FPs used for Evocation Casting are twice as good...?

[jb.teller4]

I apologize if this has already been addressed (I tried searching and didn't find anything, but it might just be that my search-fu is weak or I just wasn't thinking of the right search criteria).

In the Dresden Files campaign I finished a couple months ago (here), one of the characters was a wizard built to do tons of evocation damage. That was fine. But in play he consistently did obscene amounts of damage with Evocation (upwards of 20 stress on more than one occasion) and it felt broken. After talking about it for a bit, it came down to the fact that every fate point he spent on his casting roll effectively became +4 damage, instead of just +2 damage.

Has anyone else run into this? I explain in detail below what was happening, as well as the house rule I made for the rest of that campaign. I'm curious if either someone can point out where we were making a mistake or else comment on the house rule I made and/or what they've done in the same situation.
What Was Happening: The Discipline roll used in casting serves two functions -- controlling the spell and hitting the target. Therefore, any invocation or tag that is used on the casting roll gives a +2 to both. If you plan on invoking and/or tagging on the roll, then you can up the Power of the spell (as long as you can afford the Mental Stress), which increases the damage of the Evocation attack. The +2 from the invoke/tag also adds to your targeting roll, which adds damage 1-for-1 if you exceed their defense roll.

Now, this player loves to be compelled and often has a decent pile of fate points, despite being a low-refresh wizard (also, he tended to save his fate points for fights for expressly this purpose). So when he got into an important fight, he'd plan on pouring at least 3 fate points into the first spell he cast (and he used an Enchanted Item for his main defense, so he was able to jump straight to the blasting).

The amount of damage he would do was unbelievable (he wiped out at least one tough opponent with Supernatural Toughness completely in one hit). He had a Superb (+5) Conviction, which increased to +7 Power for offensive Evocation in his favored element with specializations and focus items. He would plan on taking a Minor consequence and fill in his last Stress box (expecting, usually accurately, to one-shot them), so he'd set the Power of the first spell at 14. Meanwhile, he had a Superb (+5) Discipline, increased to +8 Control with specializations and focus items. He'd then spend 3 fate points on invocations for +6 to his roll (he might spend a little more or less after he saw his roll and the enemy's defense roll), which was enough to control the 14 Power spell unless he rolled really badly (and even a terrible roll only meant a couple shifts of failure). So, on several occasions, he rolled 14+ on his attack roll (so no enemy ever even came close to dodging) and then he did around 14 (targeting roll) +14 (spell Power) - (the opponent's defense roll) - (armor). Even a good dodge combined with good armor let tons of damage through. I know he did over 20 stress of damage at least twice in the campaign. Even if he didn't kill them, they were so fried with Consequences that they were finished off quickly by the rest of the party.
House Rule: It's very possible that I was doing something wrong above or that the book addresses this issue, but if it does I couldn't find it. So I made the following house rule for the rest of the campaign:

• Any invokes or tags used for Evocation casting had to be applied to Control or Targeting, not both.

The logic I gave was that it was effectively two rolls combined for speed and simplicity and that applying the invocation to both was getting double the bonus (and conversely, only getting to apply the invocation to one wasn't in any way being "robbed"). The player was cool with this. It significantly lowered how much damage he did, but he was still the heaviest hitter in the group. It did add a little complexity and he had to keep track of which side he had chosen for any invocations or tags, but it wasn't bad.

(Note: The player intentionally set his character up to be a frighteningly powerful loose-cannon type and was quite cheerfully open about the fact that he was pushing the system and power-gaming as much as he could. Having a Superb (+5) in both Conviction and Discipline and then focusing his specializations and focus items into offensive Evocation were just two examples.)
Anyway, thoughts? comments?

-John B.

[EdgeOfDreams]

Yes, you were playing by the rules as written.

Yes, casters can do god-awful amounts of damage.

Yes, that house rule is a valid, mild nerf to channeling/evocation.  If the players are cool with it, and it improves your game, keep it.

EDIT: A similar house rule that can be applied instead of or alongside that rule would be this: Focus Items and Specializations that improve control apply only to controlling shifts of power, not targeting. END EDIT.

Now, some comments:

* He was willing to take a consequence to pull off these shots.  That means he can't do this more than once, maybe twice in a single fight.  Also, remember that consequences, even mild, don't go away until after you 'justify recovery', which for mental consequences may require rest, seeing a therapist, etc. etc.  So, he may not even be able to pull this off in two consecutive fights if his consequences haven't gone away yet.

* His tactic is far less effective against certain types of enemies or enemy groups, specifically Mortals (risk of killing them and breaking 1st law, much discussed elsewhere on this forum), Ogres and others with resistance/immunity to direct magical assault, and large groups of enemies spread out across multiple zones (even an AOE, which is 2 shifts weaker, may only harm some of the opposing forces).

* Throwing around that much power is ripe for fallout or compels on collateral damage.

* He's spent refresh, fate points, skill points, and consequences on being able to pull this off (pretty much every resource a character HAS at the game-mechanic level).  He deserves to get something for that.  Whether it's disproportional or not is up to you and him to determine, though.

[jb.teller4]

Thanks EdgeofDreams, those are fair points and exactly the kind of thoughts I'm looking for.

When we were discussing it as a group, the consensus was similar to what you said: That he should do a lot of damage because it was what he was focused on and he was spending a lot of fate points and a consequence (though even without the consequence he was doing a lot of damage). But there was a sense among at least some of the group that it was still just too much damage, even for the resources expended (both during character creation and in the scene). Since the player in question didn't mind the nerf, we went for it.

(This player admitted a couple times that he purposefully pushes the limits and he expects to be told no at some point -- he figures the best way to find the limits is to push past them and get pulled back.)

-John B.

[EdgeOfDreams]

(This player admitted a couple times that he purposefully pushes the limits and he expects to be told no at some point -- he figures the best way to find the limits is to push past them and get pulled back.)

Sounds like you've got one of the best kinds of power gamers you could hope for - the kind that's self-aware and doesn't want to ruin the game for anyone else.

[computerking]

How does he do in Social combat? How about Mental? Perhaps the group is relying on physical combat too heavily, if the Wizard is overshadowing them too much. Maybe something more subtle should be required of them. Also, are the aspects he's invoking all from himself, or is he also using aspects from he scene and/or targets? If he's self-powering that much all the time, perhaps his aspects are too combat-oriented, and don't define his character as well as they should?

The house rule is OK, but giving the character a good challenge may result in a more fun game, as well.

 Fighting in an area with a Thaumaturgic ward against magic may take the wind out of his sails and have him rely on his teammates a little more. Or in a torrential downpour(running water). There are ways of skirting the issue of his character build while still creating a great story.

[ARedthorn]

This... actually explains some of the issues I've been having. A lot of the questions I've been asking on this forum, people come back with "wizards are too powerful as is, leave them be"... often quite passionately. I didn't quite understand until now...

Cause, see... in our game, apparently I've been doing something very critical very wrong... and with this as the alternative, I may opt keep doing it wrong.

I've been giving my wizard extra shifts of damage based on how well their control roll does against the higher of Spell DC and Target DC...

IE, if they barely manage to control a high-power spell, they haven't been getting any bonus damage. Even if the target had low defenses and they hit very well.

Which means... I haven't had this problem yet.

I need to think about this a while.

[jb.teller4]

I've been giving my wizard extra shifts of damage based on how well their control roll does against the higher of Spell DC and Target DC...

IE, if they barely manage to control a high-power spell, they haven't been getting any bonus damage. Even if the target had low defenses and they hit very well.

Huh. I think that's a lot more elegant than my house rule (which involves keeping track of which part of the roll you apply invokes/tags to) and it addresses the "double-dipping" issue so each fate point only adds +2 shifts of damage instead of +4.

I'm going to think about that a bit more...

-John B.

[jb.teller4]

@computerking, good points. He was actually okay at social conflicts (and is the kind of character who enjoys getting himself in trouble, so he tended to be fairly central in many social scenes, too, even if it largely consisted of him getting himself compelled and causing the rest of the group to groan and smile at the same time). The issue wasn't ever that we weren't having fun. As much as anything else, it felt weird that he could do so much damage--like it didn't fit the feel of the world and campaign otherwise. Plus, at least one of the other characters was also a physical-combat focused character and was definitely very overshadowed in that niche (as well as being less versatile in other areas).

Ironically, the problem was made worse precisely because we didn't focus on combat. Almost every combat that came up went like this: This wizard went first (he had an enchanted item that basically let him use his Lore for Initiative 3 times a session, which more than covered every turn of combat in an average session). He fried the main bad guy in one shot (or, on one occasion, fried several bad guys in one shot after splitting the attack), or if he didn't, they were so weakened that the other characters mopped them up in an almost desultory fashion. Therefore almost every fight, even against villains that were meant to be scary, ended with the smell of scorched flesh and the enemy never even getting a single blow or spell off. This also completely negated the weakness of wizards, which is that they have a limited number of spells before they're tapped out.

In contrast, there was a fight against an Outsider that had complete immunity to magic and it was by far the most interesting and tense fight of the campaign and let the other combat character (a werebear) shine.

So, basically, one character consistently ending the fight in one roll wasn't as much fun and we didn't get in enough fights for me to ever get the balance right (the campaign's been over for a couple months now).

[gaelvin]

There's a way to deal with this sort of things story-wise too.

Suppose a Big Bad Guy shows up early-on instead of at the climax. First off, the Wizard probably won't have a lot of FP's to throw around for Invoking Aspects. That alone could stretch the conflict a little longer. Maybe hit 'em with a Compel to make it even more interesting. And if the Wizard's willing to take a Consequence to boost an Evocation, well, it'll probably be there for the rest of the story, ready to be Compelled.

My players have been a tad gun-shy when it comes to Evocations, so I haven't seen this issue crop up in my game.

[Arcmagik]

Fate Points in general spent for combat are just crazy. I have a Pure Mortal character in my game... he has 3 stunts and 9 fate points... tonight he told an big gruff not to start a fight in the middle of the street (not the elder gruff but the big ones right before him)... the gruff did not listen an smacked at the Champion of God for retribution for one of his brothers... he stabbed him with iron knife for a 2-stress attack in response, the Gruff turned on him and told him that he would dance with the little mortal, and so the character pulled out his .44 revolver and tagged every one of his aspects using 5 fate points... his guns is +5, +12 for aspects, and +2 roll... 19-effort attack vs the gruffs +2-effort defense roll... 20-stress damage from a Pure Mortal!!!... all my PCs fear the Pure Mortal because of the amount of Fate Points he has...

[Sanctaphrax]

Link is broken. You have http:// twice and unnecessary quotation marks.

Nonetheless, I was able to find my way to the appropriate page.

Alois has 4 refresh worth of powers and his two highest skills dedicated to pure offensive power. That's a lot of punch. Your problem may simply have been that his character was far more focused on doing damage than the rest of the party.

None of the non-wizard characters seem to have been designed to do damage. Also, some of them are Submerged and others are Feet In The Water. What's up with that?

Addressing the actual topic next post.

PS: Alois isn't actually very powergame-y in my humble opinion.

[Sanctaphrax]

Personally, I think that the system was probably working as intended in your game. FP are powerful, wizards are walking artillery, put them together and boom.

(Plus, you can always summon extra shifts of power without FP. As long as you don't mind backlash, that is.)

If you don't like that, your houserule sounds reasonable. So does Redthorn's (although I don't know how he/she handles cases where the caster takes backlash), so does the one about foci and specializations that seems to belong to no-one in particular.

It's a nerf, but maybe a justified one.

Anyway, it sounds like you have an interesting player on your hands. I have someone similar in my PbP, who goes by the name of Belial666. I hope he shows up here, it's usually fun to see his ideas for munchkinry.

Except for when they involve Orbius.

PS: I really should add this to my list of house rules. Posting this to convince myself to do it.
PPS: I have to wonder why the guy without Speed was going first. Did you never fight anything supernaturally fast?
PPPS: I question the balance of that initiative-boosting enchanted item more than I do those evocations.

[Rubycon]

The biggest problem I see is that those characters (the wizard as well the pure mortal) are build so that they can invoke lots of their aspects at once in combat. What are they exactly? War-hardened lunatics who can't think of anything else than killing? I think either their characters are too much focused on fighting - in which case the GM should oppose such an agglomeration of fighting-related aspects - or the fighting scenes are too much fitting for the use of their aspects. In this case, I as a GM would try to build fighting scenes where more of thier aspects could be used to their disadvantage.
Maybe that's responding to power gaming with power gaming, so the first option would be the better fit, I think...

[Vairelome]

Well, as far as how much is too much, consider Harry Dresden's sample sheet in Your Story, which reflects his character around the time of Storm Front.

His Aspects:
Wizard Private Eye (High Concept)
The Temptation Of Power (Trouble)
My Mother's Silver Pentacle
Chivalry Is Not Dead, Dammit
Not So Subtle, Still Quick To Anger
Epic Wiseass
Perpetually Broke

It's worth noting that Harry's not optimized for combat evocation, and yet, 4 of 7 of his aspects could be used to boost combat evocation pretty routinely, and two more in certain circumstances (Chivalry and Wiseass).  The only one of his aspects I can't see being used to boost combat evocation is Perpetually Broke, but that one's pretty obviously there as compel-bait.

High concept is always invokable whenever you are using supernatural powers--it's the perk of the requirement that your powers must always fit within your high concept (see sidebar on YS158).  Trouble is often invokable, and it often makes sense for powerful characters to have Trouble Aspects that reflect the downsides of being powerful (like Harry's The Temptation of Power).  I'd actually recommend that any spellcaster have one regular Aspect that illustrates their personal approach to magic--Harry's is Not So Subtle, Still Quick To Anger, while Molly's is Subtlety Is Its Own Power.  (See the Blind Spots sidebar on YS179, generally.)  Harry's got a second one, My Mother's Silver Pentacle, which is tied both to the named item and to its representation of his faith in magic as a force for good.

All of the above only considers permanent Aspects on your character sheet.  Spellcasting characters with access to Thaumaturgy or Ritual (Crafting/Prefixmancy) can create potions or enchanted items that give them temporary Aspects with a free tag included to further boost their effectiveness.  If those temporary Aspects are sticky, they can be a second place to dump FPs.  Characters can also use NGMs, which again, can be sticky.

My understanding is that the limiting factor is far more often the number of FPs a character has available, rather than the number of viable Aspects, assuming that the relevant roll is within their area of competence.  If a player sets his character up to be compelled right and left, and then burns the resulting FPs at a critical moment, he's...using the game mechanics in a very standard fashion.

[Masurao]

Well, as far as how much is too much, consider Harry Dresden's sample sheet in Your Story, which reflects his character around the time of Storm Front.

His Aspects:
Wizard Private Eye (High Concept)
The Temptation Of Power (Trouble)
My Mother's Silver Pentacle
Chivalry Is Not Dead, Dammit
Not So Subtle, Still Quick To Anger
Epic Wiseass
Perpetually Broke

It's worth noting that Harry's not optimized for combat evocation, and yet, 4 of 7 of his aspects could be used to boost combat evocation pretty routinely, and two more in certain circumstances (Chivalry and Wiseass).  The only one of his aspects I can't see being used to boost combat evocation is Perpetually Broke, but that one's pretty obviously there as compel-bait.

High concept is always invokable whenever you are using supernatural powers--it's the perk of the requirement that your powers must always fit within your high concept (see sidebar on YS158).  Trouble is often invokable, and it often makes sense for powerful characters to have Trouble Aspects that reflect the downsides of being powerful (like Harry's The Temptation of Power).  I'd actually recommend that any spellcaster have one regular Aspect that illustrates their personal approach to magic--Harry's is Not So Subtle, Still Quick To Anger, while Molly's is Subtlety Is Its Own Power.  (See the Blind Spots sidebar on YS179, generally.)  Harry's got a second one, My Mother's Silver Pentacle, which is tied both to the named item and to its representation of his faith in magic as a force for good.

I think you are stretching things a bit with those aspects, but I will immediately admit I haven't had any real playing experience with the game yet. His High Concept, granted, will allow you to boost magic, but why would it be combat magic? He's a private eye, wouldn't that be more applicable to tracking spells and the like? Or would you reason "I'm on a job and you are in my way, so I'll blast ya!"? Perhaps I am thinking of the High Concept in the wrong way, but it seems excessive to say: there's the word wizard in my High Concept, so I can get +2 to everything that has to do with magic, if I want to.

Tempation of Power would work if he was going above and beyond the laws, or if he's stretching them. He couldn't just use it for any spell, I'd imagine. He might be tempted to blast that annoying lady in front of him at the check out, but how would that tempt him towards more power? In the same line of reasoning, how would killing a troll, for example, tempt his darker side? I just read the graphic novels of Storm Front and in it is grandly illustrated how Harry is tempted by all the ambient dark powers around Sells' house (a GM compel), but then his pentacle reminded him of the type of magic he stood for and he resisted (buying of the compel, related to his pentacle aspect, perhaps).

My Mother's Silver Pentacle is really a stretch for combat magic of most kinds, unless he uses it to channel his 'faith' in magic, as he does against vampires. Even more so, Harry believes magic comes from the force of life, so that would not stroke with regularly blasting things to bits.

Chivalry Is Not Dead, Dammit is IMHO a far more applicable aspect for combat. Either to save or avenge the lady, to protect others from the harm any supernatural nasty might present. This, like Not So Subtle, Still Quick To Anger sound like the go-to's amongst his aspects for combat.

Now, I will grant you that the idea of aspects is to come up with interesting ways to use them to your advantage, as the GM will seek interesting ways to compel them. "So you want to summon a gentle wind, eh? Too bad you are Not So Subtle, isn't it?"