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General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
Making magic feel "Dangerous"
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<blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 7530956" data-attributes="member: 82106"><p>I think what you describe is ONE option, not the only one. Ask anyone who ever played a caster in Dragonquest, it is VERY VERY possible to make a simple, even dull and boring, and incredibly dangerous, magic system.</p><p></p><p>The question is more like "why would anyone run a PC who risks death every time he exercises his ability?" If magic is really hazardous enough to SEEM hazardous, then it is pretty much a given that it will have to ACTUALLY be pretty hazardous, at least over the longer term. Dragonquest perfectly illustrates this, there's a pretty modest chance of miscasting, and MOST such failures are only modestly harmful. However, if you run your character for any real length of time and use any spells that are not just trivial (IE anything that can have a meaningful effect on the game) then pretty soon you WILL at least leave yourself totally crippled for some critical period of time, if not outright dead. The thing is, it doesn't really add any mystery to the game, its purely a brute function of dice and probabilities and you could calculate the exact probabilities involved pretty trivially if you cared to. </p><p></p><p>Now, a COOLER system might be one that really let you trade off effectiveness for danger in interesting ways. That would almost surely start to get into your 'DM workload' though. Still, it would at least have the virtue that it would be a choice as to how much this was engaged. a character could ping around with 'at will' type level powers and be modestly effective, without invoking any of the real big danger/mystery part of things. Or they could dig down and do crazy stuff, making dire promises, sacrificing souls, whatever, in order to have a more serious impact. Some of that could involve "well, if you fail that Arcana check then the demon is going to break loose..." etc.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="AbdulAlhazred, post: 7530956, member: 82106"] I think what you describe is ONE option, not the only one. Ask anyone who ever played a caster in Dragonquest, it is VERY VERY possible to make a simple, even dull and boring, and incredibly dangerous, magic system. The question is more like "why would anyone run a PC who risks death every time he exercises his ability?" If magic is really hazardous enough to SEEM hazardous, then it is pretty much a given that it will have to ACTUALLY be pretty hazardous, at least over the longer term. Dragonquest perfectly illustrates this, there's a pretty modest chance of miscasting, and MOST such failures are only modestly harmful. However, if you run your character for any real length of time and use any spells that are not just trivial (IE anything that can have a meaningful effect on the game) then pretty soon you WILL at least leave yourself totally crippled for some critical period of time, if not outright dead. The thing is, it doesn't really add any mystery to the game, its purely a brute function of dice and probabilities and you could calculate the exact probabilities involved pretty trivially if you cared to. Now, a COOLER system might be one that really let you trade off effectiveness for danger in interesting ways. That would almost surely start to get into your 'DM workload' though. Still, it would at least have the virtue that it would be a choice as to how much this was engaged. a character could ping around with 'at will' type level powers and be modestly effective, without invoking any of the real big danger/mystery part of things. Or they could dig down and do crazy stuff, making dire promises, sacrificing souls, whatever, in order to have a more serious impact. Some of that could involve "well, if you fail that Arcana check then the demon is going to break loose..." etc. [/QUOTE]
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