Blocks on Spell Casting

[Taran]

This has come up before but the resolution has been that you can't block control rolls.

Control rolls are a defense against the stress from the spell.  Basically, you can't block a person from dodging.  So, I'd seen blocks on spellcasting as a way to block the targeting of an attack spell or maneuver(if the block is higher than the Power of the maneuver, but wouldn't prevent you from controlling the spell).  It wouldn't really hamper blocks too much.

I was perusing the Grappling page for another thread when I read this:

The
thug’s Might is Good (+3), and he rolls a +2
on the dice for a Superb (+5) grapple. Harry
is held. He decides that casting a spell while
grappled is too chancy, since the Superb grapple
blocks his target roll to control even a minor
evocation.

*the bold is highlighted in the book

The margin has this:

So even if I
was trying to
cast a, uh, Fair
spell, it’d be
as difficult as
trying to cast
a Superb one
when the block’s
that big?

Exactly right.

So, to my reading, even if I'm not targeting someone with a spell (let's say I'm putting up a 2-shift armour spell up to protect myself from the grappling damage), I'd need to succeed on a control roll of 5, even for a 2-shift spell.

Taking that further:  Does that mean, if I fail to meet the control roll, I take backlash/fallout as if I was trying to cast a power 5 spell?

Would this extend to any blocks on spellcasting?  Or just Grapples?

For instance, if I put up a Weapons block vs attacks on a wizard and they cast an attack spell.

[Haru]

That's a weird one indeed.

I don't think looking at it as a defense roll against the spell on the side of the wizard makes sense. It's his action to shape the spell.

It might help to look at Fate Core for this one, because I think this is a case of where an idea was sort of formed but only formulated in full in the Core version. In Core, there is the explicit option to have a "success at a cost", where you can take a minor cost at a tie or a major cost at a failure to turn the roll into a success still, just maybe one that's more pyrrhic than you would have liked.

And I think that's what's happening here, just in a more strict and formulated way. You roll to hit the difficulty you have chosen, and if you fail the roll you have the option of "succeeding at a cost", meaning you take backlash, or the energy goes to waste as fallout, which is the default "failure" option.

Ok, that out of the way, let's see how that would look with a grapple in place. A grapple would be, in this instance, merely a block. A block gives you a baseline difficulty, so you would need to either hit the difficulty of your action or the value of the block, whichever is higher. In the example, that would be the block.

Now we need to look at another thing, the anatomy of the spellcasting action. In my mind, it looks something like this:
1) summon up a number of shifts of power of your choosing
2) control that power

That order is important, because it means that at the time of the control roll, the power is already there. You could summon up 200 shifts of power, there's not really a rule against it, but backlash and/or fallout will most likely kill you D-E-D.
Looking at the example again, there are 2 shifts of power floating around. But controlling them is rather difficult when someone is choking you, so the difficulty is 5, equal to the block. If you fail, you could, since it is a casting roll, take backlash to cover the difficulty. You just power through, even though it hurts. That would mean taking more than 2 shifts of backlash, if you wanted to, that's a choice. Anything more than 2 would be taken to power through the grapple. However, since there are only 2 shifts of power in the air, fallout would only be worth 2 shifts, if you decided to do that, since there is no more power around.

It should work with any block, as long as it makes sense that it should hamper the wizards spellcasting abilities in some way. Driving him back with your swords should definitely do the trick.

[Taran]

That's a weird one indeed.

I don't think looking at it as a defense roll against the spell on the side of the wizard makes sense. It's his action to shape the spell.

Well, it's been a question that's occasional been thrown out there: can you block a dodge.  The answer is no.

So, when it came to spell casting and someone asked can you block a control roll, the consensus, as far as I can remember was, 'no' since control is your attempt to dodge an attack with an accuracy equal to the power you draw.

But, I don't think this is really relevant for the discussion anyways, so I'll just skip to the next point...

It might help to look at Fate Core for this one, because I think this is a case of where an idea was sort of formed but only formulated in full in the Core version. In Core, there is the explicit option to have a "success at a cost", where you can take a minor cost at a tie or a major cost at a failure to turn the roll into a success still, just maybe one that's more pyrrhic than you would have liked.

And I think that's what's happening here, just in a more strict and formulated way. You roll to hit the difficulty you have chosen, and if you fail the roll you have the option of "succeeding at a cost", meaning you take backlash, or the energy goes to waste as fallout, which is the default "failure" option.

Ok, that out of the way, let's see how that would look with a grapple in place. A grapple would be, in this instance, merely a block. A block gives you a baseline difficulty, so you would need to either hit the difficulty of your action or the value of the block, whichever is higher. In the example, that would be the block.

A block gives a default difficulty for 'attacks, maneuvers, movement and blocks'  So, what is a control roll?  none of the above.

Now we need to look at another thing, the anatomy of the spellcasting action. In my mind, it looks something like this:
1) summon up a number of shifts of power of your choosing
2) control that power

That order is important, because it means that at the time of the control roll, the power is already there. You could summon up 200 shifts of power, there's not really a rule against it, but backlash and/or fallout will most likely kill you D-E-D.

Well, technically, you need to mark off a mental shift when you draw power, so the most you can cast is your stress+all your consequences...but I digress    Anyways, I get what you're trying to say!

Looking at the example again, there are 2 shifts of power floating around. But controlling them is rather difficult when someone is choking you, so the difficulty is 5, equal to the block. If you fail, you could, since it is a casting roll, take backlash to cover the difficulty. You just power through, even though it hurts. That would mean taking more than 2 shifts of backlash, if you wanted to, that's a choice. Anything more than 2 would be taken to power through the grapple. However, since there are only 2 shifts of power in the air, fallout would only be worth 2 shifts, if you decided to do that, since there is no more power around.

O.k, so I think I get what you're saying here.  There are only x shifts of power.  It's hard to control because of the grapple but you only take enough backlash/fallout to a maximum of the Power of the spell.  So, even if you fail by 3, the most you can take is 2 points of backlash.

Whether you fail or not, the spell goes off no matter what(because that's the mechanics of spell casting) - unless you let it all go to fallout, of course.

I like that.  But it's quite different from how I've been doing it.

It should work with any block, as long as it makes sense that it should hamper the wizards spellcasting abilities in some way. Driving him back with your swords should definitely do the trick.

Yup.  Now here's another question:

Block = 5

You cast a maneuver, Power 3.

Normally, I'd say, no.  The Power of the maneuver has to be at least equal to the block to be fragile (5) or (6) to be sticky.  But on top of that, you also have to boost your control to 5. 

So basically, it forces you to put more Power into spell blocks/maneuvers AND it increases your control roll.

The way I used to do it is the block could only affect targeting...

edit:  this is a stupid question.  Obviously, if you are forced to make the maneuver equal or higher to the block, it'll also affect your control.

[Haru]

O.k, so I think I get what you're saying here.  There are only x shifts of power.  It's hard to control because of the grapple but you only take enough backlash/fallout to a maximum of the Power of the spell.  So, even if you fail by 3, the most you can take is 2 points of backlash.

I would allow more backlash but not more fallout. It would represent how you strain yourself to control the spell, maybe allowing for the grapple to hurt you more (physical backlash) or just having to exert your mental capacities, because you are preoccupied.

A block gives a default difficulty for 'attacks, maneuvers, movement and blocks'  So, what is a control roll?  none of the above.

It is what it needs to be. If you cast an attack spell, it's an attack roll. If you cast a maneuver spell, it's a maneuver. if it's a block spell, it's a block.

Yup.  Now here's another question:

Block = 5

You cast a maneuver, Power 3.

Normally, I'd say, no.  The Power of the maneuver has to be at least equal to the block to be fragile (5) or (6) to be sticky.  But on top of that, you also have to boost your control to 5. 

So basically, it forces you to put more Power into spell blocks/maneuvers AND it increases your control roll.

That brings up something that I never really liked for either the block or the maneuver rules for spellcasting. I have a few ideas in mind to fix that, but maybe that would be more suited for a new topic.

Going with what we've got, I would say the maneuver would still be in place if you choose less power, but you would still need to roll higher than the block. However, since your power is also the difficulty to remove the aspect for someone else, most of the time it wouldn't make sense to choose a lower level of power if you already need to hit a higher difficulty.

[Taran]

That brings up something that I never really liked for either the block or the maneuver rules for spellcasting. I have a few ideas in mind to fix that, but maybe that would be more suited for a new topic.

here's as good a place as any.

Why don't you like it? 

My issue with having the maneuver strength based on control is there's no longer a need for Power.  You might as well simplify spellcasting to a discipline roll.  Choose your action (block, defense, attack), narrate your spell and roll discipline.  The same way with any other action in the game.  I really don't think it's a crazy thing, but foci and specializations would have to be toned way down.  Foci, instead, could be your 'weapon' value. So a +2 foci would add that much weapon damage.  The base would be 0.  Basically, your foci becomes the weapon.  but that's just off the top of my head.

I have more of an issue with weapon values for evocation than Power for maneuvers.  I think weapon values should be more like Power/2.

[Haru]

Most of the time, magical maneuvers are vastly useless. You spend one of your (most often) 4 spells in order to get you a +2 on something later. But if you did this as an attack, you could get a much higher weapon rating out of it than the +2 would give you. Thus, it would make a lot more sense to stack mundane aspects and use them on the attack spell. Or just gear up for attack spells and do nothing else.

I find that rather boring, as I think a lot of cool magical trickery would be in maneuvers. It would also allow wizards to be at least a bit helpful in their chosen field, even if their spells are spent.

Of course, it would still need to be balanced in some way, that's going to be the big issue.

First I would do is throw out duration. That would count for blocks as well. I not only find that extremely clunky but also highly against what we see in the world. By the rules, Harry could easily keep up a high powered shield while tossing out a big attack. But that's not what happens. He has to concentrate on his shield all the time or it gets blown to bits. Quite frankly, I think that works much better if the magical block rules would be the same as regular blocks. They might be more powerful and they might allow blocks that would not be possible by mundane means, but otherwise, roll them up each exchange just like everyone else.

I think blocks as a whole are a lot easier, so here's how I would do them:
When you set up a block spell, spend 1 shift of casting stress. Then roll [something] and take the result as the block value. Every exchange after that you can roll again without spending another casting stress to keep the block up. If you spend your action on something else, the block vanishes and you would have to initiate a new one by spending 1 shift of casting stress. An enchanted item with a block on it allows you to initiate the block for free.

Now I said [something], because I'm actually not sure what to roll. It might be that the trinity of spellcasting skills could vanish. I was also thinking that this might be a nice way to make a distinction between finesse and power. A wizard could choose which skill they want to use, and the action would be colored by that choice. Discipline would be more finesse, conviction would be more power. Though what exactly would that mean, both could still cast spells. Sounds a bit like approaches from FAE. This is certainly something that needs some refinement.

Speaking of, I think I might go and redo refinement as well. Turn focus items, specializations, enchanted items, rotes, etc. into something more resembling stunts than what we have now. Especially since with redesigned blocks and maneuvers, they would either be vastly overpowered or not make any sense at all.

It could be as easy as having a stunt that gives you +2 when casting your fire attack spell.


For maneuvers, I think I would actually drop the mental stress costs entirely, at least up to a point. Maybe make offensive maneuvers cost stress but navel-gazing and scene maneuvers not? So any maneuver against a fixed difficulty is free, any maneuver against an opposing roll would cost? That seems very arbitrary.

I'm starting to ramble. Given that it's 4:30 in the morning, I think I need some sleep and look over this again. Maybe you've got a few ideas until then, as well.

[blackstaff67]

This thread actually makes me wonder if that's what Harry did in Fool Moon with MacFinn in his first encounter.  IIRC, Harry was grappled after a fashion when he countered (I think--don't have my book available, loaned it out).

[Taran]

This thread actually makes me wonder if that's what Harry did in Fool Moon with MacFinn in his first encounter.  IIRC, Harry was grappled after a fashion when he countered (I think--don't have my book available, loaned it out).

It's funny you should mention that.  Right after the margin I quoted, it says this:

Reminds me
of that time
MacFinn put me
in a headlock.

[dragoonbuster]

Based on the book text you pasted, I think they mean you need more power and corresponding control. After all, the Power of a spell is equivalent to the "roll" from another action, with the exception of Attack spells. So other than with Attacks, trying to get a Maneuver or Block off when your spellcasting is Blocked means you've got to set the Power to meet or beat the Block on you. So how do we deal with Attacks?

At the end of the day...a Block prevents action from occurring. Sometimes that means "you spit bullets and they bounce off my shield," and sometimes that means "I spit bullets at the doorway, and no one is going to go near that doorway now to escape." In the latter case, if you're trying to Sprint through that doorway and you don't beat the Block, it isn't like you run into the doorway, dance around lead in the air, and come back--you just don't go for it. (Or, you know, a million other options, but stay with me: )

So. Blocking the use of magic. I think this makes perfect sense. It isn't infrequent for Harry to wind up too up-close to a Bad Guy to get a spell off...that screams a Fists or Weapons Block. Sure, some of that is compelled, but not all of it has to be. Or, for example, say that someone with some high Athletics and Speed powers is dueling a wizard in an all-out brawl. There are bystanders on the left and right side of their "arena." So the speedster runs around to place himself between the wizard and bystanders and keeps bouncing around--if the wizard misses, he's got a really good chance at hitting an onlooker, and we can't have that; ~Athletics Block against ranged attacks including evocation. Seems reasonable to me. He could compel this as well, sure, but...the Block should work too if that's what he wants. We can argue over whether that's a winning strategy for the speedster, but it seems like a valid strategy, at least.

So...how to handle this. The idea is that generally these Blocks makes it disadvantageous for a wizard to make the attempt moreso than make it impossible to get the spell itself off (I'll get to that). So in these instances...you don't know if you'll beat the block until you roll. Meaning you've got to call up power first, and then we get into the questions we have here. So you call up power, deciding on an evocation element and some kind of attack spell...you roll to control/aim it at the Speedster, and the roll is less than the Block value...what happens? Well, I recall when discussing adjudicating Athletics rolls that if your PC makes an Athletics roll to jump across a chasm, for instance, and fails the roll...they don't have to actually jump and fall; they realize that they won't make the jump and need to find another way across. In that vein, I think what I would say is that the power you call up doesn't just disappear--you took stress and have X shifts of power called up to work with still...but that you have to decide on an alternative thing to do with the power you called up, with what is allowed being what fits in the narrative. In this case, maybe you hit the ground beneath the Speedster or the roof above him, or Block him, or whatever...you just can't throw that spell at him in a straight line from A to B, because you're not confident enough on your aim.

Or, you can make the control roll and see if it fails...and if it does, just don't take any stress and say it's because you never called any up, because you weren't confident enough that you could hit the guy without hitting a bystander. I think I'd allow the player to decide--forget the stress hit from Power and accomplish nothing, or take it but redirect the spell in another way. A third option, if you're roll-happy, is to forget the stress hit from Power but then allow them to make a completely different mundane action after they failed the Control check, but that feels like double-dipping in a way other PCs can't do, so I'm not a fan of that.

As far as more...personal blocks, like grappling....I think I'd say the same thing. Figure out the spell but hold off on marking off Power stress. Make the Control roll. Will you beat the Block? If yes, then mark off the Power stress and adjudicate the spell. If no, then no Power is called up, no stress hit, but you lose your attempt at another kind of action.


^ The above ideas are all just for Attack spells because of the different Power/Control relationship they have. For Blocks or Maneuvers, you need to just worry about Power meeting/exceeding the Block, and the Control roll is a bookkeeping roll for yourself. If you fail Control and allow enough Backlash that the Power isn't enough to beat the Block anymore, that's your issue, and the Block holds.

[Theogony_IX]

I think blocks as a whole are a lot easier, so here's how I would do them:
When you set up a block spell, spend 1 shift of casting stress. Then roll [something] and take the result as the block value. Every exchange after that you can roll again without spending another casting stress to keep the block up. If you spend your action on something else, the block vanishes and you would have to initiate a new one by spending 1 shift of casting stress. An enchanted item with a block on it allows you to initiate the block for free.

I think I would allow duration to remain.  Instead, I would simply let my players know that if they did anything other than block or take a free or supplemental action, the block would fall.  No need to rewrite the rules, just add a caveat to disallow double actions.

For maneuvers, I think I would actually drop the mental stress costs entirely, at least up to a point. Maybe make offensive maneuvers cost stress but navel-gazing and scene maneuvers not? So any maneuver against a fixed difficulty is free, any maneuver against an opposing roll would cost? That seems very arbitrary.

I kind of like this idea.  Maneuvers aren't nearly as efficient an action with spellcasting as attacks, and aren't really affected by the raw power that spellcasting brings.  They really shouldn't be limited in the same way.  While they open up the range of options to a considerable degree, they also come with the limitation of a base +3 difficulty in the presence of any other person.  I think I'd have them not cause casting stress outside of exceeding your conviction, and backlash or fallout.  This may even open up power over control builds for wizards that don't necessarily want to go all offense and would rather play a support roll.

[dragoonbuster]

I kind of like this idea.  Maneuvers aren't nearly as efficient an action with spellcasting as attacks, and aren't really affected by the raw power that spellcasting brings.  They really shouldn't be limited in the same way.  While they open up the range of options to a considerable degree, they also come with the limitation of a base +3 difficulty in the presence of any other person.  I think I'd have them not cause casting stress outside of exceeding your conviction, and backlash or fallout.  This may even open up power over control builds for wizards that don't necessarily want to go all offense and would rather play a support roll.

Both the issue of Maneuvers and of Power changes dramatically when you allow Evothaum maneuvers to split a single "maneuver" type spell into several aspects, even to "spray" maneuvers....You might consider allowing this for all evocation.

[Taran]

So...how to handle this. The idea is that generally these Blocks makes it disadvantageous for a wizard to make the attempt moreso than make it impossible to get the spell itself off (I'll get to that). So in these instances...you don't know if you'll beat the block until you roll. Meaning you've got to call up power first, and then we get into the questions we have here. So you call up power, deciding on an evocation element and some kind of attack spell...you roll to control/aim it at the Speedster, and the roll is less than the Block value...what happens? Well, I recall when discussing adjudicating Athletics rolls that if your PC makes an Athletics roll to jump across a chasm, for instance, and fails the roll...they don't have to actually jump and fall; they realize that they won't make the jump and need to find another way across. In that vein, I think what I would say is that the power you call up doesn't just disappear--you took stress and have X shifts of power called up to work with still...but that you have to decide on an alternative thing to do with the power you called up, with what is allowed being what fits in the narrative. In this case, maybe you hit the ground beneath the Speedster or the roof above him, or Block him, or whatever...you just can't throw that spell at him in a straight line from A to B, because you're not confident enough on your aim.

Or, you can make the control roll and see if it fails...and if it does, just don't take any stress and say it's because you never called any up, because you weren't confident enough that you could hit the guy without hitting a bystander. I think I'd allow the player to decide--forget the stress hit from Power and accomplish nothing, or take it but redirect the spell in another way.

I like this and would adopt that.

For maneuvers, I think I would actually drop the mental stress costs entirely, at least up to a point. Maybe make offensive maneuvers cost stress but navel-gazing and scene maneuvers not? So any maneuver against a fixed difficulty is free, any maneuver against an opposing roll would cost? That seems very arbitrary.

I kind of like this idea.  Maneuvers aren't nearly as efficient an action with spellcasting as attacks, and aren't really affected by the raw power that spellcasting brings.  They really shouldn't be limited in the same way.  While they open up the range of options to a considerable degree, they also come with the limitation of a base +3 difficulty in the presence of any other person.  I think I'd have them not cause casting stress outside of exceeding your conviction, and backlash or fallout.  This may even open up power over control builds for wizards that don't necessarily want to go all offense and would rather play a support roll.

I like using Power for maneuvers and here's why.

At low power (+3), it's kind of pointless, really, since most people are going to probably beat that anyways but for scene aspects, 3 seems like an 'o.k' number.  Although, I could see lower Power for other maneuvers especially since casting 'light' costs nothing as per YS.  You just don't get an aspect for it.

Where wizards shine for maneuvers is Scene aspects.  They can do things that other characters can't.  When they do try to do stuff like that, I use the adjective ladder as my guide.

They want to put 'rough terrain' on the scene. 

Let's say they're in a factory with cement floors.  Putting 'rough terrain' might be a power 5 or 6 maneuver...basically, on the 'breaking table' it's the equivalent of a steel door.  It could be as high as 'weak interior wall' which makes it +8.  But it's not like you're trying to get through the concrete, you're just trying to break it up.

Let's say the wizard, with all his Foci can do a +10 maneuver.  That's smashing down brick or weak stone.  That's pretty massive and a great guide for compels.   Now when you compel 'rough terrain' on the PC's you can have them fall right through the floor - or have walls start caving in on them because of the amount of structural damage the wizard caused.

Here's another example:  BLOWN BACK water maneuver.

You hit someone with a geyser of water.  If you hit someone with enough force, it could kill them.  The Power plays a big roll in compels.  The NPC gets hit by a Power 8 Blown Back maneuver.  He's a mook, so he concedes (since a power 8 attack would have killed him).  Now I can compel the Wizard's High concept and say, you just pounded him with enough force to blow him through a wall.  He's not moving anymore.  You'd better go over and make sure he's not going to die.

If you leave it to target rolls, they're going to focus on accuracy anyways.

I think I would allow duration to remain.  Instead, I would simply let my players know that if they did anything other than block or take a free or supplemental action, the block would fall.  No need to rewrite the rules, just add a caveat to disallow double actions.

That's a nice compromise

[Lavecki121]

So, after only skimming most of this, I think the thinking behind the idea is off a little bit. There are multiple times that a Control roll has been equated to a Dodge roll, which I don't think is the right course of thinking. To put it in perspective, a control roll is only made after you have called up the power. It would make perfect sense no matter what kind of block has been put up, that the controller would have his concentration broken at some point, making it harder to cast his spell.

I think it is very important to make this distinction as a Wizard casting a spell is not dodging his own power, he is attempting to control power he called up. If someone has put up a Weapon 5 Block on him by making finesse moves so he has to keep dodging, it would understandably be harder for him to cast a spell. His concentration isn't being fully put to the spell.

That said a grapple puts in a different light as they are restricting their movement. This could have the same effect as sight, sound, motion, are all things said to be dependent on for spell casting. If I'm trying to hit the guy who is grappling me with a spell, it might be understandably harder to hit him.

I may not be as clear as I want to be in the above but I think I got my point across.