why would wizard with Manastaff spend 200 EP on 1 Mana instead of 2 ST ?

[Plane]

It costs 100 EP to get +1 to ST, so https://thefantasytrip.game/news/201...-fantasy-trip/ talking about " spend 200 experience points to upgrade the Mana stat" doesn't seem to have any benefits.

How does "No need to waste character points now to build a wizard with great physical strength." make sense here?

About the only advantage I can see is that injuries can't deprive you of your mana, but injuries can stop you from spellcasting by knocking you out (ST 1) or even compromise them at ST 3 (-3 to DX penalty) so it still sounds like it makes more sense to buy up ST.

Shouldn't mana be cheaper than ST to give a reason to purchase it? Or maybe ignore how ST spend on spells doesn't count as injury for DX purposes and have it penalize DX? Avoiding the -3 to DX when suffering 5 ST of injury would be at least a slight incentive here with some strategic benefit, though I don't know if it should warrant paying double the cost.

Were there some plans to charge 300 EP for ST boosts in New Fantasy Trip that I missed? Or maybe there's a typo and it's meant to be 20 EP per mana so 1/5 the cost of ST ?

http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=159581 apparently has the missing "Mana and the Wizard's Staff" section which seems even worse ... you need to spend 5 ST to recharge 1 mana in combat?

This would only be useful if it were cheaper, I can't figure why you wouldn't just buy up the ST, it's more efficient.

[TippetsTX]

You wouldn't, not in the early phase of character development. Using XP to unlock staff-mana only makes sense once the cost of increasing attributes gets higher than 100 points.

I have also seen others argue that the wizard's first few hundred XP should be spent on DX, but I say put it on whatever makes sense to you.

[hcobb]

The basic Wizard rulebook enables a wizard to add 8 points of ST (or any other attribute) for only 100 XP each, but also includes a Staff spell that doesn't have mana.

The ITL rulebook charges much more (after the first two attributes). And also includes a Staff spell that has mana, which can be very cheap once ST starts costing 1000 XP per point.

My suggestion is that GMs ought to consider equipping mid-tier enemy wizards with say half a dozen points of mana to give them the chance to cast a few extra spells during the few seconds the players will suffer a witch to live, without treasure dropping a powerstone worth hundreds of gold pieces into their sticky fingers.

[Axly Suregrip]

Hi Plane,
See ITL page 45. Here you will see the XP cost per attribute point depends on how many attribute points you already have. So, someone with 37 points is looking to get their 38th point would need to spend 1000 XP. It is usually around 37 or 38 points that characters start spending points on Mana Staff or even purchasing additional talents/spells.

[Plane]

Originally Posted by Axly Suregrip

Hi Plane,
See ITL page 45. Here you will see the XP cost per attribute point depends on how many attribute points you already have.

ah okay hadn't noticed that change, the scaling cost system (reminds me of 3e GURPS) definitely puts things into perspective here

it also looks like pg 9 of ITL changed the ST recovery to time-based (1 per 15 minutes of rest if it's fatigue, sort of along the lines of the 1 per 10m FP recovery in gURPS) instead of the vague ~instantly back to full ST at the end of combat~ that the 70s/80s version used.

the benefit of First Aid explais why I see the Physicker skill in playthroughs, being able to cure 2 ST of injury per 5 minutes would be very useful. That's 6x as fast as you recover exhaustion ST, almost seems broken.

I'm not sure if this is a "per injury" cap though, like they can cancel out an unlimited amount of ST loss from damage doing merely 1 or 2 hits, but if it's a 3-hit wound they can only treat it 1 time for 2 ST and the other 1 ST loss has to recover via other means like the 1 per 2 days of rest, healing pot, or having a Master Physicker come along and upgrade the treatment?

Pg 10's "immediate action" seems like it should have some kind of timeline since combat could take varying lengths, maybe something like "you can survive 15 minutes" but perhaps subtract however many ST someone is in the negative from those minutes?

[hcobb]

You may need to check https://thefantasytrip.game/resources/errata/


The rulings I've seen is that a Physicker gets one healing per figure per combat. So if the target had taken three wounds of two points each then a Master Physicker with kit could heal three of those six hits with the remainder requiring time or healing potions.

[Axly Suregrip]

Yes to what Henry said.

Also note that a physicker can fix wounds, not fatigue. Resting fixes fatigue, not wounds.

[Steve Plambeck]

Of course the short answer to the original question is that you never would, unless you'd increased attributes previously to the point that spending XP on Staff mana became cost effective.

If like me you find this to be much too meta-gamey, alternative systems have been suggested in the House Rules forum. I started a thread on this myself a couple years ago here: http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread...ght=staff+mana

And elsewhere in the House Rules, alternative and simplified rules for charging and re-charging Staff mana were also talked about. That was basically just letting the Staff recover mana at the same rate the wizard recovered fatigue, but not at the same time the wizard recovered fatigue (as that would unbalance things). Essentially 1 point recovered every 15 minutes credited to either the wizard's fatigue or the Staff's "fatigue" (as long as the Staff was in hand the whole time), the destination of the recovered point being the wizard's choice.

[Bill_in_IN]

I concur with the replies to the OP.

A lower attribute point wizard gains far more from spending XP on ST as opposed to staff mana points with it becoming more economical as the attribute cost goes above the 200 point cost for a mana point.

It becomes more economical to spend 500 XP on one IQ point talents when the attributes start costing 600 XP. If the next talent for which your character needs costs two IQ points, the same is true for when your character is at 38 Attribute points.

I have shamelessly stolen a house rule from another GM that the first two talent points for a character only cost 250 XP each which would make it more economical one or two attributes earlier. The reasoning for this house rule is to help fill talent voids in a party while keeping the attribute totals more balanced as a character or group of characters develop. It basically promotes more talent diversity earlier in the development of a character. Thus far, I have seen this as a good thing that doesn't cause imbalances in game play.

The 5 levels of Staff spells in Legacy TFT are a new thing to this old Classic TFT player. I actually like them because it fills a void that I remember from Classic TFT in that most PC wizards didn't have a staff because there was little advantage to having one other than optics.

[Skarg]

Originally Posted by Plane

...
it also looks like pg 9 of ITL changed the ST recovery to time-based (1 per 15 minutes of rest if it's fatigue, sort of along the lines of the 1 per 10m FP recovery in gURPS) instead of the vague ~instantly back to full ST at the end of combat~ that the 70s/80s version used.

I'm not sure what you're thinking of about instant ST recovery, unless you mean Melee/Wizard, which just assume that there are however many days or weeks of rest are needed to heal up between battles. Original TFT/ITL was the same about 15 minute per point fatigue recovery.

Originally Posted by Plane

the benefit of First Aid explais why I see the Physicker skill in playthroughs, being able to cure 2 ST of injury per 5 minutes would be very useful. That's 6x as fast as you recover exhaustion ST, almost seems broken.

I'm not sure if this is a "per injury" cap though, like they can cancel out an unlimited amount of ST loss from damage doing merely 1 or 2 hits, but if it's a 3-hit wound they can only treat it 1 time for 2 ST and the other 1 ST loss has to recover via other means like the 1 per 2 days of rest, healing pot, or having a Master Physicker come along and upgrade the treatment?

As others wrote, Physickers can't heal fatigue at all. Only wounds, and injury greater than they heal will need to be healed by rest (1 / 2 days) or healing potion (expensive, rare, fragile, always in demand).

Originally Posted by Plane

Pg 10's "immediate action" seems like it should have some kind of timeline since combat could take varying lengths, maybe something like "you can survive 15 minutes" but perhaps subtract however many ST someone is in the negative from those minutes?

Yes. ITL says people fully die after 1 hour at negative ST, but the official rules go for simplicity, and a GM can always add house rules or make rulings. There's an old article in Interplay about "Physicker Revival" that I'd rather use than the Legacy death rule, where there are rolls involved and the amount of damage matters, etc.