What SHOULD magic be like in D&D?

General questions, debates, and rants about RPGs

Moderator: Moderators

Stubbazubba
Knight-Baron
Posts: 737
Joined: Sat May 07, 2011 6:01 pm
Contact:

Post by Stubbazubba »

Seerow wrote: I wouldn't bother Sanderson about it personally. It's a near certainty he did none of the design work on the game, and if I got a chance to meet him at a convention I'd have a lot of other questions that he would be better able to answer (or at least get a RAFO card >_>)
Yeah, IIRC, he didn't see the game until it was near completion, and just gave his blessing because that's what you do and he's more of a M:tG guy, not an RPG guy.

I was in his writing class for a semester, I should have asked his thoughts on it then. Don't know why that didn't occur to me.
User avatar
Hiram McDaniels
Knight
Posts: 393
Joined: Mon Sep 15, 2014 5:54 am

Post by Hiram McDaniels »

All of the other forums argue about casters vs. mundanes in terms of damage output, which is missing the forest for the goddamn trees. The biggest disparity is one of agency.

Magic guy decides that he wants to go on vacation in the 9 hells; he memorizes the appropriate spell and leaves first thing in the morning.

Sword guy decides that he wants to go on a vacation in the 9 hells; if he doesn't have a caster friend on hand to send him there, he needs to go on a quest to find someone to cast Plane Shift for him, then hope he finds someone to do the same on the other side after he's done fighting monsters that he can't kill without magic, or else he'll have to find an apartment and an air conditioner.

You can't really even out this disparity while keeping sword guy just a blue collar Everyman Joe who 'Mericas good, even in geezer edition D&D when he controlled armies; because they had to march, make camp and die of dysentery along the way to the story, unlike the Pit Fiends that the book nerds can summon.

So in this regard, I agree that the game needs to accept that sword guys eventually become Gilgamesh, Hercules, Cuchulain, Reynard the Fox, et al. That's #1.

Second, I agree with the idea of Rituals. Not the implementation mind, but the idea of separating big, campaign-buggering, Gordian Knot cutting powers into their own resource management category. And don't just charge a sum of fucking god to use story powers; make the cost some sort of group wide resource so sword guy is actually contributing in some small way, even if he has to jerk off into the cauldron to fuel the time portal with his (or her) manliness. That, or make the reagent cost a bunch of quest items that need to be adventured for.

Third, the game needs to tie magic guys to the same attrition model that sword guys are on, because as it stands now casters don't give a wet shit about hit points: they get to bypass those altogether. Or, the old attrition model needs to go entirely, and instead sword guys and casters just knock their target up or down a condition track or some shit.

Fourth, the scope of casters needs to narrow. Magic guy essentially gets to change his class each day, instead he should specialize. You could tie them to spell schools like Divination, Conjuration, Enchantment, etc. or tie them to themes like necromancer, pyromancer, summoner, you get the point.

In any case, this is not going to look like the 3E wizard that people know and love...but if you want to swing your magic staff around like a big, knooted, rune etched dick substitute then play Ars Magica. In summary:
  • Martials get supernatural abilities at some point.
    Reality fucking powers become rituals instead of just spell slots.
    Spell slot attacks follow the attrition model, or cause short term tactical effects.
    Casters become more focused and specialized, and not Batman.
The most dangerous game is man. The most entertaining game is Broadway Puppy Ball. The most weird game is Esoteric Bear.
Lago PARANOIA
Invincible Overlord
Posts: 10555
Joined: Thu Sep 25, 2008 3:00 am

Post by Lago PARANOIA »

I'm increasingly coming to believe that rituals are a stupid idea that only serve as a laudanum-coated pacifier for people who don't want to get with the high-level program.

In stories, rituals are used as a way for spellcasters to temporarily go above their power level. Hot Topic goths use a ritual to animate a skeleton, Harry Potter uses a ritual to change the weather in a 10 mile radius for a couple of days, Golbez uses a ritual to send a floating island into the sky, etc.

But you know what rituals are not used for? As a way to stuff all non-combat bullshit off to the side so that Gourry doesn't feel bad when Lina just teleports the party as a standard on-demand trick. And it's definitely not used for as a way to get Gourry some extra screentime via rushing into the summoning chamber with a pile of Griffin feathers squealing 'I'm helping!'

The only non-fringe series I know that does that is Fairy Tail. And that series sucks. When Starfire whines that Cyborg and Robin and Raven are doing plot advancement stuff without consulting or needing her, the solution isn't to throw her a pity party and give her a montage of her carrying tools and crystal balls. It's to tell her to fuck off and get her own schtick. And if Starfire can't think of a way to contribute without butting into other peoples' scenes as a helper then the party should kick her out of the Titan Tower.
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.
Username17
Serious Badass
Posts: 29894
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by Username17 »

I'm pretty onboard with casters specializing and martial characters being forced to grow up into super heroes with some actual powers. And I mean real powers like the goddam Justice League and not bullshit 'martial power source' extra-high jumps like a 4e character. But... why should spells follow an attrition model? That's very much a non-sequitur. I could imagine a game where the spellcasters had a limited number of spell bombs and the archers had a limited number of trick arrows, but I could equally imagine wizards having a few spells them spammed as required and the team demigod using her super strength as much as she wanted. Or one from column A and one from column B. Or some other system entirely. Necromancers could need to hurt things with their minions and minor powers to build up temporary charges to use their big powers, or they could follow a conservation of ninjitsu model where there was a status amount of dark power to distribute among the troops so the less skeletons they had the more kickass each one was.

There are, quite simply hundreds if not thousands of decent resource models that D&D could use. And your task as a game designer is to make whichever one (or ones) you write in balanced, fun, and explicable. There is no mandate to use or not use attrition, build-up, or static power growth systems for any kind of character. If you can give a resource management system some compelling fluff, some easily understood rules, and a balanced and entertaining gameplay, go nuts.

Deciding that you have to have attrition because reasons is literally what turned the 3.5 Crusader and War blade into the 4e Warlord and Fighter (seriously, that is the actual story as explained by the 4e design team). If you can write good attrition mechanics, you should do that, and if you have good mechanics that work some other way you should do that instead.

Similarly, I don't know what you think rituals are supposed to accomplish. Let's consider two movies: Willow and Maleficent. In both, a Fighter shows up with an army and the witch neutralizes it with a spell. Bavmorda turns the approaching army into pigs, and Maleficent makes a dragon. Both perfectly respectable and thematic things for a witch queen to do. As it happens, both these works of magic were done by having the witch queen in question say a sentence worth of magic words, but would it have made any difference had the effect required hours or days of ritual casting? I say: No. Bavmorda had weeks of warning that the enemy was marching upon her with an army, and she cast the spell from her castle while the enemy was dots on the horizon. Maleficent had sixteen years to prepare for her confrontation with King Stefan, and she could have brought anything she had summoned or created during that time.

Rituals are useful because they allow downtime effects to use downtime resources. It would be pretty bad if Maleficent could have an extra dragon for every five minute scene she was in out of combat (as it would be if 'gain a dragon' was a once per encounter spell) - but it would be nearly as bad if she could get an extra dragon for every full moon that passes (16 years gives 178 chances to perform a ritual on a full moon). Clearly, Maleficent needs to have a limit to the number of dragons she can have. And once she has that, does it really matter whether she spends a combat action to make the dragon, or spends weeks making the dragon during downtime and then spends a combat action to order it into battle?

-Username17
kzt
Knight-Baron
Posts: 919
Joined: Mon May 03, 2010 2:59 pm

Post by kzt »

There is the theory that says any plan that gives a powerful magician 16 years to plan how to defeat you is probably a bad plan....

But should there be things that take months or years to accomplish? Which, if the PCs are the antagonists, allows them to spoil the ritual at the last moment.
Lago PARANOIA
Invincible Overlord
Posts: 10555
Joined: Thu Sep 25, 2008 3:00 am

Post by Lago PARANOIA »

Oh, definitely. It's not a big deal to protagonists in single-author fiction since things move at the speed of plot anyway, but for TTRPGs it makes a huge difference whether Neo-Bavmorda can complete her ritual to block out the sun across the continent in one month or six months.
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.
Username17
Serious Badass
Posts: 29894
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by Username17 »

kzt wrote:There is the theory that says any plan that gives a powerful magician 16 years to plan how to defeat you is probably a bad plan....

But should there be things that take months or years to accomplish? Which, if the PCs are the antagonists, allows them to spoil the ritual at the last moment.
Obviously there should be things that take months or years to accomplish. Even if you don't have magical rituals that take that long you're still going to have cathedral building, ocean voyages, and raising children. Something is going to take months or years.

Now what there is in a role playing game is a need for comparable uses of downtime resources between player characters. Because otherwise the amount of time the party spends on downtime issues in-game becomes a source of strife between players out-of-game.

Sooner or later someone is going to want to be a general or a king. That someone may even be one of the casters, as 'Witch Queen' and 'Priest King' are pretty classic paragon archetypes to aspire to. In any case, once someone has a realm to manage, there are going to be things that occur on a seasonal basis and valid reasons to time skip significant amounts of time. When that happens, every character needs downtime activities so that they can can do something other than advance their age when time jumps happen.

-Username17
User avatar
OgreBattle
King
Posts: 6820
Joined: Sat Sep 03, 2011 9:33 am

Post by OgreBattle »

You could say that Bavmorda pre-prepared it and just has to utter the words to trigger it. In that way it's like building a doomsday device or laying down hidden bombs, then hitting the red button to trigger it. Moonraker is fun with the evil scientist/wizard building up his doomsday device/ritual, so the heroes are in a race against time to dismantle it.

So the big scary wizard tower/Cobra base is terribly dangerous to attack, but the wizard/scientist is more vulnerable if he leaves his base and he can only bring so many minions along with him. This incentivizes necromancers to do things like spread "blight" across the land so his undead minions can be powered up without his direct control and Elven Archdruids to plant lots of trees so the nature spirits can grow in number.
User avatar
brized
Journeyman
Posts: 141
Joined: Sun Jun 17, 2012 9:45 pm

Post by brized »

There are a few things rituals accomplish mechanically:

1) You clearly communicate to new players which are tactical/combat powers and which are strategic/utility powers. If each set of powers are in separate sections of the book, you remove the possibility that a player will select a bunch of utility powers and be useless in combat. More importantly...

2) You allow a player access to strategic powers without that coming at the expense of tactical powers. This becomes more important the more you limit the number of powers a player can select from in any given turn. This isn't a concern for a Beguiler, but imagine if a Crusader had to suffer the opportunity cost of a known, readied, and granted maneuver to use something like Move Earth. Much how adventuring skills like Acrobatics are better boosted via resources separate from stuff like Profession: Painter, it's better if rituals are just tracked as a separate resource from spells, maneuvers, etc.

Time should definitely be the main resource for rituals rather than materials. You can still have material costs, especially for rituals that create things, but those costs should be a secondary concern. Not only does it open narrative opportunities, you also have opportunity costs for crafting items, training apprentices/disciples, training yourself, managing a government, researching new powers and rituals, traveling (in a non-Tippyverse), and so on. Balancing all of those to at least have a handful of competitive options at all levels would be tough, but not insurmountable.
Tumbling Down wrote:
deaddmwalking wrote:I'm really tempted to stat up a 'Shadzar' for my game, now.
An admirable sentiment but someone beat you to it.
User avatar
Hiram McDaniels
Knight
Posts: 393
Joined: Mon Sep 15, 2014 5:54 am

Post by Hiram McDaniels »

Lago PARANOIA wrote:I'm increasingly coming to believe that rituals are a stupid idea that only serve as a laudanum-coated pacifier for people who don't want to get with the high-level program.

In stories, rituals are used as a way for spellcasters to temporarily go above their power level. Hot Topic goths use a ritual to animate a skeleton, Harry Potter uses a ritual to change the weather in a 10 mile radius for a couple of days, Golbez uses a ritual to send a floating island into the sky, etc.

But you know what rituals are not used for? As a way to stuff all non-combat bullshit off to the side so that Gourry doesn't feel bad when Lina just teleports the party as a standard on-demand trick. And it's definitely not used for as a way to get Gourry some extra screentime via rushing into the summoning chamber with a pile of Griffin feathers squealing 'I'm helping!'

The only non-fringe series I know that does that is Fairy Tail. And that series sucks. When Starfire whines that Cyborg and Robin and Raven are doing plot advancement stuff without consulting or needing her, the solution isn't to throw her a pity party and give her a montage of her carrying tools and crystal balls. It's to tell her to fuck off and get her own schtick. And if Starfire can't think of a way to contribute without butting into other peoples' scenes as a helper then the party should kick her out of the Titan Tower.
To be clear: I'm not talking about paring off non-combat spells from blasty-blast spells and shoving them into rituals the way that 4E does. The lines I want to draw concern agency, not tactical vs. strategic magic; spells that are essentially plot devices and autowin buttons for an entire adventure. For instance, Animal Messenger doesn't deserve to be a ritual but maybe Weird does.

And honestly, why shouldn't magic guy pay a higher premium for god-moding?
The most dangerous game is man. The most entertaining game is Broadway Puppy Ball. The most weird game is Esoteric Bear.
User avatar
Hiram McDaniels
Knight
Posts: 393
Joined: Mon Sep 15, 2014 5:54 am

Post by Hiram McDaniels »

FrankTrollman wrote:I'm pretty onboard with casters specializing and martial characters being forced to grow up into super heroes with some actual powers. And I mean real powers like the goddam Justice League and not bullshit 'martial power source' extra-high jumps like a 4e character. But... why should spells follow an attrition model? That's very much a non-sequitur. I could imagine a game where the spellcasters had a limited number of spell bombs and the archers had a limited number of trick arrows, but I could equally imagine wizards having a few spells them spammed as required and the team demigod using her super strength as much as she wanted. Or one from column A and one from column B. Or some other system entirely. Necromancers could need to hurt things with their minions and minor powers to build up temporary charges to use their big powers, or they could follow a conservation of ninjitsu model where there was a status amount of dark power to distribute among the troops so the less skeletons they had the more kickass each one was.

There are, quite simply hundreds if not thousands of decent resource models that D&D could use. And your task as a game designer is to make whichever one (or ones) you write in balanced, fun, and explicable. There is no mandate to use or not use attrition, build-up, or static power growth systems for any kind of character. If you can give a resource management system some compelling fluff, some easily understood rules, and a balanced and entertaining gameplay, go nuts.

Deciding that you have to have attrition because reasons is literally what turned the 3.5 Crusader and War blade into the 4e Warlord and Fighter (seriously, that is the actual story as explained by the 4e design team). If you can write good attrition mechanics, you should do that, and if you have good mechanics that work some other way you should do that instead.
The attrition model might not be the ideal scorecard for combat encounters, but as it stands now sword guys are stuck hacking off HP with weapon attacks and magic guy gets to bypass that system entirely and insta-gank fools with SoL effects. How do you balance those two things against eachother?

Traditionally this was balanced by granting casters a finite number of spell slots, but obviously this hasn't worked out. They get 9 spell levels full of SoL effects to choose from, at least 4 levels of which matter at any given time...so they're in no practical danger of ever running dry.

So one option is to move magic guy to the same attrition model. Not a popular idea here, I know. 4E did the same thing and it made combats ponderously slow and tedious. I would advocate improving the attrition model itself.

Another is to essentially turn SoL effects into a condition track, wherein it takes Finger Of Death a few rounds to actually kill something, unless it's a 1HD schmuck. Problem here is that AD&D geezers complain that the medusa isn't scary and player-fucky enough.

Yet another way to balance them is through some new and gimmicky system: like randomizing the spell list or tacking a meaningful hit point cost to casting fuck you spells. But would the player base accept it?
FrankTrollman wrote: Similarly, I don't know what you think rituals are supposed to accomplish. Let's consider two movies: Willow and Maleficent. In both, a Fighter shows up with an army and the witch neutralizes it with a spell. Bavmorda turns the approaching army into pigs, and Maleficent makes a dragon. Both perfectly respectable and thematic things for a witch queen to do. As it happens, both these works of magic were done by having the witch queen in question say a sentence worth of magic words, but would it have made any difference had the effect required hours or days of ritual casting? I say: No. Bavmorda had weeks of warning that the enemy was marching upon her with an army, and she cast the spell from her castle while the enemy was dots on the horizon. Maleficent had sixteen years to prepare for her confrontation with King Stefan, and she could have brought anything she had summoned or created during that time.

Rituals are useful because they allow downtime effects to use downtime resources. It would be pretty bad if Maleficent could have an extra dragon for every five minute scene she was in out of combat (as it would be if 'gain a dragon' was a once per encounter spell) - but it would be nearly as bad if she could get an extra dragon for every full moon that passes (16 years gives 178 chances to perform a ritual on a full moon). Clearly, Maleficent needs to have a limit to the number of dragons she can have. And once she has that, does it really matter whether she spends a combat action to make the dragon, or spends weeks making the dragon during downtime and then spends a combat action to order it into battle?

-Username17
The difference is that Willow and Malificient are stories. In the end the heroes succeed because the author predetermined that they would, and then contrived the means by which they do so. Games however, are subject to actual logistics and probability.

The purpose of rituals is to keep Bavmorda from turning entire armies into pigs every single time, or at least impose a price that she gives a shit about so Bavmorda's player is incentivized to throw a few lightning bolts instead.

(Incidentally, I haven't seen Malificient yet...is it any good?)
The most dangerous game is man. The most entertaining game is Broadway Puppy Ball. The most weird game is Esoteric Bear.
Lago PARANOIA
Invincible Overlord
Posts: 10555
Joined: Thu Sep 25, 2008 3:00 am

Post by Lago PARANOIA »

Hiram McDaniels wrote:To be clear: I'm not talking about paring off non-combat spells from blasty-blast spells and shoving them into rituals the way that 4E does. The lines I want to draw concern agency, not tactical vs. strategic magic; spells that are essentially plot devices and autowin buttons for an entire adventure. For instance, Animal Messenger doesn't deserve to be a ritual but maybe Weird does.
The thing is, with high-level plots, yesterday's autowin plot device spell becomes tomorrow's gateway level spell that you have to have just to get into the door. Bavmorda's 'freeze anyone who enters the castle' spell completely stops a Gandalf-less Fellowship in their tracks but is a minor inconvenience to any of the main protagonist/antagonist benders in A:TLA's season one finale. On-demand invisibility and perfect disguises completely breaks Die Hard but is considered a literal entry-level trick even redshirt ninjas know in Naruto. Etc., etc.

If players are using Passwall and Teleport and Flight to bypass your plots, you either need to redesign your plots or put a ceiling on the power level of the game. 4E D&D's solution, which was to permanently put all of the plot device spells that would fuck with recreating a lameass Lord of the Rings high on the pantry shelf while still pretending to let people advance in JRPG Dungeon Designer approved ways, is lame as fuck and made nobody like the edition.
And honestly, why shouldn't magic guy pay a higher premium for god-moding?
They already did. It's called 'being a higher level'.
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.
Username17
Serious Badass
Posts: 29894
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by Username17 »

I understand that you are talking about turning things that are useful into out-of-combat things rather than talking about golfing out-of-combat costs to out-of-combat effects. That's why I'm skeptical of your proposal!

If you just wanted to give noncombat costs to noncombat effects, everyone would nod their head and move on. Because that's fucking obvious. No one gives a shit whether identify uses a combat action or a combat spell slot, because outside the most ridiculously contrived situations, you don't identify the properties of equipment in the middle of action scenes. Setting limits of how many items can be identified per day and what ritual components that requires are things that matter, so those are the things you should discuss when designing identification rituals.

But you're not talking about that. You're whining about how there shouldn't be combat-time teleportation and dimensional travel. And that's wrong. Obviously if power levels go high enough, characters should be able to teleport across the continent in the middle of combat. I mean, obviously. There is a power level at which that is appropriate, so if you get to that power level, that would be an appropriate thing for you to do. Welcome to tautology club.

Now there are a lot of parameters teleportation can have, and some of them can come online before others. I would expect to be able to combat teleport short distances or noncombat teleport long distances at a lower power level than is required to combat teleport long distances. Heck, I'd expect to be able to teleport out of the Lich King's castle before I could teleport in. But there still exists a power level at which Doctor Fate can hear about a conflict in Fawcett City and respond by teleporting into that battle. Long distance, combat time teleport to unfamiliar locations is a high level ability, but it's a genre appropriate ability. The only way to make it reasonable for characters to never get it is to cut off level gains before they get there.

-Username17
Username17
Serious Badass
Posts: 29894
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by Username17 »

As for Maleficent, it's basically the same movie as Frozen. It's made by Disney and subverts and embraces all the same Disney story structure tropes in exactly the same way. It makes the witch queen sympathetic with the same storytelling techniques, deprotagonizes the two male love interests into the same categories and even reinterprets 'true love' in the same way to save the cursed princess. It even takes place in a fantasy version of a Northern European kingdom starting with the same letter ('S').

It's live action with a huge amount of special effects instead of animated, people take injuries which bleed and scar, and it's not a musical. But structurally it's the same movie. Which is fine, because it's a pretty good movie and they could probably make it one or two more times before I'll be tired of watching it. Angelina is of course a great actress and most of the movie is her brooding, which is fine. The battles between armored knights and creatures of magic are fine, but rather smaller scale than what you get out of something like lord of the rings.

-Username17
User avatar
Wiseman
Duke
Posts: 1402
Joined: Fri Mar 09, 2012 4:43 pm
Location: That one place
Contact:

Post by Wiseman »

Lago PARANOIA wrote:I'm increasingly coming to believe that rituals are a stupid idea that only serve as a laudanum-coated pacifier for people who don't want to get with the high-level program.

In stories, rituals are used as a way for spellcasters to temporarily go above their power level. Hot Topic goths use a ritual to animate a skeleton, Harry Potter uses a ritual to change the weather in a 10 mile radius for a couple of days, Golbez uses a ritual to send a floating island into the sky, etc.

But you know what rituals are not used for? As a way to stuff all non-combat bullshit off to the side so that Gourry doesn't feel bad when Lina just teleports the party as a standard on-demand trick. And it's definitely not used for as a way to get Gourry some extra screentime via rushing into the summoning chamber with a pile of Griffin feathers squealing 'I'm helping!'

The only non-fringe series I know that does that is Fairy Tail. And that series sucks. When Starfire whines that Cyborg and Robin and Raven are doing plot advancement stuff without consulting or needing her, the solution isn't to throw her a pity party and give her a montage of her carrying tools and crystal balls. It's to tell her to fuck off and get her own schtick. And if Starfire can't think of a way to contribute without butting into other peoples' scenes as a helper then the party should kick her out of the Titan Tower.
At the risk of derailing this thread I will state that Fairy Tail is good for mindless fun. Of course their solution is to make everyone a specialized mage. Not sure how to transplant that into D&D though without rewriting the class system.
Keys to the Contract: A crossover between Puella Magi Madoka Magica and Kingdom Hearts.
Image
RadiantPhoenix wrote:
TheFlatline wrote:Legolas/Robin Hood are myths that have completely unrealistic expectation of "uses a bow".
The D&D wizard is a work of fiction that has a completely unrealistic expectation of "uses a book".
hyzmarca wrote:Well, Mario Mario comes from a blue collar background. He was a carpenter first, working at a construction site. Then a plumber. Then a demolitionist. Also, I'm not sure how strict Mushroom Kingdom's medical licensing requirements are. I don't think his MD is valid in New York.
User avatar
Kaelik
ArchDemon of Rage
Posts: 14757
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by Kaelik »

Fuck you no it isn't. Mindless fun in fairytail involves six episodes of pure unadulterated shit as build up every single time, and then it still DBZes you with it's goddam slow as shit fights with nothing happening.

Also, Fairytail's solution is to make everyone a fucking fighter with different colored fists. The amount of actual magic that isn't a maguffin or perfectly bland shit that could just be DBZ (except that DBZ teleports and flying are too non combat for fairytale) is hyper slim.
DSMatticus wrote:Kaelik gonna kaelik. Whatcha gonna do?
The U.S. isn't a democracy and if you think it is, you are a rube.

That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.
User avatar
Wiseman
Duke
Posts: 1402
Joined: Fri Mar 09, 2012 4:43 pm
Location: That one place
Contact:

Post by Wiseman »

Yup. Pretty much. The idea though, of everyone being a caster of some sort has merit, though I'm not sure how far you can make something like sword magic go.

Cutting your way into other planes?
Cutting away harmful effects (mind control, curses, debuffs, ect.)

That's all I can think of now.
Keys to the Contract: A crossover between Puella Magi Madoka Magica and Kingdom Hearts.
Image
RadiantPhoenix wrote:
TheFlatline wrote:Legolas/Robin Hood are myths that have completely unrealistic expectation of "uses a bow".
The D&D wizard is a work of fiction that has a completely unrealistic expectation of "uses a book".
hyzmarca wrote:Well, Mario Mario comes from a blue collar background. He was a carpenter first, working at a construction site. Then a plumber. Then a demolitionist. Also, I'm not sure how strict Mushroom Kingdom's medical licensing requirements are. I don't think his MD is valid in New York.
Sakuya Izayoi
Knight
Posts: 395
Joined: Tue Nov 26, 2013 5:02 am

Post by Sakuya Izayoi »

A sword can be a spellbook if you have a system for etching runes onto it. This is the fluff for Warcraft Death Knights; they expend the runes on their blade to power various effects. They're actually a bit more Vancian than the floppy hat spell slingers of the setting in that regard.
User avatar
Hiram McDaniels
Knight
Posts: 393
Joined: Mon Sep 15, 2014 5:54 am

Post by Hiram McDaniels »

Lago PARANOIA wrote:
Hiram McDaniels wrote:To be clear: I'm not talking about paring off non-combat spells from blasty-blast spells and shoving them into rituals the way that 4E does. The lines I want to draw concern agency, not tactical vs. strategic magic; spells that are essentially plot devices and autowin buttons for an entire adventure. For instance, Animal Messenger doesn't deserve to be a ritual but maybe Weird does.
The thing is, with high-level plots, yesterday's autowin plot device spell becomes tomorrow's gateway level spell that you have to have just to get into the door. Bavmorda's 'freeze anyone who enters the castle' spell completely stops a Gandalf-less Fellowship in their tracks but is a minor inconvenience to any of the main protagonist/antagonist benders in A:TLA's season one finale. On-demand invisibility and perfect disguises completely breaks Die Hard but is considered a literal entry-level trick even redshirt ninjas know in Naruto. Etc., etc.

If players are using Passwall and Teleport and Flight to bypass your plots, you either need to redesign your plots or put a ceiling on the power level of the game. 4E D&D's solution, which was to permanently put all of the plot device spells that would fuck with recreating a lameass Lord of the Rings high on the pantry shelf while still pretending to let people advance in JRPG Dungeon Designer approved ways, is lame as fuck and made nobody like the edition.
And honestly, why shouldn't magic guy pay a higher premium for god-moding?
They already did. It's called 'being a higher level'.
Remember, I actually advocate martial types doing things like punching through walls, zipping through dungeons at Flash speeds and Hulk leaping over great distances. If a player wants to allocate resources to overcoming certain obstacles, then they get to do that: They paid for the privilege with their spell slots.

You and Frank make strong points regarding rituals. On further reflection, it's not such a good idea afterall.
The most dangerous game is man. The most entertaining game is Broadway Puppy Ball. The most weird game is Esoteric Bear.
User avatar
Hiram McDaniels
Knight
Posts: 393
Joined: Mon Sep 15, 2014 5:54 am

Post by Hiram McDaniels »

FrankTrollman wrote:As for Maleficent, it's basically the same movie as Frozen. It's made by Disney and subverts and embraces all the same Disney story structure tropes in exactly the same way. It makes the witch queen sympathetic with the same storytelling techniques, deprotagonizes the two male love interests into the same categories and even reinterprets 'true love' in the same way to save the cursed princess. It even takes place in a fantasy version of a Northern European kingdom starting with the same letter ('S').

It's live action with a huge amount of special effects instead of animated, people take injuries which bleed and scar, and it's not a musical. But structurally it's the same movie. Which is fine, because it's a pretty good movie and they could probably make it one or two more times before I'll be tired of watching it. Angelina is of course a great actress and most of the movie is her brooding, which is fine. The battles between armored knights and creatures of magic are fine, but rather smaller scale than what you get out of something like lord of the rings.

-Username17
Sometimes smaller scale battles are fine. I'd be much more interested in watching the Avengers face the Masters of Evil on the big screen than watching them wade through another legion of faceless schmucks.

I'll give Maleficient a look if it shows up on Hulu or Netflix.
The most dangerous game is man. The most entertaining game is Broadway Puppy Ball. The most weird game is Esoteric Bear.
User avatar
erik
King
Posts: 5861
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by erik »

Wiseman wrote:Yup. Pretty much. The idea though, of everyone being a caster of some sort has merit, though I'm not sure how far you can make something like sword magic go.

Cutting your way into other planes?
Cutting away harmful effects (mind control, curses, debuffs, ect.)

That's all I can think of now.
Imagine any time you see a wand or staff casting a spell, instead it is coming out of a sword.

Also. This.
Image
User avatar
Wiseman
Duke
Posts: 1402
Joined: Fri Mar 09, 2012 4:43 pm
Location: That one place
Contact:

Post by Wiseman »

So maybe there's just a list of abilities everyone picks from? And then it's just refluffed to fit whatever theme your going for?
Keys to the Contract: A crossover between Puella Magi Madoka Magica and Kingdom Hearts.
Image
RadiantPhoenix wrote:
TheFlatline wrote:Legolas/Robin Hood are myths that have completely unrealistic expectation of "uses a bow".
The D&D wizard is a work of fiction that has a completely unrealistic expectation of "uses a book".
hyzmarca wrote:Well, Mario Mario comes from a blue collar background. He was a carpenter first, working at a construction site. Then a plumber. Then a demolitionist. Also, I'm not sure how strict Mushroom Kingdom's medical licensing requirements are. I don't think his MD is valid in New York.
User avatar
Hiram McDaniels
Knight
Posts: 393
Joined: Mon Sep 15, 2014 5:54 am

Post by Hiram McDaniels »

Wiseman wrote:So maybe there's just a list of abilities everyone picks from? And then it's just refluffed to fit whatever theme your going for?
Savage Worlds does something similar, where you have fairly generic, effects based powers like "Armor" which just increases the target's damage absorption, but can be flavored as a mystical forcefield, sheathing oneself in a coat of ice, or conjuring armor made of live scarabs.

I like this approach to magic, but the Savage Worlds system as a whole definitely has it's warts.
The most dangerous game is man. The most entertaining game is Broadway Puppy Ball. The most weird game is Esoteric Bear.
8d8
Apprentice
Posts: 62
Joined: Fri Mar 28, 2014 5:41 pm

Post by 8d8 »

Hiram McDaniels wrote:
Wiseman wrote:So maybe there's just a list of abilities everyone picks from? And then it's just refluffed to fit whatever theme your going for?
Savage Worlds does something similar, where you have fairly generic, effects based powers like "Armor" which just increases the target's damage absorption, but can be flavored as a mystical forcefield, sheathing oneself in a coat of ice, or conjuring armor made of live scarabs.

I like this approach to magic, but the Savage Worlds system as a whole definitely has it's warts.
Or Mutants & Masterminds, which can easily be played in another genre where "I'm a mutant teenager who can turn into an icicle" turns into "A genie cursed me with the chill of death" or "I am the end of all things, witness the stillness of entropy!" It's amazingly flexible if what you want is D&D-level super powers.
souran
Duke
Posts: 1113
Joined: Wed Aug 05, 2009 9:29 pm

Post by souran »

The real issue with the D&D magic system is inherent to D&D itself and its the concept of what is a "spell."

In D&D everything is a god damn spell. A medusa's gaze does not turn you to stone, its that her gaze has a supernatural ability that functions as the "flesh to stone" spell.

To "fix" the D&D spell system starts with doing something like stripping it back so that it functions like the magic system in the WOT RPG or the "Words of Power" system pathfinder built. Those systems are both just inherently weaker than the existing spell system.

If a spell or effect cannot be generated under your new "build-a-spell" system then it can remain as a D&D style spell but it probably means you need to make sure that the spell has a weakness or flaw or cost.

Finally, magic that really changes the way you interact with the world, the very things that allow high level wizards to play a different game than high level fighters needs to given a price that players care about. Even a taudry show like 'Once' figured out that the only real way to not make magic the solution to EVERYTHING is to give magic a cost that is not fun to pay. Considering that this is a pretty common element to D&D source materials its amazing that the game doesn't have something like this already built in....
Post Reply