Lesser Wish

Steve Jackson · 06-19-2018, 09:42 PM

Okay, where were we talking about this? The SEARCH function is not pulling up that thread - I knew I should have started a new one . . .

I had been thinking about what kind of use you might get out of a lesser demon, and somebody posted about a Lesser Wish spell (?) they had been using.

This might even tie in with a "karma" type mechanic, not called that, to both act as an XP sink and give characters a chance to survive weakly deathlike situations.

Melichor · 06-19-2018, 09:50 PM

I think it was here: http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread...=lesser&page=5

Steve Jackson · 06-19-2018, 10:01 PM

That was the one - thanks.

Skarg · 06-19-2018, 11:39 PM

Well, as far as I know so far, the best someone can do at getting a Greater Wish is to have IQ 24*, a +2 Charm, and roll a 6 or less to win the battle of wills, which is not likely to work, and so hopefully less likely to be attempted. One possibility might be that the way you get eventually able to win such a contest, is to maybe beat a series of Lesser Demons at will contests and getting them to each give you something that can give a bonus in later contests with a Greater Demon, up to the highest level you want that to be possible. Though personally, I'm pretty much fine with wishes being nearly impossible to get, and impossible to get reliably.

As for lesser wishes, weaker versions of the current Wish abilities might look like:

(1) Add 1 to an attribute, but it can't increase it above 14, it can't increase your attribute total over your natural maximum, and it does not increase your natural maximum.

(2) It can influence a roll made before you make it, but instead of dictating the result, you get to roll that result twice, and pick one of those rolls as the actual result.

(3) It can influence a result after a roll is made, but only by one point. So for example you can change an 18 broken weapon result into a 17 dropped weapon, or increase or decrease a damage roll by 1 point.

(4) A wish can bring one dead figure back to life, if that figure was killed within the last ten minutes of game time, but they will lose attributes equal to the amount of damage they took beyond that needed to kill them, or 6, whichever is more.

(5) An answer to any question the lesser demon knows the answer to, or a yes/no, or teasingly incomplete but not untrue answer to a question.

(6) Heal injury up to 1/2 of the ST (round up) of a living creature. E.g. Sven is ST 11 with 8 points of injury. A lesser wish could heal 6 of that.

(7) Can counteract a lesser wish that was just made.

Rick_Smith · 06-20-2018, 12:36 AM

Hi all,
In my article of the economics of wishes I showed that to have a reasonable chance of getting a wish and surviving you needed an IQ 33+, and a +2 charm. My campaigns have higher attribute totals than most, but I've never had a PC or an NPC get anywhere near that high. So where wishes come from is a mystery.

But if you do have an IQ 35 and a +2 charm, wishes become virtually risk free. You can turn out thousands of them. Neither of these situations are good. My article fixed this, making wishes easier to get for people around IQ 20, but even very high IQ (with charms) wizards are not totally safe.

The old TFT rules for getting wishes won't work with the very low attribute limit, so they will have to be rewritten. Steve can look at my article or write something himself, but certainly this should be improved.

Regular TFT did not give the price of wishes but one (much too low I feel) was suggested in the TFT Codex. Even if the players don't know the fair market value of wishes, the GM sure should.

I think wishes will be much more important in the new TFT, since people will be so desperate to improve their low attribute cap. But it is my opinion that fixing the economics of wishes is the most important thing about wishes, needed in the new TFT.

Warm regards, Rick.

Rick_Smith · 06-20-2018, 01:09 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Steve Jackson

... I had been thinking about what kind of use you might get out of a lesser demon, and somebody posted about a Lesser Wish spell (?) they had been using.

This might even tie in with a "karma" type mechanic, not called that, to both act as an XP sink and give characters a chance to survive weakly deathlike situations.

Hi Steve, everyone.
My friend Steve Perrot had a RPG with a Karma mechanic. (I don't know if he invented it, or if it was from another game.) In his system you started with one Karma point, and could earn more. They cost experience AND other criteria had to be met, a key one being, you couldn't get too many Karma points.

Karma points were traded in, if you were about to die because of something dumb. In TFT terms, the battle is going not too badly, you're wounded but the good guys are about to win, when the orc with the +3 magic crossbow rolls 1, 1, 1, and does 3d+3 damage, tripled. He rolls a bit over average for damage and it's 'game over man'.

Should something like this be added to TFT?

-- Now there is a good thing about this idea. Characters don't die as often. It sucks becoming attached to a good character and he dies for a stupid reason. (It's different dying when fighting the Big Bad at the end of the campaign.)

-- Now there is a bad thing about this idea. Characters don't die as often. The less real risk, the less heroic the game is.

Note that TFT has traditionally been on the dangerousness side of this question.

Now this is what I think Steve Jackson means when he mentions Karma. (I might be totally wrong.) Assuming that Karma can be used to save your bacon (at least if the situation is not too dire)...

Could lesser wishes from a Lesser Demon be used as Karma points? And should they?

Well wishes already CAN be used that way. A wish can be saved until some guy rolls a triple damage on Joe the archer. Or if Joe dies anyway, a wish can bring him back (at -5 attributes). So current wishes really are Karma points, except that they don't cost you experience points.

SHOULD wishes be so used? Over the years, I made my campaign less dangerous in various ways. (Mainly, you don't die at zero ST, my GM style gives players better warning if they are getting in over their head, and I no longer make sure that there is a deadly fight every session.) Note, that I didn't decide to make my world easier by making Lesser Wishes common. So I would vote against Lesser wishes being used this way. (I'm not keen on Karma points for new TFT to be clear.)

But, this is speculation, piled on guesswork. Steve Jackson might have a really good idea about using Lesser Wishes from Demons + an experience sacrifice to use a Karma mechanic (not called that).

The purpose of this post is for me to say what I think SJ meant by Karma, give my opinion, and finally to ask you guys what you think of adding Karma to TFT. So what do you guys & gals think?

Warm Regards, Rick.

Rick_Smith · 06-20-2018, 01:36 AM

Hi everyone,
When I'm writing rules for TFT, I like to pick the one(s) that will add drama. Let us think about what is dramatic about a wish.

1) Add to an attribute. Dull. You change a single number. Back when I foolishly let PC's find wish rings once in a while in dungeons, a fair number of players used them for this. Getting attributes is hard, and attributes made you more likely to survive again and again, roll after roll.

2) Control a die roll. Choosing when to do so it a tough decision and there is a real satisfaction to 'just this once not being at the mercy of the dice'. This is pretty dramatic I think.

3) Erase a die roll. Powerful but pretty much an automatic decision. Dramatic a little bit, I think.

4) Resurrect someone. This does what the Revival Spell or Revival Potion do (but they are cheaper). If wishes were the only way to bring someone back to life, this would be cool, but since it is the most expensive way to do something, that two other things also do, this is not that dramatic, I feel.

5) Ask a yes / no question. Either uses a wish or an IQ 16 Trance spell. Not very dramatic. I just wasted a wish rather than using a 10 fST spell. If the Trance spell were to be replaced with other scrying spells (which I think is a good idea), then this would be a more important power for wishes. (And therefore, more dramatic. As it is now, not so much.)

6) Heal a figure. Now that Steve has a fast, 3:1 healing spell, using it this way is actually dramatic in the 'I can't believe I had to waste a wish to do that!!!', (smash your head against stone floor), sort of way.

7) Cancel another wish. I've never seen this happen, but yes, such a use would be dramatic.

***

Now my Lesser Wishes are exactly like full wishes except they can't raise attributes. If they didn't resurrect people that would be more than fine with me. Those powers are the least dramatic powers of a wish so cut them out. Leave the cool stuff behind.

Now others might say 'wishes have 7 powers', lesser wishes should have the same 7 powers, but each one is 60% as good. That is logical, but I prefer my decision.

Or perhaps a lesser wish is a beast of another colour and has some weird power, totally unlike wishes. That is fine with me - just make sure that the new power makes drama pop in the game.

***

What do people think?

Warm regards, Rick.

Skarg · 06-20-2018, 02:08 AM

I wrote standard ideas for that "60%" as effective lesser wish above, but that's not necessarily what I'd do for a new TFT campaign.

I don't like wishing for attribute increases, especially when it means piles of EP and/or exceeding a 40-point cap, because it feels dull, gamey ("I wish to be a bit more dextrous than I currently am!"), and too clearly the "best" use of a Wish, which seems wrong. I don't want the "best" thing to do with a wish to be something dull and gamey and that undermines a core part of the game I like (i.e. that what your PC experiences in play determines their abiltiites).

I think resurrection seems a natural thing to wish for, and I like that it's a cost-ineffective thing to use it for.

I really don't like to have the Trance spell (or crystal balls) in my campaign unless the campaign is designed to have people using them a fair amount. I don't like having to think about who in the world might be gathering information with Trance or crystal balls on a regular basis. I don't like gameworld situations involving limited information being short-cut by people using Trance and/or crystal balls. So given that I will disallow those, and I think wishes should certainly be allowed to wish for a variety of inefficient things, I like having this be an option, especially when it's the only way to get such information. However I still want there to be some limits, as sometimes it seems to me to just remove something interesting from play to be able to force information from the world, OR it adds something annoying to play, such as a way to know something that shouldn't be knowable.

Healing with a greater wish seems fine to me.

Cancelling a wish seems cool/appropriate even if it rarely/never gets used.

Mainly though, I want wishes to be rare and not something anyone is regularly cranking out with some gamey-tasting Charm / wishes for attributes scheme. If wishes are a standard item, well, I want it to at least be clearly a GM option whether that's practical in their campaign or not.

I think that wishes are most interesting when they are creative wishes for something a character might wish for, rather than established gamey things you know you can wish for.

I think what I would tend to prefer would be if demons were more detailed, specific and interesting. Like, they each have different abilities, personalities, names, goals, situations, and you actually bargain with them and they can help you with things they know or can do or find out. I like the idea that they are magical beings usually doing their thing on some other plane, rather than being nameless generic vaguely Judeo-Christian-Islamic demons who are used to predictably mechanically extract mechanical wishes from, or who can absolutely be commanded to go die trying some action as if they were a summoned myrmidon.

Rick_Smith · 06-20-2018, 02:28 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Skarg

...I don't like wishing for attribute increases, especially when it means piles of EP and/or exceeding a 40-point cap, because it feels dull, gamey ...

I think what I would tend to prefer would be if demons were more detailed, specific and interesting. Like, they each have different abilities, personalities, names, goals, situations, and you actually bargain with them and they can help you with things they know or can do or find out. I like the idea that they are magical beings usually doing their thing on some other plane, rather than being nameless generic vaguely Judeo-Christian-Islamic demons who are used to predictably mechanically extract mechanical wishes from, or who can absolutely be commanded to go die trying some action as if they were a summoned myrmidon.

Hi Skarg,
I agree with every point you made in this post.

To do demons right, you would likely have to do a Demonology expansion. Give a monster manual with a bunch of different types, talk about their society, rankings, & hierarchies, decide how they relate to undeath, how they relate to Demonologists. Basically write some clever stuff.

But I suspect that all we will get is a greater and lesser demons in the basic new TFT, but would love to be surprised and see a few more demons to invoke.

Warm regards, Rick.

JLV · 06-20-2018, 03:02 AM

Dark City Games had a Karma system that sounds remarkably like the one being discussed above, though the Bard skill had something to do with how they were acquired.

I wouldn't mind seeing Demons more differentiated than they are currently, and Devils too, for that matter... And Lesser Wishes strikes me as a completely acceptable add on.

06-19-2018, 09:42 PM	#1
Steve Jackson President and EIC Join Date: Jul 2004	Lesser Wish Okay, where were we talking about this? The SEARCH function is not pulling up that thread - I knew I should have started a new one . . . I had been thinking about what kind of use you might get out of a lesser demon, and somebody posted about a Lesser Wish spell (?) they had been using. This might even tie in with a "karma" type mechanic, not called that, to both act as an XP sink and give characters a chance to survive weakly deathlike situations.

06-19-2018, 09:50 PM	#2
Melichor Join Date: Jul 2005	Re: Lesser Wish I think it was here: http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread...=lesser&page=5

06-19-2018, 10:01 PM	#3
Steve Jackson President and EIC Join Date: Jul 2004	Re: Lesser Wish That was the one - thanks.

06-19-2018, 11:39 PM	#4
Skarg Join Date: May 2015	Re: Lesser Wish Well, as far as I know so far, the best someone can do at getting a Greater Wish is to have IQ 24*, a +2 Charm, and roll a 6 or less to win the battle of wills, which is not likely to work, and so hopefully less likely to be attempted. One possibility might be that the way you get eventually able to win such a contest, is to maybe beat a series of Lesser Demons at will contests and getting them to each give you something that can give a bonus in later contests with a Greater Demon, up to the highest level you want that to be possible. Though personally, I'm pretty much fine with wishes being nearly impossible to get, and impossible to get reliably. As for lesser wishes, weaker versions of the current Wish abilities might look like: (1) Add 1 to an attribute, but it can't increase it above 14, it can't increase your attribute total over your natural maximum, and it does not increase your natural maximum. (2) It can influence a roll made before you make it, but instead of dictating the result, you get to roll that result twice, and pick one of those rolls as the actual result. (3) It can influence a result after a roll is made, but only by one point. So for example you can change an 18 broken weapon result into a 17 dropped weapon, or increase or decrease a damage roll by 1 point. (4) A wish can bring one dead figure back to life, if that figure was killed within the last ten minutes of game time, but they will lose attributes equal to the amount of damage they took beyond that needed to kill them, or 6, whichever is more. (5) An answer to any question the lesser demon knows the answer to, or a yes/no, or teasingly incomplete but not untrue answer to a question. (6) Heal injury up to 1/2 of the ST (round up) of a living creature. E.g. Sven is ST 11 with 8 points of injury. A lesser wish could heal 6 of that. (7) Can counteract a lesser wish that was just made.

06-20-2018, 12:36 AM	#5
Rick_Smith Join Date: Apr 2014 Location: Coquitlam B.C.	Economics of Wishes Hi all, In my article of the economics of wishes I showed that to have a reasonable chance of getting a wish and surviving you needed an IQ 33+, and a +2 charm. My campaigns have higher attribute totals than most, but I've never had a PC or an NPC get anywhere near that high. So where wishes come from is a mystery. But if you do have an IQ 35 and a +2 charm, wishes become virtually risk free. You can turn out thousands of them. Neither of these situations are good. My article fixed this, making wishes easier to get for people around IQ 20, but even very high IQ (with charms) wizards are not totally safe. The old TFT rules for getting wishes won't work with the very low attribute limit, so they will have to be rewritten. Steve can look at my article or write something himself, but certainly this should be improved. Regular TFT did not give the price of wishes but one (much too low I feel) was suggested in the TFT Codex. Even if the players don't know the fair market value of wishes, the GM sure should. I think wishes will be much more important in the new TFT, since people will be so desperate to improve their low attribute cap. But it is my opinion that fixing the economics of wishes is the most important thing about wishes, needed in the new TFT. Warm regards, Rick.

06-20-2018, 01:36 AM	#7
Rick_Smith Join Date: Apr 2014 Location: Coquitlam B.C.	What should a Lesser Wish do? Hi everyone, When I'm writing rules for TFT, I like to pick the one(s) that will add drama. Let us think about what is dramatic about a wish. 1) Add to an attribute. Dull. You change a single number. Back when I foolishly let PC's find wish rings once in a while in dungeons, a fair number of players used them for this. Getting attributes is hard, and attributes made you more likely to survive again and again, roll after roll. 2) Control a die roll. Choosing when to do so it a tough decision and there is a real satisfaction to 'just this once not being at the mercy of the dice'. This is pretty dramatic I think. 3) Erase a die roll. Powerful but pretty much an automatic decision. Dramatic a little bit, I think. 4) Resurrect someone. This does what the Revival Spell or Revival Potion do (but they are cheaper). If wishes were the only way to bring someone back to life, this would be cool, but since it is the most expensive way to do something, that two other things also do, this is not that dramatic, I feel. 5) Ask a yes / no question. Either uses a wish or an IQ 16 Trance spell. Not very dramatic. I just wasted a wish rather than using a 10 fST spell. If the Trance spell were to be replaced with other scrying spells (which I think is a good idea), then this would be a more important power for wishes. (And therefore, more dramatic. As it is now, not so much.) 6) Heal a figure. Now that Steve has a fast, 3:1 healing spell, using it this way is actually dramatic in the 'I can't believe I had to waste a wish to do that!!!', (smash your head against stone floor), sort of way. 7) Cancel another wish. I've never seen this happen, but yes, such a use would be dramatic. * Now my Lesser Wishes are exactly like full wishes except they can't raise attributes. If they didn't resurrect people that would be more than fine with me. Those powers are the least dramatic powers of a wish so cut them out. Leave the cool stuff behind. Now others might say 'wishes have 7 powers', lesser wishes should have the same 7 powers, but each one is 60% as good. That is logical, but I prefer my decision. Or perhaps a lesser wish is a beast of another colour and has some weird power, totally unlike wishes. That is fine with me - just make sure that the new power makes drama pop in the game. * What do people think? Warm regards, Rick.

06-20-2018, 02:08 AM	#8
Skarg Join Date: May 2015	Re: Lesser Wish I wrote standard ideas for that "60%" as effective lesser wish above, but that's not necessarily what I'd do for a new TFT campaign. I don't like wishing for attribute increases, especially when it means piles of EP and/or exceeding a 40-point cap, because it feels dull, gamey ("I wish to be a bit more dextrous than I currently am!"), and too clearly the "best" use of a Wish, which seems wrong. I don't want the "best" thing to do with a wish to be something dull and gamey and that undermines a core part of the game I like (i.e. that what your PC experiences in play determines their abiltiites). I think resurrection seems a natural thing to wish for, and I like that it's a cost-ineffective thing to use it for. I really don't like to have the Trance spell (or crystal balls) in my campaign unless the campaign is designed to have people using them a fair amount. I don't like having to think about who in the world might be gathering information with Trance or crystal balls on a regular basis. I don't like gameworld situations involving limited information being short-cut by people using Trance and/or crystal balls. So given that I will disallow those, and I think wishes should certainly be allowed to wish for a variety of inefficient things, I like having this be an option, especially when it's the only way to get such information. However I still want there to be some limits, as sometimes it seems to me to just remove something interesting from play to be able to force information from the world, OR it adds something annoying to play, such as a way to know something that shouldn't be knowable. Healing with a greater wish seems fine to me. Cancelling a wish seems cool/appropriate even if it rarely/never gets used. Mainly though, I want wishes to be rare and not something anyone is regularly cranking out with some gamey-tasting Charm / wishes for attributes scheme. If wishes are a standard item, well, I want it to at least be clearly a GM option whether that's practical in their campaign or not. I think that wishes are most interesting when they are creative wishes for something a character might wish for, rather than established gamey things you know you can wish for. I think what I would tend to prefer would be if demons were more detailed, specific and interesting. Like, they each have different abilities, personalities, names, goals, situations, and you actually bargain with them and they can help you with things they know or can do or find out. I like the idea that they are magical beings usually doing their thing on some other plane, rather than being nameless generic vaguely Judeo-Christian-Islamic demons who are used to predictably mechanically extract mechanical wishes from, or who can absolutely be commanded to go die trying some action as if they were a summoned myrmidon.

06-20-2018, 03:02 AM	#10
JLV Join Date: Nov 2010 Location: Arizona	Re: Lesser Wish Dark City Games had a Karma system that sounds remarkably like the one being discussed above, though the Bard skill had something to do with how they were acquired. I wouldn't mind seeing Demons more differentiated than they are currently, and Devils too, for that matter... And Lesser Wishes strikes me as a completely acceptable add on.