BattleMaster Community
Toms Other Games => SpellMaster III => SM General Discussion => Topic started by: Tom on September 23, 2011, 09:47:59 AM
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With a bit of experience now, I'd like to collect some feedback on the strength of spells, i.e. Effect, Target, Duration values. What do you think?
I'll lead with a thought of my own - it seems to be too easy to hurt people seriously. Maybe instant death should be moved to 5, while 4 turns into mortally wounded, or something?
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I'll lead with a thought of my own - it seems to be too easy to hurt people seriously. Maybe instant death should be moved to 5, while 4 turns into mortally wounded, or something?
Agreed, I was just thinking that as I read about Dynamis accidentally killing Astalos. A Power Level 12 spell with the ability to instantly kill someone? That's much too easy.
Perhaps you could spread out power levels a bit, so instead of 1-5 we have 1-10 and have more subtle changes between the levels? Then keep everything else the same. So progression will be slower, but actually more meaningful in the effects that your character can do.
That would certainly solve the other issue I have of durations: they're too rigid. I wanted to make a spell that lasted about 6 hours but I only had the option of 1 hour or 1 day. I had to go for a day but it just felt wrong.
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Agreed, I was just thinking that as I read about Dynamis accidentally killing Astalos. A Power Level 12 spell with the ability to instantly kill someone? That's much too easy.
Perhaps you could spread out power levels a bit, so instead of 1-5 we have 1-10 and have more subtle changes between the levels? Then keep everything else the same. So progression will be slower, but actually more meaningful in the effects that your character can do.
That would certainly solve the other issue I have of durations: they're too rigid. I wanted to make a spell that lasted about 6 hours but I only had the option of 1 hour or 1 day. I had to go for a day but it just felt wrong.
I don't want to change the categories as that would also require changing the math - and PL being a ^3 curve, that would mean most effects are out of reach for a very long time.
I don't see the duration category as rigid at all. Consider it brackets. You went right picking "1 day" for a 6 hour effect. Remember that a longer duration is not always better. Basically, the categories are just there for the math part. Nothing stops you from making a spell with a target of exactly 3 humans, either, picking the "group" category.
And yes, the accidental killing is something... well... let's just say one thing we all learn is that pretty much every magician who wants to live will constantly have a few protection spells on him. Since magic can not be detected, that's perfectly fine and not a giveaway. Note that there is no deterioration in spells anymore (I removed the "interaction" part from the rules), so a protection spell once cast is good against many attacks, which should counter the problem of having to constantly waste a lot of energy on refreshing protections.
On interactions, I think a new rule is asked for: We have two basic categories of bases - physical and non-physical. Each should be able to defend against attacks from the same category within reason.
And we have a problem with energy/concentration regeneration. Astalos probably exhausted himself there, but thanks to the whole roleplaying taking a lot longer than the action, he had regenerated some when it was his turn again. Or players could simply wait with posting their next roleplay until they have regenerated enough.
Maybe we need a game mechanic of characters entering an "action scene", which halts regneration, storing everything that would have regenerated and when the character exits the action scene, he gets it all at once (so nothing is lost, but people don't regenerate in game-time seconds what should've taken hours or days) ?
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And we have a problem with energy/concentration regeneration. Astalos probably exhausted himself there, but thanks to the whole roleplaying taking a lot longer than the action, he had regenerated some when it was his turn again. Or players could simply wait with posting their next roleplay until they have regenerated enough.
Maybe we need a game mechanic of characters entering an "action scene", which halts regneration, storing everything that would have regenerated and when the character exits the action scene, he gets it all at once (so nothing is lost, but people don't regenerate in game-time seconds what should've taken hours or days) ?
I was just thinking about that problem earlier, and I think that's an excellent solution to it.
So will there be a button or something we hit to indicate that our character has entered or left an "action scene"?
Also, a practical consideration for discussion: assuming he hadn't subsequently gotten killed, would getting knocked out have removed Astalos from the action scene, thus allowing him to start regenerating as soon as he was unconscious? Or would he have to wait until his body was removed from the scene?
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Agreed, I was just thinking that as I read about Dynamis accidentally killing Astalos. A Power Level 12 spell with the ability to instantly kill someone? That's much too easy.
It wasn't too much of an accident. =D Dynamis had no way of knowing that the spellcaster had no protection.
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I'll lead with a thought of my own - it seems to be too easy to hurt people seriously. Maybe instant death should be moved to 5, while 4 turns into mortally wounded, or something?
Agreed, Dynamis could've wiped them all out without breaking a sweat. The two Earthen Spikes and Cantrip only cost 10 mana because of how expensive it was with such a low earth skill and water. If I'd used fire or air it would've been 8 mana to kill the four templars and the inquisitor. He still has enough mana to kill another 20 people in the crowd.
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I think Mortally Wounded sounds good at 4.
And I'd thought of the protection spell thing on my first read-through of the game, was hoping no one else would notice...
>.>
<.<
What about having your energy reserves provide some innate defense as well? If I get hit by a power level 12 spell, and have 12 energy hanging around, I can burn that energy to negate the effect of the spell on me? Incredibly expensive defense mechanism, so everyone would much rather use protection spells, but still.
Also, the "action time" thing makes sense to me.
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And we have a problem with energy/concentration regeneration. Astalos probably exhausted himself there, but thanks to the whole roleplaying taking a lot longer than the action, he had regenerated some when it was his turn again. Or players could simply wait with posting their next roleplay until they have regenerated enough.
Maybe we need a game mechanic of characters entering an "action scene", which halts regneration, storing everything that would have regenerated and when the character exits the action scene, he gets it all at once (so nothing is lost, but people don't regenerate in game-time seconds what should've taken hours or days) ?
I'm not opposed to this idea, it would also be relatively easy to just have people post their actual concentration/mana used and self police, but a delay would work as easily, ultimately I think a certamen is really the only place where we need a hard stop. Everyone else in a scene will actively be collecting power as well. I fully expect that concentration will ultimately be the limiting factor for most casters. Hence I myself dumped a lot into two intents and spread the rest out among the bases.
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I'm not opposed to this idea, it would also be relatively easy to just have people post their actual concentration/mana used and self police, but a delay would work as easily, ultimately I think a certamen is really the only place where we need a hard stop. Everyone else in a scene will actively be collecting power as well. I fully expect that concentration will ultimately be the limiting factor for most casters. Hence I myself dumped a lot into two intents and spread the rest out among the bases.
Personally, I'd have a hard time keeping track of what I'm supposed to have.
And a hard time limiting myself to it.
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What about having your energy reserves provide some innate defense as well? If I get hit by a power level 12 spell, and have 12 energy hanging around, I can burn that energy to negate the effect of the spell on me? Incredibly expensive defense mechanism, so everyone would much rather use protection spells, but still.
I'm not a fan of any kind of "inate" or automatic stuff. I'd much prefer magic to be dangerous and have people actively think about defenses.
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Well most of my protection spells were either physical protection (fire, water, air, earth) or non physical (death,body,mind).
For energy/concentration, I like the idea of having a button for 'entering combat'. But then, people can leave to regenerate.
About the spells, I see that our current system for duration is instant - seconds/ a minute - an hour - a day - over a day. I have no problem with that really. But for the other two, I think we need to adjust them.
If I have 5/5/1 spell, I can use them by level 25. With a spell like that, I can instantly turn an entire village into ashes. This is insane. Maybe for each level of effect and target there should be a restriction. Or we can add a feature I guess.
For the putting a restriction method, we can limit each level of categories with something like the total sum of the powerlevel for your skill must reach a certain point to be able to use level 4 or 5 effect and target? For level three =25 total powerlevel, level four = 50, level five =75?
Or we can add a feature to limit each caster's capability. For every 5 or 10 levels of total powerlevel you reach, you gain a point to put either to increase your target level or effect level?
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If I have 5/5/1 spell, I can use them by level 25. With a spell like that, I can instantly turn an entire village into ashes. This is insane.
No, it's really cool. SpellMaster has always been a game where the characters wield insane amounts of power. There's a reason they once ruled the world. And PL 25 isn't all that easy to reach - if you focus entirely on, say Harm/Fire, you will be very, very vulnerable. Your enemies will exploit that vulnerability and you will die.
All I want is to make sure that character deaths aren't commonplace.
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a good point. lol now that I think about it my character died like that. no protection spells. I didn't have that many mind spells either and I put all my points into mind. I don't know why I did that.
p.s: I need my protection spells to be accepted!
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Quick poll/ruling- Counterspelling or diverting/modifying a spell cast by someone else I'm assuming would fall under "Change" but what about the base? Would it always need to match the base of the original spell?
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Quick poll/ruling- Counterspelling or diverting/modifying a spell cast by someone else I'm assuming would fall under "Change" but what about the base? Would it always need to match the base of the original spell?
I think Tom said that something like this would need a base of "Magic" and that isn't going to happen.
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I think Tom said that something like this would need a base of "Magic" and that isn't going to happen.
I vaguely recall this, but can't find the exact post on the subject. To clarify, the thought was that if someone cast a Fireball, in theory, someone with Change Fire should be able to modify the spell to become Fireflies before it hits. But like I said, I'm assuming you'd have to create a new modification spell for each and every base. There wouldn't be a catch-all (I think that's where a base "Magic" would come in).
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I vaguely recall this, but can't find the exact post on the subject. To clarify, the thought was that if someone cast a Fireball, in theory, someone with Change Fire should be able to modify the spell to become Fireflies before it hits. But like I said, I'm assuming you'd have to create a new modification spell for each and every base. There wouldn't be a catch-all (I think that's where a base "Magic" would come in).
No, not really. A Fireball has an Instant duration, but cast times (which we've ignored so far) are generally larger than Instant. Casting your counter would take longer than it takes for the Fireball to hit.
There's no rule there yet, because that's going to be part of the Magic Duel rules, but basically, casting isn't instant, and you can't just throw 3, 4, 5 spells at someone without them being able to also cast something in your general direction.
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A good example of what Tom is talking about is his and my duels. The timing is a bit funny, but you can see that our characters react to eachother's spells. Though my fellow is tricksy and hides his casting with his book, or has made other such means as talking lowly in a large crowd.
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Well I couldn't do much with spells I have. They are mostly nothing to do with my skills :P. GMs probably have lists of good low level spells. Over half of my spells cannot be casted at the moment. Maybe GMs should accept low level spells over high level spells for now?
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Or maybe you guys could start doing what you're supposed to do - trade?
Getting new spells really is a major part of the game. I agree we have too many spells on the not-yet-accepted list, but since we're discussing a couple changes currently, it's understandable that we don't want to do them twice.
I feel like we're getting pretty close, and then there's going to be a fresh start. When it launches for real, remember that you absolutely want to get a good spell collection, and trading spells with others is one way to do that.
Also, I think we should start people out with more than 5 spells. Maybe 10.
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That's the problem I was having as well. None of my Control spells have gone through yet, which severely limits the ability of my guy to do anything because Spontaneous castings are 1. so random in effect and 2. considerably lower in power than spells you can cast unless you're willing to accept a lot of shifts.
And yeah, trading works when you have compatible skills (because I'm pretty sure most of us have been designing spells to fit our skills, or skills to fit our spells, I suppose), but none of those Harm Body spells getting tossed around do my mind-control character any good :)
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Based on reading the test thread, I'd say that any magician who depends on spontaneous magic to do anything useful is a moron.
I've been trying to follow the test thread, but there's still so much of it that I just can't understand. I feel it's stuff that we should understand, too. Like the mechanics of storing power in items. Or loren's cryptic comment about using a book to mask the fact that he was the one casting spells. Maybe I just need to sit down and re-read the rules again, because stuff like that just totally confuses me.
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Spontaneous castings are 1. so random in effect and 2. considerably lower in power than spells you can cast unless you're willing to accept a lot of shifts.
If you up your skill level in what you want to spontaneously cast, you should be fairly safe. You can also work it out so that even with shifts, you can pretty much get what you want done. Just a few checks with mine and I get this:
spontaneous magic (Harm/Death - 5-2-1) (2 shifts)
spontaneous magic (Harm/Death - 3-2-2) (2 shifts)
So with just a bit of overcasting and some creative descriptions about what you want to happen, you should be able to kinda get what you want. So if I wanted to seriously wound my opponent I might go for the first one instead so that the worst that can happen is that effect is brought down to a 3. Best that can happen is my opponent has a very seriously wounded hand that is gradually wounded over an hour.
Of course you'd have to describe what your character wants very well so that the person picking it up has something to work with. Plus you have to hope they listen to your character's intentions at least a little bit. But using only spontaneous spells is entirely possible.
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Only if they decide to listen to you, which they explicitly don't have to. And it's especially bad for stuff like control or change, because it could easily turn from "mind control all those soldiers to not attack me" to "mind control the captain of the soldiers to say that I murdered his sister".
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Only if they decide to listen to you, which they explicitly don't have to. And it's especially bad for stuff like control or change, because it could easily turn from "mind control all those soldiers to not attack me" to "mind control the captain of the soldiers to say that I murdered his sister".
Right. Given proper parameters, it would be feasible (and possibly quite cool) to play a caster that routinely casts spontaneously. But given that the results are left to the other players (some who might even be directly/indirectly involved in the same scene), and given that the majority of us are inclined to get a hearty guffaw out of the comical misadventures of others (hello, OT?), I'm inclined to avoid it for the most part.
So far, I'm treating it like the "ooh, let's see what this button does" feature but wouldn't rely on it for anything important.
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Right. Given proper parameters, it would be feasible (and possibly quite cool) to play a caster that routinely casts spontaneously. But given that the results are left to the other players (some who might even be directly/indirectly involved in the same scene), and given that the majority of us are inclined to get a hearty guffaw out of the comical misadventures of others (hello, OT?), I'm inclined to avoid it for the most part.
So far, I'm treating it like the "ooh, let's see what this button does" feature but wouldn't rely on it for anything important.
I plan to do just this, my character is intentially restricted to not having any spells. However the skill distribution I picked means spontaneous is a bit of a gamble right now, guess Rituals will be his thing until he has more experiance
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(hello, OT?)
Curses! you've discovered my nefarious plan! ;-)
Seriously, though. I was considering playing a Three Stooges-type fool who does everything spontaneously, but I think he'd be too deadly to himself and everyone around him.
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Maybe the writer should be able to choose half of the shifts?
Like if it has 4 shifts the caster can choose 2 and the other person can choose remaining 2?
For three, let the caster choose 1 and 2 for the other person?
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I might make a rule that spontaneous magic is the only kind that is quick enough to be used as reactive, i.e. after the other guy has cast a spell in your direction. Also, that unless shifts are involved, it will mostly do what you wanted it to, at least it can't do something entirely different (as with the captain example).
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Well I couldn't do much with spells I have. They are mostly nothing to do with my skills :P. GMs probably have lists of good low level spells. Over half of my spells cannot be casted at the moment. Maybe GMs should accept low level spells over high level spells for now?
Everything my character did could've been done with four/five spells (Earthen Shield, Lightning Bolt, Ball Lightning, Air Shield, Breath of Air) . I just wanted to play around with less than optimal skills to see how it ate away at mana, and the one RP w/ Unhand Me was a GM sort of thing that Tom over-ruled. But yes we have access to all the spells. We could trade...
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Also, that unless shifts are involved, it will mostly do what you wanted it to, at least it can't do something entirely different (as with the captain example).
Don't you always have at least one shift with spontaneous magic?
When a spell discharges into something else - like it did for Zuno with the mind bullets - is that basically shifting points from the primary discharge into the secondary? As in a 2-2-2 with 3 shifts could produce two 1-1-1 discharges?
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Don't you always have at least one shift with spontaneous magic?
Nope, read my latest RP in the test thread. I managed to get a spontaneous spell with no shifts. It was only PL4 though, once I bumped it to 5 it had a shift.
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Don't you always have at least one shift with spontaneous magic?
When a spell discharges into something else - like it did for Zuno with the mind bullets - is that basically shifting points from the primary discharge into the secondary? As in a 2-2-2 with 3 shifts could produce two 1-1-1 discharges?
http://lemuria.org/SM3/welcome/free
shifts are within the spell details - the sum stays the same. So a 2-2-2 spell with 1 shift could become a 1-3-2, 1-2-3, 3-1-2, 3-2-1, 2-1-3 or 2-3-1 spell. Intent and Base always stay unchanged. However, instead of shifting inside the spell, or discharging into something with a PL of the number of shifts.