Aid Spell, Damage, and Fatigue

[Steve Plambeck]

Originally Posted by phiwum

All of this consternation just because someone asked about the Death Spell.

LOL -- guilty as charged!

The only thing I might add to this spinoff thread is that, my oh my wouldn't this all have been a lot simpler if ST and Mana were entirely separate things? Imagine if Aid were only for sharing/lending spell-casting energy and had nothing whatsoever to do with ST/hit points. But this isn't the House Rules forum so I won't even mention the idea.

[larsdangly]

I like that spell casting and physical fatigue and damage are linked concepts, as it makes the magic system have consequences beyond expending your 'spell slots'. But it is definitely true that you are forced to figure out for yourself how the magical fatigue economy works, with your decisions having potentially significant game-changing effects.

This discussion is so long and complex that it might be useful to boil down the major decision points where you need a table ruling:

- Is Aid limited to +5 ST at any one time, or is it unlimited? I don't accept the logic that it has to be unlimited to enable casting some spells, as a caster can readily pay for all the standard spells using a staff and/or power stones. But I also think it would be a perfectly valid table ruling to say Aid increases in ST are an exception to the stat-boost rule of 5.

- When a wizard casts the Death Spell, do they match their current available physical ST or the mana points expended vs. the ST of the target? If the latter, can the target expend Mana instead of physical ST to resist the spell? If the caster wins, is their cost paid in Mana or physical ST?

- If you take physical damage while benefiting from an external source of fatigue-based ST increased (Aid or Drain ST), what happens to you when that increase expires?

Can you think of any others that aren't corollaries of these?

[Shostak]

Originally Posted by phiwum

I want to be cool.

You play TFT. That's the very definition of cool.

[Steve Plambeck]

Originally Posted by larsdangly

- When a wizard casts the Death Spell, do they match their current available physical ST or the mana points expended vs. the ST of the target? If the latter, can the target expend Mana instead of physical ST to resist the spell? If the caster wins, is their cost paid in Mana or physical ST?

So we've come full circle back to the questions that started the thread that lead to this thread, about 100 posts ago...

How about we set as our goal this: we want the Death Spell in ITL to be and work the same as the Death Spell in Wizard.

And in Wizard, there are no power stones, no staff mana, etc. The lower ST figure simply dies, the stronger figure is wounded by the amount of ST the weaker one had. It is a magical exchange of negative health. Done.

The only thing the original spell missed explaining was what to do in the event both figures were tied for available ST. Skarg suggested they both die, and that sounds like the perfect answer to me.

[Shostak]

Wizard did have the Aid spell, though. I'd let someone buff up ST with Aid to be better prepared to cast the Death Spell. If they want to use staff mana to power Aid, great. But I'd not let the defender treat their staff mana reserve as an emergency Aid spell that they can call upon in an instant to boost ST to try to survive.

In the original Wizard, both characters would die in a tie, since they would both be brought down to zero ST (which, in the original rules meant death). So, I'd keep the outcome the same: they both die.

[phiwum]

Originally Posted by Shostak

Wizard did have the Aid spell, though. I'd let someone buff up ST with Aid to be better prepared to cast the Death Spell. If they want to use staff mana to power Aid, great. But I'd not let the defender treat their staff mana reserve as an emergency Aid spell that they can call upon in an instant to boost ST to try to survive.

In the original Wizard, both characters would die in a tie, since they would both be brought down to zero ST (which, in the original rules meant death). So, I'd keep the outcome the same: they both die.

Just to be clear, Shostak, that bolded part would only help in the ST test and temporarily after receiving damage, right? Joe Aids himself with ST 5, so now he's at ST 11 and casts Death against an ST 10 foe, killing him and bringing Joe down to ST 1. The spell wears off, and Joe's at ST -4.

I ask because I think I misread that part at first.

[hcobb]

Whataboutisms ITL 15 "Note: a wizard cannot cast a spell which would reduce his ST below 0."

Ergo this so-called Death spell never actually kills anybody.

[larsdangly]

Originally Posted by Steve Plambeck

So we've come full circle back to the questions that started the thread that lead to this thread, about 100 posts ago...

How about we set as our goal this: we want the Death Spell in ITL to be and work the same as the Death Spell in Wizard.

And in Wizard, there are no power stones, no staff mana, etc. The lower ST figure simply dies, the stronger figure is wounded by the amount of ST the weaker one had. It is a magical exchange of negative health. Done.

The only thing the original spell missed explaining was what to do in the event both figures were tied for available ST. Skarg suggested they both die, and that sounds like the perfect answer to me.

One problem with using original Wizard to resolve this issue is that it didn't really have any rules governing the distinctions between fatigue and damage - a ST reduction was a ST reduction. In fact I don't think the word 'fatigue' even appears in either edition of Wizard.

[larsdangly]

Originally Posted by hcobb

Whataboutisms ITL 15 "Note: a wizard cannot cast a spell which would reduce his ST below 0."

Ergo this so-called Death spell never actually kills anybody.

Two things:

1) This is not mathematically correct. If caster has ST 10 and his or her target ST 8, then the latter can be killed (driven to ST -1) without the caster reducing ST below 0.

2) This point has been made a frillion times here and elsewhere; everyone gets that you can't use the Death Spell in Legacy Edition without the implicit rules change that the amount of ST required to kill them has increased by 1.

[Shostak]

Originally Posted by phiwum

Just to be clear, Shostak, that bolded part would only help in the ST test and temporarily after receiving damage, right? Joe Aids himself with ST 5, so now he's at ST 11 and casts Death against an ST 10 foe, killing him and bringing Joe down to ST 1. The spell wears off, and Joe's at ST -4.

I ask because I think I misread that part at first.

I would say No, because I would treat the ST loss to the caster as fatigue rather than damage.

At the risk of undermining everything I've said about Aid, I'll note that the simplest thing really would to not differentiate between wounds and fatigue with regard to the Aid spell, which is, I believe, the position advocated by Nils Lindberg over on a similar thread on FB. It doesn't really make sense with the analogies I've come up with, but it is magical and simple and thus very appealing.