CCM Fixes

[Andreas the Wise]

something small but im against mages having an un-maskable glow. i mean aura of power is cool and all but if it makes you a giant glowing target, no thanks.

I was giving that a bit more thought. We've always said both mages and magic show up on the Astral Plane. But mages no longer have Astral Spirits ... so how do they show up on the Astral plane?

My theory is this. Mages look (on the Astral Plane) exactly like they look on the material plane. So if you have astral vision but are looking normally, and no magic is being cast, then you don't notice mages stand out from the crowd. If you close your eyes, however, you only see the Astral Plane - and the people you then see normally are the mages. It does make sense and seem fair that Archmages, when casting, are fairly obvious. But that said, 90% of the class casting styles were just stuff I made up, and haven't been developed properly. What if magic looked like normal stuff (instead of glows and flashing lights etc) on the Astral Plane. So if you see a rat running down the corner of the street, it could be a real one; or it could be the spell of a Beast Mage (ok, we don't have that class yet, but the example is cool). If you see a trickle of water down the street, it could be real; or it could be the spell of an Elementalist. The only way to check is to close your eyes and look only Astrally - but that makes you more vulnerable to physical attacks.

[Gerk]

8%? more like 50%...

[Bayen]

something small but im against mages having an un-maskable glow. i mean aura of power is cool and all but if it makes you a giant glowing target, no thanks.

I was giving that a bit more thought. We've always said both mages and magic show up on the Astral Plane. But mages no longer have Astral Spirits ... so how do they show up on the Astral plane?

My theory is this. Mages look (on the Astral Plane) exactly like they look on the material plane. So if you have astral vision but are looking normally, and no magic is being cast, then you don't notice mages stand out from the crowd. If you close your eyes, however, you only see the Astral Plane - and the people you then see normally are the mages. It does make sense and seem fair that Archmages, when casting, are fairly obvious. But that said, 90% of the class casting styles were just stuff I made up, and haven't been developed properly. What if magic looked like normal stuff (instead of glows and flashing lights etc) on the Astral Plane. So if you see a rat running down the corner of the street, it could be a real one; or it could be the spell of a Beast Mage (ok, we don't have that class yet, but the example is cool). If you see a trickle of water down the street, it could be real; or it could be the spell of an Elementalist. The only way to check is to close your eyes and look only Astrally - but that makes you more vulnerable to physical attacks.

This is really cool.

*approves*

[Demon of Fides]

But it's only useful occasionally, the rest of the time; it's nuisance.

[Nargoth]

I do like that andreas, the whole if your looking for magic you can see it but it blinds you to non-magic. Its a good way to balance things (being only able to easily notice one at a time per character.) much better than get a rank 1 fly and have it sit a there and see everything, or such... anyway yeah...

[Andreas the Wise]

I thought more on it ... I'm really taken with the idea of displaying your spells in natural ways. It really brings in the concept of familiars, something which has never worked before. Say a wizard chooses a crow as his familiar. Anyone who can see Astrally will always see a crow sitting on his shoulder. When he casts a spell, that crow will fly over and land on whatever is cast. The crow isn't *real* as such - it's just the Astral vision of his magical powers. But it's darn cool.

And no, you don't have to have animals. Streams of water, balls of string, haunting chords, and indeed giant glowing balls of light are all possible ... animals are just one cool way of doing it.

[Bayen]

>_>

<_<

Squirrels!

'Nuff said.

[Nicholas the Mad]

Hmm. I like most of what is going on here, so I'll comment on what I disagree with:

Some good ideas; I'll be able to write up some specific comments when I don't have lots of physics to do.

Also important in the Mind verbs is time requirements, and by association, reducing time costs and insta-spells. I still think we should drop "decrease time requirements" option altogether, since--forget mind control--it allows for spells like "Animate Unwilling Person" to be cast instantly to simply snap someone's spine. (Alliteration)!

Personally, I think we should drop mind control completely except in story magic (because lets face it, its pretty much impossible to do mind control in a war without constant disputes). Also, I think we should still allow spell costs to be reduced. It gives more highly costed mages an advantage. BUT, I think we should get rid of the whole "instant" thing. Make the smallest unit of time for any spell 0.5 seconds, whether it used to say instant or its had its time cost reduced. Also, if you lower the time cost of a spell, it should lower your rank by a bit for as long as it should have taken to cast the spell. Because as long as you have spells that are very fast (eg stoneshot), I could cast it twice a second indefinitely. And if we keep in the lowering of spell time costs, well, its even stupider. So say I want to cast Animate Unwilling Person- DC 3, 21 seconds = DC 11, 0.5 seconds (taking into account that you can't inst-cast anymore) let's say my rank goes down by the actual DC cost of the spell for however long it should have taken. Therefore, I am at Rank-3 for 20.5 seconds after I have cast animate unwilling person.
Does that make sense?

So Nullify *can* be used to make non-magic units safe from mages; but of course, that either requires a mage to keep casting that, OR to cost it, which will be expensive points wise.

How exactly does this work? Say I wanted to crush a tank with rock. Couldn't I just animate the rock into the air above the tank, and let it drop? I wouldn't be holding the spell anymore, so it would be normal rock hitting the tank, not nullified rock. How would that work? Unless you said anything that's had a spell cast onto it within the last however long will become as though the spell had never happened when it comes into contact with a nullified noun.

Instead of using Null against mages; we have a new verb, Assault.
Assault - Word cost 3 - "You mentally assault another unit. You can cast no other spells while you are casting this one. The rank of a unit you cast this on is reduced by 1 while you hold this spell." - Person - DC 5 - 12 seconds.
This will obviously need to be used in combination with Unwilling and Person, and so it becomes a DC 9 spell, 30 seconds spell.

Block is modified to block mental communications from all other people by strength 1. (so it will apply to Telepathise and Influence as well as Assault).

Example 1: Bayen sends three weak mages who can cast just Assault; and all three cast it on me. My rank is reduced by 3 (one for each mage). I cast Block Self (to block mental communications to me). It blocks all three mages (because it blocks strength one from each source). I'm now casting a spell (which reduces my effective rank for other spells by 3) but I can still cast other spells normally.
Example 2: Bayen sends one mage who can just cast Triple Assault. I now have to use Triple Block Self, to restore my rank to normal.
Example 3: Bayen sends three mages all casting Triple Assault. I'm at -9 rank. I cast Triple Block Self, and now I block all those attacks at once.

So don't you have to keep holding the spell to counteract the Assault? So thus, won't your rank be effectively lowered to cast other spells while holding Block?

[Andreas the Wise]

Re Nullify: Yes, you could drop a rock on it. But you can't teleport it into a volcano; or crunch it's motor; or fill it with poisonous gas ... that sort of thing.

Re: Assault - you do have to keep holding block, and so, when people assault you, if you choose to block it, your rank will be effectively lowered. However, if multiple people assault you at once, you'll save rank by using block.

What do people think about all the suggestions I made in the first post? Apart from Null and mind control they've had no comments. Just briefly:
- Should empty planes be empty or a blank copy of Micras?
- Should Animate change to giving velocity to a noun, instead of force (which can be easily broken)
- Should your IC knowledge affect Transmute/Transfigure?
- Should Teleport take longer/move you less distance?
- Should we have a 'Vehicle' noun?
- Dispel - does it's time cost decrease?
- Clarify what powers have to be done magically, and which can be costed as base cost.

[Bayen]

My thoughts:

- If we go with Planes at all (which I still think we should consider dropping), they should probably have a blank copy of Micras, if only because "magic comes from the land" and if a plane has no land, then it would have no magic!!
- Animate's not broken; Extend is. That said, it would probably be easier on non-physics folks to just give it a maximum speed, letting the Noun handle how much mass you can handle.
- If IC knowledge affected Transfigure particularly, then in order to change into really anything, from an elf to a toad, you'd need to fully grasp biology far beyond the cumulative knowledge of all the scientists in the world, especially with regards to brain functions and the like. If we're going to assume that you can do basic Transfigures like turning into an animal, then I can't see restricting them in any way. (Similarly, it would mean that only people with training in highly advanced chemistry and geology can do simple transmutes like turning dirt into stone, simply because their compositions are so complex). So, in short, either we totally nerf transformations by requiring IC knowledge (which would actually be okay with me), or just let people do "whatever."
- I'm still of the opinion that we should get rid of Teleport altogether, since it takes away movement as an element of strategy. Rather than nerfing it, let's just do away with it altogether. If you must have Teleport, I'd use the following rule: it takes as long to cast as it would take you to traverse the distance normally. Higher-level spells can increase the speed from walking to running to car to plane, but you still have to take as long as normal, non-magical units to get there--it's just via magic rather than actually travelling.
- Rather than a Vehicle noun, it might work to just include a person's equipment and any vehicle they're driving as part of Person. For example, when you're driving a car and someone bumps into the back of your car, you say, "That guy hit me!" Not "he hit the back of my car;" "me." A vehicle is an extension of oneself, so why not let magic treat it that way and resolve the problem like that!?
- I think it might be a good idea to go back to NCM-like rules for enchantments cast by mages, while actually costing in your OrBat items (which can't be dispelled). It could just be reducing the time cost for Dispel and Enchant, or allowing a Mass Dispel, or something like that; just we'd have to make sure there are good rules in the charter for costing pre-made magic items that last.
- I'd say non-magical "powers" are allowed as long as they match a non-magical unit. For example, if you wanted a mage who could cast fireballs and conjure force shields around themselves, simply cost them the same as a tank, that can shoot giant projectiles and has plate armor. Treat them basically as a tank for all intents and purposes except for backstory, which is magical. (In fact, you could do an entire magic system this way, but if you want to be able to do "creative" stuff with magic, just copying modern units doesn't quite cut it. It does work well for simply determining base costs for "basic" magical units).

[Andreas the Wise]

- Animate/Extend - now Extend cannot be used with Imbue, is it still broken? Even if it isn't, you can still use your animate to create a black hole totally and completely and utterly broken technique. Speed and noun takes weight is much easier.
- Person/Vehicle - that gets extremely complicated very fast. Not only does it mean that if you're able to cast Transfigure Unwilling Person, you could also transfigure their tank (now that gets weird); it also raises questions like "If I go into an enemy vehicle, does the enemy vehicle become part of me?" etc. Person is already a weird noun, not letting you do anything to air inside a person etc. A vehicle noun would be a much easier option than making Person weirder still.
- Dispel/Enchant - I really never liked the NCM rules; particularly that it let enchantments last forever. Our increased time costs for enchantments and the like work, I think; we just need to agree on how easy it should be to dispel them.
- That's a fairly good explanation, actually.

[Bayen]

- Vehicle - or we could just make Object only able to affect entire objects (or groups of them), in which case you'd need Epic Object to affect a vehicle, so it's no longer broken. I don't know why we had "partial objects" in the first place... the fact that it references "hand" as the example shows that it's an artifact carried over from an outdated system.
- Dispel/Enchant - I just don't like the idea of "strong" enchantments. Non-magical units aren't allowed to make other non-magical units, even though in reality things like factories do exist; why should mages get special treatment? I'm fine with transient item creation (easy come, easy go) for tactical purposes, but for anything close to permanent, I think it should be costed--just to be fair within the overall recwar system.

[Andreas the Wise]

We've made the 'strong' enchantments take a long time to do; and anything that lasts close to permanent (ie Rune) takes such a prohibitively long time to do that it's practically unviable to do during war instead of just costing it.

[Andreas the Wise]

Partial objects: there are some advantages to partial objects. The most obvious one is casting multiple spells from the same overall object. For example, if you want a necklace that can fire lightning or electricity, what you do is use object on the chain, to give it the ability to cast fire; and use object on the pendant, to give it the ability to cast electricity. If we require full objects, we cannot make a tank easily nullified, because we can't cast it on part of the tank (though I suppose if we're costing it in, we can count that as costed at Epic) ... hmm, maybe it could work.

[Demon of Fides]

- I'd say non-magical "powers" are allowed as long as they match a non-magical unit. For example, if you wanted a mage who could cast fireballs and conjure force shields around themselves, simply cost them the same as a tank, that can shoot giant projectiles and has plate armor. Treat them basically as a tank for all intents and purposes except for backstory, which is magical. (In fact, you could do an entire magic system this way, but if you want to be able to do "creative" stuff with magic, just copying modern units doesn't quite cut it. It does work well for simply determining base costs for "basic" magical units).

Just like to mention that this is something I've been gunning for for a very, very long time.

[Andreas the Wise]

This topic has got somewhat confusing; and in the other topic we've begun discussing related stuff; so I'm going to create a bunch of topics, one for each issue; and try and structure them in a way that what we agree on will work for CCM or Gerk's new system.

[Demon of Fides]

And as soon as you do so; Bayen makes one post appropriate to all of them...

[Andreas the Wise]

You think those three were all I was going to do? More are coming out.

[Demon of Fides]

I see them... Thank god I'm logging off soon...

[Andreas the Wise]

As I've run out of the mental energy to properly structure separate topics on each magic idea, I'll put the last two here to continue in this topic.

Animate
I think it should be adding velocity to the noun; not a specific force (because that can be broken at very small weights to create black holes).


Attacking with elements - [Note this is elements and not elementals].
Nargoth noted that Earth is really the only element worth attacking with. Getting things wet generally achieves little; fire has been weakened so much I'd swear it'll barely burn infantry, let alone to anything to vehicles; when has air ever been helpful?; electricity just gives a light tingling sensation; and dark ... yeah.
Is this a problem? Nargoth and I agree it is. What should we do about it? Well, at the least, I'd like clarification on how hot fire is; and then a magical way to make it hotter (though yes, this would of course cost more DC). And electricity should probably be stronger.