[Edit : At some point during my lengthy explanation (sorry for that), I decided to do an alternate guideline for spell cost that made sense to me. I'm not trying to be patronizing, just to help myself and maybe the game. Also because I don't have much experiences with MM and D&D, it may not be balanced. It's just an exemple to explain what I mean.
Thanks in advance if you can help me. Also I'm french and it's late, sorry for any typo !
Love MM, can't wait for final release.]
I've recently played MM for the first time. I had never played a D&D like game. It was short and we did not encountered many situation (no combat nor a single spell use yet), yet here are two questions/remarks from reading the rules :
- How does multiple attacks work ? It is said in the combat rules that you only roll the d20 once per turn (unless complex turn). But when levelling up you can get extra mêlée attack. How should I manage those ? If I got a character with 3 attack per turn, do I get to roll damage for all of them after succeeding the one stat check ? Or do I break the only one roll rule ?
- Spell cost guideline is not clear for me. It's a big time problem for me right now so I'll get extensive.
I love the spell philosophy in MM. You get room to improvise and basically, the more you want to do, the more you have to pay. I know you would need a few session before getting used to improvise spell cost, but the spell cost guideline is too messy for me to understand how much should cost even a basic spell.
It says first a basic spell cost 1, does either 1 heal or 1 damage. This is solid, I understand. Then it says to increase the cost by 1 to 5 for each.
Problem : It's already getting vague. 1 to 5 is a big range, and how would I know if It's +1 for instant casting time, but +3 for long range ? +5 for large area ? For extra targets I'm assuming that it cost +1 for each additional target.
Then it says "damage or healing (from a single d6 to d12 per character level)".
Problem : I don't understand if the character level is determining the size of the dice (d6 to d12) ou the number of dice you get (should a level 3 automatically get 3d6 ?). And then again, to what cost ? Does a d6 cost less than a d12 ? Does a d6 cost 1 and a d12 cost 5 ? How does the character's level impact the cost ?
So here I already don't get how much is going to cost a lvl 1 character healing spell. I would assume from what I've read that a spell called "cure wound" cost 2 points for 1d6+1 heal. (1 for basic spell, +1 for the healing tag). I assume the player can pay additional point for additional d6 (1point for 1d6).
Don't ask me how the same spell work for a level 3.
But then, in the "Wounds and Death" section, under "Magical healing", it is said : "a typical healing spell should cast 3HP per d8 of healing, with a limit to 1d8 per character level."
Explain like that it's actually more clear ! A d8 size die cost 3HP, and you have a purchase limit of 1d8 per character level. But it feels like a different rule that the one in the actual spell cost guideline, so it mess with my head...
It's too bad that you don't set more exemple like this one for typical spell cost, with such clarity, and that the only one is not even in the spell cost section.
Talking about spell exemples, I don't find them much helping, because you never state their "vanilla" cost. How much would have cost Melt them Faces if the player had not asked for specific effect ? And to what effect ?
Only "Hearing the Wise Wyrm's Councel" spell helps with that. It say it cost 8HP vanilla. But sadly it does not explain why. But then with this base cost I can understand better how the specifics then influence the cost.
I feel like the rules should set a certain basic cost for each die size, that represent the minimum you need to pay to expect a certain spell power.
Exemple : 1HP for d6, 3HP for d8, etc...
For spell that doesn't use dice size (like the wirm one), we should get a basic word scale equivalent to make our choice (ordinary for a d6, extraordinary for a d12).
Then say explicitly how a character level influence that base cost (I would go like in your healing spell exemple, with the limit on number of dice you can use).
Then only add the improv part with the bargaining for specifics. Because you want to keep some room for the GM, as it is what's so good with MM.
And I would say "add at least +1 to the cost for each instance of any of these effects : effect list
[At this time I just decided to write a guideline example to explain my point of view]
Exemple using my guideline :
ReplyDeleteSpell : charm humanoïde
Target : Captain of the Guard
Burden : Power Lock, the captain have a strong will so it must at least be a strong spell.
Also let's say he has 2 more HD than the player's level (lvl 3), so it will cost 2 extra HP.
Basic cost = 5HP (a strong spell cost 3)
The player is level 3, so he can take up to 3 additional effect. He choose "Spell duration" three time, with the GM choosing the units of hours for this spell. The spell with last 3x3 hours, 9hours.
Modified cost = 8HP
The GM ask the player to roll the dice, with disadvantage because the cost is greater than his current level.
Thanks for the feedback and detailed rules, NukaCola Light Don't feel like you're being patronising: I'm just one designer and I'll take all the help I can get :) The game wouldn't be where it is without this community and its advice and ideas.
ReplyDeleteI (very briefly) considered an evaluation system like the one you're proposing. I've done one for the dK System, which you might have seen if you're old enough ;) But I don't want the game to be bogged down by bean counting and calculations, that's why I'm handing ask this over to the referee. Also, my feeling is that parameters systems turn magic into a maths game, which is… the opposite of magic!
That said, it's your game, and an old school game to boot. You should absolutely adapt it to your needs and referee style!
I hear your critique about the way I wrote the examples and the guidelines. I may change some of this in the draft (if it's not too late - we're at the layout stage!)
(I'll answer your question about multiple attacks in a while. Gotta catch my bus!)
Something I should have said about spell costs, is: I try to stay in line with the power levels of old school D&D spells. For instance your charm example above is way too costly, as charm person can be cast by a first level magic-user.
ReplyDeleteIf you want to keep your MM game close to this paradigm, you may want to familiarise yourself with the spell lists of say, Basic D&D.
But then again it's your campaign. Magic can be anything you and the players want it to be!
Re: multiple attacks, you just roll all your damage if you pass the check.
ReplyDeleteThink of it as resolving the round's attacks. If you fail your check while fighting five goblins, you take 5d6 damage. It works the same the other way around.
Eric Nieudan on the multiple attacks, would you still roll only once if you were attacking more than one target? I guess that makes sense (because usually the attributes of the targets won't make any difference to whether you succeed or fail), I just hadn't expected it to work that way.
ReplyDeleteYeah, it's one roll per round, regardless of what's happening. Unless you decide to use the 'slow motion' rule, but that should be a rare occurrence.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the answer, means a lot. If anything, hopefully you can re-write a few sentence to make it more easy to grasp.
ReplyDeleteTotally clear for the multi-attack problem now , so that's good.
Regarding magic however, it's not really helping.
You want to keep magic a bit vague and to just let the GM "feel" the right cost. But it means that people that don't have a lot of D&D under their belt cannot use this magic system. Me, I just don't have the instinct built up yet to give a fair price like that. I've got no idea of what kind of power is level 1 or 10. Someone without much experience just don't have the knowledge to deal with that. But I guess you might say MM is intended for people with experience or that this is a personnal preference and that it doesn't have to be the case for everyone.
So for me, it's not a solution, and I'm still lost. Don't know how much to ask for what.
Then I'm thinking of two solution, but I should say in advance they are going to be pretty customed for my liking :
1 - If keeping in mind the original level of the spell in the source book is important, then I feel I could just use a system of cost like this one (http://experimentalplayground.blogspot.com/2018/08/metatoy-system-spells.html) and then just ask for more HP if someone want to do something unexpected with the spell.
It's fast, you don't do math, you just take the level of the spell, which is also its cost, and add whatever extra cost you want on top of that.
This with my experience of the dungeonverse I can use with no difficulty.
2 - If I don't care about the sourcebook material, the system I wrote last time makes enough sense to use. Because while 8HP to charm a Captain of the guard may seems too much for a seasoned D&D player like you, it seems okay to me that charming such an important character cost that much.
For me, with my background, I see such a cost like the price to pay to take the story further. Charming an unimportant character would have cost much less. It makes more sense to me than saying "this spell is level 1 so it should not cost much, and also not do that much" because someone arbitrarily wrote so in a book 40 years ago.
I feel like it's actually more coherent with what the MM spell guideline is promising to deliver (or so I believe) : You're free to do what you want, but to do more, you pay more.
I feel the way I wrote it it will be fast to give a price that fit the intention of a player. And while I understand you want a bit of mystery regarding what cost what, I would argue that the true mystery happens only when the actual magic takes place. when the spell is on, and that it react a way you didn't predict. If a spell cost 4 one time, then 6 the next time, but apply the same, I don't feel much mystery.
Then again this is something I need because I just can't wing it with what I currently know. I don't have D&D knowledge and MM, the way it's currently written, doesn't give me enough to deal with it on my own.
My rambling aims to create a system that work for me, so I understand if not much people care. I just needed to talk about this ^^
Main point really was saying that the current guideline is not clear at all for people without much experience like me.
Thanks for being cool ;)
experimentalplayground.blogspot.com - Metatoy System: Spells
NukaCola Light I'm sorry the magic system doesn't work for you. But you're doing what a good old school referee should do: change the ruleset to make it fit your needs.
ReplyDeleteEither of your proposed patches would work, and if it doesn't you can change it again :)
I'd advise you against making spells more difficult for plot related reasons though. In old school games, the referee should be a neutral interface with the world, with no ambition to tell a specific story. You get to decide if charm magic is easy or hard to use, but once that's established you should let the players use it to affect the world any way they can.
That said, if story oriented games is what you want to run, I'm not stopping you!