Wulf Ratbane said:
If I understand you correctly, you have two concerns:
1) Players putting too high a priority on STR and,
I would say it is more a matter of the rules putting pressure on the players than the players doing anything. Players can do whatever they want.
2) Players "taking themselves out of the fight" and leaving themselves with nothing to do.
Not exactly. That is not a problem. But I am just pointing out that this price can be just as bad as the price of using WIS.
Ah, but you'll notice a nice side effect to my method:
Spellcasters won't wear armor, and they'll abhor physical combat.
But, as you already pointed out, my method will turn STR into a dump stat, thus also achieving this same goal.
There's no arcane spell failure in Grim Tales, yet spellcasters are still unlikely to wear armor as they'd collapse under the weight of their own gear.
This is the EXACT reasoning given to me for why GURPS was better than D&D when I first encountered GURPS 16 years ago. Not terribly relevent to the matter at hand, just struck me as very funny how far we can go and end up where we started.
Why does the archetypical mage wear robes? So that he can, actually, remain quite competently in the fight all the way down 1 STR. Depending on the campaign (the frequency of other spellcasters and/or Horror), they are a lot better off with low STR than they are with low WIS.
Well, the occasional archetype of magi going nuts from using to much magic is fine with me. And I think that perhaps being down to Heavy Encumbrance at 7 pounds (STR 1) would be a greater drawback in my mind than you seem to see it.
Your method only encourages ALL spellcasters to put their lowest stat in STR (which, actually, is an acknowledgement that spellcasters suffer LESS from loss of Strength than from any other ability score). If you're truly concerned about spellcasters retaining their competency, that should be an indication that STR is an appropriate place to direct spell burn.
I don't see that. A WIS 1 Arcane mage is fully compentent mage who happend to be temporarily insane. Yeah, they have lost a good deal of will save and that is a harsh price. But they can still run away. Which is a good idea being as they are out of mana. At STR 1 they are out of mana AND in serious danger on being unable to do anything at all.
A spellcaster with even 7 points of STR to play with (having put an 8 in STR and burning down to 1) is still better off than a caster with 7 points of WIS to play with (17 reduced to 10, in your example). The spellcaster losing 7 points of STR feels less of an impact to his overall competency than a spellcaster losing 7 points of WIS (an assessment, admittedly, based largely on Will saves-- but it's a relevant assessment).
I don't see how getting your max carry knocked down to 10 lbs is less of a penalty than getting a -3 to your Will Save.
A WIS 10 Divine Caster will still have a better WILL save than most strong characters. If that is going to incapacitate them, then the party toughs are going to be in deep trouble when their tourn to make a WILL save comes around. An 8th level dedicated with 17 WIS = +7 Will save, would go down to +4; 8th level strong with 10 WIS is only +2.
You WIS 17 STR 12 STR-burn divine caster has 5 more points to work with than my WIS 17 WIS-burn caster. They each have 3 points of mana burn resistance. Using d6 burn they each burn 1.17 points per spell level.
You can cast 10 spell levels before your are lying unconcious. I can only cast 6, but I am still in complete control of my faculties and body when I am done.
That seems in the ballpark of a fair trade-off. Which is all I am seeking.
I'm not trying to "fix" your system. I'm trying to get an equivalent mod that gets away from Buff mages. After all, Buffy is the slayer, not the witch.
In terms of heroic action, I disagree here. The character who pursues spellcasting has made a choice: that when the time comes, he will willingly "take himself out of the fight" in order to cast his spells. It's an important choice to allow him. The character who suffers STR burn says, "I forgo my physical body in exchange for mental strength."
"I can maybe save the day here, but you guys are gonna have to carry me out of here."
VS.
"Ok, now I pull a gun and chip in."
Sure, but that argument pre-supposes one magic system over another.
If the character can choose between the two systems it may be more heroic in the paladin code of lawful stupid way to sacrifice yourself to the cause. But the other party members might actually prefer that you shoot your spells off and then actually continue to help achieve the goal.
And a character at 0 STR is not necessarily out of the fight. He can lie there helpless and his mind is still sharp (he might even, in fact, be able to cast some spells direct from his CON). The point is, his greatest asset-- his mind-- is intact.
I think where your assessment is really breaking down is assuming that a character at 5, 3, 1, or even 0 STR (in rare cases) is "out of the fight."
Fair point.
One last time, hopefully without beating a dead horse:
Changing the burn stat to WIS and effectively encouraging all spellcasters to dump into an 8 STR takes away important options/decisions during character creation. In practice, all this will do is allow the (divine) spellcasters to cast from 17 to 10 WIS (instead of from 8 to 1 STR, same amount of spells) with the difference being that you gave the player a free "out" during character creation by way of a dump stat.
Disagree. Using STR not only encourages padding STR, in pretty well requires it. I really doubt that a caster using STR would put and 8 in STR. Allowing a dump stat is less bad than forcing multiple ability dependency.
Using WIS actually frees up the player to put their stats where they want.
You also allow divine spellcasters to get double duty out of their Wisdom-- they have a higher prime spellcasting attribute, AND they can cast more spells.
I think that's poor balance.
That is not correct. They can not cast more spells. Once their WIS drops below 10 they can not cast any more spells. So they do not gain any more power. If anything they have less. A STR12 WIS17 divine mage would have 12 points your way and 7 mine. So you balance concern is not there.
I also think this is another benefit. It adds further separation between the arcane and divine casters. Arcane casters are more volatile. They can blast more, but at the risk of doing more damage to themselves. Divine casters sell off some power for insurance against self destruction.
Where we differ is in the assessment of the price. I don't agree it's equivalent from a number of perspectives.
I don't want to discourage tinkering around under the hood, but I do think you should give the STR version a run in actual playtest before you start worrying about players buffing up their spellcasters with super strength (again, ignoring the fact that using the elite array, there is no super stat). In actual play I think you'll find STR relegated to no better than the 3rd best stat, and to call this an "Arnold" mage is to overlook wherever his 1st and 2nd best stats are applied.
Obviously I have not been able to play GT much yet. But I did play GURPS for many years, and I see the same road markers here on this one issue.
One last thing to consider (again, assuming you'll actually be playing rather than just a thinking exercise) is simply not to tell your players that spellcasting is even going to be an option. Let them place their ability scores without the foreknowledge that they may someday regret being pencil-necked STR 8 geeks.
That is a good point.
Good discussion so far-- you can count on a lot of this showing up in a Spellcasting supplement!
Wulf
Glad you are finding it worht the time.
