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Old 05-23-2019, 08:42 PM   #31
tbone
 
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Join Date: Aug 2004
Default Re: Removing the Rule of 16

Quote:
Originally Posted by maximara View Post
Actually, a roll of 17 is a critical failure if your effective skill is 15 or less; otherwise, it is an ordinary failure (in enchantment it is always a critical failure)
Correct. I should have just said "failure".

The point remains the same: If 17+ is a failure anyway, there's no point in a rule limiting skill to 16 if the purpose is to limit success/fail alone. But the intent of the Rule of 16, of course, is to limit margin of success, which is understandable.

In the end, I certainly get the intent of the rule (which the DFRPG text makes more clear). I guess there's just something that nags me about it, in that it seems there should be some cleaner, less kludgey way of getting the intended effect. . . .

But I haven't thought of an improvement. Until someone does, I'll happily assume that the writers of the rule know what they're doing!
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Old 05-26-2019, 07:55 AM   #32
Ottriman
 
Join Date: Apr 2015
Default Re: Removing the Rule of 16

Back when I used GURPS magic I never noticed that it was supposed to be skill vs attribute, so I always thought that all spells that were to be resisted were unopposed checks with a penalty.

So for example an adept mage with Magery 4 would have his spells be resisted with attribute-4.

But I quickly abandoned GURPS magic anyway because the way it scales at higher powerlevels is not nonsensical as demonstrated by the turbo-huge skills above and beyond any ordinary skill.

Another patch I have done for all skill based magic recently is to not have Magery be a thing. Instead magic has 3 attributes (Magic Power, Magic Skill and Magic Resilience).

Magic Power acting as the ST of magic that increases damage, ranges, area of effect and duration based on its MBL (Magic Basic Lift).

Magic Skill acting as the DX of magic, affecting your odds of pulling off a magic roll to activate a complex spell or hit people with magic blasts and stuff.

Magic Resilience being magic HT, could be used in substitute for any other attribute when resisting magic and also provides ER (Magic FP separate from normal FP).

Then I build some number of spells (30-120 or so, I also recycle between games) and give them complexities and power requirements. Thus how complex (skill modifiers) and powerful (ER costs and stuff) a spell is would be not the same. Thus a mage could be a skilled finesse one who does exotic stuff while another could brute force telekinesis a dude into the stratosphere.

Each spell is in a school which is a skill group you must all raise together and cannot raise above attribute+5 (Magic Skill +5 in this systems case). I also just always bundle skills together and use separate skill points (and no points for other things but a different way of organizing power of stuff like advantages).

Or at least that is what I have laid out recently, haven't actually made a game around this mechanic yet.

Hope this was of some help to you.
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Old 05-26-2019, 11:18 AM   #33
AlexanderHowl
 
Join Date: Feb 2016
Default Re: Removing the Rule of 16

I think that having magic being based off every attribute is not a bad idea. ST to determine power, DX to determine defense, IQ to determine accuracy, and HT to determine resistance. Let us examine that for a moment.

So, let us say that we have a mage with ST 10, DX 10, IQ 14, HT 12, Magery 3 and Fireball (H) Attribute+3 [4]. When casting Fireball, the mage would roll against a 17, which would determine the accuracy of the attack as well. If they hit, they would do damage equal to their success on a ST roll against 13 (multiplied by the energy spent when casting the spell). When defending against a Fireball, the mage would roll against a 13. When resisting a Fireball, the mage would roll against a 15, reducing the damage by their margin of success (multiplied by the energy spent during a defense).
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