New design notes - Sorcery!

[Mugen]

1 hour ago, Jeff said:

The new RQ sorceryis the least effective per magic point of the three systems, but unlike spirit magic you can put 15 additional magic points to bump up the strength of your spell to impressive levels.

It could have been possible to do it the other way around, and put more restrictions on how many MP a Sorcerer can put in a spell. Quite like in OpenQuest (or Sandy Petersen's rules from 1997) , in which one can not put more MP in one spell factor than his Sorcery skill/10.

EDIT: Plus, the INT-based limitation allows a beginner sorcerer to have potentially the same magical power than a seasonned one, providing he has access to the same MP storages.

And is there a limit on the number of spells one can maintain at a given time ? That's something I really liked in Sandy Petersen's rules : spells had no Duration factor, but you had a limit on the total Intensity of the spells you could control at a given time, based on the Vows you took.

Edited August 25, 2016 by Mugen

[Mechashef]

I think this sounds very promising with lots of potential.

I liked RQ3 Sorcery but it didn’t have anything to do with Runes so I assigned a set of Runes to each spell and created a skill of Runic Lore.  Each 5% in Runic Lore allowed the character to learn one Rune and they could only learn spells they knew the Runes for (Opposed Runes cost 10% if you already knew its opposite, so it would take 10% of Runic Lore to learn the Death Rune if you already knew the Fertility Rune).

My system made sorcery more complex (I also renamed it to Wizardry and wizards typically created Staves instead of familiars).

Jeff’s system gives a similar flavour but seems to be nicer to play (and I’d guess has better game balance), so I am looking forward to it.

[MOB]

18 hours ago, Nick J. said:

@Rick Meints @MOB @Jeff A request: when RQ4 gets ported to Fantasy Grounds, can the holy days and seasonal effects on spells be integrated into the calendar that comes with that software?

That would be super helpful for tracking these things during play (and that VTT is the only way I play games these days).

Is the Fantasy Grounds calendar the RW calendar - 52 weeks, 12 months, 4 seasons etc? Or can it be modified? The Gloranthan calendar has 42 weeks, 5 seasons and other assorted non-terrestrial weirdness. Assuming the calendar can be modified away from 365 days, it would be cool to integrate the holy days and seasonal effects of the Gloranthan year.

[jux]

So this is a dynamic magic system? The explanation did not make any sense to me

Can anyone give an example or scene how a sorcerer is using magic? It sounds interesting. Having static spells is too over-used in fantasy games. I'd like it to be more like fantasy you read in literature.

[Mugen]

33 minutes ago, jux said:

So this is a dynamic magic system? The explanation did not make any sense to me

Can anyone give an example or scene how a sorcerer is using magic? It sounds interesting. Having static spells is too over-used in fantasy games. I'd like it to be more like fantasy you read in literature.

It depends on what you mean by "dynamic".

You can chose the parameters of your spells, and use them in an inventive way, but you still have to learn each spell individually.

[Nick J.]

1 hour ago, MOB said:

Is the Fantasy Grounds calendar the RW calendar - 52 weeks, 12 months, 4 seasons etc? Or can it be modified? The Gloranthan calendar has 42 weeks, 5 seasons and other assorted non-terrestrial weirdness. Assuming the calendar can be modified away from 365 days, it would be cool to integrate the holy days and seasonal effects of the Gloranthan year.

It can be fully modified according to setting. In fact I've custom edited the xml files myself to create a 13 month "lunar" calendar for an alternate earth setting I use in my homebrew.

I was just thinking that as part of a purchased ruleset this would be a nice feature to integrate for a Gloranthan based game.

[styopa]

11 hours ago, davecake said:

Also, am I the only one who is finding the editing system on these forums dealing with quotes incredibly hard to use and frustrating?

It ain't just you.

[Nick J.]

@MOB One more note on Fantasy Grounds calendars. The calendar feature is only available in rulesets based on the 3.0 CoreRPG codebase. BRP for Fantasy Grounds is based on an older codebase and doesn't have this feature.

[styopa]

3 hours ago, jux said:

So this is a dynamic magic system? The explanation did not make any sense to me

Can anyone give an example or scene how a sorcerer is using magic? It sounds interesting. Having static spells is too over-used in fantasy games. I'd like it to be more like fantasy you read in literature.

I think the only one that could give you an authoritative example would have to be Jeff, or a playtester released from NDA to do so.

I could give you what I THINK would be an example, but it's going to be colored with my long experience with RQ3 sorcery, so likely to exaggerate the similarity to RQ3 and miss some subtle new differences.

Re RQ3's version, I think it's relevant to point out that our main character that played a sorcerer...has just completed his degree as a MATH MAJOR.  The amount of number crunching and fiddling needed to play a sorcerer PC as an ongoing major role was....substantial.  He *enjoyed* it though.  Even he recognizes that was not broadly appealing to most customers, so is willing to accept a sorcery that still delivers the variability (that's what made it so massively better than any other system we'd encountered) but at a lower MFLOPS cost in use.

[Jeff]

4 hours ago, jux said:

So this is a dynamic magic system? The explanation did not make any sense to me

Can anyone give an example or scene how a sorcerer is using magic? It sounds interesting. Having static spells is too over-used in fantasy games. I'd like it to be more like fantasy you read in literature.

OK, let's take Damalstan the sorcerer. He's got an INT of 17 and POW of 16. He's got a 5 point magic crystal and a bound spirit with 13 magic points - that gives him 34 in total. Damalstan knows the following Runes: Fire, Truth, and Movement, and he knows two Techniques - Summon and Tap. He's already nearly maxed on the Runes and Techniques he can master. He can know up to 17 spells, but right now he only knows 6 - Conflaguration 65%, Steal Warmth 50%, Enhance INT 35%, Memorize 40%, Reveal Rune 35%, and Summon Fire Elemental 30%.

Conflaguration, Steal Warmth, Enhance INT, and Memorize are all at the normal magic point cost - but Reveal Rune and Summon Fire Elemental have double magic point costs (he hasn't mastered all the Runes/Techniques of the spell, but can rely on knowledge from related Runes/Techniques).

Damalstan always carries around a lit lamp (to give him a bonus on his Fire Rune spells, and a "Y" shaped staff to help him on his Truth spells. 

When his friends are attacked by broo, Damalstan decides to cast a powerful Conflaguration - a 2 point spell - on the toughest looking of the broos. He decides to add 11 magic points to the strength of the spell. That means Damalstan will spend two full rounds casting the spell, and it will go off on round three. Hopefully, his friends can hold them that long. Round three happens, and Damalstan rolls to cast his spell - he has a base of 65% plus 6% for the silly lamp he always carries around (he rolled  a 6). Damalstan rolls a 23 - a success. He marks off 13 magic points and a fire hot enough to melt lead is summoned on the broo leader - and it does 3D6 damage to a hit location. No magic resistance roll is necessary - this is a real fire! It does 13 points of damage - and if the broo does not move away, he'll take damage next round!

However, Damalstan is now down to 21 magic points and needs to be careful about trying to do this again!

[Nick J.]

@Jeff I really dig that example. It kind of makes me want to take that as a base and mashup some of  the "Spellburn" and "Corruption" mechanics from Dungeon Crawl Classics to come up with something really crazy

[deleriad]

1 hour ago, Jeff said:

OK, let's take Damalstan the sorcerer. ...

Damalstan always carries around a lit lamp (to give him a bonus on his Fire Rune spells, and a "Y" shaped staff to help him on his Truth spells. 

When his friends are attacked by broo, Damalstan decides to cast a powerful Conflaguration - a 2 point spell - on the toughest looking of the broos. He decides to add 11 magic points to the strength of the spell. That means Damalstan will spend two full rounds casting the spell, and it will go off on round three. Hopefully, his friends can hold them that long. Round three happens, and Damalstan rolls to cast his spell - he has a base of 65% plus 6% for the silly lamp he always carries around (he rolled  a 6). Damalstan rolls a 23 - a success. He marks off 13 magic points and a fire hot enough to melt lead is summoned on the broo leader - and it does 3D6 damage to a hit location. No magic resistance roll is necessary - this is a real fire! It does 13 points of damage - and if the broo does not move away, he'll take damage next round!

Sadly, this just unsold me on sorcery. It reads like all the worst parts of AD&D combined with the worst parts of RQ3 sorcery. There's a sorcerer carrying around all manner of gee-gaws in order to give himself micro bonuses to a skill and extra Magic Points. His ability to cast powerful magic seems to have nothing to do with skill and mastery and everything to do with the number of magic doodads containing Magic Points he's acquired over the years. Basically, a sorcerer's capability is defined by their gear.

Then the spells. Enhance INT. Really? Are we going back to RQ3 days of sorcerers buffing party members and themselves to stupid characteristic levels. And then to cast a spell you first roll all your doodad based micro bonuses. Then you roll for the spell. Then you roll for its effects after doing the old RQ3 SRs carrying over calculation despite the fact that nothing else in the universe carries over. 

For what its worth, I thought the idea sounded good (bar the micro-bonuses) in the blog. It's always seemed cognitively wrong that we kept approaching Gloranthan sorcery through improvised magic or pseudo ars-magica verb+noun manipulations when the lore always said that a sorcery spell did one thing and one thing only, precisely, exactly and without variation. This description of how it works, however, does nothing for me.

[smiorgan]

5 hours ago, Jeff said:

he has a base of 65% plus 6% for the silly lamp he always carries around

The system seems OK to me but nothing to write home about. Two things:

1) I strongly dislike these fiddly little bonuses. One thing I liked about OpenQuest in play was the big-bonus policy.

2) the rune + technique thing seems a missed opportunity if you in the end have pre-made spells, When I started reading about the runes and techniques I expected something more dynamic like Unknown East magic in Elric! a.k.a. Deep Magic or, even better, Mythic Iceland's rune magic 

Let me be clear: I don't say that you have to make a free-form system for sorcery. I have no idea what is right for RQ sorcery. Just saying that the one you presented seems like one but it's not.

If it's pre-made spell lists why the fuss with runes and techniques? Just create flavorful spell-lists (schools, grimoires) with ideological-magical restrictions as in Warhammer FRP 2nd edition for instance (great magic system).

As for the manipulations. Spending more magic points to do more damage is always fun. But I'd love more ad-lib things like the Vancian Polysyllabic thing in 13th age.

 

    

 

Edited August 25, 2016 by smiorgan

[MOB]

3 hours ago, deleriad said:

There's a sorcerer carrying around all manner of gee-gaws in order to give himself micro bonuses to a skill and extra Magic Points. His ability to cast powerful magic seems to have nothing to do with skill and mastery and everything to do with the number of magic doodads containing Magic Points he's acquired over the years. Basically, a sorcerer's capability is defined by their gear.

I think that is overstating things. Skill and mastery is important but I like the idea that the sorcerer's ability is affected (for better or worse) by how they are attuned to external variables, such as the calendar, sympathetic objects, etc

[styopa]

5 hours ago, deleriad said:

... the lore always said that a sorcery spell did one thing and one thing only, precisely, exactly and without variation....

Reference?

Because from what I've seen in the lore, sorcery is very much collectivist (ie you can have multiple casters all cooperating) which would imply that scaling and variability are core concepts in sorcery?

[SDLeary]

Silly question. Why are the Runes a sorcerer has to choose from not tied to the Runes the player chooses during character creation? I imagine that it has something to do with the Western mindset. 

If they DO choose a rune from character creation, is there any benefit?

It seems to me that if Damalstan  was strong in The Forc... Fire from birth, he should gain some advantages if he chooses that as his path of study in the magical arts.

SDLeary

 

[TrippyHippy]

One thing that RuneQuest could borrow from Ars Magica is more imaginative spell names. Rather than simply spells being named by effect, could they not be given some more poetic sounding names? 

[Jeff]

2 hours ago, SDLeary said:

Silly question. Why are the Runes a sorcerer has to choose from not tied to the Runes the player chooses during character creation? I imagine that it has something to do with the Western mindset. 

If they DO choose a rune from character creation, is there any benefit?

It seems to me that if Damalstan  was strong in The Forc... Fire from birth, he should gain some advantages if he chooses that as his path of study in the magical arts.

SDLeary

 

Damalstan of course can use his personal Fire Rune to augment Fire Rune spells. On a simple success, that's a +20% gain. However, unlike Rune magic, a sorcerer can master Runes utterly unconnected to their personal Runes. Frex Damalstan has mastered the Truth Rune for sorcery and has a personal Truth Rune at 75%. He can learn sorcery spells using the Truth Rune (and augment them with his personal Rune), but he could also learn sorcery spells using the Illusion Rune (at twice the magic point cost, and no augments).

BTW, I am not a big fan of spell names that do not provide to the informed reader an immediate idea what the spell does. 

[Jeff]

2 hours ago, styopa said:

Reference?

Because from what I've seen in the lore, sorcery is very much collectivist (ie you can have multiple casters all cooperating) which would imply that scaling and variability are core concepts in sorcery?

Sorcery spells make a particular effect - but all sorcerers know how to "increase the effect". They tend to be more focused than spirit magic spell. Frex, instead of Countermagic, sorcerers need to Neutralize a specific Rune or type of magic. 

And yes, the true Malkioni (Brithini, Hrestoli, Rokari, etc.) have methods of cooperation to increase the effective Free INT, pool magic points, etc. 

[MOB]

24 minutes ago, Jeff said:

BTW, I am not a big fan of spell names that do not provide to the informed reader an immediate idea what the spell does. 

Spell names in RuneQuest have always been helpfully prosaic in their utilitarian descriptiveness.

[Jeff]

Initially we playtested more "dynamic" sorcery - like Ars Magica - where sorcerers kept track of each Rune they knew and each Technique, but were able to cast improvised spells. That turned out to be both way overpowered AND very slow (the sorcerer tended to take more time than all the other characters put together). Now, a sorcerer can create new spells by working with the GM to describe the intended effects of the new spell, what its point cost should be, what the impact of additional intensity should be. The GM has the final authority as to the description of the new spell.

After spending time researching the formula of the new spell, the sorcerer makes an INT test (the multiplier ranges from x4 where the spell merely modifies a spell the sorcerer already knows to x1 where the sorcerer creates something totally brand new and unique). The God Learners had ways of getting big bonuses to this by augmenting with their Monomyth Lore and even bigger bonuses (including on the starting ability of the spell) by heroquesting to observe mythic activity. But modern Malkioni (with a few interesting exceptions) consider this God Learner heresy.

[jongjom]

Another plea for no small bonuses. Nothing quite like slowing down a game for no discernible effect. If you roll +d10% a lot of the time you'll get a disappointing score which adds to the slow grind hassle. 

[TrippyHippy]

You could keep some low powered dynamism by having each Rune associated with some relatively minor 'cantrip' style effects? 

In Ars Magica, Spontaneous Magic has only a fifth of the potency of Formulaic spells. 

 

Edited August 26, 2016 by TrippyHippy

[skoll]

11 hours ago, Jeff said:

OK, let's take Damalstan the sorcerer. He's got an INT of 17 and POW of 16. He's got a 5 point magic crystal and a bound spirit with 13 magic points - that gives him 34 in total. Damalstan knows the following Runes: Fire, Truth, and Movement, and he knows two Techniques - Summon and Tap. He's already nearly maxed on the Runes and Techniques he can master. He can know up to 17 spells, but right now he only knows 6 - Conflaguration 65%, Steal Warmth 50%, Enhance INT 35%, Memorize 40%, Reveal Rune 35%, and Summon Fire Elemental 30%.

@Jeff, can you please confirm, if the following modification to the scenario you described, would hold true?

Let's say Damalstan only has 15% in Conflaguration. Nonetheless he got lucky and managed to cast the spell, having poured 30 magic points into it. And now the damage would be 6D6 or something like that?

[Jeff]

Damalstan would need to have an INT of 29 to pour that many points into. The total points that can be added to strength, damage, and range is capped by Free INT.

So no. Damalstan could have put 15 points into the spell to get it up to 4D6 damage, but that would have taken an extra round, and his player doubted he could wait that long.