Author Topic: Discussion  (Read 34231 times)

Offline chaos_redefined

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Re: Discussion
« Reply #80 on: August 25, 2013, 07:10:55 PM »
The thing is...  there is a solution.  Warlocks having swarms at level 1 might be a valid concern, but it is a lot better than them having access to all their powers at level 1.  Instead, they gain access to different powers as they level up.

Think of it like this: Can you really say that an RM can learn to mess with peoples heads a lot by confusing them without knowing how to mess with their heads a bit by deluding them?  It seems like learning to run before you can crawl.

Delude/Enlighten -> Confuse -> Compel/Charm

Fluff-wise, this makes sense.  Delude just messes with someones mind in a minor way.  Enlighten messes with things in a different, but still minor, way.  Confuse turns the brain into chaos.  Compel and Charm make a bit more order out of it.  It isn't that any one of them is more powerful than the previous.  It just means that you need to know the basics of mind-messing before you can mess with their heads a lot.

Offline TheGeometer

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Re: Discussion
« Reply #81 on: August 26, 2013, 01:28:56 AM »
That might make sense fluff-wise, but not game-wise. Even if you do that, you'll still have Confuse (a pretty bad effect on a missed save) when you get to level 2. Really, that's not much of a difference at all. Same with Blind. You might be able to put it off with the chaining by having Light/Darkness or Deafen come first, but it'll be there soon enough, and you still are basically insinuating that one is better than the other. One of the things I love about Remnant Magic is that you can cast anything by level 3, but there's still a clear increase in power with the increase in level. There aren't supposed to be more powerful effects or any limiting factors. Changing the progression to quadratic again should fix the problems that you're talking about, and that is something I am a bit more willing to do. It does, however, screw up the saves, making them very easy at lower levels and near-impossible at higher ones, which is not an effect I would like.

I think the whole problem really revolves around at-will casting versus limited casting. Yes, a 1st level Remnant Mage with a fixed RP/day would still be able to save-or-screw something, but she would think twice about it. Limiting by the day keeps tons of things in line. I hate to say it, but maybe making the entire system RP/day is the way to go. The Magician will still be different in that it has more power per turn, but less per day. Thoughts?

Offline Garryl

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Re: Discussion
« Reply #82 on: August 26, 2013, 03:00:01 AM »
It would be nice to see some more remnants that grow and evolve as you gain levels and can use them more, rather than just becoming the same thing with larger numbers. Monster is a good example, summoning more powerful creatures with different sets of abilities.

Speaking of Monster (and Animal and Animate, as well), the quantity and quality of the effect seem to be mildly borked. For 25 castings (1 + 3*8), it seems that you get 25 monsters (one per casting) from the SM9 list (SM1 + 8 SM levels for 24 extra castings). I'm not exactly sure what kind of scaling you were trying to accomplish, so I can't offer a proper fix.

Should Open maybe affect the Open Lock or Disable Device DCs as well as the break DC so you can actually open things instead of shattering them with one well-placed blow? Likewise with Close also locking things instead of just making them very solid.

Bludgeon, Pierce, and Slash are all force effects, so they ignore DR anyways.

Is there any reason that Health and Pain do so little? They're doing 1.5 hp/3 RP at touch range. By comparison, Bludgeon, Pierce, and Slash do 4.5 hp/2 RP at touch range (or 6.75 hp/3 RP, a 350% greater return), and can also be used at range. If it's to balance out the healing potential, then almost any amount of at-will healing is enough out of combat (be it 1 or 100 hp/round), but in combat healing is weak even when it's on the 1d6/level scale.

Light's damage is much greater than other remnants if I'm reading it correctly. But, it seems I'm not, as on re-reading, it appears that you need 3 castings to create a radius larger than 10 feet and thus deal damage. So I'm just going to go with it being mildly confusing and unintuitive, then. I think.

Life should have the standard clauses from Raise Dead and/or Resurrection about what creatures can be revived. Most importantly, that the creature's soul needs to be free to return, that it knows who the caster is, and that it must be willing to return.

Shield incorrectly refers to itself as Resistance.

Why do Sound, Spark, Flare, Chill, and Acid all have different damage values? I understand Sound being smaller, because few things resist sonic energy damage. Why is Flare larger? Fire is resisted more than cold, but not terribly so, especially compared to electricity. If you want the differing damages, maybe take a cure from psionics and have both fire and cold increased in damage (1d4), but have cold target Fort instead of Reflex, electricity give +2 vs. SR and on save DCs (although that might not work out quite right given that SR/AC/Saves are effectively part of the damage expression for remnants), and sonic doing reduced damage (1d2) but ignoring hardness? Acid can sit kinda blandly (possibly ignoring SR or hardness as well, if you so choose) at the mid-range damage (1d3, like electricity).
   Also, why the unusual areas? Why not just a simple 5' or 10' radius? Or targeting a simple 15' cube? Picking a 5' cube, and then centering an area around that cube's center, an area that's defined by a diameter rather than a radius, just seems needlessly complex and inconsistent.

Charm's RP cost is unusual. What happens if you think you have enough RP but actually don't when you try to cast it (for example, you think you're targeting your old drinking buddy, but you're actually targeting a Rakshasa disguised as him who has just noticed your party's Rogue preparing to slip a knife under his purse strings)?

Protect incorrectly refers to itself as Resistance. Also, it needs a better definition of its granted DR. Is it supposed to be DR 2/-, except only applying against one of piercing, bludgeoning, or slashing damage of your choice (which, it should be noted, is slightly different from your choice of DR 2/slashing or bludgeoning, DR 2/piercing or bludgeoning, or DR 2/slashing or piercing when stacking multiple types when multi-damage-type weapons like morningtsars and natural weapons come into play)?

Resist incorrectly refers to itself as Resistance.

If a creature partially resists a multi-option remnant, such as Weaken, how do you decide how many castings of each selected option of the remnant still affect the subject? For example, if I Cast Weaken 6 times (Str x3, Dex x2, Con x1) and only 3 of them get through, does the subject take a -2 penalty to just Str (Dex x2 and Con x2 successfully saved against), Str and Dex (Str x1, Dex x1, and Con x1 saved against), Str and Con (Str x1 and Dex x2 saved against), Dex and Con (Str x3 saved against) or all 3 stats (Str x2 and Dex x1 saved against)?

Offline chaos_redefined

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Re: Discussion
« Reply #83 on: August 26, 2013, 05:31:59 AM »
It would be nice to see some more remnants that grow and evolve as you gain levels and can use them more, rather than just becoming the same thing with larger numbers. Monster is a good example, summoning more powerful creatures with different sets of abilities.

I actually like this idea, now that you mention it.  I'm gonna tackle three of your questions first, and then present a new idea!

Speaking of Monster (and Animal and Animate, as well), the quantity and quality of the effect seem to be mildly borked. For 25 castings (1 + 3*8), it seems that you get 25 monsters (one per casting) from the SM9 list (SM1 + 8 SM levels for 24 extra castings). I'm not exactly sure what kind of scaling you were trying to accomplish, so I can't offer a proper fix.

It's trying to say that instead of getting 25 castings of SMI, you can have 1 casting of SMIX.  Or that's how I interpreted it.

Light's damage is much greater than other remnants if I'm reading it correctly. But, it seems I'm not, as on re-reading, it appears that you need 3 castings to create a radius larger than 10 feet and thus deal damage. So I'm just going to go with it being mildly confusing and unintuitive, then. I think.

You put in 3 castings to get one ball of light, then another 3 castings to get another ball of light, etc...  So, it's 4d6 damage for 18 RP, but with no save and no damage type, and only SR stops it.

Charm's RP cost is unusual. What happens if you think you have enough RP but actually don't when you try to cast it (for example, you think you're targeting your old drinking buddy, but you're actually targeting a Rakshasa disguised as him who has just noticed your party's Rogue preparing to slip a knife under his purse strings)?

Then it fails?


So...  new idea.  First...  Monster, Light and Animal get changed as follows:

Animal
Conjuration (Summoning)
RP/class: DS 3
Range: Close
Duration: 1 round + 1 round/3 CL
Target: Summoned creature
You summon a single creature from the Summon Nature's Ally I list per casting of this remnant. At the end of the duration, any and all summoned creatures disappear.
Augment: For every 9 additional RP you use to pay for this spell remnant, you may use the next level list.  (So, by using 9 more RP, you can cast from SNAII.  By paying 18 more RP, you can cast SNAIII.  Etc...)

Light
Evocation [Light]
RP/class: RM 6, DS 6, Mg 7
Range: Close
Duration: 1 round + 1 round/3 CL
Target: None (SR)
A ball of bright light appears that sheds bright light for 5 feet of this remnant in every direction, and dim light for another 10 feet beyond that.
Augment: For every 6 RP used to pay for this spell remnant, the radius of the bright light increases by 5 feet. If the bright light extends beyond 10 feet, a region of intense light appears around the ball of light with a radius equal to the number of feet beyond 10 that the bright light extends. Any creature within the region of intense light at the end of one of your turns takes 4d6 damage and is dazzled for 1 round. Undead take 8d6 damage instead. Overlapping regions of light caused by multiple separate castings of this remnant can stack to increase damage.

Monster
Conjuration (Summoning)
RP/class: RM 3, Sk 3, Mg 4
Range: Close
Duration: 1 round + 1 round/3 CL
Target: Summoned creature
You summon a single creature from the Summon Monster I list per casting of this remnant. At the end of the duration, any and all summoned creatures disappear.
Augment: For every 9 additional RP you pay for this effect, you may use the next level's list.  (So, paying an addition 9 RP lets you use the SMII list.  Paying an additional 18 RP lets you use the SMIII list, etc...)


As stands, this doesn't work properly for the magician, since he is supposed to be paying 12 extra, but I'm sure we can tack on a way to fix that if it's an actual problem.  This, however, does allow for us to create some potent ways of bypassing our problems.  For example:

Weaken
blah blah blah
Augment: A remnant caster of X level or higher may pay an additional Y RP to turn this remnant spell into enervate.

(Reword this, of course).

So, now, a RM has reason to get to Xth level.  At higher levels, he can aim for higher effects, even.

Offline TheGeometer

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Re: Discussion
« Reply #84 on: August 27, 2013, 10:45:56 AM »
Wow, lots of good points. I'm currently in the process of revising the remnant list, and have already made about 10 alterations. I had hoped it wasn't going to come to this, but I might have to just replace the entire list and redo all the individual lists from scratch. I will definitely improve some of the wording, to say that Slash and co. are susceptible to DR, for instance.

Any thoughts about making RP per day universal? I talked about it in my last post.

Offline Garryl

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Re: Discussion
« Reply #85 on: August 27, 2013, 12:52:28 PM »
Everything being per day instead of at will can work fine, you just have to balance things around it.

Another thought of how to implement a daily limit, rather than a strict limit where you are at full power until you run out or ration yourself, would be a slower reduction of power. I was just thinking that it might be interesting, and would fit the concept of remnant magic to a tee, if eventually you run down to the dregs of the dregs, slowly reducing your available RP per round until you run out entirely. So instead of having a daily limit of ([4.5 * level, rounded down] * (level + 4)), with a maximum of [4.5 * level, rounded down] RP/round, as the Magician currently has, you might instead reduce your RP/round by 1 for every (level+4) RP you've spent during the day.

Offline TheGeometer

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Re: Discussion
« Reply #86 on: August 27, 2013, 01:02:27 PM »
Interesting, but the main flaw of that idea is that after the first few times you use it, the effective DCs of all of your effects become easier to overcome. It would doom the caster to minor utility roles for most of the day.

Offline chaos_redefined

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Re: Discussion
« Reply #87 on: August 27, 2013, 09:52:15 PM »
As the day goes on... they can't rely on their high DCs, and you'll want to give them some buffs to make up for this.  At that point, you have someone who can debuff at the beginning of the day, and as the day goes on, he can use his buffs/battlefield control options instead.  You keep focusing on the DCs of your abilties, while in the meantime, the battlefield control options available are quite good.  Tack on some buffs and the debuffs/save-or-dies aren't a giant concern anymore.

In any case...  I think I need to get an important question out of the way...  Geometer, what tier are you aiming for here?  At the moment, it's very solidly a high Tier 2, especially at lower levels.  At higher levels, it might get to Tier 3 category (increased versatility, but the power is linear while Tier 2 requires quadratic growth).

Offline TheGeometer

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Re: Discussion
« Reply #88 on: August 28, 2013, 01:06:55 PM »
High Tier 2 sounds about right. I am aiming for anything lower than 1 and higher than 4: aka very useable, but not broken. I'm sort of hoping for a fix for the higher and lower levels that doesn't involve changing the at-will casting, the progression, or any augment-like additions.

On that note, one thing that we've all (or at least I've) overlooked is duration. Monsters summoned, blindness inflicted, and confusion produced by a 1st level Remnant Mage are all subject to the (purposefully) terrible duration of 1 round + 1 round/3 CL, or 1 round only at 1st level. This means that all a Remnant Mage can do with its magic at first level is make sure that someone stays blind, and even that won't work perfectly due to some successful saves. Alternately, it can keep 2 walls in existence or shift them around, but can't do any other magic and can't sustain them past that round. Maybe first level isn't as overpowered as we thought.

A concept that's been rolling around in my mind to fix the higher levels is the concept of Spell Constructions, or larger spell effects composed of lots of different remnants pieced together. Basically, you would cast Chill 3 times, Spark 3 times, and Wind 3 times, and summon a storm or something (net RP: 33). Since they would be composed of other remnants, they would essentially have the same prerequisite-like properties as the paths that C_R was talking about. That would add some interest to Remnant Magic that would spice up the higher levels. Lower levels naturally won't have access to enough RP to use these. It fits easily with what I've already made. It could mean that Monster will simply summon a creature from Summon Monster I, and the Advanced Monster construction can require a number of castings of Monster to make the more powerful creature appear.

Most likely, these constructions will require the necessary remnants to be cast every turn for a number of turns, and the effect begins when the caster expends a standard action. I'm less clear on how remnant casters would acquire these. A feat probably wouldn't be worth it unless you got 2 or 3 constructions per feat, but just getting one every few levels seems very limiting. Maybe both? Remnant classes could get a construction at every level divisible by 6 or as a feat, maybe. I need to think it through a bit more. And come up with a better name. What do you call something built from a lot of small pieces? A mosaic? :p

Offline Garryl

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Re: Discussion
« Reply #89 on: August 28, 2013, 10:26:35 PM »
Speaking of DCs, I'm kinda concerned about how they work out. The math works fine for saves against all-or-nothing effects, where the effect is the same for 1 or 100 remnants taking effect. This breaks down when you get to SR and touch attacks, or to remnants that model save half/partial, rather than save negates.

Since a save, attack, or CL check vs SR exactly at the DC means only half get through, +/-1 per point above or below, an all-or-nothing effect effectively has a save DC of +1/2 castings. However, it also effectively has +1/2 castings to CL when determining whether at least one of them bypasses SR, and +1/2 castings to the attack bonus vs. AC to see if at least one hits, and so on. SR also has unusual effects when you consider such a remnant that is both affected by SR and allows a save.

A concept that's been rolling around in my mind to fix the higher levels is the concept of Spell Constructions, or larger spell effects composed of lots of different remnants pieced together. Basically, you would cast Chill 3 times, Spark 3 times, and Wind 3 times, and summon a storm or something (net RP: 33). Since they would be composed of other remnants, they would essentially have the same prerequisite-like properties as the paths that C_R was talking about. That would add some interest to Remnant Magic that would spice up the higher levels. Lower levels naturally won't have access to enough RP to use these. It fits easily with what I've already made. It could mean that Monster will simply summon a creature from Summon Monster I, and the Advanced Monster construction can require a number of castings of Monster to make the more powerful creature appear.

Most likely, these constructions will require the necessary remnants to be cast every turn for a number of turns, and the effect begins when the caster expends a standard action. I'm less clear on how remnant casters would acquire these. A feat probably wouldn't be worth it unless you got 2 or 3 constructions per feat, but just getting one every few levels seems very limiting. Maybe both? Remnant classes could get a construction at every level divisible by 6 or as a feat, maybe. I need to think it through a bit more. And come up with a better name. What do you call something built from a lot of small pieces? A mosaic? :p

I very much like the idea of spell constructions. From what you're describing, I'd like them to be a core component of remnant casting, as it's a perfect way to let the remnants evolve into more potent, higher-level effects. Just combine this and this and that in some combination to produce is level-appropriate effect. I'd like to see the constructions be fairly accessible, either with a decent amount known based purely on class level, or with just all of them available to anyone who can produce the required remnants all in one round.

Offline chaos_redefined

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Re: Discussion
« Reply #90 on: August 29, 2013, 10:11:37 PM »
Constructions sound fun, depending on implementation.  I wanna see how it looks before I start talking a lot about it.

Offline TheGeometer

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Re: Discussion
« Reply #91 on: September 01, 2013, 04:38:11 PM »
Sorry for the delay, but I've been thinking about how to solve the high-level problem, and I've come to the conclusion that constructions make the system needlessly complicated and are thus better suited for a prestige class (don't worry, it's coming soon). Here's my alternate proposal:

1. Bonus RP/turn is now called Talent. I've already considered having a few other systems in the BoSS have "pseudo-abilities," and now I think it's time I formalized it and made all of them officially have one. Spirit Magic, once I get around to it, will have a new ability called Devotion. At any rate, the naming is necessary because Talent will now be a much more important part of Remnant Magic.

2. Talent will now scale equally for all characters, using the graph currently being used only for 60 RP/turn classes. This might be a little strong for the Spellknight, but gish classes are generally MAD anyway, so I'm not expecting Spellknights to be able to get their Charisma high enough to make full use of this. It might also be a little weak for the Magician, but it's a difference of maybe 2 RP/turn at level 20, which really doesn't matter all that much. This change is crucial to keep step 3 from being unusable.

3. This is what all of these changes are really about. Individual remnants will have additional effects based on Talent. For instance, Shift will say at the bottom of the description that once per day for every point by which your Talent exceeds 2, each iteration of this remnant cast in the same turn can move the target up to 50 miles instead of 5 feet. You do not need line of sight or line of effect for this use of this remnant. The target appears 100 x 1d4 feet from the intended destination in a random direction.

This is how I'm going to make remnant magic scale up with level. Looking at the chart that determines Talent, you can see that the bare minimum stat will give you this ability at level 13 (as a 7th level spell), while the best-optimized characters could get it much earlier, as the equivalent of a 4th level spell, for instance. The spell that this mimics, Teleport is 5th level, but more powerful, so it's easy to see that this can be fairly balanced. I'm sure that there are ways to get high enough stats to use this at level 1, but I doubt that this is much more broken than any other spellcasting-based application of a Charisma score of 40. If you think that this idea needs some work to be more balanced, please suggest how I can fix it. All other comments are still welcome.

Offline Garryl

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Re: Discussion
« Reply #92 on: September 01, 2013, 07:01:02 PM »
The proposed usage of "Talent" rubs me the wrong way. It feels like it's giving ability scores a greater influence on the potency of your abilities than your actual character level and class level. I'm also worried that the number of daily uses of various things will get ridiculous with each individual remnant having it's own pool of per day charges of awesomeness.

Offline TheGeometer

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Re: Discussion
« Reply #93 on: September 01, 2013, 08:44:51 PM »
The proposed usage of "Talent" rubs me the wrong way. It feels like it's giving ability scores a greater influence on the potency of your abilities than your actual character level and class level. I'm also worried that the number of daily uses of various things will get ridiculous with each individual remnant having it's own pool of per day charges of awesomeness.

Yeah, I guess so. I agree that this change would make the system way too reliant on ability scores. I still like the concept of Talent and the effects associated with it, but it should be implemented differently, separately from ability scores and Bonus RP/turn. Also, if it's based on level, rather than casting modifiers, it should probably be called something other than "Talent."

Offline chaos_redefined

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Re: Discussion
« Reply #94 on: October 14, 2013, 07:32:12 PM »
Huh.  Didn't notice we abandoned constructions.  Thought you were working on that for some reason...

Not a fan of talents for the reasons given above.

Edit: Any thought to the augments I wrote earlier on?  More importantly, could we give augments that are accessible at certain levels?  e.g. Make a fire effect a larger AoE at higher levels?
« Last Edit: October 14, 2013, 07:38:14 PM by chaos_redefined »

Offline TheGeometer

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Re: Discussion
« Reply #95 on: October 23, 2013, 05:26:48 PM »
Wow, it's been a month and a half already? Well, despite the work that comes with the end of the summer, I don't intend to let this whole project fade away for a whole year like what happened in 2012. A brief update on my plans for this system:

- The new remnant list is nearly done. I have already fixed all of the issues that Garryl and others pointed out, and though I'm very reluctant to add augments into the mix when casting a remnant more than once will do the trick, I have added a number of level-dependent effects, as per the recommendation of chaos_redefined.

- Constructions: not sure yet, but still an option. I'm currently leaning toward adding it as a variant. That way the people dissatisfied with the current system at high levels can throw it in for a twist. I thought of an interesting idea that makes them work well within the existing framework of Remnant Magic.

Basically, to make a Spell Construction (still looking for a better name for these things. Any ideas?), you cast a few remnants specific to that construction once per round for a minute. This makes it near-impossible to construct one on the fly in battle, but you can make any number of them before battle with a still-limitless RP supply (unless you're a Magician). The new factor I came up with that reigns in their power is the concept of decay. Every turn, 1/10 of the Construction decays into the pieces of magic from which it was formed, and if it decays to 0 (after a minute), it fades away completely. To prevent this from happening, you can cast those same remnants that you used to construct it in the first place. You can do this as many times as you want per round to restore any amount of decay (though you can't restore more than the amount of decay in any one Construction).

For example, Elemental Blast could be a Spell Construction that costs 2 Flare, 2 Spark, 2 Chill, 2 Sound, 2 Acid. To make it, you spend a minute casting this combination of remnants every turn (for a total cost of 100 RP over the course of the minute). After you make it, it immediately begins decaying, and the next round it decreases to 9/10. You can cast Flare twice, Spark twice, etc. that round to bring it back to 10/10 until the next round. You can't cast it unless it's at 10/10. If you decide not to restore it that round, it will be at 8/10 next round. At that point, you could cast Flare, Spark, and the others 4 times each to get it back to 10/10.

That's the general idea. There are nuances like the fact that Magicians do not deduct the RP costs of restoring Spell Constructions from their RP per day, but still deduct them from RP per turn. I think it's fairly balanced, since the number of Spell Constructions you can have with you is pretty much limited to the amount of RP you have per turn. You would have to keep diverting RP into them to keep them from decaying away, so either your spellcasting would get weaker or you would have to not cast in some turns. It has a nice parallel with the rest of Remnant Magic in that you can have a lot of weaker ones or a few larger ones, and it also scales directly with RP.

Unlike remnants, these would definitely scale in power, not just quantity, with level. Either I would just have a flat rule saying something like "you must have RP per turn greater than or equal to twice the RP cost per turn of a Construction to learn it," or each Construction would have a minimum number of ranks in Spellcraft needed to learn it. Get it? Because you're crafting spells. Spell-craft.

Anyway, I hate to come up with so many ways to try to fix this troubled system, but I think it still has the potential to come together into something that could make D&D even more awesome. So I'm going to stick by it and keep improving it until it works.

Offline Garryl

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Re: Discussion
« Reply #96 on: October 23, 2013, 06:05:12 PM »
Have you done anything about how saves, touch attacks, and SR work? In particular how each layer of defense effectively halves the number of remnants getting through unless the remnant caster gets a result vastly above the defender's defense (so having SR makes "saving" really easy even if the penetration roll is high enough), or how multiple castings of a remnant effectively function as bonuses on the SR penetration roll or touch attack when dealing with no save remnants?

Offline TheGeometer

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Re: Discussion
« Reply #97 on: October 24, 2013, 04:16:17 PM »
Have you done anything about how saves, touch attacks, and SR work? In particular how each layer of defense effectively halves the number of remnants getting through unless the remnant caster gets a result vastly above the defender's defense (so having SR makes "saving" really easy even if the penetration roll is high enough), or how multiple castings of a remnant effectively function as bonuses on the SR penetration roll or touch attack when dealing with no save remnants?

I will modify the rules of Remnant Magic to say that SR comes into play only after all other rolls. If you think about it, this is basically the same effect as having an additional caster level check. Say you manage to get 6 Flare effects through, and then roll a caster level check exactly equal to the monster's SR. Then the monster takes the effects of 3 Flare remnants. This is exactly the same effect as if this 6-Flare effect was a spell, since on average, if you keep rolling exactly the value of the SR, you will do 6 Flares half the time and nothing the other half of the time, or 3 Flares on average. Yes, adding or subtracting 1 for each point above or below is just an approximation for the multiplicative processes that actually take place, but it's a good approximation, and it's easier for the average player to calculate.

I think you'll find in practice that even though saves, touch attacks, SR, miss chances, etc. seem to stack and make it very difficult to hit anything, it's really just the average effect of what multiple spells would have done. That's pretty much what I was going for.

Offline TheGeometer

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Re: Discussion
« Reply #98 on: November 01, 2013, 06:12:55 PM »
After a lot of thinking, I asked myself, "what's the simplest way to make a free-action spellcasting system? Is that what I've made?" That is, after all, the goal of this whole project: new and interesting, but still as simple as possible. And it dawned on me that if I make the changes I've talked about, what I'm going to end up with is a system of remnants that progress with RP and level in addition to a totally different system of constructions that progress with RP, level, and remnants.

The only reason that constructions are needed is because the system doesn't progress well in the higher levels, and it only doesn't progress well because it's based on the idea that all remnants should scale with level and never become intrinsically less useful. What I need is an addition to the system that creates new, level-based effects without having so much depth that it detracts from the actual object of the system: the remnants.

So, here's the idea. The last idea. I don't think I have enough time or you patience for me to keep being indecisive about how remnant magic is going to work. The idea is to introduce a new class of feats, Combination Feats or something like that. Each feat details 3 new combinations that the character can use, and each one of those combinations involves using the listed remnants in a single turn to produce the desired effect. Each combination also specifies a number of turns that the character has to wait before using them again. That's it.

For example, one combination feat could have a combination that lists Water x2, Gas x1 as the component remnants and produces a raining cloud every, say, 2 turns. So every other turn, by spending 16 RP, the character can make the cloud, which will be about as useful as a 2nd or 3rd level spell (because a character can cast it at around level 5).

It simplifies existing remnants as well. For instance, Monster now has none of those confusing ways to turn multiple iterations of the remnant into a single, more powerful monster. Now there can be a feat with a combination in it that has Monster x(3N) as the component remnants which says that it summons a monster from the Summon Monster [N] list. Yes, this will make remnant magic a little more feat-intensive, but I needed to curb its power a bit anyway.

If you see any problems with this plan, please post about it. That's what this thread is for. Thanks!

Offline Nanshork

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Re: Discussion
« Reply #99 on: November 01, 2013, 09:48:34 PM »
That actually sounds pretty interesting, a system that functions similar to the Drow SLA feats in Drow of the Underdark.