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The Dresden Files => DFRPG => Topic started by: Rephath on October 15, 2011, 08:46:40 AM
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I came up with some magic powers, and wanted to solicit comments on them.
Blood Magic [-1]
Description: You give your lifeblood as a sacrifice to fuel your magic.
Musts: You must have thaumaturgy, evocation, sponsored magic, or some other form of magical ability.
Skills Affected: Conviction
Effects:
Power in the Blood: You may spend physical stress to cast a spell or to add power to a spell just as you would mental stress.
Deep Hurting: You may also take physical consequences to fuel magic, as you would mental consequences. These consequences add power at 1 and 1/2 times their normal value, but may not benefit from any regeneration powers or magical healing on consequences you get that power bonus from. The Blood Drinker vampirism power clears minor consequences as usual.
Magic Mimicry [-1]
Description: You can copy any magic spells you see in action.
Musts: You must have thaumaturgy, evocation, sponsored magic, or some other form of magical ability. Sponsored magic grants certain bonuses as part of its cost, and that may include this power as a large part of it.
Skills Affected: Conviction, Discipline, Lore
Effects:
Magus See, Magus Do: This acts similarly to refinement that gives you access to a new element, only instead of that element you can cast any spell you've seen done before, even if you only saw it once.
Aquatic Caster [-1]
Description: Your magic is in tune with water and is not disrupted by its flow.
Musts: You must have thaumaturgy, evocation, sponsored magic, or some other form of magical ability. Sponsored magic often grants unique bonuses, and this may be one of them.
Skills Affected: Conviction, Discipline, Lore
Effects:
You can cast magic on water, from underwater, or through flowing water without difficulty. If you have any senses that work underwater, you may cast magic on any target you can sense in that way, even when murky or deep water obscure normal sight.
Signature Spell [-1]
Description: You have a single spell that you can perform better than any others.
Musts: You do not need to have other magical abilities, but if you do the bonuses from this power stack with any bonuses you get from them.
Skills Affected: Conviction, Discipline, Lore
Effects:
Favorite Spell: You gain +2 control and +1 power or +2 power and +1 control (choose which when you take the power) to a single spell. If you have no other magical abilities, then this is the only spell you can cast.
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One more I thought deserved its own post.
Magical Healing [-1]
Description: You are trained in the ways of healing, and can work healing more effectively than most mages.
Musts: You must have thaumaturgy, evocation, sponsored magic, or some other form of magical ability. Sponsored magic grants certain bonuses as part of its cost, and that may include this power as a large part of it.
Skills Affected: Conviction, Discipline, Lore
Variations: This spell clears physical stress but varieties could exist for mental or social stress.
Effects:
Treatment: You may clear a stress box on you or an ally by casting a spell with at least as much power as the number of the box in question. A 4 power evocation could clear any of a character's first 4 stress boxes. You may justify beginning recovery on a consequence with a power of spell at least equal to the consequence's value.
Cure: You may clear multiple stress boxes at once, and even reduce the severity of consequences by 1 step by summoning enough power. The chart below lists effects.
1 Power: Clears 1st stress box.
3 Power: Clears first 2 stress boxes.
6 Power: Clears first 3 stress boxes.
10 Power: Clears first 4 stress boxes.
12 Power: Clears all stress boxes and all minor consequences.
16 Power: Same as 12 power, plus lowers a moderate consequence to mild.
22 Power: Same as 16 power, plus lowers a severe consequence to moderate.
30 Power: Same as 22 power, plus lowers an extreme consequence to severe.
40 Power: (With GM approval) Revives a character from death assuming character's body is still in relatively good condition. The character comes back with all consequence slots filled but a clear stress track. Additionally, he must take a [-1] Stunt Back from the Dead Which grants no bonuses. If the revived character lacks the refresh, he may trade in one of his stunts or powers to make up for it. Note: excessive injuries raise the difficulty. Having the head cut off raises it to at least 50. Someone's who's burnt to ashes just isn't coming back even with 1000 power.
Note the Second: Death is a continuum in Dresden Files, not a set point. Even after "death" a few of your cells are still alive for awhile. A revivification spell provides enough juice for them to replicate and reconstruct the body. This shouldn't be a violation of the 5th law, though wardens may not see it that way.
Final Note: Just because the chart lists power levels for certain amounts of healing doesn't mean you're not abusing the rules to get those shifts of power.
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Why'd I say Blood Magic can't benefit from supernatural recovery or magical healing? It makes it too overpowered. But allowing Blood Drinker to clear a minor consequence makes too much sense to disallow.
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I'm no expert, but I think Magic Mimicry should cost -2. it's pretty powerful to be able to cast with potentially two elements you don't have.
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Personally, I wouldn't allow Magical Healing at all. Stress boxes clear at the end of a scene anyway so this is basically an in-combat power. Having in-combat healing would drastically alter the balance and tone of the game, which is why there isn't any spec'd out in the RAW aside from a very few self-only powers.
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I'm no expert, but I think Magic Mimicry should cost -2. it's pretty powerful to be able to cast with potentially two elements you don't have.
Yeah, it allows you to casts spells from all elements, but not any spell you want. Just any spell you've seen. This actually makes it a bit more limited, since you can't make up spells on the spot to solve problems.
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Blood Magic [-1]
Description: You give your lifeblood as a sacrifice to fuel your magic.
Musts: You must have thaumaturgy, evocation, sponsored magic, or some other form of magical ability.
Skills Affected: Conviction
Effects:
Power in the Blood: You may spend physical stress to cast a spell or to add power to a spell just as you would mental stress.
Deep Hurting: You may also take physical consequences to fuel magic, as you would mental consequences. These consequences add power at 1 and 1/2 times their normal value, but may not benefit from any regeneration powers or magical healing on consequences you get that power bonus from. The Blood Drinker vampirism power clears minor consequences as usual.
This is close to what a caster can already do without the power. Using sacrifice (self or other) to fuel magic is cannon. This seems to increase the shifts gained by 50% and make healing more difficult than normal. Am I missing something else? As is, don't think I'd spend a refresh on it.
Magic Mimicry [-1]
Description: You can copy any magic spells you see in action.
The caster still has to gather and control the appropriate shifts of power, correct?
Aquatic Caster [-1]
Description: Your magic is in tune with water and is not disrupted by its flow.
Depending on location and campaign, this may be worth more than one refresh. :)
Signature Spell [-1]
Description: You have a single spell that you can perform better than any others.
Interesting...particularly as a way to give something less than Ritual or Channeling to a focused character.
Re: Healing - I'll probably stick with the Reiki derivatives. It's also worth noting this spell, if cast on yourself, allows for endless spellcasting. Something I'd prefer to avoid.
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Thanks for posting these here, Rephath.
Anyway, here's the point-by-point:
Blood Magic:
Like the idea. But execution is worrying.
Not comfortable with this because it doubles the number of possible consequence-free spells per scene.
The 1.5x value on physical consequences also makes me kinda nervous, although it might well be balanced.
Should tighten up the wording on the recovery clause.
I think that this might work better as a -0 power that simply replaces all mental stress with physical stress and specifies that it satisfies all Catches.
Magic Mimicry:
For the same price you could get an element and a specialization, so I think it's balanced.
Looks like a bookkeeping nightmare though.
Does it work for Ritual/Thaumaturgy?
Aquatic Caster:
Looks good.
Reminds me of the Fomor Magic power I wrote a while ago.
Not sure how well this jives with canon, but fortunately I don't really care.
Signature Spell:
This worries me.
Breaking the cap on Refinements is dangerous territory to play in.
And I'm not sure if it's fair to buy this without any other spellcasting powers.
Does this work for rituals?
Magical Healing:
Very brave of you to try this.
Need to think about it more.
But at first glance, I'm pretty sure that the 30 and 40 complexity effects have problems.
Extreme consequences should be sancrosant. Something like "may justify recovery from an extreme consequence would be better, but that's probably not worth 30 complexity.
And the 40 complexity effect is clearly a violation of the Fifth Law. You could use that "continuum" excuse for absolutely anything that violates the Fifth Law.
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Important question about Magical Healing: is it Evocation or Thaumaturgy?
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I don't know about anybody else, however I would consider Healing Magic to be Thaumaturgy.
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But there's no point using Thaumaturgy on stress. It'll be gone before the ritual ends anyway.
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But there's no point using Thaumaturgy on stress. It'll be gone before the ritual ends anyway.
Eh, possibly. Harry's done some pretty quick (a minute or so) thaumaturgic location spells. I generally rule anything you can no-prep can be pulled off in about a minute. For exchanges to actual time I usually go four to a minute when it comes up, depending on the situation.
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Sponsored magic allows combat thaumaturgy. But it doesn't matter much to me, whether thaumaturgy or evocation I dislike the idea of healing stress for two reasons - first, if you can heal more stress than it takes to cast a single spell, you can ignore the mental stress limits on casting; second, I don't consider stress "damage" anyway - consequences are damage.
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Well, you can't recover mental stress with this version of the spell. So just remove the note about mental and social variations and your endless spellcasting issue will be solved.
Your point about the nature of stress is a good one, though.
In my opinion, stress can be (superficial) damage if the player wants it to be. But it can also be near misses and other such things.
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Use it with Blood Magic and you have the unlimited casting back though. Regardless, easy, instant healing is extremely game-changing and should only be allowed if you're absolutely certain that's the way you want to go.
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Was "Blood Magic" intended to replace the mental track with the physical for purposes of casting? If so, it needs to be clarified...using "add power" makes me think it's using / changing the standard sacrifice rules.
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I will try my hand at making a Blood Magic with jives with the standard mental track spellcasting as well.
The idea here is to make Blood Magic useful but dangerous as hell.
Blood Magic [-0]
Description: You give your lifeblood as a sacrifice to fuel your magic.
Musts: You must have thaumaturgy, evocation, sponsored magic, or some other form of magical ability.
Skills Affected: Conviction
Effects:
Power in the Blood. You may take physical stress (or physical consequences) in place of mental stress (or mental consequences) in order to fuel your magic. Stress and consequences you take in this way are considered to bypass all catches and thus you do not benefit from Recovery powers, Toughness powers, or Armor.
Backlash of Power. Blood magic is very potent, very dangerous and very addictive. After using blood magic you must roll discipline (with the same bonuses) versus your original discipline roll, as if you were facing an attack of the same value. If the attack succeeds you take an extra toll in physical or mental stress. This extra stress is considered to bypass all catches and thus you do not benefit from Recovery powers, Toughness powers, or Armor.
For Example: Tommy uses blood magic to cast a 5 shift evocation spell. He rolls a 5 to control the shifts of power he called up. Now he must defend versus an attack with an accuracy of 5 and a weapon rating of 0. He rolls a 4 and takes one extra stress, which his player may allocate to either the physical stress track or the mental stress track as he sees fit. If it was allocated to the mental stress track, the pleasure of the power coursing through his body has impacted him in a negative manner. If it was allocated to the physical stress track his body had difficulty handling the strain of so much energy rushing out of him, fatiguing him just a little more than he had expected.
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Uhm its a zero power which makes you use physical stress instead of mental (so you have less boxes for getting hit) and then attacks you each time you use it, without toughness powers casting with physical stress has no advantage over mental so this power is just negative it gives you a severe negative and a minimal positive (unless the attack roll replaces the original stress to cast).
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Uhm its a zero power which makes you use physical stress instead of mental (so you have less boxes for getting hit) and then attacks you each time you use it, without toughness powers casting with physical stress has no advantage over mental so this power is just negative it gives you a severe negative and a minimal positive (unless the attack roll replaces the original stress to cast).
Well, it does nearly double the number of spells you can cast since there's no prohibition against using your physical track for one spell then your mental for the next. If anything it's under-costed. Yes, I know that's not a word but I'm on my first cup of coffee; give a guy a break.
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Suppose it might be nice with a feeding power (so a free recovery period means quadruple casting) and I suppose there is no rule that you can't cast normally to get rid of your mental stress before falling back on blood magic.
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+2/+1 to a single spell can be achieved with 2 Focus item slots if you lock it down. Costs 1 Refresh.
So, Signature Spell is basically an internalized Focus item locked down to a single spell
Seems fairly balanced, though extreme stacking could be a problem.
Important would be to specify that you can only take the Power once.
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Uhm its a zero power which makes you use physical stress instead of mental (so you have less boxes for getting hit) and then attacks you each time you use it, without toughness powers casting with physical stress has no advantage over mental so this power is just negative it gives you a severe negative and a minimal positive (unless the attack roll replaces the original stress to cast).
I disagree.
1) It increases the number of spells you can cast in one sitting.
2) Using Blood Magic should not be overtly more powerful than casting with Mental Stress. Once a thing becomes obviously better it becomes necessary to keep up with the "arms race". If something is so obviously good that you would be an idiot not to take it, it makes the field of play stale.
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I might agree to the -0 version of Blood Magic if it replaces normal casting entirely. In other words, the blood mage wouldn't have the option of just using mental stress. (Reminds me of Shadowrun, may have to work up a villain along these lines.)
I'm not a fan of being able to choose between physical and mental stress. Wizards are powerful enough without the extra boost.
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It's overpowered, because it isn't useless.
The drawbacks on this power only trigger when the power is used, which is optional. So there's no reason not to take it.
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Why not just make it a -3 Power that does exactly what Evocation does except using the physical track? Let it be just a re-skinning of Evocation. You'd need to treat it as a separate casting skill from Evocation though. Specializations and focus items go to one or the other if you have both.