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Old 07-22-2019, 02:31 AM   #34
Steve Plambeck
 
Join Date: Jun 2019
Default Re: IQ to power spells

Quote:
Originally Posted by Shoug View Post
It's been my confusion this whole thread, that nobody who's tried it seems to think that completely replacing ST with IQ as the casting resource is an unbalancing idea.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris Rice View Post
For the record, I don't like the idea of IQ powering spells.
Whoever went off on that long Missile Spell tangent is entirely to blame for any confusion in this thread, and he should be... oh wait. That was me. Apologies to all, and I have deducted 25 XP from my record sheet.

Let me try to back up here and address a couple of those on-point comments.

My main purpose in using an IQ based stat to power spells wouldn't be to have more powerful wizards or any more power for spells. It's to separate spell casting from self-inflicted damage. Although the hits against ST for casting a spell do "heal" faster than other wounds, we all know most melees don't last nearly as long as the 180 turns it takes for a wizard to recover even 1 ST point of fatigue, and longer than that if they still have to stop and defend themselves and their party. Every spell cast, even a failed one, is one step closer to death for a wizard. Most would agree wizards, especially starting ones, are anemic, and you can't even offer them more iron to fix it :) So there is already a certain imbalance in the system in this regard, and a house rule that tips the scale the other way could also be construed as stabilizing rather than upsetting. The clear and obvious way is to charge heroes 1 point of fatigue for every sword swing... well no one wants that!

Spell costs still have to be paid, but if not using ST what else? The most underutilized attribute is IQ (starting heroes don't even have an IQ in Melee) so that seems to be a good place to start. I think it's the best, but if you don't like it, there's more than one way to skin this cat.

If you don't want to fund the mana pool from IQ, fund it from ST instead. Let the starting Mana stat (my group called it MV) be set equal to ST instead. Going forward tally wound and mundane fatigue hits in the ST box, and tally power spent on spells against the MV box. The ST attribute and the MV stat simply stay separate from then on (until the ST attribute itself goes up one, then the MV would automatically go up one as well). Now wizards function just like heroes, but their weapons are their spells. Wizards do not presently function that way under the RAW, although that sure seems to have been the intent. And by initializing the MV stat based on ST, the mage has exactly as much power to spend on spells as they did in the RAW, they just aren't killing themselves for doing it any more than the fighters wound themselves with their own weapons.

It wouldn't have to be ST either, or ST alone. You could use the average of the other three attributes. You could average ST and IQ. Or you could just make it a fixed number, say 10. Then though nothing would differentiate bad, good, and better wizards from each other. What really makes a wizard better at being a wizard is still IQ, which is one reason I would rather base my MV stat on IQ. And there are others.

Like I mentioned above, I find IQ to be the least used attribute in the RAW. Sure, talents give IQ a bit more purpose, but ironically talents are less applicable to wizards; under the RAW, they can't afford much in that regard (there's a solution for that too, but that's a whole other topic).

Look at it this way. DX is multi-purpose. It functions as the stat for agility, for accuracy, for speed in combat, and for reactions of all kinds. ST is a four-pronged attribute: it's Health, it's Endurance, it's the Brute Strength that determines the size of the weapons you can use, and it's Magical Power all at the same time. It's really doing the jobs of four attributes. Whereas IQ only does two jobs: it regulates memory capacity (the number of things you can learn), and complexity (the difficulty of the things you can learn). It's so weak heroes don't even need the stat in Melee. Even when they have it, they rarely ever need to use it in combat.

If any function is going to be transferred from one attribute to another, it makes much more sense to me to move something from ST to IQ. IQ is really the logical thing to use for powering what is primarily the mental activity of spell casting. A wizard just can't really be good at wizardry with a ST higher than IQ, but under the RAW they need all the ST they can get to stay alive in combat. I love the idea that the natural attribute they use in their jobs should be the actual attribute they use... in their jobs! All the more in the job of magical combat.

There is now I don't know how many spells for a wizard to choose from. How many of those do we actually see in play? There's a lot of colorful, interesting spells in the tables, going back to Advanced Wizard, and even some from original Wizard, I've never seen used in play, and I played continuously for almost 20 years. I think the reason for that is because wizards are discouraged from increasing their IQ's to begin with, resulting in what we often call the Conan the Wizard syndrome. That puts higher level spells out of reach. Wizard's with higher IQs (and DX) are too anemic to cast many of the spells they do know, and rarely cast the more expensive ones. Isn't the game more fun when wizards don't have to be quite as conservative?

The one real point of imbalance, perhaps the only one, in basing a mana stat on IQ rather than something smaller was the Missile Spells. But SJ already fixed that in the current edition, so it's no longer a problem. But don't let me go off on that tangent again :)
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