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Old 03-19-2018, 10:32 AM   #1
Darakai
 
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Default Is this Working as Intended or did i messed things up?

One of my players is playing a Mage, he got himself IQ19 + Magery 4, thus learning [H] Spells at lvl 21 and [VH] at lvl 20 spending 1 point on each, since the campaign began with 300 points, he has a collection of over 100 spells, all with NH 20+, Besides that he has some energy reserve and fast fatigue recovery that is allowing him do recover quickly and stomp any challenge (not only monsters) that his group is facing, things like detect magic, detec traps, open locked doors, tunnel trough stone and rest for half an hour.

So i need advice, is this working as intended or did i missed something out? is there a rule to help me get him under control? Should i just take a stance and talk to him to "nerf" his Charachter sheet? i am not oposed to mages being versatile but 130 spells at NH 20+ is extreme, he can do it all. Even range penalties + low light aren't being such a hassle, low mana areas neither, the player is very smart and always finds optimal usage of resources and clever ways to use the vast asortment of spells he has to his advantage.

i thought about some solutions but none of them pleases me

1- Nerf his Charachter, just force him do go to IQ 18 + Magery 3 and that would make each spell cost a lot more to have at NH 20, thus lowering the versatility;

2- Change magic systems, either to RPM or Sorcery, i prefer the traditional casting system to those 2, so i am reluctant to do it.

3- Force him to develop his charachter background more trough purchase of different advantages and skills, so he will have less points to spend on spells and IQ.

And to put the cherry on the cake, i am having trouble with spells that are 1 shot 1 disabled enemy for 60 turns, things like charm, or panic, i got from somewhere on the forum the idea of taking the margin of victory and applying the effect for that ammount of turns (combat), and RAW (Outside of Combat), but i am open to suggestions from anyone.
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Old 03-19-2018, 10:36 AM   #2
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Default Re: Is this Working as Intended or did i messed things up?

Low Mana Zones will give him -5 to skill. Throw those in on occasion and he'll actually have to try!

And are you applying the Rule of 16 to all his save-or-suck spells?
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Old 03-19-2018, 10:47 AM   #3
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Default Re: Is this Working as Intended or did i messed things up?

OK so you have a magical swiss army knife, but even more so you have player who know what every single accessory does.

Yeah that's a powerful build made more powerful by a player using it to it's fullest.


My first thought is don't force anything, especially if you like the magic system.


But I would have no issue with making life difficult for this particular build (especially if they're stealing the spot light from the other PC's).


Off the top of my head magic resistance, mana damper and no mana areas are your friends.

I'm not great on the magic rules, but I suspect specialised magical threats (as in low number of spells but at a high level) might be a problem?

Thing is at 300cp the build is: IQ19 costs 180pts, Magery 4 is 45 pts, 100+ skills at 1pt each, Energy reserve, there really can't be much left for much else to cover them for anything that magic doesn't solve

Last edited by Tomsdad; 03-19-2018 at 11:14 AM.
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Old 03-19-2018, 10:50 AM   #4
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Default Re: Is this Working as Intended or did i messed things up?

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Originally Posted by Darakai View Post
One of my players is playing a Mage, he got himself IQ19 + Magery 4, thus learning [H] Spells at lvl 21 and [VH] at lvl 20 spending 1 point on each, since the campaign began with 300 points, he has a collection of over 100 spells, all with NH 20+, Besides that he has some energy reserve and fast fatigue recovery that is allowing him do recover quickly and stomp any challenge (not only monsters) that his group is facing, things like detect magic, detec traps, open locked doors, tunnel trough stone and rest for half an hour.

So i need advice, is this working as intended or did i missed something out?
Depends on what you mean by "working as intended". If you mean, do the rules allow this build? Then yes, they do. It sounds like the player has built a standard optimized mage. If you mean, "should the character dominate the others", then no, they shouldn't. Fortunately, there's a number of things you can do to reign in the mage character without radically altering them or the magic system.

First, you mention range penalties not being a hassle. But are you applying them correctly and consistently? Standard spells have a range penalty of -1 per yard to the target. That's actually quite huge. Someone even 10 yards away takes the character's skill 20 down to skill 10. The mage can, of course, invest in things like Telecast or Throw Spell to increase their range, but that's expensive and takes more time.

Second, remember that magic assumes, as a balancing factor, things like low- and no-mana areas, and traits like Magic Resistance. Make sure these things are factors. Don't put them everywhere, of course - you want to challenge the player, not completely nerf them - but there should definitely be enemies to fight in such areas, or who are unusually resistant to spells.

Third, make sure that such a potent ability to use magic has realistic social consequences. While being a magical prodigy should definitely have positive results (invitations to join prominent mage guilds or apprentice under notable archmages, high political figures like kings or emperors seeking them out for aid, various social climbers trying to get on their good side, etc.), there's also going to be negative things: ambitious mages challenging them to magical duels all the time to prove who's the best, fearful common folk who refuse to help them or sell them anything on the assumption that such power must involve a pact with dark forces, or powerful political figures who to make sure they don't make a deal with their rivals, or are offended they already have. And being this powerful means that people will be interested in them in general, and their standard tactics and tricks should be known.

And putting all this together, make sure your enemies are using good tactics against the mage. Their power and fame should mean that most who go up against them will have at least some idea of what they can do. So enemies should try to target them at range, arrange to fight battles in low- or no-mana areas or with magic resistance, and prepare counters to their standard spells.
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Old 03-19-2018, 10:51 AM   #5
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Default Re: Is this Working as Intended or did i messed things up?

You can also throw meteoric iron objects at him (locks, traps, weapons, paint) so that his magic cannot affect them (no lockmaster, detection spells, blocking spells, or the various "shape" spells work-around). Don't use this all the time, but throw it in so that he's surprised and might want to invest his points into not spells.

Give certain monsters Magic Resistance +5 to +10 or straight up immunity to magic. Or give them stats that make certain spell strategies not work on them. (I believe that a lot of mind magic only affects sapient creatures, so they don't work on IQ 5 or less beasties or plant monsters).

Challenge his magic with a Counterspell Mage. Stick one in every so often during encounters to just sit there and try to actively counter his magic so he has to rely on non-magic help.

Reduce his pool of available FP for spells that can't be recovered with Recovery Energy. You can do this by making the party travel, FP only recoups with rest, good sleep, food/water, not spells. Also, throw disease or poisons that sap FP which can only be restored once he is healed.


Magic, as a power modifier, assumes that he'll be hosed once in every 5 scenarios. So, assuming a small dungeon (10 or so rooms) stick in one of the above tricks in two of the rooms and make sure the groups travel there was FP draining.

To make sure the player doesn't feel picked on, let him shine when you arn't hosing him. Let his magic blast open the door, charm the guards, and find the deadly trap.
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Old 03-19-2018, 11:22 AM   #6
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Default Re: Is this Working as Intended or did i messed things up?

Thanks a lot, you guys gave me a lot of good advice, i was reading about mana levels now and i thought about a "roll" to check mana levels, something like 3d6
3- No mana
4 5 6 7 8 - Low Mana
9 10 11 12 - Normal Mana
13 14 15 16 17 - High Mana
and 18- Wild Mana

Of course, some of them fudged behind DM screen for Avoiding TPK and Creating Drama reasons.

I had the insight about he being one of the most prodigious young magician in the realm, and thought about people praising his abilities but never thought about rival and almost as powerful if not even more powerful than him challenging him to duels to make their fame.

Meteorite Iron, how rare is it? more than silver? or is it somewhat common? i know i can decide this, but i am looking for your fantasy wolrd views.

Thinking about Magic Resistance, it could be both inate and enchanted itens right? i think there is a spell that grants magic resistance, and there is also WARD, so what i thought, a couple of rings that absorb/negates the first 2 spells that come in contact with the wearer, or a cloak of magical resistance.

The biggest problem in my case was that i am GMing for 3 friends, one of them never played gurps, and his Charachter sheet is super Basic, a monster strenght barbarian with SM+1, the other friend has some experience but idk why the hell build a psi warrior super poorly, his 300 CP warrior can be bested by a 150 well built one, and the third one is the mage who has over 12 years of experience with gurps and RPG in general, he plays since he was 6 and is now 18, his dad played for 20+ years too so he has some experience under his belt.

This is my first time GMing, and until now people seem to be having a lot of fun, but this lack of balance is worrying me a lot.

Thanks a lot for the suggestions i will keep improving
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Old 03-19-2018, 11:59 AM   #7
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Default Re: Is this Working as Intended or did i messed things up?

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Originally Posted by Darakai View Post
Meteorite Iron, how rare is it? more than silver? or is it somewhat common? i know i can decide this, but i am looking for your fantasy wolrd views.
...
Thinking about Magic Resistance, it could be both innate and enchanted items right? i think there is a spell that grants magic resistance, and there is also WARD, so what i thought, a couple of rings that absorb/negates the first 2 spells that come in contact with the wearer, or a cloak of magical resistance.
...

This is my first time GMing, and until now people seem to be having a lot of fun, but this lack of balance is worrying me a lot.

Thanks a lot for the suggestions i will keep improving
I play a lot of DF, so it's fairly common in my worlds. Probably about as common as silver. It's there to hose mages if I need it to (but since a lot of my players don't care to be omni-capable wizards it's not a big problem in my games).

I like to have my magic resistance to be innate personally. Hobgoblins in my game world are magic resistant.

Well you've hit the first thing you need to know as a GM: make sure everyone is having fun. Everything else is just gravy.
I would suggest taking a look at your problem mages' spell sheet and tell him to remove any spell you don't feel comfortable with, or know how to counter. (obviously, give him those points back). Remember, you're the GM this is your game world and sometimes there will be rules in the books that you don't want to deal with.
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Old 03-19-2018, 12:36 PM   #8
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Default Re: Is this Working as Intended or did i messed things up?

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Originally Posted by Darakai View Post
i was reading about mana levels now and i thought about a "roll" to check mana levels, something like 3d6
3- No mana
4 5 6 7 8 - Low Mana
9 10 11 12 - Normal Mana
13 14 15 16 17 - High Mana
and 18- Wild Mana
You could do something like that, but personally, I wouldn't, unless you were doing a campaign where all the dungeon features were randomly generated. If you're not doing something like that, then I think a no- or low-mana area is just like a trap, monster, or other feature of a location: you should put it in where it makes sense for the adventure you want. Even if you're randomly generating this sort of thing, make sure you're doing it before the session, because if it's a permanent feature of the area, the locals should definitely be taking advantage of it - orcs will try to lure people into a no-mana area where their mundane-but-well-made weapons and armor will have an advantage over the magically-enhanced arms and armor and spells of the adventurers, for example.

And I'd be very careful about making large areas deficient in mana, particularly no-mana areas. These tend to completely shut down the wizard's fun, and if they're very large, it means an adventure where the mage will just feel useless all the time. It's better to use mana-deficient areas tactically, rather than strategically, if that makes sense: have a battle where there's a 2-hex wide area of no-mana where the orc archers can stand and shoot at the mage from, surrounded with a larger area of low-mana where the orc warriors try to stay to regroup and avoid big spells, but can be moved from, for instance. In that setup, the players have to think tactically, having the non-magic characters work to force the foes out into areas that the wizard can deal with, and the wizard has to think about how things like area effect spells and line of sight will work for them. Whereas, if the whole dungeon is just all low-mana everywhere, there's no tactics people can use, it's just "Sue the Wizard is going to suck this adventure."

Quote:
Originally Posted by Darakai
Meteorite Iron, how rare is it? more than silver? or is it somewhat common?
Personally, I'd definitely make it much more rare than silver. Having it so common that you can make jewellery or decorative items out it trivialises it, in my opinion. On the other hand, it should probably be common enough to actually be traded and have some kind of price, not so rare that any bit of it is basically priceless and starts wars when it turns up.

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Originally Posted by Darakai
Thinking about Magic Resistance, it could be both inate and enchanted itens right? i think there is a spell that grants magic resistance,
There's Amulet, which gives magic resistance against a specific spell, the Magic Resistance spell, which straight-up grants universal Magic Resistance, and the Magic Resistance alchemical preparation, which grants the drinker Magic Resistance as well.

And creatures can absolutely have innate Magic Resistance. In the Dungeon Fantasy books, for example, ogres naturally have a couple levels, and can buy more as a racial power-up. Lots of creatures, really, could justify at least a few levels. That can be justified either by being naturally anti-magical, but also by saying they're basically so magic that they can shake off hostile magic easily. Dragons are a good candidate for the latter, in my opinion.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Darakai
The biggest problem in my case was that i am GMing for 3 friends,
[...]
This is my first time GMing, and until now people seem to be having a lot of fun, but this lack of balance is worrying me a lot.
One thing to consider is that this may be less a rules issue and more an issue with the social dynamic of your group. Have you considered talking to the players, especially the one with the most GURPS experience, and just pointing out that you see something of an imbalance, which you're worried is making things not fun? You may find that the other players don't actually resent the wizard being so powerful - some players actually enjoy being "supporting cast" and helping their friend be cool! If they do see it as an issue, though, also consider that the person playing the wizard might not realize the degree to which they're dominating things - sometimes, when you have a lot of experience with a game system, particularly one like GURPS where there's a lot of optimization potential, you get stuck in an assumption that you must optimize, and don't realize how big of a difference in effectiveness that can produce between you and the people who don't know all the tricks. Maybe just say to the wizard player "Hey, you're kind of overshadowing the others a bit. Would you mind dialling it back a bit and just not focusing on winning every encounter with magic, giving them a few more chances to shine?"

Another option is, if the wizard's player is just sort of a "natural optimizer", is to see if they'd be willing to help out the other players in making their characters just as powerful as the mage is. I know quite a few players who are perfectly happy to help others build their characters up to the same level: optimizing isn't necessarily a game being played against others, to be the most powerful in the group - it's often a challenge against the game system itself, trying to find the most efficient, workable way of being powerful, and helping others do so is just more of the same fun, basically.
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Old 03-19-2018, 12:38 PM   #9
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Default Re: Is this Working as Intended or did i messed things up?

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Thinking about Magic Resistance, it could be both inate and enchanted itens right? i think there is a spell that grants magic resistance, and there is also WARD, so what i thought, a couple of rings that absorb/negates the first 2 spells that come in contact with the wearer, or a cloak of magical resistance.
There are also magic resistance potions.
Random dungeins wont adjust but key enemy bosses will adjust to a famous potential threat. And hes not the only mage so there will be others to protect from.
Ascharecters grow I sometimes try to slow down advancement of the more powerful members by having them broaden thier abilities. That's a positive way of spreading the spotlight around.
If the player is a good one he will realize the others need to have fun too and may welcome ways to balance things better as long as he doesnt feel attacked.

Other options depend on your setting.
Dungeon crawl only or political intrigue?
Not only can rivals and better prepared enemies be a problem, local laws may be enacted, say against Mind Control or Necromancy type spells. That limits things in town.
I also use taxes and levies. A powerful warrior or mage can sometimes be ordered to do a quest or help out with things for the betterment of the kingdom. Failure makes him rather unpopular
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Old 03-19-2018, 01:16 PM   #10
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Default Re: Is this Working as Intended or did i messed things up?

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One thing to consider is that this may be less a rules issue and more an issue with the social dynamic of your group. Have you considered talking to the players, especially the one with the most GURPS experience, and just pointing out that you see something of an imbalance, which you're worried is making things not fun? You may find that the other players don't actually resent the wizard being so powerful - some players actually enjoy being "supporting cast" and helping their friend be cool! If they do see it as an issue, though, also consider that the person playing the wizard might not realize the degree to which they're dominating things - sometimes, when you have a lot of experience with a game system, particularly one like GURPS where there's a lot of optimization potential, you get stuck in an assumption that you must optimize, and don't realize how big of a difference in effectiveness that can produce between you and the people who don't know all the tricks. Maybe just say to the wizard player "Hey, you're kind of overshadowing the others a bit. Would you mind dialling it back a bit and just not focusing on winning every encounter with magic, giving them a few more chances to shine?"

Another option is, if the wizard's player is just sort of a "natural optimizer", is to see if they'd be willing to help out the other players in making their characters just as powerful as the mage is. I know quite a few players who are perfectly happy to help others build their characters up to the same level: optimizing isn't necessarily a game being played against others, to be the most powerful in the group - it's often a challenge against the game system itself, trying to find the most efficient, workable way of being powerful, and helping others do so is just more of the same fun, basically.
\
That is the case, for the most part, the other 2 players are not resenting the wizard, but after every session we do a debate, and i have each player give me at leat 1 point of negative feedback, i love positive feedback, but i think we grow more with constructive criticism than with compliments.

I thought a lot about it before coming to the forums, and i talked to the player even before the adventure began, he was suposed to be a showcase to the magic system, and that he is... but it is getting out of hand, he is that kind of guy that is very smart but has little social touch, he sometimes does stuff without noticing, he overshadowed the other 2 only trying to help, almost all of his spells are suport/utility, in 3 sessions he has cast 1 explosive fireball (wich would be another topic in itself, i hate how little damage this thing does on targets 3 hexes away).

I was looking for an alternative where i could give this friend of mine full control to try to be as OP as possible, that may sound weird, but i want him to try to game the system and be heroic and do cool stuff without having to worry about it. That is why i am looking for a mechanical way to nerf mages, right now i am looking againt trough Thaumatology and found some possible ways, there are some optional rules for NH for spells like 10+Magery lvl, so he would learn everything from a lower NH and would have lesser spells, he would also game and have low IQ and high magery, but i think this may be the right direction. Maybe some kind of geometric progression for magery lvls instead of aritmetic, magery costing 0 5 15 30 50 80, these values are an example. This way low magery lvls are more common and higher lvls are rarer without an GM intervention needed.

And i get the "use Low mana level locations tactically and not strategically", but it sparked a new question, you used as an example putting 2 archers in a "no mana zone", to protect them from magic, but if a missile is prepared in a magic zone and thrown into a no magic zone, does it disappear? i know regular spells would not produce any effects, but a missile one would fail too?

What u guys think about these modifications present on thaumatology book.

1- NH to learn/cast spells = (IQ + Magery+10)/2
2- NH to Learn/Cast = Lowest of the 2, IQ or Magery+10
3- Nh to Learn/Cast = (IQ+per+will)/3

But i am fearfull that these changes will f*** up a game where they begin with only 100 points, and since i am looking for balance for magic in general, maybe some solutions to mages at 300 point level would make them impractical at lower point levels.

I understand that magic users and swordfighters will never be "balanced" in a MOBA or MMORPG way, ans if they were it would be bland and lose it's fun, like happens in a system like openlegends, if a eletrical bolt, a fireball, an arrow and a thrown spear all do 2d of damage, what is the difference between them? that is what made me love GURPS it's complexity, aaannd i am out of the subject.

TL; DR.

I am looking for a way to balance the Base value from wich a mage learn spells to avoid having someone spend 1 point in each spell and have them at a uber High NH.
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