Systems where blasting is a good idea?

[Archmage Joda]

Ok, so we all know that a mage using blasting spells in d&d eats the moldy end piece of a loaf of bread, but are there any systems in which blasting is a good use of arcane power?

[Stahlseele]

what, exactly, do you mean with blasting?

[Username17]

Ok, so we all know that a mage using blasting spells in d&d eats the moldy end piece of a loaf of bread, but are there any systems in which blasting is a good use of arcane power?

Well for starters: Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. An AD&D Troll steps up to the plate with 30 hit points, and fireball damage is uncapped. You're damn right that blasting was considered awesome. And rightfully so.

-Username17

[name_here]

A shitload of CRPGs, where status effects may be highly unreliable or just suck too much to justify wasting a turn on.

[Red_Rob]

Honestly I see D&D 3e as weird because blasting isn't the best option. Messing about with weird effects is usually so heavily nerfed to stop exploits and cheesy wins that it's better to just go straight for the health bar.

[Whipstitch]

Yeah, it's hard to exaggerate just how much easier it was to reach a critical mass of raw damage in old AD&D thanks to pretty much everyone having much lower hitpoints--having two wizards blast at full power was overkill if people weren't packing magical defenses; against a standard "Bunch of orcs and a cleric" war band you could easily get away with a "I'll use my fireball while you magic missile the guy with the funny hat" game plan and still leave rather little for the fighter to mop up afterwards.

[crasskris]

If blasting includes AoE, then any RPG that has mooks and spells that halfway reliably kill a mook. Death is still the one of the best status effects. Single target blasting is also great against glass cannons.



Hell, even 4e qualifies in that regard.

Oh great, I feel dirty now.

[zugschef]

well, in 3e you can build casters who reliably one-shot dudes. the problem, however, is that it takes far too much effort.

[Stahlseele]

Shadowruns Magic sounds like a contender here.
It's easier to get magic damage up than it is to get magic defense up.
Which, if i understood this correctly, is basically what you are looking for, right?

[RobbyPants]

A shitload of CRPGs, where status effects may be highly unreliable or just suck too much to justify wasting a turn on.

The original Final Fantasy on NES was this way, in part, due to various bugs that would cause status effects to not be properly applied during combat. There was even one that would accidentally buff your enemy!

When I played this as a kid, I didn't know about the bugs, but I knew from experience that debuffs just didn't seem to do anything appreciable in combat, so I focused on damage, and it seemed to work just fine.

[Seerow]

A shitload of CRPGs, where status effects may be highly unreliable or just suck too much to justify wasting a turn on.

The original Final Fantasy on NES was this way, in part, due to various bugs that would cause status effects to not be properly applied during combat. There was even one that would accidentally buff your enemy!

When I played this as a kid, I didn't know about the bugs, but I knew from experience that debuffs just didn't seem to do anything appreciable in combat, so I focused on damage, and it seemed to work just fine.

Another part of this is that in video games, you don't get the entire enemy group disabled and then say "Okay now we mop up" like you can in a tabletop. If you turn that enemy into a frog, you still have to go through the process of reducing his hp to zero to win the fight.

So unless the fight is actually threatening to you (as in you have a significant chance of actually losing), it saves time to just deal hp damage, rather than wasting a turn disabling and then dealing hp damage. Since the only fights that are likely to actually challenge you are also the ones where the enemy is immune to all status effects (or to all except one very specific one you will never know about without wasting a lot of time experimenting, or reading a guide), the go-to answer is almost always just deal damage.

[RadiantPhoenix]

They also don't have the Coup de Gras to finish off helpless enemies. ("Coop dee Gracie" as a guy I once knew called it)

[Rawbeard]

If you ever get to play Savage Worlds, blasting is a very valid, if not the best option for an arcane type. At least single target. Multi target was capped in the latest edition, seems even those guys realized the Bolt power was stupid-good. AoE is friendly fire heavy, so that tends to suck.

Of course Savage Worlds sucks cock with fantasy (unless you play medival non-fantasy boring shit). I don't get why people around me have such a hard on for this system and convert everything ever to it.

"This game sounds fun, how about we convert it to Savage Worlds and make it shit?" How about you die in a fire?

[nockermensch]

Ok, so we all know that a mage using blasting spells in d&d eats the moldy end piece of a loaf of bread, but are there any systems in which blasting is a good use of arcane power?

Well for starters: Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. An AD&D Troll steps up to the plate with 30 hit points, and fireball damage is uncapped. You're damn right that blasting was considered awesome. And rightfully so.

-Username17

This. Fucking this. I still didn't recover from the shock when Evokers ceased to be awesome.

[virgil]

This. Fucking this. I still didn't recover from the shock when Evokers ceased to be awesome.

I don't think most of the gaming community ever did. Out of the last half dozen arcane spellcasters I've seen over the last two years from watching d20 tables, not a single one was built as anything but a blaster. The upcoming campaign I'm running will have two wizard-types, and one of them will not be an evoker-type.

[Slade]

Ok, so we all know that a mage using blasting spells in d&d eats the moldy end piece of a loaf of bread, but are there any systems in which blasting is a good use of arcane power?

Well for starters: Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. An AD&D Troll steps up to the plate with 30 hit points, and fireball damage is uncapped. You're damn right that blasting was considered awesome. And rightfully so.

-Username17

Except status effects were still better, a blind Troll is easy mop up for Fighters and everyone else (just use ranged as there is no spot skill so they are helpless).

Blind is a 1st level spell single target spell BTW. Glitterdust is 2nd level (similar to 3.5 version).

[Guyr Adamantine]

They also don't have the Coup de Gras to finish off helpless enemies. ("Coop dee Gracie" as a guy I once knew called it)

It's "coup de grâce". "Coup de gras" means "hit of fat".

Now that I'm done being a dickhead, I do miss being able to use fireball without feeling like I'm a disgrace to wizards everywhere. I guess that the main advantage of playing an RPG is out-of-the-box thinking, and direct-damage is as unimaginative as it gets.

[Whipstitch]

Except status effects were still better, a blind Troll is easy mop up for Fighters and everyone else (just use ranged as there is no spot skill so they are helpless).

Blind is a 1st level spell single target spell BTW. Glitterdust is 2nd level (similar to 3.5 version).

Yeah, Glitterdust has been money for a long, long time. Still, cutting out the middle man entirely is a pretty defensible benny for going up a spell level, and that's effectively what you were doing against many targets. Ultimately, wizards possessed an embarrassment of riches back in the day; blast spells weren't always the most efficient option--particularly when you consider the sheer volume of AD&D material out there--but they could often get the job done and were especially effective as sort of an unofficial "Must be this tall to ride" GTFO power you could use to slay lesser foes quickly and cleanly. Whereas in 3.x and its Con bonuses and d8s for everyone mentality keeps evocation very firmly in banned school territory.

[Emerald]

Whereas in 3.x and its Con bonuses and d8s for everyone mentality keeps evocation very firmly in banned school territory.

Actually, it was AD&D that had the "d8s for everyone" mentality, since all monsters had d8 HD unless noted otherwise in a given entry. It's the magical beasts and dragons with their d10 and d12 HD that got the larger-than-average HP boost.

[Mistborn]

You know, you can still theoretically be a blaster in 3e as long as you shamelessly abuse metamagic.

The problem is that you're walking the knifes edge of "contributes level appropriately" between "useless fireworks" and "your own personal death star"

[Slade]

They also don't have the Coup de Gras to finish off helpless enemies. ("Coop dee Gracie" as a guy I once knew called it)

It's "coup de grâce". "Coup de gras" means "hit of fat".

Now that I'm done being a dickhead, I do miss being able to use fireball without feeling like I'm a disgrace to wizards everywhere. I guess that the main advantage of playing an RPG is out-of-the-box thinking, and direct-damage is as unimaginative as it gets.

Dragon Age video game made blasting decent (each spell had a side effect like fireball sets on fire target).

So it is short term battlefield control effect + damage rather a choice (there are straight battlefield control effects that last longer as well)

I've never played the RPG version so I don't know if the game is the same.

[SlyJohnny]

Dragon Age limited spells by timeout as well as mana, so you'd often open a fight with a fireballs, follow up with a status effect spell and a crushing prison, then another damaging aoe, etc.

I also like the idea of blasting spells that do something useful besides HP damage. Would all the evokers grumble if their fireballs had a chance to knock their targets prone, say?

[Neon Sequitur]

I've seen some effective blasters in Ars Magica, but haven't personally played one. (House Guernicus don't blast.)

[Avoraciopoctules]

If you play a blaster mage in Warrior, Rogue, and Mage you can easily end up doing more damage than you or many monsters have in HP with one spell. Abuse blood magic, and you can do it basically all day.

Of course, WR&M is a pretty modular game, and you probably want to check with the MC before you create somebody like this guy: http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheetview.p ... tid=498624

[Archmage Joda]

I realize this is posting quite some time after this thread died, but would Avoraciopoctules or someone else familiar with WR&M explain to me just how using Blood Magic can let you do magic all day long? Is it as simple as just Blood Magicing and then healing yourself?