Miscast risks as a balancing system for magic

[Usamimi]

Warhammer-derived RPGs typically use the possibility of miscasts as a balancing lever for powerful spells. How viable is this? Is it worth an analysis across multiple systems?

[Foxwarrior]

Miscasts are more funny than balanced. It's not like your wizard exploding and you having to make a new character is a useful risk to have in a game balance sense: either your new character is about the same strength as the lost one, and you can just cast the super spell again with the new character, or your new character comes it at a lower level, making the party unbalanced in the other direction for a significant portion of the rest of the campaign.

It's amusing to sometimes have wacky magical effects happen that nobody really intended though, so as long as you keep "this is going to be used by players to troll their party" in mind, you can tune the miscasts to be on the light trolling end rather than the game collapsing end.

[Lord Charlemagne]

In most game systems, miscast risks are often a terrible way to balance it as it is only fun when it used in a light-hearted fashion or it is self-inflicted & only extends that far.

In a cooperative game, people rarely like it when George has a bad roll & hits himself in the crotch in a vital combat. People will really not like it if George has a bad roll and explodes himself and the rest of the party.

In addition, it can cause further balancing problems down the line as player can then have a harder time getting into the games if random screwage chance is just a thing packaged into some characters. Constantly cycling through characters, while it can be fun, completely destroys any balance aspect miscasting/backfiring something may have.

A constant source of backfiring --> cycling through more characters --> less emotional investment --> less reason to care about backfiring.

[virgil]

Depends on the effects of a miscast. If all it does is fizzle or a minor inconvenience, then it's essentially like having a spell miss or be resisted, which should be fine.

The severity of the miscast increases the badness of the idea. Having a spell that is asymmetric in power at the cost of possibly killing your character creates a borderline untenable situation - you either overwhelm and dominate the scene, or lose your character.

[pragma]

I also feel like the rarity of miscasts matters a lot. If the caster doesn't feel a palpable risk when casting a spell, then the miscast chance isn't going to throttle their decision-making about when to use magic. Cumulative risk seems wise as a way to get them to conserve resources.

I had this complaint about drain in SR3-5, which I consider a related mechanic. Properly designed mages never took drain in my experience. In fact, I'm not sure I ever saw even a single box of drain damage taken outside of areas with high background count.

[jt]

Rare miscasts that completely hose the character (or worse, party) aren't a very good balancing system for the reason Foxwarrior covered. Entirely reasonable mechanic for a big dumb hack and slash meatgrinder though.

Very common miscasts (on par with missing) might be workable. That lets you make magic special and better than non-magic, because replacing the zero of a miss with the negative of a miss-cast brings the expected value down. I'm not sure this is compatible with the usual big table of random wacky miscasts, it seems like you want the downsides to be way more consistent and bounded than those. I'm also not sure most people would find it fun; or at least, more people think they enjoy this sort of high risk high reward thing than actually do.

Miscasts might actually be a useful concept in a story-driven system. They seem like a pretty easy way to enforce the axiom that every failure still has to advance the plot. Oddly enough I haven't seen this done (but I don't look at many of these systems).

[Usamimi]

If I used a miscast system in an RPG, the chance of a severe miscast would increase based on spell power, the effects would be consistent and bounded (no "your head asplode" result) and not party-hosing.

[Thaluikhain]

Yeah, speaking just for myself, miscasts of any real severity are an automatic nope for me.

Miscasts as in the spell is more likely to miss at high level seem fine, though.

[Blade]

While miscasts that outright kill the spellcaster and the party aren't funny or interesting, miscasts that put them in a worse situation are, in my opinion, okay in a "high-risk/high-reward" approach (where magic will either solve the problem or make it worse) and a more or less slapstick tone.

[Dogbert]

For the last time:

d&d is not meant to be balanced. It's meant to mix Hawkeye with Thor in the same party (for some reason), and Hawkeye is meant to be even more useless each passing level as the Avengers move from "hit a Hydra nest" to "force peace between the Kree and the Shi Ar."

There's only two ways around a fix: either nerf magic or give everyone magic. Nerf magic and the game becomes dnd 4E, which no one liked because it was no longer d&d. Give everyone magic and the game becomes Exalted, which no one liked because it wasn't d&d at all.

We tried to fix the matrix, Morpheus, we tried to make life perfect for everyone, but people rejected it. They need to be miserable for things to feel real. You can't fix what's fundamentally broken, and what is broken here is the players.

[OgreBattle]

Warhammer-derived RPGs typically use the possibility of miscasts as a balancing lever for powerful spells. How viable is this? Is it worth an analysis across multiple systems?

If the risk is in the player's hands it can feel like risk in Poker or Blackjack.
If the risk is random and happens for any spell big or small then it feels like risk in slots, or comedic.

At this point D&D is a solved problem in the sense that those who know, know and play it as the only game in town anyways, and those who don't know can just have the DM fudge the dice or retell that one time they rolled a 20 and still have fun. But if I were to rebalance various editions magic...

D&D3.PF: Stick to lvl6-8 cap most of the time, give noncasters action points and entirely new lvl 7+ PrC. A soft mistcast mechanic can be implemented with making lvl X+ spells require a miscast if no 1 round rest is followed, and miscasts for casting more than one lvl X+ spell in a round.

4e: Martials use a "apply rider to hit" and action point encounter/daily mechanic. Some casters pick Dailies that give an Encounter/At Will when its yet to be spent like 3e reserve spells.

5e: the battlemaster refreshing special move dice after encounters is what an OK stamina system looks like. Do that with action surges too

[erik]

I could get behind miscast as a possibility that happens when you try to overreach. Like maybe you wanted to empower a spell or use some metamagic ability equivalent, you could have a currency of burn or something to attempt this, and it isn't guaranteed that the spell will succeed.

Also a way to make enemies potentially miscast is pretty handy as a control option that you can give to characters.

[Harshax]

I feel like miscast mechanics only work if a spell’s effect is guaranteed. Otherwise, it just seems like additional dice rolls for success.

An OSR I’ve recently been exposed to has a single 6-sided spellcasting mechanic that caps success at 5 in 6. Failure consumes spell-casting resources, at minimum, with addition MTP options or fuck yous by the MC.

At minimum, this makes a spell an arrow in a limited quiver. Escalating from there, spells are like grenade bouncing mechanics and at worst, they’re a trap option.

[MGuy]

Miscast mechanics are like gambling. The idea is that you have a chance to have something bad happen when you cast a spell and how willing I am to stomach that kind of thing depends on both what the rewards are for doing such a thing and what the cost of failing is. Typically the cost of failing in every system I've played with this kind of thing goes from 'lose your action' which is very annoying to 'lose your character and possibly kill your teammates' which is unacceptable.

I'm sure that there's a way to implement it that wouldn't get an immediate 'no' from me or my players but I don't think that there's any actual advantage in even implementing it besides "it fits the setting" or some similar thematic excuse. So unless you're shooting for something in theme I can't see a reason to ever use it.

[Zinegata]

Warhammer-derived RPGs typically use the possibility of miscasts as a balancing lever for powerful spells. How viable is this? Is it worth an analysis across multiple systems?

Generally speaking, miscasts are a really bad balancing lever because you're adding an additional point of randomness.

Really well-balanced games tend to reduce, rather than increase points of randomness.

What does work as a balancing lever are clear downsides. You cast a really powerful spell, but you lose 50 HP as part of the price for casting. Or a specific hostile creature is summoned which fights for the opposing side.

In that case, you didn't add another point of randomness. Instead you introduced a non-random additional price for casting.

[Foxwarrior]

Really well-balanced games tend to reduce, rather than increase points of randomness.

Yeah, but if you want to play a really well-balanced game then TTRPGs are deeply fundamentally never going to give you what you want. A 4v1 tactical turn-based combat where the 1 player gets a bunch of secret information their side isn't supposed to have, and isn't really supposed to be playing to win in too much earnest, and the 4 have no real restrictions on excessive quarterbacking, is actually one of the worst possible setups for a well-balanced tactical combat.

What people hopefully want from a TTRPG is a balanced enough game where they don't feel bad about their character choice, and randomness actually helps with that by making it unclear whether things are balanced or this is just a fluke.

[Emerald]

Whether miscasts actually work as a balancing mechanism or not, don't forget to keep in mind the flavor of magic in the game in question when determining whether miscasts make sense.

Warhammer Fantasy magicians miscasting in combat all the time, and 40K psykers doing the same, makes thematic sense because the Winds of Magic and the Warp are one part raw Chaos energy, one part collective subconscious negative emotions of multiple non-human species, and one part grimdarkness given physical form, so of course everything's going to blow up in their faces; same goes for magic in Lovecraft RPGs and other "magic is evil and/or sapient and it laughs at your suffering" settings.

D&D wizards miscasting in combat all the time is not thematic, because their flavor of magic involves pre-casting most of the spell in quiet peaceful environs ahead of time to avoid just that, but miscasting occasionally is thematic because they're academics in robes who need to make precise gestures for their spells and monsters getting up in their face can be hampering and distracting.

Superheroes mis-activating abilities in combat at all is not thematic (unless their powers are chaos-/luck-/randomness-themed or they're in the "still getting a handle on their powers during their origin story" phase) because superpowers are generally considered innate or "like another limb" or whatever and usually Just Work every time barring plot devices.

Superman and an Alpha Psyker are both immensely powerful, but you don't thematically balance Superman by slapping miscasts on him and you don't thematically balance the Alpha Psyker by letting him use his powers unerringly all the time except when presented with Green Kryptonite Warpstone.

[Omegonthesane]

As it happens the 40k tabletop RPGs I have had experience with allowed psykers to opt out of all the risks associated by casting everything at Fettered.

Unfettered casting means you use your full Psy Rating instead of "half, rounded up" but causes a 10% chance of rolling on the Psychic Phenomena table, of which 75% is flavour or acceptable risks while 25% redirects you to the much scarier Perils of the Warp table. Casting at "Push" increases your Psy Rating for the purpose of the casting, but forces a roll on Psychic Phenomena with the scales tilted towards Perils of the Warp. For context, Psy Rating both makes it easier to cast the power in the first place and makes many powers more, well, powerful if they do work - but at no point is the miscast table tied to whether or not you pass the casting roll.

Anecdotally this has led to me casting at Unfettered any time I start genuinely worrying that not having the extra power would fuck me harder than the Psychic Phenomena table, and at Push exactly once when I thought I would otherwise die next round.

[Krusk]

If I'm reading about a new game, and see miscasts included, its generally one of the first things I think about house ruling out.

[Zinegata]

Really well-balanced games tend to reduce, rather than increase points of randomness.

Yeah, but if you want to play a really well-balanced game then TTRPGs are deeply fundamentally never going to give you what you want.

TTRPGs aren’t ever going to be as balanced as Euros, but its still a sliding scale. The more points of randomness in a TRPG, the more likely it is for a rocks fall and everyone dies scenario to occur.

The original question is whether miscasts can be used as a balance point. It isn’t - indeed its an imbalance point. Thats why I suggest pre-defined additional costs to cast powerful spells, rather than gambling to see if you get away with casting a powerful spell. That way, the price of miscasts is baked into the game without adding an imbalance point.

[Mistborn]

Here's the thing, people who play spellcasters want to play characters who cast spells. Shitting in their Cheerios by having their spells not work or force them to roll on table 420: "hilarious" random mishaps would need to actually balance the game in order to justify itself and it never does, because it adds another set of moving parts to the equation. If your miscast rules are too lenient then they just randomly kick players in the balls every so often but don't actually solve the problem. If they are too harsh then casters are unplayable and you spent pages and pages crating a system players do not want to interact with. Even in the unlikely case you thread the needle the result isn't going to be fun because once again having your character abilities randomly not work isn't fun gameplay.

[Harshax]

The counter point is that people play fighters to kill things with axes, but there is never been a single argument to suggest fighters should miss or do suboptimal damage with their attacks.

Maybe there just needs to be less spells with guaranteed effects and a spell casters casting check is just a roll vs. AC Magic. Then you’d at least have parity between mundane and magicians when it comes to task resolution.

[Orion]

One difficult thing about miscasts is that if you're trying to balance spotlight time they can actually backfire. Like, why do we even balance characters against each other in the first place? To a large extent I think it's about making sure that different players have opportunities to hold the spotlight and/or influence the shape of the story. If the miscasting effects do things like temporarily prevent further casting, or stun or silence or injure the caster, then they'll have the effect of pushing the caster into the backseat for a bit, so it potentially works as a way to rotate the spotlight.

On the other hand, if the miscast effects are big and impactful enough to affect the whole group or change the whole direction of a scene, then they're actually increasing the magic-users "footprint" on the game. It's especially dire when you get into a vicious cycle where failed spellcasting creates problems that can be only be solved with more spellcasting. There's a very real risk that a trigger-happy, chaos-loving, or aggressive player can bend the whole campaign around their magic PC as though it were single-protagonist fiction.

[Zinegata]

The counter point is that people play fighters to kill things with axes, but there is never been a single argument to suggest fighters should miss or do suboptimal damage with their attacks.

Thing is the OP was talking about miscasts in Warhammer RPGs, and those tend to have much more explosive effects on the casters than a fumbled attack roll. I'm pretty sure some of the tables in those RPGs involve killing the caster outright in some pretty horrible ways.

By contrast no single botched fighter roll attack will result in that kind of mess.

I don't think people are inherently against miscasts if the system is meant to be very random and the life of the PCs is cheap. As some folks noted there are games and settings where miscasts add to the experience the designer is trying to deliver.

But the question is whether they're a good balance lever. Math-wise, they are the very definition of adding imbalance.

[Thaluikhain]

Adding my name to people who instinctively "nope" at chances of horrible miscasts.