07-10-2018, 05:55 PM | #101 | |
On Notice
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Sumter, SC
|
Re: The Problem With Magic
Quote:
|
|
07-10-2018, 06:11 PM | #102 |
Join Date: Jan 2017
|
Re: The Problem With Magic
If you have a firm attribute cap but are open with skills and start off at a fairly high point, you can amass tons of different skills and 112+ pts worth of skills easily.
|
07-10-2018, 06:56 PM | #103 |
Join Date: Feb 2016
|
Re: The Problem With Magic
But why bother with an Attribute cap if your characters are going to have excessively high Skills anyway? You end up trading one form of 'cinematic' for another form of 'cinematic'. Now, I completely approve of Attribute caps for beginning characters, I generally cap DX, IQ, and HT at 14 for beginning characters to avoid the 'characters who would have no reason to be in the party' problem but I think that it creates weird discrepancies to cap attributes after character creation.
Instead of an attribute cap, I think that it is better to give mechanical bonus to invest points in skills. In the case of spells, I would suggest reducing spell penalties by one and increasing effective skill level for determining ritual effects by one for every four points invested in a spell. Therefore, a character with IQ 12 and Magery 0 that purchased Continual Light (H) IQ+9 [40]-21 would reduce spell penalties by ten and would have an effective skill of 31 for determining ritual effects (time to cast would be 1/8, rounded up, and cost to cast would be -4 FP). Practitioners would have a vested interest in investing more points in spells rather than just purchasing high IQ and high Magery. |
07-10-2018, 06:57 PM | #104 | |
On Notice
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Sumter, SC
|
Re: The Problem With Magic
Quote:
Six skills are Megadungeon specializations. Why? Five are sub specializations of Connoisseur. Again, why? If these are needed then wildcard version would cut down the skill count: Megadungeon knowledge! (11): eliminates 5 additional skills Connoisseur! (11): eliminates 4 additional skills The 58 skills (I think I counted right) now becomes 49. I should point out the number of skills is not as important as the points that go into the skills. "Each point is the equivalent of 200 hours of learning." (Basic Set pg 292) Take a good look at the iconic characters in the Basic Set. They range from 47 points to 127 and several of them are well over 30 total skills. Professor William Headley has 28 mundane skills and 9 magic skills (three paths, 6 spells) using 48 points. He is 43. Sora has 33 skills and 12 techniques using 86 points. She is 23. She has enough time at the age of 23 to have put 17,200 hours or nearly 2 years into her skills! I have to ask how old is the Sage supposed to have been? Xing La at first glance has a moderate 23 skills but one of them (Drive!) is a wildcard skill which equates to every specialization of the skill in the game (there are 9 listed under Driving). Last edited by maximara; 07-10-2018 at 07:05 PM. |
|
07-10-2018, 07:15 PM | #105 | |
Join Date: Sep 2006
Location: Luxembourg
|
Re: The Problem With Magic
Quote:
But it doesn't mean that 1 point in skill require or imply 200h of training. Especially in a DF setting. In 3e, yes, there was an age based limit for cp in skills. Not in 4e. A cp in skill may represent learning but also natural talent, intuitive understanding, innate ability, ... |
|
07-10-2018, 08:14 PM | #106 | |||||
Join Date: Jun 2010
Location: Dreamland
|
Re: The Problem With Magic
(There's a lot to respond to, and it's not easy to break up quotes, so I'm going to respond differently than normal)
146 IQ skills? Now I feel less bad about breaking Per and Will from IQ. Good to know. 837 spells? That's nearly triple the entire spectrum of skills in base GURPS. Further, every single skill added is both IQ and boosted by Magery. A ten point talent that affects every non-magic skill seems far too good, why does magic get to do triple that? 1 in 7 spells can be spammed is far more than I thought, ten always useful spells being free seemed great already. That going up to 1 in 3 is crazy good. And the skill 20 break off further points out how magic gets much better as you go up in it (spells are cheaper AND you negate more of the "spells on" penalty). Bow being better than any missile spell kind of makes my point of how bad the missile spells are. The knowledge college makes sense for IQ since both are "I know things" traits. Fireball might be based on IQ for flavor reasons, but Gun is DX based and I'm not certain what the difference is (although I guess there's the point that Fireball also requires another DX skill... which again shows how bad the missile spells generally are). Quote:
Even Kromm has pointed out that prerequisites aren't the balancing tool behind spells, time and cost are (I wish I could find the link, but I swear I've also seen this by many members and in a few books) I've yet to GM or play in a campaign with default Magic where the wizard wasn't basically better in almost everyway to any other character... in almost any system. The progression really seems to be (from worst to best) Warrior -> Rogue -> Wizard -> Face. Maybe I'm doing things wrong, but it really seems that Rogue and beyond can just avoid combat and get to where they want with their respective skills (just as Wizard does for Rogue and Face often gets better results than Wizards if with less spectacular effects). The only time this seems to be false is when both GM and Player force the moment to be combat without a way to avoid it (which has always felt artificial). "Experience" with a vague or subjective system rarely means I get better at it (I sometimes find myself getting worse). If someone could clear up how to get better in this regard, I would love that! Power-As-Magic doesn't have to have anti-magic built in. I can just have many of the features of magic without the -10% Mana Sensitive. Magic 14 has bit about making new spells. I've been using Timeslip as an example because it's blatantly an abuse of perfectly legitimate effects; I have someone attack them so it's actually used as a Blocking spell (I didn't see any rules about resisting Blocking Spells) and for some reason it has a clause about being "stuck" in time if your hex is blocked. It looks like it might be even more abusable than 3e's was (I do admit I haven't seen 3e's Magic in a while). "go in those rooms (and fight those enemies) or go home empty handed" - You don't have to fight the enemies if the treasure is in easy to grab locations if you have any ability to avoid obstacles like the ability to turn insubstantial or warp after using a spell to see into the room and point out all the enemies and traps. It's not obvious if any college should just be taken out wholly, especially if they make sense thematically before knowing what the effects of the spells are (and thus it's not obvious if any are too good or not good at all). An invested fighter with 18 ST, 16 DX, and 16 HT is already 260pts alone and less capable than an invested wizard of 100pts less (with the large advantage of being hard to outright kill) That apprentice wizard still has the starting point of IQM 18, so every point you get is an entire extra spell and another tool in your arsenal. Quote:
As for that skill list, that seems pretty paltry (I see a lot of 11s which is exactly below reliable and still more further below). I'm not certain what this character is doing, honestly. Quote:
Basing things on a D&D style generic fantasy isn't a problem... but that system itself shows off how broken wizards are (I even remember someone back in the day explaining to me how a 12th level wizard can be simultaneously better than every other class combined with the right build). That's the problem, when the wizard just gets to be better because "Only wizards get access to 95% of the cool stuff" that system brings. As for enchantments being rare/non-existent, I thought that was the base assumption (such that even things like magical "torches", a +1 sword, and a staff of fireball would be incredible treasures, not something you just go to a store down the street to buy). That's why I assumed non-wziards had not much access to magic. Quote:
Quote:
The Poison Blood spell is cool, but I'm not sure why any of those things were picked (except the damage lines up with other damage spells). Why is it a "fire and forget" spell instead of maintained one? Why those prerequisites? As for the 'toxic synergy", how do I know what spells shouldn't exist? I might not even know it's broken if no one thinks it's worth taking or never uses it to it's maximum capability. The "reverse drain" spell might be better as a Meta/Healing spell that lets you take the effects of a healing spell onto yourself instead of spending FP to fix (such as Empathic from Powers for healing). How much would it cost? Would it require a roll? On that note, why is Recover Energy a skill? It might be the only "passive" spell and skill in GURPS, when passive effects seem to be normally advantages. (I hope I addressed the points properly) |
|||||
07-10-2018, 08:57 PM | #107 | |
Join Date: Dec 2007
|
Re: The Problem With Magic
Quote:
|
|
07-10-2018, 09:06 PM | #108 |
Join Date: Feb 2016
|
Re: The Problem With Magic
Well, there are a few ways that fighters can counter wizards. With 20 CP, fighters can have Magic Resistance 10 [20], which makes them almost impossible to target with magical spells, except for missile spells (which they can defend against normally), meaning that wizards will have a really bad day against them. If the campaign allows powers, fighters can also develop their own powers, which will probably be chi-based or something similar, meaning that fighters are immune to the powers of the mages, but mages are likely not immune to the fighter's powers.
In that scenario, you could have two 250 point characters, one a female fighter and the other a male mage (for example). The female fighter possesses ST 12, DX 14, IQ 12, and HT 14 (for 180 points) while the male mage possesses ST 10, DX 12, IQ 16, and HT 12 (for 180 points). The female fighter possesses Ambidexterity, Combat Reflexes, High Pain Threshold, and Magical Resistance 10 (for 50 points) while the male mage possesses Ally (Familiar; 50%; 15-; Special Abilities, +50%; Summonable, +100%) and Magery 3 (for 50 points). Each character will have 50 points of disadvantages and quirks and 70 points of skills and techniques. The female fighter will probably make mincemeat of the male mage in direct combat (though a mage mage may be capable of turning invisible and be an annoyance that way). Even if the male mage possesses Flame Jet (H) IQ+9 [28]-25 and Innate Attack (Beam) (E) DX+4 [12]-16, he will likely be a less capable fighter than the female mage with Shortsword (A) DX+6 [24]-20, Shield (E) DX+4 [12]-18, and Knife (E) DX+2 [4]-16. |
07-10-2018, 09:14 PM | #109 | |
Join Date: Jun 2010
Location: Dreamland
|
Re: The Problem With Magic
Quote:
Which is why I avoid direct combat when playing a wizard. One GM I played under for a few years made it very obvious when and how to avoid situations where my character is useless (this applies to any character type). If I was suddenly thrown in that situation, I know I'd have a handful of spells to get out of there on my turn. That's not even unusual, this hypothetical wizard has IQ16 and would be smart, both planning ahead and knowing plans aren't enough. |
|
07-10-2018, 09:42 PM | #110 | |||||
Join Date: Dec 2007
|
Re: The Problem With Magic
Quote:
Quote:
It has those characteristics because those are the characteristics I wanted it to have at that moment. Now that I look at it again I realize I also want a higher chance of more than one turn of damage so I'd put a negative modifier based on margin of success, decreasing by one with each cycle. Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
The reasoning behind Poison Blood: It's a modified Poison Food. It requires a Body Control prereq to be able to affect a living body and Drunkenness is a Body Control spell that simulates a toxin in the body. This is a just a different toxin. |
|||||
Tags |
lend vitality |
|
|