Does Spellcasting Need A Change?

[LuciferHex]

Despite how much I adore this game, it's one of the few rpgs that I feel requires homebrew. 1 is banning Specialized Skill. 2 is changing how magic works.

The assumption that failing at something means you don't do anything has wormed it's way into more rpgs than it should imo. It feels especially egregious tho in TTB. I really like how magic works in comparison to other abilities. Magic will never outpace damage, no matter your build the same amount of effort put into weapons and combat pursuits will be better. In exchange magic has this beautiful creativity that I wish more games explored. But when someone sits down to play and I have to tell them that magic skills are the only skills in the game that can fail no matter how high your skill is? Well that breaks my heart and can easily be a "I quit" moment.

My solution is a homebrew rule. If you achieve a margin of success when casting your spell, you count as having one of the necessary suits to cast the spell. It doesn't give you a suit so you can't get triggers, but it means powerful mages can guarantee casting simple spells, whilst spells drowning in Immuto will challenge even the most min maxed of spellcasters.

But i've only ever played with my friends, so living on an experience island i'm paranoid i've over blown how feels bad this mechanic is. So what do ya'll think? Am I right? Do you have your own solutions to the spellcasting problem?

[Ebb]

I like the idea that one or more margins of success grants a Suit to a characters spell-casting duel. I don't think that it's strictly necessary for my play, but I'll probably work it into an easily accessible General Talent, thank you 😃

I think it's important that any group with any tabletop plays the way that works best for them. If your changes improve the game for your group then they are good.

I am curious about your banning of the Specialized Skill General Talent, I don't think you explained where that fits in?

[LuciferHex]

On 12/22/2023 at 11:07 AM, Ebb said:

I like the idea that one or more margins of success grants a Suit to a characters spell-casting duel. I don't think that it's strictly necessary for my play, but I'll probably work it into an easily accessible General Talent, thank you 😃

I think it's important that any group with any tabletop plays the way that works best for them. If your changes improve the game for your group then they are good.

I am curious about your banning of the Specialized Skill General Talent, I don't think you explained where that fits in?

Glad to hear someone agrees with me.

That was more of an aside. The main reason being it makes a lot of very broken very unfun builds, or it just makes the game stale. Even if you're not doing something like Torakage execution arrow spam, letting any builds get any trigger on any skill leads to repetitive gameplay.

[Ebb]

Oh! I bodged out that Torkage Assassinate Talent so many years ago that I forgot it existed 😆

Auto-Triggers can take some of the tension out of proceedings once the characters builds start to shape up, I'll certainly give you that. Personally, my first priority has usually been to increase the already huge variety of viable builds that this system offers. I think that the Specialized Skill GT enables a bunch of the fun, flavorful, but maybe less impact-full Triggers to shine, particularly after you've dealt with some of the worst offenders (such as Assassinate). Having said that it's pretty rare that a build doesn't take it at some point, so it could definitely be argued that it's too much of an auto-include? Hmm... worth considering.

I've been meaning to do a full rework of the Torakage Advanced Pursuit since From Shadows came out, but I still haven't gotten around to it. I'll post my current replacement for Assassinate here for anyone that's interested:

Step 5: Shadows And Smoke

This character gains the following Talents:

Kage: Double this characters Df/Wp against Attacks targeting her from more than 5 yards away.

From The Shadows: (see the Infiltrator Pursuit, Boogeyman Pursuit, etc)