Increasing the Cost of Purchasing Spells - Page 3

Skarg · 07-08-2019, 01:23 PM

What I found even running a TFT campaign as a teenager using the original rules, was that the GM ought to consider the implications of the spells, and then choose which spells the GM wants to exist as written, which spells to modify, which to have known only by certain groups (perhaps in some cases, only people in the past), and which spells to have not exist at all in his campaign.

The difficulty is that it's challenging, even for a very experienced TFT GM, to catch all of the potential uses and abuses of all of the spells. But I find it easier with TFT than with other games, not just because it's the magic system I started with, but because there are not all that many spells, they're organized in general power level by IQ, and they have a foundation of low-IQ original Wizard spells that are quite well balanced at least in arena situations.

Getting back to the original question of this thread, I'd restate my original answer that I think purchasing spell casting isn't really the core issue. I think the core issue is that some spells do very powerful things quite easily, which creates game situations the GM may not want to be so easy in his campaign worlds.

And that's a matter of choice of campaign style (as well as the GM awareness issue I mentioned above). Some GMs may want a game where there's tons of easily available magic, and others may not, and others may want some mix of some magic but not other magic, and it's best, if the GM is up to it, to figure that out before learning in play that there are consequences he'd prefer weren't there.

And of course, one of the main and best ways to learn what you like and don't like, is to play games and find out what happens. (Though player experience and style makes a big difference. It took a year or so before my players started showing me that certain magics would undermine many of my campaign assumptions and/or make it very hard for me to GM without lots of work and chaos. And then another year or so before my players themselves started wanting less magic, and would even store away magic items and choose to limit what magic items they used, and want there to be magic item breakdown rules and not to be able to get lots of XP by slaughtering people using powerful magic.)

When I choose which spells will be known in what versions by whom, usually my own basis for choosing is about whether I think the spell adds fun and interesting possibilities to the game world, or whether it actually trivializes game situations I find fun and interesting. For example, I really like mapped travel and exploration, tracking rations, weather effects and food supplies, so I don't want spells that will remove those things from play (e.g. Meal, Stalwart, healing spells, ubiquitous gate networks, etc).

So looking at costs of purchasing spells again, I first ask whether I really want even high-IQ wizards to be able to cast each of the more powerful spells as trivially as written.

For me, for some powerful spells, the answer is yes (e.g. Wizard's Wrath, Megahex Freeze, Unnoticeability... why not?), and for some others I want to adjust the costs, risks and what the spell actually does (e.g. Shapeshifting, Summon Demon, Look Your Best), and for some others my answer is I may not even want them to exist, or at least not as written (e.g. Regeneration, Restore Device, Stalwart, Minor Medicament, Meal).

Some of the spells already have some good examples of interesting risks and limits built in, such as Long-Distance Teleport.

A great example of the type of adjustment I like to make, is the change Steve Jackson made in Legacy Edition to the Trance spell, which I used to think was far too strongly described. i.e. instead of compelling a truthful answer from the GM, it gives an oracularly worded clue which can be misleading on a failed roll, and can only be asked on the same subject once per game week. It changes it from a powerful munchkin-able GM annoyance, to a fun and interesting limited but still potentially very useful spell.

Having figured out what spells exist in my campaign with what changes, and which are known by whom, I then think about what the wizards are like, and what their commercial practices are. As I mentioned before, this tends to make me at least make high-IQ spellcasters often tricky to find willing to do random spellcasting work for adventurers, and perhaps require higher fees and probably also other in-kind things such as answering questions about who they are, what they're up to, who their powerful friends and enemies are, and what they know about things the wizard (and/or guild) is interested in, and whether they're interested in gathering/delivering some info or items for the wizard in their travels.

Tywyll · 07-09-2019, 04:26 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MikMod

The population of such a world would explode... :/

Not really. Again, peasants (the vast majority of the population) don't have access to this magic. Not to mention this is a world with monsters, dragons, evil wizards, et al going around trying to conqueror and destroy, so excess population is bled off in the form of wars and conquests.

zot · 07-09-2019, 05:52 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tywyll

Not really. Again, peasants (the vast majority of the population) don't have access to this magic. Not to mention this is a world with monsters, dragons, evil wizards, et al going around trying to conqueror and destroy, so excess population is bled off in the form of wars and conquests.

Rich and/or powerful people might also suppress the free market a bit by trying to restrict access to those spells.

Also good wizards might go around teaching Regeneration to IQ 15 people and Aid to IQ 9 people for free -- a sort magical peace corps that perhaps other forces might want to stamp out (sounds like a story hook to me -- changing the world through magic!)...

It really all depends on two things:

Are all of the spells in ITL available to learn? The easy way out for a GM is simply to rule that Regeneration doesn't exist at their table.
How free is the market in the world? What's to prevent someone who does know Regeneration from running around and teaching it to the highest bidder? Are there laws against this? And once knowledge does leak out, won't others teach it at lower and lower prices so they can get in on some of the business?

MikMod · 07-10-2019, 03:22 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tywyll

Not really. Again, peasants (the vast majority of the population) don't have access to this magic. Not to mention this is a world with monsters, dragons, evil wizards, et al going around trying to conqueror and destroy, so excess population is bled off in the form of wars and conquests.

If Regeneration costs $40 and a labourer earns enough to pay their food and rent and leave them with $5 over every single week, then its fairly clear that almost anyone will be able to scrape together (or have already put aside) enough to pay for a Cleansing and stay alive when they get seriously ill. And that's assuming there is no charitable mechanism for providing this kind of curing for the poor.

Plus the long term impact of Cleansing might mean diseases are actually much less common.

Boom - loads of people.

zot · 07-10-2019, 06:10 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MikMod

If Regeneration costs $40 and a labourer earns enough to pay their food and rent and leave them with $5 over every single week, then its fairly clear that almost anyone will be able to scrape together (or have already put aside) enough to pay for a Cleansing and stay alive when they get seriously ill. And that's assuming there is no charitable mechanism for providing this kind of curing for the poor.

Plus the long term impact of Cleansing might mean diseases are actually much less common.

Boom - loads of people.

That might cover (average) wages but not access to magic and doesn't address any of the other points, so the argument does not go boom.

Tywyll · 07-10-2019, 09:49 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MikMod

If Regeneration costs $40 and a labourer earns enough to pay their food and rent and leave them with $5 over every single week, then its fairly clear that almost anyone will be able to scrape together (or have already put aside) enough to pay for a Cleansing and stay alive when they get seriously ill. And that's assuming there is no charitable mechanism for providing this kind of curing for the poor.

Plus the long term impact of Cleansing might mean diseases are actually much less common.

Boom - loads of people.

I think its pretty generous to imagine that people can save 1/5th of their earnings each week. Evidence points to the contrary. Sure, some people can, but look at the number of people who survive on credit and overdrafts. Look at the go-fund-me's for health care. People can't or don't often have that kind of long term foresight or ability to avoid day-to-day needs and vices, especially not poor people who are far more often the victim of these economic pressures.

Also, just because 1 in 300 people might have true magic, how many have an IQ of 15? How many of those bother to learn (or are allowed to learn) Regeneration? It's going to be a lot less than 1 in 300. 1 in 5000? 1 in 10000? 1 in 50K? Yes, there will be disease healing wizards in big cities perhaps, but thinking they exist in every two bit town and village just doesn't follow.

zot · 07-10-2019, 10:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tywyll

I think its pretty generous to imagine that people can save 1/5th of their earnings each week. Evidence points to the contrary. Sure, some people can, but look at the number of people who survive on credit and overdrafts. Look at the go-fund-me's for health care. People can't or don't often have that kind of long term foresight or ability to avoid day-to-day needs and vices, especially not poor people who are far more often the victim of these economic pressures.

Also, just because 1 in 300 people might have true magic, how many have an IQ of 15? How many of those bother to learn (or are allowed to learn) Regeneration? It's going to be a lot less than 1 in 300. 1 in 5000? 1 in 10000? 1 in 50K? Yes, there will be disease healing wizards in big cities perhaps, but thinking they exist in every two bit town and village just doesn't follow.

I think the problem is that TFT really needs some setting books. Cidri is HUGE and there should be such a wide diversity of government and culture as to make true generalization impossible. There are so many variables that I don't think it's really possible to talk about "average" situations.

Probably a good approach would be for one of us programmers to write some sim code and generate some towns and villages.i don't think I'm ready to volunteer for that right now but maybe some other programmer would be interested in randomly generating whole village/town/city/metropolis populations, with stats and vocations and then analyzing them.

How is the IQ 15 master physicker population distributed among towns and villages?

What are some representative village wizards?

Do many people in villages know spells or own magic items?

The sim code parameters would greatly affect these results but their values and their results might give GMs some useful insight...

MikMod · 07-10-2019, 11:15 AM

Plagues in 550 and 1300's are known to have killed 30% of whole continent populations. 50% of whole populations. Absolutely incredible scales of death. Well beyond the impact of war.

I think you are completely underestimating how radically different it would be if there were some way to literally wave away diseases. Bear in mind that Cleanse goes well beyond our modern day capabilities.

Any wizard is likely to focus on IQ, especially if they're not adventuring since the money and respect is going to be in the higher level spells. And in the real world (not the brief life of an adventurer running straight into danger), the most useful and most learned spells would almost certainly include the healing ones. In my opinion.

And if there was just one spell that someone might learn in 'every two bit town' I'm going to guess it would be Cleanse.

MikMod · 07-10-2019, 11:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tywyll

I think its pretty generous to imagine that people can save 1/5th of their earnings each week. Evidence points to the contrary. Sure, some people can, but look at the number of people who survive on credit and overdrafts. Look at the go-fund-me's for health care. People can't or don't often have that kind of long term foresight or ability to avoid day-to-day needs and vices, especially not poor people who are far more often the victim of these economic pressures.

I have to say this sounds like a very 'modern american' viewpoint - not one I share.

If it's a matter of a couple of weeks wages, or death, I think you'll find people will be able to beg borrow or steal $40, or sell something, or promise to work for someone for a week, or just get a little wages advance or borrow it from family.

A weeks wages or death. And you think people are too dumb and useless to scrape that together?!

MikMod · 07-10-2019, 11:28 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by zot

That might cover (average) wages but not access to magic and doesn't address any of the other points, so the argument does not go boom.

Sorry! You were the one saying Cidri would have cities with populations like modern Tokyo, in multi millions.

Are you arguing against yourself now? :)

07-08-2019, 01:23 PM	#21
Skarg Join Date: May 2015	Re: Increasing the Cost of Purchasing Spells What I found even running a TFT campaign as a teenager using the original rules, was that the GM ought to consider the implications of the spells, and then choose which spells the GM wants to exist as written, which spells to modify, which to have known only by certain groups (perhaps in some cases, only people in the past), and which spells to have not exist at all in his campaign. The difficulty is that it's challenging, even for a very experienced TFT GM, to catch all of the potential uses and abuses of all of the spells. But I find it easier with TFT than with other games, not just because it's the magic system I started with, but because there are not all that many spells, they're organized in general power level by IQ, and they have a foundation of low-IQ original Wizard spells that are quite well balanced at least in arena situations. Getting back to the original question of this thread, I'd restate my original answer that I think purchasing spell casting isn't really the core issue. I think the core issue is that some spells do very powerful things quite easily, which creates game situations the GM may not want to be so easy in his campaign worlds. And that's a matter of choice of campaign style (as well as the GM awareness issue I mentioned above). Some GMs may want a game where there's tons of easily available magic, and others may not, and others may want some mix of some magic but not other magic, and it's best, if the GM is up to it, to figure that out before learning in play that there are consequences he'd prefer weren't there. And of course, one of the main and best ways to learn what you like and don't like, is to play games and find out what happens. (Though player experience and style makes a big difference. It took a year or so before my players started showing me that certain magics would undermine many of my campaign assumptions and/or make it very hard for me to GM without lots of work and chaos. And then another year or so before my players themselves started wanting less magic, and would even store away magic items and choose to limit what magic items they used, and want there to be magic item breakdown rules and not to be able to get lots of XP by slaughtering people using powerful magic.) When I choose which spells will be known in what versions by whom, usually my own basis for choosing is about whether I think the spell adds fun and interesting possibilities to the game world, or whether it actually trivializes game situations I find fun and interesting. For example, I really like mapped travel and exploration, tracking rations, weather effects and food supplies, so I don't want spells that will remove those things from play (e.g. Meal, Stalwart, healing spells, ubiquitous gate networks, etc). So looking at costs of purchasing spells again, I first ask whether I really want even high-IQ wizards to be able to cast each of the more powerful spells as trivially as written. For me, for some powerful spells, the answer is yes (e.g. Wizard's Wrath, Megahex Freeze, Unnoticeability... why not?), and for some others I want to adjust the costs, risks and what the spell actually does (e.g. Shapeshifting, Summon Demon, Look Your Best), and for some others my answer is I may not even want them to exist, or at least not as written (e.g. Regeneration, Restore Device, Stalwart, Minor Medicament, Meal). Some of the spells already have some good examples of interesting risks and limits built in, such as Long-Distance Teleport. A great example of the type of adjustment I like to make, is the change Steve Jackson made in Legacy Edition to the Trance spell, which I used to think was far too strongly described. i.e. instead of compelling a truthful answer from the GM, it gives an oracularly worded clue which can be misleading on a failed roll, and can only be asked on the same subject once per game week. It changes it from a powerful munchkin-able GM annoyance, to a fun and interesting limited but still potentially very useful spell. Having figured out what spells exist in my campaign with what changes, and which are known by whom, I then think about what the wizards are like, and what their commercial practices are. As I mentioned before, this tends to make me at least make high-IQ spellcasters often tricky to find willing to do random spellcasting work for adventurers, and perhaps require higher fees and probably also other in-kind things such as answering questions about who they are, what they're up to, who their powerful friends and enemies are, and what they know about things the wizard (and/or guild) is interested in, and whether they're interested in gathering/delivering some info or items for the wizard in their travels.

07-10-2019, 11:15 AM	#28
MikMod Join Date: May 2019	Re: Increasing the Cost of Purchasing Spells Plagues in 550 and 1300's are known to have killed 30% of whole continent populations. 50% of whole populations. Absolutely incredible scales of death. Well beyond the impact of war. I think you are completely underestimating how radically different it would be if there were some way to literally wave away diseases. Bear in mind that Cleanse goes well beyond our modern day capabilities. Any wizard is likely to focus on IQ, especially if they're not adventuring since the money and respect is going to be in the higher level spells. And in the real world (not the brief life of an adventurer running straight into danger), the most useful and most learned spells would almost certainly include the healing ones. In my opinion. And if there was just one spell that someone might learn in 'every two bit town' I'm going to guess it would be Cleanse. Last edited by MikMod; 07-10-2019 at 11:21 AM.