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Spell System Fail

I tested out my spell building system last night, but the results are not what I hoped.

Magic Missile and Fireball should be 1st and 3rd level respectfully. They both ended up at 4th level.

Bleh. More number crunching tonight when I take my son to PE.

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15 Comments

  1. Ivan Sorensen

    Are you trying to reverse engineer the existing spells ?
    I would be very curious how many published spells you may find are “too good” or “too weak” šŸ™‚

  2. John Payne

    Not really, i just wanted to compare two similar spells and have them come out differently.

    If they had not computed to the same level, i would have been happier about it.

    The end result is a mechanical process for the basic effect (do damge, heal, teleport, alter) and then a more narrative part for the description (4 green flamomg skulls, a box appears releasing weird elementals that dissolve the flesh off a victim revealing a stone statue beneath.)

  3. Jesse Cox

    Iā€™m wondering what features Magic Missile has that add disproportionately to the cost.

  4. Keith J Davies

    Remember, magic missile is often identified as “best of first level”. That whole “can’t miss, and hits incorporeal” thing.

    Try costing them out in Hero System, magic missile is crazy expensive.

  5. John Payne

    Keith J Davies That’s what I’m finding. I used The Black Hack version, then went down to the B/X D&D version. Maybe I’ll try two different ones.
    Jesse Cox Getting more arrows per x number of levels. If it didn’t grant you more arrows, the difference would have been much larger.

  6. Keith J Davies

    Can you show me the framework you’re building on? I haven’t been paying close attention and don’t know what you’re working with, and I’m quite interested.

  7. John Payne

    Keith J Davies its rough, but i should be able to later tonight. It based off OpenD6’s values and measurements tables, but not their rules.

  8. Keith J Davies

    Excellent. I’ve got a bit of time this weekend, I think.

  9. Dave R

    As a point of interest, ACKS reverse-engineered the B/X spell list to get a spell building system, and Fireball and Lightning Bolt come out as 5th and Sleep as a 3rd level spell before they’re corrected to their legacy levels. Just a feature of not all the original spells being perfectly balanced against each other.

  10. John Payne

    Dave R That’s true. I also know that the narrative part of the process in my head would have all kinds of unbalancing secondary effects.

    It’s good to be reminded that ot doesn’t have to be perfect. I was interested in the ACKS method because of the novel use of multiplication, but I’m opting for something more EABA-ish.

  11. John Payne

    Keith J Davies i hope that I will. This week is kicking my butt.

  12. Keith J Davies

    John Payne I can understand that.

  13. Keith J Davies

    Dave R Was this in the Companion, or the core book? I don’t remember seeing it.

  14. Dave R

    Spellbuilding system is in the Companion.

    And I see I erred, Lightning Bolt comes out at 4th level.

  15. John Payne

    Dave R I forgot to really say it before, but thanks for mentioning the ACKS system.

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