http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/topic/magic-manipulating-magic Gaming Outpost Discussions » Topic: Magic manipulating magic en-US Thu, 24 May 2012 11:27:59 +0000 http://bbpress.org/?v=1.0.2 q http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/search.php http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/topic/magic-manipulating-magic#post-6383 Tue, 05 Aug 2008 01:27:43 +0000 M. J. Young 6383@http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/ <p>Well, I'm glad that I've got good answers. I think it comes from really understanding the system--which is why you so often do come up with the good answers on your own.</p> <p>--M. J. Young </p> http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/topic/magic-manipulating-magic#post-6370 Sun, 03 Aug 2008 22:30:49 +0000 WilliamTWodium 6370@http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/ <p>Useful, but not so universally useful that I can't explain why wizards everywhere aren't doing it all the time. Good.</p> <p>You know, every time you explain something like this, I feel as though the solution was so simple that I really ought to have hit on it on my own. That's the sign of a good answer, I think. </p> http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/topic/magic-manipulating-magic#post-6364 Sun, 03 Aug 2008 19:47:42 +0000 M. J. Young 6364@http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/ <p>It's an interesting connundrum.</p> <p>I see a couple factors that play in favor of a low TF. One is that you could have doubled the duration of the original spell at a -10 penalty; the other is that you're taking the risk of failure or botch on the extension skill.</p> <p>However, a 0:12 TF for a spell that doubles the duration of a skill that already lasts several hours does seem small.</p> <p>How does this play: The base skill is an extend duration of effect for spells of a narrowly defined type, and has a 1:10 TF:duration ratio. You get -10 if it affects spells of a "broadly defined" type, and -20 if it affects all spells.</p> <p>The duration is the amount of time by which the effect is extended. Thus if you extend the duration of an 8 hour effect using a skill with a 1:00 TF, you extend it to 8:10--unless you pack a lot of sit-mods into it and then burn them up increasing the duration of the extension. Thus you can make the duration 20:00, 40:00, 1:20:00, 2:40:00, or 5:20:00 by taking penalties of, respectively, -10, -20, -30, -40, or -50, and then you can reduce the penalties by upping the ritual accordingly.</p> <p>How does that feel?</p> <p>--M. J. Young </p> http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/topic/magic-manipulating-magic#post-6356 Sat, 02 Aug 2008 19:16:16 +0000 WilliamTWodium 6356@http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/ <p>I'm in search of game balance advice. In the description for M4@8 Manipulate Magic, it says that if the spell targets magic and there is still a magical effect after the spell succeeds, it's a skill under that heading. It gives suggested baselines for an array of uses, but it doesn't address a spell whose purpose is merely to extend the duration of another effect already in progress. Ordinarily, I'd just eyeball it, but this struck me as something with some serious potential for imbalace. (Let's see, I'll take a +20 sit-mod on the three-hour climate control for cutting the duration down to 7:30:00, then I'll cast my guaranteed-success three-minute Extend Duration spell - that's +40 for the time factor - and I'll do that five times for +RS% to the duration each time . . .)</p> <p>So, I guess I'm looking for opinions in three areas:</p> <p>1) What should the baseline time factor be? Most M4@8 Manipulate Magic skills run about twelve seconds, but I think this one's atypical. The standard one-to-ten TF-to-duration rule of thumb isn't much help here either.</p> <p>2) How should the length of the extension be determined - based on the TF of the target skill, based on the TF of the extension skill, or fixed somehow and thus relative to neither?</p> <p>3) How narrowly, at baseline, should such skills be defined? This could range from, at one extreme, a single Extend Duration skill for any in-place magical effect to, at the other, a separate skill for each specific spell the caster would like to be able to extend. What should be the standard, and what should be craziness calling for ad-hod adjustments to the other baseline values? </p>