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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Wulf Ratbane" data-source="post: 1607008" data-attributes="member: 94">If I understand you correctly, you have two concerns:1) Players putting too high a priority on STR and,2) Players "taking themselves out of the fight" and leaving themselves with nothing to do.Ah, but you'll notice a nice side effect to my method:Spellcasters won't wear armor, and they'll abhor physical combat.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.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.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.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).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."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."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. 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.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.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.Good discussion so far-- you can count on a lot of this showing up in a Spellcasting supplement!Wulf</blockquote>

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