Missile Spells and casting time reduction / multiplication

[Plane]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

With regular Fireball it's just a roll (with Shock penalties) to avoid dropping it on his own foot.

It never actually specifies foot though, and that wouldn't make sense if for example you were holding a fireball in a Lying posture.

Originally Posted by kirbwarrior

Rereading it, I think I was thinking of the 3e version where it gives examples like Stone Missile just falls to the ground but FIreball lights up your arm. I'd likely just have it affect hand because it's already there (you're effectively holding it at bay) but there's all sorts of ways to do it.

This idea basically looks at fireball as having 2 components: the initial creation which summons the magical energy, and the ongoing maintenance which keeps that energy inside an invisible orb that you are able to handle.

I always thought it could be fun to rework those with ongoing maintenance costs (if you don't pay them, it explodes in your hand) and instead of "I make my fireball vanish for free" (this seems designed to coddle mages) actually force mages to do stuff like... cast "Extinguish Fire" to make their fireball vanish without dropping it and setting the wood floorboards ablaze.

One comparison you might make is casting "Throw Spell" on a non-missile spell such as "Ignite Fire" (M72) which is sort of like how the spell Ember (Least of Spells pg 9) works (except it can only do 1st-tier IF not tiers 2-4)

Originally Posted by kirbwarrior

Also, wow, you can't cast while holding one. I had totally forgotten about that. Wow missile spells have so many downsides.

Yeah there's some calculated workarounds for that I've seen proposed.

One was to have a friend cast Suspend Spell on your fireball (you can't cast it yourself!) which would prevent you from throwing it for the duration, but at least you could get it back once Suspend is ended.

Doing that sort of reminds me of Naruto using his Shadow Clone to help beef up his Rasengan, but in this case you're actually just parking it.

This raises a LOT of questions though, like:
1) can counterspell/suspend work on missile spells
2) if they do, what are effects does it make the missile vanish (both) make it immobile (suspend?), make it mobile-but-unthrowable (and still can't leave your hand), negate the containment field and it hurts the holder...

One of the major problems I have understanding Suspend is how it affects maintenance/duration. It "nullifies" an ongoing spell but presumably the spell is still ongoing (ie you could still cast Counterspell on a suspended spell, you don't have to wait for Suspend Spell to end first to Counter the suspended one)

We know the result of it ending for whatever reason is:

“picks up where it left off” and resumes operation.

But it might be unclear how much "operation" encompasses.

Knowing a spell is suspended is automatic if it is "maintained" but even then it's not clear if that means "I know when I pay my FP that it's not doing anything" or "I immediately know because I'm constantly incurring that -1 penalty for split focus"

There's also that weird issue as to whether ongoing spells like missile spells are maintained or not. You're not paying any energy to do it (kind of like if you had a spell costing 1 energy to maintain at 15 skill for -1 cost) but it's even more crippling than a usual maintained spell since you're "can't cast anything else" as opposed to "cast at -1" (most maintained spells) or "cast at -3" (concentration spells)

One new factor is also how there's a perk which sort of upgrades missiles to "concentration spell level" where Magical Styles allows you to cast other spells while holding a missile, but at a huge -3 penalty similar to Concentration Spells.

That makes it seem even more "maintenancy" even though there's still no ongoing maintenance cost for holding a missile spell (IE you could keep a fireball in your hand a million years as long as you never fell asleep, no cost!)

The easiest fix IMO is just to re-imagine missile spells as having durations and maintenace costs but make it something easily affordable like "1 energy per hour" so it doesn't depower the mages who like to walk around with them.

This also finally allows combos with things like "Lend Spell" or "Maintain Spell" which you can't really do w/ missiles since they don't have casting/maintenance costs.

If you did maintain spell on a missile IMO you couldn't throw it until you regained control (remember you no longer own something with Maintain Spell) which would require using "Steal Spell" to regain control of your parked spell.

It being just as easy to maintain a 1d fireball as a 100d fireball seems sorta weird though. Rather than increasing costs I'm wondering if higher-dice fireballs could have progressively shorter intervals.

Like maybe they cost 1 energy to maintain (regardless of power) but the duration is "sixty minus dice" so 59 minutes for 2d fireball, 58 minutes for 3d fireball, etc.

This in theory caps fireballs at 59d (60d would have duration 0m) so you could probably do "minimum 1 second" or else set up some kind of non-linear regression in duration.

That or just say "maintenance cost is energy equal to dice" (ie the amount to make the fireball is amount to maintain it) but don't obligate them to pay this all at once, just say "it's due every hour and you can pay at any time during that hour".

This kind of thing would also be interesting to try for other spells too, allowing mages to pay for things in smaller chunks.

Like for example instead of paying 3 energy per hour for Spellguard 3, you could let the mage pay 1 energy every 20 minutes if they wanted to. Some kind of flexibility option where in exchange for "I don't need a massive FP pool" you lose "it lasts longer without payments".

This doesn't really matter much with Maintain Spell because you can't regen that FP pool anyway, more a consideration for actively maintained ones.

[Dalin]

Originally Posted by seycyrus

Are there any players/GMs (maybe even game designers) that can relate their actual experiences in a fantasy world where 6d (and greater) missile spells are tossed around?

I have run and played in a number of gritty fantasy campaigns where magic was relatively rare. I can't recall a single instance where an NPC mage killed a PC at the beginning of a battle with a held missile. There were definitely missiles ready from time to time, but there are multiple failure points: a roll to hit with various penalties for light, range, etc., followed by a defense roll for the PC. As a player, if we spotted a mage with a ready missile, we typically spread out (in case it was explosive) and attempted to neutralize them as our first priority. I always thought it added a fun bit of tension.

A group of thugs with ready crossbows always seemed a lot more frightening. (It takes a lot less skill to fire a crossbow; the impaling multiplier is scary; they can all fire at once; and they could use crossbows above their ST.) I've definitely seen a healthy PC die from a single crossbow bolt!

[seycyrus]

Originally Posted by Dalin

I have run and played in a number of gritty fantasy campaigns where magic was relatively rare. ...

Thank you for sharing your experience.

I think I am concerned about the "Harm Severity" portion of the Risk Matrix. That's why I am trying to gather data about the "Probability" portion.