Author Topic: Consult on balance repurcussions  (Read 5451 times)

Offline Belial666

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Re: Consult on balance repurcussions
« Reply #15 on: April 28, 2011, 02:57:32 AM »
I a wizard makes an OMG powerful shield and you wait it out, you might lose. You can't "stack" aspects normally; you have to use them as soon as possible or you lose the free tag. And just before the shield runs out of duration, the wizard can reroll to redirect it into an attack spell, atfter he has done a "focused" aspect himself for a better attack roll.

Offline BumblingBear

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Re: Consult on balance repurcussions
« Reply #16 on: April 28, 2011, 03:45:15 AM »
I a wizard makes an OMG powerful shield and you wait it out, you might lose. You can't "stack" aspects normally; you have to use them as soon as possible or you lose the free tag.

Not if they're sticky - and if you have skills in the 4s and 5s, a few rounds to do NGMs should easily result in some sticky aspects.

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And just before the shield runs out of duration, the wizard can reroll to redirect it into an attack spell, atfter he has done a "focused" aspect himself for a better attack roll.

True, but the wizard will have already wasted a round casting the shield and a round extending it, whereas the wizard's opposition could have started running and stacking aspects immediately.
« Last Edit: April 28, 2011, 08:07:08 AM by BumblingBear »
Myself: If I were in her(Murphy's) position, I would have studied my ass off on the supernatural and rigged up special weapons to deal with them.  Murphy on the other hand just plans to overpower bad guys with the angst of her short woman's syndrome and blame all resulting failures on Harry.

Offline Tedronai

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Re: Consult on balance repurcussions
« Reply #17 on: April 28, 2011, 06:26:46 AM »
I think the idea for the character is needlessly complicated, but I still like it.

Another idea would be for the PC to have a high conviction, a low discipline


Except that, as I said, for him to be able to be versatile with high-complexity thaumaturgy, he'd need either a high discipline, or a crapload of thaumaturgical control bonuses.
That, or be prepared to drop a handful of fate points just to prevent those rituals from blowing up in his face.
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Offline BumblingBear

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Re: Consult on balance repurcussions
« Reply #18 on: April 28, 2011, 08:07:39 AM »

Except that, as I said, for him to be able to be versatile with high-complexity thaumaturgy, he'd need either a high discipline, or a crapload of thaumaturgical control bonuses.
That, or be prepared to drop a handful of fate points just to prevent those rituals from blowing up in his face.

Well... you have a point.
Myself: If I were in her(Murphy's) position, I would have studied my ass off on the supernatural and rigged up special weapons to deal with them.  Murphy on the other hand just plans to overpower bad guys with the angst of her short woman's syndrome and blame all resulting failures on Harry.

Offline tymire

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Re: Consult on balance repurcussions
« Reply #19 on: April 28, 2011, 05:26:03 PM »
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If a wizard makes an OMG powerful shield, you just wait it out and stack aspects.  If a wizard throws 50 shifts of power with a 4 shift targeting/control roll (which would be impossible but still..) ...yawn.

Hmm not too sure I agree with that.  With 50 shifts you could cover a lot of ground, make it fairly long duration.....  Can easily see that destroying pretty much building standing going to the point of "rocks fall everyone dies".

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Another idea would be for the PC to have a high conviction, a low discipline, and a power of like... -1 Raw Power.  "The character has +2 to conviction for the purpose of drawing power for evocations."

*Shrug* make it a stunt where the +2 power comes at a price of a -1 or a -2 control roll.

My biggest problem is with the first part of the post.  If you go this way you definitely are not going to be a wizard prodigy (you don't even qualify to join the white council), you technically aren't even a sorcerer.  In fact you probably never will as am betting most of your new refresh would be spent on refinements instead of buying channeling/envoc and if you are buying it why start out this way?

Offline sinker

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Re: Consult on balance repurcussions
« Reply #20 on: April 29, 2011, 12:04:35 AM »
My biggest problem is with the first part of the post.  If you go this way you definitely are not going to be a wizard prodigy (you don't even qualify to join the white council), you technically aren't even a sorcerer.  In fact you probably never will as am betting most of your new refresh would be spent on refinements instead of buying channeling/envoc and if you are buying it why start out this way?

Because it creates a story for the character to grow through.... Wizard prodigy is probably not the proper term, but I understood his intent plenty. This is a young apprentice wizard with a lot of potential and not a lot of interest in learning how to control it "the hard way." Makes plenty of sense to me.

Offline Tedronai

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Re: Consult on balance repurcussions
« Reply #21 on: April 29, 2011, 02:03:11 AM »
My biggest problem is with the first part of the post.  If you go this way you definitely are not going to be a wizard prodigy (you don't even qualify to join the white council), you technically aren't even a sorcerer.  In fact you probably never will as am betting most of your new refresh would be spent on refinements instead of buying channeling/envoc and if you are buying it why start out this way?

If your biggest problem is with the fluff, ignore it.  I'm looking for game balance assessments, not fluff preferences.
Even Chaotic Neutral individuals have to apologize sometimes. But at least we don't have to mean it.
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Offline Todjaeger

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Re: Consult on balance repurcussions
« Reply #22 on: April 30, 2011, 03:23:27 AM »
In terms of game balance, it is hard to say how a character with significant opportunities to make things to 'boom' accidentally should be built, as it has a good deal with both how the player role-plays the character, and how the GM/Storyteller handles the character as well.

I built one such character for the playtest, and subsequently annihilated one square block of San Fransisco by accident...

In my case, I had a character with high Conviction (Superb +5), Evocation, and essentially no Lore or Discipline.  My character also had a number of Aspects which revolved around his latent talent/power and complete lack of training.

With the idea of using Thaumaturgy/Ritual Magic and Enchanted Items or Potions to allow a practioner to 'cast' Evocation-type spells, I can see how that can be done, but with some fairly strict limitations.

For Enchanted Items, the effect (Fire blast, Spirit force shield, etc) and power of the item must be chosen at the time of item selection.  Additionally, the Power of the item is limited both by the size of the item (and therefore the number of Enchanted Item slots it has...) and the Lore of character, with a maximum Power of Lore x2.  In order to get the item to that level, the character needs to devote Enchanted Item slots specifically to increase the Power of the item beyond the character's Lore skill.  If a character wants to subject themselves to Mental stress to get additional uses of the Enchanted Item beyond whatever number they would normally get per session, that if fine by me, but they are still limited to whatever pre-selected magical effects the player chose to equip the character with.

For Potions (which are really just consumable enchanted items) they can be chosen at the start of a session, or on the fly via Lore rolls and/or Fate point usage.  However, these can't be used repeatedly by having the character take Mental stress, so no more Potions than the character has Potions slots and the effect is still limited to a max strength of Lore, or Lore x2 if Aspects were invoked during 'Potion' creation of use, as well as being limited to whatever effect the player chose for the potion to be.

Additionally and it is very important to note, if the character does not have their Enchanted Items or Potions with them, they are completely incapable of achieving Evocation-type effects since they can only perform Thaumaturgy/Ritual Magic.

With that last restriction in mind, if the idea is for a character to be able to handle significant Evocation-type castings when properly equipped, but still able to cast (albeit have no control over their magic when not equipped,) it might make more sense for the character to have either Channeling, Evocation, or a relevant Sponsored Magic instead of Thaumaturgy/Ritual Magic.

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