Spells (was: god legends)

[Choinski, Burton]

In this way, people would be less likely to waste it. When the victim
returns, s/he WILL be peeved. Oblivion should be used to jail those who need
time to reflect on what they have done.

I thought no time passed for the victim while under the spell, and the rest
of the universe as a whole "forgot" about him (thus, said King may be
wondering
why the hell he hired no guards when in fact his 10 elite soldiers are just
poofed).

Yes, you could just say that the GM has to really clamp down on certain
spell use (another cheap-bastard spell is Quarrels), but for new GM's not
having some
sort of "hard limit" makes running the game harder.  The goal of V2 should
be to lower the learning curve while keeping as much of the flavor as
possible.
We need to get new blood, not just cater to us elders. :}

I suppose an interesting mechanic might be to add +1 for every currently
overlapping oblivion, to be used for checing for abysmal failure only.  This
overlap represents your impinging on the balance marches.

Thus, say you have poofed 3 people into Oblivion for 1 day today.  When next
you cast the spell, you get a +3 when checking for Abysmal, but not overall
failure. If you have, before this busy day, poofed 2 other people (one for 5
years, another for a week), they would also count, since they are still over
there.  When people pop back out your "overlap" is decreased.

This means that you you only put so many people "on ice" before you are
limited by the powers that be, unless you are really lucky or really good.
With this modification, Abysmal should not impose an automatic "affects
caster", but instead use the abysmal table (or mu custom tables on Wout's
site).




----------------------------------------
Burton Choinski
Principal Software Engineer, Quality Engineering
email: burton.choinski at matrixone.com

phone: 978-322-2135
fax  : 978-452-5764

MatrixOne, Inc.
Two Executive Drive
Chelmsford, Ma 01824
www.matrixone.com

The First in Intelligent Collaborative Commerce
----------------------------------------

-----Original Message-----
From: Albert Sales [mailto:drite_mi at YAHOO.COM]
Sent: Tuesday, December 30, 2003 3:23 PM
To: POWERS-AND-PERILS at geo000.CITG.TUDELFT.NL
Subject: Re: Spells (was: god legends)


Balance (the primal force behind existance) is a powerful force. This domain
should not be toyed with lightly. Oblivion does not kill, it sends the
target to oblivion for a time. Oblivion can be theorized as a balance plane.
To use oblivion as a dumping grounds could easily piss off the powers of
balance. Oblivion should have a slight side effect: Any abysmal failure
backfires on the caster. In this way, people would be less likely to waste
it. When the victim returns, s/he WILL be peeved. Oblivion should be used to
jail those who need time to reflect on what they have done.

"Choinski, Burton" <Burton.Choinski at MATRIXONE.COM> wrote:

This god talk has me thinking again about spell balance (for P&P V2)

Thinking about ol' Tehuti, with a MEL 100 or so...does that give him EL 50
in his spells? he can put you in oblivion for 1.5 trillion years (many
universe lifetimes)...don't piss him off.

But thinking on this...oblivion is damn cheap and easy to cast.  At BMC2 it
is pretty cheap and easy to effectivly "kill" the target (at high EL it's
still cheap to cast, and the target is gone for decades), but even at low
levels you can make a bunch of targets vanish long enough to ineffectualize
them...Joe Guard is usually pretty low on the MDV, so poofing a King's
guards is pretty simple, and you get the benefit of having a clean conscious
since you didn't really kill them.

Champions/Hero System had an interesting view on things like this in that
the usfulness of the power determined the game cost.  Things like
"Transform" (i.e. turn a guy into a statue) are as expensive as leathal
damage, since if you can do a major transform and remove him from play, you
can just as easily do the same by killing him.

Do you have any plans to revamp the spell lists (including adding more
spells), and rebalance the costs?

----------------------------------------
Burton Choinski
Principal Software Engineer, Quality Engineering
email: burton.choinski at matrixone.com

phone: 978-322-2135
fax  : 978-452-5764

MatrixOne, Inc.
Two Executive Drive
Chelmsford, Ma 01824
www.matrixone.com

The First in Intelligent Collaborative Commerce
----------------------------------------

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