The Dresden Files > DFRPG
Earth magic responsible for weapons skill?
nadia.skylark:
--- Quote ---Before we dive too far into homebrew, let's refocus the question: You want a good representation of Morgan.
So, then, we must ask: How good of a swordman is Morgan when you consider his 'honed instincts' derived from his earth magic ?
Shiro is listed at Fantastic which, according to the ladder is:
...
If you want to add more, then Morgan is either a very poor swordsman who relies entirely on his magic for his skill or he's an expert/proffessional swordsman whose supernatural ability makes him better than Shiro.
--- End quote ---
Or Shiro is seriously under-statted, which is what I think. He should definitely have a base weapons rating of +7 (if the Merlin can have his conviction and discipline that high, I believe that Shiro can have his weapons that high) plus a bunch more stunts to up his power. (I don't remember which stunts he does have, and I can't look because I don't currently have access to my copy of Our World, but I remember very distinctly thinking that his expert swordsmanship was just not very well shown in his write-up. As I recall, he has way fewer stunts enhancing his combat ability than Murphy does as of Paranet Papers, and given that he's described as "Mozart with a sword" I'd say he's very definitely supposed to be better than her.)
Taran:
OW says Shiro is +6 and +7 to defense. Even if you push it by 1 shift, my point still stands: the more shifts this ability gives Morgan, the crappier he is naturally. I think he's only slightly worse than micheal who has a skill of +5
A normal joe has a skill between +1 to 3 in most things. Most people have weapons skill at +0 to +1
also: I'm reposting this edit I made in the last post.
Edit:
--- Quote from: nadia.skylark on May 22, 2019, 11:03:44 PM ---Or what if the stunt/power allowed you to make earth magic maneuvers related to combat as a supplemental action without the usual supplemental action and without taking stress?
--- End quote ---
Doing it as a supplemental would give you a free tag every round and, if it didn't cause stress, you could do it for infinity.
How about something like this: 'You may use your earth magic to 'hone your instincts', making you more alert for danger and quicker and deadlier in combat. You may use your Earth magic to create the Maneuver: 'honed instincts'. The aspect lasts for the scene and you may tag the aspect twice.'
It could even be one of his Rote spells.
Sanctaphrax:
To expand on what I said a few posts back, I think all these Power concepts are likely to fail because the basic problem has been mis-identified.
The game doesn't need ways to represent using magic to be better at mundane fighting. It has a million of those.
The thing that all this is meant to address is that having high Weapons and Evocation is generally a bad idea optimization-wise. And that puts Wardens in a weird place. To deal with that, you'll want a different approach.
--- Quote from: g33k on May 22, 2019, 10:20:58 PM ---That said... Morgan was reportedly a SERIOUS badass with a blade. So that should be represented SOMEHOW ...
--- End quote ---
Great or Superb Weapons and an appropriate Aspect covers that.
--- Quote from: nadia.skylark on May 22, 2019, 11:03:44 PM ---But this isn't standard spellcasting; it's the easy evocations power, you can just use it with your fists or with a weapon.
--- End quote ---
Power writeup that I can see doesn't say anything about that. Says that you can cast without stress, not that you can cast with the easy evocations rules.
--- Quote from: nadia.skylark on May 22, 2019, 11:03:44 PM ---Could you elaborate? This sounds really interesting!
--- End quote ---
There's not much to say; I never did anything to develop the idea.
--- Quote from: nadia.skylark on May 22, 2019, 11:03:44 PM ---...What about adding half the power bonus? I agree with you that I don't want to have wizards outdoing everyone else at everything, but I'm still trying to figure out a way to represent earth magic as looking like really good mundane combat.
--- End quote ---
It already can look like really good mundane combat. Completely by the book.
--- Quote from: nadia.skylark on May 22, 2019, 11:03:44 PM ---Or what if the stunt/power allowed you to make earth magic maneuvers related to combat as a supplemental action without the usual supplemental action and without taking stress?
--- End quote ---
No way. A free Aspect every round is crazy strong.
nadia.skylark:
--- Quote ---OW says Shiro is +6 and +7 to defense. Even if you push it by 1 shift, my point still stands: the more shifts this ability gives Morgan, the crappier he is naturally. I think he's only slightly worse than micheal who has a skill of +5
--- End quote ---
True. I figure that Morgan probably has a base weapons ability of +4/+5. With his magic, he's good enough to nearly kill the Red King--and a lot of that has to be stressless sword attacks, or he would have taken himself out before he got that close (unless you think the Red King doesn't have a bunch of really powerful bodyguards. Morgan had to take them out, plus take out any mooks that got in the way, plus defend himself from all the vampires).
--- Quote ---Doing it as a supplemental would give you a free tag every round and, if it didn't cause stress, you could do it for infinity.
--- End quote ---
...so it's basically an overly-elaborate +2. I suppose I should go back to "just add half your earth power bonus."
--- Quote ---How about something like this: 'You may use your earth magic to 'hone your instincts', making you more alert for danger and quicker and deadlier in combat. You may use your Earth magic to create the Maneuver: 'honed instincts'. The aspect lasts for the scene and you may tag the aspect twice.'
It could even be one of his Rote spells.
--- End quote ---
I'm not sure if that's broad enough. Here's what Paranet Papers says about earth magic:
--- Quote ---The contrast to air, earth magic relies on instinct and intuition—basic, primal impulses operating on a supernatural level. The least structured of all the elements, earth magic manifests in reflexive command of the basic forces of nature (gravity, electromagnetism, and perhaps weak and strong nuclear forces) and seeming to always be “on the ball.” It’s not neat and precise like air magic, or chaotic like fire magic—the effects are unplanned and improvisational, coming from the gut, yet they always seem to work extremely well.
We know of overt earth magic doing things like creating earthquakes or changing the direction of gravity, but it can also manifest
as extreme ease of action on the wizard’s part. Instead of a literal shield, an earth block might look like a series of coincidental dodges, with the wizard just instinctively knowing which way to move to avoid the attack. Instead of some electromagnetic distortion zapping people, an earth attack might look as though the wizard was really, really good at hand-to-hand fighting, always managing to slip past the opponent’s defense.
Perhaps the most advanced application of earth magic doesn’t look like magic at all— just the right things happening in response to anything the wizard does, always working out in his favor.
--- End quote ---
This is what I'm trying to represent mechanically. ...Actually, no, that's not true. I've gotten so caught up in this discussion that I forgot what I'm actually trying to do, which is to add an addendum to the easy evocations power (here: https://www.paranetonline.com/index.php/topic,53054.0.html ) that says "if you're using earth magic and happen to have a sword or something, you can use the sword in the attack to get its weapons value."
--- Quote ---To expand on what I said a few posts back, I think all these Power concepts are likely to fail because the basic problem has been mis-identified.
The game doesn't need ways to represent using magic to be better at mundane fighting. It has a million of those.
The thing that all this is meant to address is that having high Weapons and Evocation is generally a bad idea optimization-wise. And that puts Wardens in a weird place. To deal with that, you'll want a different approach.
--- End quote ---
This is true.
--- Quote ---Power writeup that I can see doesn't say anything about that. Says that you can cast without stress, not that you can cast with the easy evocations rules.
--- End quote ---
Then I mis-wrote it. Sorry.
--- Quote ---No way. A free Aspect every round is crazy strong.
--- End quote ---
Do you think I should just have this as a 1-refresh upgrade to the easy evocations power that says "you can incorporate weapons into your earth evocations done with this power and get their weapons value"? I've been trying to make it separate so that people can use it without having "easy evocations"-type spellcasting for all their elements, but that doesn't seem to be working.
Sanctaphrax:
--- Quote from: nadia.skylark on May 23, 2019, 03:11:21 AM ---Do you think I should just have this as a 1-refresh upgrade to the easy evocations power that says "you can incorporate weapons into your earth evocations done with this power and get their weapons value"?
--- End quote ---
I guess that would at least be worth testing out.
I still don't think any of this really addresses the issue of Warden optimality though.
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