Spells As Skills

[ghost-angel]

This is an idea that came out of a Blog post by Vondy - the basic idea is that actually writing up a Spell for Fantasy or Urban Fantasy is a bit of a pain. Especially if you're working with ideas that use a lot of modifiers.

 

Instead of writing up a spell, or heck even cracking open the Powers Chapter, you just define a spell the same way you do a weapon, buy an appropriate skill or spell familiarity and get on with it.

 

I came up with two basic ideas - Spells are simple Skills like any other, to cast the spell you make a Skill Roll. The other is that Magic is more reliable and Spells are more like Weapons, once you know how to cast it you can do so, so you buy Spell Familiarities. Whys and Hows are completely up to the group in question - restricting access to Spells is the job of the GM.

 

A "writeup" under this system would like more like this:

Fireball; 6D6 Normal Damage in a 10 Meter Radius; Requires Gestures & Incantations; -3 Penalty to the Skill Roll.

 

no Active Points, no Real Points, no Power Build, no Frameworks, nada.

[Rapier]

Re: Spells As Skills

 

It does certainly have merit. Especially in low point campaigns. It was always a pain to try and figure out how to balance spell costs with non-spell casters. This would completely remove that need. If I had an appropriate campaign in the works I would definitely give this a try....

[薔薇語]

Re: Spells As Skills

 

Likewise, I can see some uses to this. My first question is, however, the two don't seem naturally balanced. Weapons can always be taken away, magic seems like a hard thing to just 'leave at the door.' In that way, unless the magic has physical components that can be forcibly removed like a sword, it will naturally be unbalanced in comparison.

 

La Rose

---Reading through your PDF at the moment.

-----Also, the front cover reminds me of Naruto's Rasengan. .

[Beast]

Re: Spells As Skills

 

you have a 52 pt active power with a 35 pt real cost fire ball(8.67 per die)

 

Blast 6d6, Area Of Effect (10m Radius; +3/4) (52 Active Points); Gestures (-1/4), Incantations (-1/4)

 

How are you limiting the skill roll is it general(11-)based or Int based

 

in either case at 4pts per level it only takes 12 pts to negate that -3 roll

in effect skill levels become a 1 for 1 damage class increase instead of the 2 5pt+ levels needed by the sword swingers and arrow lobbers to add 1DC with the same advantages

in this case it would take 2 levels to add 1d6 to the blast where a man would need 4 levels with a giant flyswatter to add 1d6 +advantages

 

while it could work it is unbalanced vs those with no magic

why not just make it a multipower or VPP and have all the common limitations on that

if you want a skill roll you can add that and make is so you can push

[Hierax]

Re: Spells As Skills

 

I like it. Good to see your Blog materialize in the Forums. It provides a succinct way to present the most important spell information.

 

Here's a few thoughts about Spells as Skills:

 

However, creating spells with full write-ups (Active Point/Real Point and all the modifiers) is not mutually exclusive with this Spell Skill system though; spells can still be created using the full write-up approach but bought as Skills by some characters and as powers by others. In some ways a Skill System (past a certain point) can be seen as another kind of Framework to reduce the cost of buying spells, just with the added bonus of being more concise.

 

With using the Weapon Familiarity (WF) version, maybe Spell Familiarity (SF), a parallel Combat Skill Levels (CSL) structure would be useful to put into place with similarly broad/general categories. In fact, you could use this sort of structure even with the spells that do require Skill Rolls as well as those that don't.

 

Expanding upon this, you could use the CSL structure to be considered more generally as Casting Skill Levels and have the bonus apply to the Skill Roll and link this to the WF:

 

• WF/SF 1-pt: Fireball, Skill Roll at standard CHAR/5,
  
• CSL 2-pt: +1 with Fireball,
  
• CSL 3-pt: +1 with Fire Spells (Small Group),
  
• CSL 5-pt: +1 with Elemental Spells (Large Group),
  
• CSL 8-pt +1 with All Spells.
  

This way you pay 1 point for each individual separate spell and then more points to be better either with that spell or with a group of related spells (these cost points are chosen to stick closely to the existing WF/CSL cost structure, but may make a large variety of spells too cheap as is, but is easily adjusted to taste).

 

If you want to lower the buy-in cost of each individual separate spell you could use similar cost structure for the groups WF/SF, and allow several spells to be learned at once (effectively lowering the individual separate spell cost):

 

• WF/SF 1-pt: Fireball, Skill Roll at standard CHAR/5,
  
• WF/SF 2-pt: Fire Spells (Small Group),
  
• WF/SF 3-pt: Elemental Spells (Large Group),
  
• WF/SF 5-pt: All Spells.
  

This would be like a Framework equivalent making multiple spells cheaper. You would adjust the cost increment of the WF/SF levels to match how cheap you want how broad of knowledge to be (these cost points are chosen to stick closely to the existing WF/CSL cost structure, but may make a large variety of spells too cheap as is, but is easily adjusted to taste).

 

As for restricting which/how many spells are available to a spellcaster at a particular time, spells with a Focus could enforce the availability of spell components as a control.

 

Memorization could use a Talent like Cramming as sort of a Skill VPP.

[ghost-angel]

Re: Spells As Skills

 

you have a 52 pt active power with a 35 pt real cost fire ball(8.67 per die)

 

Blast 6d6, Area Of Effect (10m Radius; +3/4) (52 Active Points); Gestures (-1/4), Incantations (-1/4)

 

How are you limiting the skill roll is it general(11-)based or Int based

 

in either case at 4pts per level it only takes 12 pts to negate that -3 roll

in effect skill levels become a 1 for 1 damage class increase instead of the 2 5pt+ levels needed by the sword swingers and arrow lobbers to add 1DC with the same advantages

in this case it would take 2 levels to add 1d6 to the blast where a man would need 4 levels with a giant flyswatter to add 1d6 +advantages

 

while it could work it is unbalanced vs those with no magic

why not just make it a multipower or VPP and have all the common limitations on that

if you want a skill roll you can add that and make is so you can push

 

The fact that you have a write-up and mention Active/Real Points means you either didn't read the PDF or missed the point.

 

Spell Skills are based off of whatever Characteristics the GM feels is appropriate. Most likely INT, as that's a classic. But it could be EGO. or PRE. Or vary by Spell Category.

 

The general assumption is you can't add more damage to a spell with Skill Levels. Part of that is that I just didn't go into it, part of that is it's one of the balances against weapon users.

[ghost-angel]

Re: Spells As Skills

 

Likewise, I can see some uses to this. My first question is, however, the two don't seem naturally balanced. Weapons can always be taken away, magic seems like a hard then to just 'leave at the door.' In that way, unless the magic has physical components that can be forcibly removed like a sword, it will naturally be unbalanced in comparison.

 

La Rose

---Reading through your PDF at the moment.

-----Also, the front cover reminds me of Naruto's Rasengan. .

 

I had two thoughts on that; first add in a Focus component that a caster needs and you've got a similar system. Another is Skill Levels are generally more useful to the guy with the sword than the guy with the Fireball - damage adding, OCV increase, DCV increase, et al.

 

Perhaps, after some more feedback here I'll address that in an updated version. There are some things I never got to adding into this document, for fear it'd end up sitting on my computer waiting to be "finished" and then never make it out.

 

(and, oddly enough the girl on the front cover is my D&D4E Character. A Warlock.)

[ghost-angel]

Re: Spells As Skills

 

I like it. Good to see your Blog materialize in the Forums. It provides a succinct way to present the most important spell information.

 

Here's a few thoughts about Spells as Skills:

 

However, creating spells with full write-ups (Active Point/Real Point and all the modifiers) is not mutually exclusive with this Spell Skill system though; spells can still be created using the full write-up approach but bought as Skills by some characters and as powers by others. In some ways a Skill System (past a certain point) can be seen as another kind of Framework to reduce the cost of buying spells, just with the added bonus of being more concise.

 

With using the Weapon Familiarity (WF) version, maybe Spell Familiarity (SF), a parallel Combat Skill Levels (CSL) structure would be useful to put into place with similarly broad/general categories. In fact, you could use this sort of structure even with the spells that do require Skill Rolls as well as those that don't.

 

Expanding upon this, you could use the CSL structure to be considered more generally as Casting Skill Levels and have the bonus apply to the Skill Roll and link this to the WF:

 

• WF/SF 1-pt: Fireball, Skill Roll at standard CHAR/5,
  
• CSL 2-pt: +1 with Fireball,
  
• CSL 3-pt: +1 with Fire Spells (Small Group),
  
• CSL 5-pt: +1 with Elemental Spells (Large Group),
  
• CSL 8-pt +1 with All Spells.
  

This way you pay 1 point for each individual separate spell and then more points to be better either with that spell or with a group of related spells (these cost points are chosen to stick closely to the existing WF/CSL cost structure, but may make a large variety of spells too cheap as is, but is easily adjusted to taste).

 

If you want to lower the buy-in cost of each individual separate spell you could use similar cost structure for the groups WF/SF, and allow several spells to be learned at once (effectively lowering the individual separate spell cost):

 

• WF/SF 1-pt: Fireball, Skill Roll at standard CHAR/5,
  
• WF/SF 2-pt: Fire Spells (Small Group),
  
• WF/SF 3-pt: Elemental Spells (Large Group),
  
• WF/SF 5-pt: All Spells.
  

This would be like a Framework equivalent making multiple spells cheaper. You would adjust the cost increment of the WF/SF levels to match how cheap you want how broad of knowledge to be (these cost points are chosen to stick closely to the existing WF/CSL cost structure, but may make a large variety of spells too cheap as is, but is easily adjusted to taste).

 

As for restricting which/how many spells are available to a spellcaster at a particular time, spells with a Focus could enforce the availability of spell components as a control.

 

Memorization could use a Talent like Cramming as sort of a Skill VPP.

 

I had something going into that really vaguely in an early draft of the document, and it ended up being deleted when I couldn't make heads or tails of my notes. As I noted already I hadn't really gone into Skill Levels (Combat or Otherwise) as part of this system. I suppose I should and add that in.

[ghost-angel]

Re: Spells As Skills

 

Thanks all for your current feedback, I've already got some ideas to put into a revision of this at some point in the near future.

[Beast]

Re: Spells As Skills

 

I just used your discrption and built it in HD 6th(not sure of what PDF you are refering to)

 

you can still use 4 pt skill levels to negate most of the effects of a skill roll

pretty much any mage type is going to have an 18 int for 13- roll(could go with a 13 int and get 1 extra level and save 1 pt

for 16 pts and have a roll of 14-

also going with what I gather would be a cookie cutter list of standardized spells

I thought the major advantage of the Hero system was to build what you want

 

 

The fact that you have a write-up and mention Active/Real Points means you either didn't read the PDF or missed the point.

 

Spell Skills are based off of whatever Characteristics the GM feels is appropriate. Most likely INT, as that's a classic. But it could be EGO. or PRE. Or vary by Spell Category.

 

The general assumption is you can't add more damage to a spell with Skill Levels. Part of that is that I just didn't go into it, part of that is it's one of the balances against weapon users.

[薔薇語]

Re: Spells As Skills

 

I just used your discrption and built it in HD 6th(not sure of what PDF you are refering to)

 

The one attached at the bottom of his first post. I has a picture of a young lady casting some kind of spell. It is the one I referred to in my initial post on the subject. PDF name is "SpellSkills."

 

La Rose.

[Beast]

Re: Spells As Skills

 

listed as thumbnail

thought it was just a picture

 

 

The one attached at the bottom of his first post. I has a picture of a young lady casting some kind of spell. It is the one I referred to in my initial post on the subject. PDF name is "SpellSkills."

 

La Rose.

[Lucius]

Re: Spells As Skills

 

I just used your discrption and built it in HD 6th(not sure of what PDF you are refering to)

 

you can still use 4 pt skill levels to negate most of the effects of a skill roll

pretty much any mage type is going to have an 18 int for 13- roll(could go with a 13 int and get 1 extra level and save 1 pt

for 16 pts and have a roll of 14-

also going with what I gather would be a cookie cutter list of standardized spells

I thought the major advantage of the Hero system was to build what you want

 

Kind of like the way warriors get a cookie cutter list of standardized weapons.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary is chewing on it

[Beast]

Re: Spells As Skills

 

if you want a specially built weapon you pay points for it just like everybody else

if it gets stolen or trashed you have the point to either build/commision a new one

I much prefer build for concept, than take 1 from list A ,2 from list B.....

 

 

Kind of like the way warriors get a cookie cutter list of standardized weapons.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary is chewing on it

[Nolgroth]

Re: Spells As Skills

 

Interesting. Not exactly the tact I am going for, but interesting nonetheless.

[Lucius]

Re: Spells As Skills

 

if you want a specially built weapon you pay points for it just like everybody else

if it gets stolen or trashed you have the point to either build/commision a new one

I much prefer build for concept, than take 1 from list A ,2 from list B.....

 

Presumably, if you want a specially built spell you can pay points for it.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

And an inefficiently built palindromedary with serious psychological issues

[ghost-angel]

Re: Spells As Skills

 

Addendum; Side Effects. Rough Thoughts.

 

Many campaigns involve the idea that a failed spell invokes some form of Side Effect - or Magical Backlash - upon the Cater. Since we're not building Powers there's no Active Points to use; This is another aspect that goes with Spell Levels. For every Level the caster takes 1D6 Normal Damage, they can apply only their basic PD/ED - no defenses from any source that isn't inherent to the character. For most this means their PD or ED Characteristic. Level 0 Spells do no damage when a casting fails, making them good spells to learn with.

 

Another idea is that the caster takes on Unluck for a period of time. Either a set amount of dice for 1 Day (or some other time period the GM feels is appropriate) per Spell Level. Or a set period of time with a number of Unluck Dice equal to the Spell Level.

 

The last idea I had was a Penalty Modifier to the next Spell Cast equal to the Spell Level of the failed spell, or equal to how much the failed Skill Roll was missed by. On top of the normal Penalties for the next spells casting. If you fail a level 3 spell them your next spell is cast at -3 + Normal Penalty (a total of -6 if you try and cast another Level 3 Spell). Or if you missed by 2 then you get an additional -2 to your next Spell Roll.

---

 

Just putting down the idea for later integration into the document.

[ghost-angel]

Re: Spells As Skills

 

Presumably, if you want a specially built spell you can pay points for it.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

And an inefficiently built palindromedary with serious psychological issues

 

That would be the idea. The Spell itself is pretty much treated exactly like any other Equipment. No points are paid for Equipment, thus no points are paid for Spells.

[Killer Shrike]

Re: Spells As Skills

 

I've done a number of skill based magic systems...been up for years:

 

Validus Familiaritas

Magecraft

Metruvius

Spellweaving

 

Validus Familiaritas is all about buying familiarities vs the actual power/spell.

[ghost-angel]

Re: Spells As Skills

 

I've read through some of those, but they all, from what I recall still deal at the core with actual Power Write-ups involving some kind of working with Active Points, Real Points, and modeling the Spells with Powers. The intent here is to avoid that completely.

 

Similar idea on the character sheet, but also taking that to the backend of campaign building.

 

I realize it's not really everyone's cup of tea; after all many Hero players love to get into the guts of building stuff with Powers and Modifiers. But some don't, or want to avoid that for a specific game while still retaining a lot of the rest of Hero's abilities - like the combat system. Vondy is one of those - and is the reason this is here - where he doesn't want to ever see "Fireball: 6D6 Blast, Area Of Effect...." but "Fireball 16-" and then knows what a Fireball will do (blow up everything in 12 meters with 8D6 Normal Damage or whatever he decides a Fireball should do).

[Killer Shrike]

Re: Spells As Skills

 

I've read through some of those, but they all, from what I recall still deal at the core with actual Power Write-ups involving some kind of working with Active Points, Real Points, and modeling the Spells with Powers. The intent here is to avoid that completely.

 

Similar idea on the character sheet, but also taking that to the backend of campaign building.

 

I realize it's not really everyone's cup of tea; after all many Hero players love to get into the guts of building stuff with Powers and Modifiers. But some don't, or want to avoid that for a specific game while still retaining a lot of the rest of Hero's abilities - like the combat system. Vondy is one of those - and is the reason this is here - where he doesn't want to ever see "Fireball: 6D6 Blast, Area Of Effect...." but "Fireball 16-" and then knows what a Fireball will do (blow up everything in 12 meters with 8D6 Normal Damage or whatever he decides a Fireball should do).

 

I'm not entirely sure what you mean. To the best of my knowledge, Vondy's system you refer to is a modified version of Magecraft, if its what I think it is.

 

Metruvius is a little odd in general, and more closely tied to AP concepts than the other three skill based systems due to the considerations of AP in conjunction with naked power advantages.

 

As to Validus Familiaritas, you just buy familiarities with flat abilities pretty much just like Weapon Fams. The only AP relationship involved is that the underlying abilities are generally built on 15 or 30 active points (or 45 AP in extreme cases) which was very deliberately chosen to track against a 2d6 Killing Attack weapon.

 

With Magecraft, the associate Skill Roll must be bought at a minimum roll under level to cover the active points of the underlying effect, and the Real Cost over 10 imposes a penalty on the roll, but all of that can be entirely rolled up or even hidden from the players if desired. On a character sheet "Fireball 15-" is all you would need to know or keep track of as a player if it wasn't desirable to show the specific build.

 

Spellweaving is very straightforward and has very little to do w/ AP or RC directly. You buy a 3d6 rollunder skill relevant to a base power, and make a skill roll to "weave a spell". AP impose penalties, so it is harder to cast high AP spells, but no hard AP cap or correlation between skill level and AP is given.

[ghost-angel]

Re: Spells As Skills

 

This stemmed from a Blog Post Vondy made - he didn't even want to go as far as writing up a Fireball on the back end.

 

Fireball 15- is ALL you need. Not even the GM needs a writeup. No Active Points are involved. No Real Points are involved. No Write-Up is involved. You can literally take the Power section of the book and ignore it.

 

Penalties to rolls in what I've written up are arbitrary -based on the GMs whim on how easy/hard a spell is to cast. If the GM wants Damage to be difficult to do with Magic even a mere 2D6 Fire Blast spell could have a -10 Penalty. There's no Active Point to even work off of.

[Killer Shrike]

Re: Spells As Skills

 

This stemmed from a Blog Post Vondy made - he didn't even want to go as far as writing up a Fireball on the back end.

 

Fireball 15- is ALL you need. Not even the GM needs a writeup. No Active Points are involved. No Real Points are involved. No Write-Up is involved. You can literally take the Power section of the book and ignore it.

 

Penalties to rolls in what I've written up are arbitrary -based on the GMs whim on how easy/hard a spell is to cast. If the GM wants Damage to be difficult to do with Magic even a mere 2D6 Fire Blast spell could have a -10 Penalty. There's no Active Point to even work off of.

Well, then thats not really all that much like weapon familiarities and "free" gear afterall then, as gear with combat application is written up.

 

 

Regardless, at some point someone needs to decide what a given effect roll actually does for a given spell, and it will be expressed in some way. It might be narrative, in which case the GM just describes what happens as they see fit. If its not narrative then the GM will have to determine how much damage to apply to the victims. Again, it can be randomized or done by GM's whim. Unless the effect does different damage as the GM's whim dictates, some kind of pattern will emerge on a rule of thumb base damage modified up or down based on degree of success. Whether the GM actually writes this base effect down or not is really just semantics - it's still hiding beneath the surface.

[Rapier]

Re: Spells As Skills

 

I notice that you keep stressing the fact that the spells have no writeups. I can understand that you are, I believe, trying to say that there is NO CONNECTION between the Skill Spell and how much the Skill costs or the modifiers on the skill. However, it appears as if this point is confusing people. There IS a writeup. Frankly, you can't have an effect in Hero (more or less) without a writeup. It is just that the writeup is independent of the Skill. Neh?

 

I'm still reading through your doc, so bare (bear?) with me. Obviously, some spells have effects with higher Active Point costs and larger effects. How are you balancing these? Or are you? Wouldn't it make sense that a 12d6 Explosive FireBall spell would be a bit more expensive than, say, a Create Light Change Environment Spell?

[薔薇語]

Re: Spells As Skills

 

It seems that the main confusion here is that Ghost Angle isn't saying that any given spell doesn't or couldn't have a write up but that the write up that the player deals with (along with the GM) is no more detailed than the gun chart in any game system book (including HERO: page 208 of 6e.2). One could write up any given weapon on that page if they desired, but we never have to. Why? Because all relevant information is handled on either that page or in our shared knowledges (guns are OAF, require one to two hands, ammo, fire straight, etc). SO, the desire is to have spells that are written up in the same manner.

 

Name.....Damage...Range...Skill Min / Mod...notes

Fireball...6d6N.......50m......13- / -2............AoE (8meters).

 

That is all the PC and GM would need to know. The GM doesn't need to write up the fireball, but he would simply have to make a judgment call, "Is a -2 the right mod given all other game elements (plot, fellow PCs, NPC, fluff, etc)?"

 

Does that clear things up? No need to write up the exact spell, just need to make a judgment call as to the value (in the context of the game, not system) of the spell. This is akin to quick notes for Guns and Swords. "Hmm, it is a finely crafted short sword. Other short swords are 1d6+1killing. This should be a 1&1/2d6 then." No need to build, just reason.

 

La Rose.