I know, I’ve already mentioned this before. But I wanted to discuss this in with little more depth. There is an inherent problem with the magic system, specifically with the magic attack action.

I asked Sam Stewart the following question, and here is his reply.

Quote

Question:

In the new Genesys RPG, do magic casters pay an Advantage cost to activate additional effects they’ve already purchased for a spell with a difficulty increase to the spell? (e.g. If a character purchases the Blast, Fire, and Range upgrades for an attack spell, making the spell Daunting difficulty, must they then also pay Advantages to activate Burn and Blast?)

Answer:

That is correct.

Why is this a problem? Well, let’s take the spell that I have listed above. Basic magic attack action, with the Blast, Fire, and Range upgrades. Now let’s give the caster easy magic implement. Let’s give him a staff. The staff removes the difficulty increase of the first range upgrade taken. As a result, the difficulty of the spell is Hard ( ). Now let’s give him a decent level of skill, with Imtellect 4 and Arcana 3. He is now rolling three Proficiency dice ( ), one Ability die ( ), and three Difficulty dice ( ). Seems reasonable.

Here’s the rub. I tested that dice combination with 100 rolls in the Genesys dice app. Out of 100 attempts, enough Advantages were generated on successful rolls to activate one Quality only five times. That is one out of 20 attempts, on average. During the entire test, enough Advantages to activate both Qualities were never generated on a successful roll.

To be fair, out of 100 rolls, 38 generated Triumphs. Of those 38 Triumphs, 26 of them were generated during successful rolls. Three of those Triumphs were generated on successful rolls that also generated two Advantages. That leaves the caster with a quandary. A Triumph can be used to generate a crit, or a Triumph can be used to activate a Quality’s effect. So which does he choose?

So, a total of 29 rolls generated the ability to activate a Quality. Assuming the caster would prefer to crit 50% of the time, that leaves 16 successful magic attack actions where one Quality could be activated, and only 3 where both Blast and Fire’s Burn Quality could be activated. And that is assuming the caster doesn’t want to crit and activate a single Quality.

Does that seem like decent odds to you? Three out of one hundred?

(Keep in mind, there were some outliers. I generated double Triumphs three times during successful rolls. Those were counted among the other Triumphs. So that could increase the odds of activating two Qualities from 3/100 to 6/100, without increasing the 16-29/100 odds of activating a single Quality. (Double Triumphs were never generated on successful rolls that also generated two or more Advantages.) Also, all the Triumphs generated on unsuccessful rolls could activate Blast, as could the 14 times two or more Advantages were generated on unsuccessful rolls.)

This is the reason I am considering either reducing or removing the Advantage cost of activating Qualities. What do you think?

As someone who has players that will drive for Intellect 5 as fast as possible, and have magic skills of comparable advancement, I'm fine with the rules as is.

Casting a spell that has both Burn and Blast is supposed to be difficult. It's supposed to be rare and hard to pull off. Otherwise you will have players who solve every problem with an Empowered, Medium Range, Blast and Burn attack spell, every single round. That's what you're risking by removing the Advantage cost for Blast and Burn.

But...it's your game, playtest it and see how it goes.

20 minutes ago, Simon Retold said:

I know, I’ve already mentioned this before. But I wanted to discuss this in with little more depth. There is an inherent problem with the magic system, specifically with the magic attack action.

I asked Sam Stewart the following question, and here is his reply.

Why is this a problem? Well, let’s take the spell that I have listed above. Basic magic attack action, with the Blast, Fire, and Range upgrades. Now let’s give the caster easy magic implement. Let’s give him a staff. The staff removes the difficulty increase of the first range upgrade taken. As a result, the difficulty of the spell is Hard ( ). Now let’s give him a decent level of skill, with Imtellect 4 and Arcana 3. He is now rolling three Proficiency dice ( ), one Ability die ( ), and three Difficulty dice ( ). Seems reasonable.

Here’s the rub. I tested that dice combination with 100 rolls in the Genesys dice app. Out of 100 attempts, enough Advantages were generated on successful rolls to activate one Quality only five times. That is one out of 20 attempts, on average. During the entire test, enough Advantages to activate both Qualities were never generated on a successful roll.

To be fair, out of 100 rolls, 38 generated Triumphs. Of those 38 Triumphs, 26 of them were generated during successful rolls. Three of those Triumphs were generated on successful rolls that also generated two Advantages. That leaves the caster with a quandary. A Triumph can be used to generate a crit, or a Triumph can be used to activate a Quality’s effect. So which does he choose?

So, a total of 29 rolls generated the ability to activate a Quality. Assuming the caster would prefer to crit 50% of the time, that leaves 16 successful magic attack actions where one Quality could be activated, and only 3 where both Blast and Fire’s Burn Quality could be activated. And that is assuming the caster doesn’t want to crit and activate a single Quality.

Does that seem like decent odds to you? Three out of one hundred?

(Keep in mind, there were some outliers. I generated double Triumphs three times during successful rolls. Those were counted among the other Triumphs. So that could increase the odds of activating two Qualities from 3/100 to 6/100, without increasing the 16-29/100 odds of activating a single Quality. (Double Triumphs were never generated on successful rolls that also generated two or more Advantages. Also, all the Triumphs generated on unsuccessful rolls could activate Blast, as could the 14 times two or more Advantages were generated on unsuccessful rolls.)

This is the reason I am considering either reducing or removing the Advantage cost of activating Qualities. What do you think?

I didn't use any implement, just a char with Intelect 4 and magic (arcana) 5 aganst a difficulty of 4. I succeded 8 in 100 times to activate both blast and fire. I guess the higher a caster is, he will rely heavily on implements to activate the goodies. And there will/should be talents lending a helping hand as well. The already exiasting Tier 5 talent Master might help as well. Thus decreasing the difficulty to easy I was successful in 60% of the time to activate both blast and fire.

I guess it depends on the setting if you make a mages life easier or harder like in Conan, where sorcery is definitely perilous. Guidelines to "scale" magic could be helpful.

Well I doubt there's going to be many new arguments showing up here, but I'm fine with beating the horse if you are. It might not be dead yet.

I just want to point out that there are literally tools already in the book for making it easier to activate qualities. Give your player that wants better odds of spending lots of advantage on a success and implement that reduces the difficulty by 1. If they hit a ceiling a little too low for you, upgrade their implement. I see no reason to changing some of the most fundamental and prevalent mechanics in the system to work in different ways for different skills.

Not when you already have RAW tools to accomplish the same thing more easily.

The first time the party gets hit by a blast that applies the burn effect to everyone, presumably with a fairly high base damage (does each round's burn test against soak?) they'll understand why this effect should be difficult to produce.

Well, I understand that it'd be better to see the full effect with more frequency based on your tests, but I guess the system still works well.

Keep in mind that blue dices can help A LOT any roll and the party/narative can help with that.

Also It's important to think that all rolls are there to represent the uncertain future. If we have almost 100% in all rolls, what'd be the purpose to roll?

It reminds me my own party playing Pathfinder... sometimes we're assaulted by bad luck, you know? A lot of attacks missing and this kind of stuff. Of course they don't like, but what we can do? If they have 80% do hit all the time, the game would be much more like a video game, and the enemies should've more armor and health points to survive.

2 minutes ago, Doctor Xerox said:

I just want to point out that there are literally tools already in the book for making it easier to activate qualities.

Sadly I am still waiting for the book

Can you give me examples besides implements to scale the difficulty of casting? I'd love the idea of scalability of magic with rules already in the CRB.

1 minute ago, Dragonshadow said:

The first time the party gets hit by a blast that applies the burn effect to everyone, presumably with a fairly high base damage (does each round's burn test against soak?) they'll understand why this effect should be difficult to produce.

This isn’t limited to just Burn and Blast. This applies to any spell in which you have selected to upgrades with no implements to reduce the difficulty, or any spell in which you have selected three upgrades, one of which is range, and the caster has staff implement, or any spell with three upgrades, and the caster has a wand that affects one of those upgrades. Burn and Blast were just examples to create a standard fireball spell.

How does aiming and double-aiming factor into your dice rolls?

7 minutes ago, Bellyon said:

Also It's important to think that all rolls are there to represent the uncertain future. If we have almost 100% in all rolls, what'd be the purpose to roll?.

Nobody asked for 100%. Nobody asked for 50%. Heck, nobody asked for 25%. I just figured 3% to 6% might be a bit on the low side for a caster of moderate ability.

Just now, DarthGM said:

How does aiming and double-aiming factor into your dice rolls?

I did not apply aiming or double aiming. If I did, to be fair, I would have to apply Setback dice as well.

3 minutes ago, DarthDude said:

Sadly I am still waiting for the book

Can you give me examples besides implements to scale the difficulty of casting? I'd love the idea of scalability of magic with rules already in the CRB.

I don't have the book yet either, but its been mentioned other people. From what I've heard its mostly "You get upgrade X without increasing the difficulty."

Just now, Simon Retold said:

This isn’t limited to just Burn and Blast. This applies to any spell in which you have selected to upgrades with no implements to reduce the difficulty, or any spell in which you have selected three upgrades, one of which is range, and the caster has staff implement, or any spell with three upgrades, and the caster has a wand that affects one of those upgrades. Burn and Blast were just examples to create a standard fireball spell.

In d20Land, burn isn't part of a standard fireball spell. It's a blast of magic that looks like fire and pelts you with d6's that might catch that scroll you're holding on fire, but otherwise you won't even have to roleplay not having eyebrows for a few weeks. Burn in Genesys is terrifying.

I get your point though. Why hamstring yourself by heaping on difficulty just to make it increasingly likely that any advantage-cost effects won't trigger even if you succeed, but now you're less likely to succeed well anyway. Will have to give this some more thought...

Just now, Simon Retold said:

I did not apply aiming or double aiming. If I did, to be fair, I would have to apply Setback dice as well.

Not necessarily; not every die roll will have setbacks, but unless you're out of Maneuvers just about every Magic Attack action could have at least one Aim maneuver applied.

Plus if I know I'm going to be putting my all into a spell, I'm going to double-aim the crap out of it to make sure it hits and to try to get all the Advantages I want/need.

That happened quite a lot during my running of The Haunted City at GenCon, and they didn't even have a Blast or Burn affect to try and trigger. They just wanted to score enough Advantage to trigger the Crit 2 with Vicious 3.

1 minute ago, Simon Retold said:

Burn and Blast were just examples to create a standard fireball spell.

Although, the "classic" fireball does not have the burn quality, only blast. To emulate a D&D fireball range and blast should suffice. In my understanding, the element you use is just narratively. You could also say it's a spray of acid or a cloud of gas.

Hmmm. but how would one manage the vulnerability to certain elements?

Is it covered in the CRB how vulnerabilities work like the vulnerability of Trolls to fire? Would the spell need the Fire effect even if you don't explicitely want the burn quality anyways? What with effects like acid that are not covered in the effects table? How are they handled? Narratively or is there a mechanical approach?

During the alpha test, we thought that Magic was extremely strong. During a series of test sessions all of us created a Spell Caster of one variety or the other and played through a Scenario where we were all in Magic College, similar to Harry Potter or the Magicians. I don't recall anyone being disappointed with the magic system at +150 xp, in fact, it was the opposite. Many encounters became very easy with a few spells powered up.

Create a talent like Frenzied Attack for Magic (Arcane Barrage, Divine Wrath, Unleash Primal Force, or something): When fully trained, up to five upgrades for 5 extra Strain.

Admittedly a tad powerful, but not as much as free activation of qualities.

29 minutes ago, DarthGM said:

Not necessarily; not every die roll will have setbacks, but unless you're out of Maneuvers just about every Magic Attack action could have at least one Aim maneuver applied.

Plus if I know I'm going to be putting my all into a spell, I'm going to double-aim the crap out of it to make sure it hits and to try to get all the Advantages I want/need.

That happened quite a lot during my running of The Haunted City at GenCon, and they didn't even have a Blast or Burn affect to try and trigger. They just wanted to score enough Advantage to trigger the Crit 2 with Vicious 3.

I just want to second this. If you're trying to blast/burn your foes, why wouldn't you aim to get that extra helping hand?

Alright, first off, let's have some math. STAR WARS ANYDICE.

OP's original probability: http://anydice.com/program/dd62

OP's original probability gives you a 3.55% chance of pulling it all off (both Burn AND Blast). However, the spellcaster has greater than a 73% chance of casting the spell and hitting with a regular attack, so that's great. I'm not too concerned. Tweaking the variables a bit (only needing 2 Advantage instead of 4), the spellcaster can trigger one of the Additional Effects about 20% of the time. (Why doesn't the FFG forums allow me to use a tilde? That's dumb.)

But. Check this out. http://anydice.com/program/dd64

With a mere two Boost dice (say, from a double Aim maneuver for 2 stress, or a singular Aim maneuver and some assistance), you get off both Blast and Burn 43% of the time.

Feel free to play with the math, but hitting minions with both Blast and Burn 2/5th of the time is just fine by me as a GM.

32 minutes ago, DarthGM said:

How does aiming and double-aiming factor into your dice rolls?

I think a better question is do you need multiple effects everytime? As a GM I'm not going to pile up opponents conveniently next to each other all the time.

Or don't attempt super difficult spells without an outstanding dice pool, or at least understand that you will not get all of the effects you attempt. I personally like the way it is - because it is powerful. Knowledge 4 equates to a burn 4, on the fly (with difficulty increase).

49 minutes ago, Simon Retold said:

I did not apply aiming or double aiming. If I did, to be fair, I would have to apply Setback dice as well.

In equal numbers Boost and Setbacks are not equal. A Boost generates more Advantages than a Setback does Threat.

It's not just aiming either. There's aiming, as well as other PCs spending Advantages to pass Boosts on to the caster as well.

I gave my caster a magic ring that adds a Boost to casting. That wouldn't be nearly as cool if he was accomplishing casts routinely with all effx without even aiming.

What about that Superior mage staff a GM might wanna hand out?

What about new Talents? Or even Master?

Sorry, wanting a high level of multi-success with just a base pool isn't good balance imo.

23 minutes ago, Forgive said:

Or don't attempt super difficult spells without an outstanding dice pool, or at least understand that you will not get all of the effects you attempt. I personally like the way it is - because it is powerful. Knowledge 4 equates to a burn 4, on the fly (with difficulty increase).

Does soak apply to burn?

Just now, DarthDude said:

Does soak apply to burn?

It does in Star Wars, so assuming it didn't change, then yes, you would subtract Soak from the Burn damage. Personally I'm not a fan of that but it is what it is, likely for game balance.