FrankTrollman wrote:If you make magic and iron irreplaceable but you make the iron swingers common and the magic rare then the magic users are the star of the story. Whatever it is that they do, that's the stuff that the story will be about. If the story is supposed to be about the guys with swords, then whatever it is that the shaman is doing has to be completely dispensable and replaceable with mundane techniques.
That depends on your perspective. If the story is 'How the Three Heroes Slew the Evil Wizard and Ended the Famine', the magic user is the villain of the story, and therefore a star, but the PCs with no magical ability are the real stars. Even if one of the PCs has weather control magic, the swording still dominates.
Psychic Robot wrote:
Or, at the very least, there should be mechanical and role-playing incentives not to use magic. Perhaps magic has a tendency to asplode on the caster, or perhaps it does Con damage, or maybe it just costs 5-10% of your WBL, takes forever to use, and generally sucks overall (/rage on).
If it's con damage you just burn your character out and get emu RP perks from it as well as badassitude. If it just generally sucks compared to everything else, you've got to wonder why anyone uses it.
The law in its majestic equality forbids the rich as well as the poor from stealing bread, begging and sleeping under bridges.
-Anatole France
Mount Flamethrower on rear
Drive in reverse
Win Game.
-Josh Kablack
If it's con damage you just burn your character out and get emu RP perks from it as well as badassitude. If it just generally sucks compared to everything else, you've got to wonder why anyone uses it.
That's the problem. While it might not be fair to the sword-swingers, perhaps magic doesn't have to be completely replaceable by them. No, the sword-swingers can't cast overland flight, but they can travel by horseback--magic just makes getting from one place to another easier.
Count Arioch wrote:I'm not sure how discussions on whether PR is a terrible person or not is on-topic.
Ant wrote:
Chamomile wrote:Ant, what do we do about Psychic Robot?
Why *not* let the sword-swingers cast Overland Flight?
I mean, that may or may not be appropriate to the story you're trying to tell, but that's kind of the point? If you put a class in the game which sacrifices swording for plot powers, you're *going* to be working around those plot powers, and you *have* to make them useful.
Why not just let the players find a talisman of sky spirits or let them tame a pegasus or get a freakin scroll of flight. If you really want, have an Arcana skill which lets you activate magic plot devices, but don't make it more expensive than 4e's Ritual Casting feat.
Frank:
I think I might be on a different page on where I'd be taking this. My desire to see a "non-flashy" fighter is to tell fantasy stories where fighter an mage can stand next to each other without either of them wearing an "I'm with wimpy" t-shirt, while not forcing the fighter types into a wuxia style game that 3.5 demands to compete.
But I'm not looking for a spellcasting to be reduced to a L1 Redbox mage who casts one spell and is then forced to sit in the corner until the party is willing to rest again.
There must be a balance point that can exist for a lower fantasy setting without asking me if I want to be fucked in the mouth or the ass.
The internet gave a voice to the world thus gave definitive proof that the world is mostly full of idiots.
Why not just let the players find a talisman of sky spirits or let them tame a pegasus or get a freakin scroll of flight. If you really want, have an Arcana skill which lets you activate magic plot devices, but don't make it more expensive than 4e's Ritual Casting feat.
That works, but the first two are DM fiat. They're cool, but it depends on whether or not your DM is going to be okay with them.
Count Arioch wrote:I'm not sure how discussions on whether PR is a terrible person or not is on-topic.
Ant wrote:
Chamomile wrote:Ant, what do we do about Psychic Robot?
My desire to see a "non-flashy" fighter is to tell fantasy stories where fighter an mage can stand next to each other without either of them wearing an "I'm with wimpy" t-shirt, while not forcing the fighter types into a wuxia style game that 3.5 demands to compete.
In your opinion, what are the craziest things that Fighters should be able to do without it going to wuxia?
I really hold a lot of cynicism to this belief, because what seems 'wuxia' always seems completely arbitrary. People have no problem with fighters lifting up a 12-ton boulder and throwing it at the people they hate, but using the same muscles to jump 13 feet into the air is a no-no.
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.
In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
Look, there are two options: Either you make powerful magic like flight selectable abilities which your PCs can simply choose to start with or you don't. If you *do* make them selectable abilities,congratulations you are not playing a low-magic game. No matter howunderpowered the Wizard build may be, I guarantee you that in a five person group at least one person will take the wizard and he willlearn overland flight. If you put it on the ability list, you are resigning yourself to 80%+ games and storylines being defined by it.
So assuming you don't want to do that, you may remember that one Conan story where they *did* fly a long distance (I don't know if this ever actually happened, but whatever). If you want to be able to include flashy magic as a plot device you should put it into the system as a plot device. And therefore its accessibility should be by fiat.
No. Fvck that whole "my magic is so precious and special I bleed for it," that just makes it even more annoying, and that is inevitably used to justify advantages over non-harikari techniques in the straight numbers department, such that it means that the harikari techniques become the new bar to meet, as they can now explode well past everyone else, screwing the RNG. No, that stuff is crap.
What makes magic unreliable and unwieldy is that in the confrontation with a demon, a thaumaturge may be able to banish or bind it to his will, but the swordsman can also just stab it in the face, and in fact the swordsman is more likely to get the result of stabbing it in the face or not. The difference between the two is mostly that the thaumaturge can rearrange the demon instead of just killing it.
In other words, the barbarian's "low cunning" can solve a problem, and generally will, and often produce the fastest results. Remember, that thaumaturge may be able to command the demon's obedience with a few trinkets and a magic word, but if they fail, he's basically dropped his guard. The Conanoid, on the other hand, may have had to hack through the demon, but at least he's alive.
Boolean wrote:
Look, there are two options: Either you make powerful magic like flight selectable abilities which your PCs can simply choose to start with or you don't. If you *do* make them selectable abilities,congratulations you are not playing a low-magic game. No matter howunderpowered the Wizard build may be, I guarantee you that in a five person group at least one person will take the wizard and he willlearn overland flight. If you put it on the ability list, you are resigning yourself to 80%+ games and storylines being defined by it.
So assuming you don't want to do that, you may remember that one Conan story where they *did* fly a long distance (I don't know if this ever actually happened, but whatever). If you want to be able to include flashy magic as a plot device you should put it into the system as a plot device. And therefore its accessibility should be by fiat.
Yeah, pretty much once you have flashy high magic options as abilities anyone can pick, then you're no longer playing a low magic game anymore.
Otherwise you've basically got to do high magic via plot device, where they appear in one story, and then you never hear from them again. You don't concern yourself with how the items of power got created or why, and for whatever reason, the monsters with abilities you don't want to be in PC hands (like flight) don't stick around for long.
Last edited by RandomCasualty2 on Wed Apr 08, 2009 9:29 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Or you just make magic a secondary ability, such the the people who use it are also sword-swingers, and their sword swinging is what wins them the day.
For instance, let's say all magic is ritual magic - even the fastest spell takes at least a minute to cast, so you don't use it in combat. There is no "Mage" class - instead, the classes are all about stabbing people, and everyone gets a secondary skill set, separate from their class. The various types of magic are some of those skill sets. So in a group of four players, they all know sword-swinging, then maybe one knows divination, one knows stealth and thievery, one knows vitamancy, and one knows social-fu.
Then if you want mages as foes, go ahead and include forms of magic that are stronger and can be used in combat, but you have to sell your soul or go insane or whatever.
Last edited by Ice9 on Thu Apr 09, 2009 1:51 am, edited 1 time in total.
Or you just make magic a secondary ability, such the the people who use it are also sword-swingers, and their sword swinging is what wins them the day
This is in fact the system that Naruto and Bleach uses.
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.
In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
Or you just make magic a secondary ability, such the the people who use it are also sword-swingers, and their sword swinging is what wins them the day
This is in fact the system that Naruto and Bleach uses.
Not so sure about that. Naruto does have people use a lot of techniques to carry the day.
He jumps like a damned dragoon, and charges into battle fighting rather insane monsters with little more than his bare hands and rather nasty spell effects conjured up solely through knowledge and the local plantlife. He unerringly knows where his goal lies, he breathes underwater and is untroubled by space travel, seems to have no limits to his actual endurance and favors killing his enemies by driving both boots square into their skull. His agility is unmatched, and his strength legendary, able to fling about a turtle shell big enough to contain a man with enough force to barrel down a near endless path of unfortunates.
--The horror of Mario
Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!
This discussion, especially the latter part, reminds me of Elder Scrolls: Oblivion. I always felt that the game was balanced between casters and melee types with a strong cross-pollination between magic and fighting skills. I worked for a bit on making this game the basis of a pen and paper RPG. Has anyone here tried to roll the Oblivion rules into an RPG? I might be able to find my old notes, if there was a consensus that the approach had merit and hasn't already been tried and rejected for some reason.
I'm not sure there's complete consensus, but on the other hand I'm not sure there has to be. Only the people willing to do the legwork will end up making a game.
For what it's worth I'm trying to do my own system as well, and I'd love to see any mechanics or implementation of your attempt to balance casters and melee.
Fair point about consensus (especially here!). I just didn't want to do something that has has been done to death and discarded for whatever reason. I'll see if I can find those notes...
Not so sure about that. Naruto does have people use a lot of techniques to carry the day.
Yes, characters in Naruto often win by using energy balls or something to finish off their enemies, but the archetype of 'small, fragile wizard who stays in the back and tries to pepper enemies from a distance with spells' does not exist in this setting. All of the high-level ninja have considerable hand-to-hand combat techniques and in fact use them to get into position for their ninja techniques. It's not possible to be 'magic-only', but it is definitely possibly to be 'martial only'.
The slider between 'martial' and 'magic' varies but the general idea is that even a high-level magic-specialist ninja can out-fight a medium-level martial-specialist ninja even if the former uses only 'martial' techniques.
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.
In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
I think the tiers idea has some merit. Three tiers, common (Swinherding, sailing, tracking), heroic (Conanesque swordfighting, archery, killing people without magic stuff) and supernatural (stuff like teleport, alter weather, transform into snake). PCs are on the heroic tier. They have heroic and common powers, which are aquired from seperate point pools.
Magic users are people who are on the common or heroic tiers but can use supernatural tier powers if certain arbitary conditions are met. These conditions cannot be met by the PCs mid-combat because they are stuff like, "Be in the temple of Piffle, God of the Sea.", "It is the night of the full moon." and "Sacrifice 10 virgins."
This means the PCs don't get to use 'Overland Flight' to reach the Castle of Doom on Skull Mountain unless they do whatever things the DM say that they need to do first to either qualify for one of the PCs to use magic or for them to convince some NPC to do it.
Bill Bisco: Isometric Imp wrote:I'm not sure there's complete consensus, but on the other hand I'm not sure there has to be. Only the people willing to do the legwork will end up making a game.
To expand on this. For an individual project consensus is worthless. If you ask 50 people if something is good/shit and they all agree you've learned very little. Unless you actually get to see their reasons you can't tell if their advice is relevant or sensible. All you've got is permission to proceed from the cool kids.
