09-04-2020, 03:25 PM | #1 |
Join Date: Jul 2009
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Resisting spells with Active Defense "saving throws"
An idea I've been contemplating as a tweak to the baseline Magic system is, instead of a quick contest, to have such spells resisted with a 'saving throw'.
Stuff that's resisted with HT would instead give the victim an active defense of 3+HT/2 to resist. Stuff that's resisted with Will would give 3+Will/2 to resist. That kind of thing. Deceptive attack style '-2 to hit per -1 to resist' might or might not be available. I'm not sure. So! While I like this idea in principle, I'm curious what it would do in practice. Does anyone with a better head for system-math and probabilities have an idea of what the effects of this would be on a campaign, and how to balance it so it works? I could just try it in my games, but I'm worried it might actually be wildly broken in some way and don't want to risk sacrificing an ongoing game for it. |
09-04-2020, 03:31 PM | #2 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Helsinki, Finland
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Re: Resisting spells with Active Defense "saving throws"
It makes things a lot harder to resist, if that is something you want, sure.
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09-04-2020, 03:59 PM | #3 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Helsinki, Finland
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Re: Resisting spells with Active Defense "saving throws"
Oh wait, forgot about MoS. Let’s re-think.
Assuming a caster skill of 15 and an attribute of 12: The usual way, if the caster rolls a 10, you effectively get -5 to your roll to resist, so you need to roll 7 or less to resist. Your way, caster only needs to succeed on their roll to cast, and assuming a successful roll, you need to roll vs your Att/2 +3 or 9 or less to resist. Actually it now looks like it’s easier to resist. Of course I have not crunched all the numbers yet. If we’re going to do that, we can ignore all failures for the caster, and presumably on your proposed way a critical success on the casters part would mean no chance to resist, or no?
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[/delurk] AotA is of course IMHO, YMMV. vincit qui se vincit |
09-04-2020, 05:28 PM | #4 |
Join Date: Jul 2009
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Re: Resisting spells with Active Defense "saving throws"
If the caster fails, he fails, just like any other spell. On a critical success, sure, it makes sense to skip defense just like attacks do.
I'd figured the basic odds (since casters tend to have high spell skills) will be very roughly on par. I'm a little concerned about range no longer making spells easier to resist, but I'm not sure if it's a big deal. Basically, casters will usually have a penalty on their spell for range to the target, which makes resisting easier, but that wouldn't apply here. I'm also still waffling on a deceptive attack equivalent. My gut feeling is that it probably either shouldn't be an option at all, or it should be capped at some penalty to defense (=Magery?), because allowing it to be unlimited creates the same problems that the rule of 16 is meant to prevent in the standard system. |
09-04-2020, 05:59 PM | #5 | |
Join Date: Jun 2010
Location: Dreamland
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Re: Resisting spells with Active Defense "saving throws"
A friend of mine when making a roleplaying system entirely threw out Quick Contests and uses your idea for everything. I really like it.
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Unrelated, I totally through Deceptive Attack had a max penalty of -10 to give -5. But I don't know why I thought that. |
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09-05-2020, 01:07 AM | #6 |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Panama
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Re: Resisting spells with Active Defense "saving throws"
Are you allowing advantages to add to it, like magical resistance adding to the defense? or making some enhanced defenses (like enhanced dodge, parry, block) without needing magical resistance?
Is there a way to use a skill to improve defenses, like weapons skills and parry? |
09-05-2020, 01:36 AM | #7 | |
Join Date: Jun 2010
Location: Dreamland
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Re: Resisting spells with Active Defense "saving throws"
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09-05-2020, 06:42 AM | #8 | ||
Join Date: Apr 2005
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Re: Resisting spells with Active Defense "saving throws"
This is an interesting idea. It's highly suitable for certain fantasy genres where the target's ability to resist the spell is independent of caster skill or range. It certainly would make DF much more "D&D-like.
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OTOH, giving bonuses for various forms of AoA to rolls to avoid losing concentration might work. For example, the magical equivalent of AoA (Determined) might give you a +2 bonus to rolls to maintain your concentration while spellcasting. Quote:
Neutral * Target resistance is decoupled from caster skill and range penalties. This gives your average person a 50% chance to resist a typical spell regardless of caster skill. * It penalizes casters with high skill casting Melee spells or close-range Regular spells. * It benefits casters with relatively lower spell skill or who are casting Regular spells at a distance. Cons * Play might be slowed because you're decoupling the spellcasting roll and the resistance roll. * Treating Resistance Rolls like an Active Defense seriously penalizes most people, since their resistance is based on Attribute/2+3 (average: 8) rather than just the base attribute (average: 10). * Mechanically, it makes Magic Resistance a great deal as opposed to Enhanced Defenses. |
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09-05-2020, 12:37 PM | #9 |
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Gothenburg, Sweden
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Re: Resisting spells with Active Defense "saving throws"
You could base Will rolls on (Mental Strength or Mind Block)/2+3.
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09-05-2020, 01:35 PM | #10 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Wellington, NZ
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Re: Resisting spells with Active Defense "saving throws"
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I think this will make lower skilled casters a bit more powerful, as their spells won't become next to useless in opposed rolls, and will as others have said give casters more effective range with opposed spells. The question is how to determine margin of success for spells that use that to determine duration, etc.
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