Easing Use of Black Company Magic System

[Tormenet]

I'm strongly leaning toward following those who are merging Grim Tales with the Black Company Magic System.

It looks like the threads boil down to the BCCS magic system being great but hard to use at the table, killing the pace of play.

Other than pre-figuring DCs out of game has anyone found a way to speed doing the calculations (I've downloaded Henry's excel sheet and its great!)

What's your experience and your solutions?

Thanks,
Tormenet

 

[Henry]

Thanks for the compliment on the spell sheet! Necessity certainly WAS the mother of that little kludge.

The only way I've figured out so far is pre-writing about four different "major effects" for each spell:
1 low effect -- as much crammed in as possible & still be a free action
2 medium effect -- as much crammed in and still be a std. action, and 1 for full round action
1 high effect -- prepared instead of spontaneous, as big as I can cast and still have a reasonable chance of casting with an action point.

Then I have the modifiers charts handy so I can alter them up somewhat. That's still the fastest way I know outside of the spreadsheet.

GREAT system, but it does have this drawback. Only other solution? CAST SPELLS in game -- tons of them. Cast 'em small, cast 'em big, practice makes perfect, sorry to say.

 

[Old One]

What Henry said...him smart cookie!

When I GM'd the BCCS/GT Hybrid at the last NC Game Day, I attempted to have Henry's SpellCalc sheet up and running, but I kept forgetting about jumping onto it for NPC spells. I think Henry's idea above is the best bet...and should cover 90% of the situations that are likely to apply.

A PC/NPC might want to apply some minor tweaks (range, AoE, damage dice) off of a base casting, but that should be doable with the modifier sheets handy.

~ OO

 

[HeapThaumaturgist]

What they said. I started forcing my BCCS magic user player to have a sheet with "spells" on it so he didn't slow the whole darn works up. He got to be pretty fast with it ... though he did like taking his time adding things up, but mostly for dramatic purposes. "Now that's DC ... 43 ... and I need a 10 ... aaaand ... uh ... uh ... Action Point!" same for his dice.

For the love of Pete. Watch the dice. Oi vey. After about lvl 7 or so, you can get some NASTY AoEs out of that system. I think he once managed to toss down an 11d6 cold ball that very neatly cleared the deck of an enemy ship. Huge bastage, too, like 40'-60' radius, IRRC. Of course he almost blasted himself out cold, and passed the Nonlethal MDT save (a nice added feature I put in, BTW) by the willing grace of God, but it was still a little disheartening to see most of my precious encounter go belly up on their MDTs.

Where the system's a real pain in the kiester is NPC spellcasters. GAH. Eventually I was reduced to re-using caster "templates" over and over again because I just didn't have the prep time to sit there with a calculator and make interesting spell decisions. I sort of had an "out" in that the major behind-the-scenes enemy was a whole race of dastardly spellcasters with some racial themes to their spellcasting ... I.E. the same darn NPC renamed and retooled.

It also helps that you'd be a flaming moron not to take the Force Talent, and use it to the hilt, so if you prep a card full of varied Force effects you've got a small spell book that's useful for alot of NPCs.

One of the big things I hope Wulf adds in his GT spellcasting supplement is a fully flexible system like the BCCS ... but with a nice, robust selection of pre-statted stuff ... even up-to and including some quick notes on PHB spells.

The Vancian magic system is really a godsend for GameMasters, I've found. You have X spells, they do Y effects, all effects easily referenced in the book. Boom, yer done. But it's not very much fun from a creative standpoint.

I want my cake and the ability to eat it without a graphing calculator too.

--fje

 

[swrushing]

Other than pre-figuring DCs out of game has anyone found a way to speed doing the calculations (I've downloaded Henry's excel sheet and its great!)

What's your experience and your solutions?

Thanks,
Tormenet

Here's what i did to make things flow quickly in playtest.

For each talent i did a one page sheet.
this sheet listed for my character at least four spells, one that would be a free action to cast, one that would take a std action, one full round and one with a casting time of minutes or maybe 10 minutes. Each was stated out to their level and DC

These were my templates.

I also had a summary page of the costs.

this way, most of the time, i could choose the template spell i had time to cast, tweak it a little from the summary of costs chart, and get moving right away.

its a sort of shortcut beyween prefiguring everything and redoing the calculations.

As i started noticing "i use this variation a lot" i added it to my prefiged list.

 

[Tormenet]

Thanks for the compliment on the spell sheet! Necessity certainly WAS the mother of that little kludge.

The only way I've figured out so far is pre-writing about four different "major effects" for each spell:
1 low effect -- as much crammed in as possible & still be a free action
2 medium effect -- as much crammed in and still be a std. action, and 1 for full round action
1 high effect -- prepared instead of spontaneous, as big as I can cast and still have a reasonable chance of casting with an action point.

QUOTE]

Compliment given where earned.

You would not, by chance, have the sheet where you pre-figured everything in a sharable format would you?

 

[Tormenet]

What Henry said...him smart cookie!

When I GM'd the BCCS/GT Hybrid at the last NC Game Day, I attempted to have Henry's SpellCalc sheet up and running, but I kept forgetting about jumping onto it for NPC spells. I think Henry's idea above is the best bet...and should cover 90% of the situations that are likely to apply.

A PC/NPC might want to apply some minor tweaks (range, AoE, damage dice) off of a base casting, but that should be doable with the modifier sheets handy.

~ OO

Don't I remember you saying you'd run that BCCS/GT hybrid for my group at somepoint...

 

[Tormenet]

Heap and swrushing, thanks for your comments. I'll make sure my players see them.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

You would not, by chance, have the sheet where you pre-figured everything in a sharable format would you?

Seconded! I'd love to see it if it's available...

 

[Old One]

Don't I remember you saying you'd run that BCCS/GT hybrid for my group at somepoint...

Doh!

Yeah...possible...just gotta figure out when ! My biggest problem right now is that almost every single weekend betwixt now and mid-December is either booked with out-of-town travel or a family function. I don't know if they would be interested in doing it in conjunction with MD-DC-VA Game Day (if the stars align and 10/22 ends up being the date), but that might be my only change before early next year...

~ OO