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## A Whole New World Project

General questions, debates, and rants about RPGs

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cthulhu
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### Re: A Whole New World Project

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Post by cthulhu » Thu Aug 23, 2007 11:47 pm

You could make the duration of all spells capped at 1/round per level and remove the ability to actually make anything from raw mana (summoning temporially is okay) and you'd reign in alot of things. For example, wishing for items is now shot in the face. So is fabricate. And all the stupid create food spells. and so forth.
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Manxome
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### Re: A Whole New World Project

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Post by Manxome » Thu Aug 23, 2007 11:56 pm

How many rounds would summoned gold/items need to last in order for you to trade them to an unsuspecting merchant for real goods?
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RandomCasualty
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### Re: A Whole New World Project

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Post by RandomCasualty » Fri Aug 24, 2007 12:09 am

> Manxome at [unixtime wrote:1187913411[/unixtime]]How many rounds would summoned gold/items need to last in order for you to trade them to an unsuspecting merchant for real goods?

Well you could just make them obviously magical and have everyone know that they're temporary.
I like the idea of having it have a duration that lasts as long as you don't use the slot for anything else. So if you want you can set one of your slots on fire and get a suit of full plate, but the armor vanishes once you try to prepare something else or try to refresh the slot as a sorcerer.
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cthulhu
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### Re: A Whole New World Project

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Post by cthulhu » Fri Aug 24, 2007 12:24 am

Err. Let me change what I meant by 'summon temporialy'
You can call a spirit from the outer planes as per summon monster XVII, but making coins out of magic is not okay.
However, I don't think coins made of illusion are even a problem, because you can cast dominate on the merchant and make him give you all his stuff.
Either way he is going to notice a minute later.
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Captain_Bleach
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### Re: A Whole New World Project

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Post by Captain_Bleach » Sat Aug 25, 2007 5:56 am

Things that I learned from RPG games:
1.) Screw game balance; RPG games could be as broken as hell, but as long as everybody has fun, it does not matter. My casual players still have fun, despite being inferior in almost every way to spell casters. Obviously imbalanced, yes. Fun for everybody? Yes.
2.) If you MUST adhere to the design of game balance, take a feat, class, whatever, and find every possible way to break the game with it. If you cannot find even ONE way to break the game, then it is apparently balanced. (Keyword: apparently)
3.) I hate d20 magic. Yes, it is something that I have no shame in discussing. The fact that ANY society in D&D remains feudal when spell casters and creation-based "permanent" magic is around is socially impossible. Humans are resourceful little buggers; when it comes to surviving, it is one of the things that we do best. There is nothing stopping spell casters from mass-casting Wall of Iron to cheapen the value of iron to a large degree in the economy. Medieval peasants are a rather uneducated lot, but that speaks nothing of raw aptitude.
4.) I don't believe in game balance. It is impossible to balance any RPG game without making every single game mechanic the same.
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Captain_Bleach
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### Re: A Whole New World Project

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Post by Captain_Bleach » Sat Aug 25, 2007 5:59 am

> PhoneLobster at [unixtime wrote:1187049973[/unixtime]]Alright then.
> Luck: Even if remove magical item bonuses from the game you barely even notice this bonus. No one cares about it.
> Great Mentor: Making other people better action for action is not so great, doing so as your one special "I don't need no stinking items" ability is a bit confusing. I wouldn't take this ability, but I suppose you might give it to cohorts or something.
> Signature Item: You better not be giving any magic weapons to anyone else. Ever. Other wise this ability is basically the ability to have the weapon everyone else has anyway. Now it COULD make a kind of sense if intended to be used with a signature item that just happens to be say a +1 weapon with a +X amount of special abilities to give it a +1/2 CL enhancment bonus AND a million special abilities, but, I suspect you would frown on that and in no way intend that to be the case.
> Tough it out: When your corpse is lieing on the floor the minotaur and the troll will ask each other "Did he have Luck or Tough it out?" and they'll shrug their shoulders and realise they can't tell whether you had one, the other, niether OR BOTH.
> Barren: OK, needs a new name. Meanwhile, why not +10 then +15, or even more, especially if magic is really rare anyway. If luck worked half the way it is supposed and magic is suddenly on the special bus then the girl who gets shafted with Barren will feel bad for more reasons than having to describe herself as 'Barren' all the time. Meanwhile as it really works its probably better than Luck and Tough it out, (pretty much a +5 save bonus) but still small enough that the majority of the time the Evil Necromancer will be joining the after fight party with the troll and minotaur to try and puzzle out which 'special' ability you had.
> Special Attack: Sold, every character ever takes this ability when faced with this list. Because its way better than the rest. Its still evocation level on the big magic scale but if you intend to kick magic in the nuts repeatedly like you seem to suggest then 'special' attack for the win. Oh but you don't describe it in sufficient detail for someone to understand precisely how this ability functions.
> As for the rest, a lot of its not making much sense. like...

> > wrote:Maybe one or two signature abilities; gaining too much special abilities just makes characters over-reliant on something else.

> Over reliant on what? Not sucking in their own right?
> If every ability on this list did what you want it to do and operated to create equipment independence (which they don't) and you gave EVERY ability to EVERYONE, in order to achieve your stated goal of equipment independence.
> Then what have they become over reliant on anyway?
> I see similar problems with many of your other sweeping statements in regards to means and ends.

I changed the special abilities.
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Manxome
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### Re: A Whole New World Project

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Post by Manxome » Sat Aug 25, 2007 6:26 am

> Captain_Bleach at [unixtime wrote:1188021370[/unixtime]]Things that I learned from RPG games:
> 1.) Screw game balance; RPG games could be as broken as hell, but as long as everybody has fun, it does not matter. My casual players still have fun, despite being inferior in almost every way to spell casters. Obviously imbalanced, yes. Fun for everybody? Yes.

I believe there is a sizable demographic of players for whom increased game balance tends to make the game more fun. Especially if your GM doesn't have a godlike command of the game and can't accurately determine what challenges she can or can't throw at an arbitrary, unbalanced party without killing them (even most people who usually don't care about game balance still get annoyed when they die).
Not true of all players all the time, but I believe it's a significant enough issue that at least some games should be seriously concerned about it. There exists a market for balanced games.

> Captain_Bleach at [unixtime wrote:1188021370[/unixtime]]4.) I don't believe in game balance. It is impossible to balance any RPG game without making every single game mechanic the same.

So, in addition to believing it's not important, you also believe it doesn't exist? Seems like you could have shortened your list a bit.
I don't think you should view balance as a hit-or-miss thing. Game balance is a matter of degree. There's a big difference between an imbalance that lets you win 60% of the time in same-level duels instead of the intended 50% and an imbalance that lets you rule the multiverse at level 1.
There are a whole lot of games out there (maybe not ones you'd call RPGs) which are popularly accepted as basically balanced and which involve more than one distinct game mechanic. RPGs are a particularly nasty case for balance on account of the fact that they're open-ended, and part of the design is that the players and the GM are specifically intended to make up crap that the game designers didn't think about and throw it into the middle of the game. That means that players always have the option of breaking the game and throws a lot of noise into the system, but I still think it's entirely possible to talk about more and less balanced game systems.
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Captain_Bleach
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### Re: A Whole New World Project

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Post by Captain_Bleach » Sun Aug 26, 2007 2:56 am

I was exaggerating the "I don't believe in game balance" bit. I just believe that it would be a second priority for certain types of gamers. I can sympathize with the want to have everything be not grossly imbalanced, but there are some people, like some of my players, out there that as long as they get a chance to act awesome and kill things, then they're more than happy.
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