Author Topic: Discussion  (Read 34227 times)

Offline TheGeometer

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Re: Discussion
« Reply #120 on: July 18, 2014, 04:16:24 AM »
Why do you want to precharge Mystic Flurry, anyways? Why not have it apply only to your next flurry in the same turn?

If you do want it to be prechargeable, why do you want multiple in-combat rounds to stack the charging?

Well, the thing is that 5 RP at level 15 won't get you much. If you chuck 5 Flare at someone, they'll almost certainly save and avoid the whole thing. Whereas adding an extra attack to your Remnant Flurry means that you're guaranteed that extra 1d6 damage, assuming you could hit with your Remnant Flurry already. So I wanted to give the Spellmonk an ability that would take the spare RP that she usually can't use well and give her an edge with it. And I think that works better if she can charge it for subsequent turns.

But I specifically don't want everything to stack so that she gains a billion extra attacks, so what I think I'll do is that instead of having each turn's Mystic Focus override the previous turn's, I'll set a cap of [class level]/2 extra attacks that can be added to a Remnant Flurry due to the Mystic Focus ability.

Offline TheGeometer

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Re: Discussion
« Reply #121 on: July 19, 2014, 02:19:25 PM »
Only 5 more short posts to go, and then I can move on to Spirit Magic! Start the countdown! 5!
4!
3!

Offline TheGeometer

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Re: Discussion
« Reply #122 on: July 25, 2014, 09:28:37 AM »

Offline TheGeometer

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Re: Discussion
« Reply #123 on: July 31, 2014, 04:50:54 AM »
Only 5 more short posts to go, and then I can move on to Spirit Magic! Start the countdown! 5!
4!
3!
2!
Screw the countdown! FOUR POSTS AT ONCE!

And with that, every Remnant Magic post is up. I'm going to make a few final tweaks to the main sticky'ed thread, add the remnant list for the Remnant Adept, and formally wrap this all up. PLEASE say something on this thread if you have any comments or notice anything that should be fixed; while the editing process for this system will continue even after it's done, this is the best time to make changes to it. Thanks!

Offline Garryl

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Re: Discussion
« Reply #124 on: July 31, 2014, 09:37:51 AM »
Shard of Life (and its psionic version) is missing the standard "The subject can have been dead for up to {time}" clause that all other resurrection spells have. The nearest equivalents would be 1 round (Revivify) or 1 round/level (Revenance, which is basically the same spell but 1-2 levels higher and 1 minute/level duration). It should also function as one of the standard resurrection spells (likely Raise Dead) to deal with all sorts of other resurrection-prevention issues (like the condition of the corpse, dying from Death effects, refusing to be returned to life, the soul being trapped or destroyed, old age, nonliving creatures, etc.). The open-ended way that it's written means that it bypasses (and essentially undoes) all of those things, allowing a subsequent resurrection spell to work on a willing creature regardless of the original death; you could use Shard of Life and following it up with Raise Dead to revive a human from a billion years ago who died of old age and had his soul completely obliterated, something that even a Miracle spell usually only has a 50% chance of doing, if it can do it at all.

Combine Psionics should cost 7 PP as a 4th-level power, not 9, and Shard of Life (Psionic) (which should be called Psionic Shard of Life or Shard of Life, Psionic to follow convention) should cost 5 PP, not 7.

Offline TheGeometer

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Re: Discussion
« Reply #125 on: July 31, 2014, 11:21:36 AM »
Fixed and fixed. Thanks, Garryl.

Offline Garryl

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Re: Discussion
« Reply #126 on: July 31, 2014, 12:54:01 PM »
Combine Psionics says spell instead of power in the first augment. It's also overly efficient in PP with the augments. Spending +8 PP (total 15) gives you that same 15 PP-worth of powers (3x 3rd-level or 5x 2nd-level), but with some amazing action economy. Even at +4 PP (11 total), you're getting 9 PP-worth of 2nd-level powers, so it's 2 PP for the ability to throw out two extra powers in the same turn.

Shard of Life (and the psionic version) should have a shorter revival threshold. 1 day/level may seem appropriate from Raise Dead, but the actual analogue is Revenance (4th level spell, revives for 1 minute/level, can be dead up to 1 round/level) and the big thing to consider how this temporary revival effectively extends Revivify's revival threshold (5th level spell, revives permanently with no level loss, but can only be dead up to 1 round flat). I would recommend 1 round/level at most.

Offline TheGeometer

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Re: Discussion
« Reply #127 on: July 31, 2014, 03:01:28 PM »
I... completely forgot Revenance existed. That spell was basically what I was going for with Shard of Life, albeit with a longer duration. I think I'll just cut it and its psionic counterpart out, but that's going to make the spell and psionic power list a little sparse. I don't think it'll be a problem replacing them, though (any ideas would be helpful).

As for Combine Psionics, I'll just get rid of the option to add more than 3 powers, and I'll change the augment to 6 PP to keep the total PP the same.

Offline TheGeometer

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Re: Discussion
« Reply #128 on: August 02, 2014, 07:50:54 AM »
The spells/powers/domain thread is now fully updated and fixed up, and I've also added the first ever post on the Book of Seven Secrets main subforum, which is kind of like a preface to the "book."

As of now, Remnant Magic is officially done! Nevertheless, please let me know if you find anything game-breaking, erroneous, vague, unusable, or even misspelled in anything in this chapter.

Offline TheGeometer

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Re: Discussion
« Reply #129 on: August 24, 2014, 10:04:44 AM »
I just finished a Remnant Mage playtest, which led to a few fixes. The bonus RP is now more limited, and the Weapon, Swarm, Monster, and Animate remnants now have a clause added that prevents people from just dismissing them and then immediately making another monster at full health appear. Animal has been changed similarly and its name has been changed to Ally. Finally, the wording for the mechanic of sustaining now says that half of the initial cost of the remnants is subtracted from your RP/turn, rather than spent each round, in order to account for the by-day limitations of Magicians and Remnant Adepts.

If I make any other changes, I'll post them here, but I'll be focusing more on Spirit Magic from here on out.

Offline YouLostMe

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Re: Discussion
« Reply #130 on: September 14, 2014, 03:48:09 PM »
The Monsters link in the remnant magic thread links to items instead of monsters.

Offline TheGeometer

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Re: Discussion
« Reply #131 on: September 15, 2014, 01:43:23 AM »
The Monsters link in the remnant magic thread links to items instead of monsters.

Good catch, thanks. It's fixed now.

Offline CKirk

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Re: Discussion
« Reply #132 on: September 25, 2014, 12:18:23 PM »
I've been looking over the Spellform feats, and I'm kinda confused about the formula for uses/day.
The Formula as written results in negative spells per day no matter the caster level for any spellform with an effective spell level of 3 or higher, and results in a NAN value for effective Spell Level 2, so...what gives?

Offline Garryl

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Re: Discussion
« Reply #133 on: September 25, 2014, 02:02:24 PM »
I've been looking over the Spellform feats, and I'm kinda confused about the formula for uses/day.
The Formula as written results in negative spells per day no matter the caster level for any spellform with an effective spell level of 3 or higher, and results in a NAN value for effective Spell Level 2, so...what gives?

The formula I see here is ((character level / 2) - spell level) / 2, with an effective minimum of 0 due to only being allowed to use the spellform if that results in 1 or higher. After all the rounding up, that works out to 1 use at level equal to 1 plus twice the spell level, with one more use every 4 levels thereafter (which is probably a simpler way of defining it). In any case, there are no NAN values because you're always dividing by 2, not some changing value that could be 0.

Offline CKirk

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Re: Discussion
« Reply #134 on: September 25, 2014, 04:15:34 PM »
I've been looking over the Spellform feats, and I'm kinda confused about the formula for uses/day.
The Formula as written results in negative spells per day no matter the caster level for any spellform with an effective spell level of 3 or higher, and results in a NAN value for effective Spell Level 2, so...what gives?

The formula I see here is ((character level / 2) - spell level) / 2, with an effective minimum of 0 due to only being allowed to use the spellform if that results in 1 or higher. After all the rounding up, that works out to 1 use at level equal to 1 plus twice the spell level, with one more use every 4 levels thereafter (which is probably a simpler way of defining it). In any case, there are no NAN values because you're always dividing by 2, not some changing value that could be 0.
Thank you! I misread the Order of Operations on the formula, apparently forgetting divide before subtracts, so....

Offline Versatility_Nut

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Re: Discussion
« Reply #135 on: July 22, 2017, 10:10:13 AM »
I'll have this first post be Spoiler-divided to keep things smaller and more easily understood:

(click to show/hide)

(click to show/hide)

(click to show/hide)

Thoughts on anything in this post?

Offline Nanshork

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Re: Discussion
« Reply #136 on: July 22, 2017, 01:29:19 PM »
TheGeometer hasn't posted since May so I don't know when you'll get a response.

Offline TheGeometer

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Re: Discussion
« Reply #137 on: October 27, 2018, 06:09:43 PM »
I'll have this first post be Spoiler-divided to keep things smaller and more easily understood:

(click to show/hide)

(click to show/hide)

(click to show/hide)

Thoughts on anything in this post?

Whoa, I'm glad someone put so much time and thought into looking through this (I sure haven't, at least not for a while). Let me try to answer as well as I can.

Mis-schooled Remnants:

Not much to say about this. I guess I was thinking more about force effects on a lot of these, but the distinction doesn't matter too much. The fact that healing is conjuration and Contingency is evocation is proof enough to me that these categories are all that rigid (I wouldn't see a problem with Telekinesis being evocation, but maybe that's just me). Relabeling Acid messes with the Warblaster prerequisites a bit, but that's not a huge issue. Really, you could make all the changes you suggested with good reason, but I'm not convinced they're in urgent need of changing.

Remnant Mechanics:

1) I honestly don't understand what these sentences are saying. I've read them like five times and I still don't know what you mean. What line from Psionics, what statblock? I'd like to make the Remnant lists better-organized, but I literally don't understand what your suggestion is.

2) Looking back at Build, there's a lot I don't like about it. A minute per week of normal time would probably be more appropriate, and the last line about making Craft checks in addition to the effective Craft DC of the Remnants seems... out of place, if not just badly worded. I don't think it's more broken than Fabricate in its current form, but I'd still like to rework it.

3) I agree that in practice, casting only 1 group of remnants per turn is usually the way to go. It gives you a lot more damage and larger effects on saves, and if you split up your RP, you'll find your effects fizzling out. The main times when you would divide them would be sustaining effects and in non-offensive cases. Putting up a few small walls, healing a bit of damage, and moving over a bit, all in the same turn, can be really useful. They're not meant to be combined more than that except in spellforms (which, as you point out, have their own set of problems).

Keep in mind that damage from Weapon still obeys the remnant damage rules (though now that you've drawn my attention to it, I should add that they explicitly don't add any size modifier to their attack rolls). A CL 7 Remnant Mage can indeed make a cluster of 21 fine greatswords that attack at +7, but if you're up against a pretty standard CR 7 monster with AC 20 and you roll a 10, let's say, you'll be dealing 7d4. So, it's a fairly typical damaging spell for its CL. I should also explicitly say that the weapons don't deal with natural 1s or 20s normally, since a 20 in this case is already 17d4, and I don't want anyone to think that a crit doubles that. So thanks for mentioning falchions - wouldn't have caught that otherwise.

4 and 5) Aw shucks, thanks.

6) Note that in the introduction, I mention that all remnants must be cast in the same action per turn. That means you specifically can't use a remnant in between every action, only between every turn. As for the examples you gave, none of them seem unbalanced to me. A 1-level dip in Remnant Mage could let you Shift 5 feet every turn. Pretty reasonable for a dip - an extra 5-ft. step every turn seems to me like something a good feat would let you do. As for Shift and Ascend being used to fly... yeah. :p Remnant casters don't have any other way to fly. They were absolutely intended to be used together like that.

Spellform idea:

I like your concept (if I'm understanding it right) of a Spellform being a customizable plug-and-play spell-creation system, where you can create any number of slightly different spell effects by swapping out the component remnants. If you can make something like that work well mechanically, I encourage you to post it as homebrew. As is, though, other than some potential balance tweaks with how strict the Remnant component requirements are and how many unique effects are worth a feat, I don't see any way to modify my current system slightly to increase the flexibility. Making a variant partially or completely from scratch seems like the way to go if you want to flesh out your idea.

TheGeometer hasn't posted since May so I don't know when you'll get a response.

Late 2018, apparently. :) I have to say that the days when this was my main creative outlet are in the past, so I won't be hanging around here constantly like I did back then. That said, I still play D&D 3.5 a lot, and this post is proof that I do occasionally still remember Remnant Magic. I still have all of those other 6 big magic system ideas, plus a few more since then, rattling around in my head, and it's a shame that I don't think I'll ever be able to write them all out like I did for this one. But I'm sure that at some points, I'll be struck by the need to share one of them in a smaller capacity, and when I do, I'll be sure to check back here.

Offline Nanshork

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Re: Discussion
« Reply #138 on: October 27, 2018, 08:24:34 PM »
Well I'm glad to see you're still alive if nothing else.

Offline Versatility_Nut

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Re: Discussion
« Reply #139 on: October 31, 2018, 09:27:05 PM »
Remnant Mechanics:

1) I honestly don't understand what these sentences are saying. I've read them like five times and I still don't know what you mean. What line from Psionics, what statblock? I'd like to make the Remnant lists better-organized, but I literally don't understand what your suggestion is.
This line (using Body Adjustment as an example):
Power Points:    Psion/wilder 5, psychic warrior 3

When I read the threads originally, I actually missed that you'd actually already done pretty much everything I'd suggest. The Remnants are listed alphabetically, have a line for per-class RP costs and the class lists are in the thread with the classes. The only real improvement would to be hitting up the more advanced table guides to get them into a sortable table, so that you can organize them by any single value you want (the Martial Discipline Compendium uses such a table).

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2) Looking back at Build, there's a lot I don't like about it. A minute per week of normal time would probably be more appropriate, and the last line about making Craft checks in addition to the effective Craft DC of the Remnants seems... out of place, if not just badly worded. I don't think it's more broken than Fabricate in its current form, but I'd still like to rework it.
Just making the Craft check with a DC bonus based on how many instances are used should be balanceable, as it does give earlier access to crafting stuff like plate mail, but you still need the money to pay for materials. And mundane crafting has a tiny, barely mentionable, profit margin (though they do have one by RAW, unlike magic items). Having the DC boost for multiple uses per turn be mandetory prevents extremely rapid construction because you get confined by one check per interval, meaning it only gets faster when you have the Epic Level Handbook rules in play and make up for the +10 DC for accelerated construction.

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3) I agree that in practice, casting only 1 group of remnants per turn is usually the way to go. It gives you a lot more damage and larger effects on saves, and if you split up your RP, you'll find your effects fizzling out. The main times when you would divide them would be sustaining effects and in non-offensive cases. Putting up a few small walls, healing a bit of damage, and moving over a bit, all in the same turn, can be really useful. They're not meant to be combined more than that except in spellforms (which, as you point out, have their own set of problems).

Keep in mind that damage from Weapon still obeys the remnant damage rules (though now that you've drawn my attention to it, I should add that they explicitly don't add any size modifier to their attack rolls). A CL 7 Remnant Mage can indeed make a cluster of 21 fine greatswords that attack at +7, but if you're up against a pretty standard CR 7 monster with AC 20 and you roll a 10, let's say, you'll be dealing 7d4. So, it's a fairly typical damaging spell for its CL. I should also explicitly say that the weapons don't deal with natural 1s or 20s normally, since a 20 in this case is already 17d4, and I don't want anyone to think that a crit doubles that. So thanks for mentioning falchions - wouldn't have caught that otherwise.

Missed the "same action" clause and that Weapon uses the general rules (you forget to mention that it targets AC with those rules, though), though the situation with building up damage over time (as Weapon has a duration) still holds true.

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6) Note that in the introduction, I mention that all remnants must be cast in the same action per turn. That means you specifically can't use a remnant in between every action, only between every turn. As for the examples you gave, none of them seem unbalanced to me. A 1-level dip in Remnant Mage could let you Shift 5 feet every turn. Pretty reasonable for a dip - an extra 5-ft. step every turn seems to me like something a good feat would let you do. As for Shift and Ascend being used to fly... yeah. :p Remnant casters don't have any other way to fly. They were absolutely intended to be used together like that.
All-day flight for two picks with a level-scaling speed is a pretty good out of combat capacity, and taking away from the speed is a good cost for bursts of high effectiveness.

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Spellform idea:

I like your concept (if I'm understanding it right) of a Spellform being a customizable plug-and-play spell-creation system, where you can create any number of slightly different spell effects by swapping out the component remnants. If you can make something like that work well mechanically, I encourage you to post it as homebrew. As is, though, other than some potential balance tweaks with how strict the Remnant component requirements are and how many unique effects are worth a feat, I don't see any way to modify my current system slightly to increase the flexibility. Making a variant partially or completely from scratch seems like the way to go if you want to flesh out your idea.

Hmm... This makes me think of a slight adjustment, as what I was considering was, itself, an adjustment to the existing setup of a specific, set list of Remnants used in it, differing by use of precasting and scaling parts of the effect, rather than genuinely plug-and-play. This also makes it easier to justify a Feat, as instead of just replicating Call Weapon off the Feat, you'd be able to replicate a wide array of admittedly-simple weapon enhancements in a way that synergises better than normal, meaning you can make a good weapon at a good cost and pile on upgrades to what you already have. An issue does arise with reams of interactions to be specified, but condensing it into bullet points listing a variety of Remnants, then their similar effects, could get the point across.

For example, the Call Weapon analogous feat could list Acid, Chill, Flare, Sound and Spark together, stating of all of them that they add some amount of damage of their damage type. This means you take five subsets of the effect and turn them into a two-sentence or so description, allowing the feat to cover a lot of ground. This also means all of the borrowed effects can be listed together, possibly under a genericised heading like Compounds to denote those offer their listed Remnant effect, modified as specified. Such as becoming on-hit effects with the number active reduced to one-third. In the case of a Call Weapon analogue, Enhance and other Remnants that already alter weapons/objects wouldn't need listed interactions because Remnant usage is a Free Action, so you can just use them the instant after your Spellform finishes. The same holds true for other effects, so listing them becomes unnecessary.

Though given the fact they're different in nature and goal, a different name is in order. Spellforms are there to offer higher-level spell effects than Remnant casting would otherwise allow, while the setup I'm considering is there to open up versatility with variable effects that let you adjust the details of the effect as the situation reveals itself. Trading action economy for effectiveness is a common element, and Remnant casting currently has no form of doing so in many cases, drawing on external systems to do so. Being able to expend actions on more complex and, generally, more powerful Remnant effects would make the Remnant "Full Casters" considerably less open-action, as otherwise Remnants being Free Action means they'd Run every round their Con score permits. By giving them useful options that eat Standard actions, they're playing by much more similar dynamics to regular classes. The activation itself being a Swift Action both ties up the Quicken part of the round, for Remnant/Vancian duel casters, and lets the Spellknight still have Full Attack access when they set it off, while the pure Remnant casters have the actions to spend on setting up more mid-combat without impacting direct Remnant use.

If a melee-oriented Spellknight (as they have the effects to go Archery) finds themselves frequently out of range, they can use the same abilities to get or stay in range more easily or have something better to do with their Standard Action than make a single melee attack. On top of the existing Remnant usage mobility. Which makes them ludicrously hard to actually keep out of attack range, but they're eating quite a lot of actions, and charge rate restrictions (possibly relying on upkeep costs for having prepared being a fraction of the cost to activate) could then cover some of the issues. A longer-range Teleport's upkeep cost would be more RP efficient than Blinks of the same distance, meaning more damage on the next turn than you'd get by using Blink to close the distance.