Congratulations Sean. You just sold me a book.
I might post something about the actual topic of the blog-post later (when I'm not half-asleep).
RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Chapter 2 includes a 12-page section about spell design, complete with an analysis of what goes in the spell stat block and benchmarks of good, typical, and poor spells for each spell level.
Soon to be my favorite chapter of the book. I always like when players create their own spells. I think it makes a game more memorable, even when I didn't catch the loophole soon enough...
It just amazaes me that in just three paragraphs Sean K Reynolds has jsut given me the best reason to puchaes Ultimate Magic. Best of all he is just talking about only 12 pages in this book. I wonder what the other 200+ are going to look like.
|
It just amazaes me that in just three paragraphs Sean K Reynolds has jsut given me the best reason to puchaes Ultimate Magic. Best of all he is just talking about only 12 pages in this book. I wonder what the other 200+ are going to look like.
Those were my exact thoughts. I really wasn't planning on getting this right away, but I'm sold now.
They sold it to me with just the name of the book, "Ultimate magic".
I must actually disagree with SKR. Take a look at what spells people complain about. It isn't fireball. It is the Save or Suck's. Spells like Hold Person, Glitterdust, and Feeblemind are the quality spells are each level. Combat is ultimately about action economy and those spells produce action economy. Have a party of 4 against a party of 8? Glitterdust is going to be brutal if it hits 2 or more creatures as you just spent 1 action nullifying at least 2. Also 1 round/level is still the duration of an entire combat by level 5. A lot of stuff should probably be put at 1 round / 2 levels if duration is going to be a relevant factor, probably even 3 because acid arrow feels about right.
I must actually disagree with SKR. Take a look at what spells people complain about. It isn't fireball. It is the Save or Suck's. Spells like Hold Person, Glitterdust, and Feeblemind are the quality spells are each level. Combat is ultimately about action economy and those spells produce action economy. Have a party of 4 against a party of 8? Glitterdust is going to be brutal if it hits 2 or more creatures as you just spent 1 action nullifying at least 2. Also 1 round/level is still the duration of an entire combat by level 5. A lot of stuff should probably be put at 1 round / 2 levels if duration is going to be a relevant factor, probably even 3 because acid arrow feels about right.
I agree with you in all, but the fact SKR says otherwise.
I am not sure he says that existing damage spells are better than existing debuff spells.
I myself am intrigued by the concept, but I 'll have to see how it's actually implemented to decide wether I like it or not.
If you reread what I said above, you'll see that I'm not discounting the effectiveness of spells that just give penalties. But I'm saying that you can't kill someone with those spells. If you cast glitterdust on your enemies for 4 rounds, yes, you've forced them to make 4 saves, but they're not any worse off than if they had just failed 1 save. Failing 4 saves doesn't make them quadruple-blinded. Failing 4 saves against hold person doesn't make them quadruple-held. Failing 4 saves against feeblemind doesn't make them quadruple-feebleminded. And each round that you've cast one of those spells and the target makes the save is a round that your caster has had zero effect on the battle.
Casting fireball four times has a cumulative effect because hit point damage stacks. Casting poison four times has a cumulative effect because ability damage stacks. But the penalties from most penalty-inducing spells don't stack, so you can't win a battle just by using penalty-inducing spells--doing so pushes the damage burden entirely onto the nonmagical characters. If all you're doing is fighting one or two powerful monsters, yes, tactically it's smart to go for the save-or-out-of-the-combat spells, but a smart GM will give you other encounters with multiple weaker opponents to give you a reason to use fireball and such--because fights that are always the same get really boring, and it's cool for the party mage to obliterate 10 weak enemies with one spell, leaving only one creature for the fighter and rogue to beat up.
As with many things, a mix of tactics (giving penalties and using spells that attack incrementals) is generally better than just using one type of attack over and over.
Also, the section you're reading above doesn't talk about the analysis of other types of spells. At the top of the hierarchy are spells that turn enemies into allies, and below that are spells that instantly kill or disable enemies, and below that are spells that target depletable statistics. But talking about depletables vs. non-depletables is a more interesting blog topic than "dominate person owns LOL!"
Interesting. Where do summon spells fall in that hierarchy?
It depends on why you're summoning them. You can use a summoned creature for direct damage, or to penalize a target, or to convert an enemy to an ally (with a charm from the summoner, frex), or to negate an advantage of the target (like summoning a bat with blindsight to locate an invisible foe).
Interesting tstuff about spells.
I love the way you think. Mathematically, it may not be the optimal way to play, but it's more fun to blow stuff up than to SoS them to death, IMHO. Is it safe to say that y'all design your games with that playstyle in mind?
As for favorite spells, my answer is whatever gets the job done. Sorcerers, with their limited spell selection, are obviously a bit different, but to me the great challenge (and fun) of playing casters is the guessing game that is spell selection. Good adventures, IMHO, require, or at least encourage, varying tactics (and spells) to succeed. Succeeding by spamming your best one or two spells over and over again in all encounters is boring.
Conversely, I love it when a humble spell like Zone of Truth is key to a major success, as it was last night for a group I was GMing for.
I love the way you think. Mathematically, it may not be the optimal way to play, but it's more fun to blow stuff up than to SoS them to death, IMHO. Is it safe to say that y'all design your games with that playstyle in mind?
We try to keep all playstyles in mind. Ultimate Magic has direct-damage spells, penalty spells, and some save-or-disabled spells, and even some "I'd never use this in combat but I can see the utility of it in a mystery or exploration game" spells.
If you reread what I said above, you'll see that I'm not discounting the effectiveness of spells that just give penalties. But I'm saying that you can't kill someone with those spells. If you cast glitterdust on your enemies for 4 rounds, yes, you've forced them to make 4 saves, but they're not any worse off than if they had just failed 1 save. Failing 4 saves doesn't make them quadruple-blinded. Failing 4 saves against hold person doesn't make them quadruple-held. Failing 4 saves against feeblemind doesn't make them quadruple-feebleminded. And each round that you've cast one of those spells and the target makes the save is a round that your caster has had zero effect on the battle.
Actually, failing 4 saves versus 4 held persons mean the target is held 4 timea and must dispel/get rid off it 4 times as well. Each spell effect overlaps, but still exists if the others dissipate.
Yes, you aren't double blind in sense that penalties stay the same but you are double for dispelling the effect (and when duration runs out).
But overall, I get what you mean.
But the point of "save or lose" spells is you don't have to waste additional spells to kill them as the other party members should be able to kick their butts easier now. Blind targets treat everyone as having 50% miss and all.
If you reread what I said above, you'll see that I'm not discounting the effectiveness of spells that just give penalties. But I'm saying that you can't kill someone with those spells. If you cast glitterdust on your enemies for 4 rounds, yes, you've forced them to make 4 saves, but they're not any worse off than if they had just failed 1 save. Failing 4 saves doesn't make them quadruple-blinded. Failing 4 saves against hold person doesn't make them quadruple-held. Failing 4 saves against feeblemind doesn't make them quadruple-feebleminded. And each round that you've cast one of those spells and the target makes the save is a round that your caster has had zero effect on the battle.
Casting fireball four times has a cumulative effect because hit point damage stacks. Casting poison four times has a cumulative effect because ability damage stacks. But the penalties from most penalty-inducing spells don't stack, so you can't win a battle just by using penalty-inducing spells--doing so pushes the damage burden entirely onto the nonmagical characters. If all you're doing is fighting one or two powerful monsters, yes, tactically it's smart to go for the save-or-out-of-the-combat spells, but a smart GM will give you other encounters with multiple weaker opponents to give you a reason to use fireball and such--because fights that are always the same get really boring, and it's cool for the party mage to obliterate 10 weak enemies with one spell, leaving only one creature for the fighter and rogue to beat up.
As with many things, a mix of tactics (giving penalties and using spells that attack incrementals) is generally better than just using one type of attack over and over.
Also, the section you're reading above doesn't talk about the analysis of other types of spells. At the top of the hierarchy are spells that turn enemies into allies, and below that are spells that instantly kill or disable enemies, and below that are spells that target depletable statistics....
I understand your point that some things can get very dangerous when they stack up. My point is that the most powerful things are the ones that typically don't stack. While casting 4 glitterdusts isn't going to do much more than casting 1, casting 1 glitterdust by itself is very potent. These are the kind of spells that need to serve as the benchmark at each spell level; if a player makes a spell that's more powerful than them it shouldn't be allowed. I am quite honestly surprised that create pit was made when you compare it to web and glitterdust.
Also if we look holistically, we see that effects like glitterdust can "stack" to devastating effect (for those familiar I'm drawing analogy to virtual card advantage in MtG). Things that produce action economy do stack in a non-straightforward manner. Let us suppose that a particular combat is a 4v4 combat being slugged out would last 8 rounds (for simplicity assume participants get knocked out on round 5,6,7,8). This means that each side gets 26 actions. On one side the party sorceror casts hold person at the beginning of combat and the victim gets out in 4 rounds. Party A now has 25 actions remaining while party B has 22 actions. When quantified like this, we can see that actions are indeed depletable statistics. When a party runs out of actions, they'll lose. While I have greatly simplified things in order to produce hard numbers, the idea remains in a more realistic combat. This is why dominate person is indeed devastating if it goes off. You spend one action to make them lose all the actions of one character while your side gains all the actions of that character.
I feel this concept is too important to be omitted from a section about balancing spells.
In most cases, an impaired creature (like a glitterdust target or a blinded creature) doesn't have the opportunity to dispel or negate that condition, it just has to suffer through it until the PCs kill it... or it runs away, waits out the duration, and appears in a later battle.
If a combatant is still alive after 4 rounds of being held, that combatant's opponents are doing something wrong.
And, as I said above, the actual section of the book says that enemy-into-ally spells (like dominate person) are better than kill spells, depletable-targeting spells, and non-depletable-targeting spells.