Tell me about Grim Tales' Magic

[Aldarc]

All we need now is for Wulf to put out GT 2.0.

Has he considered it? I would so love to see it.

 

[GreatLemur]

- I'm not in love with the idea of spending your action and then FAILING to do something.

Yeah, I've got to concur on that one. I've always thought that check-based magic systems sound great until I realize that, inevitably, players are going to fail a bunch of checks and be really disappointed.

I think there's a nice compromise available in threshold systems like the ones in Sovereign Stone and Thieves' World. Every spell has a casting threshold (or mana threshold, or something) that you have to reach in order to cast it. You roll your check (something like d20 + ability score mod + level-based bonus), and if you hit or exceed that threshold, the spell goes off fine. Of course. But if you don't make the threshold, you can roll another check on the next round and add in your last result to the total. Needless to say, this kind of system pretty much assumes that some spells will take more than one round to cast, and some of those casting thresholds can be pretty high.

So I think failing to cast a spell probably isn't so bad when it's not a complete waste. Not sure how applicable something like this would be to Grim Tales, of course. Cumulative +2 to casting checks for each failed attempt? Not entirely sure what you'd do about spell burn, though. Suffering burn for each round of casting might be a bit rough.

 

[Fenris]

Yeah, I've got to concur on that one. I've always thought that check-based magic systems sound great until I realize that, inevitably, players are going to fail a bunch of checks and be really disappointed.

I think there's a nice compromise available in threshold systems like the ones in Sovereign Stone and Thieves' World. Every spell has a casting threshold (or mana threshold, or something) that you have to reach in order to cast it. You roll your check (something like d20 + ability score mod + level-based bonus), and if you hit or exceed that threshold, the spell goes off fine. Of course. But if you don't make the threshold, you can roll another check on the next round and add in your last result to the total. Needless to say, this kind of system pretty much assumes that some spells will take more than one round to cast, and some of those casting thresholds can be pretty high.

So I think failing to cast a spell probably isn't so bad when it's not a complete waste. Not sure how applicable something like this would be to Grim Tales, of course. Cumulative +2 to casting checks for each failed attempt? Not entirely sure what you'd do about spell burn, though. Suffering burn for each round of casting might be a bit rough.

I actually adapted the SS magic system for use in GT. I think I had it set up where untrained casting caused Con damage, trained non-favored element caused lethal damage, and trained, favored element caused non-lethal. It was a decent mix, lower magic than SS normally is, but it was very workable. There was still the danger of casting that is very important to a low magic/GT feel.