Nuclear Beasts

Spell Damage

I kind of need some "standard" rules for determining spell damage. Something like...

• Trivial: 1d6+DRV
• Minor: 2d6+DRV
• Major: 3d6+DRV
• Dramatic: 4d6+DRV
• Legendary: 5d6+DRV

That's probably not extreme enough, really. A "Legendary" spell that averages 19.5 points of damage isn't very legendary, especially if you get to save for half. I mean, it's a lot compared to a sword-blow, but that level should really be more of a "target is disintegrated" power level. Now if there's no "half-damage" bit, that's a good bit nastier, of course.

• Trivial: 1d6+DRV (you could do just as well with a knife)
• Minor: 2d6+DRV (about equivalent to a big bruiser's sword-blow)
• Major: 4d6+DRV (can kill people outright)
• Dramatic: (4d6+DRV) x2 (can kill major monsters outright)
• Legendary: (4d6+DRV) x4 (obliterates even major monsters).

Hm. So, it's an interesting issue... if spell-effects go up exponentially, then magic-specialists tend to get gross.

If they go up linearly, then magic starts to hit a limit pretty quickly... but that's not necessarily bad. My damage system is similar to CoC... 3d6 is a lot of pain and suffering and 6d6 will kill pretty much any PC.

I like adding Drive to the damage roll, though... I could copy the Spycraft idea of using each mental stat for something separate... say KNO for actually casting the spell, PER for targetting spell-throwing effects, INTU for sensing/countermagicking stuff, and DRV for boosting the effects. I'm not sure I want to go to the trouble of doing separate casting/targetting checks, though.

I could also go with the first set and increase the boost from DRV... 1d6+DRV, then 2d6+DRVx2, then 3d6+DRVx3, etc.. 5d6+DRVx5 would average 27.5 instead of 19.5. Dunno. I'd like for the calculations to be super-quick and simple. I might even just use Diff/5 in d6... then it would start at 2d6+DRV and go up to 6d6+DRV.

tSoY effectively uses an MP system, since you have to spend from your pools to do stuff. It's interesting that it drains from a different pool depending on what Secret you're using. So you could exhaust yourself throwing divination magic but be fully charged for throwing destructive magic still.

It's got a few nifty effects, though... it looks like regular spell-casting is free but requires you to touch a single target. Casting at range costs 1 mp. Affecting a group costs 1 mp for up to 5 targets, 3 mp for 25, 6 mp for 100, and 10 mp for "everyone the caster can see". Since pools max out around 10, I doubt anybody could manage that last one. The duration starts at an hour and can be extended by spending points, too.

So the difficulty doesn't go up... but the MP cost does. There aren't many ways to increase the effectiveness, though... so if you need a minimum of X to produce an effect, you have to have the appropriate skill or you're hosed. Most powers don't have a minimum, though...

Also, there's the Massive Damage secret, which is pretty gross... you multiply the damage done by the amount of Vigor you spend (minimum 2).

Posted by Kiz at March 9, 2005 12:52 PM