Multicasting and Concentration rolls

Games Discussion Ars Magica
81

Well, most of the Giants were only Might 30, so your point is moot. The main giant was set to 50, mainly because I needed that to take the number of qualities I wanted.
In fact, I am going to format the giants for forum posting, post them in the Bestiary thread of my saga, and put a link here for you all to see.

The trick I used to balance out Titus' exceptional PeVi skill was that the main giant had a magic (non hermetic) ring that doubled his MR/Soak. Titus is the one and only character in the saga with this level of PeVi power. My monsters are not designed around him. The Ring was though. Indeed, I actually planned on him defeating the giant and taking the ring as to lead into some cool story scenarios for him.

It's all about the mechanics of monstercreation, not about the specific characters. In fact, I don't even know the scores and powers of the PC's that well at all. I trust the players to self regulate and be honest. When I design an adventure, I usually have no idea at all how the players will accomplish their goals. I plot point "Z" (what happens if they win or loose) and point "A" the event that kicks off the story). I usually never plot the points inbetween. I use a sand-box method, and simply let stuff run chaotic and randomly. I throw things at the characters, see how they react, and that inspires what I do next.

82

I think this has moved away from the original long enough. If you want to keep examining DEO, take a look at the thread in which I exposed the guideline as extremely inconsistent with the other PeVi guidelines; that's its real problem. Maybe we should start a new thread just about DEO and move the conversation there.

As for the original idea of the thread, it's pretty rare for anyone to get a very high Ability, let alone having that be a Spell Mastery Ability. Even in those cases, it's usually someone who's really focused on a single spell. Since they could have invented a spell 5 levels higher for about 10x as many targets, I don't see the problem with multi-casting as-is. And, no, there's no Concentration roll requirement for multi-casting. I think the mistakes in the original post about Concentration and casting multiple spells at the same time have been found and agreed upon.

Chris

83

That's an interesting comparison, with which I would raise the following points:

Firstly it reduces the spells penetration by 5, where multicasting does not (indeed, with the Mastery factored in you probably got a bonus),

And Secondly it specifically will not allow you to focus all of the effects on one target (while multicasting specifically penalizes you for spreading the effects out).

Many would argue (especially where DEO is concerned) that it is the ability to focus lots of castings on one target that makes multicasting so nasty (a multicast damage spell might only wound ten people where it would kill one target if all the spells affected that one target. Conversely, to simply kill one target might need a much higher level spell in the first place),

84

While all true, we could also look at raising the level by 5 to get more potency from the effect, too. In many situations this is not as effective, but in many it is more so. Examples: putting the same target to sleep twice is no good while keeping the target asleep can be handy, and commonly +5 to damage gets you more than an extra damage. Examples the other way: DEO and fatigue-loss spells.

There's also the question of experience saved. There's a lot of effort put into getting an Ability. Where would those points go otherwise. However, to be fair we could make the comparison against someone who chose different Spell Mastery options.

Finally, don't forget the increased chance of mishap from multi-casting.

I'm not saying it's not a really nice option, but I don't think it's broken.

Chris

85

True, but note that multicasting has the flexibility to allow you to target multiple targets if you so wish as well - so it still has some use (and indeed, extra flexibility compared to your other spell),

That said, perhaps a character would simply be less inclined to multicast that sort of spell? That doesn't necesarily make the view that multicasting may be "overpowered" invalid, just that it isn't overpowered in all cases,

Well, frequently +5 damage is exactly one extra damage level (for most human-sized characters), but nevertheless,

Equally however, +5 extra damage does you little benefit if the extra levels mean you cannot penetrate at all... Of course, conversly, the extra penetration does you no good if the damage is trivial compared with soak (although multicasting does at least "even out" your luck on damage rolls, meaning that you will often stand some chance),

Ask yourself this though, how many extra levels do you need to add to render most targets noncombatant? And how many duplicate multicast spells?

Very true, and you could compare the latter but it is hard to quantify the extra time lost in creating the new (higher level) spell, which in theory a weak magus may not even be capable of inventing or learning, even though they have the multicastable lower-level version,

To be honest, I'm not sure if it is either (and it doesn't help that DEO seems broken even before adding multicasting) - but there are some real edge cases where it seems so (and sadly overpowered edge cases cause problems in games),

86

If I'm reading you correctly you're saying that the main opponent had an effective Magic Resistance of 100. And you still had a player who could defeat it? All I can say is, Yikes. You said upthread that you were using 20 year magi. Imagine what a century old archmage could do.

The strongest entities I could find in RoP:M are "Protogonoi", described as "governing immense concepts such as sky, the waters, love, the abyss, and earth" and "the mightiest creatures of magic". Their Might is 75-100. I agree that Hermetic Magi are intended to be powerful but something is seriously out of alignment here.

87

There was an old archmagus there. An NPC. I needed there to be some reason why the powerful NPC couldn't solve the problem, thus requiring the ingenuity of a player character. Antonio did peetrate with some of his powerful damage causing spells. But the soak doubling power of the ring protected him. As powerful as Antonio is, he just didn't happen to have the might stripping capability of Titus. Titus knocked out the giant's might with PeVi, which in my ruling does not kill the creature just yet. However, Titus did not have anything big enough to finish the giant off. So Antonio hit him with his PeCo Killer of Giants spell (named after the Ozzy song). His PeCo had much lower penetration, but since resistance was no longer an issue, he poped the giant's heart like an overripe grape.

So, it wan't so much about the player character's power level. It was abut me trying to curb what my 80 year old archmagus NPC could do, giving the PC an opportunity to shine, and reinforcing my philosophy that it takes teamwork and not individual glory to win the day.

88

Just to let everyone know, I've updated the Multiple Casting page at Project: Redcap to include a synopsis of the early part of this discussion (that Multiple Casting probably does not require a Concentration roll). If anyone has anything to add to that page feel free to edit it, or PM me if you don't want to go to the trouble of editing the page yourself.

Thanks to everyone for helping to reach consensus on how this works. I now return you to the debate over Might scores in Marko's Saga. :wink:

89

-And now for something completely different. A man with three legs.
-He ran away!

:wink: