Inobvious Magic
 

TFT is all about obvious magic: spells that anyone can see are happening. Anyone in a magic-using area of Cidri who think magicians are charlatans is clearly deluded.

The other kind of magic in RPGs is inobvious magic. Magic that some characters will believe is good to have on your side, and others will doubt exists at all. Magicians whose skills can't be established in a brief job interview.

Inobvious magic might prevent catastrophes, cause accidents to inconvenience enemies, provide bonus to friends and penalties to enemies, force or allow rerolls, etc.. It works without unambiguous signs.

I'm thinking it might be interesting to have this kind of magic in some TFT campaigns. Has anybody tried implementing an inobvious magic system in TFT, and if so how did it work?

Re: Inobvious Magic
 

David, I never have personaly; however, your Overt vs Discreet Magic observation is brilliant.

On first-blush, it sounds to me as though the so-called: inobvious magic, has the potential to add a whole new dynamic to the story-side of the TFT experience, as well as the combat-side; and may possibly provide for some very creatively colorful moments during play.

I will be very interested to see how this thread develops.

JK

Re: Inobvious Magic
 

Hi David,
I ran a campaign where magic was highly illegal so wizards would strive to get +4 IQ so they could cast spells without speaking or moving. A few spells, could be cast without it being obvious. (Spying spells, making an image bird for scouting, casting a healing spell in the wilderness, etc.)

Of course, the evil government didn't have to hide THEIR magic use.

Nearest things to such I campaign that I've GM'ed.

It was fun, mostly for the variety. The campaign felt quite different from most of mine.

Warm regards, Rick.

Re: Inobvious Magic
 

Brilliant observation, David!

And, that actually sounds like a superb paradigm for a "priestly magic" system -- exactly the kind of thing a deity might provide to his/her followers. If that were the case, we could have our cake (flashy, obvious magic) and eat it too ("lucky events," inobvious magic)!

Re: Inobvious Magic
 

Sure. The AW rules say what gestures or words are necessary. Someone who can cast Fire without any outward signs, and who doesn't get noticed or suspected for being where all the fires keep starting, can cause absolute mayhem, destroy cities, etc.

Well, unless the local authorities and/or Wizard's Guild have a crystal ball or other way to scry... but those have far more annoying implications to me, so I tend to not have crystal balls or even the Trance spell available.

Often a wizard who does things smartly can be much more powerful and dangerous than a wizard with powerful overt spells doing things overtly.

The Trance spell (if allowed by the GM) is another example - it can be cast discretely by just doing it in private, since the subject doesn't have to be nearby. It may seem reasonable but taints many kinds of situations by allowing powerful yes/no information gathering, and not having much counter or chance of bad information. And, it's a nightmare to think about if there are many people with access to Trance casting available in the world, scheming... ugh, makes my head explode.

Re: Inobvious Magic
 

I think there's more to this idea than magicians being overt. I'm talking about magic where the magician can't easily prove he's doing anything, even if the magician wants to prove they are useful.

I think it would make a good kind of magic for a shaman, or maybe a priest.

I wonder if it's worth making a system that works like this, and how it would work. Any thoughts?

Re: Inobvious Magic
 

David, you thoughts about potential rules for an *inobvious* magic system, seems to be dove-tailing nicely with a thought JLV shared with us on another thread:Perhaps the two of you should try working together on this one?

You're both bright guys, easy and fun to work with, and seem to be sharing the same wave-length on this very interesting topic. Who knows, you two might make a good team for this concept.

I, for one, would be quite interested to read what you two might cook up together as a rough-draft on this unexplored area of TFT.

JK

Re: Inobvious Magic
 

I've tried to leave this discussion of priests and such to those interested in having it in their game, but isn't a system of "inobvious" magic basically just religion?

That is, activities where the believer can't, even if he wants to, show that his prayers or supplications etc. actually work?

Isn't this what TFT already has, i.e. priest talent etc., where only the GM knows if it really works, and it can never be proven?

Maybe I missed the point, but I don't really understand what inobvious magic might be, I guess...

Re: Inobvious Magic
 

Right off the top of my head, I suppose it alternatively could also be:

• Psionically Talented Individuals who can manifest their powers free of visual or aural detection
• Individuals who can telepathically call upon invisible *sorcerer-gremlins* to do there secret wishes or mischief - consciously or unconsciously - as 2nd party agents
• Karma is real, and manifests it's effects for some individuals much more than others, and without them having to call and wait upon it for "Instant Equalization".
• Individuals are in possession of ancient Mnoren relic-devices which allow them to transmute matter via mental thoughts, which, acting as an amplifier, the secret device detects their thoughts as telemetry broadcast directly from their minds. The manifest *effects* are powered invisibly from a source of abandoned, though operational power-stations, hidden deep within underground Labyrinths, scattered throughout and beneath the surface of Cidri. The caretakers are long-gone, but the generator-machines continue to operate, unabated; for those who have the remote devices and have figured out how to use them... and for as long as the machines continue to hold-up without malfunctioning or breaking down. - Sounds like an adventure plot seed.

So, to me, I don't see why a system of *inobvious* magic must conceptually have a dogmatic ritual, creation story, or identifiable deity associated with it, or based on any form of faith or superstition whatsoever; it could be pure super-science, reason and fact - maybe; who knows... could be a great many ways to go with this, limited only by creative imagination; but I'll stop the list short here and give others a chance to add to the list.

JK

Re: Inobvious Magic
 

I guess my misunderstanding is the "unobvious" part. If something can be done repeatedly, learned, trained, etc., then it is science, or in TFT, "obvious" magic.

If someone can't ever show cause and effect and predictability, then it is religious.

I'm not sure, then, why unobvious magic wouldn't basically be religious, since it can't be predicted, can't be repeated, etc.

But it's not important. I just hope religious concepts beyond "only the GM knows if it works" don't enter TFT.

Re: Inobvious Magic
 

The examples given for 'inobvious magic' amount to probability tweaks. If it actually works, there would be statistically significant effects that a proper testing environment would reveal, but that doesn't mean they're particularly visible to the casual observer.

Re: Inobvious Magic
 

Ah, so you are saying something like a curse? From a simple thing like a sword that makes you clumsier, slightly, say DX -1 when used, to having the eyes behind spell, which again might not be immediately obvious?

Aren't there a lot of magical effects that might be "inobvious" already in the system? Even, perhaps, something like sex appeal, which might be difficult to pin down straightaway?

Re: Inobvious Magic
 

Also it's not obvious the forces providing the tweaks would wish to participate in a trial of statistically significant size, which might be hard to make double blind as well.

But I'm thinking the effect could count for enough that people get the feeling someone is useful to have around, even if they can't be sure.

Re: Inobvious Magic
 

Which is actually a very cool approach to this whole concept.

In fact, if you think about it, it's kind of like those characters that get designed with unusual character flaws (in GURPS terms, advantages/disadvantages) -- you may not know anything about them until something weird happens in the game, and even then, you may be left asking; "What was THAT all about?"

Re: Inobvious Magic
 

David, your idea reminds me of The Subtle Art from the Fate System Toolkit. Maybe there are some nuggets in there you can mine...

Re: Inobvious Magic
 

It reminds me of the magical historians of Norrel and Strange, or the decayed form of the society in Anubis Gates. Only in those cases magic was something that turned up occasionally and in between people forgot about it. I was talking about a world where magic was real, but didn't leave an unambiguous signature.

I'll look through it for ideas but I think FATE and TFT are pretty different.

Re: Inobvious Magic
 

True but if someone wanted TFT to be closer to Fate, they could just add aspects. I've grafted them into several different systems, including Tri-Stat (I remember seeing David Pulver listed as a Tri-Stat designer).

Unverifiable Magic
 

This is a first cut at a system for unverifiable magic. It won't work yet - all the numbers are basically placeholders and I have to work out how much everything should cost. I'm just putting it here in the hope that someone might give me their thoughts on whether the idea would be fun once it was balanced. Tell me whether you would enjoy playing, or playing alongside, a character like this.

--
David
--


Introduction

Canonical TFT magic is verifiable. If you want to hire a wizard for the party you take her somewhere with nothing fragile about and ask her to show you what she can do. Anyone in a magic-using area of Cidri who think magicians are charlatans is clearly deluded.

The other kind of magic in fantasy fiction and mythology, and to a lesser extent in RPGs, is unverifiable magic. Magic that some characters will believe is good to have on your side, and others will doubt exists at all. Magicians whose skills can't be established in a brief job interview. Sometimes the wizard may not even know.

This is an attempt to implement a system for unverifiable magic in TFT. In this system unverifiable magic does work. But there's no way to prove it works, and unless you have access to the wizard's sheet it's unclear how powerful they are or even if they bought the unverifiable magic talents at all.

Unverifiable magic is not the same thing as discreet magic, where a wizard casts a spell and not everybody nearby knows she has, or which spell it was, or perhaps even that a spell has been cast at all. TFT does have discreet magic to some extent.

Some common uses of unverifiable magic in fiction include:

• A shaman who enters a drug-induced trance and speaks to spirits or totems, asking their advice or aid. Is he really on a first name basis with the rainbow serpent? Or has he just eaten so much psychoactive cactus he thinks he is?
• A wizard in a story that's realistic historical with a touch of cynicism. "I hired her for the voyage, because the sailors said we needed a wizard to protect us from the enemy wizards, and I suspect she's a charlatan, but I can't prove it and the sailors are happy, or pretend they are, which is good enough, so I guess as long as the enemy wizard is a charlatan as well maybe it doesn't matter." From time to time they try to do magic, and claim they've done something, but there's no way to know if they really did.
• Rumours of magic, carried out by natural forces or people you never meet. The villagers believe it's bad luck to harm an albino goat: one of the goats is hurt and two days later the guy who did it dies falling down a staircase. Was it coincidence? Did someone who was offended by his crime push him? Who knows.
• Someone who prays to his god(s) for assistance. This might be a priest, but it doesn't have to be: if a barbarian warrior screams out something about Krom as he charges into battle, is he casting a spell? Perhaps he is, and doesn't know it.

Mechanics

To cast unverifiable magic requires:

• A reserve of magic power. This is purchased through talents:
  • Unverifiable Power I (IQ 8; talent cost ?): power is 1 die.
  • Each subsequent level: one higher IQ required, and ? higher cost.
  • Many campaigns will cap power at some level. (e.g. none)
• A relevant field of magic, called an aspect.
  • IQ 11, talent cost 4?: melee hit roll by target, melee damage roll by target
  • IQ 10, talent cost 3?: ranged hit roll on target, ranged damage on target, melee hit roll by target, melee damage roll by target, friendliness, sexually attractiveness, stealth, wealth, see through tricks, perpetrate tricks
  • IQ 9, talent cost 2?: ranged hit roll by target, ranged damage by target, pereption to see enemy, perception to see trap, perception to see treasure, perception to see clue to mystery, leadership, bard, athletics
  • IQ 8, talent cost 1?: HTH hit roll by target, HTH damage roll by target, HTH hit roll on target, HTH damage roll on target, feat of strength, feat of endurance, feat of dexterity, feat of agility, feat of intelligence, feat of will, boats, ships, horses

To energise one or more effects requires a spell casting action. A character performs the following procedure:

• Chooses a spellcasting action. As part of this she makes a public display appropriate to her style of magic, such as calling on her god's aid, dancing about while cackling insanely or reciting doggerel. Unless there are e.g. cultural or linguistic barriers that make it harder, this will normally tell any observer more or less what you're trying do.
• Cancels any effects she no longer wishes to energise
• Rolls her power, according to which talents she has
• Subtracts any power currently being used to energise an effect
• Allocates some or all of whatever is left to creating new effects appropriate to aspects she knows. For each point of power allocated she incurs one point of obligation, see below.

Effects

Effects include:

• 1: When making rolls relevant to the aspect, the target replaces one D6 with a D8. The caster must specify whether rolls greater than 6 will be considered 1s or 6s.
• 2: As above but use a D12.
• 3: As above but use a D20.

The cost in power of an effect is multiplied by the cost of the aspect being used?

For twice the cost, the magician can affect 1 die of targets. For three times the cost, two dice.

A roll might be:

• An attack
• A damage roll
• Dodging a trap
• Seeing a secret door
• A reaction roll
• A random check to see how long it will be before a ship comes to port
• A random determination of the quality of the horse the army has provided you
• Anything else that might be random

Obligation

Each time power is committed the caster incurs obligation. Obligation accumulates until it reaches a threshold equal to (something) times the number of characters in the party who could reasonably be expected to help multiplied by the caster's power level.

If the obligation threshold is reached after an adventure, or if it's close and the GM feels like it, then the caster and party have been called upon to do something. This will require an adventure that wasn't what they'd otherwise do and might not be as beneficial to them as the other thing would have been, it should be non-trivial but not especially dangerous, and it goes without saying that it should be fun. After the mission is complete, obligation is reduced by an amount equal to the threshold.

If the party won't do it for some reason then the caster's power is halved, round down, until they start trying to complete the mission.

Re: Unverifiable Magic
 

It looks great to me -- Lenny Balsera once described this type of magic as "confirmation bias magic".

I like the idea of changing the dice size. Great way to increase chances of a critical without changing the effect range! I did a mental double-take before I figured out that must be what you're going for.

1) I like the goat-to-accident example. Here's an effect that might capture that: force a DX saving roll for whatever they're doing, like using a staircase or just walking around. Failure produces damage like magic fist -- additional power might increase damage or dice for the saving roll.

2) I also like "two days later" for the goat incident. Here's a potential "augmentation" for unverifiable magic: get one an extra unit of effect if it happens 1d days later (i.e. very much not in this combat).

I suspect there might be other interesting augmentations besides just N days later...

Re: Unverifiable Magic
 

Hi David,
I was going to give you feedback, but I'm afraid that I don't understand the system well enough to do so. Could you add some more details, and maybe give an example or two?

The improved dice go d8, d12, d20. d20 is amazing, if you want to roll a 1, there is a 75% chance of getting exactly what you want. Wouldn't d8, d10, d12, d14, d16 work better? (d14 and d16 can be found, I have several.). I'm not sure what the cost is for rolling a d20 rather than a d8.

Can you do multiple effects on the same roll? (Can you roll a d6, d8 and d12 at the same time?)

Warm regards, Rick.

Re: Unverifiable Magic
 

Bah! Only perfect solids are dice!

Crom does not like these... things!

Seriously though, that's a good point, even if Crom doesn't like those so-called dice, they should still be used. Crom supposes...

Re: Unverifiable Magic
 

I will add details and work out the numbers if people think this is a worthwhile idea. If everyone says, "I would never use that," I'll probably just let it die.

A band of soldiers are about to charge the rude fortifications of their religious enemy. It's a difficult and dangerous mission but they are heartened by the presence of the Lady Melisende, widely recognised as a living saint. Melisende considers herself a follower of Saint Antoine d'Arcachon, who protects those on the Lord's work and eases their path through obstacles. Her aspects (a subset of those she believes he has) are be missed by ranged attacks, minimisation of damage from melee attacks, noticing of hidden enemies, protection against disease, athletics and horses.

Melisende has already been protecting the group against disease long-term, and has blessed the eyesight of the scout. The disease bonus D8 costs 3, tripled because she applied it to 2+0 people, and the noticing of enemies bonus D12 costs 4. She decides to hang onto the ambush detector just in case and let the band's own immune systems worry about disease.

Bringing forth her silver cross she asks Saint Antoine to ask God to protect them from arrows. She rolls four dice for 16 points of power and subtracts 4 already committed to the ambush bonus to leave 12. She commits 9 of that to giving 2+0 people D8 protection against arrows, incurring 9 obligation.

As the assault reaches the walls she shouts out, "Aid them, Saint Antoine, and let them not be hurt!" Melisende collapses all her effects, rolls 4 dice and gets 15. She gives 2+0 of the band a D8 bonus to Athletics to help them climb quickly costing 3x1=3, and the 1+0 at the tops of the ladders she gives a D12 bonus against melee attacks for 2x2x3=12, for another 15 obligation.

Version Two of this story: Melisende suffers from schizophrenia.

Version Three of this story: Melisende has never eaten so well, and has almost started to believe someone really is watching out for her.

That was in fact my first plan. But my intuition underestimated how fast the benefits drop off.

• D6: mean 3.5
• D8: mean 2.88, i.e. 0.63 better than D6
• D10: mean 2.5, i.e. 1.0 better than D6, 0.37 better than D8
• D12: mean 2.25, i.e. 1.25 less than D6, 0.63 better than D8
• D20: mean 1.75, i.e. 1.75 better than D6, 0.5 less than D12

The gap between D12 and D20 is actually smaller than the gap between D6 and D8. I also considered a system where it cost 2 to buy a D8, 3 to buy a D10, 4 to buy a D12 and 6 to buy a D20.

I hadn't decided but I guess there's no reason you couldn't.

Re: Unverifiable Magic
 

Have you analyzed the effects on criticals? If you roll 3d20 and anything over a 6 on each die counts as a 1, that's a much larger chance for a critical than 3d6.

Re: Unverifiable Magic
 

So off the top of my computer, these seem to be the chances for rolling all 1s or all 6s (i.e. ((sides-5) / sides)^3 * 100%):

d6: 0.46%
d8: 5.27%
d10: 12.5%
d12: 19.85%
d14: 26.57%
d16: 32.5%
d18: 37.67%
d20: 42.19%

It is a much smoother progression of you don't omit d10 and d14-d18.

Re: Inobvious Magic
 

Lot of potential here, for sure! I definitely see this as being linkable to the Priest/Theologian talents which, as many have noted, do next to nothing in the old RAW.

The single downside I can see, is the use of polyhedral dice, and that's purely a personal bias. One of the things that I originally liked about TFT, is that I could just raid the Risk set for dice - as a kid I had neither access to a FLGS, nor the credit card and Internet access to order online. But those restrictions are gone now, and I can buy fancy dice to my heart's content – and my wallet's dismay...