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Why NOT use a multipower for magic?


Panpiper

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On 5/26/2020 at 9:40 PM, dmjalund said:

I had this mental image of Magic as an EGO based martial art

 

This was sort of how I imagined "Bending" in Avatar: The Last Air Bender works. Complex (two handed) gestures, and an ego roll to control it. But it's also very common.

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7 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said:

That’s great but i asked before what other media have this been done in for examples? The Witcher and Jedis/Sith are two I can think off. Is there others? Or any game which did buck the trend? I’m not trying to bring up the class system argument just looking for examples of a classless game.

It's worth mentioning that many classless systems actually do have classes in the form of specialization. They're classless only in name, encouraging you to find your class organically over time rather than choose at the start.

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21 hours ago, Shoug said:

Eh, Gandalf is explicitly described as being a wizard, of which only 3 remain. Cosmologically speaking, wizards are incredibly unique, demi-angelic superbeings.

True enough. The reason I said the movie version cause it shows him using a sword and staff too. He not just a spell slinger so to speak. Yes I know in the Hobbit it talks about him using sword.  The movie version shows that he has skill with the sword. Btw Basic Fantasy OSR allows a magic-user to use a sword too, just a -5 penalty cause he doesn’t have any training with sword use.

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I've created a sample wizard with a Multipower, using the d20-style Vancian magic system that I developed. While spells are very cheap (one real point each, generally), the wizard is still constrained by the need to memorize spells in advance, and in the total number of spells that can be memorized.

 

I apologize if some of the spell builds are a little weird, this is just something that I threw together.

Sample Wizard.HTML

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I've paged through the literature, and in my view, literary wizards who can use a sword are more common than those who cannot. Most fantasy literature treats wizards first and foremost as adventurers, mentors, or villains. Garion from the Belgariad uses one, the Grey Mouser, Lythande, some versions of Merlin, Gandalf, most of the wizards in Vance's Dying Earth, and Harry Potter. In movies you can add the evil wizard from the Golden Voyage of Sinbad and the kid from Dragonslayer. Wizards who don't use swords include the old wizard in Dragonslayer, Radaghast the Brown, Skeeve, the conjuror from Krull, Schmendrick.... largely old people and comic relief characters. Almost any character that springs to mind when you say "wizard," with the exception of Raistlin, uses a sword.

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I think a lot of people today are influenced by anime and Japanese rpg video games.  They don't want to play Conan, they want to play some character from Final Fantasy 17 or something.

 

Looking at tabletop rpgs or old fantasy novels isn't necessarily going to tell you what your players are really looking for.

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I had magic roll just be a flat roll, with no modifiers for power, unless the spell had a disadvantage “Unstable”. But my FH games had a very different feel from others as they were low-medium Fantasy with a regionally defined magic schools. Having a magic roll defined you as one who could wield magic. What you did with it was the character’s business. 
 

The limitations were that all spells were GM defined and GM built until I deemed the player trustworthy enough to build their own. 

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18 hours ago, massey said:

I think a lot of people today are influenced by anime and Japanese rpg video games.  They don't want to play Conan, they want to play some character from Final Fantasy 17 or something.

 

Looking at tabletop rpgs or old fantasy novels isn't necessarily going to tell you what your players are really looking for.

 

Depends on the age of the player.

 

on the other hand, Anime, like "Goblin Slayer" is a pretty close following of D20 based Fantasy.

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22 hours ago, Ockham's Spoon said:

Weapon and armor restrictions by class in D&D always seemed contrived to me, and one of the things that drew me to the Hero system in the first place.

 

Even so, a warrior type is likely to have around 5-6 DEF armor, a sword and shield, maybe a couple of daggers, maybe a crossbow and 10 quarrels.  That... sounds not unlike a Multipower to me, for which they've paid no points.  Maybe STR 18 and 6-8 normal PD, for 11-14 total PD.

 

The wizard type could have all of that stuff too, but why would they, when they have a flaming bolt spell that does 3d6 RKA, a mystic shield for 10 PD/10 ED, a gust of wind (TK, 10 STR, AoE, plus Life Support), and eyes of the cat (Nightvision), for which they did pay points.  Whether or not those are in a Multipower.  

 

My point of view is that if you're specializing in weapons and armor, you're not paying points for them; in exchange, you're not building to CV/DC/DEF, but approaching it through character concept, Normal Characteristic Maxima, and Skills and Talents.  Whereas, if you're specializing in magic, you might be able to exceed "normal" DEF and DC on a regular basis, but that's a privilege for which you're paying points, again whether or not you're doing it through a Multipower.  

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2 hours ago, Chris Goodwin said:

 

Even so, a warrior type is likely to have around 5-6 DEF armor, a sword and shield, maybe a couple of daggers, maybe a crossbow and 10 quarrels.  That... sounds not unlike a Multipower to me, for which they've paid no points.  Maybe STR 18 and 6-8 normal PD, for 11-14 total PD.

 

The wizard type could have all of that stuff too, but why would they, when they have a flaming bolt spell that does 3d6 RKA, a mystic shield for 10 PD/10 ED, a gust of wind (TK, 10 STR, AoE, plus Life Support), and eyes of the cat (Nightvision), for which they did pay points.  Whether or not those are in a Multipower.  

 

My point of view is that if you're specializing in weapons and armor, you're not paying points for them; in exchange, you're not building to CV/DC/DEF, but approaching it through character concept, Normal Characteristic Maxima, and Skills and Talents.  Whereas, if you're specializing in magic, you might be able to exceed "normal" DEF and DC on a regular basis, but that's a privilege for which you're paying points, again whether or not you're doing it through a Multipower.  

 

Well, this is another good argument that has me thinking a lot more, lately, that all characters should be built with multi powers, some of which are limited by appropriate circumstances (weapons of opportunity, etc.), and let everyone build to concept without the argument over who pays points. Really, armor, weapons, equipment, etc., are all just special effects anyway, right?

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45 minutes ago, Brian Stanfield said:

 

Well, this is another good argument that has me thinking a lot more, lately, that all characters should be built with multi powers, some of which are limited by appropriate circumstances (weapons of opportunity, etc.), and let everyone build to concept without the argument over who pays points. Really, armor, weapons, equipment, etc., are all just special effects anyway, right?

 

To me, this starts looking less like Fantasy Hero and more like Fantasy Champions.  

 

Edit to add:  Adding in process.  Please stand by...

 

Edit edit:  This is worth a follow-up, so I'm going to do that instead.  Stand by...

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23 minutes ago, Brian Stanfield said:

 

Well, this is another good argument that has me thinking a lot more, lately, that all characters should be built with multi powers, some of which are limited by appropriate circumstances (weapons of opportunity, etc.), and let everyone build to concept without the argument over who pays points. Really, armor, weapons, equipment, etc., are all just special effects anyway, right?

Ninja Hero the original (at least that’s where I found it.) Had a suggestion that even though you don’t pay for weapon, you were only allowed to carry x points depending on where you were set for war or out on town not expecting combat.

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1 hour ago, Brian Stanfield said:

 

Well, this is another good argument that has me thinking a lot more, lately, that all characters should be built with multi powers, some of which are limited by appropriate circumstances (weapons of opportunity, etc.), and let everyone build to concept without the argument over who pays points. Really, armor, weapons, equipment, etc., are all just special effects anyway, right?

 

55 minutes ago, Chris Goodwin said:

 

To me, this starts looking less like Fantasy Hero and more like Fantasy Champions.  

 

Edit to add:  Adding in process.  Please stand by...

 

Edit edit:  This is worth a follow-up, so I'm going to do that instead.  Stand by...

 

My own words above are the sort of dismissive drive-by that I normally despise, so I'll illuminate a bit. 

 

By Fantasy Champions, I mean: tending toward higher power levels, most of the superheroic combat and character options, a bit less GM oversight over world design.   Pay points for everything, generally Power-focused builds.  Characters get built to DC/DEF/CV caps.  

 

By Fantasy Hero, I mean:  lower power levels, Normal Characteristic Maxima, generally Skill-focused builds, a world and magic system(s) designed by the GM.  Combat options: Bleeding, Hit Locations, Impairing/Disabling, Knockdown, Encumbrance, normal equipment doesn't cost points.  

 

It shouldn't surprise anyone that I favor the latter play style.  Given that this thread is specifically discussing Multipowers for magic, I'm not going to say this play style precludes their use, and I've been at least partly defending magic as Multipower herein... my tendency as a GM is to more heavily restrict magic as part of a magic system, which means that if Multipowers are used for magic, they fall under whatever those restrictions are.  

 

I'm pretty strongly against charging points for normal equipment.  I think it's for historical reasons; my preferences were pretty heavily formed by the standalone, Hero-as-house-system games, rather than the universal HERO System.  It's also partly because I don't want to have to work out all of the point costs for normal equipment.  (edit)  It's partly because, if a character's sword, or his sword and daggers, or his sword, daggers, shield, and crossbow, are part of a Multipower, it starts looking more like a "Brick Tricks" Multipower.  (/edit)  And partly because, to me, the combination of lower point values, Normal Characteristic Maxima, Strength Minima on weapons, encumbrance, and so on, seems to give a more organic feel than does building to caps.  

 

All of the above having been said, I have played in a short-lived Fantasy Champions game that I quite enjoyed.  I hoped it would go on longer, in fact.  

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24 minutes ago, Chris Goodwin said:

I'm pretty strongly against charging points for normal equipment.

 

My own approach to that has been that normal equipment is bought with 'gold', not character points. However a player IS allowed to buy equipment that is 'better' than regular gear, but they have to pay character points for it. Usually that holds true for me in 'any' fantasy campaign, and I would consider including it for superheroes.

 

The best fantasy campaign I ever played in by the way was a five year long game of 600 point 'fantasy champions'. We didn't define it that way, but that is what it amounted to. We had a morally ambiguous ultra-vampire, a Tarzan character Burroughs would have been proud of, an immortal warrior as old as the universe (my character), and a sorceress with a huge VPP that enabled a spell book literally a half inch thick of predefined spells. The game ended when we successfully resolved the main quest of saving the continuity of sapience from a universe destroying event.

 

None of our characters actually had a multipower, but I doubt our GM would have blinked if we did.

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Not every ability is appropriate in every campaign.  Thematically not everything fits together.  In a gritty medieval world, you aren't going to want your farm boy adventurer to fly off in his X-Wing.  But in other campaigns, airships and magitech robot suits might be awesome.  Those sorts of decisions are up to the players and the GM, to see if they can come to some kind of agreement on what to play.

 

If you want to get a D&D vibe with different character types, which a lot of Fantasy Hero published materials (at least the ones I've seen) kind of encourage, then you're gonna have to deal with the free equipment problem.  Because D&D doesn't let wizards wear armor or use good weapons.  If you want to maintain that D&D feel, then you're basically allowing everyone but magic users to have free equipment.  If you don't care about the D&D feel, and are totally cool with Zandar the wizard running around in heavy plate with a battle axe, then more power to you.  But what I've seen with a lot of published characters are sucky wizards that spend all their points buying "magic spell" versions of equipment that the fighters get for free.

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On June 8, 2020 at 3:38 PM, Ockham's Spoon said:

Weapon and armor restrictions by class in D&D always seemed contrived to me, and one of the things that drew me to the Hero system in the first place.

 

 

Ditto!

 

D&D had me _convinced_ that I hated fantasy role playing even more than I dislike the genre overall.

 

Our original "hey, let's play fantasy with Champions!" game was something we just sort of _slipped_ into, and I have to say that the difference between "fantasy HERO (cough-cough-*champions*-cough cough) and D&D wasn't just extreme, it was both liberating and eye-opening.

 

However, I _do_ tend to discourage Lightning Mages from wearing metal armor. ;)

 

 

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3 hours ago, Chris Goodwin said:

My own words above are the sort of dismissive drive-by that I normally despise, so I'll illuminate a bit. 

No worries, I didn't take it that way. I already knew what you'd say and inserted it into my mind for you! :D

 

3 hours ago, Chris Goodwin said:

I'm pretty strongly against charging points for normal equipment.  I think it's for historical reasons; my preferences were pretty heavily formed by the standalone, Hero-as-house-system games, rather than the universal HERO System.  It's also partly because I don't want to have to work out all of the point costs for normal equipment.  (edit)  It's partly because, if a character's sword, or his sword and daggers, or his sword, daggers, shield, and crossbow, are part of a Multipower, it starts looking more like a "Brick Tricks" Multipower.  (/edit)  And partly because, to me, the combination of lower point values, Normal Characteristic Maxima, Strength Minima on weapons, encumbrance, and so on, seems to give a more organic feel than does building to caps.  

 

So I guess I should have been clearer. Multipowers aren't necessary for what I was saying. I'm riffing off of this conversation earlier this year, and I haven't been able to get it out of my head. The whole discussion then was about dividing magic costs or not, a la Fantasy HERO Complete dividing spells by 3 to reduce cost (If I remember correctly). Again, this amounts to  Multipower without calling it a framework: you just get the cost benefit for free. 

 

So there's nothing that says you couldn't charge points for everything, as suggested by Doc Democracy in the link, but keep the DCs low. No need for Multipowers either. But the ongoing debate in Fantasy HERO is how to keep free equipment balanced with purchased spells. Simply making everything purchased solves the issue. The equipment builds are all available if you get the Equipment Guide, or any number of sources. Use those guidelines, and add another Limitation: weapon of opportunity, and you're good to go. So a fighter has a 2d6 KA with all the typical data (OAF, real weapon, roll required, etc., and add "weapon of opportunity") and he can use any weapon he has a Weapon Familiarity with. If he loses it, he's without his "power" until he finds another weapon. He can also have an RKA to go with it, with a similar build. Armor would follow the same model, with PD caps based on the campaign guidelines. Make them really low for low fantasy, or really high for Fantasy Champions. Levers, dials and switches to your taste, and we no longer have to argue about how much a spell should cost to "balance" the free sword that requires a WF of some sort. The arguments become moot (ok, who am I fooling? The arguments continue on just because . . .) and we have some internal consistency.

 

I know, I'm taking this discussion sideways, but it really comes back to the same issue as we usually see: how to balance magic with mundane equipment. All that mundane equipment, by the way, that was built with the Powers rules in the first place anyway. It's all just special effects for the powers. Giant sword-wielding plate-male wearing warrior? Same as a KA casting, Armor casting wizard. Just different special effects. Spell ends? Re-cast it. Sword breaks? Just get another one. 

 

Ok, that's just a little bit more description for what I'm proposing. Just another way to conceive of it.

 

One quick edit: I forgot that the discussion I linked was revolving around Resource Pools for magical items and equipment. I misremembered it as Multipowers and inserted my foot into this discussion. Sorry. But the point still holds: once people can start buying magic items in Fantasy HERO, all bets are off as to why we all shouldn’t be paying points for our equipment anyway. 
 

I actually prefer low fantasy with little to no magic, but it still holds, just with much lower campaign limits. Even heroic level games like Danger International offered ways to use character points to buy more money in order to get better equipment. So why not just eliminate that mediating step and just pay points for equipment?

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26 minutes ago, Brian Stanfield said:

So there's nothing that says you couldn't charge points for everything, as suggested by Doc Democracy in the link, but keep the DCs low. No need for Multipowers either. But the ongoing debate in Fantasy HERO is how to keep free equipment balanced with purchased spells. Simply making everything purchased solves the issue.

 

I've literally spent decades fighting the misconception that Fantasy Hero requires players to work out point costs for every object their character picks up.  Simply making everything purchased solves the issue because you won't have any players.

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From a balance standpoint, making characters pay for their equipment works, but that results in some odd situations.  Does my warrior have to pay character points to get a better sword?  Can he loan/give his old sword to a fellow PC or NPC?  When they find a magic sword, will he not be able to use it until he has earned the character points to do so?  When my rogue character steals a magic item from the bandit king, did he just get a bunch of free character points?  Now I can hand-wave around some of these issues to keep the flow of the campaign going, but they are conceptually odd and cumbersome.  In a superhero campaign, characters don't swap equipment around much, so having equipment as part of their power set is less clunky.  But in a fantasy setting where equipment upgrades and exchanges are fairly common it is a bit more awkward. 

 

Maybe if you created a gold to XP exchange rate you could smooth it out, so a warrior could spend 100 gold to buy enough character points for his new sword, while the wizard could spend a similar sum to purchase a scroll with a new spell.  Anyone ever tried something like that?

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9 hours ago, Old Man said:

 

I've literally spent decades fighting the misconception that Fantasy Hero requires players to work out point costs for every object their character picks up.  Simply making everything purchased solves the issue because you won't have any players.

Ok then why pay for spells? Or Racial abilities?

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12 hours ago, Old Man said:

 

I've literally spent decades fighting the misconception that Fantasy Hero requires players to work out point costs for every object their character picks up.  Simply making everything purchased solves the issue because you won't have any players.


I appreciate your fight against that misconception. I was, of course, proposing an alternative to the equally aggravating problem in Fantasy HERO of who pays, who doesn’t pay? I’m not taking the stance that people must play this way, but several people have already said that the did play this way already, so I don’t think it’s going to kill the HERO System. It’s just a hypothesis on my part. Your mileage obviously varies. :hex:

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11 hours ago, Ockham's Spoon said:

Maybe if you created a gold to XP exchange rate you could smooth it out, so a warrior could spend 100 gold to buy enough character points for his new sword, while the wizard could spend a similar sum to purchase a scroll with a new spell.  Anyone ever tried something like that?


I mentioned something about this at the very end of my post. Danger International had a way to spend character points for more money to buy better equipment. It worked great. It seems like a Resource Pool could offer a similar result. 
 

11 hours ago, Ockham's Spoon said:

From a balance standpoint, making characters pay for their equipment works, but that results in some odd situations.  Does my warrior have to pay character points to get a better sword?  Can he loan/give his old sword to a fellow PC or NPC?  When they find a magic sword, will he not be able to use it until he has earned the character points to do so?  When my rogue character steals a magic item from the bandit king, did he just get a bunch of free character points?  Now I can hand-wave around some of these issues to keep the flow of the campaign going, but they are conceptually odd and cumbersome.  In a superhero campaign, characters don't swap equipment around much, so having equipment as part of their power set is less clunky.  But in a fantasy setting where equipment upgrades and exchanges are fairly common it is a bit more awkward. 


The balance standpoint is the only reason I brought this up in this context. So, the “found” equipment (theft, treasure, gifts, purchase) used to be what garnered experience points in D&D (not to defend that game right now). So the equipment was the experience points that allowed one to advance. Fantasy HERO is fortunately set up differently, but the found magical equipment sets up a different kind of problem, as is always discussed in these forums: now everyone is carrying “free spells” in their flaming swords and exploding arrows and such, so why does a wizard have to pay for his magic? It’s obviously going to depend on the particular campaign setting, so can’t be answered in any “universal” way for all settings. But it’s still another balancing problem which kicks the can down the road. 
 

This is why I simply hypothesize the “pay for everything” approach. I don’t want people to have to build everything, as Old Man says. That’s a total pain. But the Equipment Guide is pretty thorough, so they won’t have to. But realistically speaking, who pays attention to all their mundane equipment? I’m playing in a D&D game right now where I have a bag full of stuff that I started with. I probably won’t use most of it. Let’s face it, the only equipment people really care about is their weapons, and we obsess over their  capabilities. That’s the quickest way to break a good D&D game, and Fantasy HERO suffers from a similar problem. 
 

Perhaps I say that if you keep that magic item you stole from the bandit king, then you should pay points for it, which is pretty much the approach that Fantasy HERO suggests in several places. Cool. It’s like a Power Trick in Champions: use it once, that’s ok, use it many times, you should pay points for it. I’d say the same thing with magic items in Fantasy HERO. What about the mundane equipment? Well, that’s why I suggested a Resource Pool. I’ve got my “adventurers pack” full of stuff that I never really think about. I’ve never stopped to lament that I only had ten torches when I should have bought five more. We almost never even us the first one, except perhaps for narrative effect. It’s just there, in the background where it belongs because who really cares about that crap anyway? So, let’s just make the adventurers pack a Resource Pool that I have a set number of points for, and I’ll fill it with equipment worth that many points, but maybe it’ll be rearranged when we get to town. I’m just spitballing here, but it works. It worked in Danger International too, all you have to do is justify how it works (how do you get the items, etc.) Any found item can be added to the pack, but if you want to keep it it will need to replace some other item. 
 

The “loaned” sword issue is already resolved in what I wrote above: everyone should have their own Attack Power defined with a “weapon of opportunity” Limitation. If swords are defined in my game as 2d6 KA on average, then I take that Power with the “weapon of opportunity” limitation. It could be my sword, your sword, or one I found in the lost temple of Thunder Mountain. If it’s a “magic” sword, maybe it simply adds Skill Levels to your ability to use a sword. Apply them to DCs or OCV, However you want. Remember, the “magic” on a sword is a special effect. I hand the sword to you, you get the Skill Levels that go with the magic sword.
 

What does that do to our accounting of our Character Points? Well, things get a bit wonky once I start lending out my magical equipment. This is why I suggest a Resource Pool, which is a fancy way in HERO-speak of saying, “I’m going to handwave this.” Seriously. If the magic sword, packaged as Skill Levels, gets lost or is lent to my friend, I’m out those specific points and I’m entitled to replace them with some other equipment of equivalent value. And the borrower would have to lose some points to be able to keep it. If it’s just temporary, who cares? Don’t do the accounting because it’s a pain. And let’s be honest, who does all the nit picky accounting for all their gear anyway? 
 

My point is this: we all choose to ignore or handwave certain things, and enforce others in our games. That’s GM fiat and not some universal RAW. Some people use Multipowers for magic, others don’t, others allow for a divisor to the real cost. Then they decide what to do about equipment, magic equipment, magic weapons, etc. plenty of different solutions have been offered in the forums. Again, it’s GM fiat, it’s campaign setting-specific, and it’s really up,to the taste of the group. Do we waste our time tallying every bit of weight that we carry around in order to enforce encumbrance  rules? Some do, some don’t. It’s important to some people that they are carrying 15 rather than 10 torches. Others will just handwave the problem away. I’m just offering an internally consistent way to address some of these problems. I don’t claim wrong-bad-fun if nobody else wants to try it out. 

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I never played a Danger International game, but I am intrigued with the Resource Pool concept as a way to manage 'experience' and money.  I may have to give that a try in my next campaign.  That does make it a little more D&D-esque as you note, but if I give a warrior a big chunk of character points via a magic sword, then I can more easily justify letting the wizard buying an expensive new spell without having to resort to a multipower and trying to balance it.

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