Re: [DF] Talents for the Standard Templates
 

How is the wizard invading other character's turf and rendering them irrelevant not genre-appropriate to dungeon fantasy? It happened all the time in the games that are being emulated.

Re: [DF] Talents for the Standard Templates
 

In Dungeons & Dragons, at least, there was a limit to how often those spells could be cast, and when they could be cast. You didn't get those niche-destroying spells until higher levels, and even then you couldn't cast them a hundred times a day. All the DM would need to do in D&D is put lots of locks everywhere.


One thing I've considered doing to sort-of emulate this is remove the high-skill cost reductions and replace them with a rule similar to what's used for Imbuements: you can take a -5 to skill for each 1 point in energy reduction. And then add on top of that a rule that says when you fail to cast a spell that attempts such a reduction, you lose FP equal to the full energy cost.

That would keep them from casting the spells so often.

Re: [DF] Talents for the Standard Templates
 

That's because the "turf" of the Thief or Rogue in AD&D or D&D isn't to pick locks, but to deliver backstabs as often as possible. It doesn't matter whether the locks and traps are dealt with by the Wizard or the Rogue. Locks and traps are very, very tertiary to the important business of attriting the hit points of the opposition as quickly and as efficiently as possible.

GURPS, on the other hand, and this very much includes DF, makes the players of Thief template character spend precious character creation currency on skills to deal with locks and traps.

Also, the root cause of the problem is that GURPS Magic is stupid bad designed.

Re: [DF] Talents for the Standard Templates
 

Why not generalize that, into a Do Skill spell?

Re: [DF] Talents for the Standard Templates
 

The same approach works in GURPS. Lockmaster has a cost of 3; that means you'd need skill 25?!?!? to cast it for free. By putting locks everywhere the Mage is going to have to make a choice between casting Lockmaster and casting other spells.

To me it just sounds like b-dog needs to work with enforcing the inherent limitations of Magic - the casting time, the energy cost (and subsequent recovery), and the mana requirements. If you move quickly from sneaking into a base, climbing a wall, picking a lock, then combat the Mage may very well be able to do any of those things with Magic but he will have serious trouble doing all of them with Magic. He will need to pick and choose when he casts spells and when he lets the Thief do the lockpicking or the Barbarian do the fighting.

You can also adjust or outright ban spells which you find too conveniently done by standard RAW Magic. If Lockmaster makes it too easy to your taste then adjust Lockmaster to increase the casting time or casting cost or simply ban it outright. There are a great many spells which are banned to Mages; most of them are Healing spells to protect the Cleric's niche, but other spells to protect other niche's are fair game too.

Re: [DF] Talents for the Standard Templates
 

My usual problem isn't that any one spell is too effective, it's that mages can be effective at too many things for too low a cost. A minimum cost of 2 per spell solves a lot of issues. Basing spells on 10+magery is also tempting.

Re: [DF] Talents for the Standard Templates
 

Yes the thief has only few things he can do well and the wizard can do all of them with spells at a higher level and also do many other things too. This makes the Dungeon Master have put in no mana zones and meteoric locks to give him something to do.

Re: [DF] Talents for the Standard Templates
 

What would that look like? Would it be a separate spell for each skill?

The main reason would be so that you can price the skills differently. A spell that mimics the Lockpicking skill need not cost the same as a spell that mimics the Skiing, Knot-Tying, or Leatherworking skills.

With Lockpicking, you're always trying to overcome an obstacle placed by another sapient being. That's not true with Leatherworking. Or some spell that mimics, say, the loading part of the Packing skill, that allows you to efficiently Tetrisize loading cargo.

And there is a niche-protection aspect as well. A spell that cheaply mimics the Packing or Leatherworking skill doesn't matter much, since no one's dungeon-delving career is based around those skill. It's not someone's defining characteristic, at least not as Dungeon Fantasy handles things. The idea is to put players into roles the GM sees as useful for dungeon-delving. Having Lockmaster is about the same as having a Swordmaster skill that makes the wizard a better swordsman than the group's swordsman. And that's pretty much the only role the spells in Magic don't directly outshine on purpose.

Re: [DF] Talents for the Standard Templates
 

I will say that for the PCs rarely go through a dungeon at a rapid pace. They tend to be careful and if they are injured or need to regain spell energy they securevthe dungeon doors and rest. So even if a wizard has to spend a couple of magic points to open a lock he has time to regain them before moving onto another difficult encounter.

Re: [DF] Talents for the Standard Templates
 

I have to disagree with you here. It's easy enough to get the spell at skill 20, which reduces the cost to only one energy, which is easy enough to handle. Recovering energy is easy enough that this shouldn't be much of a problem for characters as capable as the wizards in Dungeon Fantasy.

You mention the casting time and the energy requirements, but those aren't different from what the Thief is doing with his skill. In comparison, they're rather generous. Can the Thief pick a lock more quickly than the wizard can in five seconds? The Magelock (Edit: I meant Lockmaster here) spell can be cast from a considerable distance for even a beginning Wizard, while a Thief has to get up close and personal with the lock and all the dangers that entails. That's certainly worth the single energy point (which can be distributed throughout the rest of the party with Lend Energy and Steal Energy).