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New design notes - Sorcery!


MOB

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12 hours ago, Nick J. said:

@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.

Well I suppose the new RQ will warrant the new version of Fantasy Grounds then. Thanks for the info about the calendar, it would be great to have in there.

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6 hours ago, MOB said:

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

How is this an overstatement? I believe Jeff just confirmed, that what Deleriad said, is true. Spell "mastery" has no effect whatsoever on the power. The only thing, that affects how powerful spells you can cast, apart from free INT, is the mana you have available, ie. the amount of mana crystals and bound spirits you are carrying with you. How good you are with any given spell only affects the likelihood of success .

Edited by skoll
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1 minute ago, skoll said:

How is this as overstatement? I believe Jeff just confirmed, that what Deleriad said, is true. Spell "mastery" has no effect whatsoever on the power. The only thing, that affects how powerful spells you can case, apart from free INT, is the mana you have available, ie. the amount of mana crystals and bound spirits you are carrying with you.

Your chance of casting the spell is effected tremendously by the day, week, season, and components. And yes, I have made those flat percentages rather than dice (an easy change - and frankly one I am happy with).

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6 hours ago, MOB said:

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

Yes, that feels really Gloranthan.  I love the flavor.

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38 minutes ago, skoll said:

How is this as overstatement? I believe Jeff just confirmed, that what Deleriad said, is true. Spell "mastery" has no effect whatsoever on the power. The only thing, that affects how powerful spells you can case, apart from free INT, is the mana you have available, ie. the amount of mana crystals and bound spirits you are carrying with you. How good you are with any given spell only affects the likelihood of success .

@skoll:  Step back and look at it from this angle - A Sunspear does how much damage and how many can a priest cast?  None of that damage is dependent upon the players skill.  Neither is battle magic.  Now take another step back and look at the damage numbers Jeff is talking about.  That's a lot of magic points for the same effect.  So it's balanced.  The sorcerer can variable it, but limited to his Free Int.  If he wants a greater effect, he has to have access to greater Free INT.  Extra magic points just means more castings.  Look at how many sunspears the priest is casting.  For way cheaper.

 

So what do we have here?  A character class that isn't restricted to any pantheon like a priest is.  He can build his repertoire of spells however he sees fit, within certain parameters that work identically to schools of magic, but has way more versatility.  No two wizards need be alike.  But the tradeoff is it costs far more magic points.  So gaining magic point sources is very important.  Not for the power of your spells, but how many you can cast.

I don't think this is in any ways broken.  But of course, only playing it long enough will tell.  If it can be broken, some players will find a way.

Edited by Pentallion
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24 minutes ago, Jeff said:

Your chance of casting the spell is effected tremendously by the day, week, season, and components. And yes, I have made those flat percentages rather than dice (an easy change - and frankly one I am happy with).

It's not the chance of casting I'm concerned about. It's the disconnect between your skill level and the power of the spells. It's enough to know the spell with 5%, to be able to unleash tactical nukes. Granted, you will fail most of the time, but the possibility is there. A simple skill-based cap on the amount of mana you can add to the spell effect (e.g. skill / 5) could be one solution.

And BTW, I also like that the day, week, season, etc affect casting. 

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1 minute ago, skoll said:

It's not the chance of casting I'm concerned about. It's the disconnect between your skill level and the power of the spells. It's enough to know the spell with 5%, to be able to unleash tactical nukes. Granted, you will fail most of the time, but the possibility is there. A simple skill-based cap on the amount of mana you can add to the spell effect (e.g. skill / 5) could be one solution.

And BTW, I also like that the day, week, season, etc affect casting. 

I don't want to go in that direction. Sorry.

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48 minutes ago, skoll said:

How is this an overstatement? I believe Jeff just confirmed, that what Deleriad said, is true. Spell "mastery" has no effect whatsoever on the power. The only thing, that affects how powerful spells you can cast, apart from free INT, is the mana you have available, ie. the amount of mana crystals and bound spirits you are carrying with you. How good you are with any given spell only affects the likelihood of success .

I was responding to the assertion that "Basically, a sorcerer's capability is defined by their gear" - carrying around "all manner of gee-gaws". There's also the day and the season, proximity to certain elements or mythically resonant locations, etc. that I think gives what we're doing with sorcery a very Gloranthan flavour. 

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I'm surprised that each spell is a separate skill - becoming proficient in several spells becomes a potentially lengthy endeavour in terms of character advancement. One of the trends I've liked in recent BRP-based iterations is the move towards skill grouping, such as combat styles in RQ6, or combining the attack/parry skill etc.

Runes and Techniques also seem something of an oddity within the rest of the system, in the fact that most character attributes are quantified as a skill. Grouping spell casting ability under something like the lowest % of its specified runes would lessen the impact of skill proliferation.  I appreciate the fact that you can't really use personal Rune Affinites for the basis of this because they are now essentially personality traits, but you could have something like a Rune Lore skill instead that represented a way to objectively manipulate a specified rune, rather than be subjective to it.  

I'm not even sure I'd have Techniques as a thing - if Sorcery isn't an improvisational system, but rather a set of defined spells, then you either know the spell or you don't - the Technique seems more a part of the spell description (i.e. this is how it's done according to the in-game lore) rather than an attribute of the caster?

Environmental factors I like, but there's always the danger that it turns into the old HW/HQ1 augment fest, which thankfully got removed in later editions - glad to hear they are going to be flat modifiers.

Anyhoo, MGWV as they say.

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58 minutes ago, TrippyHippy said:

I do like the use of season/moon cycle idea. I'd still like to see more florid language in the spell names though - it would also add to the flavour I think. 

Aren't names for us to make up in our games? For example I've not heard someone call bladesharp that in game for donkeys years.

.

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47 minutes ago, Iskallor said:

Aren't names for us to make up in our games? For example I've not heard someone call bladesharp that in game for donkeys years.

.

Well, words carry the atmosphere of the game for me. Prosaic, generic language makes magic feel unmagical to me - and while we could make it all up ourselves, it's like arguing that we should just write up the setting material ourselves too. What's wrong with a bit of florid writing? It worked in Ars Magica. 

Edited by TrippyHippy
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4 hours ago, MOB said:

I was responding to the assertion that "Basically, a sorcerer's capability is defined by their gear" - carrying around "all manner of gee-gaws". There's also the day and the season, proximity to certain elements or mythically resonant locations, etc. that I think gives what we're doing with sorcery a very Gloranthan flavour. 

tl;dr. I'm sure it works perfectly well but it's not for me.

Just to reduce the strength of any fire runes around here there are judgement calls and preferences in the sorcery outlined mentioned that I personally don't like but it doesn't mean they are in any way "broken." 

There are some game design decisions that don't work for me: particularly augment hunting when those augments are in the tiny percentage range. I do realise that some people get a real kick out of optimising their skill chance by chaining together a whole load of small bonuses but I really don't. As someone who mostly GMs I particularly dislike it because I don't want to have to be constantly dealing with multiple small bonuses. I'm relieved that at least small dice roll bonuses have gone. 

For what it's worth, my personal preference is that the power of a spell is based on the skill of the caster not on access to Magic Points. In the latter case, a contest between wizards is mostly settled by who has the bigger machine gun and the most ammo. That however is a personal preference for how to model magic.

So my dislike of the sorcery system is a mixture of personal preference for how to model it and a dislike of tiny-augment-hunting skill systems. The other issues for me are indications that there are characteristic buffing spells (Enhance INT) which I dislike in a game intensely because they add yet more fiddly skill changes and that despite handfasting the system to Glorantha we have vanilla names for spells. That final point seems like a missed opportunity. Spell names don't have to be florid but I would much rather see them rooted in the setting than the game function. 

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9 minutes ago, deleriad said:

...despite handfasting the system to Glorantha we have vanilla names for spells. That final point seems like a missed opportunity. Spell names don't have to be florid but I would much rather see them rooted in the setting than the game function. 

Glorantha has always had "vanilla" names for spells, so nothing different here.

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3 minutes ago, MOB said:

Glorantha has always had "vanilla" names for spells, so nothing different here.

I thought the point of making a new edition of the game was to make it better. If you are reviewing the mechanics of the sorcery system to better capture a flair for the setting, well the language you use is a simple way of doing exactly this. Do you want RuneQuest to be a vanilla fantasy or something more flavourful of Glorantha?

Edited by TrippyHippy
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5 minutes ago, TrippyHippy said:

I thought the point of making a new edition of the game was to make it better. If you are reviewing the mechanics of the sorcery system to better capture a flair for the setting, well the language you use is a simple way of doing exactly this. Do you want RuneQuest to be a vanilla fantasy or something more flavourful of Glorantha?

Well, I see the prosaic nomenclature of Gloranthan magic as a feature not a bug. Ironically it's the most vanilla of all FRPGs, DnD, that has some of the most florid spell names.

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7 hours ago, jongjom said:

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. 

Instead of a +dx% cast bonus, maybe those bonuses could be changed to POW doubling. Like say 1 point POW doubling, but if the sorcerer has two or three such goodies it doubles the first two or three POW points spent. That would keep the bonuses useful, easy to play, but not all that powerful. 

Chaos stalks my world, but she's a big girl and can take of herself.

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30 minutes ago, MOB said:

Just look at spell lists in any edition of RuneQuest - #6, #3, Moongoose, AiG, whatever, all the way the back to RQ1

But this is just tradition, though. Like I say, if you are changing the Sorcery system in the new edition to make it more flavoursome of Glorantha, then surely the language of the spells names could also be part of that consideration? It doesn't impact on backwards compatibility too much if names are given a bit more pizzazz - you simply need to list name changes.

Beyond backwards compatibility, how is it a feature to have generic names? 

 

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8 hours ago, MOB said:

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

I understand the need for this descriptively, but as an esthetic I've always far preferred more evocative names for what would be IRL amazing, wondrous things to see.

Not to get into Psychology 101, but I have to expect that sorcerers would want to make sure that the spells they cast sound as impressive as possible.  "Globe of Distant Discernment" sounds so much more potent/cool than Farsee.  "Expeditor of the Skein of Destiny" sounds cooler than "Jump ahead in time", "Fulguration of Immanent Grandeur" sounds scarier than "Zap with light beam".  "Food of Chaos" is terrifying, calling it "Carnivorous mold" just sounds like something annoying you found in your damp basement.

(these names are all from the Tekumel RQ *also* by the inimitable Sandy Petersen - *fantastic* to read if you haven't)

Curious that we're at opposite positions on this, considering our opposite stances on evocative rules-writing vs rules-as-reference-work.  Frankly RQ2 spell names were pretty dull, RQ3 sorcery even moreso.

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7 hours ago, Jeff said:

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.

Honestly, this was my only qualm about your description.  Having spell flexibilty tied to a STAT and not a skill level makes it more or less fixed, not progressive.  It's not going to change materially (particularly as INT is a very-fixed stat) as the character develops.  Billy the New Wizard can adjust a spell as much as William the Magus 100 years later?  That seems counterintuitive?

Do we want a mechanic that says starting-out sorcerers are able to whomp stuff with 4d6 damage (perhaps offset by  a low chance to cast)?  My gut reflex says that this is an approach that might have worked in old-school rpgs, but is ultimately unsatisfying today both as a player and DM.  Is the 'sorcerer' character in the party the gal with the "one shot kill" gun, but only has a 1 in 8 chance it goes off?  So in the fight with the BBEG, the (young) sorcerer is doing nothing most of the time OR killing the BBEG in one shot making the other characters less relevant?

The time to cast only matters if combat's actually begun.  Giving beginning sorcerers the ability to fully manipulate their spells to a high degree gives them OP alpha-strike capability.

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9 hours ago, Jeff said:

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).

One middle way that I like between on the spot improvisation and innovation by research only is keeping the spell free-form but have the sorcerers prepare them in advance rather than in the middle of the action. The sorcerer need first to prepare a spell by combining the rune and technique and committing the magic points in advance, you might say it takes several minutes if not hours. Then when the sorcerer has the spell prepared it can be unleashed as a matter of strike ranks...

That mitigates a lot the time issue because preparation happens in downtime out of combat. And it provides interesting tactical choices. When I was running Stormbringer and there was some big combat anticipated - say storming Gaynor's tower in Ameeron - the sorcerer would try to summon and bind a custom designed demon for the task. All the players would participate to the discussion should we summon a flying beast to fly us on rooftop or just a big brute...

Or think of the preparation of rune scripts in advance in Mythic iceland...

As for the power issue, the GM can still veto or modify certain spells at prep time.

Designing your spells in advance would fit the rationalist intellectual mindset of the sorcerer AND be way more fun than the fricking lantern...

 

       

Edited by smiorgan
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Yes, if a starting sorcerer is willing to blow all their magic points for one spell that they have likely a mediocre chance to cast, I am fine with that. And since sorcery has half the base duration of spirit magic (1 minute), a sorcerer wanting to prep beforehand really needs to spend a bunch of points on duration (it takes 10 additional magic points for a spell to last all day), which reduces the ability to increase the spell's strength. Sorcerers are constantly forced to ask:

Do I want a powerful spell?

Do I want a long duration spell?

Do I want a long range spell (default range is only 10m)?

You can do one, but probably not two of these. Definitely not all three - not unless you have managed to gather dozens of sorcerers together to link together into a grand spell. Which is really only possible in Malkioni lands.

So for the starting sorcerer - they have to decide whether they want to blow all their magic points on a one-shot wonder, which likely means that they have no magic resistance against their opponents. And no ability to do anything else. Or they can do smaller spells that might give their party an edge. 

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52 minutes ago, styopa said:

Honestly, this was my only qualm about your description.  Having spell flexibilty tied to a STAT and not a skill level makes it more or less fixed, not progressive.  It's not going to change materially (particularly as INT is a very-fixed stat) as the character develops.  Billy the New Wizard can adjust a spell as much as William the Magus 100 years later?  That seems counterintuitive?

Another consequence is that Enhance INT becomes a must-have for any experienced sorcerer.

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