IVhorseman wrote:Spells with Durations (speed buff, armor buff, ripped and buff) are (tentatively) treated by leaving the dice used to buff with the recipients and the caster is forced to take a cumulative -1 to skill per die left behind.
This is also the system used for necromancy, which I think somebody asked about further down in the thread - you raise up a skeleton and hand him a couple of your dice to act as his Move and Skill and whatever else he needs. It's a pricey way to raise troops, and you take the Skill penalty for as long as he's out walking around, but you get the dice back whenever he dies (or you decide to stop animating him) and then you can just raise another one. Meanwhile, you get to kick it back in your wizard tower drinking magic tea or whatever while he's out in the wild fighting with clerics.
Dr StrangeBrik wrote:This is great, but it’s going to take a few example scenarios to get my head around this.
I think this section is going to need example scenarios more than almost any other section of the book. But that's okay, because the Supernatural Powers examples are usually the funniest anyway.
Dr StrangeBrik wrote:Do you roll your regular skill die (d6 for normal minifigs) first to determine if the spell cast is a success to begin with, and then start adding the Supernatural dice for the effect (and modification of the effect) of the spell (damage etc.) one at a time, or do you just use the SN dice from the outset.
I've gone back and forth on this a bunch of times over the past year or two. Since there's no real reason not to use the maximum number of dice on every effect (since you only get one Action per turn, unless I come up with some clever way - maybe a new Specialty - to save dice for defenses without requiring an Action), I'm thinking that the best thing is to start with the Skill Roll to establish how many dice you can use, but then (except on a Critical Failure) to allow the unit to spend one or more of its Super dice to boost that Skill roll if necessary.
This means that you'll have to be able to assign and roll the dice one at a time: "Okay, this d8 is for extra Skill. A one? Crap, I guess this next one is also for extra Skill then." Etc.
Whatever Skill is left over after you've purchased your dice is used as the Skill Roll for any attacks or ranged actions you're doing - so if you're attacking with a Use:2 weapon, you'd better make sure to leave 2 Skill left over after assigning dice. This takes some of the element of chance out of attacking, since it gives you the power to effectively decide that you're going to hit with every attack just by budgeting your dice properly, but I haven't figured out a good way to bring randomness back into that.
Dr StrangeBrik wrote:Secondly, how does one determine range? The fireball is traditionally fired from the spellcaster’s hand, not thrown, so would I use the standard ranged weapon distances of 5” or 10” (depending on whether it was a one-handed or two handed cast…).
If the spellcaster has specifically bought his fireball as a standard Ranged Weapon or something, then it starts out with standard Ranged Weapon stats, and Supernatural effects just add to those stats. If he's creating it out of nothing, which seems more likely, then it starts with a Range of 0" before adding any Supernatural range. You might remember that when Gandalf cast fireballs, he did it by picking up pinecones and throwing them; in this case you'd be casting the fireball effect on the pinecone, and it'd start with standard thrown equipment item stats. That depends on there being some pinecones lying around though, which is probably not the case in most battles.
Rev. Sylvanus wrote:I've used this supernatural dicepool rule set in my last three battles. Here are some things i noticed:
This is fantastic. I really appreciate getting to hear play results for new rules from outside my immediate circle.
Rev. Sylvanus wrote:Early in the game, wizards can tend to be indestructible. That is, if your opponent is still to far away to screw with and you don't feel like overloading on buffs, then you've just got this pool of potential armor equal to all your Supernatural dice. On paper this sounds a little broken, but in my last battle, all of my wizards died the turn immediately following a big spell attempt. SO, they can be very defensive, but that only means you aren't actually casting anything.
One of the bits I'm still hung up on is this one - how to best handle dice used as defense. Obviously a wizard should be able to choose, during his turn, to buff his Armor if he has nothing better to do.
But what's the best way to handle the case where he's got unspent dice and attacks are incoming? I want to treat it as a Response Action, so that he has to at least make a Skill Roll to see if he gets his defense activated in time - that'll also burn through some of his Skill points for spending dice, so it'll act as a penalty for not having prepared defenses in advance. I'd even go so far as to say the attacker should be allowed to wait to make his Attack Roll until after the defender has assigned dice, so that he won't know the exact amount of Skill he'll need save to be sure his defenses activate in time.
I mentioned earlier that I was thinking of making a Specialty to allow Supernatural units to spend dice on defense even after they've already used their Action for the turn, but I think it's just as interesting to force them to choose to put lasting buffs on themselves early in the battle that they may have to deactivate later to add dice to some other big spell. At that point they're most likely already in the heat of battle; do they have time to spend a turn's Action to reapply the defense buff, or are they too busy fighting? That's the kind of forced decision that makes for more interesting gameplay, I think.
Rev. Sylvanus wrote:Some of my playmates are dissatisfied that there are no necromancy provisions. Or healing provisions (but I guess we are waiting for the medic?)
Necromancy (and I guess a very lame form of healing) are handled through the duration effects that IVhorseman mentioned in the original post. But the Mediks are on the way in Chapter 10.
Rev. Sylvanus wrote:Though I haven't been able to confirm it yet, one of the more powerful moves I can see happening (in fantasy) is creating "wizard bunkers" of infantry or archers whom the wizard places large armor and damage buffs on.
This sounds like a believable tactic, I wouldn't be surprised to see it. The best way would be to give area effect dice to one of the units within the group, so that all allied units within a certain distance would receive the benefits of the buffs. The opposing strategy would then be to target the guy providing the buffs to all the other guys.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/09/21
Rev. Sylvanus wrote:A final note: versatile as the spells are, they will never be as reliable as simple weapons. In my last battle, my wizard had a very large dice pool but slew less CP worth of points (40CP) than my opponents "wizard" who was carrying a flamethrower staff (62CP).
That's the goal! Hopefully it always works that way, reliability vs. versatility is the intended trade-off. Well the real goal was actually to get those sabotage dice into the game, but the reliability-vs-versatility thing at least makes it respectable. I hope.
*CRAZYHORSE* wrote:Although I still feel that "especially in a fantasy setting" there is no real reason to limit your mage to a certain kind of clichés, because isn't it so that just a mage could do everything and even more a fire mage could do because the fire mage would be bound to fire based magic and the mage to any kind of magic?I think that you should either have to choose a more specific power or get bonuses if you choose a more specefic power.
I completely disagree - "especially in a fantasy setting," wizards need to have those clichés for exactly the same reasons Heroes do - because otherwise you end up with a unit who "could do everything." It's easy to imagine a generic no-name wizard who could cast any spell you can imagine, but once you have to base him on an actual wizard character from popular fiction then the cliché starts providing some useful direction and boundaries. Saruman and Voldemort are both evil wizards, but they express their supernatural abilities in very different ways.