I am reading through the Magic rules and it feels to me like they wanted magic to be a Low Damage attack. I am wondering if those of you who are more experienced in use of the system can tell me if Talents or something else changes this? It would seem that the better your skill the more chance for extra damage, but it still looks like it was set pretty low.

Also, coming from SWRPG I notice that since this is generic there is no set system of magic resources like the Force Die or Magic Points in other systems, is that why magic is kind of low damage as an attack? Thanks for any help.

You're missing the magic implements. They add anywhere from 2 to 4 to the damage of attacks. And don't forget the empowered attack option: it doubles your characteristic for base damage.

I have a druid in my home game with a Cunning of 4 and a magic staff. She did an empowered blast against a necromancer last game for a base damage of 4 (Cunning) + 4 (empowered) + 4 (staff) = 12 damage. Before adding in successes!

As for the "magic resource" that is your strain. Each time you cast a spell (after the roll has been resolved—so after you've spent your ) you suffer 2 strain (page 211). Or more, if you rolled any ).

Implements such as staffs add damage to the attack spell action.

I like to think of magic attacks as a ranged version of brawling (fists & kicks) and using a magical implement as picking up a pistol or rifle.

It might seem like damage is low because it is ... if you're not using an implement. It would say an Intellect of 3 would be average for an Arcane user, so your attack would start at 3. But, implements would add as much as +4 (magic staff) to that. Plus, you add your success to it as well. You can add the Deadly effect to make the Critical 2 and Viscious quality equal to your ranks of Knowledge. Pretty bad *** if you think about it. An Intellect of 4 plus a staff is 8. Easily equal to a blaster rifle in Star Wars.

As far as resources go, well that would be your strain threshold. Everytime you cast a spell ... 2 strain after you resolve the effect. So, you can literally pass out from casting a spell. LOL

Z

Doh! I'm SUPER slow to respond today. LOL

Thank you so much for the responses thus far I am trying to understand the default mechanics so I can see what I need to tweak in order to get the feel I want. I want to have a version of this magic system that does not rely on the implements, but instead has magic as an innate ability of the caster (I like the idea of implements but not for the setting I am using). Would you suggest I just add the average of the implements rating? Or maybe add the Skill Level to damage? I didn't see the 2 Strain thing, but I am still reading.

If you want to diversify the skills required to cast then you can use their ranks in Knowledge (Arcana, Divine, whatever) as a flat damage bonus. This will scale a bit as the characters progress (starting at 2 and eventually getting to 5).

Alternatively or in addition, you could simply put a damage increase on the various spell types (ie, Arcana +4, Divine +2, Primal +3 etc).

End of the day, the casters will need something to bring the damage totals up to where ranged/melee are. And the system is very sensitive to small damage changes due to the way Soak works (ie, if average Soak is say 4, then a damage rating of 6 is doing twice the actual damage of a damage rating of 5).

If you want to remove implements (a grand idea, in my opinion, since not all settings have magic users use them) then you have to decide if you want it to be an innate thing or something that they need to "work at."

If it's innate, @Uncle_Joe 's idea to use Knowledge skills as an add-on would be good. Or just a flat Characteristic+3. If they need to work for it that would be a talent. Tier 2, ranked. First rank is +2 damage and crit rating of 5. Each additional rank increases the damage and decreases the crit rating by 1. So as a tier 5 stack, that's +5 damage and a crit rating of 2.

Another option is to make magic in your setting ignore normal soak. That way it'll effectively deal a lot more damage, and it could fit thematically if armor and such doesn't protect against magic in your setting.

Remember that part of the reason for this is that attacking is just one small part of what magic can do, unlike combat skills.

One of the beauties of Genesys is that it is extensible by design. The developers gave us tools to use to create new systems to make our games the way we want them. One option in this case would be to reskin the Feral Strength talent from the Star Wars RPG.

Spell Power
Tier: 2
Activation: Passive
Ranked: Yes
Description: Add 1 damage per rank of Spell Power to one hit of a successful attack using a magic skill.

This way you have a font of power that becomes more expensive to purchase for each upgrade.

Alternately, you could go with a multi-tiered approach.

Arcane Assault
Tier: 1
Activation: Passive
Ranked: No
Description: Increase the damage of successful attacks using a magic skill by 1.

Arcane Assault (Improved)
Tier: 3
Activation: Active
Ranked: No
Description: Once per encounter, as a maneuver, perform a magic attack. This does not count against the total number of spells you can cast this round.

Arcane Assault (Supreme)
Tier: 5
Activation: Passive
Ranked: No
Description: On a successful attack using a magic skill, each uncancelled adds 2 damage to one hit of the attack.

This way limits the power a little, but still makes for some pretty huge numbers, with enough uncancelled successes.

1 hour ago, Archlyte said:

Thank you so much for the responses thus far I am trying to understand the default mechanics so I can see what I need to tweak in order to get the feel I want. I want to have a version of this magic system that does not rely on the implements, but instead has magic as an innate ability of the caster (I like the idea of implements but not for the setting I am using). Would you suggest I just add the average of the implements rating? Or maybe add the Skill Level to damage? I didn't see the 2 Strain thing, but I am still reading.

Why not create a tier of talents that specifically relate to injury inflicted by magic spells? That way you still have the inborn ability reflected as well as a way to express training of that potential?

- Edit: Sigh. Kind of what Simon Retold just posted.

15 hours ago, Simon Retold said:

One of the beauties of Genesys is that it is extensible by design. The developers gave us tools to use to create new systems to make our games the way we want them. One option in this case would be to reskin the Feral Strength talent from the Star Wars RPG.

Spell Power
Tier: 2
Activation: Passive
Ranked: Yes
Description: Add 1 damage per rank of Spell Power to one hit of a successful attack using a magic skill.

This way you have a font of power that becomes more expensive to purchase for each upgrade.

Alternately, you could go with a multi-tiered approach.

Arcane Assault
Tier: 1
Activation: Passive
Ranked: No
Description: Increase the damage of successful attacks using a magic skill by 1.

Arcane Assault (Improved)
Tier: 3
Activation: Active
Ranked: No
Description: Once per encounter, as a maneuver, perform a magic attack. This does not count against the total number of spells you can cast this round.

Arcane Assault (Supreme)
Tier: 5
Activation: Passive
Ranked: No
Description: On a successful attack using a magic skill, each uncancelled adds 2 damage to one hit of the attack.

This way limits the power a little, but still makes for some pretty huge numbers, with enough uncancelled successes.

This is a great answer, you could do a similar set for Heal too to boost the Wounds healed when doing that

It really depends. One of my players with a starting character roasted a vampire with an 18 damage fireball + 6 Burn. 4 Willpower + 2 Implement + 12 Holy Damage (6 successes x 2).

2 minutes ago, verdantsf said:

It really depends. One of my players with a starting character roasted a vampire with an 18 damage fireball + 6 Burn. 4 Willpower + 2 Implement + 12 Holy Damage (6 successes x 2).

Ouch! Holy is an awesome effect

Indeed :). @Wisconsen has been magically smiting enemies left and right!

I'd definitely follow one of the suggestions here that requires a purchase of some kind to bolster magical effects without implements. Just going with a flat increase would monkey too much with balance vs. other character types. One of the downsides of needing implements to do this sort of stuff is that implements can be lost, stolen, or broken. But a flat +3 to damage to compensate for taking implements out makes magic overpowered compared to other types of damage dealing, I think. In other words, I'd go with Uncle Joe or Simon Retold's suggestions.

23 hours ago, Simon Retold said:

Arcane Assault (Improved)
Tier: 3
Activation: Active
Ranked: No
Description: Once per encounter, as a maneuver, perform a magic attack. This does not count against the total number of spells you can cast this round.

1

Arcane Assault (Improved) should be a tier 5 talent. It's better in every way to the tier 4 Conduit talent in Terrinoth: Once per encounter, your character may spend a Story Point to perform a magic action as a maneuver.

Also, I'm not aware of any limitations on the number of spells you can cast each turn. Besides the obvious "you only get one action" limitation ?

On 5/25/2018 at 9:19 AM, jackissocool said:

Remember that part of the reason for this is that attacking is just one small part of what magic can do, unlike combat skills.

This, big time. In a previous urban fantasy campaign and the current high fantasy one I'm GM'ing, magic has consistently been top tier damage, while still providing incredible versatility.

Magic damage doesn't really need boosted, because it's the most versatile weapon available.

Want blast? we can do that.

Want auto-fire? we can do that

Want Stun damage? we can do that

Want Vicious? we can do that

Wand Sunder? we can do that

Want knockdown? we can do that

Want Burn? we can do that

Want to mix and match those as needed? WE CAN DO THAT.

Also magic can double the base damage (characteristic) for just +2 difficulty if you want raw damage. It's kinda insane if you really think about it. If you have a characteristic of 4, and a staff (+4 damage) that means 12 base damage at just a base difficulty of 3 (2 once you get some XP and use signature spell). Magic attack options are really powerful.

5 hours ago, c__beck said:

Arcane Assault (Improved) should be a tier 5 talent. It's better in every way to the tier 4 Conduit talent in Terrinoth: Once per encounter, your character may spend a Story Point to perform a magic action as a maneuver.

Also, I'm not aware of any limitations on the number of spells you can cast each turn. Besides the obvious "you only get one action" limitation ?

I get that. I wrote these talents on the fly, and didn’t even bother checking them for game balance. They were just there as an idea, a concept to play with. Essentially, since this is a custom campaign setting, you could just re-skin Conduit as Arcane Assault (Improved). Then, of course, make it Tier 4.

As for the “you only get one action” limitation, Conduit skirts it. There’s no reason another talent couldn’t.

3 hours ago, Wisconsen said:

Magic damage doesn't really need boosted, because it's the most versatile weapon available.

Want blast? we can do that.

Want auto-fire? we can do that

Want Stun damage? we can do that

Want Vicious? we can do that

Wand Sunder? we can do that

Want knockdown? we can do that

Want Burn? we can do that

Want to mix and match those as needed? WE CAN DO THAT.

Also magic can double the base damage (characteristic) for just + difficulty if you want raw damage. It's kinda insane if you really think about it. If you have a characteristic of 4, and a staff (+4 damage) that means 12 base damage at just a base difficulty of 3 (2 once you get some XP and use signature spell). Magic attack options are really powerful.

Perhaps you didn’t read the original post in which it was stated this campaign setting would have no magic implements. That’s the reason he wants to improve magic damage. Another words no +4 damage from a staff, so Empowered only pushes it to 8 damage for a difficulty increase of + . In other words, to replicate the damage of a long bow at short range, the caster is rolling against while the archer is rolling against .

1 hour ago, Simon Retold said:

Perhaps you didn’t read the original post in which it was stated this campaign setting would have no magic implements.

Maybe you should re-read it.

On 5/25/2018 at 10:35 AM, Archlyte said:

I am reading through the Magic rules and it feels to me like they wanted magic to be a Low Damage attack. I am wondering if those of you who are more experienced in use of the system can tell me if Talents or something else changes this? It would seem that the better your skill the more chance for extra damage, but it still looks like it was set pretty low.

Also, coming from SWRPG I notice that since this is generic there is no set system of magic resources like the Force Die or Magic Points in other systems, is that why magic is kind of low damage as an attack? Thanks for any help.

I was speaking to the base magic system as presented in the CRB, as presented by the Original post, quoted above for reference. Now if you want to talk about the evolution of the discussion from the base system in the CRB into homebrew territory that is also perfectly fine by me.

1 hour ago, Simon Retold said:

Another words no +4 damage from a staff, so Empowered only pushes it to 8 damage for a difficulty increase of + . In other words, to replicate the damage of a long bow at short range, the caster is rolling against while the archer is rolling against .

If you are removing magical implements, which are as far as the system is concerned with regards to the attack magical action, weapons. You need to have a fair comparison for a baseline. To do such you cannot compare a magical attack to any weapon attack, as you have removed their equivalent of weapons. It's not worth delving into all of the ways this continues to make magic far superior to natural attacks available via the CRB (again if you want to debate natural attacks via homebrew that is a completely different discussion).

However, making magic viable without implements just needs a base damage modifier on the attack magical action. My suggestion would be base +3 modifier. Or even break it up depending on tradition. For example if the specifics of the setting has Arcane magic as the magic of war, maybe the arcane attack action gets a +4 (akin to a staff). If, in this same setting, divine is not often used for offensive measures maybe only a +2 as it would still be effective when it is intended to be via the holy/unholy effect. As two such examples.

Though an easier, better, and more balanced way (in my opinion) would be to tie and bake in differing implements directly to either the magic types themselves (divine, primal, arcane) or the method of access to the magical ability. For example you could very easily bake the holy icon into divine, and druid circlet into primal. Then, emulating varied fantasy sources, bake in the remaining and/or desired implements into arcane via method of usage. If you learned arcane via a war mage school it might be a staff. If you learned via apprenticeship maybe an orb, a wizard academy or school a wand, and natural ability (akin to sorcerers from DnD and other fantasy archetrypes) magic rings. From there you bake in the damage bonus on the attack action as well as a secondary affect that is applicable within the narrative.

For example using a system outlined above if a Arcane Caster studied as a War Wizard, their attack action would be a +4 damage and they get the first range upgrade for free, thus baking the effects of the staff into it without actually using a staff in the narrative. This fulfills the narrative need with minimal mechanical mess, and maintains most of (though not all of) the balance of the system as presented via the CRB.

The bonus damage probably isn’t even the main benefit of implements, it’s the reduced difficulty they bring which ultimately leads to more powerful spells, or at least better range on the spells.