Horror Magic's "Invest" and mining your acolyte's critical failures for CP

Plane · 07-08-2021, 06:13 PM

HM9 says you only benefit when they get (M7) result 3 or 18. Since either have a 1 in 216 chance of happening, that would normally mean that you'd need to have them cast 108 spells to gain the benefit.

Since Invest begins with gifting the worst form of Radically Unstable (T26: all fails are crit fails) this would happen a lot more often.

The issue with the -50% version (roll 3 times, GMs picks "worst") vs the -30% version (random) is that even though 3/18 are probably meant to be the worst results in many cases, what if the GM just opts not to choose 3 or 18 when they do come up?

A lot of that of course depends on the spell. Caster taking 1d injury is worse for an information spell, but if you're using a high-damage spell then result 4 could be worse if you lacked armor to protect from your damage spell.

So long as you pick non-damaging spells such as from RUM1 it's pretty hard to argue that any of the middle results are worse than 3/18.

The ideal would be your acolyte learns a spell that costs 1 energy, has it at skill 15 so it costs 0 energy to cast, and then maxes out penalties via distance (which AFAIK doesn't increase energy cost) so guarantee a normal failure which is then a crit fail.

I think the biggest problem is basically just keeping your minion alive:

1) if they suffer 1d injury, you'd better heal them somehow between attempts so they don't die
2) if they summon a demon, ideally they're inside a pentagram and can't be attacked

Conversely this also seems, if you have demon-management resources, to be a very cheap way to summon demons of unspecified power levels... Maybe to avoid too much craziness that the CP of the demon should be somehow related to energy spent on the spell, similar to M155's formula of 1:10?

In terms of RPing this, I figure the crit fail result (like a Control Demon spell where the demon beats your spell with his Will roll in the Quick Contest) is like getting the worst possible reaction from an NPC meaning it'd be really hard to convince them to back off?

B495 under "Second Reaction Rolls" says you don't get them if the 1st one started a fight so I guess for that option you'd need to finish the fight? Though I think certain Shticks could be an exception to this, like isn't there some perk in Martial Arts where you can make mid-fight Influence rolls to back off an opponent?

07-08-2021, 06:13 PM	#1
Plane Join Date: Aug 2018	Horror Magic's "Invest" and mining your acolyte's critical failures for CP HM9 says you only benefit when they get (M7) result 3 or 18. Since either have a 1 in 216 chance of happening, that would normally mean that you'd need to have them cast 108 spells to gain the benefit. Since Invest begins with gifting the worst form of Radically Unstable (T26: all fails are crit fails) this would happen a lot more often. The issue with the -50% version (roll 3 times, GMs picks "worst") vs the -30% version (random) is that even though 3/18 are probably meant to be the worst results in many cases, what if the GM just opts not to choose 3 or 18 when they do come up? A lot of that of course depends on the spell. Caster taking 1d injury is worse for an information spell, but if you're using a high-damage spell then result 4 could be worse if you lacked armor to protect from your damage spell. So long as you pick non-damaging spells such as from RUM1 it's pretty hard to argue that any of the middle results are worse than 3/18. The ideal would be your acolyte learns a spell that costs 1 energy, has it at skill 15 so it costs 0 energy to cast, and then maxes out penalties via distance (which AFAIK doesn't increase energy cost) so guarantee a normal failure which is then a crit fail. I think the biggest problem is basically just keeping your minion alive: 1) if they suffer 1d injury, you'd better heal them somehow between attempts so they don't die 2) if they summon a demon, ideally they're inside a pentagram and can't be attacked Conversely this also seems, if you have demon-management resources, to be a very cheap way to summon demons of unspecified power levels... Maybe to avoid too much craziness that the CP of the demon should be somehow related to energy spent on the spell, similar to M155's formula of 1:10? In terms of RPing this, I figure the crit fail result (like a Control Demon spell where the demon beats your spell with his Will roll in the Quick Contest) is like getting the worst possible reaction from an NPC meaning it'd be really hard to convince them to back off? B495 under "Second Reaction Rolls" says you don't get them if the 1st one started a fight so I guess for that option you'd need to finish the fight? Though I think certain Shticks could be an exception to this, like isn't there some perk in Martial Arts where you can make mid-fight Influence rolls to back off an opponent?