Due to control bonuses from specialization and foci, it seems like magical attacks are disproportionately powerful compared to any other venue. Bonuses "to hit" are fairly rare in the system, except with magical practitioners. This gets to a point where a very powerful wizard's attacks are nearly impossible to dodge because of the control bonus on top of their Discipline when they cast. I am running a game with serious heavy-hitters on the NPC side and, as I was building the bad guys, became concerned at their damage potential.
My initial idea was to change it so that Weapon rating for spells took two shifts instead of one, like Armor. However, this hurt the PCs more than it did the powerful NPCs and also didn't address the "to hit" problem. What I ended up doing was house-ruling that the Control bonuses only applied to the roll for the purpose of controlling the Power summoned, but not for seeing if it hit. This retains the benefit of control bonuses in allowing you to successfully channel large amounts of power without it also making you hyper-accurate (and, thus, adding even /more/ damage from additional shifts). It also brings shields back to a level of effectiveness that, I feel, better parallels the books and closes the disparity between a powerful mage and a powerful physical combatant.
For example: Bob calls forth 7 shifts of Power and gets +4 for his Discipline roll. He has a +1 specialization control bonus and a +2 focus control bonus, so his Control roll is +7, just enough. However, he only compares the +4 to his target's defense to see if it hits.
1) Many human opponents. Laws of Magic tend to tie up the wizard into playing support for the other characters in combat encounters against human opponents.
2) Nerf Wizards, as you suggest. This completely changes the dynamic, though.
Since the player dictates how he takes out his target, you should not have to worry about a wizard killing a mortal on accident.
JesterOC
You can dictate to a degree. But when you use a spell that is Weapon 4 or above (grenades or stronger), you don't get much of a choice. Either the grenade missed, or it blew him up.
There are a lot of very-much-alive people with shrapnel wounds that would argue otherwise.
Even take out results have to stay within the realm of reason. This has been discussed to death in other threads...Just because it has been discussed to death does not mean they were right. Letting the winner decide the fate of the loser is an extension of the just say yes theme of the game. If the PC's want to play a game of the A-Team then let them play it.
Ask yourself: How much is a lot? I bet you can't come up with a significant number of people who survived bad shrapnel wounds.Statistically speaking more people survive combat wounds then die from them. Just check any modern war stats.
*I'd personally make grenades Weapon:3, not 4. The benefit is that they hit an entire zone. To me, a .50 BMG round is more like Weapon:4 and assuming no concessions, I don't see any Taken Out result as reasonable other than "limb blown off" or "killed messily".
To me it's about intent, and I try to discern what the player means to do with their weapon before the dice fall.
Just because it has been discussed to death does not mean they were right. Letting the winner decide the fate of the loser is an extension of the just say yes theme of the game. If the PC's want to play a game of the A-Team then let them play it.
But lets please stop derailing this thread. I'd be happy to discuss some more elsewhere.
Agreed. So I will give my opinion to the OP.
Don't change the magic system. Use multiple opponents in multiple zones to prevent the one huge smackdown spell that can take out all the opponents. Spell casting takes mental stress, a wizard can't keep casting spells for long.
Also after a bit of exposure to a wizard a named NPC will start looking for magical protection.
JesterOC
If your issue is with damage I'd say that devonapple has a pretty elegant solution (I.E. cap it). If your issue is with wizards being expert marksmen I'd say that's a pretty accurate representation of the books. It seems to me that wizards hit most of the time, unless we're dealing with supernatural baddies with extra speed or shielding (in which case maybe the issue is with supernatural speed or shielding and not the wizard).