3 minutes ago, Forgive said:

True, but for great effectiveness, an item is required. A laser rifle is 8 damage base. A magus attack is base damage (skill)...big difference unless wizard has a good implement.

So not only does it cost more strain but it's also weaker. Interesting. The damage is equal to the skill ranks? So a max of 5 base damage without using an item or additional effect?

Just now, GroggyGolem said:

So not only does it cost more strain but it's also weaker. Interesting. The damage is equal to the skill ranks? So a max of 5 base damage without using an item or additional effect?

Double checking....

I was off a smidge - base damage is set by the characteristic (sorry). It is one difficulty die for short range attack. However, on face value it is weaker than a shotgun, but looking at the options, increasing the difficulty by just one allows some cool effects. But what's more is that same wizard can have that shotgun, and use their magic for conjurations, healing or barriers - all the better imho.

1 minute ago, Forgive said:

Double checking....

I was off a smidge - base damage is set by the characteristic (sorry). It is one difficulty die for short range attack. However, on face value it is weaker than a shotgun, but looking at the options, increasing the difficulty by just one allows some cool effects. But what's more is that same wizard can have that shotgun, and use their magic for conjurations, healing or barriers - all the better imho.

I saw somewhere today that you can only get dedication once for a single characteristic, is that accurate?

1 minute ago, GroggyGolem said:

I saw somewhere today that you can only get dedication once for a single characteristic, is that accurate?

Each characteristic can be improved once via Dedication.

5 minutes ago, c__beck said:

Each characteristic can be improved once via Dedication.

So it sounds like spending starting XP on characteristics is even more important in this than in Star Wars.

3 hours ago, 2P51 said:

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

Nobody is asking for a high level of multi-succcess. Again, I just said that I believed 3 to 6% (a statistic repeated by @CitizenKeen ‘s tests) was a tad low. In all honesty, I feel it should be about double that, which is why I am considering cutting the Advantage cost in half. But a lot of good points have been made in this thread, and I am digesting them all.

And while I know that Boost and Setback dice aren’t equal opposites, I keep my players on their toes. It’s a rare attack roll that doesn’t have Setbacks attached. (After all, we have to justify those talents designed to remove such dice, don’t we?)

Yes, but the opposite is also true. Those same Talents lower Difficulty, add Advantages, apply upgrades and/or Boost dice, to provide the increased likliehood of success.

21 minutes ago, 2P51 said:

Yes, but the opposite is also true. Those same Talents lower Difficulty, add Advantages, apply upgrades and/or Boost dice, to provide the increased likliehood of success.

Very true. Another one of those aforementioned Good Points™.

http://game2.ca/eote/?montecarlo=100000#proficiency=4&ability=1&difficulty=3

Your testing series seems off, ~10% for both and 40% for at least one quality. Seems rather fine to me.

1 hour ago, GroggyGolem said:

So it sounds like spending starting XP on characteristics is even more important in this than in Star Wars.

I like this, it rewards specialisation AND jack-of-all trades alike. The specialist now really gain something from starting with a 5, while the generalists with their starting 3s get quite decent 4s in a lot of characteristics and the difference between twos and fours is quite significant, more than for example between fives and sixes.

1 minute ago, SEApocalypse said:

http://game2.ca/eote/?montecarlo=100000#proficiency=4&ability=1&difficulty=3

Your testing series seems off, ~10% for both and 40% for at least one quality. Seems rather fine to me.

Are those with or without an implement and aiming?

21 minutes ago, Cyvaris said:

Are those with or without an implement and aiming?

Without aiming. It's a plain hard check with skill 5 and characteristic 4, just like from the OP.
And it does not consider that a triumph usually can be used to activate a quality as well, which technical increases the chances to activate both to something like 25% or so. So I guess the OPs dice series of 100 rolls was just a little below the curve.

I still don't have the book, I would assume aiming adds boost dice, so feel free to use the link and just add 2 boost dice for aiming. If you include that and consider the high triumph chance you might end up with significant more activations of both qualities.

I am glad that such dangerous spells are hard to fully pull off, or else the player characters would be toasted and left charred messes pretty fast.

10 hours 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?

Get a magic ring you can get 3 specific enhancements without increasing the difficulty, one can be a double increase to difficulty.

On 12/6/2017 at 9:28 PM, EliasWindrider said:

Get a magic ring you can get 3 specific enhancements without increasing the difficulty, one can be a double increase to difficulty.

The magic ring bumps the difficulty, though it ends up being better than a wand.

Getting boost dice is the best solution. With a wand and boost dice, you can get your chance to just over 50% with 5 yellow and two blue dice.

There's also the option of talents. The signature spell talent that decreased the difficulty by 1 helps some.

Overall, there's not that much advantage in triggering both Blast and Burn, and I'd probably focus on just getting one good effect in.

14 hours ago, CitizenKeen said:

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.

It looks like that version is still just based on one triggered effect (advantage >= 2).

3 hours ago, ubik2 said:

It looks like that version is still just based on one triggered effect (advantage >= 2).

Derp.

Played with the code with the same pool for 23.39% when based on activating 2 effects and counting Triumphs (might have been a more simple way to calculate the results, but I've never used this site before)

EDIT: Read the site's documentation and fixed it . I got a different number (25.54%) , but haven't figured out why yet.

15 hours ago, SEApocalypse said:

Without aiming. It's a plain hard check with skill 5 and characteristic 4, just like from the OP.
And it does not consider that a triumph usually can be used to activate a quality as well, which technical increases the chances to activate both to something like 25% or so. So I guess the OPs dice series of 100 rolls was just a little below the curve.

Or, you know, you got your dice wrong. My original post was Skill 3, Characteristic 4, so you’re tossing an extra Proficiency die into the mix.

16 hours ago, ubik2 said:

The magic ring bumps the difficulty, though, so it ends up being no better than a wand.

Getting boost dice is the best solution. With a wand and boost dice, you can get your chance to just over 50% with 5 yellow and two blue dice.

There's also the option of talents. The signature spell talent that decreased the difficulty by 1 helps some.

Overall, there's not that much advantage in triggering both Blast and Burn, and I'd probably focus on just getting one good effect in.

Technically it upgrades the difficulty so replace 1 purple with 1 red instead of adding up to 4 purples

Figured I'd post my understanding here...

Intelligence 5 gets enhanced to a 7 (max for spell, right?) with a staff +4 implement. They do a short range attack (1p), with burn (+1p), empowered (+2p)...they deal 18+successes damage and burn 18 damage per round for X rounds (x = knowledge)....

This revelation brought on a concern. How can other characters that aren't interested in magic compare. Like, dealing with high DPS is a non-issue; but making other character's feel...not so diminished would be my goal here.

Craft unique talents for non-magic users?

My setting is going to keep each archetype unique in some way. While humans don't have the option to use the magic actions, they will have the full array of cybernetics options available to them. I'll likely include unique talents for the archetypes too.

1 hour ago, Forgive said:

Figured I'd post my understanding here...

Intelligence 5 gets enhanced to a 7 (max for spell, right?) with a staff +4 implement. They do a short range attack (1p), with burn (+1p), empowered (+2p)...they deal 18+successes damage and burn 18 damage per round for X rounds (x = knowledge)....

This revelation brought on a concern. How can other characters that aren't interested in magic compare. Like, dealing with high DPS is a non-issue; but making other character's feel...not so diminished would be my goal here.

They have to hit with it first, and generate enough advantage to trigger the Burn, AND they're at short range. Even if you start (somehow) with a 5 Intellect, you still have to roll the Augment spell well enough to get to 7 Intellect, maintain it, and then maneuver and cast the attack spell you just laid out.

There are enough drawbacks that I as a GM can exploit and other PCs can look at and go "well yeah, but how often can you pull that combo off really?"

Need to add rules for time, make the spell take long to perform for a reduced cost. Do they have anything like that in the game?

Nope. But the idea of Ritual Magic has crossed my mind.

Ritual Magic would allow any Magic Spell/Action to be made with a removal of Strain cost, but requires a minimum of Prepare 3, would also consider removing a die of difficulty also if I included a "Limited Ammo" portion needed "Components" to create a Ritual (Chalk Circle, Candles, Animal Blood, etc.).

I feel it'd be more of an NPC mechanic than a player one though.

On 12/8/2017 at 1:44 PM, DarthGM said:

They have to hit with it first, and generate enough advantage to trigger the Burn, AND they're at short range. Even if you start (somehow) with a 5 Intellect, you still have to roll the Augment spell well enough to get to 7 Intellect, maintain it, and then maneuver and cast the attack spell you just laid out.

Dedication will only take you to 5 characteristic, so I'm not sure how a character would get to 7. A literal reading of Augment is that while you get an extra attribute die on your skill check, you are not increasing your attribute, and therefore would not increase the base damage. Between the two of these, I think you're still capping at 14 damage. I've also read this to imply that you add an attribute die even if your skill is higher than your ability (not upgrading the die), though that may not be intended.

In settings with cyberware, you could potentially bump this to 18 (since you can boost Int to 6 and Overcharge to 7) but this is an uncommon mix. If your setting allows cyberware with magic, I would suggest that you not allow the cyberware bonus to apply to the magic.

In any case, 14 with Burn is very good. Using a magic ring this goes down to 12, and will generally be successful, which is probably about as good as the Sniper Rifle, and better than existing Fantasy weapons. I'd suggest not providing a PC with an Empowered+Burn magic ring.