Magic QA: Loopholes, Abuses, and Fixes

Spectral Grasp was good when it could evade 1-2 armor absorption points, but yes right now it's just a slow mage bolt.

Battlemage I find overpowered, a normal mage has +3 hit points with Shielding, Battlemage has 4hp through Medium armor and +6 through Shielding (+10 hp total). So a battle mage has effectively +7hp points more than others (+5 more than light armor mage, and +4 more then Numious and fighters). Plus, they do more damage with Evocation.

Lesser Summons can be used daily while keeping Mage's pool full: Summon in the morning, meditate, dismiss it during evening. It makes sense, but can be changed if that is not wanted, I like my NPC bound demon.

Those are some good points

A quick post very quick here.

About the Mage Shields and magical Armor spell (and Battlemages, briefly).


The way the Mage Shield and Armor spell were written on the site, was my error. I knew what I meant to say but I not only missed some parts of the old wording that needing to be altered (read: Wound references), but altered the text in a way that clearly didn't make the sense I thought it did. I was probably very tired when I did those or gong cross eyed from doing so much.

They've been changed so they should more clearly explain how they work now, on the website. Which is, 1, 2, 3 Hit Points of damage. Not entire hits.

As for Battlemages and casting Armor with their boon of double the HP damage absorption? No. That only applies to their Mage Shield. Armor is considered an entirely separate spell. However, I went ahead and put a clarification on the Battlemages page to ensure that is clear as well.

Luck Magic:
Reverse Balance
I'd suggest: "You can move Fighting equal to 1/2 of Caster's Magic. (rounded down) or 1 for every 10 points your roll is higher.


Even with the Mage Shielding being hit points instead of successful hits, battlemage's advantage baffles me. Am I missing something?


What I mean:
Let's say that the mage has 8 points in Magic, their Race has 5hp, their Shielding blocks 3 hit points.

Non-armored mage:
Race health of 5hp + no armor + Shielding 3hp

Light armor (Songblade, Arrow)
Race health of 5hp + 2hp light armor + Shielding 3hp

Battlemage:
Race health of 5hp + 4hp medium armor + Shielding 6hp

Numinous blade (and normal fighters)
Race health of 5hp + 6hp heavy armor


Mages are a bit far from heavy armored Fighter (11hp), I'm taking Fighter here because that is what majority of people are. Non-armored mage is 3hp under it, light armor 1hp under, and battlemage 4hp above. This is with shielding which can be recast, so battlemage can shield themselves again with a really big shield. I don't see why they need double Shielding bonus, normal Shielding would remove excess HP and make them far more balanced.

I didn't feel like my suggestion warranted its own thread so I'm tacking it on here.


Mind Magic
Phantom Assassin - How does it defend?  Has stats, could legally take the Defend Another action, no information on what would happen.  Being a physical threat, even if disbelieved the image can still operate.  A concealed attacker using an Assassin for their attacks...  There's no real way to deal with the image aside from dispelling wave.  If a magic-less warrior is fighting with a Phantom Assassin and fails to recognize he's fighting an invincible illusion, there's nothing he can do about it.

Possible Solutions:  

1.) HP - Give it a scaling HP value equal to all its traits (meaning max 6hp at 10 Magic) but for most mages this will be between 3 and 5 HP.  This makes it equal to a summon, but also adds more to the interaction when a character is fighting with a Phantom, and gives non-magical characters an option for dealing with their illusory assailant.  Also opens up potential for mages to make illusory suits of armor, shields, and to use the Image as a defender in combat.  For the cost of 2 magic, I would argue that it would make it alright for the spell to be a bit better than Shielding or Armor potentially could be (for non-battlemages).

2.) Hit once, dissolves.  This option seems less enjoyable for many, and means most illusions of, say, doors, walls, and other things can just be banished with minimal effort by slapping them.  For the cost of 2 magic, this seems less than desirable, given the whole 'physical' idea.

3.) lol idk that's all I got.

Phantom Assassin, again - Time Limit.  Phantom Assassin and its line have no given duration on the spells.  This seems like an oversight.  For their cost and abilities, this could fluctuate.  One Scene seems fair, but some illusions (like doors, hills, and other such) are the kind that a mage might desire to keep up for more than one scene.  Perhaps adding a time limit, but allowing the player to extend it (1 more magic for 12 hours, additional 1 for 24 hours, able to continue extending the duration of the illusion as the player wishes with the associated magic costs, so 2 at each dawn for an entire day.)

@cail: Given its cost of 2 magic and 2 round casting time, I'd assume it wasn't meant to just to carry out one attack before vanishing, but to take a hit before vanishing sounds more fair.

That being said, it seems Phantom Assassin could/perhaps should operate more like a Summoning spell than a Combat spell? The trait cap is a little high (with Illusions cast with 10 magic having 6 for each trait), but being banished with a single focused hit might balance that out. Costing 1 magic per round on top of 2 to summon, and having it take up your round to make it attack seems extremely punishing and not worth the rounds to cast, magic to cast, or 3 spells known.

Compared to Evocation spells, this becomes even more severe a difference.  Each attack from the Illusion has an accuracy max of 6, whereas any flame bolt spell has a max of 10.  Damage is about the same (depending on build).

Or! Perhaps characters that see through the illusion can banish it with a single physical attack, and otherwise it has the HP values? Sounds complex, I know, but it's an expensive spell and it gives more potential for interaction.

There have been changes made to the website throughout the day as we noticed errors, or things were brought to our attention that needed clarifying. As it stands though, what you see should be what is current. Though keep checking back?

I'm not going to lie - this post and the next are going to be 100% seat-of-my-pants math. I'm coming into this with THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD






I am going to put myself out here and make my predictions - I'm prepared to accept I'm wrong, if that's how the math flips, though. I'd also welcome being corrected.

Observation: The mages have a mix of things that are too weak, things that are strong not because they're strong but because of loopholes, and things between the two. They do not have anything that is simply stronger than weaponry, combat-wise, except for ganging up with summons.
Question: Are mages capable of competing with a fighter? Is one better or worse?
Falsifiable Hypothesis: Fighters will beat mages consistently UNLESS the mage uses "Cheese," spells that are not Working As Intended in the Rules As Written (RAW).
Testable Prediction & Experiments:

Let's measure up mages vs. fighters, period. We'll use a human in all cases and assume that:



1a) The mage is a battlemage, leaving him (like a theoretical non-mage) at no self-heal. His only spells are Mage Bolt and Mage Blade, to avoid several types of cheese (using Ice Bolt to chain freeze a melee person while walking away, 
OR
1b) The mage is an evoker with self-heal using the school of fire, leaving the fighter with no "water" weapon.
2) No gifts are involved, but the armor mastery fighting style and a mage school are. This is the only fighting style the fighter is eligible for.
3) Everyone is fighting "to win." They will use abilities (which will assume succeed) in the first round they can. Everyone begins the fight with full resources (resolve, magic, etc.) but they will not always make perfect decisions (i.e. which spell to cast, whether to recast Shield or attack the face).
4) For simplicity, combat will generally be started with the mage, since (I have predicted) the mage will have a lower chance to win largely because of their 'spin-up' time.
5) The mage and fighter are equally specced for combat, sharing 4 resolve, 6 reflexes, and 8 magic/fighting. Therefore, each attack has .611 (61.1%) chance of hitting resolve (rounded to 60%) and .555 (55.%) chance of hitting reflexes.



This provides a 45% chance to miss reflexes and a 40% chance to miss resolve.
6) Attacks by each will, therefore, miss predictably in a pattern, since these are calculations, not demo runs. Each attack will accumulate 40 inaccuracy vs. resolve and 45 inaccuracy vs. reflex, meaning roughly one attack in 3 will miss. No random crits will happen because I don't want to calculate those.

Lettuce begin. Our cases and predictions will be:

Social Occasion: No armor for either, dual medium weapon and mage bolts. (5HP, fighter hits for 2, mage hits for 3/4 (it won't matter)) -- RNG win. Extremely RNG dependent, the mage can (using our deterministic rather than random system) just rush the fighter down since he's nominally allowed to go first. This one is, in fact, simply a coin toss - they are both at 3 TTK (mage does 0 3 6 damage or 0 4 8 damage, fighter does 2 4 6) so it's literally down to whichever one doesn't get fucked by dice. Moving first is a huge advantage. At this level of lethality, I don't actually need to run the math yet to know its outcome. Whoever acts first and misses less is the winner, full stop.
Random Encounter: Fighter in medium armor with armor mastery with medium weapon against a battlemage with massive/large bolts and light/medium armor (Fighter 10 HP and hits for 2, battlemage 9 HP and hits for 3, evoker 7 HP and hits for 4). Predicted mage win? I think because of, in short, division and remainders, the mage barely pulls ahead in this one if he uses the right spells. It may be another RNG session battle of attrition, but the fighter can (in theory) be worn down between sessions of battlemage armor (trading, effectively, 4 of 9 HP for 6 each time it's used, giving the mage Effective HP (EHP) of 13) or by just rushing to nuke and getting lucky.
Pistols at Dawn: Fighter in heavy armor with medium weapon against a battlemage with large bolts and medium armor or Evoker in light. Fighter 14 HP hits for 2, Mage same as above since they can't get any better than that. Clear-cut fighter win, but takes forever except against Evoker.

Full calculations soon. Tired.
Most of these become easy fighter wins if the fighter can take a large weapon. The mage can only keep pace with a fighter if he's up one to two weapon sizes.