I'm working on an Edge conversion for play in the world of Skyrim and I've run into a few roadblocks. The one that's got me most stumped at the moment is the conjuration spell tree. The vast majority of spells in the tree create something to fight for the caster.

A lot of my gaming history is in D&D, and I'm leery of screwing with action economy since I've seen it have pretty drastic impact.

At the moment, I'm thinking about basically simple stat blocks for the summons (all 1's, 2's, 3's, etc, depending on the strength of the spell), with some free points to float around based on extra successes. Per the source, only one summon at a time.

My concerns about action economy lean me toward having the summons limited by having no free maneuver each round (puts a hard cap on the number of turns one can last...3 to 5 at start with a an 11 strain), assuming no hits. Treating each summon like a minion (crits kill, all one damage pool) means that damaging them can and will dismiss them quickly.

Does this sound reasonable, or can you, fair readers, suggest alternatives or counter-arguments?

Perhaps the caster must maintain the summoned thing's link to the world as a Maneuver, and the summoned thing only gets a single Action per turn. The caster could still operate just fine, at the expense of strain to take normal maneuvers, and the net result of the summoning would be to convert one of the summoner's maneuvers into an action for the summoned.

It's trading a maneuver for an action from a presumably lesser creature.

Total mastery of summoning could let you summon TWO creatures. But then you either have to be trading your action for a maneuver to maintain the second summoned creature, or take two strain per turn to do anything.

You could take a page from the Animal Bond talent in FaD.

You can use a maneuver to direct your summoned creature to perform 1 action and 1 maneuver, once per round.

Maybe your summoned creature's silhouette can be equal to half your Conjuration skill rank, rounded (so skill rank 4-5 could summon Silhouette 2 creatures, like Storm/Frost Atronachs).

And otherwise, the stats can just be determined by you for that specific minion or rival-level NPC that you want to create. Not sure how your spells work, but in my envisioning of an Elder Scrolls conversion, you'd have one spell per summonable creature, and so the creature would be determined by the spell you purchase/learn.

Both of you are working on the same lines. I like that.

You could take a page from the Animal Bond talent in FaD.

You can use a maneuver to direct your summoned creature to perform 1 action and 1 maneuver, once per round.

Maybe your summoned creature's silhouette can be equal to half your Conjuration skill rank, rounded (so skill rank 4-5 could summon Silhouette 2 creatures, like Storm/Frost Atronachs).

And otherwise, the stats can just be determined by you for that specific minion or rival-level NPC that you want to create. Not sure how your spells work, but in my envisioning of an Elder Scrolls conversion, you'd have one spell per summonable creature, and so the creature would be determined by the spell you purchase/learn.

Crud. I'm going to have to get that book, aren't I? That talent might just work. I knew there needed to be a cost to the caster, but I hadn't zoned in on it yet. But if FnD has a similar talent already available then I can try to swing close to that with some sense of security. I might make the default cost an action, but allow a talent early in the Conjuration tree to reduce it to a maneuver. A subsequent, very high tier talent, might reduce it to an incidental to allow the dual casting to be more viable. Hmm.

I had considered the maneuver cost on the caster, but hadn't solidified that yet. What do you think of removing the free maneuver from the summons to put the timer on them? Too much bookkeeping?

Magic's still up in the air. Well, most of it is. I'd started with a casting check vs the level of the spell, upgraded based on factors (like being engaged with a hostile), but that means that either some spells have multiple rolls (fear for example), or some spells have special rules (destruction...the casting check is also the attack roll). I'm not sure yet. One spell per creature type is a given, though, yes.

Both of you are working on the same lines. I like that.

You could take a page from the Animal Bond talent in FaD.

You can use a maneuver to direct your summoned creature to perform 1 action and 1 maneuver, once per round.

Maybe your summoned creature's silhouette can be equal to half your Conjuration skill rank, rounded (so skill rank 4-5 could summon Silhouette 2 creatures, like Storm/Frost Atronachs).

And otherwise, the stats can just be determined by you for that specific minion or rival-level NPC that you want to create. Not sure how your spells work, but in my envisioning of an Elder Scrolls conversion, you'd have one spell per summonable creature, and so the creature would be determined by the spell you purchase/learn.

Crud. I'm going to have to get that book, aren't I? That talent might just work. I knew there needed to be a cost to the caster, but I hadn't zoned in on it yet. But if FnD has a similar talent already available then I can try to swing close to that with some sense of security. I might make the default cost an action, but allow a talent early in the Conjuration tree to reduce it to a maneuver. A subsequent, very high tier talent, might reduce it to an incidental to allow the dual casting to be more viable. Hmm.

I had considered the maneuver cost on the caster, but hadn't solidified that yet. What do you think of removing the free maneuver from the summons to put the timer on them? Too much bookkeeping?

Magic's still up in the air. Well, most of it is. I'd started with a casting check vs the level of the spell, upgraded based on factors (like being engaged with a hostile), but that means that either some spells have multiple rolls (fear for example), or some spells have special rules (destruction...the casting check is also the attack roll). I'm not sure yet. One spell per creature type is a given, though, yes.

Would love to compare notes. I haven't done any work on my "conversion" (such as it was) for about a year, but I think I had some pretty solid ideas about how to implement Elder Scrolls-style magic.

I had considered the maneuver cost on the caster, but hadn't solidified that yet. What do you think of removing the free maneuver from the summons to put the timer on them? Too much bookkeeping?

Yeah I wouldn't put a timer on it. Have a Despair (or possibly a certain about on Threat) rolled by the caster or the summoned creature cause the summoning effect to be dispelled (and the creature banished/dissipated).

I'll try to get my notes up on google docs sometime today. I'll let you know.

(Edit)

I've uploaded my work to google drive and I think I've shared it!

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B3dJ4SyGwAuJM3FYVk8xQ0c5N00&usp=sharing

I do not have a consolidated document yet because a lot of this is being discussed around the dinner table with the folks who expressed an interest in it. Base classes take the place of career/specs. Advancement is strictly by skill upgrade, talent purchase, and gear, to fit the source. Players are expected to start with a lower budget than the core game (50 is the target point, atm) to draw out the early game a bit longer.

We have not solidified a way to add additional class skills. I'm not entirely sure, as I write this, that they are even important except as experience sinks (of which there seem to be plenty already).

It's expected and desired that players in powerful gear become gods among men. Someone in ebony armor with a powerful weapon is downright scary. That fits with the source material as well.

We still need to fill out the races (so far, considering all humans and elves as straight 2's races with a different racial perk, with argonians and khajit having the only stat mods and lower starting exp). Need to fill out the conjuration spells. Need to fill out all of the magic talent trees (debating if those will be half-depth trees because otherwise there's too much duplication and fluff in them). And then need to stat out a few iconic monsters and see how they stand up to players in various tiers of gear.

Nice!

I chose to start with the normal Edge of the Empire set up of Career -> Specialization and lock in talents that way, since I felt that it seemed it could be a natural evolution of the Elder Scrolls motif.

Skyrim had selectable perks, Oblivion had perks that just came into effect at certain skill levels, and before that there were no real perks or talents to speak of. On the other hand, Skyrim had no class system to speak of (except for the NPCs of course).

So I felt that the EotE career/specialization setup wasn't too big a departure from the theme and leveling mechanics of TES. Plus then I wouldn't be reinventing the wheel, And at any rate I really liked the Career / Specialization setup from the beginning of the EotE Beta, so I was already sold on that and I'll take any excuse to keep using it (And now of course there's Elder Scrolls Online, which runs the full gamut of classes and such things in traditional MMO style)

The one big difference is in TES, skill usage translates directly into skill improvement. But I think EotE's "XP per session" is a thing that should be preserved (especially when we have 5 max skill ranks instead of 100 max skill level), and let the PCs worry about skill usage, skill ranking, and talent purchasing.

I'll post up what I've got, it's kinda scattered all over Dropbox and my PC at the moment

Skyrim was the first elder scrolls game I played for more than 2 minutes, so I really don't have any experience with the world or previous systems. I was more dedicated to trying to keep the free-flowing advancement open, and I felt that career/spec paths were too constraining.

I like career/spec...I just didn't think it slotted in here quite as well because of the freeflow advancement.