Re: (TFT) Predict Weather & Control Weather. --> What about those darn eleme...

[ErolB1@aol.com]

In a message dated 2/26/2003 1:13:35 AM Central Standard Time, 
rsmith@lightspeed.ca writes:

> I would suggest that in Predict Weather the wizard makes
> a DX roll as normal to cast the spell, and the GM makes
> the IQ roll secretly.  (Thus if the IQ roll is missed
> then the player does not KNOW he is wrong.)

I considered that, and decided against it. For one thing, Predict Weather is 
very much a non-combat spell: If the wizard misses the Dx roll, he can just 
try again, so what does it matter? 

As for the secret IQ roll: I dislike rules of the form "The GM makes a secret 
roll for the player, so that the player is left in the dark." Sometimes it's 
necessary, or at least so overwhelmingly appropriate that I do it anyway, but 
I avoid that sort of thing unless it really *is* absolutely necessary, in my 
judgment. 

It's a matter of GMing style. I dislike secret rolls, and critical hits, and 
automatic misses, so I tone them down, and reduce and eliminate them in my 
house rules (for all game systems, not just TFT). OTOH, I love "called shots" 
- those I allow and expand on the rules for. Other GMs are the opposite. 

> I think that the Control Weather is too powerful for its
> fST.  How large an area does it affect?

Large. The size of a storm; the distance one would have to travel to get to 
different weather. OTOH, the effect is 'dilute' - "you can make it rain if it 
was going to rain anyway, in a little while." And the more dramatic effects 
does run into appropriately incredible St costs. 

It's a little like a Control Animal, cast on a huge but mentally-ordinary IQ 
5 animal, like a mammoth. Yes, it is a cheap way to deal with a 10-hex, St 75 
brute, but OTOH, it's just an animal. (I know that some GMs would scale the 
St cost to the size of the target, but IIRC that's a house rule, not 
"official" - and it's not a house rule that I would use.)


> As for elemental spells, I have also felt that they are
> not quite tuned.  Anyone else have thoughts on the
> balance of those spells.

The problem I ran into was that I wanted elementals to be both 

a) scaleable, with a possible range from St 1 "micro-elementals" to 
gargantuian elementals with St scores in the 3 or 4 digit range, 

and b) balanced against each other, for a given St score. 

Erol K. Bayburt
Evil Genius for a Better Tomorrow
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