Weaning people off of the Martial power source.

[Orion]

K, that doesn't make sense,

For one thing, if you can't have spells until you're a wizard, what would the prerequisities to wizard-dom be?

[God_of_Awesome]

At least 10 Int.

[CatharzGodfoot]

So I'm talkin' at a wall aren't I? If my idea is bad, can somebody tell me so I'll stop wasting our precious time?

1) Turn a person you touch into a newt.
2) Turn a person you point at into a newt.
3) Turn a group of people into newts.

You don't need 'I turn you into a fruit fly!'.

[Avoraciopoctules]

K, that doesn't make sense,

For one thing, if you can't have spells until you're a wizard, what would the prerequisities to wizard-dom be?

Magic Abilities. So you take Magic Missile, Evoke Darkness, Produce Rabbit, Handkerchief Manipulation, and Dread Rectomancy.

In each case, you opt to select [Magic] over the other tags for the power. Since you aren't a Wizard, and are feeling uncreative, you decide that your magic comes from a wand you bought in a store and are training with.

But wait! Now you have 5 Magic powers! A Wizard is you! To celebrate this fact, you decide that you will use Spellcasting as the source for your Dread Rectomancy, explaining it as having learned Stinking Cloud. You may or may not decide to toss the wand and learn all other 4 powers as spells too.

[Red_Rob]

I honestly don't get that chain of logic. You just can't get from "abilities are not limited" to "abilities will be limited." Its like you don't believe me when I say that.

So let me say this in baby-talk:

1. Abilities are not limited by class.

2. "Class" is a set of benefits you get for taking a fixed number of abilities.

3. Wizard is a class.

4. "Spells" is a alternate thematic cost you can use to pay for "magic" abilities. Like every other thematic cost, it will will have its own merits and flaws.

5. You get access to spells as a potential thematic cost by having the Wizard class.

That's all, but let me say it again:

At no point am I saying that any level-appropriate abilities are limited to certain classes. Exclusive flavor abilities will be necessarily limited to certain classes.

Every class will have flavor abilities as a way to make them special. Wizards are going to have spell-related flavor benefits. One of those will be "spells" as a power source so that wizards won't have to do stuff like graft demon hands onto their arm stumps to use Plane Shift.

So as a sample, lets say that I'm a high powered Fighting guy. I want to get Plane Shift. I might have a magic item with the [Extraplanar] tag, I might want to make oaths to any gods who deal with that, I might want to find out that I have demon blood in me, I might want a mage casting it for me, or some other thematic cost off the list. One of my choices is NOT spells, because I am not a Wizard.

If I was a Wizard, one of my choices would be Spells.

Some classes will have exclusive flavor abilities. For example, fire resistance as a class ability will be exclusive to Efreet-born (but of course, as a magic item ability it will be common). This means that the the only people who can run naked through lava caves are Efreet-born, and everyone else needs to wear Fire Rings.

But it is 3am in the morning, so I'm off to bed.

Okay, at this point i don't see what the difference is between the classes other than flavour. I mean, if i can choose to be a fighter and gain efreeti powers at level 5 that lets me shoot a fireball, how am i different to a wizard that picks fireball as his 3rd level spell? Does the class i pick actually make any difference?

If not then thats fine, but there's really no point in having a class based system. Your character is defined by the powers you pick, this class flavour thing seems really extraneous unless I'm missing something.

[Username17]

K, that doesn't make sense,

For one thing, if you can't have spells until you're a wizard, what would the prerequisities to wizard-dom be?

My objection as well. I am totally on board with "class" being a source of flavor abilities that you select only after unlocking it by having selected your major powers. In such a model, a character "is a wizard" because they have a certain amount of spells, and being "a wizard" gives them flavor abilities like arcane mark and find familiar that Wizards are supposed to have, but which are not a fair trade for real powers like lightning bolt or invisibility.

I'm fine with that honestly. And K is sometimes talking about that. But he's also talking about it interchangeably as if you had to be a Wizard first and only then be allowed to take Spells. It's nonsense when you try to wrap your mind around the whole post, because A requires B and B requires A. It's ouroboros.

-Username17

[Avoraciopoctules]

But he's also talking about it interchangeably as if you had to be a Wizard first and only then be allowed to take Spells. It's nonsense when you try to wrap your mind around the whole post, because A requires B and B requires A. It's ouroboros.

So what's the problem with doing magic with a wand until you have learned enough to ditch it and use magic words and bat excrement instead?

[Username17]

But he's also talking about it interchangeably as if you had to be a Wizard first and only then be allowed to take Spells. It's nonsense when you try to wrap your mind around the whole post, because A requires B and B requires A. It's ouroboros.

So what's the problem with doing magic with a wand until you have learned enough to ditch it and use magic words and bat excrement instead?

That's fine for a character, but it's not a good or coherent system. If classes require abilities and abilities require classes, then no one is ever going to get anywhere.

---

Now that being said, there's a system sort of like that catch 22 slated in Black Forest. The idea is that you can develop new abilities in play and that those new abilities have to be "foreshadowed." The easiest way to foreshadow an ability is to simply have it be associated with your current class. A pig farmer is considered to have every [pig farmer] ability foreshadowed, so they are on firm ground if they want to spontaneously pull a Pig Farmer ability in the middle of an adventure. If they want to pull some other ability, they have to foreshadow it from some other source. Which could include other party members having it or simply announcing ahead of time that it was something you were working on.

But you can't reserve spellcasting for Wizards, because this sentence no verb.

-Username17

[K]

I'm fine with that honestly. And K is sometimes talking about that. But he's also talking about it interchangeably as if you had to be a Wizard first and only then be allowed to take Spells. It's nonsense when you try to wrap your mind around the whole post, because A requires B and B requires A. It's ouroboros.

Or not.

People are going to change out sources all the time. Lightning spears will get broken, people will be unhappy with being Demonspawn and want a cleansing ritual, and Bando the Fire Mage will get eaten by a manticore. Whatever. People should have the ability to change out sources because they will want to and need to.

Then people will trade out sources. IF you are a Wizard, one of your options is "spells."

This is A -> B, and B -> C.

Example:

5 magic abilities -> can become a Wizard.
If you are a Wizard -> you can change out the source of your magic abilities to "spells."

Not a big deal. You become a Wizard and change out your source on your magic powers. It may not feel "Wizard-ish" for someone to learn magic with items or something, and then learn to access that power by learning and practicing intellectual exercises, but that's merely a question of flavor and personal preference.

[Orion]

So you want PCs not to be able to have "spells" until they reach a certain power level (the one where they have enough ability slots to get N [magic] ones," but when they get there they can retroactively make all their old powers, spells.

First of all, this doesn't address your original claim that you didn't want all PCs to turn into wizards. It's manifestly obvious that in this system, as the number of abilities possessed goes to infinity (or, goes to, say 12, if being a wizard requries 5 magic abilities), every PC will become a wizard.

Furthermore, the flavor concern is inexplicable. There's no reason for "wizards" to have pre-reqs because you're not trying to foce wizards to rely on things other than spells; a pure-"spell" character is perfectly acceptable as a high-level concept.

What's weirder still, the pre-reqs, being mechanical rather than flavor, don't make a coherent claim about how one becomes a wizard in setting. If it required 5 MAGIC ITEM abilities, it would be reasonable to say that wizards begin as apprentices learning how to handle magic items, and thus developing the theoretical knowledge that ends up letting them cast spells. If it requried 5 BLOODLINE abilities, then spellcasting could be defined as the academic of art of manipulating inherent energy to unnatural purposes. If it required 5 PACT abilities, it would make sense to talk about spellcasting as the manipulation of leyline or channeling of cosmic forces.

But if I can qualify as a "wizard" because I got Fire Resistance as a Demon Bloodline, Lightning Bolt as a magic spear, Neutralize poison as an "NPC attendant," Water Walking as a "gift of the water god," and See invisible as a "drank from the Well of Knowledge," ... then... being a wizard has no consistent or comprehensible flavor.

[God_of_Awesome]

My other suggestion is that Fighter and other martial classes should more easily gain the ability to make their own magic items then Wizards.

My flavoring has also been the usage of runes; ala dwarves. You don't see many dwarven wizard but you any weapon made by dwarves is going to rock so hard everyone will want it. Part of that is craftman ship and the other is their mastery of runes. Physical carvings that don't take any spellcaster ability. In fact, other then the need of Knowledge (Magic of some sort), they would benefit from lack of spellcasting.

Sugestion two; as the thread says, fuck Fighters and the horses they rode in on. You can have some fighter esque, but their class is always something like Samurai, which use the spirit of their ancestors to empower themselves, Barbarians, who simply hulk out, Knights, who are magic for some odd reason, Monk, who know kung-fu, and any number of martial-esgue classes that are really weeaboo fightan mages.

Suggestion three; up the ante on the martial ability. Fuck realism and the horse it rode in on. Fighter can do all sorts of crazy bullshit like deflect lasers, make magic weapons, run so fast it's like teleporting, give magic defenses the general FUCK YOU. How? Either make it straight up the class abilities OR make it into feats.

[Username17]

Those would be the three options so far discussed, yeah.

• Make "non-spellcasters" into gadgeteers.
• Force "non-spellcasters" to get spells at some level.
• Let people do apeshit stuff equivalent to spells for no reason.

Any of them will work. K is currently trying to convince us that through the magic of rapidly moving cups and balls around he can not quite commit to any of them and have things still somehow work out. I am... unconvinced.

-Username17

[God_of_Awesome]

Yeah, so am I. I bet'd what he's talking about would make a great system with it's own unique flavoring and underground cult following, but it doesn't seem DnD-ish to me.

[Grek]

Option four: Declare that no class gets plot device powers as class abilities. Anyone wanting some plot device powers to further the plot has to use plot related rituals from a hopefully not shitty ritual system, talk with a plot-related NPC or otherwise plot their way into getting it.

[God_of_Awesome]

The 4ed approach. I didn't really like the ritual system in 4ed.

Edit: Although for different arbitrary reasons. I do like a couple things about it.

[K]

So you want PCs not to be able to have "spells" until they reach a certain power level (the one where they have enough ability slots to get N [magic] ones," but when they get there they can retroactively make all their old powers, spells.

First of all, this doesn't address your original claim that you didn't want all PCs to turn into wizards. It's manifestly obvious that in this system, as the number of abilities possessed goes to infinity (or, goes to, say 12, if being a wizard requries 5 magic abilities), every PC will become a wizard.

I've already mentioned that your abilities can only be used once to apply for a class. Some people will start as Fighters and then collect enough magic abilities to become Wizards, but they don't automatically get that class. They might chose to use those abilities to qualify as Priests, or Dragonriders, or Pit Fighters, or any of the large number of classes that will be available.

I mean, you might have picked five abilities with [Lightning] and [Magic] and decided to be become a Stormlord instead of a Wizard.

[K]

Those would be the three options so far discussed, yeah.

• Make "non-spellcasters" into gadgeteers.
• Force "non-spellcasters" to get spells at some level.
• Let people do apeshit stuff equivalent to spells for no reason.

Any of them will work. K is currently trying to convince us that through the magic of rapidly moving cups and balls around he can not quite commit to any of them and have things still somehow work out. I am... unconvinced.

-Username17

I don't subscribe to any of those three options.

When you make design choices, some are going to be completely arbitrary. You make choices because the end product has the feel of the game you want to play.

People have tried those options in various other games. They work passing well, but have failed for various reasons and that is why I am choosing my own fourth option. Some of the design decisions are going to be arbitrary, but since I'd be the one doing all the work I can live with that.

Design by committee doesn't work.

[Psychic Robot]

I honestly don't see why you can't do gadgeteers, spellcasters, and random powers all in the same system.

K's system seems perfectly workable to me.

Gadgeteer: "The dragon approaches! Quickly, stand close to me. My amulet of flameshield will shield us from his fiery breath."

Spellcaster: "The dragon approaches! Quickly, stand close to me. I will cast a spell that will shield us from his fiery breath."

Random Powers: "The dragon approaches! Quickly, stand close to me. I will call upon the powers infused within me to shield us from his fiery breath."

Now, the problem that I see with this is that writing three different sets of mechanics for the same effects is going to be time-consuming and confusing. What K is suggesting (I believe) is essentially Mutants and Masterminds in a fantasy universe. This, of course, has some problems with it, but it is not unworkable.

[God_of_Awesome]

As I said, it's not very DnD esque, where every character has a seperate class that does different things, not a list of abilities that anyone can take.

DnD's character building system, class-based instead of ability-based, has a very different feel to it then the MnM system. I suppose you could make a fantasy version of MnM but it would be even less DnD then 4ed.

[Orion]

But K ISN'T saying that "spells" will just be one more explanation among many: he's saying they'll be a special explanation which must be unlocked as a class feature. Why would you do that?

There are only two reasons:

1: the "spell" version of an ability is *better* in some way than the "item," "hireling," or "bloodline," version. And indeed, you would need to work fairly hard to make sure that was not the case. Nonetheless, K has assured us that the spell version will NOT be better.

2: some reason to do with the "flavor" of spells. I can think of only three possibilities.

A: Flavor-based level scouting. If you must be level 6, in D&D terms, to have "spells," then you know that anyone you see do a "spell" is a serious badass. If it's difficult to get enough abilities, period, to be a wizard, that would work. If, as I suspect, characters are supposed to be able to start off as wizards or become wizards early on, this doesn't work.

B: Backstory/Justification. Maybe you want spells to be something that, in this world, must be learned in a particular way. You want everyone who is a "wizard" to have some degree of commonality or shared experiences. The problem is, K's standard fails to do this. As I proved in my last post, many people will qualify as wizards for diverse and crazy reasons. Knowing that someone is a wizard will tell you very little about their life.

C: Forcing diversity. Maybe for whatever reason you don't want to allow any PC to have all his abilities be "spells." You want every PC to either have some "techniques," some magic items, or something to go with his spells. But K's system fails this test to, since he explicitly ALLOWS all-spell PCs; they just have to start with items and bloodlines and then re-train out of them.

I just can't see what he hopes to accomplish by making people jump through hoops before they can call their abilities "spells."

[God_of_Awesome]

Oh yeah, what he said.

[K]

But K ISN'T saying that "spells" will just be one more explanation among many: he's saying they'll be a special explanation which must be unlocked as a class feature. Why would you do that?

To give wizards a flavor mechanic all their own to make them feel special, just like every class needs flavor stuff to make them feel special. This is why 3e has clerics and wizards have their own casting mechanic even though you could easily have one.

It works like this: to be a "Wizard" you need to use magic. On that we can agree, right?

But a player of Wizard doesn't want to have a pact, or use magic items, or have a bloodline be the source of his power. He wants spells. He wants magic to be a product of his learning.

So he gets his own flavor mechanic to explain his magic. I mean, that's all these sources are anyway: minor mechanics that alter the way the abilities feel when you use them.

I seriously don't know why some people are flipping out and setting up false dichotomies. You seriously can just ask me about my reason without waxing poetic on all my potential choices (and showing that you obviously missed the one I was using).

Here's a model: "Hey K, it sounds like X would happen if you do that and that would be bad for this reason. How do you correct for that?"

[Orion]

Okay, I admit I should have posed in the form of a question. It would have been more polite. But the question you just posed yourself? I was really hoping to goad you into answering it. The fact that you didn't erodes my confidence that you have a good answer.

So here's the question: Why can't "spell" just be another universally-available power source like "item" or "bloodline"? Why single it out for special treatment.

Bonus Question: Why do you feel that wizards need to cast spells? Neither Gandalf nor Harry Potter does.

[K]

Okay, I admit I should have posed in the form of a question. It would have been more polite. But the question you just posed yourself? I was really hoping to goad you into answering it. The fact that you didn't erodes my confidence that you have a good answer.

So here's the question: Why can't "spell" just be another universally-available power source like "item" or "bloodline"? Why single it out for special treatment.

Bonus Question: Why do you feel that wizards need to cast spells? Neither Gandalf nor Harry Potter does.

Its a simple design choice.

Ask yourself the question: "what does a Wizard do that other people don't?"

The answer can't be "magic", because lots of people are going to be doing magic. It can't be "knows ancient lore", because lots of people are doing to have that. It can't even be "has a magic staff".

So that's my answer: "spells". People chose classes based on reasons as illogical as name and flavor text, and if role protection of a minor flavor mechanic makes people feel like Wizards when they choose the class then its a good thing.

Bonus question: See the above posts for my comments on "arbitrary design decisions." While fantasy RPGs steal ideas from novels, myths, and tall tales, the actual source material for fantasy RPG is other fantasy RPGs. This is why FFXI has a "soul flayer" that is exactly like a mind flayer. It's even purple.

So yeh. Asking my why I didn't base the idea of a Wizard on some other idea of a Wizard is just silly. I picked a source I liked and did that.

[Orion]

I'm not sure that I can puruse the argument further without seeing the setting you end up designing.

I will maintain that it seems, at a minimum, inelegant to make people acquire numerous item, bloodline, and pact abilities, and then "retrain" them into spells. But I suppose if you intend people to qualify for thier classes at level 1, it's no big deal.

It's also unclear to me why you think the game needs "wizards" at all. But that does indeed come down to design choices. I can't attempt to persuade you that your game would be better off without wizards until I've seen it.