A comment about fantasy RPGs

[womzilla]

rickj has been thinking about tabletop RPGs and made this comment about Baldur's Gate 2, a computer game based on D&D:

Anyway, playing Baldur's Gate 2 did remind me about one of the problems that I'm glad they're fixing in 4e -- the constant need for sleep. The game has pretty much been "we fight until the wizards run out of artillery and the clerics run out of healing, and then it's nap-time." Also, I like how most of their wizard characters are actually dual classed wizard/rogues, so they can use short bows and not totally suck when they're low on spells. I may have to try that with a character, either in 3e or 4e.

I replied,

One of the worst features of magic in most fantasy rpgs is how magic users (Gygax's generic term never seemed more appropriate) get used up.They have a certain amount of magic they can use over a certain amount of time, and then they're useless normal humans until they recover.

Real magicians (that is, the characters in good fantasy fiction)--they have limits on how much they can do, but they're always magical.They can sense magic, converse magically, predict the weather, unravel omens, draw magical sigils, light their pipes without a match,whatever. Even Jack Vance's wizards weren't so completely nonmagical as a D&D MU who has burned through all her spells.

I think that cantrips were Gygax's attempt to keep magic user magical even when they didn't want to burn spell points, but they're pretty weak beer. Has anyone ever written a fantasy RPG where magical PCs get to do magical things all the time just by nature of their magical background/training/sacrifices? (Well, Heroquest. Anything else?)

Comments

[avram]

RPG mechanical limitations on magic-user power seem to me to be a result of needing to balance the magic-users against other PC types (fighters, thieves, etc). In a game were all magic-users were NPCs, or one where all PCs were magic-users, you could limit power in very different ways.

Let's see, games where players can do magical stuff whenever. Everway, Dogs in the Vineyard (depending on how the table feels about it). I don't remember enough about Ars Magica.

[montoya.livejournal.com]

Doesn't modern D&D have classes that work like you say? They can only memorize n spells of level x and so on, but they can use them as much as they want all day long -- they only need to rest to memorize different spells. (I think BG2 even has these classes in it.)

At any rate, I think the rest mechanic is a good one for CRPGs because it means that your magical characters can only do so much in a big battle -- their memorized spell list depletes on the back lines just as surely as the fighters' hit points on the front lines. Yeah, this means you have to rest after every major battle, but a) that's realistic enough in a sense, and b) as long as the game doesn't make a fuss about this, it's not a gameplay hindrance.

It also makes for tactical resource management choices when you're in a series of battles with no chance to rest in between (invading an evil castle, say) -- do you use these spells now, or do you save them for a Big Bad that might be coming up?

The mechanic that I hate, and which nearly ruins BG2's combats, is the "buffs." Spells like "Protect from fire" are frequently worthless, but if you're fighting a dragon or some such, they're nearly mandatory. So there's a lot of battles where you walk in, fight, die, restore, memorize a custom set of spells, cast on the whole party, then walk in and fight. It's frustrating and slows down the game considerably to no benefit.

[mneme]

There's no D&D mage type that behaves as you suggest -- the standard D&D mage types are still the prepared caster (Wizard, Cleric, Druid: lots of spell access; Vancean), the spontaneous caster (sorcerer, bard; very limited spell access, but limits are per spell level, and somewhat more spells per day), and the psionicist (spell point system/spell points/day; very few spells(powers), but spells are more flexible).

They've also added the Warlock (blast growing with level; spells are unlimited/day (and buffs are usually self-buffs that last all day), with a somewhat limited spell selection), and as of 2007, the various 'combat style' fighters-that-act-like-casters, who have 'stances' that are effectively spells and are prepared and limited per encounter, not per day.

[montoya.livejournal.com]

Sorcerer is what I was thinking of, I suspect, but got the details wrong.

[wizwom.livejournal.com]

Well, G.U.R.P.S. Magic used the general fatigue points of the character for limiting your spellcasting - so your character could make a great effort. It's the equivalent of a mage having a six-shooter, then having to wait a few minutes to reload.

Runescape uses "runes" of various flavors, and as long as you have runes, you can keep casting. They are a stacking 0-weight item, so you could carry thousands of each type.

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

Runescape is s more like the type of thing I pictured, yes. Thanks.

[rickj.livejournal.com]

Ars Magica magi can do all sorts of crazy stuff without getting tired. Pretty much all the White Wolf "wizardy" games let wizards do all kinds of stuff on a regular basis, but they have limits on their magical resources as well.

DragonQuest

[errolwi.livejournal.com]

DQ has spell magic which requires Fatigue (FT) to cast, normally recovered by sleep (supplemented by resting, hot meals, and expensive potions). This limits you to regularly ~10 - ~25 casts per day, depending on other stats and the type of spell. Most colleges have a very few Talents that don't require FT, covering things like special senses, college-specific protections. Then there are Rituals, that normally take an hour, and generally use no FT.
So mages are generally fairly useless in combat with no FT - a state that is also unhealthy for non-mages, as they are easier to hit. However, DQ doesn't have character classes, so you can put EP (and stats) into being good at hitting things as well as casting magic.

Re: DragonQuest

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

You know, I bought and read DragonQuest when it was published, and I spent nearly eight years working for its authors, but I never actually played it. I tend to think of it as "D&D with all the stupid stripped out", but that sounds substantially more different than I remembered, and close to exactly like what I was thinking of. I will have to dig my copy out and review it.