What Do You Think Of As "Modern TTRPG Mechanics"?

[Lanefan]

...you can be starving in a desert suffering from a diseases but you won't see any of that affect the amount of spell slots you have.

Hmmmmm...interesting. That's sparked me to think about how an exhaustion (or starvation, disease, etc.) mechanic might also affect one's casting capabilities.

Easy enough to make functional in a system that uses spell points rather than slots; there, each defined degree of exhaustion might simply knock off 10%* of your spell points (as in 10% of your starting total, i.e. if your maximum is 30 spell points each degree of exhaustion would knock off 3 regardless whether you happen to be at 27 s.p. or 4 s.p. at the time).

With a slot system it would be very difficult to codify exactly which slots are lost at what degree of exhaustion at different levels; even worse if those slots are tied to prepared or pre-memorized spells.

The only way I can see this working with slots without getting way too complex in play is to have the effect occur later: if you get exhausted today it affects how many slots you have (or can prepare) tomorrow e.g. each degree of exhaustion yesterday costs you one slot per spell level today, or something like that.

With something like this in place one could also invent poisons that attack spell capabilities.

* - or whatever percentage makes sense, based on the granularity of the exhaustion mechanic.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Honestly, that question turns on whether you view spell slots as dependent on physical stamina (like the default GURPS magic) spiritual energy (like the battle/spirit magic system in RuneQuest) or some sort of intellectual focus (nothing comes to mind but I don't doubt there's something that does that out there). Depending on which of the two or three, different things will impact it.

(At one time you could have also viewed it that all the effort was used packing the spell into your capacity in the first place and nothing much was going to effect it after that, but once spontaneous casters became a thing, that muddied that thoroughly).

 

[GobHag]

Honestly, that question turns on whether you view spell slots as dependent on physical stamina (like the default GURPS magic) spiritual energy (like the battle/spirit magic system in RuneQuest) or some sort of intellectual focus (nothing comes to mind but I don't doubt there's something that does that out there). Depending on which of the two or three, different things will impact it.

(At one time you could have also viewed it that all the effort was used packing the spell into your capacity in the first place and nothing much was going to effect it after that, but once spontaneous casters became a thing, that muddied that thoroughly).

For A and C I think being stuck in a dessert would affect your ability to cast still.

 

[Micah Sweet]

It apparently feels worse to enough people to get the rules changed. Even the temporary version of life drain went away.

Yeah, but I'm not talking about permanent things like lifedrain was, just things like "This attack will expend one of the lowest spell slots on an arcane caster of its target." Arguably that's no worse than damaging someone and making them spend a resource to fix it.

 

[Thomas Shey]

It apparently feels worse to enough people to get the rules changed. Even the temporary version of life drain went away.

I'm not sure how that relates to my statement, which was not about a permanent loss like lifedrain. A lot of people would be pretty soggy about permanent attribute loss but wouldn't get worked up about temporary ones.

Edit: I missed part of that; I'd suspect they also probably figured once they were going to get rid of the permanent, they just thought they could represent the temporary other ways too. Probably less complicated ones, too.

 

[Thomas Shey]

For A and C I think being stuck in a dessert would affect your ability to cast still.

I don't disagree, but I'm not sure to the same degree.

 

[Umbran]

I don't disagree, but I'm not sure to the same degree.

Well, you try casting a spell while covered in hot fudge, see how that goes for you.

 

[TwoSix]

Well, you try casting a spell while covered in hot fudge, see how that goes for you.

Usually you pay double for that kind of action, Cotton.

 

[Maxperson]

As a group, I think they're absolutely at least as important. This shouldn't be controversial; even people I've disagreed with about the appropriate power relationship between players and GMs willingly admit that without players, you aren't a GM. You're just a person who'd like to be one.

Yes, but he said more important than the DM, not as important. We've been arguing that player fun and DM fun are equal, but some folks here think player fun is more important and that the DM should sacrifice his fun on the Altar of Players.

 

[Maxperson]

Or it could be, roll a d20, if it is a populated region (see x for what constitutes populated), on 1 to 4 an encounter happens, else 1 to 2.

If an encounter happens, cross reference population density, terrain type, season, time of day and current weather to determine which table to roll on for encounter. If any of above unknown, roll on y tables to determine.

Roll on that given table for encounter.

But may be case that first instance takes half a minute to determine and inform players, while other may take 5 to 10 minutes to inform players. Outcome may even be the same, but even if not, is that time for players essentially doing nothing fair to them for sake of DMs interest?

The DM knows which way the group is going. Why hasn't he rolled that stuff during prep?