Bay 12 Games Forum

How about Ürîßt?

What, no cereal cannon? Fool.
Range is a winner!

So you think.
You're half-dragon. Kobolds were literally made from dragon blood.

I'm also dragonblooded. And the 1,170 gp (IIRC) I have would make a pretty acceptable bed once converted to silver...

Anyways, WBL for 4th level is 5,400 gp; +50% makes it 8,000, which is 200 gp more than I calculated a moment ago...let me fix something...

((Oh man, this is so much fun...if only I could draw better...))

"STUPID VINES STUPID TALENTS STUPID ANGER STUPID ORB!!"

RIP VINES!

Quote from: GreatWyrmGold on November 16, 2012, 07:45:36 pm

In the second case, why not? Dwarves are, physiologically short humans who get knurd.

Knurd? Wut?

Discworld thing. Hint: Spell it backwards.

Unless we have a round, red-and-white artifact.

Quote from: GreatWyrmGold on November 15, 2012, 11:04:10 pm

My points were that A. you shouldn't need to change the game to make it work well, and B. there is NO REASON not to give healing magic some form of balance to bring its average utility in line with mundane healing.

Actually, there is: because "rare magical healing powers" that aren't much better than normal healing aren't very interesting.

Have you been paying attention? There have been tons of suggestions of how to make magic balanced while still being interesting and, from a certain point of view, more useful than mundane healing. And I never said that this balanced magic should be rare--that was mostly suggested as a form of "balance" I argued against.

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I guess one of our differences on this matter is that, as mentioned, I want magic to be a part of the world rather than apart from it. I feel that magic shouldn't simply be, "stuff happens for no reason," but rather things that happen for a reason that isn't true in our world. I think that, "magic vs science," as presented in many stories, where you have scientists and engineers refusing to have anything to do with, "magic," because it doesn't fit with the physics they believe in is pointless fappery, mostly by people who don't know what they're talking about, but also sometimes by people who should know better, and that it's more interesting to see what results when science and engineering are applied to phenomena that normal people in our world would consider, "magic," or, "impossible".

In other words, I think that in a "well designed" fantasy world, the concept of an "anti-magic field" that shut down all "magic" would be as ludicrous as an "anti-circle field" that negated the properties of circles, and for approximately the same reasons.

Well, several issues here.
1. Magic isn't like circles, it's more like gravity.
2. If spells can fiddle with gravity *cough*flight magic*/cough* and other natural laws, it should also be able to fiddle with magic.
3. This doesn't seem to pertain to the question, which was what the heck magical skills have to do with almost unrelated mundane skills and why dwarves have magic.

1: Some magic might be. A Roc's ability to fly despite being four times the size of an elephant should not be. Magic {replacing / being part of} electromagnetism (but being similar enough to our electromagnetism in enough ways that the world doesn't look like complete nonsense to the casual observer) is the way I view it. (remember that electromagnetism is basically the force that defines all macro-scale physics that isn't done by gravity, and that an 'anti-electromagnetism field' would thus be a pretty nuts weapon)
2: In the case of, "this magic power fiddles with magic powers A, B, and C," then sure; in the sense of, "this magic power negates everything that isn't mundane earth-normal physics," absolutely not.
3a: The idea is that understanding a magical power gives you and understanding of things related to how the magic power works. If you disagree with the relatedness, then we've probably come up with different explanations for how the power in question works. (I'll admit that having siege engineering come from the ability to aim and summon meteors doesn't make much sense)
3b: Why not? Admittedly, there are good reasons to have them favor certain themes in their magic, such as crafting, earth, and booze, but that's not the same as saying, "these creatures have no magical powers or properties. Mundane earth stuff only. Final Destination."

1. Why should a roc's ability to fly be based on a random, arbitrary ability rather than a well-defined ability?
2. If magic is a force, an antimagic field would be more like an anti-gravity or anti-electromagnetism field, but with less of a chance to screw everything up.
3a. No, it doesn't. Anyways, I see magic as being a skill, but not necessarily related to RL or non-magical skills any more than, say, skill in typing gives you skill in making a typewriter, or that skill in running gives you skill in driving fast.
3b. The way I look at it isn't, "These creatures are restricted to Real Life stuff," I look at it as "These other creatures happen to be able to use magic innately."

I had just typed up a big reply to your last post, but I accidentally deleted it. However, here are my favorite points.

Dividing the posts up lime this lets me make it more clear what we're replying to.
The magic balance I'm proposing is more comparable to making horses still competitive with flying carpets.
You left out the possibility that magic would sometimes be better than mundane and sometimes worse, which is kinda the basis of strategy games.