Episode 13 - It's a Kind of Magic (Part 2 )

After an extended hiatus, The Dice Pool Podcast returns with special guest GM Chris of the Order 66 Podcast to take a further look at MAGIC in the GeneSys Role Playing Game. In this second part of our series on Magic we'll provide you with invaluable lessons on using the Magic rules in your games. This episode we'll present a revision on Magic Skills, Magic Actions and Maneuvers, and covering off on several issues raised in the last episode. We'll then get into discussing magic implements, talents and bringing magic into your game. Finally, well get into some games and rules questions on magic. So, grab your wands, fire up your cauldrons, kickstart your brooms, and open up your mystical tomes and join GMs Hooly, Huzz, Flano and Chris for another in depth look at Magic in the Genesys Role Playing Game.

Available on iTunes and your favourite Podcatcher.

nice keep up the good work. Listen alot to the podcast while walking the dogs will look forward to hearing second part of the magic discussion. Please note again your website podcast list is lacking this new addition https://www.thedicepoolpodcast.com/podcasts/

Great episode! I love these discussions on mechanics and theory. You guys are brilliant. Where can we find those talents GM Chris came up with?

Here is the Magic Talent Sheet developed by GM Chris that we talked about on the show:

MAGIC TALENTS

Looking forward to listening to the episode.

Regarding the new talents, i have to say I love the focus talents and really dislike the tier 3 and 4 talents. Something seems wonky with the cost to benefit ratios.

Duration: increasing the difficulty by 2 will likely mean the best you could expect is to pay the duration advantage cost once on a cast. That effectively means you get a free concentrate maneuver for one round, maybe two if you're very lucky. This honestly seems like the kind of thing I'd allow a PC to spend advantage on without the talent and at no extra difficulty. For a +2 difficulty I'd say the duration should be for the rest of the scene (the added risk of the spell failing entirely should give the PC pause) if you can pay the two advantage. Less bookkeeping that way, too. Question: can the two advantage be payed on subsequent rounds when you roll them as part of other actions? that would make the talent a bit more interesting.

Combination: you're combining actions (I'm guessing this is how to get a wall of fire...again, I haven't heard the episode yet) and strain. Part of me just wants to allow that in general (maybe throw in +1 extra difficulty or strain). At worst I think I'd allow the talent to simply be called "Spellweaver" and have no other limitation. But having to pre-select the two action types makes it extremely limited. It starts to feel like imposing some highly structured and arbitrary limitations on what was supposed to be a very open casting system.

I like the model of simply saying "if you want to add X to the spell, it'll bump the difficulty by +Y" and doing as much of that as possible on the fly. The inherent issue there is it's a very small range (1 to 5), so it's hard to add many shinies to a spell without banging into the cap, barring gear or talents to offset the difficulty. It seems like the equivalent of high level d20 spells (or frankly the plot level magic described in the history of Terrinoth) isn't really in scope for PC's at any level of XP.

On 9/19/2018 at 5:32 AM, Dragonshadow said:

I like     the model of simply saying "if you want to add X to the spell, it'll bump the difficulty by +Y" and doing as much of that as possible on the fly. The inherent issue there        is it's a very small range (1 to 5), so it's hard to add many shinies to a spell without banging into the cap, barrin  g gear or talents to offset the difficulty. It seems like the equivalent of high level d20 spells (or frankly the plot level magic described in the history of Terrinot  h) isn't really in scope for PC's at any level of XP. 

I totally agree, and more. Anyone attempting to cast a spell with a difficulty of 5 is expecting to fail a lot, even with a maximum skill and characteristic. In reality a difficulty of 2-3 is what most will want, with an occasional 4 with fingers crossed.

You end up with spell casters who are extremely flexible with low power spells, huge variety without the punch. Then when they take the talents and get a better implement they have an extremely narrow area in which they excell, with only a very small number of extremely potent spells they can use.

edit: I still love it though, it’s just an understanding that players need to have.

After hearing GM Chris's explanation of Combination, I like it a little more than I did initially, but I still feel like making spells prohibitively difficult is just going to discourage taking risks. Just look how static combat is in d20 systems like Pathfinder where moving means the baddies get a free attack of opportunity. Is it worth moving to do something really cool? once in a while, but generally not. I agree with Richardbuxton that exceeding 3 difficulty is often going to be enough to discourage the attempt, and 5 is extremely unlikely.

Perhaps simply: combine difficulties and strain. Add +1 Setback due to the inherently non-standard casting attempt of combining spells. The talent could be a level 3 that removes the setback die.

All that said, I realized as I was thinking about the old favorite "Wall of Fire" I realized that I'm not actually sure how to use the "Barrier" spell type to create a wall of anything. What's the uncombined form look like? I think the fire half of the equation is much clearer than the barrier, which quite honestly by the description is more of a movable, personal shield than a wall anyway, which creates its own level of confusion (for me at least). The confusion is resolvable only by going off book and winging the difficulty, which is exactly what I'd want to do if I then said "okay, so that's the difficulty for a wall, but what's the difficulty if I set it on fire?"

Still feel Conjure is a better fit for a Fire Wall.

12 minutes ago, GM Hooly said:

Still feel Conjure is a better fit for a Fire Wall.

Agreed! If I can Conjure a weapon or NPC that causes damage then why can’t I Conjure a wall that also has the potential to cause damage? About the only thing that needs a gm to provide input or adjudication is the size of the wall for a given difficulty, and what is required to overcome such an obstacle.

Terminology is part of the problem. “Barrier” has nothing to do with stationary barriers; it should have been called “Shield” or “Protection” (I guess the latter would have been more vulnerable to snark). On the other hand, Conjure isn’t much help for figuring costs of large immovable objects.

I think we give the writers a bit more credit than they deserve when the options have such glaring omissions and we applaud the supposed freedom of extending it as we see fit rather than asking for some more helpful example difficulty listings. I had hoped Terrinoth would have done so rather dramatically, but it didn’t.

Conjuring is the only Magic Action that provides the size of the object summoned, so in actual fact this works perfectly for our needs. With the following:

Object is stationary: -1 Difficulty

Object is on Fire: +1 Difficulty

Use the Fire damage from environmental effects if someone attempts to pass through it.

The language is only limited by our imagination.

The if you want something bigger than Silhouette 2, that would be simple using the additional summon concept of +1 difficulty for the first extra then Advantage to have a third or fourth.

It really all just comes down to the players and gm having a creative discussion either in session zero or between game sessions.

Why not record the number of uncancelled successes rolled when conjuring the wall of fire and have that plus the caster’s Intellect be the amount of damage the wall inflicts if crossed, touched or otherwise disturbed? That way more skilled casters might be able to produce better barriers I would think.

Hi Hooly,

Great episodes! I always appreciate your podcast, but these magic ones have been outstanding.

I am having a bit of trouble finding your shownotes and locating the Harry Potter redesign. I've Googled everything I could think of, but everything brings me to an audio file and no show notes.

--Erik