Topic: Casting Time of Items

[Marc R]

absolutely. . .and I suspect the RMSS round is broken into 3 phases to make it possible to act 3 times, but not all in one go before the other guy can react. . .I know the RMC round was broken into 2 phases for exactly that reason.

[OLF, i.e. Olf Le Fol]

OLF, a sniper with a bow can kill you from over there, in the game as is, so could a caster with a single spell.

That's again, totally not the point.

Except it is: it's the basic tactical problem of being able to hit without being being possibly hit back. It's the same problem with a flying mage whilst its opponents don't have range weapon, or a mounted man with a gun or a bow: he can hit people, and flee away as they're trying to reach him.

The sniper is in the tower 10 blocks away, he fires once. . .he's still in the tower. . .you can go to the tower, you can shoot back at the tower, you can hide, combat resolves.

If your sniper has no way of getting away from the tower kilometres away from where you are in the time it takes you to reach him, then you just removed your mage his teleporting ability. Now, if he has, say, a small plane available, the time it'd take you to run to him, he'd be far away, which is the same tactical situation as with the mage.

The mage is right on top of you with minimal or no range penalties to make his three attacks, then is gone. . he could teleport to another continent on the way out. . .what are you going to do about it?

What are you going to do against the sniper able to shoot at you kilometres away, and with his plane available and ready to fly, if you don't have range weapons and on foot? It's the same thing. The time consideration is different but it's the exact same tactical situation.

The plane attacking from over the horizon is firing, waiting a bunch of rounds for the missile to reach you and go off, and again, is still roughly in the area, not instantly back in it's hanger on another continent so the pilot can sip a beer with impunity.

Out of reach is out of reach. If the plane is fast enough so that he's outside of your artillery the time it takes you to ready it, it's the exact same.

You need to work hard to get yourself into a situation where you can ambush and then escape, it shouldn't be something a caster can do casually at will as long as they don't roll an UM 01-02.

That's the core issue. . it's not what combos make possible, it's what they make CASUALLY possible with little effort beyond "ABBBA combo seems like it will work.". . .I think it's game braking to make something that nasty casual. . .

Getting into the right tower, at the right time, with a rifle, without getting caught, hitting your target then getting away is not casual. Getting a plane with stand off attack capability to within attack range, with accurate spotting of a non line of sight target, without being detected or tipping of the target, hitting the target and then getting away also isn't casual.

One would say that it's no less than learning to cast spell in the first place. It may not be easy but it's because society at large makes it hard because of its potency not because it's hard/impossible in itself. Why do you think it's easier to become ax expert sniper (or buying a fighter plane) than to become a mage (and alter reality itself)? IMO, if the a combo is deadly, society would react and learning the appropriate spells would become, for instance, a governement watched matter but it's a different matter from making it impossible according to the laws that rule the world.
Oh, well, whatever.

[rdanhenry]

I think one "problem" is that most fantasy worlds exist in a "time stasis" status quo where the normal principle of evolution doesn't happen to people, including the human race, with taking into account magic. Of course, this is mostly due to none of us being able to truly conceive how a true civilization of magic would evolve... I mean, just look at where we got from the little discovery of how to create (and control) electricity. Now apply that to all the wonders magic is supposed to be able to perform in RM... It wouldn't be much to say that the mere ability to cast a spell allowing one to fly, or create food, or cure disease, and to allow that ability to be replicated (through runes, items, etc.) would logically completely change a society from what we know ours did.

I think it's a lot easier to run a campaign where magic is a known quantity, not something that advances in power rapidly. Most fantasy games not only work that way, but assume that the power level is decreasing. Great artifacts are left from an earlier age when magic was mighty. More like post-Roman medieval Europe.

You mean, the way post-Roman medieval Europe imagined itself to be. While some important technologies were lost with the collapse of the ancient world (including some techniques that we cannot duplicate to the present day), after that collapse, technological advance proceeded throughout the medieval period, exceeding the Roman era in those areas that were really the most important to the people of that time. While technological advance was quite slow compared to more recent times, it did continue.

Modern rates of advancement may not make sense (although if applied properly, knowledge magic could advance a society quite rapidly), but static technologies, either mechanical, agricultural, or magical will never make sense in any society developed enough to have towns. Stone age advance was so slow it could go unnoticed except when a new technique was actually spreading, but that's a product of low populations and limited communications. People have never stopped trying to invent better ways of doing things and they inevitably sometimes succeed. You can only change that by changing human nature itself.

[Marc R]

OLF, It's not how hard it is to learn to do either. It's about how the tactical situation starts and ends in one round that is exactly the problem. Getting the super drop on someone, taking it, then getting away either takes a lot of work, or a lot of luck, you shouldn't carry it in your pocket able to be pulled on a whim. I've tried allowing multi casting as a GM and a player, most often with items in the mix, and it almost always went wonky in some exploitative but legal under house rules variation of the killer spell combo.

[rdanhenry]

Well, unless you're already in combat, the round hasn't started yet. So once you pop in under teleport, the tactical round starts next. And my assumption is that displacing a body-sized volume of air instantly is going to be rather noisy, so teleportation isn't stealthy. And in RMSS if you drop the "one spell limit", you still can only cast one non-instant in a round, unless hastened, which would let you cast two. You can at most cast three spells of any kind, hastened or not, since you are limited to one action per phase.

Also, you just teleported. You'd better make an orientation roll before you start making attacks, if you actually want to aim them in the right direction. Assuming the GM doesn't want to encourage this type of tactic.

[markc]

  Boy so much talk about rounds and time, maybe a new topic should be created.  I have a second by second system that IMHO is great but it does require bookkeeping that some do not like....but it does allow you to make changes at anytime, change actions, move for part of the time and then attack, etc.


  I can think of fire bolts encased in shotgun like shells and then a gun like object that has some number of hammers that when released make some number of the firebolt rounds go off.


 I also remember a series of book, "The Guardians of the Flame"; in which the people from Earth make firearms which gives them a big leg up on the military scale but after a few years the Mage Guild creates something close to the self contained rounds the Earthers are producing and their advantage drops off. Except for the difficulty of the Mages Guild to produce the Mage Rounds. A good series IIRC from the mid to late 80's.
MDC

[pastaav]

I think this talk about burst of shots is approaching the issue from the wrong side. One attack with a melee weapon represent the damage caused by a number of thrusts with your weapon. It is an abstraction of the essence combat that only exist to make the game flow well. The same apply to the firebolt attack. The damage caused by fire is capped not because it is realistic that you can only burn so much, but because the gaming experience will suffer if a firebolt attack is a sure kill.

The game was designed so that you have a decent chance of doing a killing a hit with a bow. Thing is that the word "bow" is just a word. We could change the flavor text and say it is an attack table for handguns instead. In the real world we know that a rocket cause more damage than an arrow, but how much more damage is fair at the game table?

I am pretty certain that if we want a good gaming experience then the handgun using fighter should have about the same probability to kill since the game isn't fun if it is too easy to kill people. Should both bow and rocket exist in the same game then we in some sense must nerf or boost one of them in some sense compared to reality to keep the gaming field flat enough for the game to be playable.

Looking further at the idea of burst of firebolts. The maxiumum damage of an attack in the game is something that we at times dodge by adding more attacks. Two Weapon Combat and Haste are the classic examples, but I think I speak for all GMs when I say they also are mess balance wise. The question how much effort should be needed to get the second attack is a delicate matter. 

[Marc R]

r'dan, per the topic of the thread, this started with "Instant casting from objects" to which I said I'd used with no problem, the only time it got hairy was when we also dropped the casting 1/round limit. . .I think the example started with "Ring of teleportation, wand of fireballs" somewhere up in there.

Speeding up items is a fairly minor shift in how the game runs, dropping the 1/round limit tends to get into problems fast. . .especially if you do both. . . .there's only so much trouble you can get into stacking up book instants, the "items always instant" rule opens all of SL to stacking.

[providence13]

r'dan, per the topic of the thread, this started with "Instant casting from objects" to which I said I'd used with no problem, the only time it got hairy was when we also dropped the casting 1/round limit. . .I think the example started with "Ring of teleportation, wand of fireballs" somewhere up in there.

Speeding up items is a fairly minor shift in how the game runs, dropping the 1/round limit tends to get into problems fast. . .especially if you do both. . . .there's only so much trouble you can get into stacking up book instants, the "items always instant" rule opens all of SL to stacking.

Although we have made (most) items cast as instants, I have the 'only 2 spells/rnd rule'. One instant and one normal is enough of a headache.

Also, I second the orientation roll for Teleports. Absurd (-70) isn't a bad trade off for GM's, if the party wants to use Teleport for popping in to cast/stab in the back, etc.

For our game, there's also %Act to consider. Sure you can cast 2 spells/rnd. But even if you get init and cast a spell do you want to save 10%Act just in case the slower init Fighter charges you? You may want to save a Bladeturn/Landing or whatever. Players saving some "just in case %Act" seems to help keep balance as well.   

[Cormac Doyle]

Bows have a variable effective range, but for example, a longbow can hit targets up to 400 feet away as per our normal attack table (and historically/realistically; massed bowmen would lay-down artillery fire at up to 400 yards ... 1200 feet.)

That's a 1st level bowman

A mage has to be 6th level before he can even start developing his Firebolt attack ... and it has a MAX range of 100' (it simply sputters out beyond that point)

This means that even casting once per round, the mage cannot get off more than two shots at a fighter charging him ...

I'd be in favour of increasing the ranges on many spells ...

[RandalThor]

MarcR, what you are forgetting is that what can be done, can be predicted.
Just like the missile attack by the plane near the horizon, the teleporting mage, as an element of a setting, will be known about, and there will be defenses built to deal with them.

Now, if you want to use your uber-cool teleporting/fireballing trick to kill the poor baker down the street ("Wheat-bran! I told him no wheat-bran!"), then I wouldn't even play it out. You succeed. He is just a baker.

On the other hand, if you want to do that to the Dire-Overlord of the 12 Kingdoms, you are going to run into a bit of a problem. You see, he damn near invented that trick, and he knows how to defend against it. You teleport in, get snagged by his teleport trap circle, and are now zapped by a dozen lighting bolts from the triggered staves ringing the room.*

Point: Nothing is all-win all the time. You have to be smart about how you do things, even when you are very powerful - sometimes that means you have to be even smarter.

*Yes, this can get into an escalating scale of such things, you just have to determine how much is enough for you. (The GM.) Plus, as others have mentioned, each spell-casting caries with it a chance of utter failure, even possible injury or death. So, having 5 chances of that a round can be a bit scary. If you do allow people to cast more than one spell a round, a simple adjustment would be to increase the fumble range of each subsequent spell. That could be a bit of a deterrent.

I like the 2 spells per round max: 1 normal and 1 instant. Also, I like the idea that the item casts the spell in the same manner as you would, but I can see where others may not. If not, then instant spells just aren't put into items.

[providence13]

The way I see it for my games, casting spells from items is pretty close to a Spell Store.
The spell has already been cast successfully, 1/day for over a month in item creation. The magical effect just needs some of the last minute targeting effects.
However, digging the item out of a pack or even from your belt, around your neck.. still takes %Act.

On the spell range issue; It may be difficult to judge exactly how close/far a distant target appears. Just like timed duration, spells could have a +/- 10% to 20% difference to max range targeting. How far exactly is 300ft when you are trying to lob a Fireball? Sometimes my players think they have laser range finders with GUI heads up displays.

[GrumpyOldFart]

When a player asks, "How far away is _____?", the first words out of the GM's mouth should be, "Meh, about...". Never ever give a player an exact distance unless they actually go and measure it. If you want to be really mean, make a hidden die roll for how far off their distance sense is.

[Marc R]

The problem Rand is that example is merely a very simple to lay out one that people get. . .

Often, with my high level Paladin, I made the comment of "You attack me, you're in trouble, but if I have time to buff spell myself for 3-4 rounds before I attack you, you're screwed."

Which becomes "I buff myself 5 spells at the drop of a hat." so you're always screwed.

Like, what kind of counter are you going to use on someone who starts combat by dropping multi blade turns, multi deflections, Anti magic radius, radius attack, radius attack.

It starts an arms race not rooted in tactics of action, but in closely reading the spells and stringing up 5 hit (or 10 hit if you allow 10 x 10% spells) combinations.

Haste, +100 OB, Extra Crit on next attack, Extra Crit on next attack, Extra Crit on next attack, Attack 100%.

Paralysis, Paralysis, Paralysis, Lightning bolt, Lightning bolt. (2 LB at 0 DB is going to slap you up)

My playing crew, handed the capability to cast 2 spells per round, turned to SL to find the best 2 shot. . .stringing 5 would almost cause brain damage in the potentialities it opens.

two gets bad enough when the caster is doing bladeturn/attack every round. It's probably not a game broken imbalance at 2, but it's pushing in that direction. . .keep in mind that this started off, all I said was "Instant cast items are no problem, the only time I see it become a problem is if you also break the 1/round limit." time to cast is a modification, casting 5-10 spells a round is game breaking. . .no idea why that comment was controversial enough to prompt so many replies.

And there's nothing about it being win-win all the time, it's about how it way shifts the balance in favor of casters to the point where you simply cannot ever allow a caster the option of choosing to attack, simply because they are unstoppable combinations in any normal situation. You shift the paradigm to where there's only 3 ways to ever beat a caster: 1) Eliminate magic in the area and attack them (like a cancel essence spell with a radius) 2) Ambush them and kill them before they react or 3) Run them out of PPs then kill them.

Magic is powerful, and great, but when you tip the balance to the point where magic trumps anything else, you break in play balance. The problem also lies in the fact that it's not simply the caster/non balance you're breaking. . .any caster can then kill any other caster with a combo, so it's a matter that you've broken the offensive/defensive balance so far toward offense that defense becomes almost impossible.

And saying that "Well, the demi god living under a mass contingency isn't threatened" or "The giant living in the non magic zone is safe" are very narrow exceptions to a generally game breaking scenario.

GoF, I think it was in Dragon magazine, but they suggested taking a canvas bag, going over a PCs equipment list, and dropping a bunch of approximately shaped objects in the bag. . ."I draw my wand out of my bag!" "OK, draw the pencil out of that bag while I time you." Then penalizing activity accordingly.

[jdale]

MarcR, what you are forgetting is that what can be done, can be predicted.
Just like the missile attack by the plane near the horizon, the teleporting mage, as an element of a setting, will be known about, and there will be defenses built to deal with them.

When guns came to the battlefield, they could be predicted and defenses could be invented - but they also forced a complete rethink about strategy and tactics. Armor disappeared, other weapons were gradually phased out. The same happened again with machine guns, with artillery, with tanks, etc.

The system is built around a certain set of assumptions. Spells are balanced with those assumptions, classes are balanced with those assumptions. You can throw them out but if you do so, you need to rethink everything else to make sure it will work together. You can certainly do that. But does it add something to the game to do so?

[yammahoper]

In RM, mages are lethal in combat.  Add in firearms, and mages combat spells are a bunch of crap, the guns dominate the feild.

I have ran many blended games of SM/RM.  Certain modifications are essential to make the mage worth much of anything in combat.  Or just accept that it the movement and information spells are were  the value is.  One things for certain, give my PC the choice of suffering a fireball or hand grenade attack, I'll pick fireball.  Shot by rifle of firebolt, I'll take firebolt.  Now, if the mage can double tap or autofire his firebolt...different story.

[Marc R]

I agree, which is why I think instant items are a minor house rule tweak, but casting multiple times per round is paradigm shifting, in line with the snips below:

It's probably not a game broken imbalance at 2, but it's pushing in that direction. . .keep in mind that this started off, all I said was "Instant cast items are no problem, the only time I see it become a problem is if you also break the 1/round limit." time to cast is a modification, casting 5-10 spells a round is game breaking. . .no idea why that comment was controversial enough to prompt so many replies.

MarcR, what you are forgetting is that what can be done, can be predicted.
Just like the missile attack by the plane near the horizon, the teleporting mage, as an element of a setting, will be known about, and there will be defenses built to deal with them.

When guns came to the battlefield, they could be predicted and defenses could be invented - but they also forced a complete rethink about strategy and tactics. Armor disappeared, other weapons were gradually phased out. The same happened again with machine guns, with artillery, with tanks, etc.

The system is built around a certain set of assumptions. Spells are balanced with those assumptions, classes are balanced with those assumptions. You can throw them out but if you do so, you need to rethink everything else to make sure it will work together. You can certainly do that. But does it add something to the game to do so?

[yammahoper]

Allow your spell users to use the fire arm rules for their directed attack spells, it really is lots of fun. 

[RandalThor]

Magic is powerful, and great, but when you tip the balance to the point where magic trumps anything else, you break in play balance. The problem also lies in the fact that it's not simply the caster/non balance you're breaking. . .any caster can then kill any other caster with a combo, so it's a matter that you've broken the offensive/defensive balance so far toward offense that defense becomes almost impossible.

Well, I have really come to believe that in a world with such magic anyone who is anyone would use magic - like in Earthdawn. It would not make sense to not use magic, whether you are going full-mage or semi, you would use magic. In Earthdawn, to play a character that is nonmagical, is suicidal at best.

GoF, I think it was in Dragon magazine, but they suggested taking a canvas bag, going over a PCs equipment list, and dropping a bunch of approximately shaped objects in the bag. . ."I draw my wand out of my bag!" "OK, draw the pencil out of that bag while I time you." Then penalizing activity accordingly.

That is just evil, and an awesome way to make a point.