Is magic always overpowered?

[angelfromanotherpin]

Riddle of Steel's magic system was in alpha when it was published, and it was a train wreck. You could do hilariously powerful things, and the penalties for screwing up were in premature aging (which was undesirable in-character but had basically zero impact in the time-frame of an actual campaign) and maybe passing out.

Being a sorcerer in Riddle of Steel was a hard I-win button. It was mostly too slow and risky to perform in combat and you tanked your personal stabfacing to get it, but you could conjure demon bodyguards in even minimal downtime so you didn't much care.

Shadows of the Iron Throne toned it back a lot, but I never got to try it out because the base system was insufficiently improved from the original.

[JigokuBosatsu]

Ahhh, I must have been reading the Iron Throne version then.

[OgreBattle]

Shadow of the Iron Throne, is it the same people or a spiritual successor to RoS?

[angelfromanotherpin]

Sorry, the product's actual name is Blade of the Iron Throne. It's been a while. It is a spiritual successor, Norwood was the sole (credited) author of RoS and is only listed as an 'inspiration' in BotIT. BotIT is a saner work than RoS, but only by a certain degree. There's another one as well, called Sword & Scoundrel, although IIRC that one solved the spell-casting problem by not even trying to include it.

I could do a full review of the trine, if there's interest.

[Regularguy]

If so... how could a person with the ability to control space, time, matter, and minds not be tremendously more powerful than somebody who can punch real hard? Is there a system that manages to balance this somehow, or could there even be such a system?

The DC superhero rpg took a shot at this in point-buy style: first, there’s the price of each amount of skill and power; and then there’s the high price of sorcery, which can duplicate pretty much anything else.

So if you only ever use 3 APs of Sorcery as 3 APs of stealth or as 3 APs of punching hard, then it would’ve cost a lot less to buy 9 APs of a skill that only does stealth, and also buy 9 APs of a skill to punch hard while stealthing around. (The advantage, as you say, is that a guy with Sorcery can switch those 3 APs of Sorcery from stealth or punching to instead try a mind-control attack; but those 3 APs of Sorcery are still pricier than already having useful contacts and also having enough charisma to get more contacts, as well as having thief skills and having fighting skills.)

The real trick, though, is that they’re trying to balance multipurpose Sorcery not against mundane-skills-and-contacts guys, but against superheroes. So the idea is that 5 APs of Sorcery can, at need, let a magician fire up 5 APs of flying around or 5 APs of x-ray vision; but you’d still maybe play Superman, to fly around faster than that while using telescopic x-ray vision, since buying both of those powers plus being bulletproof still costs less.

So a character with Sorcery can still pull his weight on a team, by always having decent APs of whichever power the story calls for; but the high cost of Sorcery means he can expect to have less of that ability than a teammate built for that specialty. (Sure, you can shine as the Can-Talk-To-Fish guy if this is one of those adventures — but if there’s already a guy with more APs of Can-Talk-To-Fish than you have of Sorcery, then you’ll probably have to shine at something else.)

[DrPraetor]

They stole that accounting gimmick from Champions (where it is called a Cosmic Power Pool), but in any setting which has psionics or super-science that is "not magic", we've obviated the question.

So the basic premise is provably false, because in Call of Cthulhu and Pendragon magic is pretty useless, so it's not overpowered. Yes, some CoC adventures will use a magic spell as a McGuffin to solve the mystery, but that doesn't count.

So I voted No, because any counter-examples disprove the statement.

But, I agree with the poll in spirit.

With those exceptions, I nonetheless maintain the Ars Magica basically has the right idea. In a setting with fantastic elements - which may or may not be formally identified as Magic - characters who don't get to interact with the fantastic elements of the setting are going to be flunkies, especially if significant character advancement is expected.

[Aryxbez]

It probably also doesn't help that designers have more to work with imagination-wise when it comes to magic, or spells, than specific abilities. They also tend to add more stuff casually that makes magic overpowered, whereas they hold back on abilities applying bits of REALIZARM (or their false perception of it).

So unless designers look at it from a Game Design point of view, opposed to what is REALIZARM, magic will always be better. In fact, depending how their RPG works, may need to ensure each character option has phlebtonium (magic) of some kind.

Furthermore, I'm not sure how you make Mind Control Not Overly powerful, controlling someone's action or negating it, is stupid good on its own, as just turned that enemy's contribution to 0, be it damage, status effect, plot, etc.

Overall, it seems some solution is giving everyone phlebtonium, force casters to specialize in their magic, look at the game from Design standpoint, with game abstractions than REALIZARM.

EDIT: Huzzah for 1000th Post!

[Whipstitch]

A lot of this comes down to semantics rather than a failure of imagination. Magic can mean rites or incantations specifically but it is also a general catch-all term for unexplained events which result in impossibilities occurring. I am not opposed to magical events and fictional realms where everything that happens is magical by the standards of our own physics, but I am opposed to people getting uppity that I casually call such settings magic, because that's what the word is fucking for. The people who insist that I don't use the word magic in such instances make less sense to me than the Athar from Planescape, and those fuckers worship the Not-God Tree of Reverse Psychology.

[jt]

I'm not sure how you make Mind Control Not Overly powerful, controlling someone's action or negating it, is stupid good on its own, as just turned that enemy's contribution to 0, be it damage, status effect, plot, etc.

It's as strong as an instant death effect plus a strong summoning effect plus whatever the premium is for combining actions. If you set the cost for that pile of effects, using spell level or whatever your cost mechanism is, you'll get a reasonable cost for mind control. In 3E that's Finger Of Death (level 7) plus a level-appropriate Summon Monster, so probably level 9, maybe 8.

But what usually happens is that designers handwave spell costs based on some combination of conceptual complexity and how big the special effects budget would need to be to film it. Mind control is easy to describe and takes no special effects, so Charm Person is a level 1 spell. Three editions in they realized this was dumb and nerfed it by making the strong version into Dominate Person, but this is still just a level 5 spell.

[OgreBattle]

So what do you anchor spell power levels around,level appropriate challenges yeah?
What would you consider appropriate spells for lvl 1, 6, 12

I like the wyvern as the anchor lvl6 challenge, then lvl12 is an intelligent dragon or demon.

[jt]

Anchor levels and appropriate challenges are good for major have-it-or-not abilities like dealing with an etherial or flying monster, but they don't give you much for raw numbers. If a dragon is level 12 then all that tells us about its stats is that they're somehow compatible with a level 12 fighter. We could go multiply their HP and damage numbers by a million and it wouldn't make a difference (in balance, obviously low numbers are more manageable). Having a wyvern at level 6 and a dragon at level 12 tells us that there's room for five layers of "is stronger than, which is stronger than" in between, but that's about it. You need some idea of the size and shape of those gaps, and at least one anchor point for what a monster's stats look like. But, to actually answer the question - I quite like Frank's 10KF SGT, which does a good job of making a believable list of "is stronger than" relationships between monsters.

To start balancing combat spells, you need to nail down your combat math. For this example I'm going to set these some targets:
[*] Two parties of equal size and CR are equally likely to win.
[*] One equal CR monster can be substituted for two CR-2 monsters, four CR-4 monsters, eight CR-6 monsters, and so on.
[*] Combat is expected to take four rounds.

This is enough to figure out several kinds of spells:
[*] Summoning takes one of your four actions for the combat, so it should be a fourth as effective as you, so a combat-duration summon should produce a CR-4 monster that can act immediately.
[*] A save-or-die should have 25% accuracy against an equal CR monster, since it'd normally take four actions to kill it. A save-or-die should have 50% accuracy against a CR-2 monster, or 100% accuracy against a CR-4 monster.
[*] Mind controlling a monster is as good as summoning plus killing a monster of that level. One convenient place that this works out is a 50% chance of mind controlling a CR-4 monster for a combat length.

How you implement those chances could be through save DCs, attack rolls, HP thresholds, hitdice rules, whatever. You might make different spells, or scale them with level.

And also note that this isn't, and isn't supposed to be, completely perfect. A summon spell is less useful later in the combat, since the summoned creature is less likely to get many actions. It also punches above its weight if you get enough advance notice to summon before combat starts, since it lets you bank an action. This is fine - things are allowed to be situationally useful. And it's an RPG - a game largely about letting the players get away with stuff.

[Username17]

I would make the case for super exponential growth of lower CR enemy equivalents. That is, I think that if you have twice as many CR -2 opponents equal one CR +0 opponent, that you should have much more than four times as many CR -4 opponents equal one CR +0 opponent.

First off, this is not very difficult to deliver on. Crowd control abilities like Fireball and Bladerush can easily have characters be much more effective offensive against large groups of underleveled opposition than small groups of equal level opposition. And defenses like Armor Class and Damage reduction are just inherently more effective the larger bulge you have over the opposition.

As to why you'd want to do this, well getting genuinely large numbers of enemies is a thing you might want to do, but three or four doublings doesn't get you very many Orcs. And secondly, you might actually want to do the story where the guards show up and arrest the protagonists and make them go fight the monster without asking why the same guards don't go arrest the monster. If the player characters are intermediate in level to the guards and the dragon, and the numbers equivalent is super-exponential, that could just mathematically work.

-Username17

[OgreBattle]

I can see unlocking bigger fireballs and blade rushes as a 'force multiplier' for facing bigger hordes.

Lots of war games work like this, 3 power armored elites are equivalent to 5 lighter armored commandos to 12 fodder to 20 space bugs

[maglag]

And secondly, you might actually want to do the story where the guards show up and arrest the protagonists and make them go fight the monster without asking why the same guards don't go arrest the monster. If the player characters are intermediate in level to the guards and the dragon, and the numbers equivalent is super-exponential, that could just mathematically work.

If the guards are no match for the monster, then why are there any guards to arrest the protagonist or a law system or any sign of civilization in the first place?

Aka what was keeping the monster from destroying the guards and whatever they were guarding before the party arrived?

Did the monster just pop out of nowhere as soon the players entered the city? Your games have zero ancient dangers?

The answer to your question is that foreign prisioners are simply more expendable than guards you invested resources in training on and have local families.

Sending condemned people to do dangerous work is a classic in both the real world and fiction.

[jt]

I think the repeated doubling works pretty well, provided two things. One: start with 4E's assumption that an equal fight is the same number of CR-equal monsters as players, instead of 3E's one CR-equal monster to four players (which is particularly awkward to me since I usually have at least five). And two: have monsters that go into the negative CRs. The first means that, when the party is CR 7 and can afford 8x CR 1 monsters, that's actually something like 40 orcs. And the second means that you can have a big pile of giant rats from level 1. To me this is enough. If it's not, I don't know why you'd go to super-exponential curves instead of just picking a sharper exponent: doubling at CR-1 gets you 40 orcs by level 4. Octupling every CR gets you 40 orcs at level 2 and over 300 at level 3.

Regardless of what CR to number curve you use, you can do what I did with the balancing logic: you can summon a monster with CR equal to where the number of appropriate monsters of that CR equals the number of actions you're expected to take in a combat. It doesn't work if the curve is a sine wave or some shit, but it works for anything I've seen someone actually propose.

[maglag]

And secondly, you might actually want to do the story where the guards show up and arrest the protagonists and make them go fight the monster without asking why the same guards don't go arrest the monster. If the player characters are intermediate in level to the guards and the dragon, and the numbers equivalent is super-exponential, that could just mathematically work.

If the guards are no match for the monster, then why are there any guards to arrest the protagonist or a law system or any sign of civilization in the first place?

Aka what was keeping the monster from destroying the guards and whatever they were guarding before the party arrived?

Did the monster just pop out of nowhere as soon the players entered the city? Your games have zero ancient dangers?

The answer to your question is that foreign prisioners are simply more expendable than guards you invested resources in training on and have local families.

Sending condemned people to do dangerous work is a classic in both the real world and fiction.

[Username17]

The point is that armies are measured in the hundreds or thousands. And while those are appropriate things to have in the world, I don't think that there's a time when 'half an army' is particularly relevant as a point of opposition. I think that there exists a point where the sky turning black with arrows is an appropriate challenge, but I don't see the point in having a staging point for the sky turning half black with arrows.

Or to put it another way, consider how you describe groups of Orcs. One Orc is different than 2 Orcs obviously, but you wouldn't ask anyone to give a shit about the difference between seventeen and eighteen. Once you get to numbers like 'lots' and 'hordes' you stop even tracking the ones or even tens place.

There comes a time when to make things meaningfully more you need an order of magnitude more. And that to me implies that you want to segue from the next step being 'double' to the next step being 'ten times' with a smoothed progression between.

-Username17

[jt]

I guess my implicit assumption was that the DM would handle that problem by exercising their control over the focus of the campaign. If you can't be bothered to care about numbers of orcs between 50 and 500, then instead of fighting 100 orcs you fight 50 wererats (or one phoenix or whatever), and don't bring orcs back until you the players can handle 500. This works fine unless you want to use a specific early enemy for the entire campaign, in which case you need to fill in with elite versions of them, and scenarios where the players fight off half an army of orcs while the the town militia fights the other half of the orcish army. But these do require some effort from the DM and it's not as nice as the CR system dropping the scenario into their lap.

That said, the best minion rules in the world are going to buy you maybe 50 individual enemies, and I'm being very optimistic there. If you want to have entire armies of orcs, you'll need to start bundling them up into squads, and at that point you have an army minigame, and at that point you can have a leadership/domain minigame. For a variety of reasons I think it's best to decouple a character's level in the domain management minigame from their individual combat power. And if you're willing to take that leap, one of the benefits is being able to set the exponent for character levels to 2x and the exponent for leadership levels to 10x.

Edit: The "various reasons" are:
[*] You get to set the growth rate separately.
[*] It's an easy point to multiclass, which is really handy here, because you'll often want exactly one player to become a monarch while the rest go off to lead the most powerful institutions in their land. Also this is exactly where Aragorn took a multiclass into necromancer out of left field.
[*] Marrying into royalty helps you gain power in one of these games. Finding a magic sword helps you gain power in another.
[*] You can build a nice progression of powers based on ability to cheese past a traditional overland+dungeon adventure. Flight comes before walking through walls which comes before teleporting into the basement. There is no natural place for getting an army to slot into this progression - I don't know whether you tamed a pegasus before or after becoming king, and I don't even expect two kings who meet at a pegasus jousting tournament to have the same answer to that.
[*] Some people hate domain minigames, and they're not appropriate for every campaign.

[OgreBattle]

So what does lvl 1 to 10 progression look like for a Warrior character that's a plate armored polearm user at lvl1?

[Blicero]

Sorry, the product's actual name is Blade of the Iron Throne. It's been a while. It is a spiritual successor, Norwood was the sole (credited) author of RoS and is only listed as an 'inspiration' in BotIT. BotIT is a saner work than RoS, but only by a certain degree. There's another one as well, called Sword & Scoundrel, although IIRC that one solved the spell-casting problem by not even trying to include it.

I could do a full review of the trine, if there's interest.

I would be interested.

[WiserOdin032402]

Just piling on, I would also be interested

[jt]

So what does lvl 1 to 10 progression look like for a Warrior character that's a plate armored polearm user at lvl1?

I feel like that question has too many moving parts. I can show what it looks like in the most recent system I'm working on, but hopefully everyone will take it in the spirit of "These are the concerns I have and here's how I resolved them," rather than a proclamation about the right way to do things. I'll skim over a lot, and highlight the parts that relate to a design skeleton. I think the parentheticals are the most useful parts here.

Fighter:
High skillpoints per level. (Skills provide non-combat utility. They scale to supernatural bullshit in a way that I'm aware the Den doesn't particularly like, but it's how I solved some things. The Fighter has the maximum allowable number of skillpoints, because its core concept has no hooks into non-combat applications, so rather than shoehorning them here I shoehorn them by making you go pick a skill that has a better hook.)

1 - Hold The Line 1, Combat Expertise 1, Extra AOOs
Hold The Line X gives you an attack roll at -5 against anything moving into a tile within X of you, ending their turn on success. You get multiple tries if they go through multiple tiles in your range. Your effective Hold The Line rating is reduced against opponents with Combat Expertise.
Combat Expertise X is a general counter to martial bullshit. Certain abilities mention being reduced by Combat Expertise.
(HTL/CE are part of the structure I've chosen to deal with CR math; every melee specialist is going to get something like them at similar levels. They'll cancel out against equal level opponents, but against lower level melee opponents only half of them will be able to actually reach you. Other abilities fill these roles on other classes: Uncanny Dodge accomplishes what HTL does in a less awesome way, while Spring Attack accomplishes what CE does in a sideways way.)
Extra AOOs: you have more than the regular number of AOOs. If you successfully use Hold The Line on something, you can spend an AOO for a free attack that automatically hits it.
(I'll be glossing over this stuff even though it's the main part of the Fighter's shtick, because it's not really an important structural component (And because it's not done.). Extra AOO stuff is most of what's in the level gaps.)

3 - Mettle 1. AOOs with ranged weapons.
Mettle X is a general counter to magical bullshit. It works like CE in that it's mentioned by the effects that care. It bypasses fear auras, winds, certain kinds of wards, and generally other stuff that you could bypass by being really determined.
(This is the other half of the structure I chose to deal with CR math. Martial and magical battlefield control effects take turns improving.)
AOOs with ranged weapons - if you're wielding a ranged weapon, you can use it for AOOs and HTL for enemies moving through a certain number of squares specify a number of squares chosen at the end of your turn.
(Glossing over the specifics again, but including it because it has a structural role - if you can't already do something approximating your primary shtick using a ranged weapon, level 3 is where you have to. This is the level where monsters are allowed to be flying archers.)

5 - Hold The Line 2, Combat Expertise 2 (Math)
A note on skills - this is where your skill checks should be high enough that you can jump mid-air or stand on something that can't support your weight on a natural 20.
(This isn't part of the structure, but it's a thematic buildup to what happens to skills at level 7, which is.)

7 - Mettle 2 (Math)
A note on skills - this is where you can indefinitely fly or balance on air on a natural 20.
(At level 7 you can fly. Three skills can do it, and the skill section outright tells you that you should have one. Magical flight is at this level too. Enemies with CRs 7+ are required to deal with flying archers.)

9 - Hold The Line 3, Combat Expertise 3 (Math)

11 - Mettle 3 (Math)
A note on skills - I'm seriously considering allowing swim-through-dirt and lockpick-solid-wall here, but it might be at level 13.

[MGuy]

So you could just make it a universal rule that anything that gets hit by an AoO is stopped from doing whatever it's doing. Cuts down on text. I am not sure what your Combat Expertise thing is there for. Seems superfluous. Same thing for mettle. Seems you would just give martials flat bigger numbers for resisting magic and physical attacks if you just want them less likely to be affected by auras, winds, and wards.

Instead of having checks to allow a character to double jump or hover or whatever just allow them to 'do' that and save the checks for opposed maneuvers. Less dice rolling for simple movement.

Basically save for unlocking the ability to fly or swim through dirt at some point this is not really all that interesting. If you're working on a system where fighter is a thing then I'm assuming that whatever they are fighting either just needs bigger number numbers for fighters to resist stuff (?) and from there grabbing a ranged weapon.

I'm always interested in looking at people's notes though so I can say I'm curious about what encounters look like in your system.