5 minutes ago, 2P51 said:

Yes. Already using OggDudes app to make specific 'trees' for spells and Alchemy recipes and such. I think leaving casters to just spend xp on a tree and Skills will lead to a campaign that progresses to retirement too quickly. Although I am also awarding basic plans and upgrades to them as 'loot' found via tomes, scrolls, Twitter posts, etc....

Has Oggdude made a generator for Genesys? I know about his Star Wars one...

Far as I know there's only the star wars program Oggdude created and I doubt this late in the game that he would make another program, he's still working on the star wars one.

3 minutes ago, Sketchpad said:

Has Oggdude made a generator for Genesys? I know about his Star Wars one...

No, but you can make custom trees and Talents in his.

1 hour ago, Sketchpad said:

So correct me if I'm wrong. The way I've been reading spells/magic is that you take the Arcana skill (or one of the other skills), and you can perform the actions listed in the magic section? Thereby being able to cast anything so long as you roll properly? Or is the Magic section a toolkit to create individual spells? So if I'm playing a mage with Fire Blast, it's 2 difficulty to cast that spell within close range. But that spell is recorded as one of my spells on my sheet?

Out of the box, all you need is one of the magic skills. For your example, once you have that first rank in Arcana, you can do everything that the Arcana skill is listed as being able to do.

There is no additional cost to it. Well, besides the increase in difficulty, of course

I had already converted Force Powers into Bending Forms for my Avatar: The Second Age conversion and in doing so, I genericized the rules to be more modular. Genesys really just streamlined a lot of those rules, and essentially went in the same direction I did (requiring the character suffer strain to use a power, regardless of whether it succeeds, for example). My Bending Forms were upgradeable like Force Powers and were set up as trees at first; users could change the difficulty or intensity of the bending form to change the way it behaved. Genesys did this as well with "Additional Effects"

I guess what I am saying is that I really didn't have to change too much . Except I got rid of trees and made it a bit more free-form like Genesys' layout. Forms are essentially just magic maneuvers and actions now.

Instead of benders having access to all of their forms at once, they have access to a couple of basic form actions (and maneuvers). Everything else must be acquired through experience. The "Additional Effects" are universal for each element, but each element has several effects unique to it. These tables are applicable to all of a bender's forms, but some forms have unique "Mastery" or "Finesse" upgrades. Finally, even though they have a base form (which is essentially just a magic skill check), the form can be upgraded with an Additional Effect (in Avatar its called Finesse) so that the user may employ that effect at any time for that form only . Benders can upgrade their forms up to five times, gaining one 'upgrade slot' per rank in the Bending Arts skill. Nearly all upgrades requires some amount of XP (5 - 20) depending on what the finesse does, and this is to reflect the training and learning that a bender needs to undergo in order to master their bending art.

The Bending Arts - 12-4-17.pdf

For a Shape shifting Druid it would be a case of saying “It’s magic, but Cunning based (perhaps called Primal?!!).”

The basic Spell Template would be something like an Average Difficulty to shift into a Silhouette 0 animal. Upgrades for Size, perhaps upgrades for Flight/Swimming, Natural Weapons.

The Duration depends on the game, in some the Concentrate manoeuvre would be required, in others it would last a number of minutes with upgrades for more time. Then some settings it would be an unlimited time thing.

Ideally the player comes up with an animal or two they want to be able to shift into, you then create a template of how that changes your character, what abilities and skills do you gain and loose, what characteristics change etc.

Examples:

Small Bird, 3 Difficulty:

Strength 1, Agility 4. Int Cunning Willpower and Presence as caster.

Gains flight, can’t use anything that can’t be done with a beak. Increase Perception skill to 3.

Wolf, 4 Difficulty:

Strength 3, Agility 3. Natural Weapon, Boost to Stealth and Perception

Made a topic of my own with three new Spells, Divination, Enchantment, and Illusion. Outside of those and some sort of Shapeshift, I feel most spells are covered.

Shapeshifting, I can't really settle on a version I like, mostly as it almost needs to cover both "become an animal" and "change your features" and I can't think of a simple, clean way to to do that. It's almost covered by Augment, but not really. Richard's version is pretty well done though and is probably a good base to work from.

For a more generic version:

Shapechange: Easy Difficulty.

Basic Effect: Change your body to be that of a Silhouette 0 creature or change your general appearance to be that of another general member of your species.

Enhancements :

Size : Increase the Difficulty once to increase the Silhouette of the new form by 1, including sentient species. This may be used multiple times.

Feature : Increase the Difficulty by 1 to define features of your new form. You can gain flight/underwater breathing/natural weapon, otherwise the appearance of a specific individual of any species.

Enhancement : Increase the Difficulty once to gain one of the following benefits;

Increase a characteristic by 1 whilst reducing another but 1.

Increase a Skill Rank by 1

Gain a Boost dice to all checks of two appropriate skills.

On 12/4/2017 at 9:26 PM, Richardbuxton said:

For a more generic version:

Shapechange: Easy Difficulty.

Basic Effect: Change your body to be that of a Silhouette 0 creature or change your general appearance to be that of another general member of your species.

Enhancements :

Size : Increase the Difficulty once to increase the Silhouette of the new form by 1, including sentient species. This may be used multiple times.

Feature : Increase the Difficulty by 1 to define features of your new form. You can gain flight/underwater breathing/natural weapon, otherwise the appearance of a specific individual of any species.

Enhancement : Increase the Difficulty once to gain one of the following benefits;

Increase a characteristic by 1 whilst reducing another but 1.

Increase a Skill Rank by 1

Gain a Boost dice to all checks of two appropriate skills.

I would say that, rather than increase or decrease a characteristic, it would make more sense to just upgrade all checks made with one characteristic, and downgrade those made with another. It plays almost the same, but means you have to do less recalculating, and don't need to do any erasing. Ditto for the skill ranks.

This also needs some duration...is it concentration? Does it last a prescribed numbers of rounds/minutes?

Size increases by themselves don't do much in this system...I suppose it would occasionally be useful, but not anywhere near as much as, say, Enlarge Person is in D&D. Also, I should think it would make more sense for the base power to change you into something of the silhouette you are already, rather than defaulting to 0, though that doesn't play well with the size increasing augment.

Final thought is that the ability to fly is definitely not on par with the other listed abilities, and it seems like it should call for some additional cost, perhaps. Feature should probably also explain what the effect of mimicking a specific person is mechanically.

One solution might be having a variable augment difficulty cost...1D for some abilities, 2D for some others?

As I said in my first post the Duration really depends on your particular setting. Some will use Concentrate, some will have specific round length, some until the scene ends and some it will be indefinite.

So I modified my original Spell to refine it, it needs proper formatting and names for the upgrades but this is the raw thing, let me know what you think.

Shapechange :

Easy Difficulty Primal Spell

Concentrate

Basic effect:

Change your appearance to that of another being of the same Silhouette and similar capabilities to yourself.

Enhancements :

D: Change your Silhouette by 1. May be used multiple times.

D: Increase 1 Characteristic, reduce another by 1, takes on a form different to your natural shape and capabilities.

D: Gain a Rank in 1 skill

D: Gain a Boost die to all checks of two skills

D: Gain a Natural weapon or defence; (Damage 3+, Crit 3, Brawl, Engaged) or (+1 Soak +1 Melee Defense).

D: Gain a beastly ability such as underwater breathing, dark vision, one improved sense, glider.

DD: Gain an Improved Natural Weapon or Defense; (Damage 4+, Crit 2, Vicious 2, Brawl, Engaged) or (+2 Soak, + 1 Defense).

DD: Gain Improved Beastly Ability; Flight, Fast Runner, Swimmer

If your setting allows for the easier use of magic then the Concentrate manoeuvre is not required, the transformation either lasts to the end of the encounter, until the caster wishes it to end, or the caster is unconscious.

If magic is a little more difficult, or it fits your setting then remove the concentrate manoeuvre. The transformation lasts for a number of rounds or minutes equal to the casters Willpower. Add the following Enhancements:

D: Extend The Duration to be twice your Willpower Rounds/minuets

DD: The transformation lasts until you wish it to end or you become unconscious.

For shapechange, you could have some of those upgraded features be talents instead of just difficulty increases. Maybe Shapechange itself is a talent that unlocks the primal spell to begin with, with Improved and Supreme versions. At Improved, you gain Movement abilities of the form, at Supreme, it lasts as long as you wish, etc.

Just as a tangent/possible source of ideas, here's a Wildshape spell tree I made for an EotE-style fantasy conversion last year.

looks like the "almost canonical" (framework?) way for defining magic is:

• define a base spell (attack, barrier, ...)
• define a number of difficulty based additional effects
• what cant be done with the two above must be bought as a talent

IMHO, also a Talent with "Commit (A) or (P) ..." that can be used instead of Concentration makes perfect sense to me.

I've been looking into "spell" creation, and I've noticed that FFG generally intends the 'spells' (Attack, Barrier, Healing, etc.) they already to be exhaustive. Any 'new spells' were hoped to be accomplished by creating new 'additional spell effects' for the spells they have... I know the wording gets hard.

Playing with that concept, here is my initial stab at doing just that. Though admittedly in some areas it's pretty loose, and really just sets the groundwork for doing more.

Thoughts, edits, tweaks, ridicule, and praise would all be greatly appreciated.

Magic Ideas.docx

17 hours ago, Richardbuxton said:

As I said in my first post the Duration really depends on your particular setting. Some will use Concentrate, some will have specific round length, some until the scene ends and some it will be indefinite.

So I modified my original Spell to refine it, it needs proper formatting and names for the upgrades but this is the raw thing, let me know what you think.

Shapechange :

Easy Difficulty Primal Spell

Concentrate

Basic effect:

Change your appearance to that of another being of the same Silhouette and similar capabilities to yourself.

Enhancements :

D: Change your Silhouette by 1. May be used multiple times.

D: Increase 1 Characteristic, reduce another by 1, takes on a form different to your natural shape and capabilities.

D: Gain a Rank in 1 skill

D: Gain a Boost die to all checks of two skills

D: Gain a Natural weapon or defence; (Damage 3+, Crit 3, Brawl, Engaged) or (+1 Soak +1 Melee Defense).

D: Gain a beastly ability such as underwater breathing, dark vision, one improved sense, glider.

DD: Gain an Improved Natural Weapon or Defense; (Damage 4+, Crit 2, Vicious 2, Brawl, Engaged) or (+2 Soak, + 1 Defense).

DD: Gain Improved Beastly Ability; Flight, Fast Runner, Swimmer

If your setting allows for the easier use of magic then the Concentrate manoeuvre is not required, the transformation either lasts to the end of the encounter, until the caster wishes it to end, or the caster is unconscious.

If magic is a little more difficult, or it fits your setting then remove the concentrate manoeuvre. The transformation lasts for a number of rounds or minutes equal to the casters Willpower. Add the following Enhancements:

D: Extend The Duration to be twice your Willpower Rounds/minuets

DD: The transformation lasts until you wish it to end or you become unconscious.

After spending more time on it, I'm thinking shapechanging could just be a subset of Additional Effects added to Augment.

D: Alter Self: Change features of appearance, sex, race, grow or shrink a small amount (within same silhouette). May spend ^^ to mimic the appearance of someone else (upon examination, may substitute your casting skill for a Deception check to disguise your appearance).

D: Growth: May grow or shrink 1 Sil from your base Sil, to a minimum of 0. Shrinking adds B to your Stealth and Coordination checks. Growing adds a B to your Athletics and Resilience checks. If you achieve Sil 3 or higher, Brawl and Melee checks you perform increase their range to Short. May be used multiple times.

DD: Polymorph (Primal Only): Gain 1 of several benefits:

• Hands and feet turn into fins, and you grow gills. You may function normally underwater, and add B per * to your Athletics checks to swim.
• Arms turn into wings, granting the ability to hover or fly, and add B per * to your Coordination checks to fly.
• Eyes grow large and avian, granting Darkvision (remove 2 SB from checks due to darkness), and add B per * to your Perception and Ranged attacks.
• Ears grow large, granting (something), and add B per * to your Vigilance checks.
• Hands or feet grow clawed (this replaces Primal Fury, granting the same effects)
• <insert one or two other similar effects>

May spend ^^ to gain an additional transformation benefit, or gain the benefit without replacing your existing features (such as by growing wings from your back, rather than transforming your arms).

I would say Duration: Concentration, or adding a D: Extend duration for number of rounds equal to twice ranks in Knowledge would make sense here.

The list of effects you listed for Polymorph (and that I was tinkering with all day) just felt too much like they were stepping on the toes of Augment and Barrier, so it seemed to me like it would make more sense to just wrap them into Augment, especially since the base ability covers what most players would use such an ability for anyway: improving their rolls.

For Necromancy, I was playing around with some ideas all day...

Add it as Additional Effects to Conjuration.

Require a talent that modifies how you use the base Conjuration, and then adds new Additional Effects.

Separate spell.

On the last, I was thinking something like the following:

Necromancy: D: Works like the basic Conjuration + Summon Ally, except you may only raise a dead character or creature, and it is undead, either a skeleton or a zombie, GM's choice or caster's choice (or based on circumstances). Instead of spending 2 Strain to cast this spell, you must spend 2 Wounds .

D: Additional Summon: Works same as for Conjuration, except you may spend 1 Wound or ^^ to summon another undead minion.

D: Medium Summon: Works the same as Conjuration.

D: Grand Summon: Works the same as Conjuration.

D: Bolster Undead: Undead you raise add damage to their attacks equal to your ranks in Knowledge, and improve their Crit rating by 1, to a minimum of 1. Affects one target of the spell. You may pay 1 Wound to affect an additional target up to the number of raised undead, or your Wound threshold.

DD: Drain Life: If you select this Additional Effect when casting Necromancy, you first suffer 2 strain, and make an attack against a living creature at Short or Engaged range. If the check is successful, it deals damage equal to your casting characteristic plus any uncancelled *. You may treat the damage dealt after soak as Wounds for the purpose of paying for the basic spell and any additional effects of the spell. For example, if you cast Necromancy with Additional Summon and Bolster Undead, and you successfully dealt 6 damage to a target, you could spend that 6 damage to pay for the 2 Wounds for the basic effect of the spell, 2 wounds to raise an additional 2 undead, and 2 wounds to affect all 3 with Bolster Undead without suffering any wounds yourself.

I dont know how many people have played Mage the Assension by White Wolf but they had a very open ended magic system. If you had the "sphere" of the magic type you could do the spell or rote as the called it. I believe that this is like this system. A magic user can build his own magical flare in his spells. The 2 strain cost and the difficulty increase to add effects limits the power of the spells and makes it so if a person tries to be over powered they risk failure

On 12/20/2017 at 7:19 PM, yeti1069 said:

For Necromancy, I was playing around with some ideas all day...

Add it as Additional Effects to Conjuration.

Require a talent that modifies how you use the base Conjuration, and then adds new Additional Effects.

Separate spell.

On the last, I was thinking something like the following:

Necromancy: D: Works like the basic Conjuration + Summon Ally, except you may only raise a dead character or creature, and it is undead, either a skeleton or a zombie, GM's choice or caster's choice (or based on circumstances). Instead of spending 2 Strain to cast this spell, you must spend 2 Wounds .

D: Additional Summon: Works same as for Conjuration, except you may spend 1 Wound or ^^ to summon another undead minion.

D: Medium Summon: Works the same as Conjuration.

D: Grand Summon: Works the same as Conjuration.

D: Bolster Undead: Undead you raise add damage to their attacks equal to your ranks in Knowledge, and improve their Crit rating by 1, to a minimum of 1. Affects one target of the spell. You may pay 1 Wound to affect an additional target up to the number of raised undead, or your Wound threshold.

DD: Drain Life: If you select this Additional Effect when casting Necromancy, you first suffer 2 strain, and make an attack against a living creature at Short or Engaged range. If the check is successful, it deals damage equal to your casting characteristic plus any uncancelled *. You may treat the damage dealt after soak as Wounds for the purpose of paying for the basic spell and any additional effects of the spell. For example, if you cast Necromancy with Additional Summon and Bolster Undead, and you successfully dealt 6 damage to a target, you could spend that 6 damage to pay for the 2 Wounds for the basic effect of the spell, 2 wounds to raise an additional 2 undead, and 2 wounds to affect all 3 with Bolster Undead without suffering any wounds yourself.

Was planning to have a blood magic form that works like this very nice work

I'm trying to do everything within the confines of the existing spells. It's taking a bit of creativity but its working. Here's what I have so far:

1) Introducing a -D modifier - this cannot reduce a spell below an Easy check.

2) Illusions: Illusions have no effect on reality. Those who see an illusion will however act as if it is real so long as they believe it. The first time a character sees an Illusion and each time it witnesses something that would shake his faith in the illusion (such as being stabbed by an illusory sword or watching someone walk through an illusory wall) the character may make a Perception or Vigilance check (the difficulty is set by the number of uncancelled Successes on the check up to 5. Advantage can be spent to upgrade the difficulty.) If the character passes the check, he is aware of the illusion, and sees it as shimmering and translucent image. Any sounds it makes are distant and echoy.

Shapechange and Polymorph are exactly the same - the only difference is that one affects a willing target, and the other an unwilling.

@saethone I'm still digesting the -D effects for illusions, but my initial impression is that I like the idea on the surface.

For Invisibility, my issue is that I believe that type of illusion (and probably illusions in general) feels more Arcane and Primal than it does Divine, but Augment is a Divine/Primal spell. Then, Necromancy has the same issue: it feels more Arcane and Divine than Primal, yet Conjure is Arcane/Primal.

I honestly hadn't considered that facet of simply adding additional effects to the existing spells, but it feels like a real issue to me. Then, on top of that, one method of spell acquisition I'm thinking of employing is to allow players to learn one basic spell per rank invested in the related skill, and it would make more sense to have a few more spells available so higher ranks of the skill have "targets" still.

I think I like Fly and Water Breathing as separate additional effects better than what I did, although I'm torn on whether I think Fly is better off as simply "magical flight" or the growth of some means of flight. The former is an iconic part of D&D, and some types of fantasy, as well as comic books, but I feel like, for certain settings (and with how I'm viewing "Augment") it may make more sense to require the character to grow wings.

Finally, I'm not sure what the point of Shapechange and Polymorph are: if you can't gain any of the benefits of assuming the new form, you're left with "being impressive" and "changing size for one of the few times it's relevant." What I liked about how I built my version of Polymorph was that if opens up the possibility of building yourself into another creature with Advantages (and the +D size changing effect). If you rolled enough Advantage, you could gain claws, wings, and some other animal ability, essentially replicating a whole creature. I think that's a necessity for a fantasy game, because Druids are a thing, and tacking everything onto +D effects puts the end result out of range (early, because casters just aren't going to succeed on that check, and later because they'll run up against the maximum additional effect difficulty limit without incorporating magic items to reduce difficulties).

Just stumbled across what looks like a post of one of the enemies from the GenCon preview of Genesys, which included a Necromancy/Animate Dead spell:

Here's my take on that, using what's been posted as a baseline of sorts.

Necromancy

Concentration: Yes
Skills: Arcane, Divine
This is magic for raising the dead as unholy servants. Select one corpse of Silhouette 1 or less within Short range. The default difficult is Easy (d). That corpse rises as a zombie minion under your control until the end of the encounter. You may spend a maneuver on your turn to direct any undead raised with this spell.
+d Additional Minions: Increase the number of minions animated by ranks in Knowledge. May spend aa to increase the number of corpses animated by ranks in Knowledge.
+d Enhance: Corpses animated gain +1 to Brawn, which also increases their Soak and Wounds. May spend aaa or x to reduce their crit rating to a.
+d Range: May animate corpses at long range.
+dd Haste: Animated corpses can always perform a second maneuver during their turn without spending strain (they may still only perform two maneuvers a turn).
+dd Armored (Arcana Only): Animated corpses gain melee and ranged defense equal to your ranks in Knowledge.
+dd Vigor (Divine Only): Animated corpses heal a number of wounds at the start of their turn equal to your ranks in Knowledge.
+ddd Undead Champion: May animate a corpse of up to Silhouette 2 as a rivl. May increase the silhouette by 1 for aa.

Pardon the formatting, copied this from my own file, which includes Edge of the Empire font.

The idea here is to grant the ability to make a lot of minions, and make them formidable with some investment, or animate one dangerous monster. How does this look?

I would consider adding a version of Enhance, Haste, or Armored to the Conjure spell...

2 hours ago, yeti1069 said:

This is magic for raising the dead as unholy servants. Select one corpse of Silhouette 1 or less within Short range. The default difficult is Easy (d). That corpse rises as a zombie minion under your control until the end of the encounter. You may spend a maneuver on your turn to direct any undead raised with this spell.

no concentration nor commited dice ?

what happens if i cast the spell 3 rounds in a row ?

8 hours ago, yeti1069 said:

@saethone I'm still digesting the -D effects for illusions, but my initial impression is that I like the idea on the surface.

For Invisibility, my issue is that I believe that type of illusion (and probably illusions in general) feels more Arcane and Primal than it does Divine, but Augment is a Divine/Primal spell. Then, Necromancy has the same issue: it feels more Arcane and Divine than Primal, yet Conjure is Arcane/Primal.

I honestly hadn't considered that facet of simply adding additional effects to the existing spells, but it feels like a real issue to me. Then, on top of that, one method of spell acquisition I'm thinking of employing is to allow players to learn one basic spell per rank invested in the related skill, and it would make more sense to have a few more spells available so higher ranks of the skill have "targets" still.

I think I like Fly and Water Breathing as separate additional effects better than what I did, although I'm torn on whether I think Fly is better off as simply "magical flight" or the growth of some means of flight. The former is an iconic part of D&D, and some types of fantasy, as well as comic books, but I feel like, for certain settings (and with how I'm viewing "Augment") it may make more sense to require the character to grow wings.

Finally, I'm not sure what the point of Shapechange and Polymorph are: if you can't gain any of the benefits of assuming the new form, you're left with "being impressive" and "changing size for one of the few times it's relevant." What I liked about how I built my version of Polymorph was that if opens up the possibility of building yourself into another creature with Advantages (and the +D size changing effect). If you rolled enough Advantage, you could gain claws, wings, and some other animal ability, essentially replicating a whole creature. I think that's a necessity for a fantasy game, because Druids are a thing, and tacking everything onto +D effects puts the end result out of range (early, because casters just aren't going to succeed on that check, and later because they'll run up against the maximum additional effect difficulty limit without incorporating magic items to reduce difficulties).

My game isn’t using arcane/primal/divine so I wasn’t considering that...you have a good point there.

Shape change even at rank 1 allows you to disguise yourself as anything from a member of another race to a wild animal (I would say a large wolf is sil 1). As you increase sil you do get the effects. Polymorph is an offensive spell - the classic turn your enemy into a sheep. You’re not supposed to be helping them

also bear in mind there is no flavor attached to flight - for a Druid it can represent growing wings and for a wizard arcane flight.

It can change into another creature as well - between flight, shapechange, and primal might. It’s just a different approach / hoping you pass a check as opposed to hoping you get enough advantage.

4 hours ago, Terefang said:

no concentration nor commited dice ?

what happens if i cast the spell 3 rounds in a row ?

Hmm...good point.

1 hour ago, yeti1069 said:

Hmm...good point.

sorry -- it has concentration ... on CRB p213 -- maintaining a Spell is a +dd Discipline Check if interrupted

so you could cast another spell AND have to spend strain for the additional concentration maneuver -- would be 5 (2+3) strain

and another 4 if casting the 3rd in a row -- argl.

and then 2 strain and three Discipline checks per round to maintain 3 spells -- LOL.

you could add a ranked talent that makes concentration on "animate dead" an incidential, with one spell per rank. (dont know which tier tho)

ah, https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/265863-genesys-talents-expanded/ already has "Lingering Spell" Talent.