Rule of 16 - What's the Point?

[ErhnamDJ]

Originally Posted by lexington

Bill the Generic Man doesn't have Mind Control. He barely has the ability to hold a job.

Bill the Generic Man should do just fine. He has the following skill levels from default. And he becomes exceptional in these same skills with the application of even a minimal amount of training.

Carousing-12
Dreaming-10
Exorcism-10
Hiking-11
Intimidation-11
Meditation-10
Running-11
Sex Appeal-13
Singing-12
Skating-10
Skiing-10
Swimming-12


As you can see, he has ample opportunity for gainful employment, as well as the means to achieve such. A singer with Sex Appeal-13 and Carousing-12 is in a pretty good position. If he spends even two hundred hours improving his singing, he'll have all the work he can ask for. That is, if he doesn't decide to work as a medical test subject with his HT 16. I'm sure there are medical breakthroughs to be had by studying a human being who can do what GURPS says someone with HT 16 can do. He doesn't get sick, he doesn't die, he doesn't collapse from pain, and he can force himself to endure horrors us normal people can't imagine. If this guy spent even a tiny amount of time training for long-distance running, he would be an immediate champion.

This guy's only ninety points. If you put the rest of his ten points into some skills, he'll become an absolutely amazing world-renowned athlete. Put four points into Running, one into each of Hiking and Swimming, and give him Attractive Appearance and this guy's going to end up on the cover of magazines pretty quickly.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by LemmingLord

Ugh. Random magician? Really? When you make magic so common place that you might randomly have to fight one then yes, getting rid of resistance rolls may be bad for survivability. .

Well since the PCs are certainly going to have a magician and magicians have a license to curb stomp unless opposed by other magic I'm certainly going to deploy magicians against them under those rules.

[Nosforontu]

Originally Posted by LemmingLord

Ugh. Random magician? Really? When you make magic so common place that you might randomly have to fight one then yes, getting rid of resistance rolls may be bad for survivability. On the other hand, if players are aware of the no resistance house rule they will take extra care to prepare themselves to avoid random encounters with the "common" wizard.

I Suspect that the first preperation that they make would either be dumping half their points or more in magic reisistance/mana dampening making magic worthless against them or dumping points into becoming nearly unstopable Wizard God Kings buying up a collection of "I Win buttons" into the 20s or even 30s since points spent on spells now far exceed points spent on martial skill sets in terms of value.

Originally Posted by LemmingLord

My perspective is that most wizards, like most accountants or police officers or bus drivers, will have skill levels between 11 and 14; so they will have to get in close to do their thing.

You are probably correct on most Wizards being relatively low skilled and those low skill wizards do have to get close to their target, which again changes party behavior to simply use stand off long ranged attacks (bows, crossbows), or stealth kills (kill the wizard in his sleep or poison him). At no time in the fight should a party allow an opposing wizard to ever cast a spell if he looks like he is about to be able to cast spells with no resistance rolls then run or the party will losse.

Originally Posted by LemmingLord

I find that resistance rolls make wizards less challenging as combatants... I find resistance rolls makes magic itself seem less fantastic.

I find active defense rolls make weapon masters less challenging as combatants... I find active defenses makes combat seem less exiting ;). Its ultimately of course your game and if you want magic to be an irresistable force in the belief that it will make for a better story you are certainly entitled to do so.

However I know that with the players at my table this rule would essentially warp the story in unfortuanate ways and would quickly narrow player builds to be either anti-magic specialist (heroic archer stealth monkeys with Mana Dampening/ Magic Resistance) or magic specialist who are constantly dumping points into their particular "I win button" because each skill bump gives them a 1 yard advantage over the opposing wizards "I Win Button".

I don't think that is going to make the game better but instead shapes into the story of the magically immune and wizard god kings. All other roles become sidelined in such a universe.

[QUOTE=LemmingLord;1618411I feel this is compounded with the rule of 16 that makes magic a crapshoot against mortal men because of their mortal statistics. I think it makes for better fantasy and better story telling for magic to not be resistable by a stat, but something the players must overcome through guile and subterfuge.[/QUOTE]

I think the issue is that if you base line a campaigns default condition to being unresistable magic you must also either make it excessively rare so that players never actually see magic or you are going to get the previously mentioned warping effect (why bother with merchant skill when you could get a much better effect with a loyalty spell for instance).

If you want a specific big bad wizards spells to be irresistable it is easy enough enough in Gurps though potentially expensive. The lesser Wish spell 180 Energy would allow him to dicatate the result of any one die roll (a fight is probably not going to reguire that many effectively irresistable rolls to be made before the fight is over). Alternatively you could just give him leveled Super Luck with the limitation only for Magical Quick Contest. Again it would be expensive but it would make Elite Big Bad Wizards dangerous without the players also being terrified of Bob the Baker who has a little bit of Mind magic as well.

[DangerousThing]

Originally Posted by LemmingLord

Ugh. Random magician? Really? When you make magic so common place that you might randomly have to fight one then yes, getting rid of resistance rolls may be bad for survivability. On the other hand, if players are aware of the no resistance house rule they will take extra care to prepare themselves to avoid random encounters with the "common" wizard. My perspective is that most wizards, like most accountants or police officers or bus drivers, will have skill levels between 11 and 14; so they will have to get in close to do their thing. What a more interesting ( and truer for making magic magical ) if pcs must plan for unresistable wizards, finding ways to keep their distance, blocking line of sight, or generally finding ways to avoid fighting those folks with knowledge of the powerful forces of magic ( sounds much more interesting to me then dealing with the mundane easily shrugged off wimpy forces of magic ).

This sort of thing works if magic is fairly rare. It also works if you have a party who is willing and able to think.

Even still, it makes bargaining with a wizard a very chancy thing because if you've guessed incorrectly you have little or no defense.

This also increases the power of PC mages hugely. Without the resistance roll the mage casts the spell and if he succeeds the target is effected. It's like a fighter having an attack where his victim can't use active defenses (a 300% enhancement).

It only hurts beginning characters if the game master takes away resistance rolls and then makes encounters without balancing no resistance into it. The short of it is this: the gamemaster is always responsible for balancing challenge and survivability. I find that resistance rolls make wizards less challenging as combatants... I find resistance rolls makes magic itself seem less fantastic. I feel this is compounded with the rule of 16 that makes magic a crapshoot against mortal men because of their mortal statistics. I think it makes for better fantasy and better story telling for magic to not be resistable by a stat, but something the players must overcome through guile and subterfuge.

I tend to play in a sandbox universe. This means I've set things up and the PCs decide what to do. If they want to attack a powerful being, they win or lose on their own. Like in the real world there are generally clues (actually even more so).

Also I have based my thoughts on how magic works on 50+ years of reading, studying, and thinking. Most of the older stories I've read allow strong willed people to resist, at least somewhat, the effects of mental magic. Other types of magic tend to be fairly rare in fiction and myth until the rise of RPGs.

I'm currently starting a science fantasy game where set far in the future. The average person can buy guns which generally outclass most forms of direct magic. Combat mages are rare because I'm using a variant of RPM which encourages subtle magic.

However, a wizard who has had time to prepare can be extremely dangerous even at low skill levels. And if he also has access to high technology, he becomes more dangerous (the game is set in a universe after the Shattering, an event that killed 9 out of 10 people and destroyed the basis of technology used at the time, so most of the planets the characters will be visiting will be TL 5 at best, while they are at TL 9-10). And in my settings magic, psi, chi, and other such things are all magic. A wizard of who knows how can block the chi powers of a martial artist easily, though the martial artist can still give him a boot to the head with plain skill.

One of the greatest influences on my thinking of RPG magic is the Roger Zelazny story Madwand and it's sequel. Magic has many expressions and if you can sense the magic you can resist it more easily. A duel between mages is one of skill, imagination, and power with each counting a great deal.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by LemmingLord

Ugh. Random magician? Really? When you make magic so common place that you might randomly have to fight one then yes, getting rid of resistance rolls may be bad for survivability.

If magic is common enough that PC magicians aren't paying a massive unusual background cost, random magicians should be expected.

[Kromm]

Magic as a rarity not easily resisted by the common man is widespread in fantasy fiction but exceedingly unpopular in fantasy games. In FRPGs, there's a long tradition of wizardry being "just another job" and everybody getting a saving throw against magic to explain why wizards aren't rulers or gods. Unsurprisingly, the basic magic system in GURPS – being part of an RPG – is optimized for games . . . meaning that it assumes dime-a-dozen wizards and gives ordinary folks an excellent chance to resist magic, thereby explaining why wizardry is an unremarkable calling rather than a rare wonder. You can certainly skew your campaign toward myths and novels, but you'll need to adjust your magic system to match. And we support this! GURPS Thaumatology is an excellent tool for the job.

[Anders]

There are also tips in Fantasy about various magic thingies.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Kromm

Magic as a rarity not easily resisted by the common man is widespread in fantasy fiction but exceedingly unpopular in fantasy games.

Well, it's more accurate to say that it is expected that PCs and foes worth bothering with can resist magic. The ability of the common man to resist magic is only relevant if PCs are common. On the other hand, the common man has a resisting stat of 10, which is only an 11% chance of resistance vs a 16, so that's not a problem for people anyway.

[Kromm]

Having played in the fantasy campaigns of GMs who refused to allow PC wizards, hurled powerful NPC spellcasters at the PCs, and made magic nigh unto automatically successful against even very tough heroes, I'm happy with the Rule of 16. It isn't fun for the player who signed on to play a tough, fearless warrior to have to resort to skulking around and avoiding the enemy wizard instead of going Conan, resisting magic by sheer will and hate, and murdering the foul mage. It's the wizard who should have to use brains and avoid confrontation, because he knows that a sufficiently determined man with a sword can always kill him. Putting the onus on the magic-user in this way makes things more fun for the players when you're trying to keep magic rare, powerful, and mysterious, as it leads to wizards who act smart and secretive instead of leaning on their "I win!" button while the PCs scramble around looking desperate rather than heroic.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Well, it's more accurate to say that it is expected that PCs and foes worth bothering with can resist magic. The ability of the common man to resist magic is only relevant if PCs are common.

In typical rags-to-riches, zero-to-hero fantasy – like AD&D First Edition – that is pretty much the case. Indeed, some of those adventures had "common" innkeepers who were retired 12th-level bards, things like that. Commonplace magic goes hand-in-glove with the random stableboy being a 7th-level thief and the guy lighting candles at the temple being a 4th-level cleric.