Tell me about Grim Tales' Magic

[BryonD]

You will not find it in the book, but Wulf has suggested that the minimum dice for a spell should be spell level, even if caster level is lower.

 

[DwelleroftheDeep]

Thanks everybody. This sounds like just what I was hoping for. Can't wait to play it.

 

[takyris]

How is this different from spending your action to attack someone with a sword, gun, whatever and failing to hit?

Attack bad guy: 1 die roll, and I hit or miss, unlimited times per day.

Cast spell at bad guy: 1 die roll to cast, possibly 1 die roll to hit with a touch attack, and then victim gets a save to resist, and I can only do this a limited number of times per day.

I don't love abilities in d20 Modern or Grim Tales that require a check to even TRY to use (like Exploit Weakness, Dazzle, or Inspiration). I'd rather just see X/day (where X is your class level or relevant ability modifier, minimum 1), and you can do more than X by spending an Action Point to activate. For buffs, I feel annoyed if I spend a full round trying to buff myself or others and end up failing. For attacks, there's already a save mechanic in there. Why do I have the chance to fail to even force them to make a save?

(Again, this isn't GT in particular. This is d20 Modern stuff in general.)

Valhalla: I know that Wulf has suggested that you make the rule "your caster level, or the minimum level necessary to cast the spell, whichever is higher" in terms of what level the spell is cast it.

GlassJaw: Yep. Totally agree. That's what I was trying to say at the end of my post. It's a difference of what kind of game I want to run. I'm evidently more interested in Buffy than Conan -- spells more likely to work and less likely to kill you by doing so, but still relatively limited. And with extremely minor tweaks, GT's magic worked great for that. I think it can work for just about any level of magic you want with minor tweaks.

 

[ValhallaGH]

Valhalla: I know that Wulf has suggested that you make the rule "your caster level, or the minimum level necessary to cast the spell, whichever is higher" in terms of what level the spell is cast it.

So I've heard. But, it's not in the book.

As I said in my post, you'll have to tweak the spells or the casting characters will feel very cheated. ("It took me two levels and a talent to cast a 1d6 fireball!") Wulf's suggestion would fall into that category.

Also, which minimum level? The minimum D&D level? The minimum GT level? The spell level? The minimum GURPS level? (Yes, that last is a joke.) I hope you see how each answer alters the feel and tone of the campaign.

 

[takyris]

Well, in the conversation I saw, he flat-out said "The D&D caster level." So a Fireball does at least 5d6 damage. In the game in which I use this system, my players carefully consider the big spells, like Chain Lightning or Delayed Blast Fireball, because they therefore automatically do more damage based on their minimum D&D caster level.

(Yes -- an untrained guy trying to cast fireball and doing 0d6 damage because the spell goes off at level 0 would be... bad.)

Wulf has also, AFAIK, suggested that in low-magic games, having the spell go off at "your caster level, or the lowest spell level listed for the spell, whichever is higher".

So, a guy with Caster Level 1 trying to cast fireball, based on three different systems:

GRIM TALES AS WRITTEN:

Caster level 1: 1d6 damage.

GRIM TALES, SPELL LEVEL:

Effective caster level 3 (fireball is a 3rd level spell): 3d6 damage

GRIM TALES, CASTER LEVEL:

Effective caster level 5 (fireball can be cast by a 5th-level wizard): 5d6 damage

I wouldn't use the first one. The second is good for very low magic games, and the third for what I think of as d20 Modern Shadow-games -- games where magic is rare and dangerous, but still available -- and there are still big boom spells.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

My personal preference and strongest suggestion is caster level OR spell level, whichever is higher.

Fireball starts at 3d6 (3rd level spell).

That's more than enough to take out the mooks.

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

In the times I've played a GT caster, we've used 'spell level'. Seems to work pretty well.

Sorry I didn't see this thread before all the smart people got here and left me nothing to contribute

I really like the GT system for its flexibility and elegance. It's so easy to tweak just by changing parameters, you don't really need to add new rules to accomodate most any level of play.

 

[Fenris]

I'm glad to see that there is another group of gamers discovering Grim Tales. There have been 2-3 threads in recent weeks from people new to the system.

 

[GlassJaw]

I'm glad to see that there is another group of gamers discovering Grim Tales. There have been 2-3 threads in recent weeks from people new to the system.

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

 

[takyris]

I'd buy it.