Making Magic less potent.

[RandomUsernamehmimo71]

Although it is a bit heretical, I'm working to make magic less potent in my game, at least in certain contexts. We deal with a Grim & Gritty system, which means most characters only have about 15 HP.. As a result of that, I'm looking into toning down evoke * a bit, so that we can use it more easily, without it being as unbalanced.

While someday, I'd be interested in going through Every spell-list, and tailoring it for my gameworld (IIRC the book is OGL, so I should be able to, even if we won't re-distribute), Evoke seems a decent place to start, and I could use a suggestion..

What we're doing right now is converting dice to "Odds are One." What this means is that Damage is rolled as normal, but all Odd numbers count as ones. This is a nice mechanic in that it still allows people a high maximum, and it gives the players a feeling of Lots of Dice, but the average ends up substantially lower.

As a secondary effect, I'm increasing the cost of Evoke. {1}. What we're doing right now is saying that each d6 after the first costs an 2 MP.
It's a simply halving of the cost, and it's been working well in most contexts, but it does have one strange element to it..

Because of the way Free Cantrips work, you can cast a Evoke 1 for 1d6, and get a Free cantrip, for another 1d6, then add on a general effect for range.. Under normal EOMr that's reasonable.. It's a 2mp effect + a general effect for free.. But here, the extra MP that's added in as a cantrip actually makes the spell a lot more damaging..

I think the way to fix that is to make Every d6, including the first cost 2mp. This fixes the hack above, but introduces two potential problems..

The first is that trading in dice becomes more expensive, if the dice cost 2mp. It might make sense for me to mentally replace "trade in dice" with "trade MP".

The second is that a 1st level caster is no longer able to Evoke at all. While that's not at all necessarily a bad thing, it's an interesting dynamic. It means that low level casters need to worry mroe about buffs and Create * spells, rather than direct evocation..

I'd appreciate any comments on ways other people have tried to scale down damage in EOMr, if they've done so at all, or implications of such things that I'm not thinking about.

Perhaps in doing this, we should remove the "Odds are One" rule, or look at other options. We certainly don't want to keep a mage a useless character, but I feel their Great versitility in getting past problems without combat means that they /don't/ need to be as effective in combat as a fighter might, just as they don't need to have as many Skillpoints as as rogue, since they are able to give themselves boosts to skills..

Just food for thought.

Colin "Ever tweaking" Davis



{1}- I do feel that Magic has too many ways to defeat it already, when compared to the soldier, and that it's unfair to the mage, when compared to the solider. SR, Saving throws, Anti-Magic, as Well as costing MP.. They're penalized a lot.. But that is for another post!

 

[Kemrain]

As a secondary effect, I'm increasing the cost of Evoke. {1}. What we're doing right now is saying that each d6 after the first costs an 2 MP.
It's a simply halving of the cost, and it's been working well in most contexts, but it does have one strange element to it..

Halving the cost would be giving 2d6 per MP. You're doubling the cost, or halving the effect, the opposite of what you said.

Because of the way Free Cantrips work, you can cast a Evoke 1 for 1d6, and get a Free cantrip, for another 1d6, then add on a general effect for range.. Under normal EOMr that's reasonable.. It's a 2mp effect + a general effect for free.. But here, the extra MP that's added in as a cantrip actually makes the spell a lot more damaging..

Emphasis mine. This is important to note, because it never works this way. General effects are never given as free cantrips, ever. That would defeat the purpose. Also, I should point out, just in case, that if you combine 2 spell lists, neither gets a free cantrip, and the least MP you can spend on each is 1.

I think the way to fix that is to make Every d6, including the first cost 2mp. This fixes the hack above, but introduces two potential problems..

The first is that trading in dice becomes more expensive, if the dice cost 2mp. It might make sense for me to mentally replace "trade in dice" with "trade MP".

The second is that a 1st level caster is no longer able to Evoke at all. While that's not at all necessarily a bad thing, it's an interesting dynamic. It means that low level casters need to worry more about buffs and Create * spells, rather than direct evocation..

Emphasis yours, but I made a typo correction. I supose that's enougn nitpicking, I just want you to understand the system before you start to modify it. Given that I play in your game, and have had to put up with gimped Evokes for a wile now, I can solve problem 1 without effort. (I'm suprised you didn't just finish our debate before you posted this....) Rewrite the spell entry to say that for every MP you spend on Evoke lists (including the free cantrip, if it's a simple spell) gives you one Evocation Point. EP's can be traded in like dice used to be, and we add "1d6 Elemental Damage" to the list of what you can add, at a cost of 2EP. Solved.

The second problem is a big one. One that makes taking your first level as Mage seem pretty pointless. Presently you say that each die of damage (except for the free cantrip 1d6) costs 2MP. Evoke Death 0/Gen 1 can deal 1d6(Odds Are One) at 30 ft, and Evoke Death 2/Gen 1 can deal 2d6(Odds Are One) at 30 ft. A first level Mage has 5MP. Because you converted "Bonus Cantrips per Day" to "Total number of spells a mage is able to cast each day" (after doubling the number, but still), a Mage is able, by the rules we presently play with, to (possibly) dish out 6d6(Odds Are One) points of damage in 6 rounds of combat, provided that at least 1d6 of that is a touch spell and you have at least one Evoke Signature Spell. If the mere possibility of 6d6(Odds Are One) damage in 6 rounds is too much for you, remind me to show you a lovely first level Fighter with Point Blank shot and Rapid Shot, dealing (possibly) 12d8+12 damage in 6 rounds with a longbow within 30 ft.

Perhaps in doing this, we should remove the "Odds are One" rule, or look at other options. We certainly don't want to keep a mage a useless character, but I feel their Great versitility in getting past problems without combat means that they /don't/ need to be as effective in combat as a fighter might, just as they don't need to have as many Skillpoints as as rogue, since they are able to give themselves boosts to skills..

If a Mage doesn't want to be effective in combat, they don't take Evoke Spell Lists. Why, if they DO want to be able to survive in combat, are you preventing this? I don't know why you feel the need to remove all combat capability from the Mage at low levels. It boggles my mind that you think the meager damage they are currently able to summon up demands an additional reduction.
Simply because a 20th level Mage can throw out a 11d6(Odds Are One) touch attack (only 10d6 if we use your new rule- and that's barely a reduction at high levels), they need to be unable to evoke at all at first? That makes no sense.

Plus, you get into the odd situation where you can Evoke with an Ambient effect, but no damage. (Evoke Lightning 1/Gen 0 turns into a touch attack stun for 2 rounds with 2 saves. Harsh.)

I do feel that Magic has too many ways to defeat it already, when compared to the soldier, and that it's unfair to the mage, when compared to the solider. SR, Saving throws, Anti-Magic, as Well as costing MP.. They're penalized a lot.. But that is for another post!

If you want to make this argument, you have my complete support.

I'm sorry, ENWorld, if it seems like this is an intra-group discussion. It is, and it shouldn't be here. I apologise. Before this was posted, this subject was being discussed, and I think it could have been resolved without needing to be posted here at all, but, we often make our points better in writing.

Just wish we'd done this out in Email.

- Kemrain the Apologetic and SICK of Gimped EoM.

 

[RandomUsernamehmimo71]

I'm going to have to disagree that it's a intra-group discussion..

I'm curious how other people would limit the damage output of EOM spells. Beyond the ideas of increasing the cost, or Odds are One, what other ideas could we do? Require that each evoke MP has another MP from a different list/general MP, or..?

It may very well be that this topic is too specific of a case for this forum, which is a modification of a modification of D&D. Maybe we'll need to work it out on our own.

Any thoughts, as always, are appreciated.

Colin "Looking for other ideas" Davis

 

[Slander]

We actually decided to reduce magical damage (damage as in raw # of dice) in our campaign as well. We didn't change any of the existing mechanics. We simply capped the number of d6's a spell effect could produce to 1/2 caster level. We rounded up, not down, so I am only now, at level 3, able to cast a 2d6 Evoke spell. So far its produced the desired effect, and it would have the same ultimate effect for you of lowering the total dice without the problems you mentioned.

While there are some ambient effects that may cause problems in a GnG campaign, I wouldn't try and change any of them until you see the result in play. You can run yourself ragged with theory, but more often than not, a live scenerio is no where near as bad as you can imagine. Food for thought anyway.

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

Gimped EoM

I too appreciate the posting of your 'intra group' issue.. as long as y'all keep it civil

I am finallly close to starting my Eberron campaign and will be playing with TEoM for sure and possibly the revised GnG.

I like Slanders concept which I will toss at my Mage player and see what he thinks.
In the revised GnG I would also use the damage cap of 4D of damage, additional dice add a flat bonus, D6 add +2, D8 add +3, etc..


Of course, to be fair you also have to limit the Healing in a similar fashion

I would also be interested of hearing , offline, how your game is doing with critters. I have been running scenario's against minor critters and noticed that even a CR5 becomes almost unkillable. ..... just realized you are probably using the 'original' rules, not the revised. oh well.

 

[Verequus]

It may be a bit late, but before now either I had no time, or I have forgotten to look into this thread.

Although it is a bit heretical, I'm working to make magic less potent in my game, at least in certain contexts. We deal with a Grim & Gritty system, which means most characters only have about 15 HP.. As a result of that, I'm looking into toning down evoke * a bit, so that we can use it more easily, without it being as unbalanced.

I've seen the revised version of Grim and Gritty, but not the original one, so I don't know, how offense and defense work out.

While someday, I'd be interested in going through Every spell-list, and tailoring it for my gameworld (IIRC the book is OGL, so I should be able to, even if we won't re-distribute), Evoke seems a decent place to start, and I could use a suggestion..

The book itself isn't OGL, but under the OGL and thus contains OGC. A fine but important difference. But for you, that doesn't matter, because you could change the system, even if it wouldn't be under OGL.

What we're doing right now is converting dice to "Odds are One." What this means is that Damage is rolled as normal, but all Odd numbers count as ones. This is a nice mechanic in that it still allows people a high maximum, and it gives the players a feeling of Lots of Dice, but the average ends up substantially lower.

"Odds are One" reduces the average to 2.5, the same compared to d4. It isn't that much of difference, if used under the core rules, because the maximum is still the same. We are talking about your game, where a lucky roll of 3d6 can kill a character, so a delay of 3 levels isn't enough. If the player can accumulate damage dice, then it will be inevitable, that the player reaches a point, where the minimum damage kills everyone outright. This is also true for the suggestion, that you use a dice cap and then add some bonus to the roll - sooner or later the bonus becomes a problem.

A solution is difficult. If you don't cap the damage, then you have a "realistic" damage system - in the real world the damage potential keeps racking up, but the protection has been left behind. There isn't a real protection from the a-bomb, isn't it? In your world, the reaction would be, that magical protection would be more commonplace than in the core rules, where 20th level characters have a lot of more HP than 3rd level characters.

As a secondary effect, I'm increasing the cost of Evoke. {1}. What we're doing right now is saying that each d6 after the first costs an 2 MP. It's a simply halving of the cost, and it's been working well in most contexts, but it does have one strange element to it..

Because of the way Free Cantrips work, you can cast a Evoke 1 for 1d6, and get a Free cantrip, for another 1d6, then add on a general effect for range.. Under normal EOMr that's reasonable.. It's a 2mp effect + a general effect for free.. But here, the extra MP that's added in as a cantrip actually makes the spell a lot more damaging..

I think the way to fix that is to make Every d6, including the first cost 2mp. This fixes the hack above, but introduces two potential problems..

The first is that trading in dice becomes more expensive, if the dice cost 2mp. It might make sense for me to mentally replace "trade in dice" with "trade MP".

The second is that a 1st level caster is no longer able to Evoke at all. While that's not at all necessarily a bad thing, it's an interesting dynamic. It means that low level casters need to worry mroe about buffs and Create * spells, rather than direct evocation..

I'd appreciate any comments on ways other people have tried to scale down damage in EOMr, if they've done so at all, or implications of such things that I'm not thinking about.

Perhaps in doing this, we should remove the "Odds are One" rule, or look at other options. We certainly don't want to keep a mage a useless character, but I feel their Great versitility in getting past problems without combat means that they /don't/ need to be as effective in combat as a fighter might, just as they don't need to have as many Skillpoints as as rogue, since they are able to give themselves boosts to skills..

That has been covered already.

{1}- I do feel that Magic has too many ways to defeat it already, when compared to the soldier, and that it's unfair to the mage, when compared to the solider. SR, Saving throws, Anti-Magic, as Well as costing MP.. They're penalized a lot.. But that is for another post!

Hmm, at first glance I would have agreed, but then I thought about the situations, where the fighter doesn't get his damage through as usual. But first to the saves: The fighter has to use an attack roll, the mage can choose so. But a mage has a poor BAB, so he uses usually the save-based variant - in this point, no one has a disadvantage.

The soldier has still a miss chance due to concealment and cover results effectively in a penalty for his attack. Damage reduction is the SR for the soldier, like the banning of all weapons is the anti-magic field equivalent. That leaves only costing MP. True, there is no limit for the swinging of swords or firing arrows in the rules, but this isn't really realistic - GURPS includes rules for fatigue for this situation. If we don't go into this direction, then you should recall, that soldiers can more or less only hack all day - mages with no limit have a far increased potential of doing things, like wreaking havoc on the entire earth.

There needs to be a limit - maybe a replenishing of the MP pool á la Diablo II will suffice?

Edit:
Another solution would be with unlimited MP pool the burn-out. A fortitude (?) save against the DC of the spell has to be done at every casting of a spell. If you fail, then the MP maximum for the spells is reduced by one. Scaling can be changed - then several failures have to occur before reduction happens, which allows a greater probabilty to cast higher level spells. Or we can use (MPmax - used MP + 1) number of times failures, accounted for every used MP separately.

For example, Jagor is 17th level mage. If he casts a spell with 17 MP, then he has to make a fortitude save against the DC 10 + 17/2 = 18 - if he fails, then can cast only spells with 16 MP or lower. With my latest rule, Jagor can cast 4 MP spells, and until he fails (17 - 4 + 1) = 14 times his fortitude save, his maximum MP for his day isn't reduced to 16. Too bad, when this happens and he hasn't cast a 17 MP spell yet.

Of course, this reduction makes it necessary, that signature spells can be reduced in power to be still castable. Maybe versions for all possible MPs have to be prepared before.

 

[RandomUsernamehmimo71]

It may be a bit late, but before now either I had no time, or I have forgotten to look into this thread.

I'm sorry for being ever Late-er in my reply

I've seen the revised version of Grim and Gritty, but not the original one, so I don't know, how offense and defense work out.
[/quote
Basically, we can work under the assumption that people have 13-18 HP, and a Higher AC than normal. But the tough part is the HP. When you only have < 20, I want to tone things down a Little.
Now, granted, the point of the system is to keep it deadly, but I'd rather not utterly destroy people so trivially.

The book itself isn't OGL, but under the OGL and thus contains OGC. A fine but important difference. But for you, that doesn't matter, because you could change the system, even if it wouldn't be under OGL.

Uhh. Right. True.. No, I meant OGL to stand for OpenGamingLiscensed! Sure I did.. <hides in corner>

A solution is difficult. If you don't cap the damage, then you have a "realistic" damage system - in the real world the damage potential keeps racking up, but the protection has been left behind. There isn't a real protection from the a-bomb, isn't it? In your world, the reaction would be, that magical protection would be more commonplace than in the core rules, where 20th level characters have a lot of more HP than 3rd level characters.

That part of why I like the Odds are one system, or, true, just moving to D4s. (Actually, I think for a while we let the player pick either..)
When combined with charging 2mp / damage die, it does slow it down, but it's not as deadly.. A 20MP spell would by 10D6OAO, or 25 points of damage on average.
That's an insta-kill, sure, but it takes a 20th level spell to do so.

Hmm, at first glance I would have agreed, but then I thought about the situations, where the fighter doesn't get his damage through as usual. But first to the saves: The fighter has to use an attack roll, the mage can choose so. But a mage has a poor BAB, so he uses usually the save-based variant - in this point, no one has a disadvantage.

The soldier has still a miss chance due to concealment and cover results effectively in a penalty for his attack. Damage reduction is the SR for the soldier, like the banning of all weapons is the anti-magic field equivalent. That leaves only costing MP. True, there is no limit for the swinging of swords or firing arrows in the rules, but this isn't really realistic - GURPS includes rules for fatigue for this situation. If we don't go into this direction, then you should recall, that soldiers can more or less only hack all day - mages with no limit have a far increased potential of doing things, like wreaking havoc on the entire earth.

Hrmm.. True. I hadn't thought of it that way. There are analogies for a majority of the drawbacks.

I'd looked into a system before that replaced MP with a fixed role to cast. Infinate MP, but essentially everyone had Spell-Resistance. Depending on how often you would want then to succeed, you can raise or lower the default Spell Resistance, tying it to the character's level somehow.
I actually spent a few hours converting EOM to a skill-based magic system before I decided that there was little point in doing so, since inherently what we want is a chance of success, not a way to steal more skillpoints
But opposing a Spell-Resistance, with the wizard's Caster Level works.. It means that his spells are less reliable, but he can do it as often as he wishes.

Edit:
Another solution would be with unlimited MP pool the burn-out. A fortitude (?) save against the DC of the spell has to be done at every casting of a spell. If you fail, then the MP maximum for the spells is reduced by one. Scaling can be changed - then several failures have to occur before reduction happens, which allows a greater probabilty to cast higher level spells. Or we can use (MPmax - used MP + 1) number of times failures, accounted for every used MP separately.

For example, Jagor is 17th level mage. If he casts a spell with 17 MP, then he has to make a fortitude save against the DC 10 + 17/2 = 18 - if he fails, then can cast only spells with 16 MP or lower. With my latest rule, Jagor can cast 4 MP spells, and until he fails (17 - 4 + 1) = 14 times his fortitude save, his maximum MP for his day isn't reduced to 16. Too bad, when this happens and he hasn't cast a 17 MP spell yet.

Of course, this reduction makes it necessary, that signature spells can be reduced in power to be still castable. Maybe versions for all possible MPs have to be prepared before.

Hrmm.. That's an interesting idea! It's not as rules-dramatic as what I was proposing above, which makes it somewhat more interesting. It keeps MP, but gives you fewer and fewer to work with. Essentially, Wizards are only at their strongest at morning coffee. By mid afternoon, they're getting tired, and by evening, they're beat

I'm not sure if it's the end-all, but it'd be fun to test!
Thanks,
Colin

 

[Verequus]

That part of why I like the Odds are one system, or, true, just moving to D4s. (Actually, I think for a while we let the player pick either..)
When combined with charging 2mp / damage die, it does slow it down, but it's not as deadly.. A 20MP spell would by 10D6OAO, or 25 points of damage on average.
That's an insta-kill, sure, but it takes a 20th level spell to do so.

I wouldn't allow the D6OAO system, because has the advantage of being deadlier in comparison to the d4. This may happen not so often, but I would gamble for this bit of deadliness.

I'd looked into a system before that replaced MP with a fixed role to cast. Infinate MP, but essentially everyone had Spell-Resistance. Depending on how often you would want then to succeed, you can raise or lower the default Spell Resistance, tying it to the character's level somehow.
I actually spent a few hours converting EOM to a skill-based magic system before I decided that there was little point in doing so, since inherently what we want is a chance of success, not a way to steal more skillpoints
But opposing a Spell-Resistance, with the wizard's Caster Level works.. It means that his spells are less reliable, but he can do it as often as he wishes.

RW is writing a skill-based magic system based on EoM, but I haven't seen it, so I can't comment, if this would be a viable alternative or not. The spell resistance idea is interesting, but basically you could rule, that on a succeeded save no effect happens. This would reduce the rolling of dice by one, but the disadvantage is, that all spell are save-or-die spells in a less deadly version.

Hrmm.. That's an interesting idea! It's not as rules-dramatic as what I was proposing above, which makes it somewhat more interesting. It keeps MP, but gives you fewer and fewer to work with. Essentially, Wizards are only at their strongest at morning coffee. By mid afternoon, they're getting tired, and by evening, they're beat

The tiring of wizards is also existent in the core rules.

I'm not sure if it's the end-all, but it'd be fun to test!
Thanks,
Colin

Hopefully you'll have fun afterwards, too!