Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sepulchrave II" data-source="post: 3133847" data-attributes="member: 4303">Absolutely.    It's also kind of convoluted for a seed provision. Simple [divine] is, well, simpler. That's what you get for cut & pasting from old drafts.  <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/nervous.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":heh:" title="Nervous Laugh    :heh:" data-shortname=":heh:" /> Knocking out [force] effects is a nonepic benefit.My procrustean approach is designed to avoid as many of these issues as possible. But I think an order of operations in seed combination is necessary, and I think that mitigation should always come last.   This seems too cheap. I wonder what the value of an equivalent metamagic feat would be?Overly complex  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /> . Replicability is important, here. We need to get utilitarian. I'm looking for a set of guidelines which governs the way seeds interact, so the same rules can be brought to bear upon any combinations of seeds. The reason that I chose [destroy] and [blast] is because they're relatively simple, share lots of common parameters, and are in a state of development where we can begin to explore with them.65d6 of fiery destructive damage is nice, but what if had been [afflict] and [blast], or [harrow] and [blast] - would they suffer fiery ability damage or fiery energy drain? I think that keeping the effects discrete is vital here - whilst it's tempting to grant logical synergies to certain seed combinations, they can't be measured in any replicable way. And I have no intention of writing 400+ descriptions for the way that specific pairs of seeds interact, not to mention 3-seed spells.I'm wary of drowning in the details; I think we need to start making some bold, wide, brushstrokes. Sometimes the results will be ugly - fiery destruction and destroying fire are examples. But they're not designed to be attractive to players: we can design those spells to our heart's content after we've hammered out some basic rules of combination. They are designed to illustrate the rules of combination, nothing more.Because you can't. We write a rule. (Edit: see below)Indeed. Halving the mitigating factor value to a secondary seed is an answer. Changing [blast] so that the choice of energy type is not available at the moment of casting, and the seed only does 20d6 is another: I have to say I'd prefer this. +12SP to add 20d6 of energy damage (of a specific type) when you use [blast] as a secondary seed seems far more reasonable.(Edit: actually, I would accept double damage for +12 SP as reasonable as a factor on a base 20d6 seed. Better still, it would eliminate the need to make a rule regarding [fire][fire] combinations - this is the best kind of rule.)I guess I haven't been explicit in my reasoning in many of my prior posts; much of my argument has been designed to facillitate the combinations of seeds. "How will that look as a secondary seed? etc."What appeals to me most of all is the *simplicity* of a secondary-seed approach. Players need to be able to put epic spells together in minutes, not hours. All kinds of internal, invisible complexity can be present in seeds in an attenpt to ensure their balance: this cannot be exposed in the way epic spells are constructed, however, as the players must accomplish this. It cannot be too onerous. Starships of the Galaxy rather than Fire, Fusion and Steel, IYKWIM.</blockquote>

Verification