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kzt
post Mar 16 2009, 04:48 AM
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QUOTE (Malachi @ Mar 15 2009, 10:22 PM) *
I'm not entirely clear on where people are getting the idea that a Mage gets to "choose" his Net Hits on the Spellcasting test.

My guess is it probably had a lot to do with the Developer saying that was how it worked.
http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?show...st&p=782523
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Malachi
post Mar 16 2009, 04:53 AM
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QUOTE (kzt @ Mar 16 2009, 12:48 AM) *
My guess is it probably had a lot to do with the Developer saying that was how it worked.
http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?show...st&p=782523

Indeed. Thanks for the link. I don't think I'll be playing it that way.
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kzt
post Mar 16 2009, 05:12 AM
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I can see why. Several of the changes, this included, are attempts at solving real problems, but approach them in really odd ways that avoid the primary issue.
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Cardul
post Mar 16 2009, 11:16 AM
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QUOTE (Malachi @ Mar 15 2009, 11:53 PM) *
Indeed. Thanks for the link. I don't think I'll be playing it that way.


I can see a very valid point for using that option, though. A mage is channeling magic, and he has some degree of control with it. Alot more control then someone shooting a bullet has. What this means is that the mace can choose after casting to dial back the successes so he only knocks someone out with a stun-bolt, instead of going into the physical, or he can stop with leaving someone only critically injured and stabilizable instead of "crispy critter." If I were going to put a limit on it, I would be more inclined to say that they could only dial back a number of net hits equal to the appropriate spellcasting skill. But, seriously, when you are looking at maybe 10, 12 dice at chargen, are you really going to be seeing that many successes?
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hobgoblin
post Mar 16 2009, 11:32 AM
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i just found myself wondering, what else can net hits on a combat spell be used for, besides upping damage?
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Mikado
post Mar 16 2009, 12:28 PM
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QUOTE (hobgoblin @ Mar 16 2009, 07:32 AM) *
i just found myself wondering, what else can net hits on a combat spell be used for, besides upping damage?

It would be nice if they allowed you to use hits to add to the drain resitance test for direct combat spells. That way your not wasting BP/karma for having a casting pool over 10. (Since statisticaly you can always beat someone with a body/willpower of 5, which is way above average) Although you would need 3 net hits to off set using 1 net hit for raising damage.
But then again... Why should the "fix" not follow the magic system...
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Fuchs
post Mar 16 2009, 12:35 PM
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That would make it very easy to reduce the drain by choosing to overcast so you have more dice against less drain.
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Dunsany
post Mar 16 2009, 12:42 PM
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QUOTE (Cain @ Mar 15 2009, 09:15 PM) *
You don't even need maxed stats. A human hermetic with Logic 5, Willpower 5, Centering and a fetish will easily be soaking 5P drain. That's easily within reach of a starting character, especially if you're using karmagen and allow the mage to initiate once. You haven't hardmaxed a thing.


Is your point that soft maxing your stats and using a bunch of karma on a metamagic (whos sole purpose is mitigating drain) and limiting your spell with a fetish gives you less than a 50% chance of resisting all of 5P drain? Because if so, I'm with you there (given that it is my point exactly).
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hobgoblin
post Mar 16 2009, 12:53 PM
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QUOTE (Fuchs @ Mar 16 2009, 01:35 PM) *
That would make it very easy to reduce the drain by choosing to overcast so you have more dice against less drain.

sounds to me like overcasting for extra bang is one hell of a return on investment, if one wants to be a combat mage (and who else really benefits from overcasting?)
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Critias
post Mar 16 2009, 12:58 PM
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QUOTE (hobgoblin @ Mar 16 2009, 06:32 AM) *
i just found myself wondering, what else can net hits on a combat spell be used for, besides upping damage?

Well, now they can be used to increase Drain, too! Yay! Isn't it exciting?

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)
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Mikado
post Mar 16 2009, 01:27 PM
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QUOTE (Fuchs @ Mar 16 2009, 07:35 AM) *
That would make it very easy to reduce the drain by choosing to overcast so you have more dice against less drain.

Well, yes... it would...
I keep forgetting that at our table we have some house rules to reduce overcasting.

Spells (Over Casting)
To represent the difficulty in knowingly hurting oneself, you must make a Composure (Drain/2) Test in order to overcast. Failure represents an inability to overcast and the spell is then cast at Magic Rating.

Yes, its not much but when your talking about some of the higher drain spells it can get very hard.

(yea, I know... does not do much to stop stun spells but we house ruled that those have the same drain as mana bolt/ball spells.)
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AllTheNothing
post Mar 16 2009, 01:47 PM
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QUOTE (Glyph @ Mar 15 2009, 11:52 PM) *
The problem with house rules is that a lot of us people who are complaining didn't think magic needed "fixing" in the first place. Yours seem, like the 20th Edition rules, to add unnecessary complexity. They bone mages less, so they're better than the 20th Edition changes - but that's kind of damning with faint praise.

My houserule do add complexity but once you get used to it should work good with minimal loss of speed, it's just one extra roll for indirect spells (mainly meant for disincentivating overcasting) and two for direct ones (the second is to allow the target to resist); the positive aspects are that it should get rid of the 15 vs 5 opposed tests, it allow the use of ALL the net hits (no cap on them in the slinging test, if the caster uses force 2 stunbolt and obtain 5 net hits slinging it the will have to resist 7S not 4S) allowing the mage to deal damage with lower drain, reduces the incentive of overcasting (on everage the hits on the spellwaving test increas by one every three extra points of force), makes indirect combat spells more attractive (not so much against mundane targets but against targets protected by counterspelling the should fare better than direct combat spells).
Many people that the system worked well, yet the change was made; obviously people at Catalyst think that the system that works well could be changed to work even better and tried to improve it (with questionable results, imo). Due to the fact that the path of the change has been undertaken it does no harm to try to make it for the better, if the result doesn't like you you can always chose to say "screw it" and keep using old rules; than I have to admit that I had added some level of complexity that aren't realy needed (I did to better represent the working of magic, as I envision them, and to disincentivate overcasting), but it's easy getting rid of some, you don't like the spellwaving test? just make it a simple action and use the old force = base damage paradigma, you don't like the sustaining overcasted spells penality? use the normal rules for sustaining spells, heck simply reducing the drain modifiers for physical spells and elemental effects would go a long way toward making indirect combat spells more attractive.
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Fuchs
post Mar 16 2009, 02:03 PM
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Well, the system may have worked well - if you were playing an awakened character. One of my players switched to an adept a few months ago, making my game all-awakened, because he did not see a point in playing a mundane anymore - after 6 years.
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AllTheNothing
post Mar 16 2009, 02:08 PM
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QUOTE (Mikado @ Mar 16 2009, 02:24 AM) *
Just because it makes more sense for this post to be here and not where I originally posted it.

What I don't understand is why they took a mechanic that did not follow any other combat mechanic in the game and changed it so it does not even follow the magic mechanic.
Seriously, what happened here?
Direct combat spells where a problem, yes. But this "solution" does not fix the problem only sweep it under the rug as it where. Fix the problem by making it so unappealing to use is not a fix.

The better solution would be to bring Direct Combat spells under the same combat mechanic as everything else. Give them a "dodge" test. Use willpower or intuition (I vote intuition) as a dodge. Like someone subconsciously shifting their aura to stop it being flooded with mana.
Thus following the dodge/resist mechanic.

Also, shifting the +2 drain modifier for "elemental" spells to direct combat spells.
Given that (most) indirect spells use 1/2 armor and direct spells negate armor switching the two make sense.

Also... using the same mechanic for healing spells uses essence loss as a dice pool modifier for the casting mage. (maybe an optional rule...) (I would add it to the "dodge" test to make math easy when casting "Ball" spells)

All of that still makes Direct Combat spells useful and brings them in line with all other combat mechanics and magic mechanics in the game. It actually fixes the problem not just cover it up.

Kind what I suggested in my wall of test:
indirect spells have Reaction + Dodge, direct ones have Willpower + Intuition;
indirect spells have Body + Armor, direct ones have Willpower/Body + Counterspelling.

Instead of increasing the drain of direct combat spells I suggested the reduction of the drain of the indirect combat spells; I have to give you credit for the part of the essence loss thought, adding the essence loss (round down) to the target's "direct spell dodge" pool.

And there are also the changes to the overcasting drain from THIS POST
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Mikado
post Mar 16 2009, 02:34 PM
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QUOTE (AllTheNothing @ Mar 16 2009, 09:08 AM) *
Kind what I suggested in my wall of test:
indirect spells have Reaction + Dodge, direct ones have Willpower + Intuition;
indirect spells have Body + Armor, direct ones have Willpower/Body + Counterspelling.

Instead of increasing the drain of direct combat spells I suggested the reduction of the drain of the indirect combat spells; I have to give you credit for the part of the essence loss thought, adding the essence loss (round down) to the target's "direct spell dodge" pool.

And there are also the changes to the overcasting drain from THIS POST

Dodge is only used when going on full defense so I would only give one attribute for the direct combat spell "dodge" and maybe use attribute x 2 for going "full defense."
Indirect spells also get counterspelling so it is not a fair comparison which is why I suggested to switch the +2 drain modifier. It makes indirect spells more attractive because the drain is less and direct spells are still attractive because the target does not get armor.
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HappyDaze
post Mar 16 2009, 02:36 PM
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I'd like to see Direct Combat Spells resisted by (Body or Willpower) + Edge. This really only helps out PCs, important NPCs, and certain critters, but I'm OK with mooks getting toasted by magic.

I like the switch of the +2 Drain Modifier to Direct Spells instead of Indirect Spells. I'm almost certain to use that change.
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crizh
post Mar 16 2009, 02:41 PM
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QUOTE (HappyDaze @ Mar 16 2009, 02:36 PM) *
I'd like to see Direct Combat Spells resisted by (Body or Willpower) + Edge.


You know that's actually a pretty dang good idea. I like it.
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Naysayer
post Mar 16 2009, 03:44 PM
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Has anyone toyed with the idea of switching overcast drain to Body + drain stat?
I guess that could be justified in the fluff, and your average mage would get a couple dice less to soak his 4 or 5P.
Just a quick thought, any takers?

I just figured that this would probably encourage more ork and troll magicians, but technically, they'd have lower values in their drain stat, which would even that out.
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Mäx
post Mar 16 2009, 03:47 PM
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QUOTE (Dunsany @ Mar 16 2009, 02:42 PM) *
Is your point that soft maxing your stats and using a bunch of karma on a metamagic (whos sole purpose is mitigating drain) and limiting your spell with a fetish gives you less than a 50% chance of resisting all of 5P drain? Because if so, I'm with you there (given that it is my point exactly).

Thats why you get a rating 2 or 3 Cerebral Booster for a cheap +2 or 3 to logic.
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Malachi
post Mar 16 2009, 03:56 PM
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QUOTE (Naysayer @ Mar 16 2009, 11:44 AM) *
Has anyone toyed with the idea of switching overcast drain to Body + drain stat?
I guess that could be justified in the fluff, and your average mage would get a couple dice less to soak his 4 or 5P.
Just a quick thought, any takers?

I just figured that this would probably encourage more ork and troll magicians, but technically, they'd have lower values in their drain stat, which would even that out.

Nah, that would make things worse. You'd have Orks or Trolls overcasting at Force 10 or 12 and having like 18 DP for soaking it.
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Zen Shooter01
post Mar 16 2009, 03:58 PM
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I think that the simplest fix to the Overcasting problem is to not divide the Force of an overcast spell when calculating the drain. Then a Force 10 Stun Bolt threatens the caster with 9 points of damage instead of 4, which will make the caster think twice about throwing the spell.
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Mikado
post Mar 16 2009, 04:08 PM
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QUOTE (Zen Shooter01 @ Mar 16 2009, 10:58 AM) *
I think that the simplest fix to the Overcasting problem is to not divide the Force of an overcast spell when calculating the drain. Then a Force 10 Stun Bolt threatens the caster with 9 points of damage instead of 4, which will make the caster think twice about throwing the spell.

Yea... And what is to stop a streetsam (or anyone for that matter) from putting down their pistol and picking up a PAC.
Other than every cop would shoot first and not bother asking why you sporting milspec hardware but on that same token a cop would shoot a mage castng a force 10 spell too. If you want to reduce overcasting put in a rule like the one my table uses.
I agree that direct combat spells need to be nerfed (8 out of 14 spells my char has are DC spells) and overcasting needs to be addressed but remember that stretsams don't fall into a coma when they reload their firearm.
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XON2000
post Mar 16 2009, 04:20 PM
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Drain damage already can't be healed magically. What if it also couldn't be healed with first aid? Would that made the physical damage from overcasting more of a deterrent?
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hobgoblin
post Mar 16 2009, 04:40 PM
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QUOTE (crizh @ Mar 16 2009, 03:41 PM) *
You know that's actually a pretty dang good idea. I like it.

cant that already be done by spending a point of edge on the test? would grant access to exploding dice while one is at it (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)
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hobgoblin
post Mar 16 2009, 04:43 PM
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QUOTE (Mikado @ Mar 16 2009, 05:08 PM) *
Yea... And what is to stop a streetsam (or anyone for that matter) from putting down their pistol and picking up a PAC.
Other than every cop would shoot first and not bother asking why you sporting milspec hardware but on that same token a cop would shoot a mage castng a force 10 spell too. If you want to reduce overcasting put in a rule like the one my table uses.
I agree that direct combat spells need to be nerfed (8 out of 14 spells my char has are DC spells) and overcasting needs to be addressed but remember that stretsams don't fall into a coma when they reload their firearm.

a mundane cop cant spot a mage until the spells go bang. unless one is blind, one can spot someone carrying a PAC (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)
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