# Ramble - design inspiration that comes too late



## RangerWickett (Jun 4, 2005)

At 2:30 in the morning, while working on the skill-based Modern Elements of Magic ruleset, I realized an idea that would have been great if I'd had it a month ago. But now I'm rather far into the book, and I don't know if it's worth the time to rework things, or even to devote time to exploring the idea.

The current system is roughly as follows:

There are 10 magical skills, and by spending skill ranks in those skills, basically characters of any class can gain the ability to cast spells of the appropriate type. Whenever you cast a spell, you make a skill check with the appropriate skill, with a DC based on spell level.

Spell levels go from 1 to 20, basically equivalent to character level, so at 1st level you ought to be casting 1st level spells, and at 10th level you should be casting 10th level spells. You can go a little higher or a little lower if you want, with lower or higher chances of success.

When you cast a spell that's the same level as your character level, you've got on average a 70% chance of success of the spell working. If you cast a weaker spell you've got a higher chance of it working. If you fail, you suffer a cumulative -1 penalty to your spellcasting checks until you get some rest. This gives you a lot of flexibility in how you dole out your power.

I realized tonight, though, that it might end up being a pain to have you make a spellcasting roll, then have your target make a saving throw, whereas the core system just has the target make a save.

And then I hit on the Wealth system from D20 Modern as a possible solution. In the Wealth mechanic system, anything with a Purchase DC that's less than your Wealth bonus you can buy without affecting your Wealth score at all. If it costs a little more than your Wealth bonus, your Wealth goes down a little, and if it costs a lot more you might run completely out of funds.  You regain wealth by acquiring money in the game, or by Profession skill checks. It's an abstract system, keeping track of relative wealth instead of dollars and cents (or pounds or euros).

What if, I thought, you have a Magic Rating, maybe just a base of 10. You still spend skill points to get ranks in magical skills, but you never make skill checks. The skill points just determine what power spell you can cast. If you cast a spell the same level as your ranks in a skill or lower, your magic rating doesn't go down. If you cast a spell a little higher level, your magic rating goes down 1, and if you cast a spell that's very high level, your magic rating goes down by 1d6 or more. Your magic rating goes back to full when you sleep.

The benefit of this system is that you don't need to make both a casting check and a saving throw to resolve a spell. You just make one roll (or rather, the target makes one roll). The drawback is that, well, it's no longer really skill-based, is it?  You spend skill points because they're a resource that happens to track fairly well to character level, but you're not spending them on skills per se.

Well, there's my ramble. I dont' know if it's enough information for people to comment usefully, but if you've got some thoughts or suggestions, I'd like to hear them.


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## Primitive Screwhead (Jun 4, 2005)

*ala RoleMaster...*

That looks very much like spell lists from RoleMaster, something that once was converted into the CP2020 system for a game one of my buddies called 'Fantasy Punk'.

 Unfortunately, the buddy got divorced and dissapeared mid play-testing, so I don't have anything left but fond memories.

 My vague recollection was of lists of 10 spells {CP2020 skills are from 0 to 10}. Spellcasters could learn the list by spending skill points on it. Non-spellcasters could learn an individual spell by spending points on it.
 The two spells my character had were Chameleon and Know Earth. Chameleon allowed me to add the spells skill to my Sneak check. Know Earth was an outdoorsy spell that allowed checks to determine large concentrations of people or natural points of interest within a {skill level} mile square area {such as nearest source of water}. It also worked underground to give a rough map of a tunnel system.

Anyway, I tend to agree on limiting the number of rolls, but would prefer some limit on times the spell can be cast. Having a caster check makes things interesting as the spell may not always work or may be weaker/stronger. Having the Wealth system makes spells much safer, and given a player who can manipulate low level spells.. much more powerful.


Being a player who would be overjoyed to have unlimited use of the so called 'minor' spells...  
..and at the same time being a DM who shuddered at the potential problems.   

My preference, based on your limited post, is to stick with a SpellCasting check.


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## Cheiromancer (Jun 4, 2005)

How would the two systems compare on how many spells could be used before fatigue set in?

I.e.  If in the first system the caster had a 95% chance of casting level 5 spells, that would be (on average) 20 such spells before penalties started to accumulate.  (I think- I don't know how level affects the check results).  What would it be in the second system?  Repeat for 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th level spells.

And how much trouble (balance wise) would a large number of spells/day be?


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## Verequus (Jun 4, 2005)

I'm not sure - while I admire the simplicity of the Wealth system, I do see Primitive Screwheads points. Having unlimited spellcasting ability is really attractive - and opposed to unlimited ammunition you can do far more than blowing things up. So there should be some limiting factor included - but how... I've never seen a convincing skill-based spellcasting system yet (RW, I don't include your try in this statement), which has been playtested (by me or by others), so I can't point in one direction or another.

Cheiromancer:
Since when do you show up in my "own" private corner of the forum?


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## Nyeshet (Jun 4, 2005)

If using magic still costs mana when the skill is used, then it is not really unlimited casting.


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## RangerWickett (Jun 4, 2005)

The power level I'm shooting for is to let spellcasters at low level (3 or less) cast only a few spells a day. At mid level (4 to 8), they can cast a few average spells, or a lot of weaker spells.  At high level (9+), they can cast an unlimited number of weak spells, a lot of average spells, and a few powerful spells.



The DC to cast a spell is 10 + spell level. Magical skill checks aren't modified by ability scores or things like skill focus, so basically if you max out your ranks in a skill, you're going to have a bonus of level +3. If you fail a spellcasting check, you suffer a cumulative -1 penalty to spellcasting checks until you rest.

You cannot normally cast a spell of higher level than your ranks in that skill. Spell level is roughly double that of a core spell, plus 2 or 3 levels based on how powerful it is to be able to use it repeatedly, so charm person (1st level) converts to 5th level with a one-minute duration and a 30-ft. range.

Right now, the 2nd level magic-user PC in my playtest game has a +5 bonus to Defend, so he can give a creature a +3 enhancement bonus to AC for 10 minutes with a 55% chance of success. This I feel is fine, because he can easily buff before combat begins, and if it doesn't work he can try again with a good chance of success.

He also has a +5 bonus to Charm, which is enough for him to cast 5th level spells (equivalent to a Charm Person), with a 55% chance of success. Or he can cast something akin to Command (2nd level spell) with a 70% chance of success.  The problem here, though, is that even if he rolls well, the target gets a save to resist. The rules say that if you roll a nat 20 on your spellcasting check, your target automatically fails his save, but otherwise a good roll doesn't mean anything.

Worst case scenario, you have a mage being attacked in melee by a creature with spell resistance. He casts defensively (roll), then casts the spell (roll), then beats spell resistance (roll), and then the creature saves (roll).  Four chances to fail the spell.  A fighter only has to roll to attack once, and he has a better chance of getting lucky against a foe with high defenses.

Now, when you're high level (9+) you wouldn't really need to worry about the Concentration check or spellcasting check if you're casting a spell that's 4th level or lower, since you only fail on a natural 1.

The rules have provisions for taking more time to cast a spell with an additional bonus. If you spend 10 minutes you get a +2 bonus to a roll, and your allies can assist with a ritual by using the Aid Another rules. This allows low-level mages to still do useful things, just it takes more time.

I'm not sure if there really is a problem.  At 1st level, an Attack-focused mage can use attack spells to deal 2d6 with the range of a gun, and have a 55% chance of the spell going off. Then the target gets a save. This makes magic at low level generally less useful than technology, since a pistol is much better unless the target is wearing armor or has cover.

At 5th level the Attack-focused mage can basically fire a rocket launcher, dealing 5d6 damage at medium range with a burst.  Hmm.


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## Arbiter of Wyrms (Jun 4, 2005)

I personally feel that the new brainstorm you had, RW, is worth pursuing.  It sounds like an improvement to me, in that it sounds like it will get you claser to what it is it sounds like you're doing.  Granted, the fact that it spends skill points on stuff that you don't make skill checks on seems wierd, but then, folks spend skill points on languages and never make Speak Language check (under RAW), and what rogue do you know that wouldn't spend skill points on increased wealth if they had the option?  I've never played d20 Modern and don't have any of the books, but I've always thought that the wealth system seemed like a really interesting abstraction.

More importantly, you have to ask yourself: Do I really want to finish wrinting a book that I wouldn't use?  If the new system you're devising is that much better, you probably ought to go back and do this right, as much of a pain as that is.


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## RangerWickett (Jun 4, 2005)

Well, I'm fairly confident the current system is balanced . . . but I just don't like having to make two rolls, one for caster and one for target. Most of the time it won't be an issue, because Create, Cure, Defend, and Summon never requires saves, and while Divine, Illusion, Move, and Transform sometimes require saves, they also have lots of uses that don't require saves at all.

It's only really an issue for Attack and Charm. Attack I could _almost_ see removing the save for -- just lower the damage output, since your opponent still gets to resist in a way through his hit points. Sure, Reflex saves are classically associated with dodging fireballs, but I'd be content to reserve Reflex saves only for things like Telekinetically dropping a wall on someone.

Charm though, you need a save to resist.  If people had mental hit points, I might be able to do away with Will saves, but that's too big of a change for this book to implement.  Maybe if I'm on the 4th edition design team, I'll do it.

I basically don't like that you have two chances to fail, whereas core spellcasters only have one.

One possibility I considered was that if you beat the DC by 10 or more, your target doesn't get a save, but that eliminates a lot of the difference of high or low save bonuses.  Another was to just add the target's saving throw modifier to the spellcasting DC, but that doesn't work if there are multiple targets.  Another was that the result of your spellcasting check became the DC, but then you've got little impetus to cast higher-level spells (still, I think this is the best solution so far). I could have it so that the DC is increased by +1 for every 2 points you succeeded your spellcasting check, but that's a lot of math. A final idea was just to make spell DCs for this system higher than for the core system, to offset the chance of spell's not going off at all.


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## Thomas5251212 (Jun 4, 2005)

Well, honestly, as someone who spent years playing RuneQuest and other games that typically had both an attack and a defense roll  in combat, I'm not seeing any horrendous deal about the two rolls.

That being said, have you thought of simply including the saving throw values as a penaltyto the casting roll?  If it's a typical resisted roll, in practice that's what it does anyway, just with extra varience built in.  You'd want to not have the penalty failure reduce the spellcasting, but that doesn't seem that complicated if you treat the latter as a sort of "magical defense".

Hypothetical example: You are throwing a fireball at three characters who have Reflex saves of +5, +7, and +3.  This means they have an effective defense equal to the casting target modified by those values.  Let's say that target is normally 15.  You throw the spell.  If you get 15, you at least got the spell off, but everyone would only take half damage; if you roll 18 the third character would take full damage, if  20 the first and third would, and 22 all of them would.


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## dekrass (Jun 5, 2005)

I like the idea of the check result being the save DC. 
It makes high rolls mean something and adds to unpredictable nature of magic.


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## astriemer (Jun 5, 2005)

The option that your spellcasting check sets the DC is probably the best solution so far (like 3e psionic combat). Roll d20 and add your skill ranks for the DC.

Another option though would be that you don't have to make a success check if the spell level is less than your character level. Thus, you'd only be making the success checks for spells that are pushing your limit. This has the problem though in that it would probably make infinite lower level spells possible. Perhaps you could put a time limit on it as well. If the same spell type is cast within 1 minute of each other, then you need to make checks as if it were a higher level spell (kind of borrowing from the recharge magic idea from unearthed arcana). You could even modifiy the time between spell castings so that attack and charm spells would be able to have a quicker wait time (d4 rounds), and some of the utility spells would have longer wait times (1 hour).

The other thing that could keep it "skill based" is that the spell could succeed automatically, but after casting you make a skill check to determine if you become fatigued (or exhausted).

I like the wealth version, but the problem is that the way the wealth system is structured there seems to be a design mechanic to help to keep it balanced. Just about all of the potentially unbalancing items (all magic items for example) have purchase DCs of 15 or more (meaning that regardless of your wealth score you automatically reduce your score).  If you structured it so that your magic rating would automatically be affected more quickly, it might work. Maybe just make it such that anything with a higher MR than 5 would cause a deduction or something like that.
You're skill check could compliment what causes you to recover your MR rather than just resting. Like you get skill check points back each 8 hours that you rest.


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## Slander (Jun 5, 2005)

I'd like to throw one other alternative out there. What if we remove the spell failure portion originally suggested and replace a different penalty:


There are 10 magical skills, and by spending skill ranks in those skills, basically characters of any class can gain the ability to cast spells of the appropriate type. Spell levels go from 1 to 20, basically equivalent to character level, so at 1st level you ought to be casting 1st level spells, and at 10th level you should be casting 10th level spells.

Whenever you cast a spell, you make a magical skill check with a DC based on spell level.  You can cast a spell little higher or a little lower if you want, altering the DC accordingly. If you fail, you suffer a cumulative -1 penalty to your spellcasting checks until you get some rest. When the cumulative spellcasting penalty equals the number of ranks in a given magical skill, you can no longer cast spells from that skill. This gives you a lot of flexibility in how you dole out your power.


While there are still two rolls involved, this ensures 100% spell-casting success at the risk of burning out your future-potential. Larger penalties could be applied for overcasting. Skill checks could be done away with if the difference between the spell levela and current skill rank (penalties included) is greater than ???. 

This has a side effect of rewarding skill specialization (since those are the spells to which you'll have access longest). If the penalties seem to harsh, the DCs could be scaled back. If its not enough, maybe a sliding penalty based on degree of failure could be implemented.


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## Abulia (Jun 18, 2005)

Primitive Screwhead said:
			
		

> That looks very much like spell lists from RoleMaster, something that once was converted into the CP2020 system for a game one of my buddies called 'Fantasy Punk'.



Yep, functionally it is the same. I thought the same thing upon reading. Honestly, if I wanted such a system, I'd probably be playing RM anyway. 

(Sorry, not thread-crapping; just professing my love of RM. We RM players are a rare breed.)


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