FP available to a DF Wizard

[ericthered]

I haven't run much Dungeon Fantasy, but the Tactical Looting article has me thinking about building a speed dungeon. The trick is, I'm trying to time the dungeon properly, and I'm not sure how much Energy a wizard will have access to.



I've got three things to look at:

• How much extra FP will the wizard have? How much do you normally see on your DF wizards?
• How fast will he regenerate FP? I know about Recover Energy, but I'm unsure if breath control is legal for DF wizards, and I swear there were some other tricks out there.
• How much mana is he likely to carry with him? I'm looking at power stones, mana stones, and paut: is there anything else I should keep my eye on? How much mana is he likely to have with him?

I'm looking at delvers that have acquired about 25 points past the baseline and $2000 in keep-able loots.



If anyone has more experience with these numbers than me, your advice would be most appreciated. Thanks!

[Polkageist]

Originally Posted by ericthered

I haven't run much Dungeon Fantasy, but the Tactical Looting article has me thinking about building a speed dungeon. The trick is, I'm trying to time the dungeon properly, and I'm not sure how much Energy a wizard will have access to.



I've got three things to look at:

• How much extra FP will the wizard have? How much do you normally see on your DF wizards?
• How fast will he regenerate FP? I know about Recover Energy, but I'm unsure if breath control is legal for DF wizards, and I swear there were some other tricks out there.
• How much mana is he likely to carry with him? I'm looking at power stones, mana stones, and paut: is there anything else I should keep my eye on? How much mana is he likely to have with him?

I'm looking at delvers that have acquired about 25 points past the baseline and $2000 in keep-able loots.



If anyone has more experience with these numbers than me, your advice would be most appreciated. Thanks!

I've been running a DF game so I can give you at least an anecdote of what my wizard character is running around with.

Extra FP comes in the form of Energy Reserve, and is a minimum of 3 with the option for more. My wizard char has 10FP base and 5 ER for a total of 15 FP available without outside help.

Energy recovery is a trick, but Recover Energy is the main path to getting magical energy back. Breath control is available but not really feasible, unless the wizard has lensed into Martial Artist. At the 25 over starting that's not likely unless they started out the character with this in mind. Quite possible with significant advancement, but it's a heck of a lot of points to invest into one trick at the start.

Supporting equipment can be a real wildcard since it's a function of the character's desire to invest, the GM's provision of loot, possibly dice rolls for random finds, rolls to find equipment in town, all that. DF is meant to be pretty friendly towards equipment, so assuming the character spends a meaningful amount on carried mana and starting equipment here's what you might see.
5FP power item is ~$500, very affordable at initial equipment purchase.
Paut is $135/4FP, and a wizard might have a potion belt (8 slots for paut sized vials, delver's webbing can carry even more!) and devote half of that to paut for 16FP in drinkable form. That's well within the $2k earnings budget, and allows for the wizard to have bought other things.
With all that, you're looking at 15FP intrinsicially, maybe 5-10 more in the wizard's power item depending on their preference, and another 8-12FP in paut. So probably 20-25FP ready to go with an immediate drinkable resource providing another 8. Paut and the power item are non-renewable within the dungeon, so if they blow their reserve in one fight the next one will have them relying on their internal source of 15.

Mana stones and power stones were considered too finicky for the style of gaming in DF so were subsumed into the 'power item' category which simplifies the whole thing into a single item that's rechargeable in town. However, if you want them the sky's the limit for how much money you can plunge into them.

[Kromm]

And if someone gets the idea of building a speed-run wizard, it's doable out of the box!

You'll probably end up with someone who has FP 11 and Energy Reserve 13, for a renewable energy supply of 24 points. They'll favor ER use, as ER regenerates even on the run and has no ill effects on Dodge or Move (as low FP does). They'll surely have Recover Energy-16, which refills both resources in parallel. Points from quirks are likely to go into $2,500 in money, for a total of $3,500, almost certainly spent in a way that gets as close as possible to a 13-15 FP power item, which is effectively one-off. Paut is neat but subject to vial breakage, but an optimist might ithink about carrying around lots of that instead . . . gearing up normally (meaning a power item in the 4-8 FP range) and tossing all the extra cash at paut means 18 doses and 72 FP in one-off energy.

You might see Recover Energy builds in the hands of clever players. They'd go in the direction of starting the game with IQ 15 and Magery 6. This would let a point from quirks buy Recover Energy-20. They would have only FP 11 and Energy Reserve 3, for 14 points of renewable energy . . . but they'd get it back really quickly (due to parallel recharge, in 22 minutes). The other four points would probably still buy gear, either a power item out in the 10-14 FP range or 56 FP in paut. But some gamers might invest three of them in +1 ER, because it'll bounce back quickly with Recover Energy-20, and others might save points for favorite spells at 20, as they'll cost 2 energy less to cast and maintain (making many excellent spells free).

It's just about impossible to frame it firmly, because these options overlap and offer considerably flexibility. I think what's most important is to know that "speed-run wizards" are a thing, and between huge one-off resources, ultra-fast recovery, and spells cherry-picked to be cheap or free, they won't suffer much from tactical looting. They probably won't be casting as many huge fight-enders, though.

You probably won't see many nonhumans, but 0-point halflings with their HT+1 (and hence extra FP) may tempt some, especially since they're smaller targets and harder for anti-wizard foes to snipe in the back ranks. It's sort of like +1 FP for free in the eyes of many.

[ericthered]

Thanks, I was thinking over what I knew of Gurps:Magic and not double checking the DF books. It really does make items to increase FP a lot simpler.



Buying ER does look pretty strong, especially given that it will regenerate at the same time as FP. Combining that with level 20 recover energy... that's impressive, especially given that each spell at 20 costs 2 FP less. Thanks for pointing that out: its not in DF1.



I'd forgotten that recover energy 20 gives the same benefit as a successful breath control roll. And not realized breath control is a hard skill against a base attribute of 11.



I was worried that consumables might be exceptionally good for a one-shot speed dungeon, and Paut does have me worried there. I might have to add a multiplier to cost since the character "Already used some of it to get here"


Thanks for giving me an idea of what the wizard will be bringing to the table!

[Polkageist]

The nice thing about consumables is that it's an easy faucet to adjust. PC already has a big stash? Sorry, we're out of sauce this week.
Need to give the PC a bit of a kick? 2-for-1 sale on paut! Or, lucky finds in the monster's den, juuuust enough juice to keep the train rolling.
Or, as Kromm pointed out, vials are prone to breaking (a factor I rarely bother with tbh) so if you need to shave off a bit it's not hard to set up situations where they might break.

What's the tactical looting article you're mentioning, can you link that?

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Polkageist

What's the tactical looting article you're mentioning, can you link that?

Its from the kickstarter pyramids.



Pyramid 4/1: Fantasy/Magic I, page 26