The Last Gasp, Powers, Costs FP and Energy Reserve

[dfinlay]

I'm working on a game that will involve Magic as Powers, including Costs FP and ER, as well as The Last Gasp. There are a few things about the interaction between these that I wanted some advice on.

First, off, with The Last Gasp, magic costing FP becomes extremely strenuous (and this is deliberate). Between Gradual Impairment, Persistance is Futile, Hitting the Wall and Painful Recovery, magic (which can cost several FP) is hard on the body and a well-trained mage will want high HT and Will. That said, this means that Costs FP is a much more severe limitation than it usually is. As such, I want to give more than a -5% limitation for it. What do people think? Is -10% appropriate?

Then, we come to ER. I want some mages with experience to be able to mitigate the strenuousness for a limited amount of casting. In other words, I want ER to be available. The way ER is written, it's point-balanced against traditional FP. However, against The Last Gasp, it becomes a lot better. It recharges much faster and doesn't suffer from all the downsides of spending FP from TLG. As such, it should probably recharge slower, to put it more on par with FP and cost more points (to balance the advantage of not dealing with losing FP). This leads to two questions, though:

How fast should it recharge? 1/2 hours, as Mild FP recovery for a 10 FP character? As the character's Mild Fatigue recovery? As the character's Severe Fatigue recovery (after all, mages will drop into Severe Fatigue sometimes)?

How many points is reasonable? I was thinking [5], which is consistent with calling "Doesn't have to deal with FP loss consquences from TLG" a Cosmic +50% Enhancement. I'm not really sure if this is reasonable, though.

What do people think?

[weby]

Originally Posted by dfinlay

I'm working on a game that will involve Magic as Powers, including Costs FP and ER, as well as The Last Gasp. There are a few things about the interaction between these that I wanted some advice on.

First, off, with The Last Gasp, magic costing FP becomes extremely strenuous (and this is deliberate). Between Gradual Impairment, Persistance is Futile, Hitting the Wall and Painful Recovery, magic (which can cost several FP) is hard on the body and a well-trained mage will want high HT and Will. That said, this means that Costs FP is a much more severe limitation than it usually is. As such, I want to give more than a -5% limitation for it. What do people think? Is -10% appropriate?

Note that -5%/FP is really not appropriate for normal games either. Already the actual limitation of limiting it to few minutes is worth more(a lot more)

Comparing it to things like Maximum Duration where 10 minutes is -50% and after that it shuts down for 5 minutes. Compare that to the 10 minutes of use you get for Cost FP -5% as normal person and the 100 minutes it takes until you can recover...

I use -10%/FP and yet no one ever volunteers to take the bare minimum required, The real value should likely be something like -20%/FP...

As for the last grasp: I would double the value likely to -20%/-40%.. as FP loss is kind of nasty in that system, basically a normal human will get -60% in aftermath like effects for using 2 FP and the aftermath takes longer than standard such.

Then, we come to ER. I want some mages with experience to be able to mitigate the strenuousness for a limited amount of casting. In other words, I want ER to be available. The way ER is written, it's point-balanced against traditional FP. However, against The Last Gasp, it becomes a lot better. It recharges much faster and doesn't suffer from all the downsides of spending FP from TLG. As such, it should probably recharge slower, to put it more on par with FP and cost more points (to balance the advantage of not dealing with losing FP). This leads to two questions, though:

How fast should it recharge? 1/2 hours, as Mild FP recovery for a 10 FP character? As the character's Mild Fatigue recovery? As the character's Severe Fatigue recovery (after all, mages will drop into Severe Fatigue sometimes)?

How many points is reasonable? I was thinking [5], which is consistent with calling "Doesn't have to deal with FP loss consquences from TLG" a Cosmic +50% Enhancement. I'm not really sure if this is reasonable, though.

What do people think?

I would likely limit the number of ERs a lot in such a system but keep the recovery fast. In such 5 points/ER would likely work. If you allow "any number of ER", the cost should likely be higher or all mages will want a LOT.

As for recovery that is basically another cosmic at likely 100%(cheating) level.

So the total of 10 minute recovery Er would be 8 points that starts to look much more correct.

Alternatively you could go with the lower cost and have the ER only not cause loss off attributes, but use the % of ER used as the recovery time for ER like you do % of FP for FP.

[Tyneras]

I'd say aim for no more than 10 ER (or even less) but remove it's standard recovery method. Instead have ER be recovered via a successful Meditation roll. 2 ER on crit success, 1 ER for regular success, none on a failure and lose 1 ER on a critical failure.

This lets mages throw spells around but forces them to take a few moments to recover.

A recommendation on this is to remove all cost reduction for high skill.

[dfinlay]

Originally Posted by weby

Note that -5%/FP is really not appropriate for normal games either. Already the actual limitation of limiting it to few minutes is worth more(a lot more)...

I've had this thought before and considered increasing the limitation value. I think you're right and it should be -10% normally. I'll probably use -20% with TLG. Thanks.

Originally Posted by weby

I would likely limit the number of ERs a lot in such a system but keep the recovery fast. In such 5 points/ER would likely work. If you allow "any number of ER", the cost should likely be higher or all mages will want a LOT.

As for recovery that is basically another cosmic at likely 100%(cheating) level.

So the total of 10 minute recovery Er would be 8 points that starts to look much more correct.

This is an interesting idea, though I worry about balancing by capping it, as I would like mages to have different amounts and not all just get the cap. That said, the point values I'm working at are low enough that it might work even if I capped it at, say 5 levels. A lot of players won't want to sink [40] into it, out of the roughly [100] they'll have to freely spend on their magic.

Originally Posted by weby

Alternatively you could go with the lower cost and have the ER only not cause loss off attributes, but use the % of ER used as the recovery time for ER like you do % of FP for FP.

This seems awkward. The guy with 1 ER counts as always recovering from Severe Fatigue, whereas the guy with 2 ER recovers the first as Light and the second as Severe. Plus, it seems odd since ER is supposed to help mitigate the strenuousness. I think your first idea is a lot better for my purposes.

Originally Posted by Tyneras

I'd say aim for no more than 10 ER (or even less) but remove it's standard recovery method. Instead have ER be recovered via a successful Meditation roll. 2 ER on crit success, 1 ER for regular success, none on a failure and lose 1 ER on a critical failure.

This lets mages throw spells around but forces them to take a few moments to recover.

Yeah, I'm not sure I want an "every mage must know Meditation" feel exactly. Plus, it kind of does the opposite of TLG: recover all energy when you get downtime.

Originally Posted by Tyneras

A recommendation on this is to remove all cost reduction for high skill.

I'm using Magic as Powers. There is no cost reduction for high skill (nor any skill, for that matter).

[Tyneras]

Originally Posted by dfinlay

I'm using Magic as Powers. There is no cost reduction for high skill (nor any skill, for that matter).

Woops, missed that. Thought you were using straight Magic and TLG.

[weby]

Originally Posted by dfinlay

This is an interesting idea, though I worry about balancing by capping it, as I would like mages to have different amounts and not all just get the cap. That said, the point values I'm working at are low enough that it might work even if I capped it at, say 5 levels. A lot of players won't want to sink [40] into it, out of the roughly [100] they'll have to freely spend on their magic.

Well, you could make the limit to be based some something. Like as example the points in spells. Like for each X points in spells you can buy one ER. Hw big the X should be.. That depends on what you feel fits.

I'm using Magic as Powers. There is no cost reduction for high skill (nor any skill, for that matter).

Unless you use power techniques and allow reduced FP cost Technique.. :)

[Mailanka]

In my samurai campaign, I used both the Last Gasp and Energy Reserves, and I allowed the latter to act as points for Extra Effort (since it represented Chi) which is beyond what you intend to do in your campaign. I did not charge extra for it. It worked out fine.

It turns out ER isn't priced "against fatigue," it's priced against spending it on powers and such, which is its purpose. Remember, the original role of fatigue is not just enduring hikes and such, but also powering spells. Since you want energy reserves powering spells, this seems perfect. In my game, Chi reserves were used to power Chi abilities, and it was much sought after... but not as much as you might think. I had a few perk prerequisites that made it a little tricky (but not too hard) to get and limited how much you could have, but again, I gave it more benefits than you did.

Hit points also take a very long time to recover, but they're actually cheaper than fatigue points. In the original magic system, you could spend fatigue (which recovered quickly) or you could spend HP (which took forever to recover). When you use the Last Gasp and Energy Reserves, you get a similar story: You could spend from your energy reserves, which recover quickly, or you could spend from your fatigue, which took forever to recover and penalized you. In effect, ER becomes like Action Points in Last Gasp, or like Fatigue in the Fatigue/HP dichotomy of vanilla magic.

So I wouldn't worry about it. Toss on a special recovery condition if you're really worried, but in practice, I think you'll find that it's not too much of a problem.