Spells (was: god legends)

[Tobie Bonahoom]

Oblivion is not truly the nastiest of low cost spells. I agree with the
amount of people making it harder to cast the spell, the thing about it is
that somebody could go to the plane and get the person(s) back. Creating
adventures around this has always created ineresting results. I would also
as a GM create cleaning crews that might go up there and pull random people
too :)

The worst low cost spell though is Fascination. BMC1 and does just about
that same thing as Control from Telepathic powers. We found that increasing
the BMC to 6 (same cost as Control) it helped to limit the amount of times
cast. Still a very powerful spell.

Tobie


>From: "Choinski, Burton" <Burton.Choinski at MATRIXONE.COM>
>Reply-To: Powers and Perils Fantasy Roleplaying Game Mailing List
><POWERS-AND-PERILS at GEO.CITG.TUDELFT.NL>
>To: POWERS-AND-PERILS at GEO.CITG.TUDELFT.NL
>Subject: Re: Spells (was:  god legends)
>Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2003 15:41:33 -0500
>
>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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