One of my goals for this year is to make shorter blog posts. I feel that I’ve been rambling trying to make sure I explain everything, and that doesn’t necessarily make for an enjoyable read.
So when I wrote the Monsters Never Save post, I left some things unexplained. Then Zomus offered suggestions that I’d already considered. That makes me feel bad, like I wasted his time.
This week’s post is addressing his reply to that post. His reply is in italics.
NPC Casters
For NPC casters, you could do similarly to how you’ve changed to-hit rolls from monsters into defense rolls for PCs. For enemy magic, the target could have a saving roll.
That works perfectly for determining whether or not the spell had its intended effect, but what about the other part of the roll? If you remember from the original magic-system post, a failed roll indicates more than the final result. It also determines if the caster has used up his magical energy reserves for the day.
Let’s say that an NPC wizard tosses a fireball at a player character. The PC makes the save and only takes half damage. Do I count that as the failed casting roll? Is the enemy out of spells? Answering “yes” to that makes enemy wizards weaker; answering “no” means I need another way to determine when they’re out of mojo.
High Level Monsters
For high level monsters, perhaps this is another factor which bumps up the difficulty of the spellcasting, which will offer that same tiered difficulty of success.
Again, if the roll was just determining if the spell had the desired effect upon the target, this would make sense. However, a failed roll also means that the spell-caster is done (“out of magic”) for the rest of the game-day.
It makes sense that a stronger monster would more easily shake off a spell, but it doesn’t make sense (to me) that casting a spell at a stronger monster will increase the risk of using up your magic for the day.
PVP
As for PvP…I feel like there’s a few routes. You could adjust the rolls for PvP so the combined spell check roll and saving roll from the two players amounts to ~50% total. You could use the context to determine which is the more difficult thing to do (succeed the spell cast or save against it), then have the just that player roll. Or perhaps (if you trust your players), you could have just the casting roll but have the target and caster role-play the outcome (with your guidance) to see what impact is had. Or some other fourth, superior option I haven’t considered. =)
Yeah. I considered the one roll vs the other, but can’t decided which is best.
That’s It
That’s it for this week. No new solutions, no new problems.
Thanks for the try, Zomus! Let me know if you come up with anything else!
Thanks for the follow-up post, and no wasted time here! I thoroughly enjoy the read each post!
ReplyDeleteI hadn't considered the additional side-effects of the spell checks for failures, so I can certainly see where my suggestions leave a gap.
At present, the best thoughts I have about remedying the situation involve additional rolls being assigned to the non-player character, which goes against the whole point.
With the added information about the spell effects, I'm inclined to think the PvP setting might need to be contextual - i.e. a party member secretly casting on a party member without their knowledge would only require them to roll like any other spell. But if in a friendly (or not-so-friendly) magic duel, I almost feel like it would need a 'split-roll' idea, but that starts to get into the weeds of additional ruleset complexity which deters certain actions...and now I'm rambling in your comments section. XD
As for the other two parts, a couple quick thoughts:
NPC spellcaster - perhaps there's a threshold for 'use-up', which the DM doesn't communicate but can then fluidly work in. It would still depend on the player's saving roll, but act as a pseudo-random occurrence to simulate spell randomness from the opponent.
Similary for higher level monsters, perhaps having a threshold for just the spell's impact would work - say, -2 means that a 14 still succeeds the spell, but the effect the monster experiences would act like they had rolled a 12. This could get tricky for the DM and mildly confusing for players though.