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The Dresden Files => DFRPG => Topic started by: zerogain on August 10, 2010, 04:39:39 AM
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Alright, I'm getting ready to run my first FATE and first Dresden game this coming Friday for some friends. We're playing a "submerged" level game with significant twisting of the canon thus far (there's a sword in play, we're not sure if Turn Coat will happen, etc.)
While asking the wizard to detail some of his power, I got the commentary that he wants to fly, and frankly I'm a bit stymied as to how to achieve this with spellcasting. Again -with spellcasting-. Yes I can make an IoP, I can invent why he has Flight [-1], etc, but evocation obviously isn't it.
How would any of you advise I handle this?
Right now, due to the preponderance of wizard flying being on brooms or carpets, I am leaning toward telling him it has to be an enchanted item.
OK, if it's an enchanted item, can it be used for long distance travel? Most of them seem to be evocative kind of effects, doing a big "oomph" now, and recharging over time.
I appreciate your input :)
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I think (like combat-speed shapeshifting), this is one of those things that, while justifiable with magic, really needs the Power bought seperately to be mechanically viable.
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I'd say enchanted item for anything long-term. You can justify it by saying that keeping up the spell would require too much attention to last for long - you can't go on autopilot like you can while driving or walking.
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You can just have him buy a "refinement" that provides an "enchanted Item" allowing him to fly.
Basically what Deadmanwalking said.
Buy the power seperately
Replace the "Wings always present" aspect of the Wings Power with "Can be taken away" to model the fact that it's an item.
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Replace the "Wings always present" aspect of the Wings Power with "Can be taken away" to model the fact that it's an item.
Actually, I'd give it he full Item of Power discount in that case, after all, Wings + Human Guise costs no more than Wings...
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This link might help you (http://www.rickneal.ca/?p=642), it's an article on spell creation written by a DFRPG playtester and it just so happens to include a flight spell which I'll quote below for convenience.
Up, Up, and Away!
In the Dresdenverse, spellcasters usually don’t try flying spells, and there’s a paragraph at the bottom of p282 of Your Story that explains why*. It’s a matter of control – just because you have the ability to fly doesn’t mean you have the expertise to safely move through the air. And given the penalty for falling from any sort of height, there’s a real danger inherent to slipping the surly bonds of earth.
That said, building a flying spell is pretty simple, if the GM is going to allow it. Personally, I would let someone get away with it if he or she built the character to show that he or she had spent time mastering the intricacies of aerial movement. Here, I’m thinking a minimum of a stunt to reflect the ability to use Athletics for flying, and preferably both the stunt and an Aspect to show the time and effort expended in gaining this off-beat skill trapping.
The guideline for gaining new powers by using magic are laid out in the sidebar of p283 of Your Story: what you need to do is transform yourself into a form with the new powers. You need shifts of complexity equal the amount necessary to kill a target, plus you need to spend Fate Points to gain the temporary powers.
So, let’s say Harry wants to be able to fly, binding the winds to hold him aloft and move him around, and his benevolent GM has okayed the attempt. In my mind, though it’s not listed anywhere in the rules that I can find, transforming a willing target should be easier than an unwilling one, so for purposes of this spell, Harry has to meet a complexity equal to all his possible consequences plus 1, but doesn’t need to overcome his Stress Track (because he just decides to take all consequences rather than Stress), and his defense rating is locked at Mediocre (+0) (because he’s not trying to resist the spell or defend against it in any way). This sets the base complexity for the spell at 21: 2 for his minor consequence, 4 for his moderate consequence, 6 for his severe consequence, 8 for his extreme consequence, and 1 to take him out. The taken out effect becomes gaining the ability to fly.
Duration becomes very important for a spell like this. I’d start the default duration at a single scene* (15 minutes or so), so if Harry wants to be able to fly for longer than that, he needs to boost the complexity as well. Let’s say he needs to be able to fly for a day. That increases the complexity by 5, stepping him up the duration ladder from 15 minutes to a day. Total complexity comes out at 26.
In addition to this complexity, Harry has to pay Fate Points for the power, in essence temporarily lowering his Refresh to buy the power for the duration of the spell. While there is no Flight power, there is Wings, which is a -1 power. That’s close enough for our purposes, so Harry needs to pay a Fate Point for the power. If he needed to fly super-fast, he’d have to pay the Fate Point for Wings, plus another 2, 4, or 6 for the desired level of speed power. But let’s keep it just to flying.
Now, Harry’s got a Lore of Good (+3). That means he needs to make up a whopping 23-shift deficit to be able to cast this spell, and he needs to have at least a single Fate Point left at the end to pay for the Wings*. For convenience, let’s say he goes through the same routine he did for the Magic Parachute spell above, giving him +10. After that, he buys some special incense for the ritual (Resources: Ritual Incense), gets Listens-To-Wind to bless his falcon feathers (Contacts: Shaman’s Blessing), does a little research into the wind patterns over the city to find the optimal place to get the attention of wind spirits (Scholarship: Air-Flow Map), fasts for a day to purify himself (Endurance: Ritual Purification), spends an hour conducting a centering meditation (Discipline: Focused Mind), and then drives out to where he’s going to cast the spell and scares off the muggers in the park so he can work uninterrupted (Intimidation: Quiet Workspace). That bumps him up to a total of +24, so he’s set to cast the spell.
Dealing with so much magic, there’s a real potential that, if things go badly, Harry’s going to be in a world of hurt, so he’s going to go slowly with the actual casting, drawing one shift of power at a time. With his Good (+3) Discipline, that means that he needs to roll -2 or better on each of his 26(!) rolls to get the power he needs and take to the air. He’s only got a 6.2% chance of blowing any single roll, but with the large number of rolls, he’s got about a 16.8% chance of succeeding on all 26 rolls without needing to spend a Fate Point or take some backlash*. Not an easy spell.
Final version of the spell:
Rite of Icarus
Type: Thaumaturgy, transformation
Complexity: 26; can vary depending on duration
Duration: One day
Effect: When the caster completes this ritual, he or she must pay one Fate Point. The caster then gains the ability to fly, as per the Wings supernatural power, for one day. Unless the caster has some training in moving aerially (reflected by an Aspect and/or stunt), the caster’s Athletics is considered Terrible (-2) for purposes of moving by way of flight.
Variations: This model can be used to gain any reasonable power, subject to GM approval. Fate Point cost is equal to the refresh cost of the power acquired.
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This link might help you (http://www.rickneal.ca/?p=642), it's an article on spell creation written by a DFRPG playtester and it just so happens to include a flight spell which I'll quote below for convenience.
I'd argue (as others do in the comments there), that you don't have to take Consequences to perform spells on yourself. Also, an appropriate Tag can certainly be used in lieu of a Fate Point to power the spell, as noted on YS p. 283 at the very end of the marginalia.
EDIT: And I can actually cite the the designers in support of the 'only need 5 shifts +FP/Tags' argument as well, see the first several posts of this thread:
http://www.jimbutcheronline.com/bb/index.php/topic,17367.0.html
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I agree with DMW here. I'd say he simply has to overcome his own stresslevel, as he can choose to take consquences. If you do not chose to take a consquence, you are take out. Ergo in this example the spell would have a base complexity of 10, but as CMEast, add a requirement for a stunt or Aspect to control the flight itself.
5 shifts to overcome his Stress Levels of 4.
5 shifts to increase duration to a day.
Or to add a more interesting complication to it, let him make a pact with a windspirit for a day. Gaining debt for instance.
Gives him flight and you get loads of fun compels for free.
cheers
Pheonix
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As a short term alternative, you could probably use Evocation for very short flights. More like a Jedi making Force assisted jumps.
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So, with magic, generally you buy effects, not abilities.
Why does he want to fly?
You can do a thamatergical ritual to give yourself a few windrider aspects to tag for effect or bonuses to be in the air.
You may be able to do evocation against a boundary rating for mystic float effects.
With a magic item, you can store up things like the above...
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I am with Ophidimancer - short term air evocations that allow you incredible jumps, for long term I would use a transformation spell into a bird (following the rules DMW laid out).
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I am with Ophidimancer - short term air evocations that allow you incredible jumps, for long term I would use a transformation spell into a bird (following the rules DMW laid out).
The main problem is not jumping up, but landing, how would you go about that? Because calculating the exact amount of wind needed soften your fall is pretty hard, if not almost impossible.
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The main problem is not jumping up, but landing, how would you go about that? Because calculating the exact amount of wind needed soften your fall is pretty hard, if not almost impossible.
There's a few ways you can represent this in the system. You can cast an Evocation Maneuver to apply an Aspect to yourself like Lifted By Wind, for example, and then tag it to boost a normal Athletics roll. I would personally also allow an Evocation "Attack" that directly throws the caster to where they want to go. This would replace an Athletics roll, though, so you don't get the benefit of your normal Athletics, you rely purely on the shifts of power you summon. I say that making your Discpline roll is enough to represent controlling your descent well enough, whereas backlash would take the form of fall damage.
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Did not Harry use a simple flight evocation in Storm Front to carry himself up to the platform?
I would probably treat this as a sprint empowered by magic as discussed between Harry and Billy in the sidelines.
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I'm not sure it's laid out in the rules, but Evocation can do most of the other stuff a standard character can do - Attack, block and maneuver. who's to say you can't use evocation to move? You'd roll your discipline and then spend shifts on duration and space covered... maybe one shift to put the fragile aspect on yourself "Up up and away!"
Yes, you might want to have another spell ready to block the damage from landing, mind you.
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I'm not sure it's laid out in the rules, but Evocation can do most of the other stuff a standard character can do - Attack, block and maneuver. who's to say you can't use evocation to move? You'd roll your discipline and then spend shifts on duration and space covered... maybe one shift to put the fragile aspect on yourself "Up up and away!"
Yes, you might want to have another spell ready to block the damage from landing, mind you.
As I suggested, I think it would be simple to allow Evocation to make a Move action, but it would replace your regular Athletics roll, not add to it. I would just use the Discipline roll to represent the control necessary to land correctly, with fall damage being taken as Backlash.
Does that work for you?
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As I suggested, I think it would be simple to allow Evocation to make a Move action, but it would replace your regular Athletics roll, not add to it. I would just use the Discipline roll to represent the control necessary to land correctly, with fall damage being taken as Backlash.
Does that work for you?
It works for me, and I'd allow it in a heartbeat in my own games.
But...well, it's not flight. It's effectively a jazzed up jump or the video-game version of flight powers, only lasting seconds and ending with you on the ground again.
So it's valid, but not really what the OP was asking about.
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It works for me, and I'd allow it in a heartbeat in my own games.
But...well, it's not flight. It's effectively a jazzed up jump or the video-game version of flight powers, only lasting seconds and ending with you on the ground again.
So it's valid, but not really what the OP was asking about.
Oh sure, but you've already covered the options for permanent and semi-permanent flight well enough, I just wanted to cover how I'd do it with Evocation.
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Evocation would be simple... remember NOTHING you make with evocation will last a whole long time. You'll always have to feed shifts of power into it. This would work the same way! Roll just have it be like a sprint action instead, roll evocation. Take shifts from that to add to duration, and at least one shift to ignore earthbound borders (the FLIGHT part). While they are in the air, just roll discipline again to feed MORE shifts of power into it.
Mind you, after fifteen or twenty exchanges, he's going to be out of mental stress, and he's going to have taken a few consequences from all that mental stress he's taking. He'll be wanting to land sometime soon. It IS extended flight thought... just don't count on using it to get around airlines. Going across town is attainable... across STATE is very much so not.
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The main problem is not jumping up, but landing, how would you go about that? Because calculating the exact amount of wind needed soften your fall is pretty hard, if not almost impossible.
Just use exactly the amount you took off with. That'll be a little bit too much, but close enough.
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As I had stated above, evocation was not what we were going for, knowing ahead of time that simple bursts, jumps, and similar maneuvers were not in the bag. We knew we could do that. However, I appreciate the discussion on the finer points of the power. Thanks.
In the end we chose to use a thaumaturgy ritual and encapsulated it in an enchanted item at full Lore strength. We know it would have been exceedingly difficult to craft, but it was created during character creation. The end result is a ring that grants access to the wings power for one scene per session. We're using the wizard's base Superb Lore (+5) as the strength and counting it for his maneuverability or power in issues where such would matter, such as clearing zones, avoiding obstacles, etc. The player chose to put two enchanted item slots into it so it has 3 uses per session.
If there's any criticism on this, I'd like to hear it.
We are going for a 10 refresh game, if that modifies any opinions on this.