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Re: (TFT) Long aimless rant, tangentially including Hanging Magic in TFT.



You could presumably combine both of these ideas. Would make magic in general much more powerful. Even 1 ST/turn is enough to maintain a lot of useful effects (Blur etc.) indefinitely.

My thinking thus far had been along the lines of: take spells from D&D, nerf/edit/derange them until they make a reasonable degree of sense, keeping their original categorization as transmutation/evocation/etc. To cast a spell, first a wizard must learn the talent that lets him cast spells from that category and level (i.e. level 1 evocation), then he can prepare and "hang" the spell. I was thinking of using IQ, or "number of IQ points invested in that spell category", to determine how many spells could be hung.

I like Rick's version better. Though I'd want the option to hang normal spells as well (Emergency Teleport, anyone?). And also the option to invest points in HM at character creation.

...Speaking of Cleansing, and other game systems, I recently bought a copy of the supplement "Trauma" (http://www.radicalapproach.co.uk/trauma/), which contains detailed rules for injury and healing. It looks like it could mesh reasonably nicely with TFT, though I don't know if I'd actually want all of the detail it offers. Still working on the adaptation, maybe sometime this summer I can get some people to playtest a bit. And if I also have a new magic system or two to test out, well then...

Incidentally, Rick, I used your superscript rules in a campaign that ran briefly and sporadically, dying when I left for college. They were mostly as-written, though I think I added a rule that superscripts couldn't be more than half the base attribute. Most of the players ignored them entirely, except Dad, who cleverly munchkinned them to make his character a much more powerful crossbowman than he would otherwise have been able to be at 32 points, by taking negative superscripts on DX and ST, making himself slower and in worse shape, but stronger and more accurate - and prompting me to start thinking of ways to make fighters have to pay fatigue in combat...just seems realistic, right?

I think I've mentioned some of the highlights of that campaign before. The pyromaniac wizard. The eternally-nauseated goblin. The alcoholic elf, who was reluctantly cured by a Geas. I'm not sure I ever understood the logic behind the pirate ship shenanigans, but I think the attractive female thief PC ended up tied to the mast of the party's boat, somehow acting as pirate bait, with the strangely-androgynous amnesiac bard keeping her company and acting as emergency escort/protection - despite the fact that the bard was more or less worthless in a fight. Meanwhile, the more combat-oriented characters pretty much destroyed the pirates by other creative means.

Bonus story, because it's late and I'm still procrastinating on writing this paper: Another time, I was running a TFT game for people who'd mostly played Pathfinder up to that point. Party of beginning characters runs into a dragon. The goblin PC hides under a rock. The other characters brace for combat... except the one who'd taken Charisma and Sex Appeal, who boldly walks up to the dragon and TRIES TO SEDUCE IT...

On 4/24/15 2:31 PM, rbrude@email.com wrote:
I think, for me, one of the drivers for wanting to hang spells is to allow w
izards to participate in combat without increasing their vulnerability to de
ath from a slight scratch, which is the reality in TFT. In a TFT-inspired ga
me I'm working on, I solved this by relying on ambient magical energy that a
  gifted wizard can draw upon the cast spells.

Like vanilla TFT, a spell can be cast entirely using fatigue. Alternatively,
  some or all can come from the ambient energy.

This option is available to characters who, at creation, choose the talent/a
bility to draw upon the ambient magic. To further limit the available power,
  the quantity varies by location. In most places, a wizard can draw only 1or
  2 ST per turn to power spells. There may be rare places with more energy av
ailable, but few wizards will want to invest the experience points needed to
  take advantage of these rare phenomena.

Relying on external, but limited, magical power reduces the need for any spe
cial spells as any magic can be fueled this way. To open the door for more p
owerful spells, I included the option for rituals (e.g. a minutes-long chant
  that draws a little magic at a time to build up the spell) that can magnify
  the effect of existing spells.

I'd be happy to copy more details for my working draft if there's interest.


Rich

Sent from Rich's iPhone

On Apr 24, 2015, at 1:31 PM, Rick Smith <rick_ww@lightspeed.ca> wrote:

Hi Joe,
  Thanks for the kind words.  Just the thing to get rid of a writhing
mass of Joes Banes.        :D

  There were many things I disliked about D&D, but a clever idea
was that wizards had to preselect spells, and then try to fit what they
have taken to the situation they ended up with.  Hanging magic
does the trick as well as greatly increasing the variety of TFT
magic spells.

  It does make the magicians more powerful, but more fragile.

  I would be very interested if anyone tries out these rules.  I am
thinking of trying them in my TFT campaign so if anyone would
like to invent a few hanging spells, I would be very interested in
seeing your ideas.  If you invent one and we use it in game, I
will describe how it was used and how it worked out.

  I could not work out a general system for creating these spells,
so I left it up to negotiation between the PC's and GM.  In some
ways it is a cop out, in other ways it just increases the fun.

  Warm regards, Rick


On 2015-04-24, at 11:20 AM, Joe Hartley wrote:

On Fri, 24 Apr 2015 10:37:21 -0700
Rick Smith <rick_ww@lightspeed.ca> wrote:
   Hanging magic in TFT.
   By Richard Wayne Smith    (c) 2015
Rick, this is really interesting!  One of the better TFT addons I've seen
.

--
      Joe Hartley - UNIX/network Consultant - jh@brainiac.com
Without deviation from the norm, "progress" is not possible. - FZappa
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