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Old 07-07-2019, 12:38 PM   #11
Skarg
 
Join Date: May 2015
Default Re: Increasing the Cost of Purchasing Spells

Making it (like) an enchantment could be interesting. It adds the aspect that and Aid spell won't jack up the caster's DX, and the spell can't just be re-cast till you get a success for 1 ST. Instead, a failure would mean a wasted week, and an 18 would ruin the enchantment... what this means when the subject is a person...

Making it an actual enchantment could imply that the new limb might be subject to Dispel Enchantment or even dispelling by lightning bolts, and/or count as an enchantment for Rule of Five purposes.


(Though these sound interesting and better than nothing, personally I still just don't want to remove permanent limb loss, because to me it makes the game less about the main situation I'm interested in, which is a flesh and bone characters who engage in serious violence which can and does have actual permanent consequences. To me, Regeneration mainly seems like removing a desired feature of gameplay - that it's actually possible to lose a limb permanently, not that it adds a task to your task list.

On the other hand, I also think that the RAW limb injury rules could/should be less clear-cut (so to speak - tee hee) about when a limb is actually lost or heal-able. That is, the optional Aimed Shot and Crippling Hits both say any limb hit doing 8+ damage means the limb is lost - my house rules tend to add a die roll and take into account the damage type, and have some intermediate results possible.

Similarly, I'd tend to want a Regeneration spell to be less certain and less binary in its possible results.)
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Old 07-07-2019, 01:18 PM   #12
zot
 
Join Date: May 2018
Default Re: Increasing the Cost of Purchasing Spells

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Originally Posted by Skarg View Post
Making it (like) an enchantment could be interesting. It adds the aspect that and Aid spell won't jack up the caster's DX, and the spell can't just be re-cast till you get a success for 1 ST. Instead, a failure would mean a wasted week, and an 18 would ruin the enchantment... what this means when the subject is a person...

Making it an actual enchantment could imply that the new limb might be subject to Dispel Enchantment or even dispelling by lightning bolts, and/or count as an enchantment for Rule of Five purposes.


(Though these sound interesting and better than nothing, personally I still just don't want to remove permanent limb loss, because to me it makes the game less about the main situation I'm interested in, which is a flesh and bone characters who engage in serious violence which can and does have actual permanent consequences. To me, Regeneration mainly seems like removing a desired feature of gameplay - that it's actually possible to lose a limb permanently, not that it adds a task to your task list.

On the other hand, I also think that the RAW limb injury rules could/should be less clear-cut (so to speak - tee hee) about when a limb is actually lost or heal-able. That is, the optional Aimed Shot and Crippling Hits both say any limb hit doing 8+ damage means the limb is lost - my house rules tend to add a die roll and take into account the damage type, and have some intermediate results possible.

Similarly, I'd tend to want a Regeneration spell to be less certain and less binary in its possible results.)
It could use an enchantment to perform the regrowth but not to actually maintain it.
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Old 07-07-2019, 10:26 PM   #13
Skarg
 
Join Date: May 2015
Default Re: Increasing the Cost of Purchasing Spells

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It could use an enchantment to perform the regrowth but not to actually maintain it.
I assume most people would assume that. I was just brainstorming more possibly interesting options to retain some risk, unpredictability, and consequences in the face of magic restoration.
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Old 07-08-2019, 02:05 AM   #14
Tywyll
 
Join Date: Nov 2017
Default Re: Increasing the Cost of Purchasing Spells

All this chat about Regeneration is nice, but isn't the only offender and only barely addresses my request.

We also have Glamour and Minor Mendicant and Shapechange, to name a few.

So, what is a good scale to increase the cost of buying a spell you can't cast?

How do we prevent this from letting PCs just give up adventuring?

If casting spells regularly isn't what makes a wizard money on their weekly job (but is a bonus) what are they doing that makes them a salary?
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Old 07-08-2019, 02:21 AM   #15
zot
 
Join Date: May 2018
Default Re: Increasing the Cost of Purchasing Spells

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Originally Posted by Skarg View Post
I assume most people would assume that. I was just brainstorming more possibly interesting options to retain some risk, unpredictability, and consequences in the face of magic restoration.
Yeah, I do agree with you that restoring lost limbs makes it a lot more cartoon and takes away the impact from the characters. It does help to maintain the laissez faire attitude towards danger that you commonly see in high school games where no NPC can threaten a PC because the players really don't care what happens.

I've found that this attitude disappears in groups care more about story than competition. But a world where Regeneration is so cheap would definitely cause even real people to be more causal about danger, getting closer to sci-fi settings where you have cloned replacement parts.

I guess the question for me is whether making it expensive and time consuming, like making a magic item, would be sufficient. In this situation, you don't gain more durability until you're extremely rich. For PCs, this normally corresponds to experience because there's this (artificial) idea that all PCs start with a level playing ground, i.e. rich kids aren't PCs. So because of this fact, maybe just making it expensive is good enough -- and the far-away goal of more durability gives the players something to strive for.

Really though, I think removing Regeneration and leaving it to the realm of greater wishes neatly handles the whole problem! It's not time consuming or really that expensive, but it's heck of a lot riskier!
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Old 07-08-2019, 02:48 AM   #16
zot
 
Join Date: May 2018
Default Re: Increasing the Cost of Purchasing Spells

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Originally Posted by Tywyll View Post
All this chat about Regeneration is nice, but isn't the only offender and only barely addresses my request.

We also have Glamour and Minor Mendicant and Shapechange, to name a few.

So, what is a good scale to increase the cost of buying a spell you can't cast?

How do we prevent this from letting PCs just give up adventuring?

If casting spells regularly isn't what makes a wizard money on their weekly job (but is a bonus) what are they doing that makes them a salary?
At my table, casting spells regularly is exactly what makes a wizard money. I have no problem with that. You have to remember though that if you increase the cost of casting, all wizards can benefit from that but there might also be economic pressure to lower the price.

Also, I see no reason that city populations couldn't go over 1 million. Before the 1800s, large city populations got up to 1.5 million and Alexandria has a population of 1M in 100 BC. A 1M population city would have over 3000 wizards and I would wager it would have a thriving magic item market.

From the mid to late 1800s, London's population goes from 2M to 6.5M. In a city of 6.5M, there would be over 21000 wizards. I think Cidri's magic can easily beat the effectiveness of 1800s technology. Heck it's better than our current technology because Cleansing + Iron Flesh can cure all diseases (except maybe cancer, depending on the GM). This is something that we definitely can't do today with drug-resistant bacteria. So I'd argue that city populations might be as large as cities today. A city the size of modern Tokyo (about 37.5M) would have around 125000 wizards...

Since we're talking about the implications of magic on Cidri, I should mention that I like really the idea of the Transport Guild (see this thread) having a lock on Gate and the teleportation spells and adding a whole dimension of intrigue to the planet.

The way the Transport Guild enforces its control could potentially be applied to wizards who attempt to undercut guild pricing.
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Old 07-08-2019, 05:49 AM   #17
Tywyll
 
Join Date: Nov 2017
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At my table, casting spells regularly is exactly what makes a wizard money. I have no problem with that. <snip>
So basically you are saying, it's cool, be okay with it? Is that the gist? I mean, that's certainly an option. We have magical makeovers...all merchants, adventurers and nobles are stunningly gorgeous (Glamour). No one above the peasant class suffers disease or limb loss or even minor inconveniences (minor mendicant and regeneration). For the extremely wealthy, even death is only a pause assuming their bodies aren't destroyed (revival).

Hummm...I find it interesting how the magic in Wizard feels both low powered compared to say D&D yet at the same time it can also transform the world in radical ways in ways that D&D magic cannot.
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Old 07-08-2019, 07:52 AM   #18
zot
 
Join Date: May 2018
Default Re: Increasing the Cost of Purchasing Spells

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Originally Posted by Tywyll View Post
So basically you are saying, it's cool, be okay with it? Is that the gist? I mean, that's certainly an option. We have magical makeovers...all merchants, adventurers and nobles are stunningly gorgeous (Glamour). No one above the peasant class suffers disease or limb loss or even minor inconveniences (minor mendicant and regeneration). For the extremely wealthy, even death is only a pause assuming their bodies aren't destroyed (revival).

Hummm...I find it interesting how the magic in Wizard feels both low powered compared to say D&D yet at the same time it can also transform the world in radical ways in ways that D&D magic cannot.
The reason it would be the standard way for wizards to make money at my table is because spell casting in TFT is so cheap and low-risk. Wouldn't that make magic-for-sale inevitable? I mean, what forces of the world would prevent it?

I'm not so sure about magic in D&D not being transformative. Eberron is all about that (for low-level spells and items). Most magic in D&D is also cheap and risk-free, True Polymorph is very cheap and it's permanent for a willing figure in a relaxed setting, provided you can get a 17th level wizard to cast the spell. How rare are 17th level wizards? There may not be any in Eberron but they must be darn common in Forgotten Realms (I'm not a regular D&Der though, so I'm guessing here). They'd certainly common in many Pathfinder settings, like Xcrawl, for instance (a great concept).

Here's a list of permanent D&D spells (for 5e, I think). Teleportation Circle seem much more reasonable in terms of cost, compared to Gate. It requires daily casting for an entire year at a cost of 50g for each casting. To me, that's way more reasonable than Gate -- there ought to be gates all over the place in Cidri, which is why I like the Gate post so much and I find the Transport Guild intriguing. It makes Cidri kind of JRPG-like, which maybe isn't SO bad of a thing.

As it is, TFT Legacy isn't all that much different from the original and they make for some very common magic in the world. Maybe there will be a TFT 2.0 that fixes up some of these things (and hopefully updates the social/psychological part of the game).
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Old 07-08-2019, 10:47 AM   #19
MikMod
 
Join Date: May 2019
Default Re: Increasing the Cost of Purchasing Spells

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Originally Posted by Tywyll View Post
So basically you are saying, it's cool, be okay with it? Is that the gist? I mean, that's certainly an option. We have magical makeovers...all merchants, adventurers and nobles are stunningly gorgeous (Glamour). No one above the peasant class suffers disease or limb loss or even minor inconveniences (minor mendicant and regeneration). For the extremely wealthy, even death is only a pause assuming their bodies aren't destroyed (revival).
The population of such a world would explode... :/
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Old 07-08-2019, 11:15 AM   #20
zot
 
Join Date: May 2018
Default Re: Increasing the Cost of Purchasing Spells

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The population of such a world would explode... :/
Could be but maybe that's a natural consequence of how easy and common magic is in TFT. But I suspect it's worse than it already appears...

Even if only one in 300 is a wizard, it only takes IQ 9 to learn Aid, IQ 10 to learn Minor Medicament, IQ 12 to learn Cleanse Poison, and IQ 15 to learn Regeneration, which is just one point higher than the required IQ for Master Physicker. A beginning master physicker character could start out knowing Regeneration.

Wouldn't many, if not most, master physickers learn these spells and require their "nurses" to know Aid? Cleansing, an IQ 17 spell, would also be useful for very accomplished master physickers.
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