Low Mana Areas

[Steve Plambeck]

Much in the spirit of what Colin proposes, but from just a slightly different approach, I would handle it by doubling (or tripling, etc.) the amount of time it would require for the fatigue spent on spell casting to wear off.

From the practical standpoint, it means none of the spell costs ever change, and there's no fractions or rounding to ever deal with for spells with odd number costs or continuing costs.

From the in-world cosmology standpoint I favor this because I treat spell costs as paid for in Mana rather than ST, so if the ambient Mana needed to be accumulated to get the wizard "recharged" is thinner, it should take longer. (Resolving this with pure TFT rules simply means equating the ST spent with the energy required to draw on or suck up the Mana.)

Spell fatigue taking longer to recover may be considered analogous to physical fatigue taking longer to recover if the party was traveling through a mountainous, high altitude environment with a very thin atmosphere.

(All credit for this goes to Larry Niven and his novel "The Magic Goes Away".)

[Chris Rice]

Does a low Mana area make spell casting more difficult or more expensive?

You could simply double the Fatigue cost to cast the spell?

[Shostak]

IF one doubles the ST needed to cast spells in low-mana zones, what does one do for casting in high-mana areas? One would think that the cost would be halved, but then you are stuck with what to do with spells that cost only one ST. Do they cost nothing? From my experience, free casting and maintenance of spells is best avoided, and keeping track of ST fractions seems too picayune. The better solution, from my perspective, is to assign a penalty or bonus to casting for low- and high-mana zones, as others have suggested.

[hcobb]

High Mana Areas: Powerstones recover one point an hour and wizards can reduce spell costs by one with a 3/DX save (also applies to maintenance costs). However everytime a wizard rolls all 6s in casting or reducing spell costs they fizzle all of their existing spells and get a headache that adds an additional die to all spellcasting rolls until they get a day of quiet rest where they do no spellcasting.

[Steve Plambeck]

For high Mana areas I would do the opposite of what I would do for low Mana areas. If Mana was more accessible, I'd recover spell fatigue faster; 1 point for 10 minutes rest, or 1 point for 5 minutes in more extreme places.

Again spell costs remain the same, so no fractions or every-other-turn business to worry about.

[Shostak]

The problem with just assigning a time bonus or penalty is that they can wind up not really having much actual consequence. It is too easy for player to just say, "We rest for an [hour, half-hour, etc.] to get our ST back." The GM has to be prepared to have there be meaningful (and fun!) differences between waiting 10 minutes to recover, or 15, or 30.

[Axly Suregrip]

Originally Posted by Steve Plambeck

For high Mana areas I would do the opposite of what I would do for low Mana areas. If Mana was more accessible, I'd recover spell fatigue faster; 1 point for 10 minutes rest, or 1 point for 5 minutes in more extreme places.

Again spell costs remain the same, so no fractions or every-other-turn business to worry about.

This means fatigue is recovered faster? From spells or physical feats, it is fatigue. With this, a high mana area would allow folks to run marathons easier, etc.

[Axly Suregrip]

Didn't the Security Station microgame adventure have low and high magic areas? I think it did double and half ST costs, with fractions rounded up.

[Steve Plambeck]

Originally Posted by Axly Suregrip

This means fatigue is recovered faster? From spells or physical feats, it is fatigue. With this, a high mana area would allow folks to run marathons easier, etc.

Whoa! No!

In an earlier post, I said recovering spell-induced fatigue in a low Mana area could be handled like recovering physical exhaustion in low oxygen areas. That was a metaphor -- there was no equivalency meant by that or connection made between these very different things.

Be hilarious though to see everyone moving and fighting faster because the air quality was so nice :)

[Steve Plambeck]

Originally Posted by Shostak

The problem with just assigning a time bonus or penalty is that they can wind up not really having much actual consequence. It is too easy for player to just say, "We rest for an [hour, half-hour, etc.] to get our ST back." The GM has to be prepared to have there be meaningful (and fun!) differences between waiting 10 minutes to recover, or 15, or 30.

Well it depends on the situation. My way wouldn't cause any change in how an arena combat played out. In a campaign of closely timed scenarios it could or would make a huge difference.

"Areas" being plural, aren't we talking about travel, and then I would assume multiple encounters along the way as the party moves through the troublesome region?

But if time isn't an issue, and you just want wizards to find magic more difficult to do during a single battle, the desired effect could be obtained by just spotting everyone some exhaustion hits to begin with for an in-story reason. Or it could be a labyrinth that winds through a rich iron deposit, causing wizards a DX penalty for spells.