The issue I think in conforming to their expectations as set by primarily d20 based games is - as GM you're just creating a massive rod for your own back that will absolutely dimish your experience with Genesys. Players have been conditioned through CRPGs and d20 to think in a very regimented, hierarchical and crunchy way. It's a vertical model; at Level X, Spell Y gains Z% more damage/attacks. That's not how this system works in any way, so trying to shoehorn that mentality in will just ruin it for you and them. And, as GM, it'll make your life harder.

one thing I do with my players is ask "ok so what do you want to achieve here? Tell me and I'll help you find a way there." D&D was really good, esp was 3.0 onwards, in conditioning the players to view the GM as adversary and not ally, which Genesys does not at all subscribe to.

If you player wants to do something and the only way they can express it is via D&D spell, the absolute worst thing you could do is try to create the spell as a distinct Genesys widget. "Oh you want to fireball. I'll make a fireball spell, how's that?" It's terrible, thanks for asking.

Instead, figure out what that spell achieves narratively (forget the mechanics, you don't have a binary axis of resolution so it's all out the window) and work back from there. You want to cast a spell that causes the cluster of thugs to catch fire, and also any surrounding terrain like crates, curtains, etc? We can do that with Genesys RAW. And that's how the mechanics work, so you're just teaching them to think in Genesys - not D20 - terms.

Ok, so my real concern as far as magic goes, is that it links a whole bunch of useful abilities to one key stat, and doesn't require the use of any major resource, and so is infinitely reusable barring a few key. If that's all true, then what is my reason for NOT choosing it over any other option? I'm sure there's a logical explanation, likely that magic ramps up difficulty in exchange for versatility, but still...

12 minutes ago, Richardbuxton said:

so it’s not as easy as an at will Spell, but should it be?

As the GM of my group I think wall of fire should be as at will as fireball. Personally, I'd adjudicate that you can combine spell actions, maybe with an upgraded difficulty. Transforming a difficulty to a challenge die seems appropriate to be able to combine the attack and barrier magic actions. That way the barrier can do damage to anyone touching it. Not simply cause a burn, but actually be a persistent, concentrated wall of fire that if people move within short range of it take fire damage.

Of course wall of fire is just an example, it could be a wall of thorns, for primal casters, or a wall of holy light for divine casters, but it could all be the same process. At least that's along the lines I am thinking of running it. Since I know it's going to come up in my game.

One of the things I am doing in my swords and sorcery campaign is locking Attack spells behind a Tier 4 talent. This is partly because of the nature of the setting (swords and sorcery stories tend not to have a lot of fireball/lightning bolt/magic missile type magic), and partly because I want to encourage my caster player to explore creative ways of casting spells without relying entirely on blasting enemies to pieces. He has access to my homebrew Manipulation spells to begin with, plus Barrier, Curse, Dispel, and Utility. I've also locked Augment at Tier 4 for future use, as well as other WIP spell types like Mentalism and Transmutation. I know Augment is not normally permitted for Arcana, but... I'm permitting it.

Also I made the base cost of spellcasting 3 Strain, instead of 2. There's a Tier 3 talent that lets you bring that back down to 2 later on (as a maneuver), but I do want magic to be demanding and dangerous.

5 minutes ago, Endersai said:

The issue I think in conforming to their expectations as set by primarily d20 based games is - as GM you're just creating a massive rod for your own back that will absolutely dimish your experience with Genesys. Players have been conditioned through CRPGs and d20 to think in a very regimented, hierarchical and crunchy way. It's a vertical model; at Level X, Spell Y gains Z% more damage/attacks. That's not how this system works in any way, so trying to shoehorn that mentality in will just ruin it for you and them. And, as GM, it'll make your life harder.

one thing I do with my players is ask "ok so what do you want to achieve here? Tell me and I'll help you find a way there." D&D was really good, esp was 3.0 onwards, in conditioning the players to view the GM as adversary and not ally, which Genesys does not at all subscribe to.

If you player wants to do something and the only way they can express it is via D&D spell, the absolute worst thing you could do is try to create the spell as a distinct Genesys widget. "Oh you want to fireball. I'll make a fireball spell, how's that?" It's terrible, thanks for asking.

Instead, figure out what that spell achieves narratively (forget the mechanics, you don't have a binary axis of resolution so it's all out the window) and work back from there. You want to cast a spell that causes the cluster of thugs to catch fire, and also any surrounding terrain like crates, curtains, etc? We can do that with Genesys RAW. And that's how the mechanics work, so you're just teaching them to think in Genesys - not D20 - terms.

So much this.

one turn your fireball may need to get to long range and explode to hit those goblins, next you want it super hot so it pierces that trolls hide, another encounter you just want to watch the world burn. Why have 3 different spells?

3 minutes ago, Richardbuxton said:

So much this.

one turn your fireball may need to get to long range and explode to hit those goblins, next you want it super hot so it pierces that trolls hide, another encounter you just want to watch the world burn. Why have 3 different spells?

Conditioning. Misaligned expectations. 20 sided dice trying to fit into a narrative dice hole. Et cetera.

4 minutes ago, SwivelDiscourse said:

Ok, so my real concern as far as magic goes, is that it links a whole bunch of useful abilities to one key stat, and doesn't require the use of any major resource, and so is infinitely reusable barring a few key. If that's all true, then what is my reason for NOT choosing it over any other option? I'm sure there's a logical explanation, likely that magic ramps up difficulty in exchange for versatility, but still...

Strain and difficulty really limit how long and how much you can do, particularly with Attack. The higher the difficulty the less excess Advantage to recover Strain. Being a social and combat character isn’t too hard, being a caster really is difficult.

3 minutes ago, Richardbuxton said:

Strain and difficulty really limit how long and how much you can do, particularly with Attack. The higher the difficulty the less excess Advantage to recover Strain. Being a social and combat character isn’t too hard, being a caster really is difficult.

Yeah exactly.

Firstly, the three skills are tied to three different attributes with only Divine sharing the base attribute for Strain. So I'm unclear as to what Swivel is basing their commentary on...

Ah, my pardon, I was completely unaware that spellcasting affected strain, I'm still going through my cursory reading of the rulebook. My sincere apologies. This thread is now utterly baseless accusations at this point, I'll come back when I've really absorbed the rulebook.

2 minutes ago, SwivelDiscourse said:

Ah, my pardon, I was completely unaware that spellcasting affected strain, I'm still going through my cursory reading of the rulebook. My sincere apologies. This thread is now utterly baseless accusations at this point, I'll come back when I've really absorbed the rulebook.

It is a nice balancing force, because once you start out you're weaker but, like Force Users in the SWRPG, you'll scale really well. A few Grit ranks to buff strain you'll be able to use spare advantage to buy down your strain tally and cast for longer.

4 minutes ago, SwivelDiscourse said:

Ah, my pardon, I was completely unaware that spellcasting affected strain, I'm still going through my cursory reading of the rulebook. My sincere apologies. This thread is now utterly baseless accusations at this point, I'll come back when I've really absorbed the rulebook.

Spells cost 2 strain to cast, successful or not. Although the probabilities to generate enough advantage to recover that strain from the spell roll itself have pretty good odds. Even a starting character with say 3 Intellect and 1 Arcana has a 24% chance to generate at least 2 Advantage while casting the Attack spell with one modification. Of course the spell caster needs to choose whether or not to activate their Additional Effects with those advantage or recover the strain they spent on the spell, a risk reward scenario to be sure. But with a 65% chance for the spell to be successful I guess it depends on whether or not you succeed casting the attack spell to determine whether or not you wish to activate the additional effects.

It's already been confirmed to players that Additional Effects on magic like Blast, works just like the item quality of the same name, so you'd need 2 advantage to activate it.

The Anydice program with Genesys dice programmed in. Shout outs to CitizenKeen

On 12/6/2017 at 0:45 PM, CitizenKeen said:

You're welcome.

26 minutes ago, Endersai said:

Conditioning. Misaligned expectations. 20 sided dice trying to fit into a narrative dice hole. Et cetera.

In my case it's my wish to align the PC's expectations more to the style of game where magic isn't the end all be all of all skill checks, because I can definitely see my group all doubling down on magic, then the whole campaign just becomes about "I cast the attack spell, I'll add blast" then next round "I cast the attack spell, I'll add range" then next round "I cast the attack spell, I'll add impact". Because that's the sort of gamers my friends are. So if I adjudicate the magic system to be something a little more limited, something more in line with the Genesys Gencon mage character spells (seriously, that character has two magic attack spells clearly defined based on the magic attack action), then my players will use it to narrate what their doing instead of just repeating that they are using the attack spell every round with various modifiers. Or my friends will argue "I narrated that my magic attack spell is a fire spell, it should catch things on fire." even if they didn't add the fire descriptor to the spell, and narratively it should catch things on fire even without the extra difficulty, because we are more used to full narrative systems where if you say a magic attack is fire based then it catches something on fire.

Not to mention I enjoy writing spells and powers then trying to figure out how to build them in the confines of a rule system or toolkit.

Yeah, looking at the system initially, I had assumed that there was absolutely no penalty for it. I'm not a stranger to players who think outside the box, in some of my previous 5e campaigns, Minor Illusion and Prestidigitation are the most abused spells in the game. My only real concern was that casting was "free."

Beyond that, my only complaint about FFG at this point is that they'll probably only release supplements digitally after a month or two of their physical release in order to drive up hardback sales, and that's just me complaining about the weather.

6 minutes ago, SwivelDiscourse said:

Yeah, looking at the system initially, I had assumed that there was absolutely no penalty for it. I'm not a stranger to players who think outside the box, in some of my previous 5e campaigns, Minor Illusion and Prestidigitation are the most abused spells in the game. My only real concern was that casting was "free."

Beyond that, my only complaint about FFG at this point is that they'll probably only release supplements digitally after a month or two of their physical release in order to drive up hardback sales, and that's just me complaining about the weather.

I wish they would have printed more of the core, but any PDF is better than none coming from a person who owns 90% of their Star Wars books.

16 minutes ago, Doughnut said:

But with a 65% chance for the spell to be successful I guess it depends on whether or not you succeed casting the attack spell to determine whether or not you wish to activate the additional effects.

The neat thing is that if you fail your more likely to have Advantage, So recovering Strain on a fail should be common. Unless you’re adding the Blast effect to your attack spell, which can still be activated on a failure with 3 Advantage.

5 hours ago, Richardbuxton said:

Obviosly you need at least a Triumph, some Advantage too would help, so it’s not as easy as an at will Spell, but should it be?

i am still considering different options making magic-effects auto-activated instead of spending 2 advantages per effect, how about that:

Attack Basic (D)
+ Blast (C for auto-activation)
+ Fire (C for auto-activation)
+ Range x 2 (DD)
+ Empowered (DD)

3 minutes ago, Terefang said:

i am still considering different options making magic-effects auto-activated instead of spending 2 advantages per effect, how about that:

Attack Basic (D)
+ Blast (C for auto-activation)
+ Fire (C for auto-activation)
+ Range x 2 (DD)
+ Empowered (DD)

Perhaps, although I would be more inclined to attach it to items r talents rather than a baked from the start thing.

Just spit balling but I don’t think a starting character should even be able to attempt that kind of spell. A starting place would be:

Attack Basic (D)
+ Fire (C for auto-activation)
+ Range x 2 (DD)

with a staff to reduce the difficulty to Hard.

Once you throw in Signature Spell then you can add another upgrade comfortably. But Signature Spell doesn’t need to be the end, that talent seems ripe for an improved and Supreme version. To me one would reduce the Strain cost, the other would allow exchanging Success for Advantage after cancelling the results.

Somehing like that last part is for me what will elevate the capacity of a Spell caster

For an item you could do something like:

Holy Text of the Sun God Ra

When holding this book of verses to the sun god Ra you may decrease the difficulty to cast any Divine spell by 1. As well if any additional effects would require Advantage to be spent to activate them you may choose one effect and upgrade the dice pool a number of times equal to the Advantage normally required to have the effect automatically trigger upon successfully casting the spell.

How the Range works with magic? What's the base range? And the upgrade impacts on magic?

Anyway, I don't think a Fireball need to has a lot of range, fire, blast, etc. In almost everygame or RPG, like the popular D&D, a Fireball hasn't any burning effect at all. It's just a big explosion. And despite the long range of a Fireball, 99% of the time the battles will de done in a small to medium arena. So (I don't have the book yet) 1x Range (I'm assuming it increase the range from short to medium) + Blast looks good enogh to a Fireball. I guess an incendiary Fireball should be a powerfull epic spell, even in D&D.

And I'm seeing in this forum that a lot of players are creating new spells, like illusions, transmutation, etc. I'm pretty sure that is possible to emulate this effects easily based on the system.

An illusion could be something like a persistent skill check of Charm/Coertion/Deception (based on what the caster want with that spell).

Shapeshift could be just a swap of stats (+1 Brawn, -1 Agility to simulate a have powerful animal/thing) and it's not hard to adapt the mobility if necessary, like fly speed or swim. New attacks? Check the animals in the bestiary or create a new one, no problem. Or, like the illusion, the magic could work like a skill test with better skill ranks.

Invoque creatures? Well, I guess the number of success shoud increase the stats/skills of the summon. Advantages could increase the duration or upgrade the summons from minions to a rival, idk. Or use your xp to create a new creature, like a droid in SW.

Create an object? Well, with a story point is so easy to "find" almost anything in the place. I don't think a magic cannot simulate this.

55 minutes ago, Bellyon said:

How the Range works with magic? What's the base range? And the upgrade impacts on magic?

Magic is short range, but you can increase the range of a spell by one range band by increasing the difficulty by one, which can be done multiple times.

5 minutes ago, Bellyon said:

Anyway, I don't think a Fireball need to has a lot of range, fire, blast, etc. In almost everygame or RPG, like the popular D&D, a Fireball hasn't any burning effect at all. It's just a big explosion. And despite the long range of a Fireball, 99% of the time the battles will de done in a small to medium arena. So (I don't have the book yet) 1x Range (I'm assuming it increase the range from short to medium) + Blast looks good enogh to a Fireball. I guess an incendiary Fireball should be a powerfull epic spell, even in D&D.

Your correct. The base range is exactly Short (can’t target Engaged) so often Medium Range will be enough. A staff adds that single range upgrade for free and can be bought at character creation. The result is a single difficulty attack at Medium Range with a Damage of about 7 or 8 and no Crit rating.

That's quite a stretch on the interpretation of the "Fire" attack add-on since the wall isn't actually lighting where it's located on fire, but rather only what touches it. A flamethrower burst doesn't hover in the air until someone tries to run through it. I like how you bent the system to accomodate the "wall" spell concept, but there's no denying the bend. I'll grant you, perhaps that's the point.

I like the magic system as is, although I feel like it straddles being too crunchy for truly "describe it and that's what happens" style of RPG (hence my concern above about the Fire component) and not being crunchy enough for those who like to order their spells off the menu. We're offered a bunch of choices for each spell type, but it still feels very incomplete even if we just test run it against a handful of classic spells.

I'm curious how many folks have actually played the magic system as written. Of those, how many players decided what to cast by limiting their choices to a given spell type's menu and calling it a spell versus ones who tell their GM what they'd like to do and they collaborate on bending the system to accommodate it. I want my table to be firmly in the latter category, so I need to make sure our magic rules actually allow such riffing to be handled quickly and fairly.