Weapons as staves

[phiwum]

Originally Posted by JohnPaulB

Well, your second reason is trounced by the first reason.

You envision what your character will be upon its creation. If you can't envision him using a staff that is not a wooden stick, then who cares if a dagger is obviously the best choice. Your character would never consider it and won't use it. For him, its not even a choice!

As a GM, on the other hand, I'm limiting a few of the choices of the players for the sake of a thematic playground. I'm mulling dagger staves from that perspective.

If, on the other hand, I was a player considering my options, I would be tempted to use a dagger staff even if it doesn't fit my image. There is always a compromise between theme and effectiveness and a starting wizard can have a short lifespan (Henry's comments notwithstanding). I might well be tempted by the effectiveness of the dagger staff to jettison my cosmetic preferences.

I must say, though, on reflection, the dagger staff isn't that great an advantage. A regular hunk of wood (not a wand) does the same damage but can't be used in HTH. Since wizards often have MA 10, HTH is a threat only when facing certain monsters or a band of wrasslin' elves.

(I know that the game doesn't explicitly include impaling wounds, but a dagger staff thrown sticking into someone's thigh would be a mighty challenge for someone, wouldn't it? Can't very well remove it unless you capture the wizard who threw it and force him to or find someone nearby with Remove Thrown Spell I guess. -- Ah. Impaling hits. Been decades since I played Runequest.)

[hcobb]

Wizards with daggers is a common enough meme that we inherited it from the Wizard boardgame and Death Test. (But in these cases the daggers were explicitly not staves.)

The problem with walking around with a silver non-staff dagger is this limits spellcasting by ITL 142. Though in much of the fantasy lit. the wizard draws his dagger in the ten seconds between spell failure and death.

Halfling Wizards ought to stock up on silver non-staff daggers, but only because they are the most insanely OP characters in the game. (Protect your eyes!)

Wizards without weapon talents ought to carry a silver dagger at their belts to deal with wolves.

When attacked by a DX 12 foe with a battleaxe:
No defense: Wizard is hit 74.07% of the time.
Defend with staff and occult blast: Wizard is hit 33.56% of the time.
Expert Dagger defend and occult blast: Wizard is hit 5.88% of the time.

[Skarg]

Originally Posted by hcobb

When attacked by a DX 12 foe with a battleaxe:
No defense: Wizard is hit 74.07% of the time.
Defend with staff and occult blast: Wizard is hit 33.56% of the time.
Expert Dagger defend and occult blast: Wizard is hit 5.88% of the time.

The real thing a wise wizard would prefer to do, however, is to avoid getting attacked by a DX 12 foe with a battleaxe, in the first place.

A DX 13+ wizard may well have a 74+% chance of preventing the attack with any of various effective spells.

The dagger expert wizard has blown time that could have been spent learning eight spells, and has to be at least DX 12 before even beginning to learn to be an expert. If there are any such people in the campaign world, they're wasting a lot of talent for the dubious benefit of being able to be better at engaging in melee combat... instead of being a wizard and doing wizardly things.

[David Bofinger]

Originally Posted by JohnPaulB

You[/B] envision what your character will be upon its creation. If you can't envision him using a staff that is not a wooden stick, then who cares if a dagger is obviously the best choice. Your character would never consider it and won't use it. For him, its not even a choice!

In other words the player is being tugged in two directions: one decision leads to a character that is more effective, giving it more agency in the game, the other leads to a character that is more aesthetic and suspends disbelief. It seems a shame to force a player to choose. The game's design would arguably be better if the choice that lead to greatest effectiveness was also a choice that was aesthetic and preserved the suspension of disbelief.

[Skarg]

It seems to me a dagger staff is mainly nice for HTH and reduced size.

Henry's endless posts suggesting it aside, I don't think that's necessarily the best option.

After all, a silver dagger staff costs at least $100, and does less base damage than a big wood staff.

It also has some social disadvantages. A ready dagger looks like a ready weapon, while most places would let a wizard hold a staff without treating it as a ready weapon.

Even as a wizard who for some reason thinks engaging in physical combat is something to focus on and learn talents for rather than avoid, an actual weapon would seem to be generally better than a dagger. How about a spear? Being able to resist charges at +2 DX, first strike for 2d+2 with a fine silver spear seems preferable than being able to celebrate having a dagger already drawn when tackled into HTH.

[phiwum]

Originally Posted by Skarg

It seems to me a dagger staff is mainly nice for HTH and reduced size.

Henry's endless posts suggesting it aside, I don't think that's necessarily the best option.

After all, a silver dagger staff costs at least $100, and does less base damage than a big wood staff.

It also has some social disadvantages. A ready dagger looks like a ready weapon, while most places would let a wizard hold a staff without treating it as a ready weapon.

Even as a wizard who for some reason thinks engaging in physical combat is something to focus on and learn talents for rather than avoid, an actual weapon would seem to be generally better than a dagger. How about a spear? Being able to resist charges at +2 DX, first strike for 2d+2 with a fine silver spear seems preferable than being able to celebrate having a dagger already drawn when tackled into HTH.

I think I'm also leaning away from my initial opinion that dagger staves are horribly overpowered. Your argument here adds some good points to my considerations.

So, I reckon I just find them jarring to my preconceptions about wizards and their staves.

[Skarg]

I tweak what spells are available and how they work (and at different locations and to different groups) all the time in my GURPS games, and to a lesser extent, in my TFT games. And not just for balance reasons, but often largely because it gives things interesting flavor and local differences.

The wizards of X can only make staves out of wood or bone, which must be at least 4 feet long, and have these powers...

The wizards of Y can make a staff out of any wood or silver object, but they only have the powers of original TFT staff spells.

The wizards of Z ...

I don't see any reason why a TFT GM shouldn't completely review all of the new Staff abilities and rules and alter them to taste. In fact, I'd highly recommend it.