Nekira Sudacne wrote:killgore444 wrote:Kevin Siembieda has done a wonderful job of producing a fun game system. I don't like all of his decisions by any stretch (I am so F***ing DONE with the CS), but over all, he's done a good job. But he's allowed into print, to many things that screw spell casters over and make technology just absolutely trump magic in nearly every aspect. Just look at spell design vs technological innovation. Not only do spell casters have a r*****ly low chance of being able to learn basic, low level spells out of the book, but even if they succeed they have to roll again with NO modifiers (complete luck) a mere 20% chance they don't get r**med. The chances of getting anything new or higher level might as well say "Don't Bother" in the book rather than allow any spell caster to get his hopes up.
Wait, where do you get that spell casters have a low chance of learning new spells? There is no roll to learn new spells, you just spend the required time.
Umm... NO!
You get 2 spells per level which MUST be your new level or lower. That's it for automatic learning. Even paying someone to teach you (and that's thousands of credits for low level common spells) does technically require a roll, but unless you GM is TRYING to screw you over, most will skip it.
Everything else follows the really absurd rules first printed in Nightbane 'Through the Glass Darkly' and then modified and reprinted in Mysteries of Magic (hated that book) which also first gave the rule about mages and armor, and then I've seen it again in one of the Rifts books (but I've got most of the old ones and I've long ago started to ignore the rule so forgot which one). Likewise, the scroll conversion chances are listed in several different places.
You essentially have less then a 20% chance of learning a low level spell unless you're high level and if trying to invent a new spell, even if just a variation to an old spell, you have less than a 10% chance and then have to roll again on a separate table to see if it worked even if you made the first roll.
And if trying for something completely new, your chances are half of that.
In the Nightbane book, the chance of learning a new spell was exactly one tenth of your principles of magic skill. So if you had a PoM of 72%, your chances of learning a new spell was 7%.
Yes, spell casters can try to learn magic from a scroll, and this is a shortcut that takes just a few minutes, and the low chance of success is reflective of that. but the % to learn from a scroll is an optional addition to just learning magic the normal way, and most spellcasters don't bother with scroll conversion at all. And the normal rule, according to the book of magic, is just 2 days of study per level of the spell, no randomness involved at all, just need a teacher.
Again, no. Only the 2 automatic spells per level are like this. Everything else, you need to learn.
My own games, I use the Principles of Magic skill from Nightbane, but ignore the 1/10th rule and make it 30% +3% per level, and that's you base chance with a penalty of +/- 5% per difference in spell level to caster level. Inventing a variant is about half that. Bare in mind, I also use skill modification from Rifter 30, so most casters are actually have much better chances.
Killer Cyborg wrote:killgore444 wrote: almost every single OCC that has anything to do with scientific or technological innovation, doesn't even have to roll dice.
They just have to figure out the time frame. And the time frame improves when they work together.
What kinds of things are you referring to with the bolded portion?
I'm referring to OCCs like the Triax Research Scientist (as the most egregious) and a couple of others. There is NO skill roll involved. The skill level isn't even relevant to their success. You just work out what level the new piece of technology is, find out how intelligent everyone is (skill level (or even if they have the correct skill) is not a factor) and then work out the formula to find out how long it takes to invent. The more people involved, the faster it goes.
I'm also not sure what you're referring to about casters not being able to "cooperate." Do you mean "teaching each other spells free of charge?"
There are several places throughout the books that make it a point of saying that spell casters are all ego bound lunatics who will never share research or help one another with spell design for fear of losing their edge. It's the justification for the super low chances of success and over priced cost of being taught new spells. Not to mention the justification of so few spells making it to print.
I feel like he's given reasons why the magic societies have survived,
He's stated things a few times, but none of the reasons hold up to game mechanics. Dog-boys and psi-stalkers alone decimate all the reasons he's given. And that's ignoring all the other advanced psychic OCCs that the CS has. How is psi-tech different than techno-magic from the CS PoV? It's like they've forgotten what the game mechanics actually say about DBs and PSs, and then they just make stuff up.
and that the CS has plenty of weaknesses.
WHERE?!?! Where does anything official exist that give even a single actual weakness of the CS?
The closest I can come up with is that they have to recycle material from battle which didn't come out until Heroes of Humanity. The only thing I liked in that book. Anything else ever mentioned as being a possible weakness is then retconned out (or fanboy argued into oblivion). In the RMB it mentions quite clearly that Mind Melters are NOT allowed into CS territory and are hunted down and killed if the presence is detected (and they have a unique aura), but there are now several books that discuss how many MMs are working in Psi-Bat etc.
So please enlighten me on what is considered a weakness of the CS that is not also a weakness of everyone else (except Atlantis)?
Sorry if I sound hostile, but this has burned me for some time now. When RMB came out, the CS was a fun bit of bogeyman. They were very pointedly described as being like Nazi Germany and/or Russia. I have always portrayed them in that way (although not as bad as RW Russia has shown themselves). Their leader was a tyrant who was never to blame for anything. And every single one of the High Command was almost as bad. Officers would never accept responsibility for mistakes, and just like the real world Japanese from WW2, the officers wouldn't ever bother to debrief their people and just assume they didn't know anything worth while. Look up what several Japanese (and American) pilots said about bio-luminescent algae and the wakes of ships including their carriers if you want to know what I'm talking about.
So yeah, that's how I envisioned them. Worked great. Even the Juicer Uprising hurt that image only a little. And even in that, they were specifically described as being nothing more than a parade force good at looking cool and murdering helpless civilians, and not much else. But then the Coalition Wars book came out, and everything had changed. Suddenly the CS was this hyper-competent death machine that had WAY to many people in the military for their previously listed population. They had this massive leap in technology despite the fact that being able to read was illegal. And on and on. And then Siege of Tolkien happened. I disliked that series so much I stopped buying anything from PBs for several years. I've since gone back and gotten most of the books I missed, but the way it was done seemed like a massive c********* for the CS to me. What could have been a great way to high light how magic could hold it's own, and offer things to magic orientated characters was a horrifying look at how inept Tolkien was. Seriously, they were a society that made ready use of rifts, why didn't they just hire trans-dimensional mercenaries or something? And no options for already existing characters to use, you had to create new characters to get anything from those books (a recurring problem for books on magic).
And I've seen many people make the opposite argument over the decades, that KS hasn't done enough to justify the CS's survival when it's clear (to them) that the magical communities would have destroyed the CS by now.
I mean, there are countless threads where people argue that Tolkeen should have WON against the CS, not just "survived and held the CS off," but actually defeated the CS.
They
SHOULD have. All that would be needed is a magic society acting intelligent and making new magic that works and is worthwhile (not to mention uses technology like it's supposed to be used). But PBs is never going to give up their bogeyman for Rifts. In an old campaign, my group used scrolls of Create Ley line and extend ley line to try an create ley line triangles inside the mega-cities of the CS from (extending the lines by over 50 miles away, we weren't IN the cities). I mentioned this on the old board and people went ballistic with how that wouldn't affect the cities and how I was power mongering etc, etc. And then low and behold, a statement that the mega-structure wall resists magic and ley lines can't penetrate.
Sorry, need to stop ranting now.
I actually agree with most of what you said, don't get me wrong, I DO agree with you.
Thank you!
Always nice to hear. A lot of the time, people (myself included) get so caught up in arguing on points of disagreement that they neglect to state the points of agreement.
I wrote up most of my post forgetting who I was actually responding to until I went back and read what you actually said. I didn't want to delete what I wrote up to that point though. And like I said, I agree with you. It's just that the perception (and game mechanics don't).
The Mage Armor rule should go away, and should have never been made in the first place.
IF it stays, it'd be nice if we had better parameters to work with when it comes to deciding what mages CAN wear.
Or ways around it like my proficiency idea.
Barring that, yeah, Armor spells that can last most or all of a day would be nice.
Or just say Screw It and rule that mages are all MDC creatures. That'd be a bit much, but hey... when's that stopped Rifts from turning stuff Mega-Damage?
#MDCbears
I once experimented with the idea that casters could exchange PPE for MDC when hit with MDC weapons, but ultimately decided it didn't work. Although making ANYONE who has magic into MDC life forms is a funny idea. It would be a very tangible advantage casters had over the CS, and would go a long way in making sense of why the CS hates casters so much.
And I share your frustration with stuff like the Wall of Stone spell. There should be permanent options for stuff like that, although things could get out of hand if it was TOO easy.
And you're preaching to the choir with non-combat spells!
It's NOT just magic BTW. Psionics is not much better (memory wipe requires the permanent sacrifice of 3 ME points by the psychic to make permanent, really). And superpowers are just as bad. The only real examples of non combat usefulness is the ability to survive hostile environments and Control Elemental Force: Earth which gives you the permanent walls of stone.
Ironically, being a Necromancer or a Nightlord from Nightbane are the 2 examples of magic having permanent affects. And both are villains.
I've pointed out myself in the past that direct combat is generally the weakest area of magic, AND that mages are supposed to use their brains instead of blasting stuff (according to Kev, and the BOM essay the one guy wrote, and so forth), and yet the large majority of spells are all just variations of "imma blast it."
I'm definitely with you there.
I know that direct conversions are bad, but so many of the original spells in PFRPG were almost exactly like other games, I wish they'd continue that and start going over the spells other games have created and doing something similar. Just make them spell invocations, not new OCCs.
If I was running Palladium, I'd have LONG ago come up with some underlying core rules to what kinds of things show up in the game, some kinds of rules for writers to use when making new tech, new magic, and so forth.
Instead we just get more or less random stuff based on what people happen to write, when filtered through what Kevin happens to be interested in at the time.
At least, that's my armchair perception.
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And unfortunately for me (or fortunately), I know myself well enough to know that if I was running things it would have been run into the ground.
I'd have a comprehensive list of rules that no one was interested in. As much as we're railing on casters getting shafted, there are a lot of people who like that. I just wish it wasn't MORE than everyone else.