re: an option for desperate Gatherers well, crossbows are identical to weak spells. No, you're right that a special option for desperately screwed Gatherers is a good idea. Perhaps if they have one basic spell that they always have access to. They can't use a pumped up one (maybe a highly limited feat for being able to) and they can only switch it out once in a while. All this talk is making me worried that I'm adding too many extraneous mechanics, but that's what playtesting is for. Okay. Sometime soon I'll get down and get sample spells together for you guys. Turbo let's just see if I'd rather have you as a Channeler or a Gatherer. Channeler is more likely I think.
Remember that Kazeto volunteered before I did to play Gatherer. But you could always have both of us and just kill one of us when we are no-longer what you want from the game. Your call. I just like Kazeto and do not want to cut him from the game if he wants to play.
Kazeto also said it was his least favorite. I'll have him be one of the others and have Turbo as a Gatherer if I feel like having only you as a Gatherer is an issue. Experimenting with this concept: Players are likely to be squishy because attack stats have a large edge on defense stats. Rather than giving players an easy path to being able to take more abuse, the game currently has lots of mitigation effects: the "ignore x damage" effect and the maybe-I-won't-use-it counterspelling ability. Giving easy access to "+1 to hit" effects would be a huge mistake, but giving easy access to "target gets -1 to-hit" might work. If the ability to make spells not work is common, I would consider making a lot of basic to moderate spells deal 3-4 damage out of the typical 12. This might also make enhanced Gatherer spells powerful, which is probably a good thing: giving Gatherers a very limited ability to modify +1 to-hit into their spells would make it so that they rarely waste a spell. This would also effectively make them put out a lot more deepz. With this aspect, I'd think about limiting the quantity of spells that Gatherers have (hopefully not the selection) and perhaps give them something else to do sometimes besides cast.
Hurrrrp. I can read. I thought I was talking about Gatherers. I even typed the word "channeler..." as for Channelers having a lot of power, I was going to have only some of their spells blow the others away in raw power. I thought it would be fun to be hoping for a certain super-spell. Now that I think about it that's not necessary--they will probably know what in their deck is the best for that day anyway. I'm having second thoughts. That would make me put together tiers of spells and rules about switching spells in and... Hrn.
Hey whoever wants to be a Channeler. I want to have several options for how your list is generated. New ones might be added if I, or you, think of them. I am certain that at least one or two of these will be cut. Here are my ideas for that: +A large deck, 60 cards because it's a nicer number than 50 and the probability is not a no-brainer for the player. TCG players will be comfortable with the probability and that's fine, even a good thing. Feats will customize the deck. Obviously the deck will have a bunch of duplicates in it. +A very long list of spells, and a randomly generated list from that every [period of time]. Feats that let you ensure that you have the right spell. +The GM deciding your spells in a themed way based on the factors that your character relies on. No ability to improve your selections via feats. +Several pre-determined lists based on the factors that your character relies on. Always having the same spells forever would be lame but I hate the idea of writing rules for customizing these lists but keeping them themed... +Several pre-determined lists, determined at random. Maybe add new lists with feats? Maybe very short lists and you get several? Nngh.
+1 for the deck of cards idea. The classic 60-card, 4-max, draft-style deck building procedure would be fly. Feats: * Reduce minimum deck size by 4. (Selectable up to 5 times.) * Add one extra of a spell of your choice (above the 4-max limit.) * Choose one spell: you can discard that spell and draw a new card as a non-action at any time during your turn. * Choose one spell: you can sacrifice three cards to draw search for and draw that one spell. You don't get the three cards back until after the current combat ends. Requires an action. * Increase your starting hand size by one.
I would love to have both a "truly random" option like the "randomly generated from a list" or the "really big deck" as well as a "pre-determined list" option. A lot of characters are going to want the latter type of list flavor-wise. Unfortunately, a short list would be a lot stronger than a long one. Maybe if it's "you can have any number of decks" and all of them are the same deal as the one deck--the same number of cards in them, and modifying one with a feat lets you modify the others too. Again, I refuse to make rules to keep the decks themed. But... if someone chooses to have several decks, he wants to have the flavor of several distinct decks anyway... and if the number of cards in the deck are the same, and each one is made the same way as a one-deck character would make one at character creation there's no balance issue... There won't be a "pay a cost, search for a card" option. And you don't have a starting hand. Well, a feat for that is a good idea, actually.
The "Truly Random Option" could just be "60 card deck, no more than 1 of each card". It would start to get to be a pain in the ass if you had to manipulate several decks. IMHO, of course.
But the deck with duplicates is a whole ton stronger. I'm talking about the difference between one very large list of spells versus several lists based on certain factors, like the weather. A first draft of Shaper spells is finished. Have a look, since they're for you.
List of 20 Common spells (Magic Missle, Dazzle, Jump Kinda High, Summon Irritated Schnauzer) List of 20 Uncommon spells (Fireball, Hold Person, Dispel Magic, Summon Rabid Albatross) List of 20 Rare spells (Meteor, Mind Control, You Are A Green Lantern For One Turn But Your Construct Lasts For Five, Summon Two Headed Triceratops Rex) All spells scale somewhat with level/stats. Base deck, roll 40 commons and 20 uncommons per (time period). Feat: Each (time period) roll 5 additional Rares, then remove 5 cards from your deck. May take this feat up to 6 times. Chance to draw Common (assuming you always replace a Common): 67%, 58%, 50%, 42%, 33%, 25%, 17% Chance to draw Uncommon (can drop to 25%, 17%, 8%, 0%, 0%, 0% if you chuck Uncommons and keep Commons): 33%, 33%, 33%, 33%, 33%, 33%, 33% Chance to draw Rare (assuming you always take each Rare you roll): 0%, 8%, 17%, 25%, 33%, 42%, 50% Other feats include the Draw 3 Use 1 Discard 2 ("Scatterbrain"), Draw 3 use 0 ("Method to Madness"), Draw 1 use it and boost it 50% ("Top Deck Like A Baws"), etc. Will definitely need tweaked, but this is a playtest, and I think that should be a decent start. Maybe 36/20/4 split for starting deck so even a level 1 channel has a tiny chance of blowing up a city already? More/Less than 20 spells per rarity so duplicates are less/more common? *shrug*
That can be our test, but I want the player's deck to be made to their specifications from the get-go, albeit with a limited power level and/or limited options. Then again you could explain just about every possible spell as somehow being granted by your god or whatever, so yeah. Nobody seems to be excited by my idea of different decks for different circumstances so we'll go with the 60 card deck. I just like the idea of changing what there is for you to get, so it's like you're drawing on different sources of power when the fluff says you would be. The thing is, though, that it really ought to be a 52 card deck. The reason should be pretty clear. Looking at the Shaper draft, I do not know how their very extreme versatility will play until we try it. If "-1 to attack" ends up being spammable it could be trouble. And, like with so many things, it could also not be trouble. That's the main possiblity I see, but there might be other nasty ones. So, yes. Now that I've given myself time to examine it? They put the versatility of Gatherers to shame. Something really needs to be done. I think it'll just be that they only get very few words to start, like three of word 1 and two of of word 2. They can get over the ridiculous restrictiveness with feats. This leaves the question of what I'm going to do for Gatherers rather than give their spells not-always-useful fringe benefits. Uhhh... I am very worried that multiple players slinging crap like this around will get annoying with all the modifiers. Also, because of how major a +1 is, I worry that things will swing back and forth very strongly. Adding good, available ways to mitigate these effects will make it all worse. Maybe. Maybe not. Testing! Potential band-aid for the problem: Have +1 and -1 modifiers be represented by little tokens. Add one when you get the +1, remove one when you get the -1. When you cast a spell, you look at how many tokens you have and compare them to your target. If you have 5 and the target has 3, you get a +2. I put an offensive and a defensive option for each stat, and then two social words but I left Cleverness out and didn't give roguey words. Hurp. I think I'll make the two Cleverness words double up as offensive/defensive and noncombat roguey. You may have noticed that when I'm on an idea, I have a crippling inability to shut the hell up. This is because getting my ideas out is, I've found, quite important to my process of thinking things out. Yeah I'm fishing for help, but also it's just what I do.
Okay, lots to sat here, you are warned. System: I likes me some tri-stat systems (any thing based on the Body/Mind/Soul or Spirit stats). However, I feel there might be some inbalance in yours. For starters, the stats themselves seem overly complicated. I get that by taking the two stats and averaging them you make mini-maxing less appealing, but six stats that I have to average against each other just seems fiddly. Like you (and just about every other tabletop gamer I've met) I've tinkered with my own RPG system off and on over the years. What I wound up with was a system where the tri-stats were combined to create a series of secondary numbers called Capacities. The Ferocity capacity, for instance, was the Body stat doubled, and governed how good a person was in melee combat. But the Health capacity was Body + Soul. So neglecting all other stats in favor of Body didn't give you the ultimate brawler, it gave you a hard puncher with a glass jaw. I mention all this because I notice that you give people 19 points to set their stats, then those stats are averaged to create defenses, leaving the typical starting player with defenses somewhere between 3 - 7. You get 3d6 + bonuses to overcome that. Which means defenses pretty much don't matter, at least in the early game. I find that kinda grating... I also feel that stats should somehow tie into what kind of magic you can learn. Just sayin'. Flavor I don't much care for worlds where magic is ubiquitous. Why? Because nothing is that prevelant in the world. In America electricity is everywhere, but we don't use it to run our vehicles because it's lousy at that. Magic should have natural pros and cons to it as well. Also, I subscribe to the unified field of inquiry viewpoint, which basically says that, in order for one school of thought to become more advanced, most if not all the other supporting schools of thought must approach the same level to provide it with the necessary foundations. Thus, I feel magic couldn't become advanced enough to play a major role in society without equally advanced technology, medicine, science, art and culture, ect. Of course, you could be aiming for a satirical or campy appoarch to the matter, in which case just saying "magic is everywhere" is enough, just don't expect everyone to be happy with it (witness Kazeto, myself.) The Classes Channeler and Shaper sound like they're kinda fun. Channeler would let me play Magic and role play at the same time! Shaper would let me try and come up with weirdness on the fly, like a massive puzzle that might not actually have a solution (actuallly, that might be kinda lame.) Gatherer is kinda meh. I kind of like the idea of actually planting spells, sacrificing one or two permanently to unlock something new and different as a core mechanic for him. Rather than shaping the magic I have, like, well, a Shaper, let me nurture it into something new and different. Just a thought. The Playtest Not sure I really have the time to add something else to my plate at the moment, so I'm not going to commit to anything on that front. Sorry. Hopefully the basic feedback above is helpful.
Just tell me what class do you want me to play appropriately early and you'll have a game-ready character design in a few hours. Also, when it comes to making the classes similar in power: How about, instead of making gatherers and channellers less random, making it so that after a shaper uses his word, he can't use this word again for a while. Let's say "for x turns", where "x" is the number of words in that particular spell. Then the overall effectiveness of spells could be raised without worry then, because you wouldn't be able to use the same thing as a shaper all the time without making yourself overly specialised (which kind of defeats the purpose) because you would have to buy repeats of words if you wanted to do so. And as for gatherers having a basic attack, well... How about them being able to choose whether they have one or not, with 2 or 3 different ones available, but choosing either one of them would give their spells a small power-down (that would stop the whole thing from being too abusable, but those who prefer stability over power would be able to choose that, and I reckon most beginners playing as gatherers would), different for every basic attack, which would be applied to every spell unless they spent an additional turn to cast. Alternatively (that is, if you don't like what I wrote above), you could have a powerup combo that made a spell weaker but let it regenerate over a course of fer turns. That would work too, and I think that combos like that would be good if you worked a little on them. That only leaves changes to be done to channelers, but honestly, I think that adding an errata that you draw two cards instead of just one if you are to draw a card and your hand is empty.
Re: the modified problem. Go the WotC way. Have something like 4 broad categories of modifier, each of which is only capable of granting an+\-1 at a time. Then force every bonus into one of those categories.
That would require making some non-number bonuses into number-dependant ones, but it would work very well if done correctly.
Or perhaps for 3-4 times the duration of the spell in question? Not all spells are combat spells, and being unable to use [air] again for 4 turns after you cast "Let me fly for the next 3 hours" seems a little silly. It's a very good idea at it's core, though.
I see no problems with that. In fact, my "x turns" was only for turn-based effects, and making it so that long-lasting spells would have it changed to "x times their duration" instead is a good change.
re: "advanced magic implies advanced medicine, art, mathematics, building materials I completely want to do this, actually. There will be at least two "magic-punk" societies that have magic replacing or even creating science. Diviners as cartographers. Druids as surveyors looking for ore deposits. Astrologers as mathematicians. Shapers whose spells are all into architecture. Gatherer-artisans whose creations create an arms race. Monks like Essence (except they're Channelers) arguing about religion. Wanting to write these things was part of the idea. Technology tends not to converge very strongly i.e. the astrologer's math takes a very long time before it's adopted into mundane non-magical technology because a lot of what's going on is enabled by magic: No need to improve on the magi-tech engine; it's perfectly able to move a proto-train or a mill without advanced chemistry or mechanical finesse. The farmer is a Channeler or Gatherer who has never in his life had even a slight issue with yield. They're quite a lot better at these things than math could accomplish, so the astrologer doesn't bother trying to use it in such a way and just uses it for, I dunno, surveying the land and being magic-Galileo. Random-ass side note: This is my theory for why the technology level in MLP is so fucked-up. The farmer doesn't need the Flim-Flam brothers to make a tilling machine instead of a cider machine; he's never had a problem with labor or yield. I still do not know how to dump a massive quantity or variety of spells onto Gatherers while still limiting what they can duplicate. Perhaps if they have a chance of "dropping" from enemies. Campaigns light on combat can have the players steal the spells or have whoever they're working for supply them because the employer understands what it's like for Gatherers. This has the side effect of making them more willing to burn basic spells while spinning their wheels and not wanting to use big ones. UNFORTUNATELY this adds another auxillary mechanic to an RPG that is already becoming bloated which is contrary to my original concept. I suppose it's okay if it's compartmentalized and the auxillary bullshit is per class, not universal. No time to talk about other stuff. Will use the insights here while designing Gatherer spells and feats. I particularly am interested in "literally plant Gatherer spells, and have them grow into stuff." Off the top of my head--assign numbers to the damage/bonus/non-numerical effects of the "planted" spells, then have a comprehensive list of random effects, and roll up a new plant that has a few traits from the sacrificed things, plus one from the random list, resulting in a new plant with a weirdo mixed bag of effects that's slightly stronger than what's been sacrificed. If the result is crap, then throw it when it sort of makes sense and it fits the vision of "absurd variety of stuff." If the result rocks, duplicate it. Still no ideas whatsoever towards "option for desperately screwed Gatherers." It's a good idea even if it's rarely meaningful.
For lots of breadth but limited duplicability: Each time a Gatherer casts a spell, it by necessity uses all of whatever ingredients that spell requires, and the amount of each ingredient makes the spell stronger. Then the Gatherer has to go get/grow/discover more of those ingredients if he wants to cast that spell again. As long as the remaining ingredients are similar enough but not quite the same, it won't restrict him too much.
Yo, Essence. You have a comprehensive first draft of Shaper basics. Have a look and tell me what you see.
