New Staff to-hit roll using IQ! (serious balance problem, no?)

[hcobb]

If you turn your unbreakable staff into a snake is the snake unkillable?

[Skarg]

Originally Posted by hcobb

The costs required to cast Staff II and up are missing from the rulebook.

Is this because it takes quite a while to craft the wizard's ordinary staff into these magic weapons?

I haven't finished reading the new ITL, but the original Staff of Power (which was just 2d damage if you use DX to hit with it, and immune to drop/break weapon, and doesn't explode when it hurts unwelcome people who pick it up) required 4 weeks' work to enchant at 10 ST per day. So I would think/hope that yes, these uber staffs would at least take some effort to make.

Originally Posted by Thorsz

I think what ultimately makes this unbalanced is that the staff is immune to drop/break weapon and critical failures at Staff III. Otherwise, it would reduce the "staff fighter/wizard" to be susceptible to a simple IQ8 or IQ12 spell....... So maybe just remove the immunity to drop/break weapon and critical failures.

That would help a bit. But it requires a wizard with those spells to get in Thrown spell range before it makes any difference - in all other situations, it would continue to be overbalanced and irregular.

But along the same lines, it looks to me like you can get a goodish chance of destroying a staff my shooting 3-die lightning at the wizard who holds it, using the new magic item destruction rules (which I really, really like!) on ITL page 167.

Originally Posted by hcobb

If you turn your unbreakable staff into a snake is the snake unkillable?

Yes, it's immune to everything except staff damage. ;->

[larsdangly]

As I read through the spell lists I'm starting to soften my ill will about some of the exceptional properties of the staff. Shock does damage that ignores armor and shields. Breath Fire lets you deliver a meaningful attack in addition to your normal action. Shock and Blast do automatic damage. The only thing I haven't stumbled across yet is another spell that is cast by rolling vs. the casters IQ.

Edit: Pathfinder is rolled vs. the caster's IQ. It is not obvious WHY but it is.

[platimus]

Originally Posted by larsdangly

Edit: Pathfinder is rolled vs. the caster's IQ. It is not obvious WHY but it is.

Honestly, I was shocked when I first found out that TFT rolls against DX. I couldn't image how that made sense until someone explained it to me.

Here's my summary of the different approaches to magic that I know of:
1) Remember the lyrics (vs. IQ)
2) Rub your tummy and pat your head at the same time (vs. DX)
3) Just do it. (d&d)
4) Kill a goat and burn some incense. (rituals)
5) Combine ingredients in pot and boil for 10 mintues. (ingredients/components)

[Skarg]

Originally Posted by larsdangly

As I read through the spell lists I'm starting to soften my ill will about some of the exceptional properties of the staff. Shock does damage that ignores armor and shields. Breath Fire lets you deliver a meaningful attack in addition to your normal action. Shock and Blast do automatic damage. The only thing I haven't stumbled across yet is another spell that is cast by rolling vs. the casters IQ.

Edit: Pathfinder is rolled vs. the caster's IQ. It is not obvious WHY but it is.

My objection isn't so much that each of those abilities exist but that they are all combined in one thing that every wizard will want anyway, and that together they make a super-reliable kill-zone effect around the wizard that costs nothing. If someone _wants_ to add "staffs are this uber thing that high-powered wizards all get which means there is this steady unavoidable free auto-kill zone within two hexes of all of them" then great, but that sounds like a peculiar option to make standard in a game that used to be pretty balanced and have a rather different situation where wizards were crazy-powerful but had to actually cast choose which spells and make to-hit rolls.

i.e. It seems to be needlessly ignoring the usual TFT formula to give so many powers all to one "spell" that upgrades without requiring any more spell-learning points or XP, so every wizard will upgrade (unless they don't take the campaign-time to learn the upgrade), and that gives a massive laundry list of abilities that wizards don't really need for balance, at no memory cost, no opportunity cost, no ST cost, and eventually no time to use...

With ITL now letting wizards get unlimited spells with XP, too, why not make each combat upgrade to a staff at least be a different spell, so there's a choice about whether to gain another cool staff ability or learn another spell? It costs XP for each +1 to the staff Mana stat, so why not to each combat-munchkin-power added to the staff? Seems to me each one is worth more in terms of potency than a +1 to the Mana stat. Also then there could be more variety - not every bookworm researcher wizard would have a killer zap staff, etc.

[larsdangly]

I'm not sure I'm ready to go 'there' when it comes to the play balance issue. Iron Flesh, a common spell, pretty much shuts it down. Diamond Flesh totally shuts it down. Now that I re-read the description more precisely it is clear that you can't use your staff's 'arcane' strike more than once per turn (i.e,. if you hit with your staff again that turn it is just a physical blow with a stick). So, really the people in your 'kill zone' just need to deal with 1d6+2 damage per turn that penetrates mundane armor but not magical protection (which I would say includes magical bonuses from enchanted armor and shields, though this isn't made totally clear in the rules).

I'm more interested in the play balance implications of Hammer Touch. In a game where experienced spell casters can have access to 30 or 40 points of ST, there is no reason why this spell couldn't be used to punch the head off a 14 hex dragon.

Also, re. the XP cost: don't you have to pay the XP cost of getting a new spell when you 'upgrade' from a low IQ to high IQ version of something?

[Chris Goodwin]

Also remember that when created, a Staff II has a capacity of 0, and building it up costs XP and presumably further castings of thr spell.

Edit to add: Part of the reason for Staff II is to avoid Conan the Librarian, aka wizards with 30 ST. Is a wizard with 14 ST and a 16 ST staff better than a 30 ST wizard? Mechanically, no way. A wizard recovers 4 ST per hour when resting; that 30 ST recovers fully with a night's sleep. The staff still needs to be recharged by the wizard, at 5 ST expended per 1 ST recharged.

[Shadekeep]

I dunno, I still can't get the underlying logic for this exceptional rule, in terms of how the game world works. Pure combat is predicated on DX to hit, pure magic is predicated on DX to hit, but a hybrid of the two is (potentially) predicated on IQ? Why? And if the answer is "because, magic", then surely spells should be predicated on IQ to hit as well.

I feel like an old Star Trek computer that's trying to work out an illogical puzzle, sparking and sputtering...

[chrisbender]

Originally Posted by Shadekeep

Pure combat is predicated on DX to hit, pure magic is predicated on DX to hit, but a hybrid of the two is (potentially) predicated on IQ? Why?

I agree that this does seem inconsistent and possibly broken. For those of you who are going to house rule that staff attacks use DX instead of IQ, I'm wondering how you will handle the Staff spell.

Will you get rid of the staff spell entirely, and just make the staff a regular melee weapon that the Wizard can use? Do you plan on getting rid of the staff enhancements available to purchase with experience?

[Shadekeep]

Originally Posted by chrisbender

Will you get rid of the staff spell entirely, and just make the staff a regular melee weapon that the Wizard can use? Do you plan on getting rid of the staff enhancements available to purchase with experience?

I'd need to dive a bit deeper into it to say for sure, but my plan at the moment is simply to remove the "or IQ" from the to-hit roll. The rest will stay pretty much as specified. Though if there is no cost for upgrading the staff spell level except time, I'll probably tack on an XP price as well.