01-18-2019, 01:51 AM | #11 | ||
Join Date: Nov 2010
Location: Arizona
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Re: Mana
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Another thing; based on HCobb's comment earlier about a Wizard who used too much Mana being a poor slime-spotter -- I should state unequivocally that my answer was somewhat tongue-in-cheek. Honestly, I see Mana as a secondary "magical ability attribute" much like fatigue was before, only not as potentially confusing (as fatigue was, given that you had to track two different effects on your ST with all the extra complexity and confusion that that situation often created in the heat of battle). Basically spending Mana would in no way reduce your IQ to some "AdjIQ" number. Rather you would have just so many Mana points to expend before you "ran out of juice" and then had to either refrain from casting spells until you can re-charge, or make the decision that it's necessary to start absorbing actual wounds in order to save the day. Your IQ in itself, however, would remain unaffected. You would still know your talents and spells, speak your languages, and so on, but simply wouldn't have the ability to cast spells anymore (without potentially fatal consequences anyway). Finally, on the matter of "re-charging" Mana, I would argue that rather than have a Mana point re-charge every 15 minutes, you could either lengthen the time component (1 Mana point per hour, for example), OR you could simply state that no Mana re-charges until, say, Midnight local time -- this would solve the oft-stated objection of Wizards having too much Mana available during the course of the day to use and becoming unstoppable killing machines; once again it becomes a resource management issue instead of an opportunity to skew the game effects. I would also point out that since the effects of AID Spells are transitory, they might not be the panacea that some folks think they would be -- and frankly, I'd rather have the other Wizards in my party making their own attacks rather than AIDing me to make one big attack. Anyway, I hope you take my comments and responses as an attempt to discuss and address issues that have been raised or ideas that have been proposed, as opposed to an attempt to overbear your (or anyone else's) preferences, concepts, and play style! And, come to think of it, this is all highly hypothetical anyway, since I have no evidence that Steve or anyone else is actually considering revamping the magic system in any way! ;-) |
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01-18-2019, 03:54 AM | #12 | |
Join Date: Aug 2018
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Re: Mana
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01-18-2019, 04:14 AM | #13 |
Join Date: Aug 2018
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Re: Mana
One other thought, the ST damage brought about by using ST to power spells would be very resistant to any healing efforts. It isn't so much a wound to a specific part of the body, but instead, a generalized weakness to the full body. Draining the life force if you will. Physickers could try, but there's nothing to bandage or stitch up. The same for healers and their spells. No wound to actually heal, just a generalized weakness. The only fix is two days bed rest for each point of damage.
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01-18-2019, 05:59 AM | #14 | |
Join Date: Sep 2018
Location: North Texas
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Re: Mana
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For me, Mana is simply what ST is called when it exists outside of the wizard; in a staff, powerstone, or even distilled into a potion (new idea?).
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“No matter how subtle the wizard, a knife between the shoulder blades will seriously cramp his style.” -Vladimir Taltos |
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01-18-2019, 06:21 AM | #15 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Pacheco, California
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Re: Mana
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01-18-2019, 07:00 AM | #16 |
Join Date: Sep 2018
Location: North Texas
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Re: Mana
Why not? You would just need to establish the existence of Mana potions (and rules for creating them) to compensate for that change. This doesn't seem like much of a stretch to me.
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“No matter how subtle the wizard, a knife between the shoulder blades will seriously cramp his style.” -Vladimir Taltos |
01-18-2019, 08:38 AM | #17 |
Join Date: Aug 2018
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Re: Mana
Sticking with the continuity of this thread, it was earlier postulated that using this idea, a wizard would use mana to cast his spells. Once he had depleted the available mana, he could, under duress, use his ST to cast spells. The reduction in ST would be damage to him, not fatigue. So, in this case, no healing of that type of generalized damage, except by bed rest.
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01-18-2019, 10:27 AM | #18 | ||
Join Date: May 2015
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Re: Mana
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Of course, you are correct that having more ST is better than having less ST, and that you certainly don't want your wizards to get wounded even if it didn't reduce their mana. And it sounds like maybe you mean by not seeing it as a problem, that you can play a game with house rules like that and still have it be enjoyable and fun and have some players not notice that the balance has shifted a lot from the original game. If so, sure, I agree. TFT can be modded a lot before it becomes a problem if the bar is being not fun or severely obviously broken. However it sounds like maybe I was mistaken to think you were disagreeing with what I meant to say. Which was, that this change greatly alters the balance of value of attributes for wizards, since ST no longer would determine mana, and wounds would no longer reduce their pool of available mana (unless using the part where you can opt to actually wound yourself to cast spells, but still it's a much reduced effect compared to original TFT). Although a ST 8 wizard is quite vulnerable to attacks, so is any 32-point wizard standing where he can be attacked, especially (in original TFT, but much less so if mana comes from IQ) if he casts spells or if he needs to be able to cast more spells to survive an encounter. All things being equal and TFT being a point-buy game, if you base mana on IQ, I'd say that pretty much any 32-point arena wizard design would be less effective than one who shifted points from ST to DX or IQ, because extra points in ST would just help you take wounds a little bit (even raising DX and then reducing it with cloth or leather armor would seem almost always a better choice than raising ST in that case). Quote:
As a side-note, I've played another GM's (house-rule GURPS psionics) system whose spell-equivalents did cause mental fatigue which reduced your adjIQ that way, which was a pretty interesting and unusual mechanic, but certainly a house rule that has a big impact on play. |
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01-18-2019, 10:36 AM | #19 |
Join Date: May 2015
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Re: Mana
I'd sort of forgotten that healing potions could do that. It's almost always such a huge waste to do so unless you are both unwounded and desperately need to recover some fatigue immediately.
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01-18-2019, 10:50 AM | #20 | |
Join Date: Sep 2018
Location: North Texas
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Re: Mana
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And there are a lot of other elements that would need to be addressed if you alter this core design assumption. How would the Aid spell work? Would Confusion reduce the wizard's available mana? Do we need new spells to target or defend one's mana reserve? What happens when mana hits zero? Will the use of XP to increase IQ automatically increase mana and if so, wouldn't the implied 40-point stat cap limit the wizard’s power potential? Like I said... eye twitching. ;)
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“No matter how subtle the wizard, a knife between the shoulder blades will seriously cramp his style.” -Vladimir Taltos |
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