1, to +20 to hit at level 5. Now that is a decent increase, considering the system, but I wouldn't say 30 times deadlier.

Combat testing. Lots of combat testing.

As a general rule, a given build's ability to defeat an enemy in combat doubles every 20 CP / 20 PL of artifacts, although some are more front or backloaded than others.


Tom has unlimited everything. I stand by my example

And I have no idea how you are doing it.

Neither I nor any of my play testers can even figure out how the build is supposed to work.


And I know its kind of a cop-out, but page 279 explicitly says that magic cannot create unlimited anything and attempting to do so will just fail and warp / destroy the surrounding spirit world.

And of course, like most mechanical exploits, if it is a legitimate trick, there is nothing stopping your opposition from pulling the same thing.


Let's be clear here. I would love to send this guy up against end game threats, solo, to see how they did. The whole idea that every high-level threat in the setting would come for the character at the same time is what I was feeling was unreasonable. It's the difference between facing Korne up there, and facing 30 of them at once. One is a high-level threat, the other is passive aggressive PC murder by the GM.

Again, I am assuming a totally impartial GM.

The exact same thing would happen if Tom didn't exist. Say a random NPC wizard somehow caused a wild magic surge that cast a DC 60 spell, erased him from reality, and left a big pile of sixty ambrosia just sitting in the middle of an abandoned field.

Every powerful supernatural being in Pangaea is going to sense the effect and then investigate it, and once they find such a ludicrous trove of magic, they are going to do everything in their power to ensure they get ahold of it / keep it out of the wrong hands.


Just like in real life if someone started detonating a stockpile of nuclear weapons in international waters, it is going to attract the attention and warrant the involvement of every world superpower, or, to use a less extreme example, its like if an armored car was involved in a loud wreck in the middle of the bad part of town and dropping stacks of cash on the street; its going to attract attention and be met with greed and ambition.


Ugh, either you're miscalculating, or I am. The Mage that did the mind control was a mile away. Since spells are limited to perception distance, and a Pace seems equivalent to a yard, this would mean the mage would be short by a factor of a thousand. That's three extend metamagics, pushing the spell well into the 40s (though as I said, away from book).

It wasn't mind control.

I think you are mixing two things I said: I said that a golden fleece doesn't protect against mind control, and I said a 60 point artifact bow is likely to get stolen.

The mage is question cast seize (or maybe it was just telekinesis). Depending on his build, that should be low to mid 30's.

Although this was 20 years ago, the exact rules have almost certainly changed since then and the wizards exact build and tactics (if there ever were any) are lost to time.


Also, I wasn't aware that each of those modifiers was Cumulative, either I'm not reading carefully enough (due to there being hundreds of pages of rules to memorize to understand how the game works), or the fact that they are cumulative isn't made clear enough on the table.

They aren't cumulative. But they do continue linearly past what the chart shows, I should definitely clarify that.


The increasing level of effectiveness that a character can have in a an aspect of a system by achieving system mastery.

By that definition I am strongly in favor of optimization.

Heck, I get a lot of flak on here by saying that player skill should matter and not just telling my players the right solution to their problems or fudging dice to let them win regardless of how little thought or skill they put into the game.


Oh, I wasn't upset that you said my build wasn't rules legal (though, that's not my understanding of what you said, I thought you said it was GM dependant)....

I don't see how your build works; although like most TO builds I can see how it *might* work if you had an extremely favorable ruling from a GM, but there are some missing steps there that I would need to fill in the blanks for you based on what you posted.


...it was that you were saying that a person who made a cool bow had it stolen from them with mind control before the character could take an action in a game, and that you were coming down on the side of the gm. Even if you mildly condemned them as being 'passive aggressive' you also said that it made sense, and that it made sense, which was the most important thing in your game multiple times.

What I said is that the weakness of artifacts is that they can be taken from you. Even symbiotic artifacts.

The bigger the artifact, the bigger the incentive to steal it, and the more helpless you will be without it.

The optimal strategy against someone who has a "gadgeteer" build is to deprive them of their gadgets, and intelligent enemies will recognize that.

I agree, it is incredibly poor sportsmanship to just yank it right away without warning, but sooner or later, someone is going to take your bow.

And this isn't exclusive to artifacts, if you have a glaring weakness, enemies will learn to exploit that weakness.

It's not a matter of system or setting or even antagonistic GMing, it's just the basic nature of tactical simulation.



Like I said, this is Bob's go to tactic in every game; make a one note glass-cannon character who outshines the rest of the party in offense, neglect his defenses and give himself several glaring weaknesses, and then whine and accuse the GM of picking on him if the enemy ever targets him or his weaknesses ever come up. He does it regardless of system, regardless of setting, and regardless of who is GMing. I will never forget his rant about how "grappling is a cheat code for the GM" when his 2-strength mage got his spell-book and wand taken away from him by the big burly orc chieftan he was blasting with them.



I disagree, obviously. It does give me an interesting idea to counter counterspells though. Attaching small antimagic field to my character would deactive most magic items targeting him, as well as making casting a dispell on him shoot up in difficulty. This would still leave him free to act as normal with just a few minor changes to the build.

Its a neat idea. Bob tried it once last game. I expect to see more variations on it in the future.


Also that you were saying that most, if not all, NPCs in your game are murder hobos who only hold back from killing others because it's either too much work, or too dangerous. That feels so viscerally wrong to me that I can't even articulate it, and it's why I said I wouldn't want to play in that game. The only way to deal with a setting like that would be to not play. I flat out wouldn't enjoy it.

It is intentionally designed as a noble-dark setting.

That isn't everyone's cup of tea, but it fits my aesthetic, and my players far prefer it to traditional high fantasy campaigns where they spend the whole time under the thumb of Elminster or Gandalf or whomever.

If you like the system, you are of course encouraged to use it with a more traditional high fantasy world or any other setting you might prefer.


Along with the implicit support of the GM that Mind Controlled a player as the start to a game, and that is why I wouldn't want to play, or suggest others play.

See above.


To allude back to the Lord of the Rings as you did earlier, out of all the powerful characters in the setting, only 2 go after the ring. Gandalf, the leaders of the elves, and many other powerful characters do not murder frodo at the first opportunity. The one character that does betray him does so because of mental influence from the ring. This feels reasonable. All the elves, Wizards, Kingdoms of men, dwarves, dragons, men, goblins, and demons marching on the shire, burning it down to claim the ring at the start of the story the moment frodo recieves the ring from Bilbo feels horrifically wrong to me.

Boromir does try and take it. Gollum does try and take it. Both Sauron and Sarumon are actively sending out their agents to hunt down the hobbits and take it. Denethor would do the same if he had the opportunity. I imagine that many of the kingdoms of dwarves and men, and all of the kingdoms of orcs goblins and trolls, and possibly even some elves, would do the same if they had full knowledge of where the ring was and what it could do.

When Frodo puts on the ring, it is like a beacon for Sauron, and all of the Nazgul immediately make a beeline for him. Every time. And the nine Nazgul are more than a match for he and his Hobbit friends, even when they have Aragorn protecting them. As a result, he uses the ring precisely three times in the entire trilogy iirc, and never for more than a moment.


A gentleman's agreement is an OOC construct and it should be enforced OOC. Saying 'oh by the way, Elminster comes and kills you' (because you broke the implicit gentleman's agreement) is antagonistic GM-ing. Saying 'you broke the gentleman's agreement, please correct your behavior' is not. You may have good intentions for wanting to regulate this, but the method you're using to do so is inherently an antagonistic one. Choose a different method.

Probably?.

Although what do you do if one side doesn't adhere to the agreement? Does one side void it and do what they agreed not to do? Or do you just say its irrevocable and start ejecting players from the game?

This is more or less academic and has little bearing on any games I might be running, real or hypothetical.


Yes, absolutely.

So you would be equally ok with both of these scenarios:

"My character is a greedy thief, but I am not going to steal from the rest of the party because I don't want to antagonize the other players."
"My character is a noble paladin, but I am going to kill the other players and take their stuff because I want phat lewtz."

Both of them are breaking character and strain the narrative, but the first one is done for the benefit of encouraging fun and fair play, while the latter is doing the opposite.


It's antagonistic if, absent the player taking that flaw, you would have ended up running a game in which spiders didn't really feature but then when someone takes a flaw 'automatically drops dead at the sight of a spider' that gets you to start to think about ways that maybe spiders should be included 'because they took the flaw, so it has to come up'.

Hmmm.

Ok, let's walk this back a bit.

Let's replace the hyperbolic "drops dead" with something more marginal, like a fear of spiders or an allergy to venom.

Assuming a normal campaign where spiders will sometimes appear, that's fine.

But, if I wasn't planning on having any spiders in the campaign, which, if any, of these three is antagonistic GMing:

A: Telling the player that the campaign won't feature spiders, and so it isn't an appropriate trait.
B: Assume that the player wouldn't take a trait they didn't want to not matter, so find a way to work some spiders in.
C: Tell the player the scenario and let them choose between A and B.

Does this change if instead of a weakness to spiders they took Favored Enemy: Spider?
Does this change if instead of running a game with no spiders, I was planning on running a game where spiders are the main antagonist?


If your end-game characters aren't being jumped by chronomantic omniscient warlords for using high-end abilities, but start-game characters would be jumped for using the exact same abilities, that's antagonistic. Not just that, but its certainly not impartial GM-ing, its very much biased and unfair.

'Cast a DC 60 spell and get preemptively ganked' could be fine, but then with an impartial GM it wouldn't matter if its a newbie character, an endgame character, or a powerful NPC - they should all equally have the same chance to get preemptively ganked, and the consequences of that should be baked into the setting already. But they shouldn't get ganked 'because the character warps the game' or 'because of the gentleman's agreement'. Those are OOC reasons, not IC reasons!

So part of being impartial is running NPCs as completely lacking judgement?

Casting a DC 60 spell informs everyone, and then lets them choose what to do with that information.

Weak character with a lot of treasure = easy target high reward.
Strong character with a normal amount of treasure = hard target moderate reward.

Like, in bog standard D&D, if you told the PCs that there was one dungeon where a CR 1 monster was guarding a mountain of gold, and another dungeon where a CR 5 monster was guarding a sack of silver, of course they are going to go after the former!

Likewise, if a starting PC party announces their presence to a CR 13 red dragon they plan to slay, it is going to roast them alive for their impudence. If a level 20 party did the same, the dragon is likely going to look for a way to escape or to cut a deal.


But even 'testing' like this is adversarial when it comes from the idea of looking at a character sheet and trying to figure out 'what could I do to undermine this build?' rather than just playing it straight and what happens happens.

Is there a difference between the two barring an information gap?

For example, if I am running a DC game, and assume supra-genius billionaire Lex Luthor has been trying to construct a death trap for Superman after years of careful planning and study, I would imagine he would actually do a *better* job than I could as a GM who was just looking at his character sheet and trying to poke holes in the build.


Responding to an antagonistic player with antagonism doesn't make it not antagonism. If the problem with this is at the level of the fiction, the proper response is 'that build is not allowed', not 'here's how I punish it'. Once the way you run depends on how you feel about the player OOC, its certainly not impartial. And if the decisions about IC things arise from a desire to thwart the player from achieving what they're trying to do, its antagonistic.

Didn't say otherwise.


Laughing and saying 'nah, that doesn't fly here, I'm not allowing it' is not antagonistic. Reserving setting logic that lets you have an NPC smush them IC but which only gets used when the character pisses you off OOC is absolutely antagonistic GMing. Don't do that.

Again, I am not suggesting anyone do the latter. I would absolutely do the former (although in my experience laughing at someone is about the most antagonistic thing you can do, so I probably wouldn't actually laugh).

At an actual table, if Jak had brought Tom, I would tell him that his build relies on too many fuzzy readings of the rules that I am not going to side with him on, and even if it did work, it is going to overshadow the other players and has so many powerful magic items that it is literally too disruptive for the setting to run a normal game, and I am not interested in (or really even capable of running) the 5-D wizard chess required as every powerful supernatural being on the planet trying to scheme about how to acquire said items. I would then work with him to see what it was he liked about the build, and if it was anything besides overshadowing the rest of the party, I would work toward building the character gradually over time rather than in one big apocalyptic reign of magic items and high end spells.

A wholly impartial GM would just let him plop down those artifacts and do their best to arbitrate how the setting reacts to it. The answer is almost certainly poorly, and almost certainly does not result in Tom coming out on top.

Also, what are the other PCs doing? As the game has to begin precisely after Tom finished casting his custom spell of insanity but before he has begun magically putting himself back together. How are they involved? Do they need to rebuild their characters to participate in this? Do they get to participate at all?


Actually, yeah. Some of the Warlords, powerful spirits, etc., do read that way. There's pretty strong vibes of a Dark Sun world in the making, what with the place going through a slow but steady apocalypse while everyone with power is involved in either getting their mini-empire on, being a terrible ideological murder maniac, or doing thier best to force everyone to pretend everything is just dandy. Depending on location I wouldn't expect an overly flashy character to be DOA, but there's also aren't any places without people willing to try mugging you in a dark alley. There are definitely places in the setting that flashing the equivalent of a fancy watch and a hand grenade will get you attacked in under an hour by an end game bbeg plus minions.

While some people talk about the setting being "low magic" I think what's happening is people have different ideas of what that means. I've heard D&D Ebberon described as low magic because you don't have anyone regularly tossing high level spells or swinging artifact level swords. I've also heard it described as high magic because there's lots of spellcasting and piles of magic items laying around in shops. Likewise I've seen Zelazny's Amber series and Saberhagen's Book of Swords seried called low magic because there's little to no "traditional" rpg spellcasting in them. Or they've been called high magic because the main characters are practically wallowing in items that D&D would class as near god-level artifacts.

This setting has... it feels like a gap. There's not terribly uncommon fantastic stuff including people & creatures with lower end magics. Then there's this level where you get pretty strong but narratively 'rare' sorcerers, liches, fey, 400 year old "well nobody ever sees him cast spells" bishops, and half-demon half-cyborg berserkers who are the lieutenants of the major powers. And the PC start out in a sort of empty middle zone between the two. Its also apparently possible for half a dozen mages working in concert to probably put out a 4 point relic every 6 months to a year, if you're willing to fund that sort of thing. Mana comes back after about a month so I think one low/average npc caster could probably turn out a basic potion or three each month if that was their job.

It... almost a sort of uncanny valley I think. The PCs are intended to start with some toys and the 4 point artifacts aren't... amazingly over the top. They're good, but limited. But the system is set up to sort of tell a story that the PC's starting 5 gold & no reputation ends up at 50,000 and famous. Yet while that scales like the familiar D&D is supposed to, the mechanical 'oomph' of a character's focused specialty trick is moving more from +15 to +25 or +20 to +30. Which doesn't seem like much if you're used to D&D style "all the numbers go up at about the same rate", but is much more impactful when you realize most target numbers won't increase much and most of the top high end stuff really is around DC 40-45. Part of it looks superficially like familiar D&D, but it doesn't work that way.

That said, it does seem like while the scaling works in magic where you go from competent/good to really quite powerful, the non-magic scaling is... less impressive. Though I admit to being slightly fuzzy on exactly what you can accomplish with a +25 to +30 score in business, technology, or woodworking.


I finally realized what this all reminds me of: Shadowrun.

Way back when you could theory build a character with a bunch of bound spell foci and maybe a spirit on you. Super strong in maybe a couple combat situations or a magic skill or two. But unusable in actual play because setting-wise in the astral you'd stick out like Liberace in a 3rd world kindergarden and everyone with any real security had a mage on staff to watch for that stuff. Likewise the PC are highly skilled with some expensive & illegal gear, but flashing it around too much gets entire organizations of rational and intelligent people hunting your ass down using more than just simple combat to isolate and neuter you.

Cool build. Totally impractical in actual play. Opposition is intelligent beings, not crpg mobs scripted to wait for an arrow to the knee before they notice you.


This is all correct.

[Talakeal]

Acquisition, para 2, end of 2nd sentence, "role"/"roll".
Barter, first line, "haggle ability (see below)" but haggle is a specialization of the skill?

Other places also reference haggle instead of acquire/barter.

Thanks.

That has been fixed.

I changed the name from haggle to acquire as part of the attempt to soften the emotional impact of using the ability; its supposed to represent putting resources toward finding a rare item, but most everyone views it as a shop-keeper swindling you by constantly raising the prices on his goods.


Buying stuff: buying target number is either based on item quality or 20+(2x value), but it's not clear when to use which formula. Crafting is just based on quality which means poor = 10 to build an ornate double gatling flamethrower rifle? Or are mods an increase like quality? And is that horror value 60 or 192? Should the Rich trait x4 really get you that thing?

Is a basic rifle, value 12, supposed to be harder to buy than ambrosia? Is it appropriate to have a character with a 76% chance to buy ambrosia (before extra wealth spends) each mission?

The difficulty to craft / acquire is based on the quality, not the value.

The number of debts / concentration required is based on the value.

I believe weapon modifications state they modify the base value, not the final, so 60, assuming your math is right.



Wealth is equal to starting business score. Is that stat +proficency +prodigy/inept + business trait +legendary skill?

Final score. Including traits and proficiency.



Cost to buy elixers? Target number to create elixers with science? Potions are bought at ???, 20 or 24 (value 2) or 15+quality?

The rules for acquiring potions are in page 220.

All potions are value 2. The difficulty to craft / acquire them depends on the type; equal to the casting difficulty for elixirs, 20 for tonics and periapts, and based on the quality for explosives, poioson, and holy water.



Artifacts can be created as clockworks via crafting skills instead of magic skills. Target numbers? Same as with magic?

The same, yes. This was the last artifact I creased and I actually ran out of physical page space for this one, I am hoping to elaborate on it if I can free up some more room during layout.




Also, unenlightened characters can use occult skills to cast subtle metamagic spells based on intelligence? You sure this is a good idea?

Not sure at all, no. I have gone back and forth several times on allowing it.




Edit: if crafting a potion/preipat is as hard or harder than buying and buying restocks on a recovery phase, then do crafted ones also restock or is it basically a trap?

ONLY explosives, poisons, and holy water restock. Elixirs, periapts, and tonics do not.

[neriana]

Ouch. That's some poor phrasing on my part.

Let me restate that:

"People seldom know why they feel the way they do, and rarely speak openly about their feelings, especially when matters of trust or ego are involved."

That's part of it, yes.

But Sauron absolutely wants to ring back because a large part of his power is locked up within it, and has sent out the Nazgul and many other agents to recover it. And when Frodo puts it on, it acts like a beacon for Sauron, who immediately sends said agents to the area to recover it.

And many of the wise absolutely believe that the ring will give them the power to defeat Sauron, and Tolkien has said that in atleast some of their cases they are correct.


That first bit is quite a goalpost shift. It's also not correct, though not quite as untrue as what you said at first. I'm not going to play a goalpost shifting game, sorry.

Yes, SAURON wants the ring back for that. Sauron. And he has minions. Are all your game's artifacts like that? You know what else is a very powerful artifact in LotR? Mithril chainmail. No one is running after Frodo trying to steal his mithril chainmail. Nor, in The Hobbit, does anyone pursue Bilbo trying to steal Sting (and only Gollum wants the ring from him, which at that point was however just a ring of invisibility.)

The One Ring is powerful, but a whole lot of things in the setting are powerful. Galadriel's ring is super powerful. But if she were to take the One Ring when Frodo offers it -- "All will love me and despair."

[Talakeal]

That first bit is quite a goalpost shift. It's also not correct, though not quite as untrue as what you said at first. I'm not going to play a goalpost shifting game, sorry.

This isn't a debate?

I said something dumb without thinking. I apologized and took it back. It happens.

[Telok]

<deadeye> seems to be another case of not noticing that a trait with * being capped at an effective score of 1-10.

...<sequester> have some suspicions, but what specifically are you foreseeing?

...Prodigy doesn't apply to mystic gift. Although I do agree mystic gift scales a little poorly in a high op game, I was trying to think of some way to boost it. Persistent is the cantrip metamagic you are thinking of.

Deadeye; my calculation was str 4 + deadeye 11 to the attribute cap of 15 + weapon damage 6. If it's instead supposed to be str 4 + weapon damage 6 + deadeye 5 to the attribute cap it has bad implications for things like the great blade that have a +9 damage bonus because you wouldn't be able to benefit from more than 6 strength. On the other hand if damage has a 10 strength cap unlike all the other s at 15 that needs a really big call out.

Sequester

Difficulty: 20
Type: Incantation
Subject: Calling
Sequester calls an object of the conjurer's choosing. The object must be an ordinary quality item of the appropriate type. The caster can specify broad details about the item such as material composition and modifications.This spell may not be used to summon tonic or elixirs.
Assume 5 paces of range. +5=50, +10=500, +15=5000... ok I'm seeing the limits now. But glyph & ritual can functionally shift the casting number down by 5 and adds the caster's concentration to their mana. In addition anyone who spends any characters points on enlightenment can cooperate to contribute.
Diamond. Gold nugget. Grenade. Gattling gun. Fifteen pound cask of gunpowder. Ambrosia. Sailing ship (probably needs the upsize metamagic). Elephant tusk. Unicorn horn. Seriously, open ended dice and free retries is dangerous.

"We got an couple hours riding in the coach? Ok... +10ish for the hiding from sensing metas, +30ish for range, none of us are wearing ruby necklaces... need to roll two 20s and then a 5+ is... 1/5000 chance. Lets just try ten times for funsies." (I didn't do the actual meta cost magic). But a snot could claim five or ten tries every time the party had a spare quarter hour or something, probably cut down on the range in cities. Just stick focus on it and you can stop worrying about it.

Mystic gift: it depends on if having the appropriate occult skill applies or not. If you can apply the +5 for a major skill & more for legendary skill, then I wouldn't worry. It's not clear if they do or don't apply though. If they don't apply I'd suggest 5+(4x animus). You get the same +25 cap at animus 5 but start out at +9 instead of +5.

Edit: ok good clarification on the buy/craft/restock. That was a touch confusing since bits were spread around. Thanks. One last Q: For ordinary gear, on a crit success buying you get +1 quality but on a crit success crafting it says +1 quality or an artifact effect. I presume that's the sort of generic enhancements and not stuff like making a low quality pistol and getting a ray gun with -1 damage on a roll of 31?

[Talakeal]

Deadeye; my calculation was str 4 + deadeye 11 to the attribute cap of 15 + weapon damage 6. If it's instead supposed to be str 4 + weapon damage 6 + deadeye 5 to the attribute cap it has bad implications for things like the great blade that have a +9 damage bonus because you wouldn't be able to benefit from more than 6 strength. On the other hand if damage has a 10 strength cap unlike all the other s at 15 that needs a really big call out.

You apply traits in the most beneficial order.

So deadeye increases effective strength and is capped at ten. So with 4 strenth you would max out at 10 with six deadeye.
Then you apply magic / racial modifiers to strength, which are capped at 15.
Then you apply weapon modifiers, which have no cap.


Assume 5 paces of range. +5=50, +10=500, +15=5000... ok I'm seeing the limits now. But glyph & ritual can functionally shift the casting number down by 5 and adds the caster's concentration to their mana. In addition anyone who spends any characters points on enlightenment can cooperate to contribute.
Diamond. Gold nugget. Grenade. Gattling gun. Fifteen pound cask of gunpowder. Ambrosia. Sailing ship (probably needs the upsize metamagic). Elephant tusk. Unicorn horn. Seriously, open ended dice and free retries is dangerous.

Ambrosia shouldn't be allowed as you can't summon potions. I guess I could make that more clear.
As for the rest, its of ordinary quality and doesn't increase your wealth score, so I don't think its too big a deal.
Your failures still cost mana, even with a staff of power, and you are still risking miscasting on a fumble.



Mystic gift: it depends on if having the appropriate occult skill applies or not. If you can apply the +5 for a major skill & more for legendary skill, then I wouldn't worry. It's not clear if they do or don't apply though. If they don't apply I'd suggest 5+(4x animus). You get the same +25 cap at animus 5 but start out at +9 instead of +5.

Currently its 5+5x animus and doesn't add proficiency, tools, or other traits. Its supposed to be about what an "average" mage of that tier would have; but I can see it struggling to compete with a true mage in a more high-powered environment.


One last Q: For ordinary gear, on a crit success buying you get +1 quality but on a crit success crafting it says +1 quality or an artifact effect. I presume that's the sort of generic enhancements and not stuff like making a low-quality pistol and getting a ray gun with -1 damage on a roll of 31?

Both aquisition and crafting work the same; on a critical success you either increase the quality by one or have a single innate artifact power.

Man, I can see the confusion though; innate is a proper term, referring to the powers that affect the receptacle itself found on page 241, not that it innately has an artifact power of any type. Maybe I should change that name to be less confusing...

[tyckspoon]

Thought: Advancement for magic users is fairly obvious. You get better at your casting rolls and acquire artifacts and traits that let you reduce the difficulty of metamagic adjustments, so as you advance the character you are able to use higher base difficulty spells and/or more reliably use metamagic adjustments.. and as we've seen in this thread so far that can result in some very impressive things.

So.. what's the non-magic user equivalent look like? What does a warrior or a skill-master get if they spend another 40 points into being better at their Thing? It doesn't seem like there is anything anywhere near so impactful available, even granted that the person spending limited resources to do their things is supposed to have a higher per-thing result than the person who can try again more readily.. so what does the skilled character or the physical fighter advance to while their magic buddy is learning how to consistently dispose of a roomful of enemies with a Balefire Piercing xmany Fireball? (Can you take Dweomer Master for Piercing? For an absolute specialist that would seem to be a pretty efficient way to just one to one make Your Thing more effective.)


..so, to circle this all the way around to the initial topic of discussion.. I would say that your system isn't meant to have blaster wizards. At least not in the sense of 'my default action is casting an attack spell.' Mana is too precious to spend it doing things that a weapon or a tossed grenade could cover - you get 7-10 mana per mission, depending on your Willpower, and a mission is expected to be composed of 4-6 important scenes/'acts', right? So you are spending between 1 and 2 spells per Act to influence things. I would expect most magic users would think that spending 1 mana to inflict 1 wound on 1 target would be a very poor use of resources compared to the.. everything.. else that mana could be doing; you wouldn't have any mages whose default combat action is 'I dunno, I guess I cast Magic Missile at him.' Not unless they either have a way to bypass the mana cost (and regardless of the in-world value or availability of them, Staff of Power seems to be a quite reasonable character build cost in order to mostly ignore the primary cost of a spell you intend to use regularly.. and at this point you aren't spending anything more than what an archer spends on a nice bow and some specialty ammo, so there's no reason this should be better than an archer shooting things) or you're so skilled at it that you regularly expect to crit pass your casting checks and get your mana back that way.

Possible less-cheaty way to cheat/stretch mana costs I was thinking about and wanted a clarification: How do Delay/Hang work with targeting? 3 stacks of Delay lasts indefinitely - can you set timing/activation triggers on this such that you can use downtime/leftover Mana to Delay a bunch of spells onto yourself, and then set them off later? I assume if you wanted something like 'I am going to set a bunch of (target foe, test for damage) spells on myself to trigger later when I need' you would have to use Hang instead; is there some reason this wouldn't work? Take any leftover mana you have after a Mission and dump it into some spells to be set off later so you can transfer your remaining Mana reserves into the next mission?

.. I realize the Calcify Magic spell can be used to the same result, and is probably the actual intended purpose of it - extract any unused Mana into Periapts, allowing you to carry it forward between recovery cycles. (And in-world, this may be an actual mechanical explanation for how 'archmages' always seem to have enough mana to do whatever they need - most of the time they don't need to expend everything they have, so they Calcify it into Periapts or Hang a variety of spells on themselves/their rings/wands/staves/assorted trinkets and accoutrements so they can call on their stockpiled power when they run into something they really have to go all out on.)

[Talakeal]

As for what non-spellcasters are supposed to do, that's a question as broad as the sky. If you want to narrow it down a bit, I can give you examples.


Can you take Dweomer Master for Piercing? For an absolute specialist that would seem to be a pretty efficient way to just one to one make Your Thing more effective.


Dweomer mastery can't take difficulty modifiers below +1. This in intentional, as piercing would otherwise become a "feat tax" imo.


..so, to circle this all the way around to the initial topic of discussion.. I would say that your system isn't meant to have blaster wizards. At least not in the sense of 'my default action is casting an attack spell.' Mana is too precious to spend it doing things that a weapon or a tossed grenade could cover - you get 7-10 mana per mission, depending on your Willpower, and a mission is expected to be composed of 4-6 important scenes/'acts', right? So you are spending between 1 and 2 spells per Act to influence things. I would expect most magic users would think that spending 1 mana to inflict 1 wound on 1 target would be a very poor use of resources compared to the.. everything.. else that mana could be doing; you wouldn't have any mages whose default combat action is 'I dunno, I guess I cast Magic Missile at him.' Not unless they either have a way to bypass the mana cost (and regardless of the in-world value or availability of them, Staff of Power seems to be a quite reasonable character build cost in order to mostly ignore the primary cost of a spell you intend to use regularly.. and at this point you aren't spending anything more than what an archer spends on a nice bow and some specialty ammo, so there's no reason this should be better than an archer shooting things) or you're so skilled at it that you regularly expect to crit pass your casting checks and get your mana back that way.

This is all correct IMO.

Although a properly built Evoker can be absolutely devastating if you really want to go all in on blasting.



Possible less-cheaty way to cheat/stretch mana costs I was thinking about and wanted a clarification: How do Delay/Hang work with targeting? 3 stacks of Delay lasts indefinitely - can you set timing/activation triggers on this such that you can use downtime/leftover Mana to Delay a bunch of spells onto yourself, and then set them off later? I assume if you wanted something like 'I am going to set a bunch of (target foe, test for damage) spells on myself to trigger later when I need' you would have to use Hang instead; is there some reason this wouldn't work? Take any leftover mana you have after a Mission and dump it into some spells to be set off later so you can transfer your remaining Mana reserves into the next mission?

.. I realize the Calcify Magic spell can be used to the same result, and is probably the actual intended purpose of it - extract any unused Mana into Periapts, allowing you to carry it forward between recovery cycles. (And in-world, this may be an actual mechanical explanation for how 'archmages' always seem to have enough mana to do whatever they need - most of the time they don't need to expend everything they have, so they Calcify it into Periapts or Hang a variety of spells on themselves/their rings/wands/staves/assorted trinkets and accoutrements so they can call on their stockpiled power when they run into something they really have to go all out on.)

This is all correct.

You can prep spells using hang / glyph / delay / contingency and play a semi-vancian mage if that is your fancy.

[Jakinbandw]

Still on road. Curious what the effects of the following enchantment would be:

Dim (illusion) - Partial, control, Bubble of Hope, Constant, Permanency, Empower x9.

Not sure if I can build a character able to cast it, but still curious if it would do what I think it would if cast during a time stop at the start of a campaign.

[tyckspoon]

Still on road. Curious what the effects of the following enchantment would be:

Dim (illusion) - Partial, control, Bubble of Hope, Constant, Permanency, Empower x9.

Not sure if I can build a character able to cast it, but still curious if it would do what I think it would if cast during a time stop at the start of a campaign.

Well, that would appear to be intended to make you nigh-impossible to notice (Dim - Resolve check to realize you're present, Empower stacks - increasing the difficulty to do so until it's effectively off the scale completely), but allow you to selectively disable the effect for people you want to interact with (Partial - you can exclude effects, Control - you can make changes to the decisions of ongoing spells so you can on the fly adjust who is 'Partially' excluded).. or possibly selectively disable it in general depending on if the spell is considered to effect everybody who might make a 'can notice you' test (eg, you can Partial Control to say 'my party can see me, the guard I am sneaking up on cannot) or if it's considered to only effect you, so you have to disable it on yourself and allow everybody/thing in the world to notice you for a bit. And then permanence is of course permanence. Seems.. straightforward enough?

Aside from trying to convince your hypothetical GM that sending it back in time with Constant does what you want it to, I guess, but that's going to be a constant theme of any spells that try to make use of retrocontinuity time travel effects.

Unrelated question for Talakeal: the Technomancy Shroud spell zaps things that 'touch you or strike you in close combat' with a fortitude test vs stun. Does this work offensively? Can an Unarmed combatant use this to add a save-vs-stun to all of their attacks?

[Talakeal]

Still on road. Curious what the effects of the following enchantment would be:

Dim (illusion) - Partial, control, Bubble of Hope, Constant, Permanency, Empower x9.

Not sure if I can build a character able to cast it, but still curious if it would do what I think it would if cast during a time stop at the start of a campaign.

The spell is base DC of100, requires 10 chakras, and 20 ambrosia. I imagine actually casting the spell would require more points worth of artifacts than most people have character points.

But if you did I would assume it would allow you to have been born with the power to not be noticed by anyone whom unless they make a DC 70 resolve test (less if you interact with them) or choose to let them notice you, even in a null zone.



Unrelated question for Talakeal: the Technomancy Shroud spell zaps things that 'touch you or strike you in close combat' with a fortitude test vs stun. Does this work offensively? Can an Unarmed combatant use this to add a save-vs-stun to all of their attacks?

No.

I think the touches you is there for the purposes of mounts or protracted grapples. Damn, this game has been in beta too long, I am getting to the point where I don't remember why I wrote some of the things the way I did.

[NichG]

Probably?.

Although what do you do if one side doesn't adhere to the agreement? Does one side void it and do what they agreed not to do? Or do you just say its irrevocable and start ejecting players from the game?


What do you do if a player says 'nuh uh, I totally hit' when they roll a miss, or 'nah, I don't die'? If someone at the table is unilaterally rejecting the game that the table agreed to play, you don't have a game anyhow. Resolve with OOC discussion, which might in the end involve only a subset of players playing on if someone refuses to actually abide by agreements.

If you have a no PVP rule and someone tries to initiate PVP, you don't run it but give their victim bonuses; you stop the game and say 'we agreed not to do that as a condition of play, so come up with something else to do. If you can't play this character without breaking that condition then you don't get to play this character at all, and they become an NPC. If you can't play any character while obeying that rule, you can't play.'



So you would be equally ok with both of these scenarios:

"My character is a greedy thief, but I am not going to steal from the rest of the party because I don't want to antagonize the other players."
"My character is a noble paladin, but I am going to kill the other players and take their stuff because I want phat lewtz."

Both of them are breaking character and strain the narrative, but the first one is done for the benefit of encouraging fun and fair play, while the latter is doing the opposite.


This example is not at all relevant to anything I've said or you've said so far. Neither is DMing, and the first example isn't even antagonistic. The relationship between players is not the same as DM/player, because the power dynamics are different in the latter case.

But even that aside, if a player said "I won't have my thief steal from other PCs" that isn't antagonistic. But if the player said "I won't have my thief steal from other PCs, except for PCs I think have an unfair amount of wealth compared to the rest of the group" it would be. Even if the second stabilizes the game or has some benefit, that does not make it not antagonistic.

'But I stole from a thief!', well, it's still theft.



Let's replace the hyperbolic "drops dead" with something more marginal, like a fear of spiders or an allergy to venom.

Assuming a normal campaign where spiders will sometimes appear, that's fine.

But, if I wasn't planning on having any spiders in the campaign, which, if any, of these three is antagonistic GMing:

A: Telling the player that the campaign won't feature spiders, and so it isn't an appropriate trait.
B: Assume that the player wouldn't take a trait they didn't want to not matter, so find a way to work some spiders in.
C: Tell the player the scenario and let them choose between A and B.

Does this change if instead of a weakness to spiders they took Favored Enemy: Spider?
Does this change if instead of running a game with no spiders, I was planning on running a game where spiders are the main antagonist?


B is antagonistic in the base scenario. If you already planned for spiders, keeping them is not antagonistic. If you are changing things in their favor rather than against their favor, it's not antagonistic.



So part of being impartial is running NPCs as completely lacking judgement?

Casting a DC 60 spell informs everyone, and then lets them choose what to do with that information.

Weak character with a lot of treasure = easy target high reward.
Strong character with a normal amount of treasure = hard target moderate reward.

Like, in bog standard D&D, if you told the PCs that there was one dungeon where a CR 1 monster was guarding a mountain of gold, and another dungeon where a CR 5 monster was guarding a sack of silver, of course they are going to go after the former!


Running NPCs as having metagame knowledge is not impartial. PCs don't get to know whether an enemy is CR 1 or 5, they have to figure out the threat from IC signs. Presumably a given character's actual CP budget is not directly visible.

To use the real world examples you seem to like, it's as if New York were suddenly nuked and your immediate thought was 'this was a boy scout who refined nuclear materials in his backyard breeder reactor' and not like 'foreign government or terrorist organization action'. Or if hearing machinegun fire you thought 'I bet it's a toddler, I should run over there and loot the valuable gun'.

If this were D&D and someone was throwing around Time Stops, even if it turns out they're some cheesed out Lv1 character that would actually make me less likely to seek a fight than if they're an established Lv19 wizard I'm aware of. Because they shouldn't be able to do that, so what else am I missing? And how would I even know they're Lv1? I'd certainly want to investigate them, sure. But immediately attacking would be dumb, because they don't make sense, and that's dangerous.

Not to mention that a Lv1 character in D&D casting 9th level spells is likely more dangerous than a Lv20 character, because that's deep into TO territory.



Likewise, if a starting PC party announces their presence to a CR 13 red dragon they plan to slay, it is going to roast them alive for their impudence. If a level 20 party did the same, the dragon is likely going to look for a way to escape or to cut a deal.


How does the dragon know the party level? If my evidence in D&D is 'I just saw them cast an 8th level spell' then that tells me they're likely at least Lv15. It could be a Lv1 wizard with a scroll and cheesed out Spellcraft, but how would I know that?

Playing it straight would mean you don't get to see the character sheet and you have to use evidence and active investigation to figure it out. Of course that's hard to do literally as a DM because of course you know what level the party is. But your job when acting as an NPC is to keep that knowledge compartmentalized.

[Talakeal]

This example is not at all relevant to anything I've said or you've said so far. Neither is DMing, and the first example isn't even antagonistic. The relationship between players is not the same as DM/player, because the power dynamics are different in the latter case.

But even that aside, if a player said "I won't have my thief steal from other PCs" that isn't antagonistic. But if the player said "I won't have my thief steal from other PCs, except for PCs I think have an unfair amount of wealth compared to the rest of the group" it would be. Even if the second stabilizes the game or has some benefit, that does not make it not antagonistic.

'But I stole from a thief!', well, it's still theft.

It is relevant.

It is bending the fiction for the sake of fun and party unity.

IMO, there is nothing wrong with putting your fingers on the scale a bit to encourage a game that is fun for everyone, and in games like D&D the entire CR and WBL system is kind of built around it, especially in "combat as sport" style games.

I have never heard of a player complaining that when level 3 PCs go dungeon crawling they encounter a CR 3 wyrmling but when 11th level PC do it they find a CR 11 young adult.

And, to bring it back around, it's a lot easier to look the other way when a starting character wants to have his grandfather's heirloom +1 sword and use it to fight bandits and become a folk hero even if the local lord really should confiscate it, but a bit harder when someone wants to start with (and actively use) The Two Ring, which is just like the One Ring but twice as powerful in every way and beyond even the ability of Aule to craft, because the later is going to be a heck of a lot more disruptive to both the narrative and game balance than the former.


B is antagonistic in the base scenario. If you already planned for spiders, keeping them is not antagonistic. If you are changing things in their favor rather than against their favor, it's not antagonistic.


Ok, because I was explicitly told upthread that being willing to change things in the players favor is antagonistic unless it is done unilaterally for all players in all circumstances.


I still don't think I agree though. As I said above, if I take a trait, merit or flaw, I expect it to come up. To me, a GM who doesn't alter their story to enable the PCs isn't doing their job.


Likewise, if someone selected favored enemy spider in a game with no spiders, or took weakness to venom in a game with tons of spiders, it feels antagonistic to me to just smile and nod without saying a word knowing that the player is tying their own noose.



Playing it straight would mean you don't get to see the character sheet and you have to use evidence and active investigation to figure it out. Of course that's hard to do literally as a DM because of course you know what level the party is. But your job when acting as an NPC is to keep that knowledge compartmentalized.
[/QUOTE]

Ok. Agreed. I wasn't assuming metagaming. Which is why the first thing I said was that they is investigate.

Assume the PCs know the monsters CR because one is orcs and the other are stone giants, and the dragon used legend lore or the like, or maybe he just knows them by reputation.

So, pretend I asked the question again, but assume all knowledge is gained in character. Does the answer change?


What do you do if a player says 'nuh uh, I totally hit' when they roll a miss, or 'nah, I don't die'? If someone at the table is unilaterally rejecting the game that the table agreed to play, you don't have a game anyhow. Resolve with OOC discussion, which might in the end involve only a subset of players playing on if someone refuses to actually abide by agreements.

I suppose so.

But most gentleman's agreements are phrased as absolutes in my experience.

Things like "The enemies won't use X broken spell if the PCs don't use X broken spell" are a lot more common than "Nobody can use X broken spell. Period."

The latter is really more of a house rule than a gentleman's agreement imo.

[Ameraaaaaa]

Hey i skimmed the thread and it seems that now we're just discussing the homebrew system.

So i have 2 questions.

1 how do you envision unarmed builds to work? What are the intended gameplay styles available to a martial artist type. What's the difference between a grappler, a fighter who specialises in a single technique/combat maneuver, and a all around tactical flexibility focused martial artist.

2ed is it possible to start the game with a tank. And if yes then at what cost.

[Talakeal]

1 how do you envision unarmed builds to work? What are the intended gameplay styles available to a martial artist type. What's the difference between a grappler, a fighter who specialises in a single technique/combat maneuver, and a all around tactical flexibility focused martial artist.

Unarmed characters typically take the Chi merit for the traditional martial artist roll, or take melee claws or brass knuckles for more of a brawler.

They are high accuracy low damage, and typically fish for criticals or enhance their attacks with poison.

There are lots of great close combat maneuvers; some of them such as grappling or strangling are really powerful and only available unarmed. You should take martial techniques in the maneuvers you like to use to develop a unique fighting style of your own.

You can carry a shield or parrying dagger in your off hand, dual wield brass knuckles or melee claws for extra accuracy, or leave your off hand open and slam people for extra damage.

Due to the way Chi works, most unarmed characters will also go unarmored. Unarmored characters make for great evasion tanks, dodging and tiring out big creatures who have trouble hitting them, but tend to suffer when surrounded or trapped.



2ed is it possible to start the game with a tank. And if yes then at what cost.

By tank, you mean literally? Like an armored combat vehicle?

That's a bit beyond the technology of most anyone in the world to produce, but there is a magical equivalent, the Juggernaut, in the Automaton section of the Bestiary. My party actually had one in the last campaign, although it didn't have weapons and was more of an APC than a tank.

As for the cost, you would either take it using the ally trait or purchase it as a vehicle / livestock. Although in both cases the final stat template and cost would be up to your Gamekeeper.

[Ameraaaaaa]

Unarmed characters typically take the Chi merit for the traditional martial artist roll, or take melee claws or brass knuckles for more of a brawler.

They are high accuracy low damage, and typically fish for criticals or enhance their attacks with poison.

There are lots of great close combat maneuvers; some of them such as grappling or strangling are really powerful and only available unarmed. You should take martial techniques in the maneuvers you like to use to develop a unique fighting style of your own.

You can carry a shield or parrying dagger in your off hand, dual wield brass knuckles or melee claws for extra accuracy, or leave your off hand open and slam people for extra damage.

Due to the way Chi works, most unarmed characters will also go unarmored. Unarmored characters make for great evasion tanks, dodging and tiring out big creatures who have trouble hitting them, but tend to suffer when surrounded or trapped.




By tank, you mean literally? Like an armored combat vehicle?

That's a bit beyond the technology of most anyone in the world to produce, but there is a magical equivalent, the Juggernaut, in the Automaton section of the Bestiary. My party actually had one in the last campaign, although it didn't have weapons and was more of an APC than a tank.

As for the cost, you would either take it using the ally trait or purchase it as a vehicle / livestock. Although in both cases the final stat template and cost would be up to your Gamekeeper.

Ok here's some follow up questions.

1 would it be possible to take on a bunch of weak mooks with a martial arts character assuming you are a high enough level character. Basically can you replicate bruce lee vs the karate school fight scene.

2 what are some possible maximum level builds for a martial artist and how would it be reflected in universe. Could a grappling master wrestle a dragon? Could a master in general take on a 1000 armed soldiers. Basically on a scale of real life to dragon ball before it got the z how powerful are the settings greatest martial artists.

3 what are the pros and cons of having a juggernaut.

[NichG]

It is relevant.

It is bending the fiction for the sake of fun and party unity.

IMO, there is nothing wrong with putting your fingers on the scale a bit to encourage a game that is fun for everyone, and in games like D&D the entire CR and WBL system is kind of built around it, especially in "combat as sport" style games.

I have never heard of a player complaining that when level 3 PCs go dungeon crawling they encounter a CR 3 wyrmling but when 11th level PC do it they find a CR 11 young adult.

And, to bring it back around, it's a lot easier to look the other way when a starting character wants to have his grandfather's heirloom +1 sword and use it to fight bandits and become a folk hero even if the local lord really should confiscate it, but a bit harder when someone wants to start with (and actively use) The Two Ring, which is just like the One Ring but twice as powerful in every way and beyond even the ability of Aule to craft, because the later is going to be a heck of a lot more disruptive to both the narrative and game balance than the former.


It's not antagonistic to say 'no, that item is inappropriate'. It's antagonistic to let them bring that into play as if it's okay, and then make the setting punish them for sake of game balance.

Don't use IC things to resolve OOC problems. You're writing the rules, you're reading the character sheets. Something inappropriate should not even get to the point where it sees play.

When you use IC things to resolve things like this, that's what comes off as being a jerk, trying to 'gotcha' players, etc. This is not to say 'you have to let them do it'! It's to say that you should prevent them from doing this by other means.

The ends do not justify the means.

Just because you identify a valid problem doesn't excuse using a bad method to resolve it.



Ok, because I was explicitly told upthread that being willing to change things in the players favor is antagonistic unless it is done unilaterally for all players in all circumstances.


To be specific, withholding a favor that others are granted because you don't like something that player is trying to do is antagonistic and unfair.

The 'because' is important as is the 'witholding'.

If you are willing to add spiders because one player took Favorite Enemy, it is only fair to e.g. add coins to NPC pockets for the person who is a sleight of hand specialist, add an ancient magical research subplot for the archaeologist, etc.

If you are willing to do this for one player but not another, it's unfair. If you specifically withhold this boon from one player in order to hinder their character or punish the player e.g. for violating the gentleman's agreement, it's antagonistic.

You can absolutely alter the game to enable the PCs. But that should be done to their benefit, more or less equally across all PCs, and should not be contingent on how you personally feel about their choices.



Assume the PCs know the monsters CR because one is orcs and the other are stone giants, and the dragon used legend lore or the like, or maybe he just knows them by reputation.

So, pretend I asked the question again, but assume all knowledge is gained in character. Does the answer change?


If you apply this consistently it's fine. Meaning that you don't work backwards from the conclusion you want to reach.

E.g. Legend Lore on a Mind Blanked Lv20 wizard and a Lv1 Cheesemaster both fail, so if that is the strategy the dragon uses, the dragon should attack both or attack neither. But if you then say 'well the dragon should know that so instead they ...' in one case but not the other, it's again unfair.

[Thrudd]

What is the benefit of having "gentleman's agreements" regarding use of rules instead of house rules, or in this case just amending the official rules so that the agreement is explicit and unquestionable? If there's a thing that should only be used in certain circumstances, then can't the rules say that explicitly?

If the desire is to have a system that accurately represents the fiction, but the fiction it represents makes for unfair gameplay, are we really sure we want the system to be that way? Maybe there are some spells and powers that just shouldn't exist in the fiction, because they are too hard to balance for gameplay purposes. Or maybe reconsider the idea of making some things NPC/Gamekeeper only. Knowing that this won't fly with your own particular players, you can keep the "gentleman's agreement", or even a house rule, that the Gamekeeper won't use those NPC-only powers in your own private games, but those NPC-only mechanics can remain in the rules for potential other groups who have no such qualms (assuming you consider it possible the system will see distribution some day).

[NichG]

What is the benefit of having "gentleman's agreements" regarding use of rules instead of house rules, or in this case just amending the official rules so that the agreement is explicit and unquestionable? If there's a thing that should only be used in certain circumstances, then can't the rules say that explicitly?

If the desire is to have a system that accurately represents the fiction, but the fiction it represents makes for unfair gameplay, are we really sure we want the system to be that way? Maybe there are some spells and powers that just shouldn't exist in the fiction, because they are too hard to balance for gameplay purposes. Or maybe reconsider the idea of making some things NPC/Gamekeeper only. Knowing that this won't fly with your own particular players, you can keep the "gentleman's agreement", or even a house rule, that the Gamekeeper won't use those NPC-only powers in your own private games, but those NPC-only mechanics can remain in the rules for potential other groups who have no such qualms (assuming you consider it possible the system will see distribution some day).

Gentleman's agreements can use more qualitative and subjective standards than written rules. They establish group norms. So forming them via active discussion and agreement is important, in a way that's less the case for hard mechanical statements. That's a useful thing and has it's place independent of system rules. But either way it's an OOC thing.

The kind of tit for tat construction (I won't use this if you don't) has more to do with establishing the negotiating power of the one proposing it than having to be the final form of such agreements. The neutral version is 'we can all agree that this being in play is worse for us than if it isn't, so let's all not use it'. I think it's important to recognize that one side of that 'if' is worse for everyone, rather than seeing it as e.g. 'the rule is that anyone gets to unilaterally choose that this becomes a thing'

[Jakinbandw]

The spell is base DC of100, requires 10 chakras, and 20 ambrosia. I imagine actually casting the spell would require more points worth of artifacts than most people have character points.

But if you did I would assume it would allow you to have been born with the power to not be noticed by anyone whom unless they make a DC 70 resolve test (less if you interact with them) or choose to let them notice you, even in a null zone.


Mostly what I thought, though the 20 ambrosia cost is unexpected. Can I get a reference page for the rule that makes it cost so much?

[Telok]

So deadeye increases effective strength and is capped at ten. So with 4 strenth you would max out at 10 with six deadeye.
Then you apply magic / racial modifiers to strength, which are capped at 15.
Then you apply weapon modifiers, which have no cap.

So deadeye diesn't work like prodigy & others with the 15 stat cap? Wait... reread, it is 10s... where was I getting 15s? Ah, ok, my bad. I was confusing prof+stat+prodigy which is 15 because of proficency. Nevermind.

Oh, wait. You can stack the wild strike maneuver. Can you stack some of the other maneuvers like the accuracy/damage tradeoffs?


I guess I could make that more clear.
As for the rest, its of ordinary quality and doesn't increase your wealth score, so I don't think its too big a deal.
Your failures still cost mana, even with a staff of power, and you are still risking miscasting on a fumble.

Ah, right right, the staff only refunds on success or if its a magic missile. Forgot. But I haven't seen any spell fumble rules? At least not that I recall at all. That did seem odd given that most other stuff had them.


Currently its 5+5x animus and doesn't add proficiency, tools, or other traits.

There it is. I missed the base 5. Possibly a misread on my part due to its position at the newline break. I'd still be tempted to let something stack on it. Chi perhaps?


Both aquisition and crafting work the same; on a critical success you either increase the quality by one or have a single innate artifact power.

Man, I can see the confusion though; innate is a proper term, referring to the powers that affect the receptacle itself found on page 241, not that it innately has an artifact power of any type. Maybe I should change that name to be less confusing...
It's not as bad as unmodified Dungeons the Dragoning with some of that community's homebrew. There's three frikkin different spells called "forsee".

Still, lets see. Stat 10 + skill 5 + heirloom tool 5. Poor quality on a gun is -1 damage & craft dc 10. Pistol is value 6ish. Technomancy cantrip + fabricate to fast build, funk a glyph to ease up on casting, subtle & Int it since craft skills are int based. So is that 2 actions, 2 mana, & 6 concentration to get a 75% chance at a -1 damage pistol with any innate artifact ability? And a possible point of destiny to up success rate to 87%? Do bullets have a value? Ah, probably 1 but... quality probably has the same effect as on the weapon. Mercurial bullets at -1 base damage should be very popular.

Generic crafting would be the same cradt skill roll during downtime + 6 concentration anyways. Or buying it has the same target numbers but costs 6 wealth and a complex (minutes/hours) instead of laborous (days/weeks) action and concentration, but you obvioualy have to be in a place with stuff to buy.

[Talakeal]

To be specific, withholding a favor that others are granted because you don't like something that player is trying to do is antagonistic and unfair.

The 'because' is important as is the 'witholding'.

If you are willing to add spiders because one player took Favorite Enemy, it is only fair to e.g. add coins to NPC pockets for the person who is a sleight of hand specialist, add an ancient magical research subplot for the archaeologist, etc.

If you are willing to do this for one player but not another, it's unfair. If you specifically withhold this boon from one player in order to hinder their character or punish the player e.g. for violating the gentleman's agreement, it's antagonistic.

You can absolutely alter the game to enable the PCs. But that should be done to their benefit, more or less equally across all PCs, and should not be contingent on how you personally feel about their choices.


Again, the initial discussion was about scale; in this particular case it is unfair to ignore one or two small magic items but not dozens of powerful artifacts.

I do agree that the GM should try and work everyone's character build into the plot, but some things are much bigger asks than others. It is easier to have a New York based game have scenes in China town than in actual China, and its easier to put in some undead for the undead hunter to slay than it is to put in Asmodeus for the guy who wants to destroy all of Hell. Likewise, if one of the players wants something that is morally repugnant or otherwise just not fun for the rest of the table, I don't think the GM should be obliged to put it in just because they did so for one of the other players.


Oh, wait. You can stack the wild strike maneuver. Can you stack some of the other maneuvers like the accuracy/damage tradeoffs?


If you can stack a maneuver, the maneuver will explicitly say so. The accuracy/damage ones do not stack IIRC.


Ok here's some follow up questions.

1 would it be possible to take on a bunch of weak mooks with a martial arts character assuming you are a high enough level character. Basically can you replicate bruce lee vs the karate school fight scene.

2 what are some possible maximum level builds for a martial artist and how would it be reflected in universe. Could a grappling master wrestle a dragon? Could a master in general take on a 1000 armed soldiers. Basically on a scale of real life to dragon ball before it got the z how powerful are the settings greatest martial artists.

3 what are the pros and cons of having a juggernaut.

It is absolutely possible to take on a bunch of weak mooks, although unlike martial arts movies they don't always wait their turn to fight you one at a time, and if you get surrounded an unarmored character can be in trouble, so it depends a lot on the layout and terrain and just how weak the mooks are.


A lot of it depends on the build and what magic items you have. A properly built character can out wrestle an ordinary dragon, although an ancient wyrm is going to be beyond most any human sized creature's abilities to restrain. Likewise, a thousand armed soldiers is doable with the right artifacts, but somewhere between a few dozen and a hundred is more likely.


A juggernaut is relentless and nearly indestructible, although it can potentially get trapped in the wrong kind of terrain. Its a very powerful tool / creature, and the biggest drawback will be in how much the Gamekeeper charges you for it and in repairing it if it does get destroyed.


It's not antagonistic to say 'no, that item is inappropriate'. It's antagonistic to let them bring that into play as if it's okay, and then make the setting punish them for sake of game balance.

Don't use IC things to resolve OOC problems. You're writing the rules, you're reading the character sheets. Something inappropriate should not even get to the point where it sees play.

When you use IC things to resolve things like this, that's what comes off as being a jerk, trying to 'gotcha' players, etc. This is not to say 'you have to let them do it'! It's to say that you should prevent them from doing this by other means.

The ends do not justify the means.

Just because you identify a valid problem doesn't excuse using a bad method to resolve it.

I think you are putting the cart before the horse here.

I am saying "don't use this build" BECAUSE "the setting will react violently to it." I am NOT saying "I don't like you build, so I will make the setting react violently as passive aggressive punishment".

The setting, as written, is one where a bunch of sociopathic power-hungry despots are trying to find any advantage they can to break the stalemate and take over the world.
The character presented starts every adventure off by casting multiple spells that can be sensed across the planet.
The character has more wealth than any three other people in the world.
The character, while very powerful, has some glaring weaknesses that a resourceful opponent can easily exploit.


If you apply this consistently it's fine. Meaning that you don't work backwards from the conclusion you want to reach.

E.g. Legend Lore on a Mind Blanked Lv20 wizard and a Lv1 Cheesemaster both fail, so if that is the strategy the dragon uses, the dragon should attack both or attack neither. But if you then say 'well the dragon should know that so instead they ...' in one case but not the other, it's again unfair.

I don't disagree.


Mostly what I thought, though the 20 ambrosia cost is unexpected. Can I get a reference page for the rule that makes it cost so much?

Oh, good call. In the current version it would be only a single ambrosia.

It appears I am thinking of an older version of the rules rattling around in my head (as I said, its been in playtest for almost ten years now, I got to get this done).

Permanency used to be 1 mana per 5 casting DC, I changed it to just a flat 1 mana because I felt that was unnecessary with stacking mana costs.


But I haven't seen any spell fumble rules? At least not that I recall at all. That did seem odd given that most other stuff had them.

Miscasts are described on p150 and p273.

Typically, they involve the spell having the opposite effect three times over.

[Mechalich]

I am saying "don't use this build" BECAUSE "the setting will react violently to it." I am NOT saying "I don't like you build, so I will make the setting react violently as passive aggressive punishment".

The setting, as written, is one where a bunch of sociopathic power-hungry despots are trying to find any advantage they can to break the stalemate and take over the world.
The character presented starts every adventure off by casting multiple spells that can be sensed across the planet.
The character has more wealth than any three other people in the world.
The character, while very powerful, has some glaring weaknesses that a resourceful opponent can easily exploit.

Using setting constraints as rules is generally bad design. Theoretically optimized builds are, at their most useful, a test of constraints. When presented with a build that theoretically destroys a setting (which happens in this case, because even if one of the socio-pathic god kings ganks the PC, they have then acquired something resembling the PC's powers and thereby break the stalemate and conquer everything), the appropriate response is to modify the rules such that said TO build is explicitly impossible. In the most basic case here, a character having more wealth than any other three extremely wealthy people is a bad thing and suggests something has gone wrong with the wealth rules.

TTRPGs are, generally, highly vulnerable to exploits because they are unleashed in published form with limited testing and it is broadly impossible for the creators to adjust after the fact (errata being an extremely limited form of adjustment). By contrast, large scale video games discover unanticipated exploits all the time and then they patch them.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I'm reminded of what I read about MM3 and GURPS--they deal with things like this by requiring active GM approval for all builds. And I think that's kinda necessary in a build-a-bear (as opposed to class/level-based) system--the number of "abusive" combinations is, well, combinatorial. Fixing all of them without severely constraining non-abusive builds is difficult where it's even possible. So you pay for build-time flexibility with needing way more GM involvement in character creation. On the flip side, a class/level-based system, simply because the number of combinations is so much smaller, can go a lot further with only white-listing sources of content (as opposed to white-listing actual assembled characters piece by piece). Tradeoffs, it's tradeoffs all the way down.

[Ameraaaaaa]

It is absolutely possible to take on a bunch of weak mooks, although unlike martial arts movies they don't always wait their turn to fight you one at a time, and if you get surrounded an unarmored character can be in trouble, so it depends a lot on the layout and terrain and just how weak the mooks are.


A lot of it depends on the build and what magic items you have. A properly built character can out wrestle an ordinary dragon, although an ancient wyrm is going to be beyond most any human sized creature's abilities to restrain. Likewise, a thousand armed soldiers is doable with the right artifacts, but somewhere between a few dozen and a hundred is more likely.


A juggernaut is relentless and nearly indestructible, although it can potentially get trapped in the wrong kind of terrain. Its a very powerful tool / creature, and the biggest drawback will be in how much the Gamekeeper charges you for it and in repairing it if it does get destroyed.



So now i know my 2 character ideas would work. Very nice.

[Satinavian]

I'm reminded of what I read about MM3 and GURPS--they deal with things like this by requiring active GM approval for all builds. And I think that's kinda necessary in a build-a-bear (as opposed to class/level-based) system--the number of "abusive" combinations is, well, combinatorial. Fixing all of them without severely constraining non-abusive builds is difficult where it's even possible. So you pay for build-time flexibility with needing way more GM involvement in character creation. On the flip side, a class/level-based system, simply because the number of combinations is so much smaller, can go a lot further with only white-listing sources of content (as opposed to white-listing actual assembled characters piece by piece). Tradeoffs, it's tradeoffs all the way down.
I don't really agree here.

I have mostly played point buy games for the majority of the last three decades and the number of characters i have seen rejected for being overpowered is 1. And because point buy character creation in build-a-bear systems tend to take more time and involve more decision making, people tend to do it alone at home and without much GM-involvement. And still nearly always produce something that fits the agreed campaign.

Sure, it is harder to balance your system if players can build whatever. But that does not automatically translate into GM involvement in the creation process. Or any need for it.

[Telok]

Using setting constraints as rules is generally bad design. ... the appropriate response is to modify the rules such that said TO build is explicitly impossible.


I'm going to have to disagree a bit here. No game system has ever really gotten rid of most of their "broken" combos, theory op or trap option, and rely on settings & GMs to police it. Some games are more honest about it, by including advice about problematic characters. But no system is free of it.

Warhammer lets you make a Tzeench worshipping apprentice wizard and a haemophiliac beggar. D&Ds give you various things from dart specialist half-ogre fighters to winged tiefling coffee-locks seeing in magic darkness and all-stats-14 monks who don't take stat boosts. Shadowrun lets you have a troll in riot armor dual wielding grenade launchers and chromed mages with low willpower. Champions lets you build a character that ultra strong unavoidable killing attacks and speedsters without enough endurance or stun to last a single round.

Every system has them. The TO characters that don't work in actual play because they rely on whiteroom scenarios. The gimps that fall over in a stiff breeze or are just too weak in real games.... come to think of it Mork Borg might not, but that's vanta black death metal comedy so it might not count... or maybe Lasers & Feelings but that's one-page-rpg rules light and only has one stat anyway.

Believe it or not no game system is ever truely disassociated from it's setting, not even Gurps. And the response "yeah it technically works but isn't viable in actual play, see p.XX for why" is something that really does happen in all those systems. Is it better to have some stop signs and good advice for both player & GM about the edge cases? Yes, absolutely. But you won't ever get a finished game by insisting it close every single possible exploit.

So do these rules let you take 75 points of relic and let the character be a dottering sickly incompetent with a giant neon sign saying "kill & rob me"? Yeah. They also let you make a character with roll 2 take best +27 business checks and 50+ wealth. Or a character that will 90% hit even hard targets and apply a crap ton of random debilitating effects. Or a character that starts with +18 to every magic skill in the game. Honestly you could do even worse things to the system if you build two complementary characters instead of trying to shoehorn untimate anything into one character, just like all the other games.

[Satinavian]

I'm going to have to disagree a bit here. No game system has ever really gotten rid of most of their "broken" combos, theory op or trap option, and rely on settings & GMs to police it. Some games are more honest about it, by including advice about problematic characters. But no system is free of it.Eh, balancing by setting often boils down to "solve out of game issues in game" and that hardly ever works and is generally a bad idea.

Sure, there are characters that have problems because of the setting. Shunned, persecuted, even killed on sight. Or dependent on material that is in limited supply. Or extremely vulnerable to common problems. Or many other things. But those setting constraints are never "because the character is too powerful", they are always because of intricancies of the setting. And often those usually don't apply everywhere or uniformly and can't be guaranteed to balance stuff.


Balance issues are handled best by having the table somewhat agree on a powerlevel for the campaign. Nothing else really works. If someone really wants to break a game, they will find some way to do so unless the system absurdly restrictive. But that does not mean a system writer should ignore balance. The more balanced the rules are, the easier it is to avoid issues and the more different build options can play neatly together in the same power range, allowing players more character variety.

[Mechalich]

Believe it or not no game system is ever truely disassociated from it's setting, not even Gurps. And the response "yeah it technically works but isn't viable in actual play, see p.XX for why" is something that really does happen in all those systems. Is it better to have some stop signs and good advice for both player & GM about the edge cases? Yes, absolutely. But you won't ever get a finished game by insisting it close every single possible exploit.

So do these rules let you take 75 points of relic and let the character be a dottering sickly incompetent with a giant neon sign saying "kill & rob me"? Yeah. They also let you make a character with roll 2 take best +27 business checks and 50+ wealth. Or a character that will 90% hit even hard targets and apply a crap ton of random debilitating effects. Or a character that starts with +18 to every magic skill in the game. Honestly you could do even worse things to the system if you build two complementary characters instead of trying to shoehorn untimate anything into one character, just like all the other games.

While every single possible exploit isn't possible to block, this system seems a long ways from that. Specifically, it seems like the kind of system that allows too much variability to potential characters. For example, stacking up various disadvantages to be a 'doddering sickly incompetent' for the purpose of accumulating points. The solution to that sort of thing is obvious: don't allow players to be doddering sickly incompetents. To use a D&D example: 3.5e has an optional rule for 'flaws' that give characters extra feats, and a great many TO builds are heavily dependent upon taking the maximum number of flaws for the purpose of gaining bonus feats necessary to make their build work. The simple solution to blocking those builds is to ban flaws, which are an optional subsystem that adds very little to the game.

At a very basic level, it sounds like this system needs to impose a cap on how much can be poured into individual traits during chargen, which is a common method of control in point-buy systems.

[Telok]

Specifically, it seems like the kind of system that allows too much variability to potential characters.

That's weird, because this system is actually much more restrictive in that aspect than any other "point buy" system I've seen. It's also more restrictive and less variable, although not quite as obviously or heavy handed, than several editions of D&D and some other class/level systems. It's way more restricted than any supers system I've played. This whole side tangent fuss comes from a TO build that may not even work and is unlikely to be useable in actual play.

Back on the actual original topic, I've stopped having any sympathy for Bob. You can make a perfectly functional blaster mage. Pick your weaknesses to offset the strengths and live with them. It's normal and expected to have your weaknesses come up on occasion. A character can have more limited blasting to beef up defenses or to go all in on being a glass cannon, plus the heavy armor option always exists. You can have a +25 in abjuration and a power staff of that school's magic missile, letting you 50% hit rate targets of dodge stat 20 (normal maximum) with an added +5 meta (range x10, change dmg type, blast etherial, 2x targets, go around cover, while running, add combat maneuver) for free. Pick up a soul gem and feel free to cast a circle of protection or an empowered protection for immunity to a damage type for the whole encounter.

[Vahnavoi]

The fundamental lunacy... sorry, differences in design philosophy boils down to idea of "class fantasy" or, rather, niche protection.

As in: there are games that posit that Melee ONLY, Ranged ONLY and/or Magic ONLY builds ought to all be viable and balanced against each other.

And then there are games that don't.

In my experience, the latter kind work better, and even many classic games such as D&D and its clones work better when played with the latter mindset. So I'll focus on detailing common features of such approach:

- everyone has at least some melee attack by default. Whether to use it is a choice based on situational usefulness, never simply a matter of character build.
- as a corollary, trying to play without using any melee attacks is at best self-imposed challenge, with no expectation that it will do as well as a similar character that uses melee attacks.
- ranged attack options are widely available to the point that any character who wants one has at least something. Lack of availability is at most a result of resource scarcity of renewable resources (such as money), never simply a matter a matter of character build.
- as a corollary, trying to play without using any ranged attacks is at best self-imposed challenge, with no expectation that it will do as well as a similar character that uses ranged attacks.
- magic is sharply limited in scope, availability or both. It is expected that a magic-user will regularly face situations where they have run out or have no applicable magic.
- as a corollary, trying to play using only magic is not a feasible player goal, period.
- fights over open ground are expected to open with ranged attack salvos. Game balance exists between ranged options, not between ranged options and melee options.
- either firing to or firing FROM melee is severely penalized. Of these two, I prefer the latter. Either way, the set-up is such that ranged attackers have to switch tactics when an enemy closes with them and/or their ally.
- moving while firing is slow or otherwise limited; point being that melee attackers dedicated on closing distance have a chance of doing so and that, again, ranged attackers have to switch tactics.
- variable terrain both within and between combat scenarios; not all fights are over open ground, some start at close enough quarters to offer no ranged attack opportunity.
- positioning matters.
- different attack modes target different defenses and the differences are big enough so that even a specialist benefits from switching attack modes between opponents.

So what does this mean for a "blaster wizard"?

- in a fight, you have limited number of magic attacks, but you also have limited number of targets against which magic is effective. So your primary specialty, and combat priority, is to use magic on those targets.
- after this comes using any remaining magic for supporting allies: healing, buffing, debuffing etc.
- "blasting" typically means "ranged magic attack", so once you're out of magic or out of allies, the enemy is likely already on you, so after magic resources ought to go to surviving melee.
- non-magic ranged option come last, with understanding that these are chiefly back-up for facing magic-resistant ranged attackers.

A "blaster wizard" trying to live "class fantasy" of being guy in pajamas who never fights in close quarters will be dead weight, or just dead, in a good chunk of actual play scenarios. A "blaster wizard" trying to live "class fantasy" of using offensive magic over and over is the equivalent of person who, in rock-paper-scissors, always picks rock, because rock is best, and will be dead weight, or just dead, in good chunk of actual play scenarios. These are allowed tactics, but they aren't good tactics, and they are not considered as balance points to adjust the game around.

[Talakeal]

So, I have to say, I do genuinely appreciate all the feedback on this thread. I think I have gotten more in the last month than I have in the previous ten years of play-test (atleast online).

As far as TO builds, I haven't ever played a complex RPG that didn't have a few infinite combos or game breaking exploits, certainly not the big names like D&D or WoD. They are however, pretty rare in actual play and normally require someone deliberately trying to break the game and often rely on rulings that require the GM to be complicit in it. While I would like to find and iron out as many as possible, its a much lower priority than more basic things that are likely to come up in every game.

Honestly, very few players try to actually break things in my play-tests. Maybe that's because they know I will just fix the broken rules so there isn't much point? But usually the worst I get are glass-cannon players who whine when something bad happens to their character due to their lack or defense or big dumb bricks who overshadow the rest of the group in combat and then get bored and make mischief outside of combat, but those aren't hugely disruptive.

The builds I am seeing have made me walk back some of the liberal rulings I have made on artifacts in more recent builds. Traditionally artifacts were limited to a maximum PL of 12, weren't cumulative, and required GM permission to take at character creation. I have relaxed a lot of those recently, but that seems to have been a mistake.

I still think there is a place in the game for gadgeteer characters, and they do have the big built in weakness of being seperated from their gear or people wanting to steal it; heck that's the plot of most Iron Man movies, but maybe the current game takes it a bit too far.


I really don't like the idea of the GM having to approve all characters. I have had far too many stupid GMs veto character aspects for stupid reasons. At the same time, people rarely actually try and play ridiculously one sided characters in actual play and it is seldom necessary.


IMO the best form of power gaming is party synergy, and most one-note optimized characters have glaring weaknesses, and I don't like the idea of the system holding your hand for you or empowering the GM to veto any character they like for any reason. I am always reminded of one of my favorite bits of rule-book sass from WW's Freak Legion.
I can't find the exact quote, but when it comes to steps for character building, step 8 is take all the powers you want, but also buy enough drawbacks and weaknesses to pay for them, step nine is take ten steps and watch your head fall off due to all the flaws you took, and then step ten is to go back to step one and make a more reasonable character now that you have gotten that out of your system.


Tom is a (very extreme) example of what I call a "brain the jar" build. Which is something I have long been aware of as being broken in my system, but which nobody has ever actually tried to play. In short, it involves taking really low physical stats and a bunch of flaws, using them to buy really good mental and magical abilities, and then somehow possessing someone else so that your actual body is irrelevant.
I don't want to flat out ban them, because someone might legitimately want to play "Professor X" or the like.
At the same time, I am not sure how practical they are in a real game, as all it takes is some anti-magic or someone ambushing you while you are in your natural state for you to have a really bad day, but I would still like to find a way to work out some of the bugs so that it is a more level play experience for everyone involved.



A "blaster wizard" trying to live "class fantasy" of being guy in pajamas who never fights in close quarters will be dead weight, or just dead, in a good chunk of actual play scenarios. A "blaster wizard" trying to live "class fantasy" of using offensive magic over and over is the equivalent of person who, in rock-paper-scissors, always picks rock, because rock is best, and will be dead weight, or just dead, in good chunk of actual play scenarios. These are allowed tactics, but they aren't good tactics, and they are not considered as balance points to adjust the game around.

Good old rock. Nothing beats rock.

[Jakinbandw]

So, I have to say, I do genuinely appreciate all the feedback on this thread. I think I have gotten more in the last month than I have in the previous ten years of play-test (atleast online).

As far as TO builds, I haven't ever played a complex RPG that didn't have a few infinite combos or game breaking exploits, certainly not the big names like D&D or WoD. They are however, pretty rare in actual play and normally require someone deliberately trying to break the game and often rely on rulings that require the GM to be complicit in it. While I would like to find and iron out as many as possible, its a much lower priority than more basic things that are likely to come up in every game.

Honestly, very few players try to actually break things in my play-tests. Maybe that's because they know I will just fix the broken rules so there isn't much point? But usually the worst I get are glass-cannon players who whine when something bad happens to their character due to their lack or defense or big dumb bricks who overshadow the rest of the group in combat and then get bored and make mischief outside of combat, but those aren't hugely disruptive.

The builds I am seeing have made me walk back some of the liberal rulings I have made on artifacts in more recent builds. Traditionally artifacts were limited to a maximum PL of 12, weren't cumulative, and required GM permission to take at character creation. I have relaxed a lot of those recently, but that seems to have been a mistake.

I still think there is a place in the game for gadgeteer characters, and they do have the big built in weakness of being seperated from their gear or people wanting to steal it; heck that's the plot of most Iron Man movies, but maybe the current game takes it a bit too far.


I really don't like the idea of the GM having to approve all characters. I have had far too many stupid GMs veto character aspects for stupid reasons. At the same time, people rarely actually try and play ridiculously one sided characters in actual play and it is seldom necessary.


IMO the best form of power gaming is party synergy, and most one-note optimized characters have glaring weaknesses, and I don't like the idea of the system holding your hand for you or empowering the GM to veto any character they like for any reason. I am always reminded of one of my favorite bits of rule-book sass from WW's Freak Legion.
I can't find the exact quote, but when it comes to steps for character building, step 8 is take all the powers you want, but also buy enough drawbacks and weaknesses to pay for them, step nine is take ten steps and watch your head fall off due to all the flaws you took, and then step ten is to go back to step one and make a more reasonable character now that you have gotten that out of your system.


Tom is a (very extreme) example of what I call a "brain the jar" build. Which is something I have long been aware of as being broken in my system, but which nobody has ever actually tried to play. In short, it involves taking really low physical stats and a bunch of flaws, using them to buy really good mental and magical abilities, and then somehow possessing someone else so that your actual body is irrelevant.
I don't want to flat out ban them, because someone might legitimately want to play "Professor X" or the like.
At the same time, I am not sure how practical they are in a real game, as all it takes is some anti-magic or someone ambushing you while you are in your natural state for you to have a really bad day, but I would still like to find a way to work out some of the bugs so that it is a more level play experience for everyone involved.

So I've been glancing at the book on my cell while I've been out here away from my computer. I even got on to my google sheets to see if my new ideas made sense. I'm pretty sure I could make a better version of Tom that would require fewer weird rulings. Also the new version doesn't use Cataract, because the rules make it clear that if I did pull that combo off, it would blow up the area. The current version casts version of bubble of hope that I listed above, with a DC of 50 to notice Tom (lowered from 65). It also spiritually fuses with a 5 times empowered Force of Nature. I'm honestly not sure what effect that has, as Fusion references attributes, but extra templates don't have attributes.

The interesting thing is that the current build only has 16 points of artifacts to start the game, and during the timestop they take with their first action, they drop that number down to 6.

Core trick to get high results is using a chaotic 10 artifact with rerolls to get a +20 to rolls (keeping initial results of 10 or higher). While the build isn't complete (I've got a few points left to balance one way or another) the basic way of getting these rerolls is having a staff of power for the 'glimpses' spell, and having a basic chronomancy check of at least +18. It also involved me realizing that I can craft Glyff wands with a a fairly low check, though my new reading of the rules only allows a single metamagic to be used this way. Finally, hanging a few spells with echo (I believe) that boost a roll help round things out.

All these rerolls are also useful, as another trick this character pulls is having decent skill results by buying huge numbers of the Inept trait. Not good for combat, or anything they need to react to. Excellent for any situation where they can take their time to get the result right.

Honestly, the most expensive part is the chakras a strong Dim Spell requires. If I cut that from the build, I'd be able to not even need to use the permanence spell, and not every one of my attributes would be a 1.

Finally, if i could afford it, I'd start with a wishing well, to give a narrative reason my Tom the second is so messed up.



I do want to state, that for the record, making PCs start without artifacts wouldn't prevent high op PCs from just crafting them the moment the game starts. It would make them a bit weaker during their first adventure, but wouldn't be a big deal if they were careful with their mana.

[Talakeal]

So I've been glancing at the book on my cell while I've been out here away from my computer. I even got on to my google sheets to see if my new ideas made sense. I'm pretty sure I could make a better version of Tom that would require fewer weird rulings. Also the new version doesn't use Cataract, because the rules make it clear that if I did pull that combo off, it would blow up the area. The current version casts version of bubble of hope that I listed above, with a DC of 50 to notice Tom (lowered from 65). It also spiritually fuses with a 5 times empowered Force of Nature. I'm honestly not sure what effect that has, as Fusion references attributes, but extra templates don't have attributes.

The interesting thing is that the current build only has 16 points of artifacts to start the game, and during the time-stop they take with their first action, they drop that number down to 6.

Core trick to get high results is using a chaotic 10 artifact with rerolls to get a +20 to rolls (keeping initial results of 10 or higher). While the build isn't complete (I've got a few points left to balance one way or another) the basic way of getting these rerolls is having a staff of power for the 'glimpses' spell, and having a basic chronomancy check of at least +18. It also involved me realizing that I can craft Glyph wands with a a fairly low check, though my new reading of the rules only allows a single meta-magic to be used this way. Finally, hanging a few spells with echo (I believe) that boost a roll help round things out.

All these rerolls are also useful, as another trick this character pulls is having decent skill results by buying huge numbers of the Inept trait. Not good for combat, or anything they need to react to. Excellent for any situation where they can take their time to get the result right.

Honestly, the most expensive part is the chakras a strong Dim Spell requires. If I cut that from the build, I'd be able to not even need to use the permanence spell, and not every one of my attributes would be a 1.

Finally, if i could afford it, I'd start with a wishing well, to give a narrative reason my Tom the second is so messed up.

I look forward to seeing what you come up with!

An extras attributes can usually be assumed to be equal to their "bad" score +/- and racial modifiers they might have.

Glimpses + inept is a great combo!


I do want to state, that for the record, making PCs start without artifacts wouldn't prevent high op PCs from just crafting them the moment the game starts. It would make them a bit weaker during their first adventure, but wouldn't be a big deal if they were careful with their mana.

That's true. Although you do need unspent character points to create the ambrosia. I suppose you could simply have leftover CP from creation, although I am not sure if that is technically RAW legal.

I actually think end-game builds are probably more interesting than starting character builds when it comes to TO shenanigans.

[Jakinbandw]

Glimpses + inept is a great combo!

Thanks!


I actually think end-game builds are probably more interesting than starting character builds when it comes to TO shenanigans.

Let's see if I can impress you :tongue:


I look forward to seeing what you come up with!

Well, I think I have a decent TO animus 1 brain in a jar build here. It has some weaknesses, but I've done my best to mitigate them, and can think of a few character options to make them work better. It's also down to only needing 8(ish) points of artifacts, down from the 40+ from before.

Firstly, I want to talk about things I cut due to rethinking their legality:

Fetishes for casting. 32 points of my original build used fetishes for rerolls. On a closer examination of the rules, I decided that might not be legal, as no cantrips improve spellcasting, and fetishes work like cantrips
Staff of Power (Cataract). With enough skill, this allows a caster to make any illusion real. Even if it's just illusions of gold, I feel that this would violate the 'no infinites' rule, so it's been cut.
Genesis as a character building option. This is fairly contradictory on second glance as it says both: 'The being has whatever attributes, traits, and skills the caster and the Gamekeeper can agree are most appropriate, up to a maximum of 100 character points, and has an animus of one.' as well as 'The caster can choose to give it proficiency in skills or languages as normal, and any appropriate traits save legendary skill, but has no experience in using them and will be unfamiliar with precision tasks until it has adjusted to its new existence.' My initial read was that that the GM and Player built a base template for the character (say it had wings, the two would give it that trait), and then after, the player would spend any remaining points as character creation. Since I'm not sure, I'm leaving that reading off the list right now, and assuming that genesis gives a very basic character with at most 5s in each stat.
Wand Stacking. I feel I misread this, and while it allows the cool bow I designed earlier, don't feal that it could allow a wand of both 'Bubble of Hope' and 'Constant' for 24 points. One reason for this is that while they are different effects, the 'wand' is the power, not the metamagic inside it.

Overall, This change in reading does reduce the level of cheese a bit. Thankfully, I'm part mouse, and even ignoring all those questionable/bad readings, I've still come up with something that should be a pretty strong option.

Say hello to Liz



Agility 1
Charisma 1
Dexterity 1
Endurance 1
Intellegence 4
Perception 1
Strength 1
Willpower 1
Occult 15

Proficiencies:
Major Proficiency: Chronomancy, Primalism
Minor Proficiency: Divination, Wyrd

Merits:
Mutant (Occult) x5
Dweomer Master (Empower)

Heirloom (Grimoire)X5
Staff of Power (Glimpses)
Staff of Power (Dispell Magic)

Ka x4
10 mana
5 destiny
Disiplin: 12

Sanctum x4 + Pocket Dimension + Vault of iron

Quirks:
inept (All) x9 (9 ranks of inept in every skill other than Occult skills (which have none) and Intelligence skills (which have 6))

Flaws:
Ignorant
Absent Minded
Arthritic
Deep Sleeper
Dull Witted
Follower
Harsh Voice
Honest
Naive
Shy
Slow Metabolism
Tiny
Ugly
Deformity
Eerie
Chronic Injury (Major)

Remaining CP:
4


Plan: So the character casts the following 12 (!) spells in order. Each time before they cast, they use glimpses to make sure they can succeed, and if they don't, they don't spend the mana. Glimpses can only fail on a result of a 1, so for this I will assume that 1 in 20 times it would fail. In that case, the character spends a point of destiny to reroll the failure. With their 6 destiny, this works out to them having over 100 uses.

All casting is being done in their Sanctum, which is both a pocket dimension, and a Vault of Iron.


Time Stop - DC 40 : This stops time for a bit while the rest of the casting is done. This is to make sure the caster isn't interrupted when casting their really world shaking spells.
Instruct (Empower, Contingency, Echo) - DC 34: When I cast a spell other than Glympses this spell activates giving that roll a +4.
Reign of Chaos (Empower x4) - DC 36: This is cast as an area spell so Liz can walk into and out of it's area of effect to turn it on and off. This is just setup. From here on out rerolls become much more frequent as we fish for the +20 from the fortune dice.
Reign of Chaos (Empower x9, extend) - DC 61: This turns a 1 in 4 chance of getting a fortune dice to work to into a 1 in 2 chance. Again cast in an area.
Rune of Wand (Bubble of Hope) (Echox2) - DC 46: A big reason we don't start with as many artifacts on our person. This gives us 3 uses of the Bubble of hope metamagic.
Essence Filter (Empower x3) - DC 32: This gives us 4 points of ambrosia. Could have also taken a 4 point artifact and destroyed it instead. There is one that gives a free 1 point shift on every roll from inspiration which would be helpful, but honestly, I got tired of revising things, and it doesn't make a big difference.
Instruct (Empowered, Perminancy, Bubble of Hope) - DC 24: a Solid +4 to any skill check we make from here on out. Costs 2 of our 5 Chakras, and a point of ambrosia. We use the wand rune to get Bubble of Hope for free.
Genesis (Permancy, Link, Bubble of Hope) - DC 45: So one thing to do before casting all these spells is to do some art to make beautiful woman that our character wishes to be. With glimpses and inept, we can actually do a decent job. At least a result of 20+. Now we make that picture into a person. To be clear, this part of the build is purely for vanity, and has no mechanical benefit. But it's 1 character point, and 1 mana, so I did my best to squeeze it in.
Legendary Skill of Primalism (Empower x4, Flash, Contingency) - DC 51: We're about to cast our hardest spell, so this gives us a +5 to our check without needing to spend any chakras.
Force of Nature (Perminancy, Link, Empower x 10, Ritualx12) - DC 68: So This is a bit iffy, and this build is a lot easier if we tried to minmax this less. This creates a massive, (at least) size 20 monster, with Poor stats of 30, and proficiency in all skills. Now there is some GM interpretation here, but a given example of traits gained from locations include a Force of Nature, created on a nexus gaining the Elighted trait. Not sure what the rest would give it, if anything, but as it's a listed example, I'm going to assume it's a suggestion an unbiased GM would follow. This is a ritual cast, and probably ends the timestop? Either way, we can't take the next step until the time stop ends.
Fusion (Empower x2, Multi, control, Perminancy, Bubble of Hope) - DC 48: And now we merge all 3 characters into 1. We choose to look like the pretty person we made. We ditch all negative traits, and we boost all attributes up to 30, and gain proficiency in every skill. If we need to get into a fight, we can use control to transform into a giant monster, which just feels like a neat touch. It is unclear if Mutant still works. If it does, we are slightly more broken. If it doesn't we are slightly less. The case for it working is the text on the extras page that says race modifiers work like normal and can boost attributes. The case for it not working is that it says it can't raise a stat above 15. We can now draw on 4 mana from the nexus, to replenish our supplies.
Force of Nature (Link, Empower x 5, Extend x3) - DC 75: Finally, we're going to cast force of nature again. We are rolling with a +44 base (assuming mutant doesn't stack). This is to create a guardian to protect this location from any who would try to come dispel it. With bad stats of 20 and good ones of 30, this thing can go toe to toe with many major foes that I can find statblocks for.


Weaknesses
So as you say, each build has weaknesses. This one has at least 2: dispelling Liz, and dispelling Liz's sanctum. I've tried to mitigate these both. While her casting can be felt across the entire plane, she's not really on the plane itself when casting. Also only Sensitive people could pick it up even if she was. But let's say a 68 is enough to jump from the outside the world itself. Even if foes know where the plane is, they can't scry on it, or teleport to it, so they have to use information gathering spells to find the entrance and learn the password. It might be doable for some, but like a locked door, the hope is that if they can't see what's going on, they won't want to risk the place belongs to some major group. Finally, if someone does get in while Liz is gone, there is a decently strong guardian inside.

Second is people dispelling Liz herself. This is why she has a staff of power that lets her dispell. I'm betting that I can use it to counterspell my foes more often than they can try to dispell my enchantments. They dispell, Liz counters, they counter, then liz counters, and so on. For fighting most foes (say Khorne), Liz has a dodge so high that they can only hit on a dice result of 20 or better.

Lastly is time travel attacks. These are... Weird. You mention Khorne can attack before a character buffs up, but I'm not seeing how. There are two time travel spells, one that is an optional rule, so I think it's not on the table for discussion, the other only lets a character go back one round in time. Doing more than that requires permission from the GM and all players, and I'm not sure why Liz's player would give permission to allow her character to be ganked in the past. If I've missed something, let me know. Either way, the scry blocking, and the radical change in appearance help hide who liz used to be, but she doesn't have a good defense against time travel attacks.

Lore
Liz was born of an experiment by a mad mage deemed unworthy of life and thrown out in the trash. Still, she had some luck, and a lot of grit, and managed to survive and escape. She learned about magic, and trained hard, though her body and mind often failed her. In the end she did learn enough to get by, but things often went catastrophically wrong for her. Eventually she made a staff to allow her to check the future to see what the results of her actions would be. This slowed her down, but made her life livable, but she always dreamed of a better life. Slowly she assembled a plan, gathered a few of her friends, and together they found an entrance to an old hidden sanctum. Inside, she sat down to change her life, and become something more than just a failed experiment.


So, how would you rate this Brain in a Jar build? Any mistakes I made, or anything you would change?

[Talakeal]

So, how would you rate this Brain in a Jar build? Any mistakes I made, or anything you would change?

There are quite a few mistakes in the build, but I would say most of them are on my end, not yours :)

Thanks so much, you have pointed out a bunch of things that need fixing or clarification.

I will get back to you with specifics tomorrow!

[Jakinbandw]

I think I see one that I made. To use glimpses on a ritual, I need to set up a Contingency acceleration, right? That means I need to start the mess by drawing at least 2 mana from the nexus, so I have enough.

This build gets so much better after it can take its first downtime. It loses a couple skills, but it starts the next mission with stupid amounts of mana(40), concentration (42), and destiny (35).

Edit: probably should change the guardian to a thrall, selective, transfigurated simulacrum. At the same cost of 75, Liz can see through its eyes/control it from any distance, and it's immune to being Dispelled.

[Telok]

Ok, so I have some questions about particular steps & rolls go with some spells.

Lets say we want to play like a Vancian caster using Cauldron of Fury as the base (dc 20 area incantation for 1 wound + 1/empower). We'll assume attribures at 5s and a +15 casting mod.

The game's normal would be; Pay your mana and cast at d20+15 vs 20. Then anything in a 1 pace space within 5 paces takes a wound. No resist roll because it's an area spell, but an evade roll is allowed vs 25. If we stick reaching the dc ups to 25 and the range to 50. If instead we put 2 instances of enlarge it would be a dc 26 to cast a... 4 pace diameter area in range 5?

So say we want to prep it on...a bullet, because they're easy to hide and we want to sneak it in somewhere. If we go glyph + echos + cloak + ritual we get: dc 23 to cast and it's on the bullet, we can use it twice, it's at -5 to detect, we spend 1 mana and can spend 5 concentration to drop the casting dc to 18.

If we instead cast it as glyph + ritual + rune we'd be trying for dc 18 and could spend 1 concentration instead of 1 mana, or reduce to dc 17 (since we have +15 & roll a 1 is assumed failure) and pay 2 concentration. Set the rune trigger to "hut by the buller" and we end up with a bullet that applies Cauldron of Fury where it hits. Not sure if that would negate the possible evade roll since the spell by definition occurs at the target already.

Is that all correct?

[Jakinbandw]

Ok, so I have some questions about particular steps & rolls go with some spells.

Lets say we want to play like a Vancian caster using Cauldron of Fury as the base (dc 20 area incantation for 1 wound + 1/empower). We'll assume attribures at 5s and a +15 casting mod.

The game's normal would be; Pay your mana and cast at d20+15 vs 20. Then anything in a 1 pace space within 5 paces takes a wound. No resist roll because it's an area spell, but an evade roll is allowed vs 25. If we stick reaching the dc ups to 25 and the range to 50. If instead we put 2 instances of enlarge it would be a dc 26 to cast a... 4 pace diameter area in range 5?

So say we want to prep it on...a bullet, because they're easy to hide and we want to sneak it in somewhere. If we go glyph + echos + cloak + ritual we get: dc 23 to cast and it's on the bullet, we can use it twice, it's at -5 to detect, we spend 1 mana and can spend 5 concentration to drop the casting dc to 18.

If we instead cast it as glyph + ritual + rune we'd be trying for dc 18 and could spend 1 concentration instead of 1 mana, or reduce to dc 17 (since we have +15 & roll a 1 is assumed failure) and pay 2 concentration. Set the rune trigger to "hut by the buller" and we end up with a bullet that applies Cauldron of Fury where it hits. Not sure if that would negate the possible evade roll since the spell by definition occurs at the target already.

Is that all correct?

I don't think so. Glyph is used when creating an artifact with imbue, so you can't use ritual, or cast spells with it.

Instead you'd be looking at something like Hang, or Contingency. A wand would be useful here. To make this worthwhile, you really need some type of cheese to make it work better. A variant of Liz up above (with a +20 mod and a staff of glympses) could turn a single point of mana into 3 casting of a spell of her choice. This is useful, as Liz knows they will work and can do some nifty tricks.

[Telok]

I don't think so. Glyph is used when creating an artifact with imbue, so you can't use ritual, or cast spells with it.

Well that's the thing. It doesn't say it's only used with imbue, just that it can be. I can definitely see that reading and it does make the rune meta an odd variant if glyph does about the same. On the other hand if it's part of the imbue metamagic then there's no reason to extract it out into it's own entry.

That's why the question.

Edit: Tak, what's a normal range of easy/standard/tough to hit & to wound target numbers? It looks like 20:15 for unarmed people and 20:20 for most real combatants. Maybe 25:15 for animals, amd 15:25 for big stuff?

I, um... got curious... and that calculator thing got... improved.

[Talakeal]

Fetishes for casting. 32 points of my original build used fetishes for rerolls. On a closer examination of the rules, I decided that might not be legal, as no cantrips improve spellcasting, and fetishes work like cantrips.

I didn't even think of this, but this is correct. Casters get their enhancement from Ley Lines, not Cantrips. Of course, there probably should be an artifact to replicate a Ley Line.


Staff of Power (Cataract). With enough skill, this allows a caster to make any illusion real. Even if it's just illusions of gold, I feel that this would violate the 'no infinites' rule, so it's been cut.

Cataract replicates existing spells. Any spell that allows you to create gold (like Midas Touch or Creation) is going to have built in limitations, and Cataract will still have to abide by those limitations.

Genesis as a character building option. This is fairly contradictory on second glance as it says both: 'The being has whatever attributes, traits, and skills the caster and the Gamekeeper can agree are most appropriate, up to a maximum of 100 character points, and has an animus of one.' as well as 'The caster can choose to give it proficiency in skills or languages as normal, and any appropriate traits save legendary skill, but has no experience in using them and will be unfamiliar with precision tasks until it has adjusted to its new existence.' My initial read was that that the GM and Player built a base template for the character (say it had wings, the two would give it that trait), and then after, the player would spend any remaining points as character creation. Since I'm not sure, I'm leaving that reading off the list right now, and assuming that genesis gives a very basic character with at most 5s in each stat.

I can smooth out the wording.

Basically, the idea is that the GM and the player work together to create an appropriate profile for whatever fictional character you are bringing to life. Much like how the Character building forums for Mutants and Masterminds will work together to create what they feel are the most appropriate character sheets for various DC and Marvel characters.


Wand Stacking. I feel I misread this, and while it allows the cool bow I designed earlier, don't feal that it could allow a wand of both 'Bubble of Hope' and 'Constant' for 24 points. One reason for this is that while they are different effects, the 'wand' is the power, not the metamagic inside it.

That is a valid reading of it. I would personally probably let you anoint two different varieties of the same artifact, but I probably shouldn't allow it to go over the 12 power level cap.


Quirks:
inept (All) x9 (9 ranks of inept in every skill other than Occult skills (which have none) and Intelligence skills (which have 6))

I don't much see the point of this. I assume you are going to drop them when you transfer into the force of nature? But why have them in the first place? Also, you are going to be in trouble if you ever do have to make a defensive or reactive skill test in your un-buffed state for whatever reason.

Flaws:
Ignorant
Absent Minded
Arthritic
Deep Sleeper
Dull Witted
Follower
Harsh Voice
Honest
Naive
Shy
Slow Metabolism
Tiny
Ugly
Deformity
Eerie
Chronic Injury (Major)


This is pretty standard, although the GM is well within their rights to deny you character points for them as per page 168.

Plan: So the character casts the following 12 (!) spells in order. Each time before they cast, they use glimpses to make sure they can succeed, and if they don't, they don't spend the mana. Glimpses can only fail on a result of a 1, so for this I will assume that 1 in 20 times it would fail. In that case, the character spends a point of destiny to reroll the failure. With their 6 destiny, this works out to them having over 100 uses.

Ok, so this is the big flaw with the build. Glimpses is an information gathering spell, not a fate altering spell; it lets you see your future, not change it. It doesn't let you just keep casting it over and over again until you get the number you want. Although I suppose this is my fault for not actually specifying how declining to cast a spell interacts with trying again in the future.


All casting is being done in their Sanctum, which is both a pocket dimension, and a Vault of Iron.

This is a much better plan than the last one. I would say that it probably protects you from most people sensing what you are doing, although a hard-ass GM could still rule that the spells cast within can be sensed from the pocket dimension's entrance.


Instruct (Empower, Contingency, Echo) - DC 34: When I cast a spell other than Glimpses this spell activates giving that roll a +4.

Seems legit. Although each level of echo only gives it a single repetition.

Reign of Chaos (Empower x4) - DC 36: This is cast as an area spell so Liz can walk into and out of it's area of effect to turn it on and off. This is just setup. From here on out rerolls become much more frequent as we fish for the +20 from the fortune dice.

So here is my big mistake.

Remember how I said I couldn't figure out how you were getting the numbers you were getting on Tom?

Well, I showed the build to Bob, and we went over it together, and he eventually realized what I had done.

I had streamlined the description of Fortune so that it was much easier for math-phobic people to handle, but I hadn't actually taken into account what happens when you combine the new wording with Chaotic Tools or the similar effects.

Fortune isn't supposed to give you a +20, its supposed to give you a d20. Under normal circumstances this was mathematically identical, but when you start playing with fortune thresholds it makes a big, big, difference.


Genesis (Permancy, Link, Bubble of Hope) - DC 45: So one thing to do before casting all these spells is to do some art to make beautiful woman that our character wishes to be. With glimpses and inept, we can actually do a decent job. At least a result of 20+. Now we make that picture into a person. To be clear, this part of the build is purely for vanity, and has no mechanical benefit. But it's 1 character point, and 1 mana, so I did my best to squeeze it in.

Not really relevant for the build, but as a trans-humanist who suffers from dysphoria, I appreciate it nonetheless.


Legendary Skill of Primalism (Empower x4, Flash, Contingency) - DC 51: We're about to cast our hardest spell, so this gives us a +5 to our check without needing to spend any chakras.


Ok, but the timing on this might be difficult to pull off. You might have to throw alacrity on glimpses to get everything done in the time frame you have.


Force of Nature (Perminancy, Link, Empower x 10, Ritualx12) - DC 68: So This is a bit iffy, and this build is a lot easier if we tried to minmax this less. This creates a massive, (at least) size 20 monster, with Poor stats of 30, and proficiency in all skills. Now there is some GM interpretation here, but a given example of traits gained from locations include a Force of Nature, created on a nexus gaining the Elightened trait. Not sure what the rest would give it, if anything, but as it's a listed example, I'm going to assume it's a suggestion an unbiased GM would follow. This is a ritual cast, and probably ends the timestop? Either way, we can't take the next step until the time stop ends.

Yes, completing a ritual would end the time stop.

I would probably give it soulless and mystic gift blink for a vault of iron pocket dimension.

Fusion (Empower x2, Multi, control, Perminancy, Bubble of Hope) - DC 48: And now we merge all 3 characters into 1. We choose to look like the pretty person we made. We ditch all negative traits, and we boost all attributes up to 30, and gain proficiency in every skill. If we need to get into a fight, we can use control to transform into a giant monster, which just feels like a neat touch. It is unclear if Mutant still works. If it does, we are slightly more broken. If it doesn't we are slightly less. The case for it working is the text on the extras page that says race modifiers work like normal and can boost attributes. The case for it not working is that it says it can't raise a stat above 15. We can now draw on 4 mana from the nexus, to replenish our supplies.

Stats can never go above 15. But the problems with this go a bit deeper.

First, forces of nature are not living creatures and therefore not viable subjects for fusion.

Second, while the wording on empower is pretty clunky (likely do to me reworking extras without reworking the spell) the idea is that it only increases the scores it has, it doesn't give it new ones like mana, destiny, etc.

Third, merging yourself to an enchantment like that, even a permanent one, is super risky as you are always one dispel away from total existence failure. Likewise, when you add bind on to it, someone can apply the seize meta-magic to turn you into his or her slave resistance free.

Fourth, forces of nature can never use precision abilities. That's a lot of them, including spell-casting. Are you assuming you can fuse in such a way that you can keep their omni-proficiency but drop their limitation on precision actions?

[Second is people dispelling Liz herself. This is why she has a staff of power that lets her dispell. I'm betting that I can use it to counterspell my foes more often than they can try to dispell my enchantments. They dispell, Liz counters, they counter, then liz counters, and so on. For fighting most foes (say Khorne), Liz has a dodge so high that they can only hit on a dice result of 20 or better.


Do you delay every round or are you always using celerity?

Either way, being always ready to counter-spell puts you at a pretty big disadvantage.

Lastly is time travel attacks. These are... Weird. You mention Khorne can attack before a character buffs up, but I'm not seeing how. There are two time travel spells, one that is an optional rule, so I think it's not on the table for discussion, the other only lets a character go back one round in time. Doing more than that requires permission from the GM and all players, and I'm not sure why Liz's player would give permission to allow her character to be ganked in the past. If I've missed something, let me know. Either way, the scry blocking, and the radical change in appearance help hide who liz used to be, but she doesn't have a good defense against time travel attacks.

Time Travel is more or less a plot device for the GM, its not really a tactical spell and shouldn't be treated as such.

Casting all of your spells in a vault of iron does protect you from a lot of scry and die tactics, although if you are playing full on 5D wizard chess expect a lot of pre-cognition ambushes.

Turn back the clock doesn't quite say that it requires player permission. It says it shouldn't be allowed if the rest of the table isn't willing to put in the effort of playing the scene over. It doesn't actually say who is doing the allowing (I suppose the default would be the GM) and it is a meta-game concern, not an in character tactical one. I would never dream of denying a player the ability to use it to redo a fight they lost as a means of protecting an NPC, and vice versa I can't imagine a player trying to veto an NPC's use to protect their PC. Especially when we are dealing with TO omnicasters playing said 5D wizard chess.

In my last campaign one of the players was a dedicated chronomancer, and there were several times he did the empowered version to replay a losing fight or even a failed mission, and I allowed it because that is what the spell is for, I didn't veto it because the monsters would be happier that way. The only time I ever recall vetoing it is when we did a one on one wizard dual and Bob's mage lost after two hours and wanted to do it again, and I said no because the entire rest of the party is already bored out of their minds in spectator mode, and I don't want to keep this up all night for their sakes.



Lore
Liz was born of an experiment by a mad mage deemed unworthy of life and thrown out in the trash. Still, she had some luck, and a lot of grit, and managed to survive and escape. She learned about magic, and trained hard, though her body and mind often failed her. In the end she did learn enough to get by, but things often went catastrophically wrong for her. Eventually she made a staff to allow her to check the future to see what the results of her actions would be. This slowed her down, but made her life livable, but she always dreamed of a better life. Slowly she assembled a plan, gathered a few of her friends, and together they found an entrance to an old hidden sanctum. Inside, she sat down to change her life, and become something more than just a failed experiment.
[/SPOILER]

From an RP perspective, it seems really odd that someone with a 1 Endurance and a 1 Willpower would have the grit to survive and train themselves that hard, and that someone with a 4 intelligence would come up with such a convoluted plan. Likewise, once you merge with the force of nature, you aren't really you anymore, but rather a composite being, especially when the force of nature is vastly smarter and stronger-willed.

But that's not really something the GM should be getting involved in.

So, how would you rate this Brain in a Jar build? Any mistakes I made, or anything you would change?[/QUOTE]

So, I didn't crunch the numbers, but Bob did, and he says that even if everything works the way you want / hope it does, you still don't have enough mana or destiny to pull off the sequence you are describing. Its fully possible that he is the one making the math error here though, I did not double (or would that be triple?) check his work.

Still though, this is a very creative build that required some critical reading to pull off! Kudos!

Overall, thank you so much for doing this. You uncovered a lot of little mistakes and unclear rules in my book, and this is actually a very high quality form of feedback.


I think I see one that I made. To use glimpses on a ritual, I need to set up a Contingency acceleration, right? That means I need to start the mess by drawing at least 2 mana from the nexus, so I have enough.

I believe starting a complex task on the following round should qualify without acceleration.


Ok, so I have some questions about particular steps & rolls go with some spells.

Lets say we want to play like a Vancian caster using Cauldron of Fury as the base (dc 20 area incantation for 1 wound + 1/empower). We'll assume attribures at 5s and a +15 casting mod.

The game's normal would be; Pay your mana and cast at d20+15 vs 20. Then anything in a 1 pace space within 5 paces takes a wound. No resist roll because it's an area spell, but an evade roll is allowed vs 25. If we stick reaching the dc ups to 25 and the range to 50. If instead we put 2 instances of enlarge it would be a dc 26 to cast a... 4 pace diameter area in range 5?

So say we want to prep it on...a bullet, because they're easy to hide and we want to sneak it in somewhere. If we go glyph + echos + cloak + ritual we get: dc 23 to cast and it's on the bullet, we can use it twice, it's at -5 to detect, we spend 1 mana and can spend 5 concentration to drop the casting dc to 18.

If we instead cast it as glyph + ritual + rune we'd be trying for dc 18 and could spend 1 concentration instead of 1 mana, or reduce to dc 17 (since we have +15 & roll a 1 is assumed failure) and pay 2 concentration. Set the rune trigger to "hit by the bullet" and we end up with a bullet that applies Cauldron of Fury where it hits. Not sure if that would negate the possible evade roll since the spell by definition occurs at the target already.

Is that all correct?

No.

Cauldron of fury is not an area spell. You resist it with resolve, you do not evade it. Are you thinking fire blast?

Glyph requires being part of an artifact to function. As is, I don't see what it is actually doing here aside from giving you a free -5 to difficulty?

Aside from that, this does seem to be how a rune would function.


Well that's the thing. It doesn't say it's only used with imbue, just that it can be. I can definitely see that reading and it does make the rune meta an odd variant if glyph does about the same. On the other hand if it's part of the imbue metamagic then there's no reason to extract it out into it's own entry.

Glyph says it "is" used with imbue, not "can be" used with imbue.

I am not sure what attaching glyph would actually do without an artifact though, aside from just dropping the casting DC by 5 for nothing.


Edit: Tak, what's a normal range of easy/standard/tough to hit & to wound target numbers? It looks like 20:15 for unarmed people and 20:20 for most real combatants. Maybe 25:15 for animals, amd 15:25 for big stuff?

For your average enemy the DC to hit and damage is going to be ~22 in tier 1, ~24 in tier 2, ~26 in tier 3, ~28 in tier 4, and ~30 in tier 5.

Obviously, some foes will be weaker and some will be stronger, and some might be more defensively focused at the cost of offense (or vice versa) or easier to hit and harder to wound (or vice versa).

[Telok]

Cool. Thanks. Consider changing glyph to "must be". Also, what the heck does it do other than lowering dc & mana costs on imbue? Is it supposed to be a visible symbol or artifact-ness so you don't need to sense magic to ID it?

Should I assume the hit/wound dcs are even or will there more likely be 3-6 points of difference? Often the harder to hit stuff is easier to wound and the harder to wound is easier to hit. Not always, but more often than not.

[Talakeal]

Cool. Thanks. Consider changing glyph to "must be". Also, what the heck does it do other than lowering dc & mana costs on imbue? Is it supposed to be a visible symbol or artifact-ness so you don't need to sense magic to ID it?

Should I assume the hit/wound dcs are even or will there more likely be 3-6 points of difference? Often the harder to hit stuff is easier to wound and the harder to wound is easier to hit. Not always, but more often than not.

It makes a single use artifact.

The DCs will likely not be even, although they might well end up that way.

[Telok]

It makes a single use artifact.

The DCs will likely not be even, although they might well end up that way.

Ok, so. Glyph + imbue at dc 23 & 1 mana make a 1 use, 1 turn? act?, 4 point artifact. Rune at dc 23 & 1 mana puts a dc 20 spell into an object for later use, the casting is already successful so you just detail the activation trigger and... is setting the effect/target optional or required? Would using rune to put an illusion spell on a scroll (triggered when read) require a predetermined target area, image, or both? So runed bullets/arrows set to affect anyone hit (my bad on the area thing) should work?

Interesting one: the restoration enchant that adds +1 endurance is dc 20, reversed -5, also affects caster -5, fades at the start of the next turn -5, limited to resilience -5, rune on an arrow +3 activates on hit on the thing hit, empower x4 +20. Should be a dc 23, cast it with leftover mana at the end of a mission (I'm going to assume the caster gets the -5 resilience for a turn on hitting something with the arrow and not at the actual cast time), target tests resolve vs... 30? with a caster rolling d20+20 to cast or else has -5 resilience for a short time. Obviously a party tactic, not for solo.... wait... that's a long way around variable bane artifact enchant... maybe... mage blade would take a second mana on activation to set the bane and straight imbue+glyph would take a turn to prep... neh, it's likely a wash.

Reasonable for low end casters to put... 23-reversed-limited... dc 13 for -1 resilience... maybe something else... was there a resilience cantrip? Nice side gig for lower end npc casters to turn out lower end 1 use items though, using up spare mana.

Edit: remove late night posting math mistake.

[Jakinbandw]

I didn't even think of this, but this is correct. Casters get their enhancement from Ley Lines, not Cantrips. Of course, there probably should be an artifact to replicate a Ley Line.


I'll keep that in mind for my next build. I'll pretend it exists if I decide to use it.



Cataract replicates existing spells. Any spell that allows you to create gold (like Midas Touch or Creation) is going to have built in limitations, and Cataract will still have to abide by those limitations.


I don't feel this is clear right now. Cataract starts off saying that it can make an illusion real, and then goes on to state it can replicate spells. That sounded like two separate applications of the same spell to me. As I said though, I already dropped it.



I can smooth out the wording.

Basically, the idea is that the GM and the player work together to create an appropriate profile for whatever fictional character you are bringing to life. Much like how the Character building forums for Mutants and Masterminds will work together to create what they feel are the most appropriate character sheets for various DC and Marvel characters

I'd reword this for clarity. Also, couldn't the pc just write an in universe character sheet, or make a short story showcasing all the attributes they want, then cast Genesis? Feels like this is overly complicated.



That is a valid reading of it. I would personally probably let you anoint two different varieties of the same artifact, but I probably shouldn't allow it to go over the 12 power level cap.


I'd make that clear in the wording, and I might take advantage of this rule in a future build.



I don't much see the point of this. I assume you are going to drop them when you transfer into the force of nature? But why have them in the first place? Also, you are going to be in trouble if you ever do have to make a defensive or reactive skill test in your un-buffed state for whatever reason.


From an RP perspective, it seems really odd that someone with a 1 Endurance and a 1 Willpower would have the grit to survive and train themselves that hard, and that someone with a 4 intelligence would come up with such a convoluted plan. Likewise, once you merge with the force of nature, you aren't really you anymore, but rather a composite being, especially when the force of nature is vastly smarter and stronger-willed.

But that's not really something the GM should be getting involved in.

From an RP perspective, this is the reason she has inept so high. Sure her attributes are low, but she's still really highly educated, she just has issues from her origin holding her back.



This is pretty standard, although the GM is well within their rights to deny you character points for them as per page 168.

Sure, but this is a TO build. And these flaws do have a real chance of coming into play.


Ok, so this is the big flaw with the build. Glimpses is an information gathering spell, not a fate altering spell; it lets you see your future, not change it. It doesn't let you just keep casting it over and over again until you get the number you want. Although I suppose this is my fault for not actually specifying how declining to cast a spell interacts with trying again in the future.

Yeah, I'm going to put this fully on you here. As a fan of time loop stories it makes narrative sense to me a character could try over and over to get something right. From a rules perspective though it's even worse. Turn back the Clock reads 'Note that the Gamekeeper might have to restrict player knowledge if a chronomancer uses this spell to simply avoid paying the costs for information gathering spells and abilities. Likewise, the Gamekeeper chooses which dice rolls from the previous timeline stand.' Making it seem like that omission from glympses is intentional, and thus that dice are rerolled. I'm curious of the rules around this however, if I go to cast a spell and stop, is that roll saved forever? If not, how long is it saved for? I'd like to know before my next build.


This is a much better plan than the last one. I would say that it probably protects you from most people sensing what you are doing, although a hard-ass GM could still rule that the spells cast within can be sensed from the pocket dimension's entrance.

Thankfully I'm building assuming an average gm.

Seems legit. Although each level of echo only gives it a single repetition.

I only need it twice, so that's fine. Honestly, with the rules as I understood when I wrote this, that second RoC was hard to cast otherwise.


So here is my big mistake.

Remember how I said I couldn't figure out how you were getting the numbers you were getting on Tom?

Well, I showed the build to Bob, and we went over it together, and he eventually realized what I had done.

I had streamlined the description of Fortune so that it was much easier for math-phobic people to handle, but I hadn't actually taken into account what happens when you combine the new wording with Chaotic Tools or the similar effects.

Fortune isn't supposed to give you a +20, its supposed to give you a d20. Under normal circumstances this was mathematically identical, but when you start playing with fortune thresholds it makes a big, big, difference.


Are you going to revert it? I can build for it either way.


Not really relevant for the build, but as a trans-humanist who suffers from dysphoria, I appreciate it nonetheless.

No problem. I always like to squeeze in personality into my builds where possible.



Ok, but the timing on this might be difficult to pull off. You might have to throw alacrity on glimpses to get everything done in the time frame you have.


That's why it's a Contingency. It activates when I start casting a primalism spell, so if I undo the casting, it's refunded as well.


Yes, completing a ritual would end the time stop.

I would probably give it soulless and mystic gift blink for a vault of iron pocket dimension.

Hmm. Probably a bit negotiable, as it should also have enlightened, but it can't have both. Either way, good to know.


Stats can never go above 15. But the problems with this go a bit deeper.

First, forces of nature are not living creatures and therefore not viable subjects for fusion.

Second, while the wording on empower is pretty clunky (likely do to me reworking extras without reworking the spell) the idea is that it only increases the scores it has, it doesn't give it new ones like mana, destiny, etc.

Third, merging yourself to an enchantment like that, even a permanent one, is super risky as you are always one dispel away from total existence failure. Likewise, when you add bind on to it, someone can apply the seize meta-magic to turn you into his or her slave resistance free.

Fourth, forces of nature can never use precision abilities. That's a lot of them, including spell-casting. Are you assuming you can fuse in such a way that you can keep their omni-proficiency but drop their limitation on precision actions?

First, that's really not clear, and the wording of the spell implies otherwise "Force of nature grants the land a life of its own, allowing it to take direct action against nature's enemies by forming a vengeful avatar." Avatar is a trait living creatures can take, and it doesn't have any wording to say that it is undead or a construct. If it's not alive, that should be spelled out. Especially when the spell says it gives life.

Second, I know. Even if it did, we can't use them as the fusion spell only lets us chose traits, proficiencies, and set our attributes on a range.

Third: sure. It's why the character has a staff of dispell. Being Dispelled is dangerous to them.

Fourth: Fusion is very clear - it cant copy anything other than traits and proficiencies, and allow attributes to be set at specific ranges. Since that bit of rules text is none of those things, it can't be carried over even if we wanted to. It's why I didn't assume the new character had like 25 chakras with only 5 filled. It's not something that could carry over. I went hard RAW with this build.

Finally: The stats thing is confusing. While you say the maximum for a stat is 15, spirits have stats that go to 20. I would argue that lacking an explicit rule, that right now rules as written, the force of nature could have that 30 in their stats. Mainly because while every other ability and spell in the game lists a cap, force of nature doesn't, and the paragon rules you need to reference show that higher stats are possible. Maybe there is a general rule, but I didn't see it, and I was looking. Also, specific beats general and all that. This is an easy wording fix however, and any new builds will abide by it.



Do you delay every round or are you always using celerity?

Either way, being always ready to counter-spell puts you at a pretty big disadvantage.


Liz can non-verbally counterspell with a +39 mod, drop this to an effective 34 with needing to use celerity. Maybe it's foolish, but with 35 destiny, I feel like she'd be safe against characters that roll with a +25.


Time Travel is more or less a plot device for the GM, its not really a tactical spell and shouldn't be treated as such.

Casting all of your spells in a vault of iron does protect you from a lot of scry and die tactics, although if you are playing full on 5D wizard chess expect a lot of pre-cognition ambushes.

Turn back the clock doesn't quite say that it requires player permission. It says it shouldn't be allowed if the rest of the table isn't willing to put in the effort of playing the scene over. It doesn't actually say who is doing the allowing (I suppose the default would be the GM) and it is a meta-game concern, not an in character tactical one. I would never dream of denying a player the ability to use it to redo a fight they lost as a means of protecting an NPC, and vice versa I can't imagine a player trying to veto an NPC's use to protect their PC. Especially when we are dealing with TO omnicasters playing said 5D wizard chess.

In my last campaign one of the players was a dedicated chronomancer, and there were several times he did the empowered version to replay a losing fight or even a failed mission, and I allowed it because that is what the spell is for, I didn't veto it because the monsters would be happier that way. The only time I ever recall vetoing it is when we did a one on one wizard dual and Bob's mage lost after two hours and wanted to do it again, and I said no because the entire rest of the party is already bored out of their minds in spectator mode, and I don't want to keep this up all night for their sakes.


I understand how you run it at your table. When I do a TO build, I assume that stuff that needs table permission is off the table (so to speak). And it does explicitly state all players "Chronomancers should not be allowed to cast the empowered version of this spell unless all of the other players are willing to put forth the required effort."

As a meta strategy, I feel it would be a reasonable choice to ban time travel to protect a character from being killed before they got strong enough to defend themselves.


So, I didn't crunch the numbers, but Bob did, and he says that even if everything works the way you want / hope it does, you still don't have enough mana or destiny to pull off the sequence you are describing. Its fully possible that he is the one making the math error here though, I did not double (or would that be triple?) check his work.

Still though, this is a very creative build that required some critical reading to pull off! Kudos!

Overall, thank you so much for doing this. You uncovered a lot of little mistakes and unclear rules in my book, and this is actually a very high quality form of feedback.

Your welcome. Unless I'm missing some rule, I think he's wrong but it is possible. That said, I have read this pretty closely, and if there is a rule that would require me to spend more than 15 mana to cast 12-13 spells, and I missed it, you may need to work on clarity. This was a lot of fun to do, but it did take several hours of study.

In the end, I think I get your system enough I could build a character for it now, but with how spread out everything is, it's really hard. I'd like to see all the player stuff put closer together, and I'd love to see more tables like the trait list. It would make it easier to find spells, artifacts, and item mods.

Also for your next version, please include sample starter builds.


I believe starting a complex task on the following round should qualify without acceleration.

I personally disagree with that reading. If this is intended I'd like to see the wording changed to make it clear.



Okay, so some final thoughts before I fall asleep in this airport:
I understand that you and others want character building to be a skill in your game that players can master. I feel that is a trap. Let's say a new player builds a character next to a master player, and struggles because of it (say they wanted to play a blaster mage, but didn't realize all the downsides until the game started, and they regret their decisions). How are they supposed to catch up, when they only get 1 cp per adventure? Some builds can be fixed by an expert with help, but others are unfixable. Are players intended to make and retire multiple characters over the course of the game as they get better at building?

I admit I have a differant philosophy from you and others here. When I ran into a Newby trap option in my game (in my case it was players that wanted to spend every action attacking instead of utizing other tactical options) I changed combat to make it rewarding, and even optimal at times, because I want players to have freedom to play any character they can imagine.

Your system allows them to build any character, true, but it has many trap builds, which effectively make it impossible to play certain common archetypes. For me its more freeing for players to have every build and playstyle be viable, even if it means that expert players can't overshadow new ones.

That said, you clearly have fans of the way you go about it, so you obviously have an audience. And if I have money when you release your book, I'll buy it, even if just for inspiration. You have so many cool ideas that I love in this.

I'll post more later when I'm not half asleep.

[Talakeal]

I'll respond in detail later, depending on how in the weeds I want to get.

Please keep the TO characters coming! They really stress test the system and help me find weird relics of older versions that are still lurking around.


Something this discussion has me thinking about though, has anyone noticed that a lot of game designers, myself included, tend to start off with an illustrative sentence (or paragraph for a larger entry) that is vague, hyperbolic, and illustrative in tone, and then get to more specific and crunchy explanations further on?

Several of the miscommunications between Jak and I boil down to this, and I have seen it a lot in the past. My ongoing feud in the Lord of the Rings SBG boils down to something similar; giant spiders have a special rule "Because they can climb over anything, spiders ignore all obstacles" and winged creatures have a special rule "Because they can fly, winged creatures ignore all obstacles" and people insist that because the fluffy justification for ignoring obstacles is different, the mechanics of what ignoring obstacles means is fundamentally different.


Anyone know why so many game books are written this way and if there is any accepted way to read / write them to know where the line between illustrative and concrete text is?

[Jakinbandw]

I'll respond in detail later, depending on how in the weeds I want to get.

Please keep the TO characters coming! They really stress test the system and help me find weird relics of older versions that are still lurking around.


Something this discussion has me thinking about though, has anyone noticed that a lot of game designers, myself included, tend to start off with an illustrative sentence (or paragraph for a larger entry) that is vague, hyperbolic, and illustrative in tone, and then get to more specific and crunchy explanations further on?

Several of the miscommunications between Jak and I boil down to this, and I have seen it a lot in the past. My ongoing feud in the Lord of the Rings SBG boils down to something similar; giant spiders have a special rule "Because they can climb over anything, spiders ignore all obstacles" and winged creatures have a special rule "Because they can fly, winged creatures ignore all obstacles" and people insist that because the fluffy justification for ignoring obstacles is different, the mechanics of what ignoring obstacles means is fundamentally different.


Anyone know why so many game books are written this way and if there is any accepted way to read / write them to know where the line between illustrative and concrete text is?

For abilities I limit myself to a single line of fluff, and put it in italics. For example from my 'Sacred Hunter (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qleclHEl9MijqUmGcxsOdN7v0njvb4k0O0gSY7tq8Go/edit?usp=drivesdk)' class/feat group:

Restoration
Between your own rituals, and your divine patron, you undo a monster’s harm
As an action, spend a point of karma: A target not at their System Strain (SS) cap is healed of both enough physical wounds to put them below their physical wound limit and any curses with a DC to remove lower than 12 + your level. This causes them 1 SS.
During a long rest choose a target with a monster npc concept that is not natural for them: you may deal them a spirit wound to remove it from them, returning them to their normal form.

[NichG]

I tend to not use that writing structure reflexively, because when I do have a specific reason to write fluff I want it to be taken as seriously as when I write mechanics - e.g. I am including it with the expectation that players can reason about things they encounter in game as if it were true.

If I think I need to guide understanding without stating extra guarantees about the world, I'll hedge with phrases like 'some believe it to be' or 'one might say that' or just phrase it as text from an in-setting in-character document: "Who are you to say what is unreal?" - Mage Aloysius on Cataract, etc.

[Jakinbandw]

Okay, I'd like clarification on how fortune dice are supposed to work. So let's say I have 10 ranks of Chaos, and I roll a 7, and then my fortune dice is an 18. What should the result be?

[Telok]

For your average enemy the DC to hit and damage is going to be ~22 in tier 1, ~24 in tier 2, ~26 in tier 3, ~28 in tier 4, and ~30 in tier 5.

Obviously, some foes will be weaker and some will be stronger, and some might be more defensively focused at the cost of offense (or vice versa) or easier to hit and harder to wound (or vice versa)

TLDR: Easiest rule of thumb to max your damage per attack, figure out the target's difference between to hit & to wound dcs, then use whatever means to set your attack bonus & damage bonus to the same difference. If target is dc 24 to hit & dc 20 to wound then the difference is 4, you try to get your +attack to 4 over your +damage.

Well that was interesting. There's a simple basic build for weapon using that gives base +15 attack & damage before weapon type (weapon is heirloom 5) that comes in about 105 points before flaws. There's variations, like one with attack & damage fetishes does better right off the bat but I'd have questions about advancement with it before a real game. Any ways, the simulator has an option now to try adjusting through all combos +/-10 atk & -/+10 dmg versus given to hit & to wound targets.

At all tiers for all weapons having balanced atk/dmg ratios worked best against balanced hit/wound dcs. There's only an exception if you can get to +9/-9 on the first tier balanced and low to hit dc targets. That's coming from the +20 damage boost for crit hitting, and unarmed/claws/brass knuckles don't get an increase in damage for doing that. They might if it went to +12/-12 but I haven't checked. Against increasingly lopsided dodge/resil you just adjust in tandem with it, like a target with 26 to hit & 18 to wound you want to shift from +18 attack & +17 damage to +21 attack & +14 damage. This only looks at damage, not stuff like maiming a swordsman's leg to walk off and shoot him. Wounds per attack were strikingly consistent. If you get within +/-1 of the best number you're generally within 2% of max damage and that max damage holds true across all +/-5 from the balanced to hit & to wound dcs. If you adjust from +18/+17 vs 22/22 to +14/+21 vs 18/26 to +22/+13 vs 27/17 you get the exact same wounds per attack rate at each one.

Claws/knuckles at +19/+16 went from 1.08 wounds per attack on tier 1s to 0.5 on tier 5s. Braced 1-handers, dual 1-handers, bows, and 2-handers are the same dang thing. They vary from +19/+18 to +13/+24, but they all output the same damane of 1.12 on tier 1s to 0.59 on tier 5s. Guns are literally +1/+1 over bows, 1.15 to 0.67.

Conclusion: if you assume a character able to get to even attack/damage bonuses and modify them +/- by about 5-7 points then; unarmed may be better for maneuvers that rely on hitting but not wounding, everything else is basically the same on damage and you should pick weapons based on asthetics, ranged vs melee, and non-damage characteristics.

[gbaji]

Staying out of the specific weeds of character building in your game system, but...


I still don't think I agree though. As I said above, if I take a trait, merit or flaw, I expect it to come up. To me, a GM who doesn't alter their story to enable the PCs isn't doing their job.

Just philosphically, I somewhat disagree with this. It's not a hard disagreement, just a caution, specifically with the second part. While there's nothing wrong with a GM considering the characters wants/desires (and certainly actions) when deciding what the game world will do, I'm hesitant to "alter the story to enable the PCs". This becomes about what the player wants the story to be, which to me, is problematic (or at least can be).

If the players want to alter the game world, they do so by having their characters take actions which alter it. Done. I'm not going to rewrite a scenario because a PC has a specific flaw or ability or whatever. I write the game environment. The players write their characters. Then we see how they interact. And yes, this means that players could write in something that is an epic fail. Which, you know, actively discourages them from engaging in serious munchkinism. Which, to me, is a good thing.



But most gentleman's agreements are phrased as absolutes in my experience.

Things like "The enemies won't use X broken spell if the PCs don't use X broken spell" are a lot more common than "Nobody can use X broken spell. Period."

The latter is really more of a house rule than a gentleman's agreement imo.

Uh... I'm going to echo what someone else said earlier. Fix the broken rule!. If you are the game dev, then you fix the rules directly. If you're GMing an existing game, you create a houserule, get buyin from your players, and write it down or something.

My issue with "gentlemen's agreements" is that they are informal, don't have weight, are not really agreed on, and inevitably will create disagreements and conflicts. There's a mistake in assuming that this is less heavyhanded or soemething, or players will appreciate it. Over time, it will actually create the perception that the GM is being arbritrary or inconsistent. This will lead to player frustration, and IME will either result in angry arguments over things, or players just retreating and being afraid to ever even try something somewhat out of bounds (or hiding this from the GM, so as to avoid a ruling). All of which lead to a disfunctional and unhealthy table.


I'm reminded of what I read about MM3 and GURPS--they deal with things like this by requiring active GM approval for all builds. And I think that's kinda necessary in a build-a-bear (as opposed to class/level-based) system--the number of "abusive" combinations is, well, combinatorial. Fixing all of them without severely constraining non-abusive builds is difficult where it's even possible. So you pay for build-time flexibility with needing way more GM involvement in character creation. On the flip side, a class/level-based system, simply because the number of combinations is so much smaller, can go a lot further with only white-listing sources of content (as opposed to white-listing actual assembled characters piece by piece). Tradeoffs, it's tradeoffs all the way down.

Was gonig to comment on this. It seems as though this rule system really really needs a whole section on GM approval for builds, so as to regulate player and GM expectations. You can address power levels on build, GM setting powerlevels in a setting, etc. In the absense of that being spelled out in the rules themselves, you will get folks trying to min/max the rules to make OP characters. Slapping them down after the fact seems like a bad approach.

Setting standards and "expected norms" ahead of character build time would probably save a lot of trouble IMO.

I played a lot of Champions back in the day. That game absolutely had a number of ways to build absurdly powerful characters. The rules also specifically recognized this, and clearly stated that all builds were subject to GM approval, and directly recommended that GMs create their own expecations for their game. We regularly would set things like power point limits (total build and limits to actve powers) for different games. So we'd play "high power", or "low power", or even "henchmen/agent level" games. All worked. But you had to set up those standards ahead of time.

Communication is king here.


Honestly, very few players try to actually break things in my play-tests. Maybe that's because they know I will just fix the broken rules so there isn't much point?

Isn't that exactly what playtesting is for? The latter should not be a "punishment" to the players, but what they are precisely trying to do when playtesting.

When I'm testing code, I don't just do the things the devs expected me to do. That's not testing. I'm going to do all the crazy ridiculous things that some random person banging on a keyboard might try to do. Why on earth have the players restrict themselves to "expected stuff" if they are playtesting the game?


I really don't like the idea of the GM having to approve all characters. I have had far too many stupid GMs veto character aspects for stupid reasons. At the same time, people rarely actually try and play ridiculously one sided characters in actual play and it is seldom necessary.

I think that out of your desire to not be heavy handed, you may be making things worse. You're still applying GM veto, but being very passive aggressive about it. Basically the rule is "I'm not going to veto characters... until I do, and then it'll be via some nasty thing I have happen to your character in the game setting". That's still you vetoing character builds. Just not giving firm documented boundaries/rules for the players to follow so they know what sorts of things are allowed or not.

And given that most of these things are exploits that exist in the rules themselves, that's a double bad whammy for the players IMO. They think that according to the rules, what they are doing is legal. But the threshold between "I can play with no problems" and "I'm going to get my character whacked" is unclear. This leads back to what I talked about earlier. Some players will be angry and argumentative. Others will retreat into just meekly avoiding ever coming anywhere close to controversial so as to avoid backlash.

Which, again, is not healthy.

[Telok]

Okay, I'd like clarification on how fortune dice are supposed to work. So let's say I have 10 ranks of Chaos, and I roll a 7, and then my fortune dice is an 18. What should the result be?

As I understand it, because it works like Inept and Tak & I talked on that, your base die has a default "bad on 1' and 'good on 20'. Subsequent dice for bad effectively lose 'good on 20' and subsequent dice for good effectively lose 'bad on 1'.

So the way I've been testing it is with... say bad fortune 1-10 & good fortune 19-20, you roll d20+bonus, it's 8 = bad fortune. All subsequent fortune dice lose the good fortune on 19 & 20, you're now at bonus-20 and roll another die. If it comes up 19 you're at bonus-20+19 = bonus-1. If it was another 1-10 you go to bonus-40 and another roll.

So if you take the insane 9 relic point chaos tool for a 1-10 bad fortune and 11-20 good fortune:
1. First die 7 then 2nd die 18 = bonus-20+18
2. First die 18 then 2nd die 7 = bonus+20+7
3. Dice do 7, 7, 20 = bonus-40+20
4. Dice do 11,11,1 = bonus+40+1

Edit: as a fumble system it's pretty lenient since rational people won't go too nuts with Inept/Chaos tools, the last die always adds, most people want a 10-15 bonus at anything anyway, and actual fumble effects only kick in at target number-20.

[Talakeal]

Okay, I'd like clarification on how fortune dice are supposed to work. So let's say I have 10 ranks of Chaos, and I roll a 7, and then my fortune dice is an 18. What should the result be?

Negative eleven.

[Jakinbandw]

Negative eleven.

Two more questions then, same setup:

1) first 7, then 20, then 13
2) first 9, then 1, then 4

[Talakeal]

Two more questions then, same setup:

1) first 7, then 20, then 13
2) first 9, then 1, then 4

Assuming maximum chaotic?

-26 and 8 respectively.

[Jakinbandw]

Assuming maximum chaotic?

-26 and 8 respectively.

Took me a few seconds, but i get it now. I can see why you wanted to change it to be less confusing though. Should i go with that, or with the +/-20 version for my next build?

[Talakeal]

Took me a few seconds, but i get it now. I can see why you wanted to change it to be less confusing though. Should i go with that, or with the +/-20 version for my next build?

You can do whatever you want for your next build, but I am going to be reverting to the older text in the next revision of the rulebook :)



In short; how it is intended to work is that if you roll a natural 20, roll a fortune dice and add it to the result, if you roll a natural 1, roll a fortune dice and subtract it. If the fortune dice rolls a natural 20, roll another dice of the same type. There is no effect for a fortune dice rolling a natural 1.

It's not confusing IMO, but it does involve subtraction and negative numbers. I tried to rewrite the rule without subtraction, but it doesn't work in the case of increased thresholds.




Of course, in typical play, it is mathematically identical to simply roll a confirmation dice; if you roll a natural 20 roll again, if the second result would succeed, you get a critical, if it would fail, you get an ordinary success. Likewise, if you roll a natural 1, roll again, if the second result would also fail you fumble, if it would succeed you get an ordinary failure.

No extra math at all, but it breaks down if you fail on a 20, succeed on a 1, or have a modified threshold for fortune.

[Jakinbandw]

You can do whatever you want for your next build, but I am going to be reverting to the older text in the next revision of the rulebook :)



In short; how it is intended to work is that if you roll a natural 20, roll a fortune dice and add it to the result, if you roll a natural 1, roll a fortune dice and subtract it. If the fortune dice rolls a natural 20, roll another dice of the same type. There is no effect for a fortune dice rolling a natural 1.

It's not confusing IMO, but it does involve subtraction and negative numbers. I tried to rewrite the rule without subtraction, but it doesn't work in the case of increased thresholds.




Of course, in typical play, it is mathematically identical to simply roll a confirmation dice; if you roll a natural 20 roll again, if the second result would succeed, you get a critical, if it would fail, you get an ordinary success. Likewise, if you roll a natural 1, roll again, if the second result would also fail you fumble, if it would succeed you get an ordinary failure.

No extra math at all, but it breaks down if you fail on a 20, succeed on a 1, or have a modified threshold for fortune.

Good to know. The reason I called it confusing (or more accurately counter inutitive) is that high rolls are always good, except when you roll a fortune dice off a 1. Its a reveral of built expectations. Now im fine with it, and i think the people attracted to your game would probably be fine with it, but it is worth noting.

I think im going to take a break from builds until your next release. Im worried that ill forget a rule change without a proper referance.

[Telok]

Ok, tried for three extreme (though not full on TO) starter builds. Pretty sure the survivor one is a fail/trap by simply being bad at everything except not dying in standard combat.

Also, couldn't follow you guys fortune math at all. You using a different version from... no version numbers... Apr 28th download?

Don't recall, would it be reasonable in actual play to buy limited enlightenment up into full enlightenment?

Basic "all offense" starter character, this can actually swap melee/brawling/marksman around pretty openly

stats 5s (80 pt)
prime skills: melee, business (need to buy better armor eventually), resolve (vs no-armor magics)
secondary skills: marksman, acrobatic (vs area booms), fortitude (vs poisons & the remaining no-armor magics), open skill
prodigy x5 melee (5 pt), +melee damage trait x5 (5pt), evocation fetish (4 pt), necromancy fetish (4 pt), heirloom sword +5 (5 pt), martial move x2 precise shot & wide swing (2 pt)
subtotal: 105, colorblind (yellow orange), -5 performance skill, allergy (peanuts), deformity (heavy scarring)
note: consider adding another flaw to get ambidextrous

anima & chakra 1, wealth 10, concentration 5, mana 5, might 10, dodge 10(12) (to hit 20(22)), resilience 5(11) (to wound 15(21)), tenacity 5, vitality 5, destiny 5, speed 5, encumbrance 5, initiative 10

fighty:
melee attack = dex 5 + skill 5 + prodigy 5 + weapon bonus AND roll 2 take better
melee damage = str 5 + heirloom weapon 5 + trait 5 + weapon bonus AND roll 2 take better
precise shot = +2 damage for -2 attack
wide swing = +2 attack for -2 damage
(ranged attack is -2 from that and ranged damage is -10 from that)

dual wield axe (-2/+5 +hilt guard)(-2 attack +high armor penetration) & short jagged heirloom blade (+2/+10 +hilt guard) (+7 damage & low armor penetration) for +2 attack
jag = +17 attack & +20 damage
axe = +15 attack & +15 damage
low caliber pistol (+3/+2 +long range & ammo(6x2)) = +11 attack & +12 damage & range 10

medium armor & helmet (+4/+5 resilience, -4 acrobat, -4 athletic, -4 stealth, -5 alertness)
house, clothing, long pole with a hook at the end (generally useful around the house), stuff, personal effects (re: business, fortitude, resolve)

Function: against tier 1 targets of 22/22 to hit/to wound aim for a +19/+18 attack using wide swing for 99% hit & 8% crit hit yields 100% wounds per hit & 14% crit wounds & 1% mortal wounds, OK if we vary by +/-3 as those are within a 5% wound/attack rate. Can stack aim & maim with good results.

Advancement: limited mutation +str(damage) at 2:1, limited mutation +dex(melee) at 2:1, generally buy up endurance & willpower, get assorted +5 skill traits, get assorted +3 basic skill proficiencies, get the knife enchanted as an artifact, get better armor


Basic "all defense" starter character, this one assumes we can't take an heirloom helmet for +6 resilience

stats all 4s (64 pt) except endurance at 7 (6 pt)
+6 dodge (6 pt), mutation endurance x5 (20 pt), mutation agility x5 (20 pt), heirloom heavy armor +5 (5pt), +1 encumbrance
prime skills: melee, business (need to buy better weapons), marksman
secondary skills (all bad fortune on 1 & 2): athletic, acrobatic, fortitude, resolve, unarmed combat, stealth
subtotal: 122, -5 reason, -5 leadership, -2 initiative, -5 perform, weak left arm (-2 str), colorblind (yellow/orange), allergy (peanuts), -6 hearing, deep sleeper (-4), ignorant x2 + inept x4, deformity (no ears), shaky hands (-1 manual int tasks), impoverished (-1), -2 concentration, -4 might
SOULLESS, amputee & bionic right arm (+2 str)

anima & chakra 1, wealth 8, concentration 2, mana 4, might 4, dodge 20(22) (to hit 30(32)), resilience 12(24) (to wound 22(34)), tenacity 4, vitality 12, destiny 4, speed 4, encumbrance 5, initiative 6

heavy heirloom armor + helmet (+11/+12 resilience, -6 acrobat, -6 athlete, -6 stealth, -5 alertness)

dual wield a jagged short blade & low quality melee claw with a hilt guard
jagged short blade (right): +13 attack & +9 damage & low armor penetration
claw (left & not ambidextrous): +11(bad fortune 1&2) attack & +2 damage
large caliber hand gun (+long barrel & high damage ammo 6x2): +8 attack & +14 damage (low armor pen) & range 8

house, clothing, steel toe boots, long pole with a hook at the end (generally useful around the house), stuff, camo fatigues, personal effects (re: business, fortitude, resolve)

Function: Survive. You aren't amazing at anything (agility skills +9 but bad fortune 1 & 2) but you can probably contribute a warm body until you buy up your dexterity & strength. You will be the last one standing.

Advancement: Buy stats & skills & the +5 talents. Acquire decent weapons.


Power abjurer midget

stats 5s (80 pt) & enlightenment (abjuration) x10 (10 pt)
mutation (enlightenment) x5 (20 pt), staff power 2x (abjuration magic missile OR circle of protection depending on other characters and starting situation) (8 pt)
prime skills: abjuration, stone carving, social
secondary skills: unarmed combat, marksmanship, business, insight
subtotal: 118
-5 perform, -5 leadership, deformity (midget), colorblind (yellow/orange), allergy (peanuts), -2 hearing, deep sleeper (-4), tiny (-2 size (phy dmg & might & resil & to be perceived), -5 expression)

anima & chakra 1, wealth 8, concentration 5, mana 5, might 10, dodge 10 (to hit 20), resilience 5(10) (to wound 15(20)), tenacity 5, vitality 5, destiny 5, speed 5, encumbrance 5, initiative 10

fighty (size -dmg factored in)
blowgun (+4/+1): +12 attack & +4 damage (to do: buy poisons)
silver melee claw (+4/+1): +12 attack & +4 damage (for use on werewolves & etc.)
light armor +shield +helmet (+2/+5 resilience & -2 athletic, -2 acrobat, -2 stealth, -4 alertness)

Function: cast abjuration spells at base +20, depending on the party priority of staves for defense or mixed.
circle of protection(enchant): tn 20 = area 1 within 5 hedges out "thing" with soulless unaffected(+15 meta for that), tn 25 for larger area
protection(enchant): tn 25 (empower) = person 1 within 5 immune to damage type, weapon type, specific poison, etc.
assault of stone (missile): tn dodge to hit & then test damage as base range 5 weapon, empower +5 for specific mineral, reach +5 for base range 50, blunt damage, needs stone brick cobbles (carry a bag of sling stones)
asylum(enchant): tn 20 encase 1 thing/person in range 5 in crystal, paralyzed & safe & auto-pass fortitude & durability 30 until release/broken, +2 meta for +2 to affect larger size things
cantrip of ground(cantrip): tn 10 or 20 as quick action or 25 as reflexive action for roll 2 & take best on resilience or stone working (tn 15 for extend duration for complex task like carving stone work)
chains of wrath(incant): tn 20 any 1 target in 5 wrapped in iron chains, immobile & paralyzed, tn 30 escape or feat of strength to get free, durability 50,
... so many spells...

Advancement: ASAP staffs of power (prismatic character pt -> abj-only ambrosia) for protection, cantrip, and magic circle. Also conglomerate all staffs into one with symbiotic or maybe use stone crafting to make a focusing crystal clockwork version, moliate +5 metamagic transfers artifact power to another object (rings? suppositories are probably a no-go). Carve piles of periapts in spare time (2 concentration each). Buy skills & talents & more mana (unlimited). Purchase a +quality abjuration spell book.

[Talakeal]

I don't feel this is clear right now. Cataract starts off saying that it can make an illusion real, and then goes on to state it can replicate spells. That sounded like two separate applications of the same spell to me. As I said though, I already dropped it.

[COLOR="#008000"]As I mentioned in my earlier post, there seems to be an unwritten style in a lot of RPGs where the first sentence is a fluffier explanation of what the rule does, and the next sentence is a crunchier explanation of how it does it. It would be really neat to study this writing style more, maybe a topic for a new thread

I'd reword this for clarity. Also, couldn't the PC just write an in universe character sheet, or make a short story showcasing all the attributes they want, then cast Genesis? Feels like this is overly complicated.

No, because the caster isn't the one who is creating the being, they are drawing them forth from the universal subconscious. This spell is meant to be complex, you are creating wholly new life from non-life. If you are simply trying to get a minion, there are much better ways to


Yeah, I'm going to put this fully on you here. As a fan of time loop stories it makes narrative sense to me a character could try over and over to get something right. From a rules perspective though it's even worse. Turn back the Clock reads 'Note that the Gamekeeper might have to restrict player knowledge if a chronomancer uses this spell to simply avoid paying the costs for information gathering spells and abilities. Likewise, the Gamekeeper chooses which dice rolls from the previous timeline stand.' Making it seem like that omission from glympses is intentional, and thus that dice are rerolled. I'm curious of the rules around this however, if I go to cast a spell and stop, is that roll saved forever? If not, how long is it saved for? I'd like to know before my next build.

I am making a serious effort to stop engaging in arguments about trying to assign % of blame, it never ends well and always derails the thread. I will just say that your reading is a valid RAW interpretation, but it was not at all what I intended and I have rewritten the spell accordingly.

In my experience, fiction about time-loops is typically about trying different things, not just doing the same thing over and over again until it eventually it works.

The roll is stored for the rest of the mission.

First, that's really not clear, and the wording of the spell implies otherwise "Force of nature grants the land a life of its own, allowing it to take direct action against nature's enemies by forming a vengeful avatar." Avatar is a trait living creatures can take, and it doesn't have any wording to say that it is undead or a construct. If it's not alive, that should be spelled out. Especially when the spell says it gives life.

This is more English being stupid combined with first sentences being . Life has several definitions. For example, if "an engine roars to life" that doesn't mean it is sustained by biological processes. The blue fairy brought a puppet to life, but he wasn't yet a real boy. Etc.

I could easily see ruling that a force of nature was alive because only those made from cities are constructs, but my intent was that it functioned like the elemental body of a kami, and if you look up kamis and elemental bodies both called out as being animate conglomerations of un-living matter.

There are other beings that are neither alive nor constructs; spirits, vampires, tulpas, living spells (the latter of which actually has living in the name).

Generally I don't spell out explicitly what creatures are alive as it is the default state for most creatures and doesn't need additional rules, but maybe I should for a few edge cases like this.


Fourth: Fusion is very clear - it cant copy anything other than traits and proficiencies, and allow attributes to be set at specific ranges. Since that bit of rules text is none of those things, it can't be carried over even if we wanted to. It's why I didn't assume the new character had like 25 chakras with only 5 filled. It's not something that could carry over. I went hard RAW with this build.


That's an odd interpretation IMO; to transfer the benefits of a limited ability without the limitations.


While you say the maximum for a stat is 15, spirits have stats that go to 20.


Spirit's attributes are capped to 15 as per Chapter Six, and nothing contradicts this or says they go up to twenty. The primordial gods have numbers that are flat out impossible, and are explicitly stated to be able to ignore the game's rules entirely, but I don't believe anything ever gives them attribute scores, twenty or otherwise, unless there is some text from an earlier draft floating around somewhere that I missed.

I would argue that lacking an explicit rule, that right now rules as written, the force of nature could have that 30 in their stats.

As written, the force of nature doesn't have attributes at all. I will clarify it in the next build.

Mainly because while every other ability and spell in the game lists a cap, force of nature doesn't, and the paragon rules you need to reference show that higher stats are possible. Maybe there is a general rule, but I didn't see it, and I was looking. Also, specific beats general and all that. This is an easy wording fix however, and any new builds will abide by it.

As written, the force of nature doesn't have attributes at all. I will clarify it in the next build.

There isn't really a good place in the book to put the no stat may ever exceed 15 in the book, and every way that I know of to modify stats already has that as a limitation.

Not sure what you mean by the paragon rules show higher stats are possible. Could you please elaborate?


I understand how you run it at your table. When I do a TO build, I assume that stuff that needs table permission is off the table (so to speak). And it does explicitly state all players "Chronomancers should not be allowed to cast the empowered version of this spell unless all of the other players are willing to put forth the required effort."

Right, but it doesn't say they have a ability to veto the spell for tactical reasons, it says the spell shouldn't be cast if they are unwilling to put in the time and effort. Claiming that you don't have the time when for a tactical advantage would, by RAW, be both lying and cheating IMO. Although I guess that you could argue that the rules don't say WHY you are unwilling to put in the effort and still be technically correct.



In the end, I think I get your system enough I could build a character for it now, but with how spread out everything is, it's really hard. I'd like to see all the player stuff put closer together, and I'd love to see more tables like the trait list. It would make it easier to find spells, artifacts, and item mods.

Also for your next version, please include sample starter builds.

I do eventually plan on including examples and walkthroughs at some point in some version, but it won't be the next one.

IMO tables take up a lot of space and are really ugly to look at, and I try and avoid them unless it is actually presenting new information.

Likewise, in my experience sample characters are just wasted space. I have never used one, and they actively make it harder to find the information I need. Likewise, I imagine that any sample characters you would find interesting would be too weird and complex for a general audience and those made for a general audience would seem bland and generic to you.



I understand that you and others want character building to be a skill in your game that players can master. I feel that is a trap. Let's say a new player builds a character next to a master player, and struggles because of it (say they wanted to play a blaster mage, but didn't realize all the downsides until the game started, and they regret their decisions). How are they supposed to catch up, when they only get 1 cp per adventure? Some builds can be fixed by an expert with help, but others are unfixable. Are players intended to make and retire multiple characters over the course of the game as they get better at building?

You know, I feel like people are coming at me from both sides in this thread; telling me that I hate any form of optimization but also trapping players by requiring optimization. Make up your minds you dang kids! :smallbiggrin:

I have a hard time imagining a "trap build" that someone could just stumble into; its really more about simply not liking that type of character you made rather than being hampered by bad choices IMO. And even if you did somehow have an un-fixable build, well, that's what transfiguration magic is for. I have certainly never seen a player wish they could buy off a weakness they took at character creation but just didn't have the CP to; honestly I tend to have the opposite problem of people having too many CP to spend and not knowing how to do so without making their character's weaknesses dissapear.



I admit I have a differant philosophy from you and others here. When I ran into a Newby trap option in my game (in my case it was players that wanted to spend every action attacking instead of utizing other tactical options) I changed combat to make it rewarding, and even optimal at times, because I want players to have freedom to play any character they can imagine.

IMO people should have the option to have weaknesses if they want them. For a lot of people, myself including, the struggling is part of the RP experience, and makes victories feel all the more rewarding.



Your system allows them to build any character, true, but it has many trap builds, which effectively make it impossible to play certain common archetypes. For me its more freeing for players to have every build and play-style be viable, even if it means that expert players can't overshadow new ones.

Could you please elaborate on this? I am serious, if you can think of some common archetypes that don't work in my system, I would love to hear about them. Heck, you can even toss them back to me as character buildings challenges of my own.

Likewise, I am not aware of any trap options; please point them out so I can fix them.

In my experience, the only way you can get a "bad" character in HoD is by ignoring synergy, either within yourself or with the rest of your party. Like, for example, making a gun-slinger with no guns, or an orator with no voice, or a pick-pocket with no hands, or an academic with no intelligence, etc.

Or, I guess, making a one-note character and then getting bored when their one thing isn't appropriate, but that really seems more like a choice and a matter of distribution rather than being bad in a vacuum.



For abilities I limit myself to a single line of fluff, and put it in italics. For example from my 'Sacred Hunter (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qleclHEl9MijqUmGcxsOdN7v0njvb4k0O0gSY7tq8Go/edit?usp=drivesdk)' class/feat group:

Restoration
Between your own rituals, and your divine patron, you undo a monster’s harm
As an action, spend a point of karma: A target not at their System Strain (SS) cap is healed of both enough physical wounds to put them below their physical wound limit and any curses with a DC to remove lower than 12 + your level. This causes them 1 SS.
During a long rest choose a target with a monster npc concept that is not natural for them: you may deal them a spirit wound to remove it from them, returning them to their normal form.

That works for a more gamist system, but for a lot of things there isn't a clear division between fluff and crunch.

Like, for example:

"Vikings are tall, blonde haired warriors who live in the fjords. They are the undisputed masters of close combat. Vikings receive +3 to strength, proficiency in sailing and melee, and +2 to resilience so long as they wear little horns on their helmets."

I can't imagine even the worst rules lawyer arguing that you are cheating for having your viking move inland or for having a non-viking dispute their mastery of close combat. Likewise, I would generally consider the blonde hair and helmet horns fluff, but I could easily see a cursed magic sword that can only be wielded by redheads or someone wanting to use the horns on their helmet as a handhold.

Like, I remember an argument on this thread a few months ago about whether or not one could see the glow from the armor of faith as the spell description mentions a glowing aura, but doesn't give it any mechanical effect.


Also, the idea of a forced one sentence of fluff makes me wince. Both because I am trying to imagine how bad my writing would be if I had to force everything worth saying into one sentence, find something stupid to say if there wasn't a full sentence worth saying, and because it feels like a value judgement about fluff vs. crunch.


TLDR: Easiest rule of thumb to max your damage per attack, figure out the target's difference between to hit & to wound dcs, then use whatever means to set your attack bonus & damage bonus to the same difference. If target is dc 24 to hit & dc 20 to wound then the difference is 4, you try to get your +attack to 4 over your +damage.

Well that was interesting. There's a simple basic build for weapon using that gives base +15 attack & damage before weapon type (weapon is heirloom 5) that comes in about 105 points before flaws. There's variations, like one with attack & damage fetishes does better right off the bat but I'd have questions about advancement with it before a real game. Any ways, the simulator has an option now to try adjusting through all combos +/-10 atk & -/+10 dmg versus given to hit & to wound targets.

At all tiers for all weapons having balanced atk/dmg ratios worked best against balanced hit/wound dcs. There's only an exception if you can get to +9/-9 on the first tier balanced and low to hit dc targets. That's coming from the +20 damage boost for crit hitting, and unarmed/claws/brass knuckles don't get an increase in damage for doing that. They might if it went to +12/-12 but I haven't checked. Against increasingly lopsided dodge/resil you just adjust in tandem with it, like a target with 26 to hit & 18 to wound you want to shift from +18 attack & +17 damage to +21 attack & +14 damage. This only looks at damage, not stuff like maiming a swordsman's leg to walk off and shoot him. Wounds per attack were strikingly consistent. If you get within +/-1 of the best number you're generally within 2% of max damage and that max damage holds true across all +/-5 from the balanced to hit & to wound dcs. If you adjust from +18/+17 vs 22/22 to +14/+21 vs 18/26 to +22/+13 vs 27/17 you get the exact same wounds per attack rate at each one.

Claws/knuckles at +19/+16 went from 1.08 wounds per attack on tier 1s to 0.5 on tier 5s. Braced 1-handers, dual 1-handers, bows, and 2-handers are the same dang thing. They vary from +19/+18 to +13/+24, but they all output the same damane of 1.12 on tier 1s to 0.59 on tier 5s. Guns are literally +1/+1 over bows, 1.15 to 0.67.

Conclusion: if you assume a character able to get to even attack/damage bonuses and modify them +/- by about 5-7 points then; unarmed may be better for maneuvers that rely on hitting but not wounding, everything else is basically the same on damage and you should pick weapons based on aesthetics, ranged vs melee, and non-damage characteristics.

Very interesting. Thank you for the effort.

Any chance I could see a spreadsheet of the results or something like it?


Good to know. The reason I called it confusing (or more accurately counter inutitive) is that high rolls are always good, except when you roll a fortune dice off a 1. Its a reveral of built expectations. Now im fine with it, and i think the people attracted to your game would probably be fine with it, but it is worth noting.

I think im going to take a break from builds until your next release. Im worried that ill forget a rule change without a proper referance.

Agreed.

I much prefer the shortcut of just using confirmation dice if at all possible.


Just philosophically, I somewhat disagree with this. It's not a hard disagreement, just a caution, specifically with the second part. While there's nothing wrong with a GM considering the characters wants/desires (and certainly actions) when deciding what the game world will do, I'm hesitant to "alter the story to enable the PCs". This becomes about what the player wants the story to be, which to me, is problematic (or at least can be).

Sure, its not an all or nothing thing.

But if it makes sense to alter the story, then I think a good GM will put in the effort. It doesn't have to be extreme or anything though, but it will feel richer and less random if there is some sort of connection.

For example, when I last ran the Dragonlance modules, one of the player's backstory was about how they grew up in a monastery that was destroyed when a bitter former student betrayed them. I swapped out one of the Dragon Highlords who didn't have a lot of development or personality in the book as written with said former student, thus putting a personal face on the enemy and giving the player more of an incentive to get involved.


If the players want to alter the game world, they do so by having their characters take actions which alter it. Done. I'm not going to rewrite a scenario because a PC has a specific flaw or ability or whatever. I write the game environment. The players write their characters. Then we see how they interact. And yes, this means that players could write in something that is an epic fail. Which, you know, actively discourages them from engaging in serious munchkinism. Which, to me, is a good thing.

It also turns every session into Russian roulette, which is not fun for anyone. The other players feel overshadowed when the weakness when it doesn't come up. The munchkin feels picked on when it does. And the GM has to listen to them all bitch about it.


Uh... I'm going to echo what someone else said earlier. Fix the broken rule!. If you are the game dev, then you fix the rules directly. If you're GMing an existing game, you create a house-rule, get buy-in from your players, and write it down or something.

My issue with "gentleman's agreements" is that they are informal, don't have weight, are not really agreed on, and inevitably will create disagreements and conflicts. There's a mistake in assuming that this is less heavy-handed or something, or players will appreciate it. Over time, it will actually create the perception that the GM is being arbritrary or inconsistent. This will lead to player frustration, and IME will either result in angry arguments over things, or players just retreating and being afraid to ever even try something somewhat out of bounds (or hiding this from the GM, so as to avoid a ruling). All of which lead to a dysfunctional and unhealthy table.

I honestly don't remember how we got to talking about gentleman's agreements, but I don't like them. I much prefer written rules to unwritten ones, and as someone with NVLD real life has enough "unwritten rules" that I am unaware of for me to want them at my gaming table.

Of course, the players till get it in their heads that we have them, and often spring them upon me after I "broke them" without realizing it.


I think that out of your desire to not be heavy handed, you may be making things worse. You're still applying GM veto, but being very passive aggressive about it. Basically the rule is "I'm not going to veto characters... until I do, and then it'll be via some nasty thing I have happen to your character in the game setting". That's still you vetoing character builds. Just not giving firm documented boundaries/rules for the players to follow so they know what sorts of things are allowed or not.

And given that most of these things are exploits that exist in the rules themselves, that's a double bad whammy for the players IMO. They think that according to the rules, what they are doing is legal. But the threshold between "I can play with no problems" and "I'm going to get my character whacked" is unclear. This leads back to what I talked about earlier. Some players will be angry and argumentative. Others will retreat into just meekly avoiding ever coming anywhere close to controversial so as to avoid backlash.

Which, again, is not healthy.

Please not, that I explicitly called out having a character with too many artifacts ambushed right out of the gate as being something that I wouldn't do and explicitly called it out as being overly passive aggressive.


But again, I don't believe in holding the player's hands. I will tell them the risks, and then let them play, and if the natural consequences of the setting or the mechanics hurt their character, that is on them.


To use a D&D example, it is generally considered a very bad idea to dump constitution, and it will likely lead to the death of the character who does it.

I don't think the game would be improved by having a rule that outright forbids dumping constitution.

The guy who enjoys a challenge, the guy who likes the fiction of a Raistlin style cripple, or the guy who thinks he can beat the system and never actually take a hit all deserve to be allowed to play the character they want to play.

The GM should remind them of the risks, and then play it fair and impartial. And gain, stacking the game so that constitution is super important is bad GMing, although in universe a character's enemies who find out about their weakness are certain to exploit it.

[Telok]

Very interesting. Thank you for the effort.

Any chance I could see a spreadsheet of the results or something like it?


Ha, once I saw the patterns I started just spot checking it.

Here's a g-doc link to the big sheet. Heart of Darkness is down in the bottom cluster by the Cowboys & Dinosaurs one, click the button to show the calculator.

//drive.google.com/file/d/11FssDTd3_uqj7gUUMW0Y3ofrmcd4f5tX/view?usp=drivesdk

It's a web page, but you run it local. Not set for phones/tablets. I swear there's no network/internet code in there but you can open it with any text editor to make sure.

I'm not 100% sure I'm running the fortune dice right after your last convo with Jak. But as long as you skip the expanded fortune range it shouldn't matter by more than a +1.

[gbaji]

But if it makes sense to alter the story, then I think a good GM will put in the effort. It doesn't have to be extreme or anything though, but it will feel richer and less random if there is some sort of connection.

For example, when I last ran the Dragonlance modules, one of the player's backstory was about how they grew up in a monastery that was destroyed when a bitter former student betrayed them. I swapped out one of the Dragon Highlords who didn't have a lot of development or personality in the book as written with said former student, thus putting a personal face on the enemy and giving the player more of an incentive to get involved.

Yeah. That kind of minor stuff works just fine.


It also turns every session into Russian roulette, which is not fun for anyone. The other players feel overshadowed when the weakness when it doesn't come up. The munchkin feels picked on when it does. And the GM has to listen to them all bitch about it.

I actually didn't even really think about it until this exchange, but it occurs to me that I pretty much avoid playing games with weaknesses/flaws in the system nowadays.

This has always been a problematic mechanism for gaming. And yeah, I get that many players just love them. And the folks who love them for RP reasons work fine with them. It's the folks who are using them for min/max reasons that become problematic IME. They want the "free points" for taking these things on their character, and often take a *lot* of them in order to pay for their builds. But that puts the GM in a pretty uncomfortable position of having to decide just how often those weaknesses should really play a part. And yeah, the min/max folks are often the very first to complain if/when one of the dozen or so weaknesses they took on character build actually comes along and bites them in the butt somehow.

It's problematic becuase it's inherently part of the "balance" of the build system (you literally get more points if you take more of them, right?), which suggests that they should actually balance more powerful characters during actual play to offset that fact (ie: you take more or higher point weaknesses and they should hinder you more often or to a greater degree). But that rarely actually goes over well and is always going to be subject to player complaints about being targetted unfairly.

And of course, if you don't take those weaknesses into account during play, then the more powerful chacters are just more powerful "for free", essentially. Which is going to annoy/upset the players who perhaps took a more modest set of them, thinking they would actually be a sufficient amount of balance effect to wash out, but now discovering they do not.

Put another way. If we were to treat this as a strictly mathematical calculation. If you take a set of weaknesses that grant you 20 extra chacter build points (or whatever), those weakensses should have the effect on every single scenario as though your character didn't have those extra 20 points. Otherwise, you are gaining more from taking them than you lose. You get to use those extra points in every adventure, and in every encounter, right? But I'm pretty sure the players would be up in arms if you had -20 points worth of negative effects applied to you in every encounter on every adventure, right?

Which is why these can be problematic mechanisms IMO.

[Jakinbandw]

I'm back home at my computer so writing is easy again! Woohoo!


I do eventually plan on including examples and walkthroughs at some point in some version, but it won't be the next one.

IMO tables take up a lot of space and are really ugly to look at, and I try and avoid them unless it is actually presenting new information.

Likewise, in my experience sample characters are just wasted space. I have never used one, and they actively make it harder to find the information I need. Likewise, I imagine that any sample characters you would find interesting would be too weird and complex for a general audience and those made for a general audience would seem bland and generic to you.

Ah, we are such different people. My entire current rules text is nothing but tables. I find them so much easier to navigate quickly. That's all just personal preference, so I wouldn't worry about it.

As for me finding sample characters interesting, you might be surprised. Once I found the Extras templates section, I was super interested to find that an animus 1 character is expected to be rolling with a +12 to their good skills, and a +6 to everything else. Likewise, a fighter is good at all 3 combat skills, and one additional skill of their choice. These are the exact benchmarks that I would look for when trying to make a character, and while I might push to a 13, it gives guidance that a +14 is of the table until I hit animus 2.

Just because I make super complex builds, doesn't mean that I don't find uncomplicated builds interesting.




You know, I feel like people are coming at me from both sides in this thread; telling me that I hate any form of optimization but also trapping players by requiring optimization. Make up your minds you dang kids! :smallbiggrin:

It's not that we think that you hate any form of optimization, it's that optimizing in the game as you envision it can easily lead to characters being killed, or made unplayable, while not having enough system mastery makes the game frustrating. I will refer once again to the two examples of this: The pyromancer wizard that started this thread, and the character with the bow. One could solve their problems easy enough, but because they lack system mastery, they are unable to (seriously, it's a moderately cheap artifact to fix). The other will have their 40 point artifact taken from them:


I said a 60 point artifact bow is likely to get stolen.

...


I agree, it is incredibly poor sportsmanship to just yank it right away without warning, but sooner or later, someone is going to take your bow.

At this point they are down over a third of their CP budget, and have nothing to show for it. And while I've seen some rules for getting lost points back, they generally are based around receiving double CP until the debt is cleared. At 40 points, that's 40 adventures until they catch up with the rest of the party, or 20 until they are back up to animus 1 effectiveness, assuming that their build wasn't focused around the artifacts, and can't work without them, leaving them with a bunch of useless CP in options that were meant to combo with the artifact, and are now gone.



I have a hard time imagining a "trap build" that someone could just stumble into; its really more about simply not liking that type of character you made rather than being hampered by bad choices IMO. And even if you did somehow have an un-fixable build, well, that's what transfiguration magic is for. I have certainly never seen a player wish they could buy off a weakness they took at character creation but just didn't have the CP to; honestly I tend to have the opposite problem of people having too many CP to spend and not knowing how to do so without making their character's weaknesses dissapear.

I've pointed out two above, but generally anyone that wants to play an archetype instead of play the system will suffer. If a character wants to play Legolas, and they focus on a bow build, they'll quickly find out that they are pretty useless for most fights. Remember, a character dumping all stats from 5 to 1 is equivalent is scale to an archer taking a -4 on their accuracy. They are going from an average chance of hitting, to being equal to the worst in the world. A mage that wants to pretend to be Gandolf and charge into melee with a sword and staff can be done, but if the player is lacking system mastery, they will die very, very fast, and find it frustrating.

These are what I mean by trap builds. They are options that you allow, and even have support for, but that when followed without a certain level of mastery, will result in a frustrating, unfun play experience, even (or even especially) when the character is unable to live up to the archetypal examples that they wanted to imitate or iterate on.



IMO people should have the option to have weaknesses if they want them. For a lot of people, myself including, the struggling is part of the RP experience, and makes victories feel all the more rewarding.

Sure. But if that's the case, there is no reason to give them Character Points for taking a flaw is there? If they are just there for extra challenge, then giving a player CP for taking them actively works against their primary intended use case.




Could you please elaborate on this? I am serious, if you can think of some common archetypes that don't work in my system, I would love to hear about them. Heck, you can even toss them back to me as character buildings challenges of my own.

As I said, it's not about the archetypes themselves, but rather the system mastery required for them to work. So I'll give you two, each one with restrictions based on a players lack of experience with your system:

1) Build as close as you can to a functional Legolas with the following restrictions: No Armor. Can only use a bow to make attacks, and is effective at melee range, or when firing into a melee. Good acrobatics and athletics. Can only build using rules found fully within in the first 3 chapters (though this does allow the items from Step F on page 9), this means no items, artifacts, spells, races, or combat maneuvers may be taken or enhanced by traits. Bonus: Do the entire character creation within 5 minutes to limit your ability to plan, and force you to put pen to page as recklessly as possible to simulate a player who knows the system much worse than you do.

This is to simulate a new player build.

2) Build as strong as a character as you can while taking at least 50 points of artifacts. Assume that at least 10 more points are spent towards the main artifact gimmick of the build. Then, when the build is over, remove all artifacts and enchantments, as they are stolen by powerful opponents. Have the result be at least as effective as a journeyman extra, as the player will be stuck with this build for a while, and they should be able to still play with their friends.





That works for a more gamist system, but for a lot of things there isn't a clear division between fluff and crunch.

Like, for example:

"Vikings are tall, blonde haired warriors who live in the fjords. They are the undisputed masters of close combat. Vikings receive +3 to strength, proficiency in sailing and melee, and +2 to resilience so long as they wear little horns on their helmets."

I can't imagine even the worst rules lawyer arguing that you are cheating for having your viking move inland or for having a non-viking dispute their mastery of close combat. Likewise, I would generally consider the blonde hair and helmet horns fluff, but I could easily see a cursed magic sword that can only be wielded by redheads or someone wanting to use the horns on their helmet as a handhold.

Like, I remember an argument on this thread a few months ago about whether or not one could see the glow from the armor of faith as the spell description mentions a glowing aura, but doesn't give it any mechanical effect.


Also, the idea of a forced one sentence of fluff makes me wince. Both because I am trying to imagine how bad my writing would be if I had to force everything worth saying into one sentence, find something stupid to say if there wasn't a full sentence worth saying, and because it feels like a value judgement about fluff vs. crunch.

The purpose of such a system is to give clear guidance to the players of the system what is fluff and what is crunch. For your example I can keep the mechanics, while making it much more clear, and give 3 different readings:

Viking
These are tall, blonde haired warriors who live in the fjords. They are the undisputed masters of close combat.
Vikings receive +3 to strength, proficiency in sailing and melee, and +2 to resilience so long as they wear a viking hat.

Viking
The undisputed masters of close combat who live in the fjords.
Vikings receive +3 to strength, proficiency in sailing and melee, and +2 to resilience so long as they are Taller than the average person (6' for men, 5'5" for women), have blond hair, and wear a Viking hat.

Viking
These are tall, blonde haired warriors who live in the fjords. They are the undisputed masters of close combat. They are recognizable by the iconic viking hats they wear.
Vikings receive +3 to strength, proficiency in sailing and melee, and +2 to resilience.

So then what is fluff? It is what can be freely changed in a system without it causing any issues to the game. In the first example, the game is stating that a character can get the benifits of being a viking while playing a short black haired warrior, because such details aren't important to the balance of the game. In the second, it is making clear that those details are important to balance, and thus shouldn't be changed. In the last, it makes it clear that the only part that is important to balance is the bonuses received to strength and resilience.

In a more political setting, the 'Undisputed Masters of Close combat' might not be fluff, as it could be more important than everything else on the sheet when it is used to pressure other nations into capitulating. If that was the case, taking this trait could allow a viking to intimidate any foe if they are in close as even a dragon is aware that they aren't as good in melee combat as the average viking. It sounds silly, but if you make it clear that part is mechanical, then players feel more free to play around with those options.

The argument you are talking about is a great example. If the glowing aura was separated out in some way (like say italics), then there wouldn't be an argument because players would know that part isn't important to the balance of the game, and thus goes with whatever is convenient to the caster. Just like if your Cataract spell had the part that said it can make illusions real in italics, it would be more clear that that is an explanation of what the spell does, but not actually the mechanics of how the spell works for balance purposes.

If players ever need to argue about the rules, I believe it's the system's designers fault. To me at least, clarity is king.



No, because the caster isn't the one who is creating the being, they are drawing them forth from the universal subconscious. This spell is meant to be complex, you are creating wholly new life from non-life. If you are simply trying to get a minion, there are much better ways to
This rule/lore isn't stated anywhere in the spell, so this is something else you have to fix. Remember, players can't read your mind. All we can do is go off what you've written.




I am making a serious effort to stop engaging in arguments about trying to assign % of blame, it never ends well and always derails the thread. I will just say that your reading is a valid RAW interpretation, but it was not at all what I intended and I have rewritten the spell accordingly.
This is all I meant when I said it. If I say something is your fault, I'm not trying to put you down, I'm saying that it needs to be fixed. If I say it's my fault, then that means you wrote it properly and I didn't read carefully enough. Basically I'm just trying to point out which stuff needs to be rewritten/clarified, and which is just fine as is.


The roll is stored for the rest of the mission.
What counts as a different action? Casting it at a different target? Using a different set of meta magic? Or does it apply to any spell casting check? These are some things that you need to clarify when you update this rule.



This is more English being stupid combined with first sentences being . Life has several definitions. For example, if "an engine roars to life" that doesn't mean it is sustained by biological processes. The blue fairy brought a puppet to life, but he wasn't yet a real boy. Etc.

I could easily see ruling that a force of nature was alive because only those made from cities are constructs, but my intent was that it functioned like the elemental body of a kami, and if you look up kamis and elemental bodies both called out as being animate conglomerations of un-living matter.

There are other beings that are neither alive nor constructs; spirits, vampires, tulpas, living spells (the latter of which actually has living in the name).

Generally I don't spell out explicitly what creatures are alive as it is the default state for most creatures and doesn't need additional rules, but maybe I should for a few edge cases like this.
At the very least, saying that their body is like that of a Kami's would at least give guidance. I don't know if you need a general set of rules, but for exceptions like this I think it's important. Especially considering the hoops a player has to go through to cast this spell and get use from it.



That's an odd interpretation IMO; to transfer the benefits of a limited ability without the limitations.

I'm trying to go by what's written. Either way it doesn't really matter in the long term. The rules for attributes and skills supersede them so during the next downtime the player takes all of that gets updated anyway. This is an edge case that I honestly don't think is worth worrying about, as you plan to make it harder to use fusion with call of the wild anyway.




Spirit's attributes are capped to 15 as per Chapter Six, and nothing contradicts this or says they go up to twenty. The primordial gods have numbers that are flat out impossible, and are explicitly stated to be able to ignore the game's rules entirely, but I don't believe anything ever gives them attribute scores, twenty or otherwise, unless there is some text from an earlier draft floating around somewhere that I missed.

It's actually not from the text, its from me talking with you just before I posted the build:

It also spiritually fuses with a 5 times empowered Force of Nature. I'm honestly not sure what effect that has, as Fusion references attributes, but extra templates don't have attributes.

An extras attributes can usually be assumed to be equal to their "bad" score +/- and racial modifiers they might have.



As written, the force of nature doesn't have attributes at all. I will clarify it in the next build.
As written, no extras have attributes.
Rather than taking the time to detail their individual attributes and abilities, extras use one of the templates found in Chapter Ten.
Does this mean fusion is intended to be impossible to cast except on two PCs?


There isn't really a good place in the book to put the no stat may ever exceed 15 in the book, and every way that I know of to modify stats already has that as a limitation.

Force of Nature didn't. It started at 10, and then got +2 for each level of empower added to the spell with no listed cap.


Not sure what you mean by the paragon rules show higher stats are possible. Could you please elaborate?
So as above when you responded about what an extras attributes would be, you said they were equal to the extras 'Bad Score.' So when I went to page 533 to look up a Paragon's Bad Score to find out what the attributes for a Force of Nature would be (As force of nature uses the Paragon Template), right next to it you can see that Eldritch Entitys and Primordials both have bad scores above 15. But even more than that the rules state 'Inborn attribute modifiers and traits modify an extra’s scores normally.' This means that even a forth circle spirit could hit a bad score of 16 in a stat with the right template applied to it, thus the highest attribute in the game would be around 25.



Right, but it doesn't say they have a ability to veto the spell for tactical reasons, it says the spell shouldn't be cast if they are unwilling to put in the time and effort. Claiming that you don't have the time when for a tactical advantage would, by RAW, be both lying and cheating IMO. Although I guess that you could argue that the rules don't say WHY you are unwilling to put in the effort and still be technically correct.
Let's be honest, TO builds are always built on being technically correct anyway. That's the reason they aren't used, the GM is expected to take one look at it and tell the player to build something more in line with the power level of the game.

[Telok]

Honestly for a 'brain in jar' build I don't see why you can't just go with the Ghost in the Machine spell. You just need a decent/high value humanoid clockwork body and a way to make it immune to anti-magic & null zones.

Um, we need some possible modifications or clarifications on the Spell-Kissed armament enchant. Like "how often" or some other use limit, and maybe a less multiplicative effect/save dc calculation.

Working on the 'spell bullet' idea;

Assumption: For worldbuilding we'll say NPCs offscreen aren't relegated to the mission structure and use the 28 days divided by <mana/concentration> optional rule. Therefore an average person has 5m & 5c that they can regain at the rate of 1 every 6 days. We give them a day off so they have a reserve for their own lives and they can use 4/month. Neh, let's be nice and throw in holidays, 3/month.

Assumption: I'm not considering the action of Imbue to be an actual spell and therefore things like Staff of Power won't apply. Otherwise it does look like you could do this sort of stuff without spending mana, and that's probably pretty bad.

The Imbue meta makes an artifact, costs mana = 1+1/rank, lasts the scene unless Tied or Extended or Permanency, dc is 20+2xRank. This cannot be a ritual (I think) and therefore the "spell" stays as a basic action. If we decide that the enchanter is also the crafter we get an additional -4 dc at the cost of making the target object & spending concentration = object value.
The Glyph meta at -5 dc makes the artifact single use and removes the extra mana cost, making it the usual spell 1 mana cost.
The Subtle meta lets you cast a spell unenlightened using Int for the attribute of your occult skill.
Spell kissed is a variable artifact quality based on the dc to cast the spell; 20=4, 15=3, 10=2 (we'll be topping out at 20). There are some limits as to what spell can go in.
Imbued ammo is a variable artifact quality that just applies everything to 12 ammo instead of 1 weapon.
Clockwork is a no cost artifact modification that makes the artifact basically a function of mad science instead of magic and allows for the creation of the artifact to be done with crafting skills instead of with occult skills.

Thus a clockwork spell kissed 12 ammo one use artifact(glyph) costs 1 mana and a 20+2x(spell dc/5) Intelligence:Crafting+Tools skill check and results in 12 bolts, arrows, bullets, blowgun needles, or sling stones, which will cast a given spell on the target when they hit. Rolls like 'test for damage' would be at (I think) the shooter's 5+5xEssense. I have no clue what the resolve dc would be to resist the spell at this point, normally it's 10+CasterMod but this might be 15+5xEssence or 15+5XIntelligence now.

spell:enchant-glyph (optional another -4 for the enchanter also being the crafter)
20=23 (19)
15=18 (14)
10=13 ( 9)
5= 8 ( 4)

On spells;
The Restrained meta limits the scope of a spell to a single subset of it's effects.
The Flash meta limits an enchantment to lasting until the start of the caster's next turn.
The Baleful meta takes a beneficial spell and makes it harmful.

spell options
Flesh Like Water, dc 20, add a rank of a medium physical trait to creature
-- fins, gills, slither, delicate*, fat*, frail*, hemophiliac*, weak back*, seizures, slow*
* minor can be limited to lower dc or limited+empowered to do 2 ranks
Alter State, dc 20, change object state without otherwise changing it (solid-liquid-gas)
-- use on armor/weapons
Obscure, dc 20, deflection shield, -2 close combat & shooting, -2 environment damage tests
-- reversed gets the target hit more, restrained
Ensnare, dc 20, apply Amputee by binding a limb
Enduring Breath, dc 20, immune to suffocation
-- reversed might apply suffocation
Drain magic, dc 15, un-magicify an artifact for the duration
-- zap that magic armor/weapon
Sanguine Health, dc 20, +1 endurance (vitality & resilience)
-- reversed & 1 turn & limited to vitality & 3 empower = -4 max vitality for a turn
Psychic Surgery, dc 20, undo a sudden/unnatural mental trauma flaw
-- reversed adds -> coward(-5 morale), follower(-5 resolve), ignorant(minor)(-2 skill prof)
Beast Shape, dc 20, what you'd expect & does not affect gear
-- one turn of bunny-shape will unequip basically all gear and be really vulnerable
Spirit Shackles, dc 20, add soulless trait to prevent casting
Animate Dead, dc 20 incantation, suitable for reversal against animated dead
-- requires use of the counter-spell metamagic
Dispel magic, would need interpretation
Suffering, dc 20, take 1 illusionary wound that vanishes at end of spell
Mind's Eye, dc 20, emotion evoking illusion
Blindness, dc 20
Burning power, dc 20, +1 strength
-- reversed & limited to encumbrance & 2 empower = -3 max encumbrance
Stasis, dc 25, unable to act but can still be affected
Slumber, dc 25, unconscious
Paralysis, dc 25, as per
Madness, dc 15, add a mental quirk (addict, phobia, psychosis, vice)
Stone Skin, dc 20, +2 resilience & as armor vs hi/lo penetration weapons
-- reversed -2 resilience
Protection, dc 20, +4 resilience vs named thing, empowers upgrades to invulnerability
-- reversed = weakness = -4 resilience vs thing, reverse + empower = ???


flesh like water:
20 - 5 (limited to minor traits) - 5 (one turn) + 10 (2x empower) + hemophiliac = dc 20= 23(19) enchant for -6 vitality for one turn on a hit
1) trade hemophiliac(vitality) for resilience, dodge, melee damage, encumbrance, speed, tenacity
2) trade off lasting the encounter instead of a single turn for only having a -4
3) have only a -4 & one turn for an enchant dc of 15= 18(14)

Result: 12 glyph clockwork subtle spell-kissed restrained flash empowered flesh like water bullets, on hit the target saves Resolve vs ??? or takes -4 vitality for one turn. Creation requires Intelligence + Metalworking + Tool Quality vs 18 & 1 mana or vs 14 & 1 mana + 2 concentration. This is pretty doable by NPCs. It's the TES Morrowind/Oblivion drain life enchant all over again.

Going the other way we can just do Subtle(+0) Rune(+3) spells using Intelligence:Occult+Grimoire. This limits us to spells from the school of magic the creator is skilled in and we aren't getting the glyph & imbue-as-crafter discounts. But it also opens us to a wider variety of spells and MAYBE the Ritual(+0) meta that might (since we're replacing Essence with Intelligence) let us discount some metamagic costs with concentration.

Result: 1 rune subtle restrained flash empowered flesh like water bullet, same effect as above, still an unknown resist dc. Requires Intelligence + Transmutation + Grimoire Quality vs dc 18 & 1 mana or vs dc 15 & 1 mana + 3 concentration.

Abusing this character as straight up using a spell-kissed sword

stats 5s (80 pt) and 10 endurance (10pt)
prodigy melee +5 (5 pt), enlightenment in transmutation +10 (5 pt)
primary skills: melee, transmutation, whatever
secondary skills: whatever

flaws: -5 performance, yellow/orange color blindness (-3 pt)
relic: 3 point spell-kissed short curved blade (+2 attack & low armor penetration)
- spell: Flesh Like Water(hemophiliac) Restrained(minor trait) Flash(one turn) Empowered(total of two ranks) -> 20-10+5=15
- effect: On hit beings test Resolve vs 5+5x10=55 or have -4 vitality until the start of this character's next turn

Dual wield with whatever else for +20 to hit & +8 to wound with low armor penetration

Plus, hey, you're still a +15 transmutation caster with 10 endurance and (if you want) heavy armor.

ALTERNATE OPTIONS:
0) Take 1 more point of flaws (or reduce endurance by 1 or something) to kick on another layer of empower and up the -vitality to 6.
1) Take 1 more point of flaws (or reduce endurance by 1 or something) and it's a 4 point relic that just straight lays on regular unaltered Beast Shape(bunny) for the rest of the encounter at save vs 55.
2) Move spell & school over to one of the dc 15 individual incantations that just says 'test for damage' (e.g. Conjuration:Tear p.448) to add that 'test for damage at +55' to every hit. Ooh, that's a possible issue.
3} Healing spells on low/no damage weapons...



random silly characters
fit the first: boot to the head

stats 5s (80 pt)
specialty (unarmed:kicking p.prof+5) (3.5 pt), specialty (marksman:firearms p.prof+5) (3.5 pt), specialty (insight:sense magic p.prof+4) (3 pt)
primary skills: resolve, fortitude, athletics, +(kicking, firearms, sense magic)
secondary skills: insight, acrobatic, alertness, stealth
subtotal: 90 pt

amputee(leg)+bionic limb(leg) (0 pt), chi (4 pt), legendary skill: kicking (2 pt), symbiotic(in the leg) necromancy fetish for unarmed damage (4 pt)

shoot: long barrel rifle, +15 attack & +12 damage
bionic kick: +21 attack & +9 best-of-2 damage

Options: 5 points of flaws for a heirloom rifle, 3 points of flaws for a business prof specialty in acquisition, trade in the necromancy fetish for the limited mystic ability & limited fisher's ring to cast the necromancy cantrip ourselves (not as good until anima 3 (2 if restrained applies) and only better at anima 4+).


fit the second: glowy doom ball

stats all 4s (64 pt) & a primary skill in mysticism
10 pt, enlightenment in mysticism
5 pt, heritage mystic grimoire +5
Subtotal: character points 79

Orb spell (dc 20, instant, any target, turns to light & goes to end of line then all in line test evade or else resist vs radiant damage)

I believe that the evade and resolve vs damage rolls will be at dc 30 if we're casting at a +20 bonus.

Dang it. Reread dweomer mastery again and it didn't work like I though all this time. Hmm... rewriting...

Persistent+5 = becomes an enchantment & lasts a whole act
Tie+5 = unlimited duration but takes a chakra
Control+5 = continually change the parameters
Ritual+3 = use concentration to offset metamagic costs
Subtotal: dc 38
8 (87) points of relic for 2 wands of tie & persist = dc 28 -- note: unsure if wands offset the dc increase or negate it by applying the meta without cost, makes a difference for sense magic
5 (92) points of +range talent = range 9 -- note: because even more meta for range was getting unweildy
8 (100) concentration -- note: same question as wands for same reason
Skill +20 +1 mana + ritual off 8 points of meta (control & ritual) with concentration vs dc 20.

Maybe add the suppress under circumstances meta?

[Talakeal]

The difficulty to resist a spell is always twenty, not sure where you get ten plus occult.

Not sure how glyph would interact with magic ammunition; I could easily see it ruled that it only effects a single arrow or that the first arrow fired uses up the charge for the entire effect.

Flash, plus synchronicity, plus glyph is unlikely to work out timing wise as the windows for the effects are unlikely to overlap.

[Telok]

The difficulty to resist a spell is always twenty, not sure where you get ten plus occult.

Not sure how glyph would interact with magic ammunition; I could easily see it ruled that it only effects a single arrow or that the first arrow fired uses up the charge for the entire effect.

Flash, plus synchronicity, plus glyph is unlikely to work out timing wise as the windows for the effects are unlikely to overlap.

The games uses a bunch of 10+x to set dcs all over the place. I don't know that it ever mentions the resist dc as being completely static and unchanging. I thought it followed the pattern. Hmm... that has implications for rerolls and the utility of the specialty trait in builds that don't want to buy the three resist skills. Could you do a wand of piercing x4?

Yeah, the artifact crafting is fiddly and having the different parts spread across different metamagics confuses things. It's not clear if imbuing uses a spell or not and may or may not qualify for renew/staff of power or what sticking other metamagics on it might do. I'm assuming it doesn't.

Synchronicity? You mean Stasis? The concept is a one use (glyph) spell kissed ranged ammo that, on hit & failed save, (stasis) locks the target in place until (flash) the start of the attacker's next turn. It's basically the same as paralysis but with a different mechanisim.

[Jakinbandw]

Okay, one last build, just to see how it turns out. This is me attempting to replicate the character I'm playing in my current system. Obviously there will be some differences, but I'll do my best to cover the basic abilities that my character has (mainly because I don't think I'll have the points to cover their ability to improvise any ability they have access to)

Fake Edit: Yeah, this is pretty painful. It costs 160 points for a fairly ineffective character. I'll post what he would look like at immediately after character creation in my system vs your system.


Agility 4
Charisma 7
Dexterity 6
Endurance 6
Intellegence 10
Perception 8
Strength 4
Willpower 8

Proficiencies:
Major Proficiency: Resolve, Leadership, Social, Academics, Reason
Minor Proficiency: Unarmed, Marksmanship, Melee, Expression, Insight, Alertness, Medical, Survival, All Occult Skills


Merits:
Sagacious x13
Eidetic
Empathic
Beauty
Confident
Soothing Voice
Priest (Gaia)
Ally (Major) (Gaia)
Wise x 8

Martial Technique (Kiai Shout)

Relic: Mage Blade + Dancing Blade + Symbiotic
Relic: Halo + Magic Banner + Symbiotic




Agility 2
Charisma 5
Dexterity 5
Endurance 4
Intellegence 10
Perception 5
Strength 2
Willpower 5

Proficiencies:
Major Proficiency: Resolve, Leadership, Social, Academics, Reason
Minor Proficiency: Unarmed, Marksmanship, Melee, Expression, Insight, Alertness, Medical, Survival, Mysticism, Chronomancy

Merits:
Priest (Gaia)
Ally (Major) (Gaia)
Wise x 2
Relic: Mage Blade + Dancing Blade + Symbiotic
Relic: Halo + Magic Banner + Symbiotic


:durkon: Stuff like this is why I feel the need to minmax. Even the 160 point version would lose against a basic Journeyman Soldier.

[Talakeal]

The games uses a bunch of 10+x to set dcs all over the place. I don't know that it ever mentions the resist dc as being completely static and unchanging. I thought it followed the pattern. Hmm... that has implications for rerolls and the utility of the specialty trait in builds that don't want to buy the three resist skills. Could you do a wand of piercing x4?

Yeah, the artifact crafting is fiddly and having the different parts spread across different metamagics confuses things. It's not clear if imbuing uses a spell or not and may or may not qualify for renew/staff of power or what sticking other metamagics on it might do. I'm assuming it doesn't.

Synchronicity? You mean Stasis? The concept is a one use (glyph) spell kissed ranged ammo that, on hit & failed save, (stasis) locks the target in place until (flash) the start of the attacker's next turn. It's basically the same as paralysis but with a different mechanisim.

The rules for resisting magic are on page 141.

No, you cannot stack multiple artifacts of the same type.

Yes, staff of power works with imbue. Glyph should probably have focus, but it doesn't as is.

I meant subtle, not synchronicity. My bad,

[Telok]

I finally understand the core issue behind the opening post. I went back to reread just in case. It's a confluence of factors that devalues damage spells. Investing fully in magic will make a character a batman wizard with a limited number of "i just solve that" and an effectively unlimited ammo flexible options heavy rifle. But that will take about 1/3rd of the character's starting point allotment and replicating the normal nameless npc takes 4/5th or more of the starting point allotment and you won't be killing anyone with magic. If you make a dedicated blaster evocation wizard you'll have fewer flaws or better stats, but your blasting won't be much better at exploding stuff than just going full batman.

I am not saying this is bad or wrong. It's a part of system & opponent design that I think matches the tropes & assumptions in the combined system & setting. It took a lot of crunching through the book, tracing multiple page references from a single rule, asking questions, and building a "roll this out a million times and report the result" sim. I propose no "solution" because this is not a mechanical problem at it's core (well aside from all the page flipping).

Here follows what I did

Ok, I apparently no longer have any clue as to how spells do damage. Let's work through all the different references.

-- note: need sub-headings in the table of contents
-- note: this is why you need page references and/or margin hyperlinks. I bounced around 4 or 5 different chapters working this all out.
-- note: Fireball spell, dc 20 incant area, all in the area evade or test for fire damage. Fire Blast spell, dc 15 incant calling, all in the zone evade or test for fire damage. Ref p.104 and zones = paces while area spells... p.275 same. Ok zone=pace=base spell area. I think Fire Blast may also bypass the Soulless trait unlike Fireball because the magic calls the flame into existence rather than affecting stuff with magic fire.
-- note: expansion of zones/paces by the enlarge meta magic is unclear. Do we run 1 pace across then each enlarge doubles that? Or is it we double the total area of paces? Thus 3x enlarge is 1-> 2->4-> 8, for either a 8 pace diameter area & 50 square paces OR 8 paces as an incomplete 3x3 area?
-- note: turns out that sensing magic is a basic action people have to take unless the magic is used/cast/targeted in their direct presence. Over the horizon spell detection isn't a worry unless there are some highly organized people with a bunch of spare masters of the insight skill laying around.

Going through evocation (p.453 - p.459 of p.430 - p.502 spells) because I'm assuming it hits all the different variations. Referencing magic rules (p.270 - p.277 under Supernatural) under Damaging Spells (p.274) "unless specified otherwise the adjustment when testing for damage is equal to the magician's score in the relevant occult skill", no mention of the dc. Let's see, what else; p273 "step 7: spells are resisted with resolve & magic missiles skip this step", p.275 area spells roll evade (acrobatic+agility) to escape the area instead of resolve (endurance+fortitude) to resist it.

Combat, attacking, p.172, test attack vs dodge (10+dodge = 10+(5+agl)), test for damage vs resilience (10+resil)... and that looks about like all that will apply.

Checking individual skills... Acrobat p.121, evade, dc 20, mentions diving for cover but no reference, difficulty mod is positive but the table not uses negative penalties to the roll (just a minor inconsistency). Dive for cover ctrl-f... just cover... p.179 penalty to attack or damage tests by cover type and amount up to a maximum of -12, good example with the brick wall & window, very nice. Fortitude skill doesn't mention magic. Resolve, p.141 resist magic dc 20, there it is, and on a crit they're immune to similar spells for the rest of the mission.

Thus checking the typical extras/npcs presented p.530-531 we see that amateur mystics should resist spells 55%, adept 75%, and nobody else should get to 50% unless they're paragons. This means most no-stat extras will mostly not resist spells... no do the math... non-caster journeyman success on rolls 14+ is 35% success rate. Ow, that's actually kind of bad for casters. Even if you cast and pay the mana you just don't do anything 1/3rd the time. Then on anything with stats... where are those... well I guess we just assume 5s since that's run as average, but still a... save 30% rate. Hmm... I getting the vibe that baseline +15 casters are basically still novices, maybe slightly above average novices. A 80% cast rate vs dc 20 then a 35% save rate is a 52% rate to affect some nameless extra with a base dc 20 spell. Do note that at the table, unless you're actually looking at the exact numbers and trying to track the difference, a player won't notice the difference between a 52% and 56% success rate. They will in fact have a very hard time telling the difference between 40% and 60% success rates unless they're actively trying to track it.

Therefore for pcs the trait: specialization resolve(resist magic) 1=primary skill & 1/+2 up to the stat 10 cap & +2 resolve trait means 4cp = will+10 at will 1-5 (throw the other point as evade or something), and at base will 5 a +15 on resisting magic. Cantrip of the Sun is the resolve 2-fer so that's a 2 point Mystic talent & 2 point Fisher's Ring 95% basic action 0-mana cast which at animus 3 we can alacrity to a quick action OR we just dump 4 points into a Mysticisim Fetish relic and now... 96% spell resist for 8 character points. If we go with the free-but-more-fumbles trait for faux prodigy we can... take up to a bad fortune range of 1-4 without impacting the 96% success rate for 5 character points, and we still have a 1% fumble rate plus a 7% crit rate. Thus willpower 5 (standard) + specialization in resist magic for 2 character points for a primary skill (+5) & 2 specialized prodigy + 3 inept prodigy in resolve (bad fortune 1-4) + 5 resolve trait for 2 more character points is our +15 vs spells for 4 character points (6 if we want to avoid the bad fortune). Might as well do the same with evade since that'll cover our ass for all the area effect stuff. Save the fetish relics for if they feel really paranoid.

Right then. While I'd expect an overall higher average for evasion bonuses I think area effects are where it's at. Now, to get any spell past point blank range (perception in paces) and a 1 pace diameter well have to use at least +5 reaching and +3 enlarge. If we wand & dwesomer master the enlarge meta to stack 3 it becomes a 8 pace diameter zone at the cost of 3 character points and +4 casting dc. With a well placed blast we should be able to place it to apply a (p.121)... ok raise the evade dc to 28 OR apply a -8 penalty. Math wise it's the same but I wish the table & text were consistent. And if they find cover instead of evading we can still call it a win as cover penalizes our to-wound roll less than resists negate it. Unfortunately we've now increased the base dc by +14 and our casting dc by +9 putting even a original dc 15 up to 24.

So test: A wizzy with book in one hand, wand in the other, and max basic enlightenment, spends the mana to throw Fire Blast (effectively a D&D style fireball and less taxing than actual Fireball that does the same thing) rolling +20 vs dc 24 that's a... cross reference insight (p.133) at max range penalty dc 35... Oh! Important note that sensing magic is a basic active action that you take unless the spell casting, caster, or target, is in their presence. Well that changes some stuff. We only have to worry about over-the-horizon detection for people who; A) we directly target, or B) have lots of staff on hand organized into a MAGDAR (MAGical Detection And Ranging) unit. Well any ways, wizzy gets that faux fireball off making everyone in the area test agility + acrobatics (evasion) vs 20 + 4x(their speed in multiples from the edge or cover), potentially a range from dcs 20 to 32ish. Then on everyone still in there rolls +20 vs 10 + resilience + cover bonus (looks like max +12 from cover) which for starting opponents we know to be average 22 (probably +/-4). Average extras (p.530)... none have acrobatics so +6, speed 6, vitality 6, resilience 12... dang, they're better than lots of starting characters at that... d20+6 vs dc 24 to evade (85% hit rate) then damage at d20+20 vs 22 at.. calculator; 85% hit, 4% crit fail evade, 1% crit success evade, 95% wound per hit, 8% crit per hit, +20 damage from the crit fail evades is in there, 0.5% fumbled the damage roll, 0.4% mortal wounds...

Wizzy has (assuming we'll destiny or extra mana any of the 1/6 failed casting rolls) about an 81% chance to hurt any specific extra in the blast and about 1/12 will take 2 wounds. Which with 6 vitality and tenacity means we won't kill average towns people. Hmm... add a level of piercing to apply a -1 to evades and a +1 to damage, ups casting dc to 25 and max range detection dc to 30 (although that's less important than we thought)... fractional changes in nearly all numbers, it did go to a 94% chance of hurting any specific extra that started at the center of the blast. Oh, guess for completeness I should check those closer to the edge where it's still dc 20 to evade. Ok, 67% to wound those closer to the edge, or 73% with the extra piercing.

Fine, fine, no armor & no helmet checking is -5 resilience but +6 evasion for... with piercing... 60% fail evasion at the center, 72% chance to harm, on damage test; fumbles 0.2%, crits 21.6%, mortal wounds almost 2%. Buggers closer to the edge get 40% hits, 48% chance to harm, on damage test is no change. The townsfolk not wearing armor take less damage from fireballs.

fit the third: Ur-Average Extra

stats (derive from scores)
trained in 3 skills = int 5 or 6, speed 6 = agility 6, perception 6, encumbrance 6 & might 12 = strength 6, tenacity 6 = willpower 6, vitality 6 = endurance 6, OK, looks like all stats are 6s for 96 pt.

skills: 3 primary skills except that we need +12 total and stats are 6 so +3 pts for prodigy (99pt)
but then no secondary skills so 3x uneducated or whatever the flaw was for -3 (96 pt)

resilience, dodge, and damage are +12s, stats assume medium armor & helmet but no penalty for having a helmet AND no training so factoring that we need... eh, it's wash, +5 alertness trait, +1 resilience trait, a 6 damage 1-handed weapon and since those are +5 we need the +1 damage trait, +1 dodge trait or the skirmisher trait if trained for combat... (101 pt)

BUT extras take morale rolls and have neither mana no destiny so fated characters need the coward flaw, -6 mana flaw, -6 destiny flaw... -14 pt (87 pt)

UNLESS we're a magic user where we have +12 to all magics for...
Major caster 12 mana & 7 enlightenment & assume they have 1 primary magic skill for 87+28=115 character points
Minor caster 6 mana & 6 enlightenment & no occult skills for 87+18=105 character points. Also they're total crap at just about anything magic that's more complex than a cantrip.

You're average nameless extra is a 87 point character unless they're a magic user. Either way they likely have better attribute scores than most starting fated characters.

[Jakinbandw]

Yes, staff of power works with imbue.

Are you pondering what I'm pondering pinky?

Staff of Power Imbue. Use Subtle to make/find Eldritch Mechanisms. Attune to those Eldritch Mechanisms to cast the spell of your choice. At the end of the act, the artifacts stop being artifacts so you can't be attuned to them any more, and you can now make more Eldritch Mechanisms.

The only loss of power is on a failure to cast the imbue spell, which has a DC of 22, so it's not that expensive.

[Talakeal]

I finally understand the core issue behind the opening post. I went back to reread just in case. It's a confluence of factors that devalues damage spells. Investing fully in magic will make a character a batman wizard with a limited number of "i just solve that" and an effectively unlimited ammo flexible options heavy rifle. But that will take about 1/3rd of the character's starting point allotment and replicating the normal nameless npc takes 4/5th or more of the starting point allotment and you won't be killing anyone with magic. If you make a dedicated blaster evocation wizard you'll have fewer flaws or better stats, but your blasting won't be much better at exploding stuff than just going full batman.

I am not saying this is bad or wrong. It's a part of system & opponent design that I think matches the tropes & assumptions in the combined system & setting. It took a lot of crunching through the book, tracing multiple page references from a single rule, asking questions, and building a "roll this out a million times and report the result" sim. I propose no "solution" because this is not a mechanical problem at it's core (well aside from all the page flipping).

Here follows what I did

Ok, I apparently no longer have any clue as to how spells do damage. Let's work through all the different references.

-- note: need sub-headings in the table of contents
-- note: this is why you need page references and/or margin hyperlinks. I bounced around 4 or 5 different chapters working this all out.
-- note: Fireball spell, dc 20 incant area, all in the area evade or test for fire damage. Fire Blast spell, dc 15 incant calling, all in the zone evade or test for fire damage. Ref p.104 and zones = paces while area spells... p.275 same. Ok zone=pace=base spell area. I think Fire Blast may also bypass the Soulless trait unlike Fireball because the magic calls the flame into existence rather than affecting stuff with magic fire.
-- note: expansion of zones/paces by the enlarge meta magic is unclear. Do we run 1 pace across then each enlarge doubles that? Or is it we double the total area of paces? Thus 3x enlarge is 1-> 2->4-> 8, for either a 8 pace diameter area & 50 square paces OR 8 paces as an incomplete 3x3 area?
-- note: turns out that sensing magic is a basic action people have to take unless the magic is used/cast/targeted in their direct presence. Over the horizon spell detection isn't a worry unless there are some highly organized people with a bunch of spare masters of the insight skill laying around.

Going through evocation (p.453 - p.459 of p.430 - p.502 spells) because I'm assuming it hits all the different variations. Referencing magic rules (p.270 - p.277 under Supernatural) under Damaging Spells (p.274) "unless specified otherwise the adjustment when testing for damage is equal to the magician's score in the relevant occult skill", no mention of the dc. Let's see, what else; p273 "step 7: spells are resisted with resolve & magic missiles skip this step", p.275 area spells roll evade (acrobatic+agility) to escape the area instead of resolve (endurance+fortitude) to resist it.

Combat, attacking, p.172, test attack vs dodge (10+dodge = 10+(5+agl)), test for damage vs resilience (10+resil)... and that looks about like all that will apply.

Checking individual skills... Acrobat p.121, evade, dc 20, mentions diving for cover but no reference, difficulty mod is positive but the table not uses negative penalties to the roll (just a minor inconsistency). Dive for cover ctrl-f... just cover... p.179 penalty to attack or damage tests by cover type and amount up to a maximum of -12, good example with the brick wall & window, very nice. Fortitude skill doesn't mention magic. Resolve, p.141 resist magic dc 20, there it is, and on a crit they're immune to similar spells for the rest of the mission.

Thus checking the typical extras/npcs presented p.530-531 we see that amateur mystics should resist spells 55%, adept 75%, and nobody else should get to 50% unless they're paragons. This means most no-stat extras will mostly not resist spells... no do the math... non-caster journeyman success on rolls 14+ is 35% success rate. Ow, that's actually kind of bad for casters. Even if you cast and pay the mana you just don't do anything 1/3rd the time. Then on anything with stats... where are those... well I guess we just assume 5s since that's run as average, but still a... save 30% rate. Hmm... I getting the vibe that baseline +15 casters are basically still novices, maybe slightly above average novices. A 80% cast rate vs dc 20 then a 35% save rate is a 52% rate to affect some nameless extra with a base dc 20 spell. Do note that at the table, unless you're actually looking at the exact numbers and trying to track the difference, a player won't notice the difference between a 52% and 56% success rate. They will in fact have a very hard time telling the difference between 40% and 60% success rates unless they're actively trying to track it.

Therefore for pcs the trait: specialization resolve(resist magic) 1=primary skill & 1/+2 up to the stat 10 cap & +2 resolve trait means 4cp = will+10 at will 1-5 (throw the other point as evade or something), and at base will 5 a +15 on resisting magic. Cantrip of the Sun is the resolve 2-fer so that's a 2 point Mystic talent & 2 point Fisher's Ring 95% basic action 0-mana cast which at animus 3 we can alacrity to a quick action OR we just dump 4 points into a Mysticisim Fetish relic and now... 96% spell resist for 8 character points. If we go with the free-but-more-fumbles trait for faux prodigy we can... take up to a bad fortune range of 1-4 without impacting the 96% success rate for 5 character points, and we still have a 1% fumble rate plus a 7% crit rate. Thus willpower 5 (standard) + specialization in resist magic for 2 character points for a primary skill (+5) & 2 specialized prodigy + 3 inept prodigy in resolve (bad fortune 1-4) + 5 resolve trait for 2 more character points is our +15 vs spells for 4 character points (6 if we want to avoid the bad fortune). Might as well do the same with evade since that'll cover our ass for all the area effect stuff. Save the fetish relics for if they feel really paranoid.

Right then. While I'd expect an overall higher average for evasion bonuses I think area effects are where it's at. Now, to get any spell past point blank range (perception in paces) and a 1 pace diameter well have to use at least +5 reaching and +3 enlarge. If we wand & dwesomer master the enlarge meta to stack 3 it becomes a 8 pace diameter zone at the cost of 3 character points and +4 casting dc. With a well placed blast we should be able to place it to apply a (p.121)... ok raise the evade dc to 28 OR apply a -8 penalty. Math wise it's the same but I wish the table & text were consistent. And if they find cover instead of evading we can still call it a win as cover penalizes our to-wound roll less than resists negate it. Unfortunately we've now increased the base dc by +14 and our casting dc by +9 putting even a original dc 15 up to 24.

So test: A wizzy with book in one hand, wand in the other, and max basic enlightenment, spends the mana to throw Fire Blast (effectively a D&D style fireball and less taxing than actual Fireball that does the same thing) rolling +20 vs dc 24 that's a... cross reference insight (p.133) at max range penalty dc 35... Oh! Important note that sensing magic is a basic active action that you take unless the spell casting, caster, or target, is in their presence. Well that changes some stuff. We only have to worry about over-the-horizon detection for people who; A) we directly target, or B) have lots of staff on hand organized into a MAGDAR (MAGical Detection And Ranging) unit. Well any ways, wizzy gets that faux fireball off making everyone in the area test agility + acrobatics (evasion) vs 20 + 4x(their speed in multiples from the edge or cover), potentially a range from dcs 20 to 32ish. Then on everyone still in there rolls +20 vs 10 + resilience + cover bonus (looks like max +12 from cover) which for starting opponents we know to be average 22 (probably +/-4). Average extras (p.530)... none have acrobatics so +6, speed 6, vitality 6, resilience 12... dang, they're better than lots of starting characters at that... d20+6 vs dc 24 to evade (85% hit rate) then damage at d20+20 vs 22 at.. calculator; 85% hit, 4% crit fail evade, 1% crit success evade, 95% wound per hit, 8% crit per hit, +20 damage from the crit fail evades is in there, 0.5% fumbled the damage roll, 0.4% mortal wounds...

Wizzy has (assuming we'll destiny or extra mana any of the 1/6 failed casting rolls) about an 81% chance to hurt any specific extra in the blast and about 1/12 will take 2 wounds. Which with 6 vitality and tenacity means we won't kill average towns people. Hmm... add a level of piercing to apply a -1 to evades and a +1 to damage, ups casting dc to 25 and max range detection dc to 30 (although that's less important than we thought)... fractional changes in nearly all numbers, it did go to a 94% chance of hurting any specific extra that started at the center of the blast. Oh, guess for completeness I should check those closer to the edge where it's still dc 20 to evade. Ok, 67% to wound those closer to the edge, or 73% with the extra piercing.

Fine, fine, no armor & no helmet checking is -5 resilience but +6 evasion for... with piercing... 60% fail evasion at the center, 72% chance to harm, on damage test; fumbles 0.2%, crits 21.6%, mortal wounds almost 2%. Buggers closer to the edge get 40% hits, 48% chance to harm, on damage test is no change. The townsfolk not wearing armor take less damage from fireballs.

fit the third: Ur-Average Extra

stats (derive from scores)
trained in 3 skills = int 5 or 6, speed 6 = agility 6, perception 6, encumbrance 6 & might 12 = strength 6, tenacity 6 = willpower 6, vitality 6 = endurance 6, OK, looks like all stats are 6s for 96 pt.

skills: 3 primary skills except that we need +12 total and stats are 6 so +3 pts for prodigy (99pt)
but then no secondary skills so 3x uneducated or whatever the flaw was for -3 (96 pt)

resilience, dodge, and damage are +12s, stats assume medium armor & helmet but no penalty for having a helmet AND no training so factoring that we need... eh, it's wash, +5 alertness trait, +1 resilience trait, a 6 damage 1-handed weapon and since those are +5 we need the +1 damage trait, +1 dodge trait or the skirmisher trait if trained for combat... (101 pt)

BUT extras take morale rolls and have neither mana no destiny so fated characters need the coward flaw, -6 mana flaw, -6 destiny flaw... -14 pt (87 pt)

UNLESS we're a magic user where we have +12 to all magics for...
Major caster 12 mana & 7 enlightenment & assume they have 1 primary magic skill for 87+28=115 character points
Minor caster 6 mana & 6 enlightenment & no occult skills for 87+18=105 character points. Also they're total crap at just about anything magic that's more complex than a cantrip.

You're average nameless extra is a 87 point character unless they're a magic user. Either way they likely have better attribute scores than most starting fated characters.



I will post more on Sunday when I have a keyboard, but this all seems right.

I will put page references and hyperlinks in once the layout is finalized.

Fire blast is not an area spell.

Area spells target any point, and everything within 1 pace is affected. That distance doubles with each enlarge. So at most, a base aoe can at most affect a 3 zone by 3 zone square, enlarged to 5x5, double enlarge to 9x9, etc.

Thanks for pointing out the evade table consistency. Thats some real quality feedback despite being a simple fix.

I suppose it depends on what you mean by a blaster wizard. If you mean like Flossie, that character in the op, yeah, she won’t out damage a similarly skilled person with a rifle, but she only paid for a four point staff of power and still retains full casting ability on top of it. If you mean a dedicated evoker who chooses a suite of artifacts and dweomers designed for dealing damage, no, they will kick more ass than a rifleman can ever dream of.



Okay, one last build, just to see how it turns out. This is me attempting to replicate the character I'm playing in my current system. Obviously there will be some differences, but I'll do my best to cover the basic abilities that my character has (mainly because I don't think I'll have the points to cover their ability to improvise any ability they have access to)

Fake Edit: Yeah, this is pretty painful. It costs 160 points for a fairly ineffective character. I'll post what he would look like at immediately after character creation in my system vs your system.


Agility 4
Charisma 7
Dexterity 6
Endurance 6
Intellegence 10
Perception 8
Strength 4
Willpower 8

Proficiencies:
Major Proficiency: Resolve, Leadership, Social, Academics, Reason
Minor Proficiency: Unarmed, Marksmanship, Melee, Expression, Insight, Alertness, Medical, Survival, All Occult Skills


Merits:
Sagacious x13
Eidetic
Empathic
Beauty
Confident
Soothing Voice
Priest (Gaia)
Ally (Major) (Gaia)
Wise x 8

Martial Technique (Kiai Shout)

Relic: Mage Blade + Dancing Blade + Symbiotic
Relic: Halo + Magic Banner + Symbiotic




Agility 2
Charisma 5
Dexterity 5
Endurance 4
Intellegence 10
Perception 5
Strength 2
Willpower 5

Proficiencies:
Major Proficiency: Resolve, Leadership, Social, Academics, Reason
Minor Proficiency: Unarmed, Marksmanship, Melee, Expression, Insight, Alertness, Medical, Survival, Mysticism, Chronomancy

Merits:
Priest (Gaia)
Ally (Major) (Gaia)
Wise x 2
Relic: Mage Blade + Dancing Blade + Symbiotic
Relic: Halo + Magic Banner + Symbiotic


:durkon: Stuff like this is why I feel the need to minmax. Even the 160 point version would lose against a basic Journeyman Soldier.

Thats a pretty non-focused build, but hardly bad.

It would be absolutely amazing in a big party or one with a minionmancer in It.

Its odd that you took a mageblade and all occult skills but no mana or enlightenment.

Also odd you have a bunch of charisma boosting traits but only an average charisma.

No way in the world this character loses to a journeyman extra.

Depending on what era the game takes place in, literally having God as an ally could also be a bit of a powerplay.

Conceptually, what are you going for here?

[Talakeal]

Are you pondering what I'm pondering pinky?

Staff of Power Imbue. Use Subtle to make/find Eldritch Mechanisms. Attune to those Eldritch Mechanisms to cast the spell of your choice. At the end of the act, the artifacts stop being artifacts so you can't be attuned to them any more, and you can now make more Eldritch Mechanisms.

The only loss of power is on a failure to cast the imbue spell, which has a DC of 22, so it's not that expensive.

I don’t know what subtle adds to this aside from giving the GM an opportunity to mess with you.

[Jakinbandw]

Thats a pretty non-focused build, but hardly bad.

It would be absolutely amazing in a big party or one with a minionmancer in It.

Its odd that you took a mageblade and all occult skills but no mana or enlightenment.

Also odd you have a bunch of charisma boosting traits but only an average charisma.

No way in the world this character loses to a journeyman extra.

Depending on what era the game takes place in, literally having God as an ally could also be a bit of a powerplay.

Conceptually, what are you going for here?

Basically something of a cross between a witcher and a cleric.

So the mageblade isn't actually for combat, it's more meant for out of combat utility. Basically, at it's end, it gives Susland access to a bunch of useful minor magical abilities. He can start a fire, maybe summon a bunch of rocks (depending on how Elemental Shank works with the Conjuration Magic Missile). Think of a witchers Signs, not true magic, but useful in a pinch. To be able to switch it to the different elements, I need proficiency in the relevent Occult skill. That's why it's set up the way it is.

As for the Charisma skills, my character isn't really focused on them in my game. He instead is built around battlefield control, and debuffing opponents. Things like throwing up walls of fire, or linking far away areas with portals, or freezing an opponent to slow them down a bit, using plant growth to lock them in place, ect. Since I couldn't see a solid way to go about that, I defaulted to buffing the party instead which relies on charisma. Any normal debuffing options required a successful hit, and Susland is bad at hitting.

As an aside, Susland ends up taking the most damage out of everyone in the party in my current game, just because he's willing to get in close, while not being especially good at the actual fighting part of combat.

But that said, I can't see him winning against a journeyman extra. Susland would need to roll a 13 to hit, while the Journeyman soldier would only need a 5. For Damage Susland needs to roll a 17, while the extra only needs to roll a 10. This is assuming Susland is using heavy armor, a Mace, and a Tower Shield, while the Journeyman soldier is using a heavy armor, and sword and shield. I just don't see Susland walking away from it alive.

As for the God thing, it's mostly just narrative fluff. In my system, it's biggest benefit in the early game is that I can spend reputation/Karmic Luck to ask her a question now an then. As Gaia is locked up and unable to do much of anything... Like I said, mostly just fluff.


I don’t know what subtle adds to this aside from giving the GM an opportunity to mess with you.
Switches it over to Intelligence instead of Occult, so it saves a bunch of attribute points. Runic anvil is also an option.

[Telok]

I
Fire blast is not an area spell.

Area spells target any point, and everything within 1 pace is affected. That distance doubles with each enlarge. So at most, a base aoe can at most affect a 3 zone by 3 zone square, enlarged to 5x5, double enlarge to 9x9, etc.

I suppose it depends on what you mean by a blaster wizard.

On fire blast; its a calling spell that says it affects a zone. And a zone is a pace is a square on the board. And people caught in/beside harmful callings get an evade just like an area spell. And enlarge doubles that. So that's why the note with the question, because I had to cross ref three chapters to try to figure it out. Either way you just drop the area to use actual fireball and everyone evades versus 20 instead of the ones at the center evading vs 24.

On area; it says something like that but it says that in relation to partial zones. It also says your area starts as 1 zone. Another issue might be the assumption of a board with squares. I know they're the most common in many places, but a number of us prefer to run hex boards when/if we use them for a game. So starting with a 1 pace aoe, how do we hit... ah, radius vs diameter. Your 1 pace zone is a 2x2 square area placed in the middle to partally cover a 3x3 square. Needs a picture (thousand words). Still doesn't explain a difference between a 1 pace sized area spell and a 1 pace sized calling spell.

Honestly you could make a completely rocking mage duo. First person drops a hard to resist aoe reversed cantrip, second drops the nuke. But that's not the blaster archetype/fantasy. The example wizzy dropped minimum about 20 points on evocation, dweomer mastery, a +5 book, and a wand just to blast three random towns people 40 feet away. Both hands are full and we have the full chanting & waving & pointing going on to create this... 17x17 (man is that unintuitive) area full of fire just to throw a minor penalty to evade on the person in the middle. This is a dc 30 "major" spell and the result is 4/5 people have painful burns. He needs to cast that twice more to reliably kill more than one person.

The problem is this doesn't align with the common idea of 'blaster mage'. A bunch of character points (granted that reach wand is super generally useful) and we have to cast a dc 30 fireball spell three times to kill people. Now if you want to kill one person there's ways to combo reversed cantrips, a reverse buff on their vitality score, then slap them with a single wound. But that's a weird transmutation & stuff 2-round combo, not blasting.

That's what tbe origin of this was. Blasting. Average McExtra has 6 vitality & tenacity. You have to do 3 wounds to get them to disabled/dying. A +20 caster with a 4 point relic and +5 heirloom book is throwing around dc 30 fireballs for three rounds of combat before they expect to kill more than one person. That's not "blasting", it's giving people righteously nasty sunburns until they pass out and start to die.

Honestly I'm starting to think maybe slapping living spell or tie on some damage over time effect as being the real combat damage magics. Sure, staff of power a magic missile gives you the unlimited variable rifle (and +15 +15 or +20 +20 is a good hit/damage rate), but I was getting that with basic shooter/archer builds. Yes, you have some very strong buffs & debuffs. But those are

[Kish]

You know, I feel like people are coming at me from both sides in this thread; telling me that I hate any form of optimization but also trapping players by requiring optimization. Make up your minds you dang kids! :smallbiggrin:
Kind of, for my part, yeah. To put it another way: Having read your system, your specific complaints about your players, and your stated means of dealing with certain builds, it appears to me that

1) You have made a system that is more crunchy than 3.5ed D&D or Pathfinder, with lots of detailed mechanics and very specific effects, and very few things described in less mechanical terms, like "this decreases your empathy" or "this causes the character to become gradually greedier over time." The closest I could find is the Vice/Virtue mental quirk, which causes a psychic wound--a specific mechanical result--whenever the character goes against the chosen vice or virtue. (Which, incidentally, gives me the amusing thought that the problem Loki describes in panel seven (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1177.html) automatically accrues to anyone who takes Vice: Deceitful.)
2) You want the people playing this system to do so with an attitude I associate much more with White Wolf games than with anything crunchy. You describe any level of optimization in unambiguously negative terms: "I am going to turn a bit of a blind eye to it if it isn't too flagrant[...]even worse[...]one-note[...]"
3) At least one of your players (the one you call "new girl") has made and is playing a nonfunctional character. This means she consistently fails to do anything. This means failure to optimize has screwed her over.

Let me know if you disagree with any of these.

[Talakeal]

Basically something of a cross between a witcher and a cleric.

I haven't actually read the books, but aren't witchers supposed to be like fantasy space marines? Alchemically augmented super-human killing machines?

Yeah, D&D clerics are tricky in my system, or indeed most point buy systems, because D&D tends to make them grossly overpowered and let them do anything and everything as a sort of meta-bribe to convince someone to play the healer.


So the mageblade isn't actually for combat, it's more meant for out of combat utility. Basically, at it's end, it gives Susland access to a bunch of useful minor magical abilities. He can start a fire, maybe summon a bunch of rocks (depending on how Elemental Shank works with the Conjuration Magic Missile). Think of a witchers Signs, not true magic, but useful in a pinch. To be able to switch it to the different elements, I need proficiency in the relevent Occult skill. That's why it's set up the way it is.

As for the Charisma skills, my character isn't really focused on them in my game. He instead is built around battlefield control, and debuffing opponents. Things like throwing up walls of fire, or linking far away areas with portals, or freezing an opponent to slow them down a bit, using plant growth to lock them in place, ect. Since I couldn't see a solid way to go about that, I defaulted to buffing the party instead which relies on charisma. Any normal debuffing options required a successful hit, and Susland is bad at hitting.

You are allowed to make custom schools of magic.

Again, I don't know what exactly your powers are, but that is probably a more efficient way to do it. Or just drop all of the social merits and play a full on omni-caster.



But that said, I can't see him winning against a journeyman extra. Susland would need to roll a 13 to hit, while the Journeyman soldier would only need a 5. For Damage Susland needs to roll a 17, while the extra only needs to roll a 10. This is assuming Susland is using heavy armor, a Mace, and a Tower Shield, while the Journeyman soldier is using a heavy armor, and sword and shield. I just don't see Susland walking away from it alive.

Mana and destiny should give you the edge, although I haven't rand the numbers. Although this is very much a support character rather than a front-line fighter, and I imagine that the bigger a group Susland is part of the bigger an advantage he or she is; Susland + 4 journeyman extras should absolutely crush 5 journeyman extras as an example.



Switches it over to Intelligence instead of Occult, so it saves a bunch of attribute points. Runic anvil is also an option.

True. Although a runic anvil is probably a better pick, because subtle spells only alter probability, and so the odds that there are a bunch of unclaimed non-permanent eldritch mechanisms nearby whenever you cast it is virtually zero and thus the GM is almost certain to say the spell fails.


and your stated means of dealing with certain builds, it appears to me that.

So, the problem here is I don't know what you are referring to, and therefore can't respond without more info.

I literally don't know if you are saying I am too biased, not biased enough, or just inconsistently biased.


Again, my default reaction to a character that looks somehow problematic is to explain the potential pain points to the player (or players if it involves other people) OOC and then run the game world impartially and play NPCs according to their knowledge and motivation. And of course, small accommodations might be requested or granted by any party OOC, for example a kleptomaniac PC might agree not to steal from the party or a PC with a golden heirloom might ask for it not to be stolen by pickpockets.


1) You have made a system that is more crunchy than 3.5ed D&D or Pathfinder.


I feel like my game plays like a cross between WHFRP and Exalted. I wouldn't say its objectively more crunchy than 3.5, but it is comparable.


On fire blast; its a calling spell that says it affects a zone. And a zone is a pace is a square on the board. And people caught in/beside harmful callings get an evade just like an area spell. And enlarge doubles that. So that's why the note with the question, because I had to cross ref three chapters to try to figure it out. Either way you just drop the area to use actual fireball and everyone evades versus 20 instead of the ones at the center evading vs 24.

Fire blast isn't an area spell. Full stop. It doesn't have a radius and it isn't affected by enlarge. Anything that shares the zone with it takes damage. The term pace is never used in the spell.


On area; it says something like that but it says that in relation to partial zones. It also says your area starts as 1 zone. Another issue might be the assumption of a board with squares. I know they're the most common in many places, but a number of us prefer to run hex boards when/if we use them for a game. So starting with a 1 pace aoe, how do we hit... ah, radius vs diameter. Your 1 pace zone is a 2x2 square area placed in the middle to partially cover a 3x3 square. Needs a picture (thousand words).

When you cast an area spell, you choose any point on the board to center it. This is typically the center point of a zone, but doesn't have to be. Then you count the squares between a character and that point (always rounding partial squares to full squares) to see if any given creature / object is affected.

It should work exactly the same on a hex-grid, in fact even easier as you don't have to deal with the knowledge that diagonals are longer than straight angles.

I would say it is simpler to use squares, but for some reason people rage about the idea of cubical spell effects in 4E, and so even as a rounding abstraction its just not worth it.


Honestly you could make a completely rocking mage duo. First person drops a hard to resist aoe reversed cantrip, second drops the nuke. But that's not the blaster archetype/fantasy. The example wizzy dropped minimum about 20 points on evocation, dweomer mastery, a +5 book, and a wand just to blast three random towns people 40 feet away. Both hands are full and we have the full chanting & waving & pointing going on to create this... 17x17 (man is that unintuitive) area full of fire just to throw a minor penalty to evade on the person in the middle. This is a dc 30 "major" spell and the result is 4/5 people have painful burns. He needs to cast that twice more to reliably kill more than one person.

The problem is this doesn't align with the common idea of 'blaster mage'. A bunch of character points (granted that reach wand is super generally useful) and we have to cast a dc 30 fireball spell three times to kill people. Now if you want to kill one person there's ways to combo reversed cantrips, a reverse buff on their vitality score, then slap them with a single wound. But that's a weird transmutation & stuff 2-round combo, not blasting.

That's what tbe origin of this was. Blasting. Average McExtra has 6 vitality & tenacity. You have to do 3 wounds to get them to disabled/dying. A +20 caster with a 4 point relic and +5 heirloom book is throwing around dc 30 fireballs for three rounds of combat before they expect to kill more than one person. That's not "blasting", it's giving people righteously nasty sunburns until they pass out and start to die.

This is a separate issue.

I said a dedicated evoker will put out damage martial characters can only dream off, not that they will kill lot's of people in a single spell.

I would say that a caster in HoD can take down most stuff of their "level" faster than a similar character could in D&D, but because the game has a shallower power curve with less HP bloat, it doesn't look as dramatic when killing stuff that is much weaker than you.

If you want to kill stuff faster, I recommend using the optional open ended damage rules. That makes the game much more realistic and much faster paced. However, because the game doesn't have a lot of HP bloat, it also means that player characters and named villains can also go down in the blink of an eye.

Also, you should absolutely be treating random townsfolk as mooks rather than making PCs deal three wounds to them.

Also also, bale-fire is an evoker's friend.


Honestly I'm starting to think maybe slapping living spell or tie on some damage over time effect as being the real combat damage magics. Sure, staff of power a magic missile gives you the unlimited variable rifle (and +15 +15 or +20 +20 is a good hit/damage rate), but I was getting that with basic shooter/archer builds. Yes, you have some very strong buffs & debuffs. But those are

But those are what? What are they Telok? Where did you go....?

Joking aside, yes, summons and DoTs are very powerful. The problem is that they don't usually stack and the caster still needs something to be doing every single turn, and sitting back and rolling damage dice isn't good enough for most players.





and very few things described in less mechanical terms, like "this decreases your empathy" or "this causes the character to become gradually greedier over time." The closest I could find is the Vice/Virtue mental quirk, which causes a psychic wound--a specific mechanical result--whenever the character goes against the chosen vice or virtue. (Which, incidentally, gives me the amusing thought that the problem Loki describes in panel seven (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1177.html) automatically accrues to anyone who takes Vice: Deceitful.)

Yes, social / personality mechanics are generally less crunchy to give people more freedom to RP their characters.

While Loki is doing it to the point of parody (like all player characters in Scion), I could easily see a situation where a dishonest enough person would refuse to tell the truth for fear of the emotional anguish it could cause.



2) You want the people playing this system to do so with an attitude I associate much more with White Wolf games than with anything crunchy.

I agree, although I wouldn't say that White Wolf games are universally anti-crunch. Exalted is extremely crunchy, and there are plenty of rules in cWoD that we still don't understand after a quarter of a century (resonance I am looking at you!)



You describe any level of optimization in unambiguously negative terms: "I am going to turn a bit of a blind eye to it if it isn't too flagrant[...]even worse[...]one-note[...]"

I don't think that has much of anything to do with optimization.

A character who can only survive on GM pity isn't really an optimized character.

I said that I am willing to ignore the logic of the setting / mechanics of the game if it makes it makes it more fun for the players as a group, but not if it gives one person a massive advantage or if it utterly shatters suspension of disbelief.

Saying you don't want your friends and family members targeted by enemies is a legit request, but if you bring your girlfriend into battle and she is a glass-canon DPS monkey (or even worse, you use her as a human shield) that is no longer fair.
If you ask me not to subject your character to fire attacks because you have PTSD from dropping a pot of boiling tea on your lap as a teenager, that's reasonable, but then if you also expect extra-character points for taking a critical weakness to fire, that is not.
If you ask me not to rob your character, that is probably fine, but if you then take a magical ring that renders you immune to all damage so long as it is on your finger, that is not.


Likewise, making a one-note character has nothing to do with optimization. It has to do with player boredom and spotlight hogging. If you want to make a guy who can only do one thing, that is probably not a great a character to begin with, but it is fine if you want to play him or her. What isn't fine is then getting bored and ruining the game for the other players when your one thing isn't the solution. You see this a lot with guys who make big dumb hack and slash characters who are great in combat but with no mental or social stats / skills, and then whenever the other players are trying to have a conversation or solve a mystery, they just start attacking people to turn the scene into a combat scene. As a less dramatic example, they tend to just either start whining or pull out their phone and tuning everyone else out; not as bad but still rude and disruptive.


3) At least one of your players (the one you call "new girl") has made and is playing a nonfunctional character. This means she consistently fails to do anything. This means failure to optimize has screwed her over.

Yeah, she is a bit of an odd case. She is doing what I think most people would consider "anti-optimization" and taking flaws and ability score arrays that negate her skills.

A mute orator, a blind lookout, a one armed man with a two handed sword, a colorblind painter, etc.

Or to use a D&D example a wizard with an 8 intelligence and an 18 strength or a fighter with an 18 intelligence and an 8 strength.

I still can't tell if she is trolling us or if she is just really bad at reading comprehension and too proud to help.

Again though, I feel like some people are mad at me for having a system that allows for deliberate anti-optimization.

But then, at the same time, you and some others are telling me that I hate any form of optimization and therefore... I like her character? I forced her to make this character? I should applaud her character? I am honestly not quite sure how the existence of a dumb anti-optimization character proves your point or even what point you are trying to make by bringing her up.


I'm back home at my computer so writing is easy again! Woohoo!

Me too! Congrats!


As for me finding sample characters interesting, you might be surprised. Once I found the Extras templates section, I was super interested to find that an animus 1 character is expected to be rolling with a +12 to their good skills, and a +6 to everything else. Likewise, a fighter is good at all 3 combat skills, and one additional skill of their choice. These are the exact benchmarks that I would look for when trying to make a character, and while I might push to a 13, it gives guidance that a +14 is of the table until I hit animus 2.


I wouldn't say that. PCs are way more unique and complicated than extras, and I would fully expect them to have way more diverse skills, both in terms of numbers and variety. I would absolutely expect to see +14s before animus 2.


It's not that we think that you hate any form of optimization, it's that optimizing in the game as you envision it can easily lead to characters being killed, or made unplayable, while not having enough system mastery makes the game frustrating. I will refer once again to the two examples of this: The pyromancer wizard that started this thread, and the character with the bow. One could solve their problems easy enough, but because they lack system mastery, they are unable to (seriously, it's a moderately cheap artifact to fix). The other will have their 40 point artifact taken from them:

At this point they are down over a third of their CP budget, and have nothing to show for it. And while I've seen some rules for getting lost points back, they generally are based around receiving double CP until the debt is cleared. At 40 points, that's 40 adventures until they catch up with the rest of the party, or 20 until they are back up to animus 1 effectiveness, assuming that their build wasn't focused around the artifacts, and can't work without them, leaving them with a bunch of useless CP in options that were meant to combo with the artifact, and are now gone.

Someone, I think Kish, flat out said up-thread that it is obvious I hate any form of optimization.

I don't know, I don't really consider having weaknesses to be an issue of system mastery or optimization. Maybe I just have an elitist view of the game, but it should be pretty obvious to most people what the weaknesses and limitations of an extreme build are just based on common sense.

But, at the same time, I don't think a game rewarding player skill is a bad thing.

AFAICT if you have a relic or heirloom stolen you just get back the full CP cost, so you aren't really out anything except time.

But yeah, bad things happening to you can happen with any build, trying to figure out how to minimize them is an essential skill for every player.



I've pointed out two above, but generally anyone that wants to play an archetype instead of play the system will suffer. If a character wants to play Legolas, and they focus on a bow build, they'll quickly find out that they are pretty useless for most fights. Remember, a character dumping all stats from 5 to 1 is equivalent is scale to an archer taking a -4 on their accuracy. They are going from an average chance of hitting, to being equal to the worst in the world. A mage that wants to pretend to be Gandalf and charge into melee with a sword and staff can be done, but if the player is lacking system mastery, they will die very, very fast, and find it frustrating.

These are what I mean by trap builds. They are options that you allow, and even have support for, but that when followed without a certain level of mastery, will result in a frustrating, un-fun play experience, even (or even especially) when the character is unable to live up to the archetypal examples that they wanted to imitate or iterate on.

I think you have a different definition of trap than I do.

The definition I am used to is when one option in a game is objectively inferior to another option. For example, in Magic a gray ogre is a 2/2 red creature that costs 1 red 2 colorless. A granite gargoyle is a 2/2 red creature with flying and pumping that costs 1 red 2 colorless. In comparison, the former is a trap option because it is objectively far worse.

I do not believe in a trap "build" because it isn't a prepackaged option; there is nothing there to trap you.

I do not believe there is anything wrong with the fact that some abilities synergies better together or that some characters require more skill to build / play than others.


Sure. But if that's the case, there is no reason to give them Character Points for taking a flaw is there? If they are just there for extra challenge, then giving a player CP for taking them actively works against their primary intended use case.

In principle I agree with you. In practice, its a social game, and people are likely to get upset if they feel someone else is over/under performing.

The primary purpose of a flaw is to create variety and diversity in both the mechanics and the setting, not to make for an overall weaker character.





As I said, it's not about the archetypes themselves, but rather the system mastery required for them to work. So I'll give you two, each one with restrictions based on a players lack of experience with your system:

1) Build as close as you can to a functional Legolas with the following restrictions: No Armor. Can only use a bow to make attacks, and is effective at melee range, or when firing into a melee. Good acrobatics and athletics. Can only build using rules found fully within in the first 3 chapters (though this does allow the items from Step F on page 9), this means no items, artifacts, spells, races, or combat maneuvers may be taken or enhanced by traits. Bonus: Do the entire character creation within 5 minutes to limit your ability to plan, and force you to put pen to page as recklessly as possible to simulate a player who knows the system much worse than you do.

I don't think different characters have different skill ceilings is a bad thing or a trap. It might well even be an advantage.

The game can do Legolas, no problem.

The game cannot do Legolas with a bunch of artificial restrictions that are not present in either the mechanics of Heart of Darkness or the fluff of Lord of the Rings. The latter shouldn't ever come up at an actual table.




2) Build as strong as a character as you can while taking at least 50 points of artifacts. Assume that at least 10 more points are spent towards the main artifact gimmick of the build. Then, when the build is over, remove all artifacts and enchantments, as they are stolen by powerful opponents. Have the result be at least as effective as a journeyman extra, as the player will be stuck with this build for a while, and they should be able to still play with their friends.

Ok.

4 Intelligence. 7 Charisma. 1 Strength. 3 Endurance. 1 Dexterity. 2 Perception. 3 Willpower. 1 Agility.

Major: Business, Leadership.
Minor: Resolve. Acrobatics. Fortitude. Expression.
Traits: Specialty: Song. Confident. Manipulative. Absent Minded. Primitive. Soothing Voice.
Relics: Earrings of allure + dirge + fisher's ring of amplify volume + medallion of heroism + magic standard of halo + whatever is left on fetishes for charisma skills.

Maybe take a few other flaws to shore up defenses or buy Empathic and Beauty. Could probably work with a lower intelligence and sagacious or specialty as well, but that might be poor RPing. Once the game starts take charisma to 10 and raise endurance, willpower, and agility evenly so the party doesn't have to work as hard at protecting you. Or just use your starting wealth / the rewards from your first mission to be an elixir of regrets like new fallen snow + transfigure to swap out relic for something else.



So then what is fluff? It is what can be freely changed in a system without it causing any issues to the game. In the first example, the game is stating that a character can get the benifits of being a viking while playing a short black haired warrior, because such details aren't important to the balance of the game. In the second, it is making clear that those details are important to balance, and thus shouldn't be changed. In the last, it makes it clear that the only part that is important to balance is the bonuses received to strength and resilience.

In a more political setting, the 'Undisputed Masters of Close combat' might not be fluff, as it could be more important than everything else on the sheet when it is used to pressure other nations into capitulating. If that was the case, taking this trait could allow a viking to intimidate any foe if they are in close as even a dragon is aware that they aren't as good in melee combat as the average viking. It sounds silly, but if you make it clear that part is mechanical, then players feel more free to play around with those options.

The argument you are talking about is a great example. If the glowing aura was separated out in some way (like say italics), then there wouldn't be an argument because players would know that part isn't important to the balance of the game, and thus goes with whatever is convenient to the caster. Just like if your Cataract spell had the part that said it can make illusions real in italics, it would be more clear that that is an explanation of what the spell does, but not actually the mechanics of how the spell works for balance purposes.

With that definition of fluff, there is no fluff in my system, and nothing should be in italics.

You could make a simple mechanical system which ignored common sense (like 4Es detractor's complain about it), but that isn't any RPG I am aware of. All of them have way too many exceptions and fuzzy rules. There are so many spells and magical effects that can affect something based on its description. Alignments and codes of conduct is all way too fuzzy to ever write concrete rules for, but it can all effect mechanics. Same with mind controlling spells or stuff like Bonds and Ideals.


When I was playing Lord of the Rings this weekend, I noticed that in a lot of their newer books they list out special abilities in the manner you suggest. First, I have to say that this requirement for one sentence necessitates a lot of unnecessary purple prose that most people just skip over, but second, it just doesn't work. For example, the balrog is immune to fire based attacks, but most fire-based attacks don't actually have anything in the rules mechanics that state they are such; all of the fire is in the names or italicized descriptions. And sure, if you had a ton of time and space you could cross reference every rule in the game with every other rule in the game and hope you didn't miss anything, but even then that makes for a closed off game as you can no longer introduce anything new to the game (and trying is just going to confuse people by referencing rules that don't yet exist).


Of course, even without a concrete fluff divide, you can still have problems with metaphor, generalization, poetic exaggeration, figures of speech, etc.

I really think this needs its own thread.



If players ever need to argue about the rules, I believe it's the system's designers fault. To me at least, clarity is king.

That's an impossibly high bar IMO.

I have never played a game, even something simple like Scrabble, Monopoly, or Poker that people don't get into arguments about.

I can't imagine a game as complex as an RPG that doesn't have fuzzy rulings, but even if it did, English isn't a precise enough language that some people can't read the same words and walk away with two or more different meanings, especially if one of them is making a bad-faith argument for their advantage.



This rule/lore isn't stated anywhere in the spell, so this is something else you have to fix. Remember, players can't read your mind. All we can do is go off what you've written.

It isn't in the spell, but it is in the general rules of magic in Chapter Six. The spell says do your best to work with the GM to come up with appropriate stats.



What counts as a different action? Casting it at a different target? Using a different set of meta magic? Or does it apply to any spell casting check? These are some things that you need to clarify when you update this rule.

Up to the GM.

I would generally say yes for a different spell or target, no for different meta magics.

I am working on clarifying it. Will probably take several drafts and still have a grey area for GM rulings.



At the very least, saying that their body is like that of a Kami's would at least give guidance. I don't know if you need a general set of rules, but for exceptions like this I think it's important. Especially considering the hoops a player has to go through to cast this spell and get use from it.

The second line of the spell says a force of nature is similar in appearance to a kami's elemental body; although again I suppose if you want to play rules lawyer that is just the appearance, not the biological processes.

For reference; kamis are described as building their body from any inanimate matter within the effected terrain including plants and the edifices of man.

Although there is still some weirdness about inanimate plants technically counting as living beings, I need to go through and clear that up.



It's actually not from the text, its from me talking with you just before I posted the build:

So as above when you responded about what an extras attributes would be, you said they were equal to the extras 'Bad Score.' So when I went to page 533 to look up a Paragon's Bad Score to find out what the attributes for a Force of Nature would be (As force of nature uses the Paragon Template), right next to it you can see that Eldritch Entity and Primordial both have bad scores above 15.

Exactly, it isn't a rule in the game. Extras don't technically have scores aside from what the GM assigns to them.

When I said generally, I wasn't thinking about spirits, who use different math; especially the primordials who outright play by a different set of rules.


Does this mean fusion is intended to be impossible to cast except on two PCs?

That is not the intent no. That's a side effect of me rewriting the extra rules more recently than the spell rules and not noticing the gap in the rules.


Force of Nature didn't. It started at 10, and then got +2 for each level of empower added to the spell with no listed cap.

Right, but force of nature doesn't have any attributes scores listed at all, so therefore it doesn't have anything to add +2 to, just like it doesn't have any mana or destiny or wealth.



But even more than that the rules state 'Inborn attribute modifiers and traits modify an extra’s scores normally.' This means that even a fourth circle spirit could hit a bad score of 16 in a stat with the right template applied to it, thus the highest attribute in the game would be around 25.

Could you please elaborate on this?

Because either you are misreading something or I mis-wrote something if this is the case.



Let's be honest, TO builds are always built on being technically correct anyway. That's the reason they aren't used, the GM is expected to take one look at it and tell the player to build something more in line with the power level of the game.

True. I am just saying that the assertion that any player can veto the spell isn't technically correct either; and that could come up in an actual game rather than in a TO forum discussion as I have had both PCs and NPCs cast that spell in the past.

[Jakinbandw]

I haven't actually read the books, but aren't witchers supposed to be like fantasy space marines? Alchemically augmented super-human killing machines?
Sorta I guess. I'm more talking from the perspective of someone who played the videogame. Thinking of them like a cleric wouldn't be far off though.


Yeah, D&D clerics are tricky in my system, or indeed most point buy systems, because D&D tends to make them grossly overpowered and let them do anything and everything as a sort of meta-bribe to convince someone to play the healer.

Honestly, when I was making them for my game, the hardest time I had was nailing down what a cleric was meant to be. Finally we broke it into 3 archetypes: The holy warrior that hunts monsters, the priest, and the white mage party support. Susland has the first 2 classes and has wisdom as his 3rd. It means his party support isn't as solid, but he's good at social from being a priest, can understand the world from wise, and has neat monster hunting abilities from Sacred Hunter.

I think my game sorta counts as pointbuyish. But anyway, I'm not trying to sell you on that.




You are allowed to make custom schools of magic.

Again, I don't know what exactly your powers are, but that is probably a more efficient way to do it. Or just drop all of the social merits and play a full on omni-caster.

Basically at level 1 I have 4 basic abilities:


Lived Experience
Your wisdom comes from not only past failings, but a willingness to learn from them. You never suffer disadvantage on any proficiency check using a free proficiency that you make. Reduce the cost of gaining a Free Proficiency by 2 TP. In addition, exert effort: Your proficiency checks get 1 base advantage.

(This makes it really cheap to pick up new skills, and I'm generally better with skills than most people as long as I have effort remaining. Good for short encounters, but less good when combat is likely to happen. Character has 3 effort)

Danger Sense
You have an almost supernatural capacity for sensing danger. You always have one action during a Surprise round. Exert Effort: Your Tactical Check gets 1 base advantage.
Burn effort when you or an ally would suffer a danger, or a negative event outside of combat: you may take a single action before that danger or event happens.

(Makes me better at hindering foes or aiding allies in combat, and I can't be surprised.)

Blessed Iconography
You bless an object meant to represent your faith, granting protection to those who carry it even if they do not believe. Burn Effort and choose an object: It becomes a single use charm that grants one of the following Effects:
- Gain a fact: ‘If this person would die, they are resurrected within 72 hours of their death.’
- Negate the wounds and stress from an attack that would down them.
- Gain a Fact: ‘If you would fail a check, you may ignore any dangers, surviving or escaping the situation.’
These charms only work while you know this ability. Attuning a charm requires a long rest or Burn Effort as an action, and only 1 may be attuned at a time. Additionally, you may instead spend a downtime action to create several (0) of these objects.

(A solid protection ability that I can hand out, probably my strongest support ability. This is what I was trying to replicate with the halo)

Elemental Signs
You are trained in simple and violent elemental manipulation
You gain a 1 load technique with the Specialist (Any), and Float Qualities. Specialist Any counts as the Elemental and Impairing qualities, except as a free action you may switch the condition it inflicts and its Element or Sub-Element to any you wish. Choose one keyword for this arm when you take this ability.
You must sustain effort to benefit from float quality on this arm.

(So in combat this is kinda an alternate weapon I can use, and it allows for a few interesting ways of shaping the battlefield, or inflicting conditions, but most things it can do, can be done in other ways that don't require magic. Out of combat, this allows the temporary summoning of any of the 6 prime elements, or the 21 sub elements in my game. This allows for cantrip level illusions, minor portals, and a bunch of other useful little tricks. As far as usefulness in the game so far, set your expectations at around the 'Prestidigitation' cantrip from 5e. Flavorful, and sometimes useful, but not as broadly useful as they first seem.)






Mana and destiny should give you the edge, although I haven't rand the numbers. Although this is very much a support character rather than a front-line fighter, and I imagine that the bigger a group Susland is part of the bigger an advantage he or she is; Susland + 4 journeyman extras should absolutely crush 5 journeyman extras as an example.

I won't directly argue there, just point out that for that role, there are far more optimal ways of pulling it off.






True. Although a runic anvil is probably a better pick, because subtle spells only alter probability, and so the odds that there are a bunch of unclaimed non-permanent eldritch mechanisms nearby whenever you cast it is virtually zero and thus the GM is almost certain to say the spell fails.
I mean, it depends on the GM. I would assume the chance of a landmine being in the middle of a place where people were fighting a current battle to be non-existant, so it sounded like it summoned stuff in to allow the spell to work, and it would only fail if the change couldn't be easily hidden in the scene.




I wouldn't say that. PCs are way more unique and complicated than extras, and I would fully expect them to have way more diverse skills, both in terms of numbers and variety. I would absolutely expect to see +14s before animus 2.

I would expect to likely see them, but at the same time they will be worse off than this extra in other areas to do so. Seeing as you've stated that a character's weaknesses should come up, there's a good argument that this extra might have an easier time of play, as they are equally paired against similar level foes, and they lack weaknesses that a GM would be looking to make matter.





Someone, I think Kish, flat out said up-thread that it is obvious I hate any form of optimization.

I don't know, I don't really consider having weaknesses to be an issue of system mastery or optimization. Maybe I just have an elitist view of the game, but it should be pretty obvious to most people what the weaknesses and limitations of an extreme build are just based on common sense.

If you believe that, you have a lot of rewriting to do. I think with all the discussions around the game, that it's very clear that players do not have such a grasp of weaknesses, and if you feel they should, you'll need to make sure that such things are made clear to them.


But, at the same time, I don't think a game rewarding player skill is a bad thing.

This is a very interesting philosophical question. Where I personally come down on it, is that player skill should only matter when the player has an opportunity to improve. Thus clever tactics at the table should be rewarding, but that clever optimization shouldn't. You can become more skilled at tactics and put them into play as the game goes on, but having to start a new character every few sessions as you learn and understand the system more just ends up with boring characters and a disinterested player.

Weirdly, as a CharOp lover, I actually believe that rewarding players for CharOp is a negative thing for games.


AFAICT if you have a relic or heirloom stolen you just get back the full CP cost, so you aren't really out anything except time.

But yeah, bad things happening to you can happen with any build, trying to figure out how to minimize them is an essential skill for every player.

I didn't see that anywhere, so if I could have a page number? Also, do you get Animus that you convert into ambrosia back as well? This is important for when a Permanency spell that has been cast is dispelled.





I do not believe there is anything wrong with the fact that some abilities synergies better together or that some characters require more skill to build / play than others.

I strongly disagree with this. Telling a player - Hey this is possible, and then having them be worse then if they hadn't tried because they didn't fully know the system or the setting, feels like baiting a trap to me. Here's a cool thing, oh look, you failed at doing it, and now you'll suffer for the rest of the game. It's much the same reason I don't like rolling for attributes tbh. An issue at character creation shouldn't preclude a fun character to play.



In principle I agree with you. In practice, its a social game, and people are likely to get upset if they feel someone else is over/under performing.

I'm confused, I thought just above this you said that you were fine with character types under performing if built poorly. Why is it worse for someone to under-perform on purpose than by accident? Why can't a skilled player take a few handicaps to bring their character down to the level of players that aren't as good at system mastery. If you're fine with players being able to make better or worse characters (and you said you valued freedom in building characters), then why not make it easy and clear how to build a substandard character. Put all possible main options at the same level of power, then have 'Over Powered' options that require GM approval to make stronger characters, and 'Under Power' options that allow a player to make weaker characters than expected. It would give the same, if not more freedom to the players, and it would be more honest.




The game cannot do Legolas with a bunch of artificial restrictions that are not present in either the mechanics of Heart of Darkness or the fluff of Lord of the Rings. The latter shouldn't ever come up at an actual table.

I mean, it has though hasn't it? I gave you that build challenge as a way to simulate someone attempting a build that they lacked the skill to make. From the perspective of someone who doesn't have time to read and memorize a nearly 600 page book, down to the smallest minutia (because later, you point out that there is a line of text around a hundred pages away from a spell that when interpreted in a certain way, could change how the spell works).





4 Intelligence. 7 Charisma. 1 Strength. 3 Endurance. 1 Dexterity. 2 Perception. 3 Willpower. 1 Agility.

Major: Business, Leadership.
Minor: Resolve. Acrobatics. Fortitude. Expression.
Traits: Specialty: Song. Confident. Manipulative. Absent Minded. Primitive. Soothing Voice.
Relics: Earrings of allure + dirge + fisher's ring of amplify volume + medallion of heroism + magic standard of halo + whatever is left on fetishes for charisma skills.

Maybe take a few other flaws to shore up defenses or buy Empathic and Beauty. Could probably work with a lower intelligence and sagacious or specialty as well, but that might be poor RPing. Once the game starts take charisma to 10 and raise endurance, willpower, and agility evenly so the party doesn't have to work as hard at protecting you. Or just use your starting wealth / the rewards from your first mission to be an elixir of regrets like new fallen snow + transfigure to swap out relic for something else.
Of course RLNFS requires GM permission. I'll wait on seeing the page that immediately allows all CP from a lost artifact to be regained instantly before I comment on the rest of the build. As it is though, assuming you can't respec. It will be too slow to escape from combat, and will then be easily grappled an killed, as GMs are supposed to make character weaknesses matter, and the character has only 1 strength and 1 agility. If the GM truly makes those flaws matter, I'm not sure that it would survive the first adventure.

Basically, your plan relies entirely on GM mercy.





With that definition of fluff, there is no fluff in my system, and nothing should be in italics.

Then this:
The ultimate refinement of the illusionist's trade is to create something so perfect that the universe itself cannot tell that it is fiction. Cataract is used to turn deceptions into reality; it can change other illusion spells into real objects, shift a being's identity to match a disguise or an assumed role, or otherwise bring fantasies to life.
is not fluff, and is an actual effect of the spell. It can make an illusion of ambrosia real, because this isn't fluff, but actually what the spell does.

I've written and deleted about 4 differant paragraphs of responces to this, but I just leave it at this: This attitude really bothers me, rubs me the wrong way, and makes me want to take the most bad faith readings possible.

I will do my best not to do this.


I really think this needs its own thread.

Sure.




That's an impossibly high bar IMO.
Just because something is hard, or even outside our personal capabilities, doesn't mean that it's not a goal worth striving for. Settling for mediocrity because one doesn't want to aim for the moon is really frustrating to see.



It isn't in the spell, but it is in the general rules of magic in Chapter Six. The spell says do your best to work with the GM to come up with appropriate stats.
I'm going to need to see the exert, as I've searched both 'universal' and 'subconscious' and I'm not seeing either. I'm also not seeing it when I read that section of the rule




Up to the GM.

I am working on clarifying it. Will probably take several drafts and still have a grey area for GM rulings.

I see.





The second line of the spell says a force of nature is similar in appearance to a kami's elemental body; although again I suppose if you want to play rules lawyer that is just the appearance, not the biological processes.

Although there is still some weirdness about inanimate plants technically counting as living beings, I need to go through and clear that up.

If as you say, there is no fluff in your system, then yes, you'll need to write that section (and many others) out much more clearly.



Exactly, it isn't a rule in the game.

I'm sorry, I guess I just expected that when I asked the designer of the game how the rules worked, they would tell me the actual rules. Since you're arguing here that advice you give outside the book isn't to be followed, I'm really not sure where to go from here. If I can't discuss your intentions with you, without you pulling these Gotcha's it feels like there's not much point discussing things further, or trying to follow any rules changes you make, as following them is just setting myself up to be shut down by you.



That is not the intent no. That's a side effect of me rewriting the extra rules more recently than the spell rules and not noticing the gap in the rules.
But it is what the rules say, so going forward I will assume that any reference to attributes can only affect PCs





Right, but force of nature doesn't have any attributes scores listed at all, so therefore it doesn't have anything to add +2 to, just like it doesn't have any mana or destiny or wealth.
This is actually where you're completely wrong. Empower doesn't add +2 to it's attributes. It's much worse than that.
Each level of the empower metamagic provides the force of nature with a +2 bonus to all of its scores, including size rating.

So what do scores cover in the system? I think the most applicable quote is here:
An entry marked with a * can be taken any number of times so long as it does not bring a character's scores beyond a value that would be possible with key attributes between one and ten.

So from this, it seems that a Score, is anything with a number. But let's double check:

Extras use their good score for trained skills and their bad score for untrained skills.

So the Good and Bad Scores are Scores, and are thus effected. What else though is effected?

An extra’s animus score is determined by its template, with an equivalent number of base chakras.

So then, the Force of Nature that we would summon, rules as written, has an Animus Score of 25, with 25 open Chakras.

Since you've made it clear that listening to what you think of the rules in this forum leads to you Gotcha'ing me, I can only assume that this is the explicit intent of the game, and build around this.



Could you please elaborate on this?

Because either you are misreading something or I mis-wrote something if this is the case.
Doesn't matter, as you've made it clear that only PCs have attributes, and that anything you've said in this thread might just be misinformation.



I'm willing to discuss you system in the future. But only if you refrain from playing games just so you can protect your system. If you say something as it's designer, I need to be able to take what you say as truth, and you can't go back later and tell me that you were just messing with me.

So one last thing before I leave then, because I worked this out before you gave your reply, and it would be a shame not to share it.

Having inept is better than not having inept on a character. Each level of Inept increases the average result of a check for that proficiency by +0.5 of a point. IE: A skill of 0 will have an average result of 10.5. An inept of 10 will have an average result roughly a 15.5 by comparison. This is assuming you go through with the change you insinuated you were planning to make to the fortune dice system. I'll leave you to do with that information as you will.

[Telok]

But those are what? What are they Telok? Where did you go....?

Sorry. Family & time & stuff.

So, where was I?... Ah, fire blast. It reads as an area effect spell. You may not intend it that way, but it read that way. I spent a couple hours cross referencing and page numbering and it seems that a zone is a pace. So it the spell fills a zone with fire then it fills it with fire. Of course I also have a fondness for a magic system where stuff was split into the power (necromancy, pyromancy, chronomancy) and the method (conjuration, evocation, apportation). That system had a whole page of fireballs; pyromancy-evocation as trad, chronomancy-apportation to reverse the flow of time on some ashes you threw, necro-conj to summon the spirit of a dead bonfire. So "same effect by a different path" is something I trend towards there. But yeah, you need something to differentiate the zone/pace difference in area/calling because it reads the same.

On blasting: The journeyman level extra was called out as a typical person for pcs to interact with while minions and open ended damage are in optional sidebars. The idea of blaster is, when coming from D&D style & influenced games/crpgs, about fireball KOing or one shotting a bunch of non-trivial targets. This system doesn't do that. This makes it so a dc 40+ nuke is seriously non-trivial to build a character for and to pay for in action. And that dc 40+ nuke is what it'll take to make a D&D style fireball. That's where the blaster wizard complaint comes from, which leads to...

On describing the game: Don't compare Heart of Darkness to D&D. People have way too much D&D baggage, especially this site, to get much useful when they make D&D assumptions about stuff unread. Instead HoD has much more DNA from games like Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay and Palladium than it does from D&D. Heck, I think it's closer to Mörk Borg than the current version of D&D. Although more accurately I'd say 1st level OD&D or hardcore AD&D 1e is still a bit north of Mörk Borg and HoD is well north of 1st level AD&D, but they're all a tighter range that's well south of WotC D&Ds. Having played starter characters in all the games in this paragraph except HoD, your game is closer to Palladium, AD&D, WHFRP, than to the last 20 years of D&D.

[Talakeal]

I won't directly argue there, just point out that for that role, there are far more optimal ways of pulling it off.

Sure. There is always a better character build for any given situation, but as is that is a pretty good one for most leadership / support roles, and scales really well so that it would be amazing with a minionmancer of some sort.


I mean, it depends on the GM. I would assume the chance of a landmine being in the middle of a place where people were fighting a current battle to be non-existant, so it sounded like it summoned stuff in to allow the spell to work, and it would only fail if the change couldn't be easily hidden in the scene.

No, it doesn't summon anything, it explicitly twists probability and will not go off until it would be plausible for it to do so. Someone could be waiting for years before the spell triggers.

Honestly though, that is a rather common interpretation of synchronicity both in games and irl; I remember many players, even even a few authors, who insisted that it was a coincidental effect to conjure thin air when nobody was looking.


I would expect to likely see them, but at the same time they will be worse off than this extra in other areas to do so. Seeing as you've stated that a character's weaknesses should come up, there's a good argument that this extra might have an easier time of play, as they are equally paired against similar level foes, and they lack weaknesses that a GM would be looking to make matter.

I can't imagine a game where that would be the case.

The idea of crafting a game for the PCs goes both ways; its not just the weaknesses you work in but the strengths as well, and in an ordinary game there is enough variety of scenarios that you shouldn't really have to do either unless the traits in question are super obscure and or specific. It's odd, most players act like there are killer GM's everywhere, and interpret the world in that light, when the opposite is far, far more common.


If you believe that, you have a lot of rewriting to do. I think with all the discussions around the game, that it's very clear that players do not have such a grasp of weaknesses, and if you feel they should, you'll need to make sure that such things are made clear to them.

Out of curiosity, what would that actually look like?

"Having a low dodge means you will be hit more."
"Having no ranged attack means you will be unable to fight back against people on elevated ground"
"Having a low vitality means it takes less damage to kill you."
"Having a low strength makes you susceptible to being grappled."
"Having an excessive amount of wealth makes you a target for robbers."
"Having a low fortitude makes you more susceptible to poison."
"Having a weakness from fire means you at a disadvantage when your opponent uses fire."
"Having powers that require you to speak means you are at a disadvantage when you are gagged."

Etc. etc.?

This is all common-sense stuff that Quertus' proverbial four year old can figure out, I don't see how the game would be improved by spelling it out as, IMO, it would come across as exceedingly wordy and condescending, and I am not aware of any RPGs that do it except in certain extreme and counter intuitive situations.

And by "my players" do you mean Bob? Because Bob does this in every game he plays, regardless of who is the GM or what system we are using, and it isn't that he intellectually doesn't understand what a weakness is, it's that he either a: is so narcissistic that he assumes himself as infallible and dismisses any failures as other people cheating / persecuting him or B: is using "gamemanship" to make the act of targetting him so unpleasant that the other players go out of their way not to. The jury is still out on which.




This is a very interesting philosophical question. Where I personally come down on it, is that player skill should only matter when the player has an opportunity to improve. Thus clever tactics at the table should be rewarding, but that clever optimization shouldn't. You can become more skilled at tactics and put them into play as the game goes on, but having to start a new character every few sessions as you learn and understand the system more just ends up with boring characters and a disinterested player.

Weirdly, as a CharOp lover, I actually believe that rewarding players for CharOp is a negative thing for games.

I see far more people grow bored from playing the same character or not liking the feel of it than I ever have someone abandon a character because it was bad.

I don't really believe in "bad" characters. In my system its mostly about synergy, both within the build and, far more importantly, with the rest of the party. And then there is such a variety of goals and scenarios, you ultimately have to ask yourself "bad at what?". And the game is so forgiving that no matter how poorly you synergize, you can always rework it with relatively little effort.



I didn't see that anywhere, so if I could have a page number? Also, do you get Animus that you convert into ambrosia back as well? This is important for when a Permanency spell that has been cast is dispelled.

Pages 157 and 162, the last paragraphs of the Heirloom and Relic traits.

Character points that have been converted into ambrosia are not refunded by default if you lose them as one of the major uses of creating ambrosia is gifting or selling it to others, but the cannibalize magic spell can reclaim it in some circumstances.

There probably should be a way to recollect the ambrosia from a permanent spell that is broken.



I strongly disagree with this. Telling a player - Hey this is possible, and then having them be worse than if they hadn't tried because they didn't fully know the system or the setting, feels like baiting a trap to me. Here's a cool thing, oh look, you failed at doing it, and now you'll suffer for the rest of the game. It's much the same reason I don't like rolling for attributes tbh. An issue at character creation shouldn't preclude a fun character to play.

Ok. But that isn't the definition of trap option I, or anyone else that I am aware of, uses.

Even going by that definition, I am not sure what mechanics you could be talking about. Best I can figure, the person in this example is too impatient to get / do something normally, so they pile on so many weaknesses in their attempt to rush it that they make a character who suffers in a bunch of other areas?

Like, every power in the game should be available to a moderately focused character in Tier 2 or 3 without any drawbacks. What cool powers are making you worse off than if you hadn't tried?




I strongly disagree with this. Telling a player - Hey this is possible, and then having them be worse than if they hadn't tried because they didn't fully know the system or the setting, feels like baiting a trap to me. Here's a cool thing, oh look, you failed at doing it, and now you'll suffer for the rest of the game. It's much the same reason I don't like rolling for attributes tbh. An issue at character creation shouldn't preclude a fun character to play.




I'm confused, I thought just above this you said that you were fine with character types under-performing if built poorly. Why is it worse for someone to under-perform on purpose than by accident? Why can't a skilled player take a few handicaps to bring their character down to the level of players that aren't as good at system mastery. If you're fine with players being able to make better or worse characters (and you said you valued freedom in building characters), then why not make it easy and clear how to build a substandard character. Put all possible main options at the same level of power, then have 'Over Powered' options that require GM approval to make stronger characters, and 'Under Power' options that allow a player to make weaker characters than expected. It would give the same, if not more freedom to the players, and it would be more honest.





I mean, it has though hasn't it? I gave you that build challenge as a way to simulate someone attempting a build that they lacked the skill to make. From the perspective of someone who doesn't have time to read and memorize a nearly 600 page book, down to the smallest minutia (because later, you point out that there is a line of text around a hundred pages away from a spell that when interpreted in a certain way, could change how the spell works).





Of course RLNFS requires GM permission. I'll wait on seeing the page that immediately allows all CP from a lost artifact to be regained instantly before I comment on the rest of the build. As it is though, assuming you can't respec. It will be too slow to escape from combat, and will then be easily grappled an killed, as GMs are supposed to make character weaknesses matter, and the character has only 1 strength and 1 agility. If the GM truly makes those flaws matter, I'm not sure that it would survive the first adventure.

Basically, your plan relies entirely on GM mercy.






Then this:
The ultimate refinement of the illusionist's trade is to create something so perfect that the universe itself cannot tell that it is fiction. Cataract is used to turn deceptions into reality; it can change other illusion spells into real objects, shift a being's identity to match a disguise or an assumed role, or otherwise bring fantasies to life.
is not fluff, and is an actual effect of the spell. It can make an illusion of ambrosia real, because this isn't fluff, but actually what the spell does.

I've written and deleted about 4 differant paragraphs of responces to this, but I just leave it at this: This attitude really bothers me, rubs me the wrong way, and makes me want to take the most bad faith readings possible.

I will do my best not to do this.



Sure.




Just because something is hard, or even outside our personal capabilities, doesn't mean that it's not a goal worth striving for. Settling for mediocrity because one doesn't want to aim for the moon is really frustrating to see.



I'm going to need to see the exert, as I've searched both 'universal' and 'subconscious' and I'm not seeing either. I'm also not seeing it when I read that section of the rule





I see.






If as you say, there is no fluff in your system, then yes, you'll need to write that section (and many others) out much more clearly.




I'm sorry, I guess I just expected that when I asked the designer of the game how the rules worked, they would tell me the actual rules. Since you're arguing here that advice you give outside the book isn't to be followed, I'm really not sure where to go from here. If I can't discuss your intentions with you, without you pulling these Gotcha's it feels like there's not much point discussing things further, or trying to follow any rules changes you make, as following them is just setting myself up to be shut down by you.



But it is what the rules say, so going forward I will assume that any reference to attributes can only affect PCs





This is actually where you're completely wrong. Empower doesn't add +2 to it's attributes. It's much worse than that.
Each level of the empower metamagic provides the force of nature with a +2 bonus to all of its scores, including size rating.

So what do scores cover in the system? I think the most applicable quote is here:
An entry marked with a * can be taken any number of times so long as it does not bring a character's scores beyond a value that would be possible with key attributes between one and ten.

So from this, it seems that a Score, is anything with a number. But let's double check:

Extras use their good score for trained skills and their bad score for untrained skills.

So the Good and Bad Scores are Scores, and are thus effected. What else though is effected?

An extra’s animus score is determined by its template, with an equivalent number of base chakras.

So then, the Force of Nature that we would summon, rules as written, has an Animus Score of 25, with 25 open Chakras.

Since you've made it clear that listening to what you think of the rules in this forum leads to you Gotcha'ing me, I can only assume that this is the explicit intent of the game, and build around this.



Doesn't matter, as you've made it clear that only PCs have attributes, and that anything you've said in this thread might just be misinformation.



I'm willing to discuss you system in the future. But only if you refrain from playing games just so you can protect your system. If you say something as it's designer, I need to be able to take what you say as truth, and you can't go back later and tell me that you were just messing with me.

So one last thing before I leave then, because I worked this out before you gave your reply, and it would be a shame not to share it.

Having inept is better than not having inept on a character. Each level of Inept increases the average result of a check for that proficiency by +0.5 of a point. IE: A skill of 0 will have an average result of 10.5. An inept of 10 will have an average result roughly a 15.5 by comparison. This is assuming you go through with the change you insinuated you were planning to make to the fortune dice system. I'll leave you to do with that information as you will.




I'm confused, I thought just above this you said that you were fine with character types under-performing if built poorly. Why is it worse for someone to under-perform on purpose than by accident? Why can't a skilled player take a few handicaps to bring their character down to the level of players that aren't as good at system mastery. If you're fine with players being able to make better or worse characters (and you said you valued freedom in building characters), then why not make it easy and clear how to build a substandard character. Put all possible main options at the same level of power, then have 'Over-powered' options that require GM approval to make stronger characters, and 'Under Power' options that allow a player to make weaker characters than expected. It would give the same, if not more freedom to the players, and it would be more honest.

I am not following at all.

If you want over or under powered characters, just give some people more or less character points; indeed that is already an option in the book.

You seem to be assuming that I am way smarter than I am and my players way dumber than they are; that I can somehow rate every possible build in every possible party comp in every possible scenario with every possible character goal, but at the same time my players can't figure out that having a high strength means they hit harder and that having a deaf orator is counter-productive, and that the lack of those assumptions is somehow dishonest?




I mean, it has though hasn't it? I gave you that build challenge as a way to simulate someone attempting a build that they lacked the skill to make. From the perspective of someone who doesn't have time to read and memorize a nearly 600 page book, down to the smallest minutia (because later, you point out that there is a line of text around a hundred pages away from a spell that when interpreted in a certain way, could change how the spell works).

Are you really trying to say that strangers making TO builds on a forum is the exact same as making a character for play at the table?

Even within that example, an archer reading the combat maneuvers and a wizard reading their spell lists does not in any way equal memorizing 600 pages down to the smallest minutia.

Even more so, a single "optimization trick" is not a character, or even a solid foundation for one, because it requires the GM to both agree with your interpretation and not just step in and rule zero it.



Of course RLNFS requires GM permission.

Just like Turn Back the Clock, no, it does not say that. It says the caster and the Gamekeeper work together to determine the shape of the new timeline.

The adding or removing traits is a separate paragraph, and not meant to be dependent on the above, although that dovetails back into the earlier conversation about reading separate parts of an entry and context.



As it is though, assuming you can't respec. It will be too slow to escape from combat, and will then be easily grappled and killed, as GMs are supposed to make character weaknesses matter, and the character has only 1 strength and 1 agility. If the GM truly makes those flaws matter, I'm not sure that it would survive the first adventure.

Basically, your plan relies entirely on GM mercy.

Look, I know you have been looking to throw that line back in my face, but do you legitimately not understand the difference between 1: an impartial GM, 2: a GM who warps the rules / setting to kill a character, and 3: a GM who warps the rules / setting to keep a character alive?

Because you seem to keep assuming I am talking about number two when I am talking about number one.

Let me clarify again: IF a character takes an obscure trait that will never come up in the game, good or bad, then the GM should either work it into the narrative or tell the player it isn't worth any points / to choose something else. Again, this could be a good trait or a bad trait; undead slayer and weakness to undead are both treated the same. Some traits, like Enemy, Title, or Ally almost always need to have the GM work them into the scenario as there is virtually zero odds that they would just come up by chance.

Having low stats isn't something that the GM needs to work into the game, its baked into the core mechanics.

An impartial GM should have enemies target the character as much as it makes sense for them given their knowledge and motivation. I am not, nor have I ever been, saying that a GM should intentionally try to kill a character to punish the player. Now, as I said above, Bob claims that any tactic that works against his character must be cheating or antagonism, either out of narcissm or gamesmanship, but that was never actually the GM's intention as far as I can tell.

As for that particular build, like any character it really depends on party synergy and the specifics of the scenario. It may legitimately be in the enemy's best interest to target said character first (much less likely that they would keep beating on her after she was down), but I can tell you that if that character were dropped into my current party, I would be able to keep her safe from most anything, and would have a field day chopping down and reanimating any NPCs who are stupid enough to go after the non-threatening party face while ignoring the actual threats.

Heck, if the GM is that determined to punish the player by targeting the character, she's probably worth the cost of reviving her after each adventure just for the sake of the lure!




Then this:

The ultimate refinement of the illusionist's trade is to create something so perfect that the universe itself cannot tell that it is fiction. Cataract is used to turn deceptions into reality; it can change other illusion spells into real objects, shift a being's identity to match a disguise or an assumed role, or otherwise bring fantasies to life.

is not fluff, and is an actual effect of the spell. It can make an illusion of ambrosia real, because this isn't fluff, but actually what the spell does.

Whether or not something is "fluff" has little to nothing to do with whether or not you can read something in context.

Saying "Here is what something does. Here is how it does it." is a very common linguistic construction, even outside of games.

Likewise, as I said above, people do talk in generalizations, metaphors, poetic exaggerations, figures of speech, etc.


Reading things in context is a skill, and I don't think there is a right or wrong answer. Heck, I can't give specific examples here, but there have been high profile legal ases where the judge threw out laws where the wording wasn't crystal clear about which clauses applied to which even if the intent was obvious.

On this very site someone once recommended that any rules lawyer or GM read Adler and Doren's "How to Read a Book" to make better sense of rules in context, and it has been sitting on my shelf ever since. Maybe its finally time I gave it a read.


Let's take a simpler example:

"The cure light wounds spell repairs the subject's injuries. Each casting heals 1d8 points of damage." Would you really say that it is only the nebulous concept of "fluff" that keeps you from insisting that only the first sentence matters and thus a single casting of rejuvenate should completely heal the subject because all of their injuries must be repaired?


I've written and deleted about 4 differant paragraphs of responses to this, but I just leave it at this: This attitude really bothers me, rubs me the wrong way, and makes me want to take the most bad faith readings possible.

I will do my best not to do this.

You may not like it, but I would argue that any game which can cleanly sever the fluff from the mechanics is no longer a roleplaying game.

There is just too much open-ended stuff. You can have a sword of reptile slaying. Or a circle that repels organic matter. Or a magic door that will only open to members of a certain bloodline. Or a force-field that can block anything but the color yellow. Or a demon who is bound to attack anyone with brown eyes.

Likewise, players should be able to use the "fluff" to come up with clever plans. Like if detect magic makes someone's eyes glow blue according to the fluff, the players should be allowed to scan the crowd for anyone with glowing blue eyes to tell who is scanning them.




Just because something is hard, or even outside our personal capabilities, doesn't mean that it's not a goal worth striving for. Settling for mediocrity because one doesn't want to aim for the moon is really frustrating to see.

Sure. And I am striving to be clear and to rewrite confusing stuff.

But that doesn't mean that a 5000 page rulebook that reads like a standards and procedures manual is preferable to a rulebook that is concise and evocative but occasionally requires GM interpretation even if the latter were a realistic possibility.



I'm going to need to see the exert, as I've searched both 'universal' and 'subconscious' and I'm not seeing either. I'm also not seeing it when I read that section of the rule.

Sorry, the exact phrase is "collective consciousness" on page 277. It is also alluded to on page 270 and probably elsewhere.

But again, this knowledge isn't really necessary for determining what Genesis does or how it does it, but rather about why it functions the way it does.

And keep in mind that I have already said that spell is a little redundant and confusing and could use a revision.



If as you say, there is no fluff in your system, then yes, you'll need to write that section (and many others) out much more clearly.

I feel like kind of the opposite maybe?

If one can safely ignore the opening as meaningless "fluff" then there is no reason why the force of nature (or almost any other creature) is or isn't alive as that condition is seldom spelled out as a game mechanic, but if you take it as part of the rules, then the force of nature is clearly said to resemble a kami, and kami are clearly said to be unliving.



I'm sorry, I guess I just expected that when I asked the designer of the game how the rules worked, they would tell me the actual rules. Since you're arguing here that advice you give outside the book isn't to be followed, I'm really not sure where to go from here. If I can't discuss your intentions with you, without you pulling these Gotcha's it feels like there's not much point discussing things further, or trying to follow any rules changes you make, as following them is just setting myself up to be shut down by you.

Great, I see the forums habit of labelling any misunderstanding at the table has gone meta and now applies to any misunderstanding on the forum as well.

Do you really think I am intentionally giving you misleading information for the sake of making you look foolish?

You asked me a question, devoid of context, and I gave you the under the hood answer, and specifically prefaced it with "generally". I was trying to explain my thought process in designing the game, I did not realize you were asking for an "official ruling" for which to hang your build from.

As is written, extras do not have attribute scores. If you need to know an extra's precise score, the GM will come up with one. It is USUALLY equal to their bad attribute, but this isn't set in stone.

In the future, if I use a "wiggle word" such as like, or usually, or generally, or if i recall, or i believe, and you really need an official word of god answer, please ask me a follow up question rather than just assuming I am giving you some set-in-stone promise or maliciously trying to supply you with false information.



But it is what the rules say, so going forward I will assume that any reference to attributes can only affect PCs.

Hmmm.

Yeah, thinking more deeply, that doesn't make a lot of sense as you don't know what will happen to an extras attributes if they are modified by spells or artifacts. I'll fix it in the next revision.



This is actually where you're completely wrong. Empower doesn't add +2 to it's attributes. It's much worse than that. Each level of the empower metamagic provides the force of nature with a +2 bonus to all of its scores, including size rating.

Yes. I am well aware of that.

My point was that it will only increase the scores it has, it won't suddenly give it new scores.

Extras do not typically have attributes, enlightenment, destiny, concentration, or mana.
They do typically have size, dodge, resilience, damage, accuracy, initiative, speed, encumbrance, might, and skills.
Depending on whether or not they are a mook, they also have vitality and tenacity.

Actually, the situation gets even weirder if the force of nature DOES have attributes, because when an attribute is changed, the skills and aspects for which it is key are also recalculated, so this would actually end up giving the force of nature +4 to most of its scores.


An extra’s animus score is determined by its template, with an equivalent number of base chakras.

Yes, animus and chakras are both scores.

Animus is explicitly listed as never being modified by traits, spells, or equipment however, and shouldn't be effected, although I suppose one could rules-lawyer it and say that it is the meta-magic, not the spell, which is modifying it.

Although for the purposes of this build, I am not really sure how much the increased animus is going to do for you as when you fuse with it your animus takes precedence over its and immediately recalculates the chakras accordingly.[/QUOTE]



Since you've made it clear that listening to what you think of the rules in this forum leads to you Gotcha'ing me, I can only assume that this is the explicit intent of the game, and build around this.

Again, could you please for the love of gosh stop attributing malice to everything I say?

You asked a question devoid of context, I gave you a general answer. Trying to somehow trick you or make you look foolish was the furthest things from my mind.

As I said, I appreciate and enjoy your feedback, but when you assume malice behind everything I say it really turns the conversation into a bummer.


Doesn't matter, as you've made it clear that only PCs have attributes, and that anything you've said in this thread might just be misinformation.

I'm willing to discuss you system in the future. But only if you refrain from playing games just so you can protect your system. If you say something as it's designer, I need to be able to take what you say as truth, and you can't go back later and tell me that you were just messing with me.

Dude. This is not how rational people converse, and it is a hair away from violating forum rules.

You asked me a question and I answered it honestly. You don't get to come in here and take a reply that begins with "can usually be assumed to" as evidence that I am trying to trick you and that you can no longer believe anything I say because it isn't a 100% concrete fact. That is completely unreasonable.

I am still really curious about how you get to spirits having above 15 attribute scores, but I am not *that* curious.


Having inept is better than not having inept on a character. Each level of Inept increases the average result of a check for that proficiency by +0.5 of a point. IE: A skill of 0 will have an average result of 10.5. An inept of 10 will have an average result roughly a 15.5 by comparison. This is assuming you go through with the change you insinuated you were planning to make to the fortune dice system. I'll leave you to do with that information as you will.

Out of curiosity, is this only because the first and second ranks provide +3 and 2 respectively?

It's funny, my play-testers insist that indept is just a flat out "trap-option" and that nobody should ever take it, but online people seem to love it.

[Talakeal]

So, where was I?... Ah, fire blast. It reads as an area effect spell. You may not intend it that way, but it read that way. I spent a couple hours cross referencing and page numbering and it seems that a zone is a pace. So it the spell fills a zone with fire then it fills it with fire. Of course I also have a fondness for a magic system where stuff was split into the power (necromancy, pyromancy, chronomancy) and the method (conjuration, evocation, apportation). That system had a whole page of fireballs; pyromancy-evocation as trad, chronomancy-apportation to reverse the flow of time on some ashes you threw, necro-conj to summon the spirit of a dead bonfire. So "same effect by a different path" is something I trend towards there. But yeah, you need something to differentiate the zone/pace difference in area/calling because it reads the same.

That's odd.

It does function like an area spell in that it is evaded (that's its gimmick) rather than resisted with resolve like most single target spells, but aside from that calling spells and area spells are distinct types with distinct rules, and I am not sure where the confusion is.

All calling spells occupy a zone on the board, be they summoning a minion, a fire burst, an insect swarm, or a living spell. Although in the case of large creatures, they might occupy multiple zones.

All area spells measure their range from a point on the board and don't occupy zones at all.

Although their might be some weirdness with diagonals I need to look at in the morning.


On blasting: The journeyman level extra was called out as a typical person for pcs to interact with while minions and open-ended damage are in optional sidebars. The idea of blaster is, when coming from D&D style & influenced games/crpgs, about fireball KOing or one shotting a bunch of non-trivial targets.

Maybe I need to make it more clear that you should really be using mooks for most NPCs you encounter.

I have never thought of fireball as a one-shot spell in any game; it's always been a moderate damage over a moderate area spell for me.


On describing the game: Don't compare Heart of Darkness to D&D. People have way too much D&D baggage, especially this site, to get much useful when they make D&D assumptions about stuff unread. Instead HoD has much more DNA from games like Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay and Palladium than it does from D&D. Heck, I think it's closer to Mörk Borg than the current version of D&D. Although more accurately I'd say 1st level OD&D or hardcore AD&D 1e is still a bit north of Mörk Borg and HoD is well north of 1st level AD&D, but they're all a tighter range that's well south of WotC D&Ds. Having played starter characters in all the games in this paragraph except HoD, your game is closer to Palladium, AD&D, WHFRP, than to the last 20 years of D&D.

D&D is what most people are familiar with and in my experience people tend to have a visceral reaction to anything new or unfamiliar.

I have never actually played anything by Palladium. The game absolutely has a lot of WHFRP in its DNA (and by extension similar systems loke Rolemaster and Runequest).

As I said upthread, I feel like it is, at least mechanically, a cross between WHFRP and Exalted.

But D&D is the lingua franca of RPGs, and it is easiest to discuss RPGs or calibrate expectations using D&D, and it has obviously had a vast influence on the entire hobby, my game included.

[Jakinbandw]

You asked me a question, devoid of context, and I gave you the under the hood answer, and specifically prefaced it with "generally".


You asked a question devoid of context, I gave you a general answer.


It also spiritually fuses with a 5 times empowered Force of Nature. I'm honestly not sure what effect that has, as Fusion references attributes, but extra templates don't have attributes.

{Scrubbed}

[Kish]

Hm. I'm wondering something. Question, Talakeal. Does Bob react negatively to other group members' successes?

[Talakeal]

Hm. I'm wondering something. Question, Talakeal. Does Bob react negatively to other group members' successes?

Actually no.

He occasionally gets jealous of other players, but its not too bad.

I have seen other players who try and steal the spotlight or sabotage their companions, or pout when they aren't the one to save the day, but that is not Bob's MO.


Mostly its just he is concerned with his own character power and always feels like he should be stronger than he is; like in the case of the OP he has the highest overall damage output of the party but still complains that he is under-powered.

Edit: @Telok: Ok,having reread the rules for area spells, I see where the confusion is coming from. I will clarify it. Thanks for pointing that out!

[neriana]

D&D is what most people are familiar with and in my experience people tend to have a visceral reaction to anything new or unfamiliar.

Your experience is certainly... unique.

People who are narcissistic are jealous of others' success. So maybe Bob is self-absorbed, but "narcissistic" is an extremely strong accusation that should be used sparingly. It sounds to me like Bob likes playing for the power fantasy aspect, and if he's not undermining other players, there's nothing wrong with that.

[Talakeal]

People who are narcissistic are jealous of others' success. So maybe Bob is self-absorbed, but "narcissistic" is an extremely strong accusation that should be used sparingly. It sounds to me like Bob likes playing for the power fantasy aspect, and if he's not undermining other players, there's nothing wrong with that.

For sure.

I would never actually say he is a narcissist, just that he sometimes shows behaviors that seem narcissistic, and I don't even know if he is legitimately feeling that way or if he has just discovered that if he acts that way people will let him have his way more often than not.

Bob is absolutely jealous of other players, but doesn't go so far as to sabotage them or complain when they succeed. He will however, complain that he isn't as powerful as he should be, and even if he is objectively "the best" he still complains that his margin of success isn't wide enough.

But what he mostly does is, if he fails at something or when something bad happens to his character, sulks and accuses other people of picking on him. He will constantly accuse the GM of tailoring the adventures specifically to counter his character. Likewise, he constantly makes "glass cannon" characters that are all offense and no defense, and then says that it is cheating for the GM to have intelligent enemies make the obviously correct tactical move of attacking his character.

[neriana]

What players do you have whose playstyles you approve of?

[Talakeal]

What players do you have whose playstyles you approve of?

All of them?

I mean, everyone (myself included) has their quirks and isn't perfect, but all of them are overall good players.

Bob is the closest thing to a "problem player" but I still feel he is a new positive for the group and keep him around despite lots of suggestions that I do otherwise.

Although I suppose the new girl might end up being worse than Bob and might not make the cut in the long run, as unlike Bob she actively lies and cheats at the table, but she hasn't been around long enough for me to make that call.

I have had a few people who have been net negatives over the years and haven't worked out with the group, but they are by far the minority, and mostly its their behavior away from the table that ends up getting them cut.

[Talakeal]

Thread is kind of dying down.

@Jakinbaw: Thank you for your feedback. I genuinely mean it, you had some brilliant ideas and very good critical analysis in there.

@Kish: Were you going somewhere talking about Bob or the definition of power gaming?

@Telok: Was there anything more in your builds you wanted me to look over?

Also, our last conversation about blasters really has me thinking about the two big waffles in my game; whether to use open ended damage and impervious bulk as the default rules rather than the options. Any thoughts?