Additional options for Ablative DR

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Flowergarden

By parry I meant parrying spells. Not weapons. (I always think of small wands, for some reason)

I'll consider it. Melee-range spells you can Parry the Wand normally, but ranged ones are treated as missile weapons and thus normally not subject to Parrying. I could see being able to do so at -5 to skill (-2.5 to Parry), to mimic Cosmic +50% on Parry (which would indeed allow it to Parry missile weapons).

Originally Posted by Flowergarden

Rings and bracelets are my preferred casting implements. What about staffs and... Totem poles? For bigger punch) or to accumulate more QP

In the current rough draft, worn Wands have Acc 0 and are ineligible to be made Fine (Accurate). One-handed Wands instead have Acc 1, while two-handed Wands have Acc 2, and both are eligible for Fine (Accurate) - which is applied to the mundane base weapon, and thus tends to be more common on wooden Wands than metal ones (as the cost for making a weapon Fine (Accurate) scales with its base cost). More "ornamental" wooden Wands that are ill-suited for melee combat are also available, which enjoy doubled Acc but cannot be used to strike, only to sling spells (or deliver Touch-range spells) and if they can Parry it will be at a penalty, representing deflecting the attack with magic (probably at -1, akin to Aggressive Parry - but they specifically use a "push" variant of the normal spell, and thus don't damage the limb/weapon they are Parrying).

Originally Posted by Flowergarden

About duration of mage armor. Depends on what are you going for. If you want mages to go with MA all the time (except maybe when you sleep) - no duration.

Mage Armor is obvious, and also makes you easier to spot (you've got a glowing force field around you, although this doesn't normally produce any light). So socially it's considered the same as walking around in armor (which most people interpret as you looking for trouble, plus it automatically draws attention to you), and it's also a liability any time you don't want to be immediately visible. I don't want mages (and their allies, see later) just always being under the effect, but I also feel it's something that a mage who thinks there may be trouble soon could use without having a lot of worry about it running out before anything happens. I'm starting to think maybe a duration of 30 minutes to an hour may be appropriate.

Originally Posted by Flowergarden

Only problem, shouldn't alternative Mage armor stop you from casting spells till you remove it?

Mage Armor is actually a spell, not simply an Alternate Ability, that grants the effect - to oneself, or to a nearby ally (or even enemy - you can opt to grant someone DR 0 Mage Armor to "mark" them to your allies). There's a lot of handwaving in the build for it, of course. Essentially, it takes the concept that a typical 1d Innate Attack has the same cost as DR 1, and uses this to justify granting DR 1 per 1d of your base thr (based on QN rather than ST); the handwaving is largely that you can use it on other people rather than yourself, plus that you can actually replenish it (casting it again restores it to full). So the base DR of Mage Armor is typically rather low, but you can take a skill penalty to increase it. My plan is to shoot for the DR it grants to have a cost of around [4]/level* so I can be comfortable having it be a -4 per +1 DR, or -1 per +1 step in the damage progression (1d, 1d+1, 1d+2, 2d-1, 2d, etc). So someone with QN 15, for 1d+1 thr, would normally grant DR 1 but can boost this to DR 2 at -3 to skill (or by using 4 charges to cast it instead of just 1, for a net +0 to skill), DR 3 at -7 to skill, DR 4 at -11 to skill, etc. I considered capping this at some multiple, but honestly with it being -4 per step, it should limit itself pretty readily.

*In the current draft - which hasn't been updated to account for the numbers in this thread - is Damage Reduction (Force Field +20%; Ablative 1:5 -30%; Obvious, +1 to detect -10%) [4]. That doesn't account for it actually having Hardened Ablative (at the time I figured that should just be the same price as the same level of Ablative, but then I realized it was actually detrimental if you have Ablative 1:1 and beneficial for Ablative 1:20; I'm not sure yet if I'll stick to what I came up with in the first post or if I'll adjust things). I also hadn't originally intended for it to have Reactive, but I'm leaning toward that possibility now.

[Flowergarden]

Originally Posted by Varyon

In the current rough draft, worn Wands have Acc 0 and are ineligible to be made Fine (Accurate).

Why not cost more to be fine? It already has accuracy 0. I imagine some aristocrats would love that. Yes, they are kinda concealed carry weapons, but still.
[QUOTE]
Mage Armor is obvious, and also makes you easier to spot (you've got a glowing force field around you, although this doesn't normally produce any light). So socially it's considered the same as walking around in armor (which most people interpret as you looking for trouble, plus it automatically draws attention to you), and it's also a liability any time you don't want to be immediately visible. [QUOTE] I didn't think its visible. Social aspect is enough in this situation then.
1/hour is good enough cost for using magic at all. Like when you use psi, you lose 1fp per some timeframe depending on how active it is.

Mage Armor is actually a spell, not simply an Alternate Ability, that grants the effect - to oneself, or to a nearby ally (or even enemy - you can opt to grant someone DR 0 Mage Armor to "mark" them to your allies). There's a lot of handwaving in the build for it, of course.

Ah, okay, make sense. I just made something of a tradeoff when tinker with something similar. The more armor you have - the less damage (or other spell effects).
Literally your ability lose points the more points you put in DR