alexandraerin (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
alexandraerin) wrote2013-08-09 11:40 am
alexandraerin) wrote2013-08-09 11:40 am
Entry tags:
AWW: Magic Re-Thunked.
While I'm still waking up...
Another change coming to A Wilder World as a result of the summer percolation and the back-and-forth on the combat system is that Magic now uses the same scale as other attributes. That is, it's no longer capped at 3, no longer costs extra points, and no longer steals points from the combat side.
There were solid balance reasons for the different handling, but I've figured out ways to shift the balance to the backend in order to make the whole point allocation process uniform, and to create a greater range of viable Magic scores.
Before, pretty much everyone who had any Magic had exactly 3. Now, a low positive score basically just means you can do incidental, trivial magic stuff all the time and might occasionally do something productive for an adventure with it, but mostly you'll be using it to help other people do things. A moderate Magic score means you'll be really useful in a support role and can occasionally (usually by taking extra time) do something yourself. A high Magic score means you can do just about anything that anyone else could, given enough time, though you'll still be out-performed by someone with an equally high score in the same area.
The main points of the re-balancing are these:
First, when you use a Spell Check to replace another check outright, the difficulty is no longer identical to the original task's, but is that +3. Which means you'd have to take the "hour or so" level of extra time to match someone else who's doing it by hand. A Spell Check made to aid an ally doesn't have the difficulty bump, so using Magic to weaken a door frame or strengthen an ally will often be more efficient than trying to blast it to bits.
Second, you can't ace a Spell Check. Acing, for those just tuning in, is a mechanism whereby if you roll high enough, you can roll another die and maybe add it to the first one. The odds of triggering one and the potential range of the bonus it gives you goes up as your score in the attribute increases, which makes higher Attributes more dramatically effective, in keeping with the idea that they represent superhuman/legendary levels of ability. If Spell Checks can't be aced, then a Strength of 6 or Perception of 6 are still forces to be reckoned with, whether the wizard gets to take extra time or not.
Third, Magic Burn Tolerance (how many failures you can rack up before your performance suffers) is going to be equal to half your Magic rounded up, instead of your full Magic. This keeps it operating on the same scale as it would have when Magic was capped at 3. Honestly, this was one of the longest sticking points that held back this change... I base magical fatigue on *failed* magic instead of successful magic to put a soft limit on wizards overreaching or parties relying on magic too much rather than a hard limit on how often a wizard can be a wizard before they're no longer a wizard. But if you could accumulate 6 strikes without any consequences and then have 6 points of plus to absorb the negatives, I think that would be weakened quite a bit.
There are also some changes for how Magic interacts with combat (which is why it no longer takes from both pools), but since I've never publicly gone into much detail about the old way, I'll refrain from going into detail now. The short version is that you can use your Magic attribute to aim your attack spells, but just like Magic 6 is no replacement for Strength 6, actually having an attack attribute and using it instead will generally work out better.
Another change coming to A Wilder World as a result of the summer percolation and the back-and-forth on the combat system is that Magic now uses the same scale as other attributes. That is, it's no longer capped at 3, no longer costs extra points, and no longer steals points from the combat side.
There were solid balance reasons for the different handling, but I've figured out ways to shift the balance to the backend in order to make the whole point allocation process uniform, and to create a greater range of viable Magic scores.
Before, pretty much everyone who had any Magic had exactly 3. Now, a low positive score basically just means you can do incidental, trivial magic stuff all the time and might occasionally do something productive for an adventure with it, but mostly you'll be using it to help other people do things. A moderate Magic score means you'll be really useful in a support role and can occasionally (usually by taking extra time) do something yourself. A high Magic score means you can do just about anything that anyone else could, given enough time, though you'll still be out-performed by someone with an equally high score in the same area.
The main points of the re-balancing are these:
First, when you use a Spell Check to replace another check outright, the difficulty is no longer identical to the original task's, but is that +3. Which means you'd have to take the "hour or so" level of extra time to match someone else who's doing it by hand. A Spell Check made to aid an ally doesn't have the difficulty bump, so using Magic to weaken a door frame or strengthen an ally will often be more efficient than trying to blast it to bits.
Second, you can't ace a Spell Check. Acing, for those just tuning in, is a mechanism whereby if you roll high enough, you can roll another die and maybe add it to the first one. The odds of triggering one and the potential range of the bonus it gives you goes up as your score in the attribute increases, which makes higher Attributes more dramatically effective, in keeping with the idea that they represent superhuman/legendary levels of ability. If Spell Checks can't be aced, then a Strength of 6 or Perception of 6 are still forces to be reckoned with, whether the wizard gets to take extra time or not.
Third, Magic Burn Tolerance (how many failures you can rack up before your performance suffers) is going to be equal to half your Magic rounded up, instead of your full Magic. This keeps it operating on the same scale as it would have when Magic was capped at 3. Honestly, this was one of the longest sticking points that held back this change... I base magical fatigue on *failed* magic instead of successful magic to put a soft limit on wizards overreaching or parties relying on magic too much rather than a hard limit on how often a wizard can be a wizard before they're no longer a wizard. But if you could accumulate 6 strikes without any consequences and then have 6 points of plus to absorb the negatives, I think that would be weakened quite a bit.
There are also some changes for how Magic interacts with combat (which is why it no longer takes from both pools), but since I've never publicly gone into much detail about the old way, I'll refrain from going into detail now. The short version is that you can use your Magic attribute to aim your attack spells, but just like Magic 6 is no replacement for Strength 6, actually having an attack attribute and using it instead will generally work out better.