CCM Fixes

[Andreas the Wise]

There's been slight talk by Bayen of a new SCOWL system (he'll post it soon), which means there's a reasonable chance CCM might be retained for the occasional actual recwar. And that means it's justified to fix the flaws in CCM like I originally planned ...

So, I propose the following:
- The verb Imbue can no longer include the verbs Enchant, Extend, Potion or Rune.

This means that there's no easy way to make millions of items; because spells can ONLY be extended by mages. This is also corrected by not having this as a constant system and by increasing the time costs for these things.

- Time costs are increased for spell lengthening verbs:
* Enchant A now takes 15 minutes to cast, and lasts for 1 day.
* Enchant B now takes 90 minutes to cast, and lasts for 1 week.
* Rune takes 1 full day to cast, and lasts for 4 months.
* All these costs can be multiplied by Double, Triple etc (both the time and length it lasts for).
* Enchantment Stacking now becomes impossible. (eg You can't Enchant A the same item twice to last for 2 days. Though you can enchant it again at any time, and it lasts a day from that new enchantment)

As enchantments become a lot longer in time to cast, and can only be cast by mages (see above), it makes the more valuable and less easy to use. So someone may take some days in war making them, but it's a lot harder for them to get broken amounts. If this is used soley for short recwars, Rune may be unnecessarily long, and may be dropped entirely.

- Items can be costed as pre-runed, and last as such for the length of the war.
* Costed at 0.5 points for a single spell on a single item.
* Costed at 1 point for up to 10 identical spells on the same item.

Example: I want lightning swords for all my soldiers. I increase their cost by 0.5 points each.
Example: I want my tank to be able to teleport. It weighs 60 ton; I use 'Teleport Triple Object' as the spell I'm runing, which moves 150 kg by itself. So 1 point gets me 1.5 tons (10 repeated spells), so I have to pay an extra 40 points for a tank which can teleport itself.

- The Adjective Intelligent has it's Word Cost increased to 10.

This makes it significantly more expensive to have a mage who can create intelligent servants (ie elementals), because it will significantly increase the class cost of the mage; and thus also their actual cost. If people don't want elementals, they don't include Intelligent in their class word list.

- Instant spells must have a 0.5 second wait between recasting.

This wasn't abused too much until Bayen did his null magic thing, in which he completely and utterly cheated time wise, as far as I'm concerned. This change means that if you're casting an instant spell multiple times (eg Mold Earth to change the shape of a hill) it's clear you can only affect 2 cubic metres per second, not "I think I can concentrate enough to cast it a million times per second" "No you can't, you can only do it half a million." "Surely this is broken ..."

- Heal is clarified to not be able to change people's memories or mind.

Mind Control at the conference. Nuff said, really.

- Uber Magic Items can be costed by themselves, and each one will be agreed upon individually.

This is for things like Armageddon's Blade and the MCM stuff Ukris stole.

- Teleport/Shift is clarified to allow people to land in fluids [gases and liquids] but not solids.

The question "Can you teleport halfway into a brickwall" has come up a couple times. This would mean "No. Your spell would stop before you ended up in the middle of a solid; and if solids totally blocked your intended destination, the spell would fail".
Eg if I fill a plane with earth; and you try to shift there, it's fully solid, so your spell fails. You don't get stuck halfway between planes or anything.

- It's again confirmed that all living things function as a single magical unit, and spells cannot effect parts of them.

You can't teleport a rock into someone's brain or stomach, nor turn the gas in their lungs into cyanide or the like.

- If people are happy with fixing and keeping CCM, I will make two pages for each Class. One, as it currently stands, which shows class description, words available, and has a spell list. The other will drop out the words available, but will include pre-costed units. That means someone who doesn't want to learn the magic system can say "I take 10 human spellspys; they cost me 100 each, they can cast these spells". I'll probably also make a 'Basic CCM explanation' page, written for those who've never done magic. I always intended CCM to be simple to use if you didn't want to go deep, and I'd like to continue to work to make it that way.

In addition to these definitely needed updates and tweaks (and CCM was always intended to be a system we could update and tweak), I'd ask for discussion on the following:
- Whether Transfigure Person should be used as a mind control thing; whether mind control should be possible at all; and whether there should be a different noun/verb convo which allows you to look at a person's mind/influence them without full on mind control.
- Whether the non-material planes should be empty, or have a copy of Micras without buildings, people or plants on them. (hint: it could be interesting to exile all magical people to the Astral Plane, but it would currently be hard as the only continent there was destroyed)
- Whether Animate should be done via forces, or looked at more like Channel (that is, it allows things to move at a certain speed; or adds a certain velocity to them in a particular direction)

This comes up because Animate can be easily broken by taking incredibly small things and moving them at impossibly fast speeds; and also because it becomes useless for taking large things and moving them at reasonable speeds. If 1 animate moves 1 earth/object/air/water at the same max speed, that seems easier and less broken. (that is, Animate Earth moves all that earth at the same speed as Animate Water moves all that water, even if they weigh different things. But Animate Double Earth works at half speed to Animate Earth; while Double Animate Double Earth works at the same speed.

- Whether IC knowledge should play any role in Transfigure or Transmute

My idea of declared training before was not, as it was accused, to make epic units epicer; but to actually place a clear limit on their epicness. So if you said "I know poisons" and costed that, you could use Transmute Water to turn water into poison. But if you didn't say "I know poisons" and cost it, you can't.

- Whether time/DC costs for Teleport and Shift should be increased, to make it much harder for armies to move around.

Really, the question is "do we want teleportation in our recwars, and if so, to what extent." There are several options, such as:
- Leave it as is (enough mages can get any army anywhere pretty quickly via a gate)
- Note that enchantment times are increased (so now to set up a gate takes longer)
- Make teleportation harder to do (so only epic mages can do it fast)
- Note that the lack of instantness in recasting means gates can only send people through slower now, and also that you'll need it cast multiple times to transport units.
- Change the range of teleport; so that short range teleport is easy, but teleporting across the world is very hard.

- Whether we should have a 'Vehicle' noun

Currently, it's possible that I could use 'Mold Object' and crush the motor of a vehicle without effecting the rest of it. But to teleport something is immensely time consuming as I need to set up a gate that can cast 'Teleport Triple Object' multiple times simultaneously to not end up with half the object in one place and half in the other. If we had a Vehicle noun, and a clear limit on the size it involves (so Vehicle might be car; Double Vehicle tank; Triple Vehicle small plane, and you'd need multiple Epics to effect the Triton), then we would both limit the ability of mages to mess with vehicles internal workings; and make it easier to move them around.

- Clarify how Null and Nullify interact, and consider if they need to be recosted.
- Change how hard Dispel is, to make it easier to remove enchantments (instead of letting it stay at half the time it took to cast them, which could be a long, long time now ...)
- Clarify what powers a unit can have that may seem magical but aren't (and so can be included in the base cost), and which need to be done magically. This effects things like Wraiths and Demigods.

[Bayen]

I'd kind of like to see CCM depowered a bit, making mages more tactical units that brute force attackers or defenders. And also I think it would be good to bring back up the goal of having magic be fair against modern units without magic. So a few ideas to consider:

- Definitely nerf teleportation. I like the idea of a really long casting time (like 10 minutes to an hour per person), and also difficulty as a function of distance is cool, except it might get annoyingly complicated.
- It might be a good idea to reduce the ranges of mages. I'd say a 10 meter maximum would be good. It's still a good distance away, but not ridiculous like 10 kilometers. Also, it forces you to be tactical about the deployment of magical units (and non-magical enemies can be strategic about keeping their tanks and planes out of range).
- If we do magic well, we should be able to get rid of Null and Nullify. They're really newbie-unfriendly, especially for people who buy premade CCM units and then realize that enemy mages who know how to use Null can completely negate their powers. How annoying.
- I think we should completely remove the ability to lower casting times. Come up with reasonable times and stick to them. That'll get rid of a lot of brokenness.

There's more, but I have to go now, so I'm just going to post what I've written so far.

And if we do this right, the plus side is that we can make mages cost a lot less...

[Andreas the Wise]

I quite agree that 10 km has been shown to be too much. I think up 1 km can still work; but I think we also need to explain how mages pick up units that far away (I'm thinking along the lines of casting your mind out and looking around - and that would take concentration). I must admit I've become quite dubious of how we say "Our mages can see your units 10 km away and do specific stuff to them".

[Gerk]

I must admit I've become quite dubious of how we say "Our mages can see your units 10 km away and do specific stuff to them".

and yet you used that yourself in the Demon War...


as i've made it perfectly clear, i've grown to detest CCM, and believe it's a waste of time to try to fix it. either it's going to continue to be breakable, or you're going to dumb mages down the the point of uselessness in a war.

and i know, Andreas, that you put this out here so early on before the conflict has even finished, because you know that I have a counterproposal. you beat me to it, and it may provide you with some support. but i'd like to be assured that we're not going to make a decision on this until i can find the time to draw up my own proposal (which i won't have time to do until after this whole thing is over.)

[Andreas the Wise]

No no no Gerk, you totally totally misinterpreted my action. I thought you and Bayen were going to argue against CCM until the cows come home, and for that reason it was effectively dead. But chatting with Bayen today, he has an interesting idea for a replacement for SCOWL which doesn't require a magic system; which means that CCM would only be used for once-off recwars and wargames. He also feels that CCM hasn't been fully developed. With that in mind (and considering I had been planning to do most of these changes from when the Al'Magroth thing started, before you even began discussing magic), it seemed pertinent to do the necessary fixes to CCM. If you want to continue developing a new magic system, by all means, go ahead. But if that's only going to take effect in the distant future, I'd rather get a fixed version of CCM now; particularly since NCM was never properly tested; whereas CCM has now had one war to test it. It would be nice to actually have a charter that gets fixed after testing instead of saying "It's no good, we need a whole new one" like the last two times.
Summary: I did this because SCOWL may no longer be applicable anyway (which removes 80% of the objections of building up items over time); and it would be nice to have a fully functional magic system rather than giving up and waiting for a new one; not to stop you writing a new one.

I'd also like to be assured that we're not going to ditch CCM until you've had time to properly draw up your proposal and give it a test recwar

EDIT: I also expected Bayen to post his ideas up today ... I assume they'll come out in the next couple days.

[Nargoth]

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.

[Andreas the Wise]

Ah yes, that's also something to clarify: how easy is it to see Null?

[Demon of Fides]

So, if I undersdtand this correctly: My awesome boots, weapon and armour will become nonmagical after this war?

[Graham Lot]

Er ... how so? You can still have items that cast spells. They're not broken (they're blatantly overcosted, if anything). You can just also have items that do magic in a not quite CCM possible manner (like Armageddon's blade)

[Demon of Fides]

Well, the only demi-permenant way of magyking anything is runes, which you mentioned expire after a war...

[Graham Lot]

Ah ... that was on the assumption we only do non-constant recwars now. But either way, you can add a point per spell to cost it as pre-runed; or you can do it as an ability (costing it at DC^2) - both of those are effectively permanent in length (the first can be dispelled, though).

[Demon of Fides]

Vunderbar

[Andreas the Wise]

Ok, done the basic fixes I said needed to be done. The link to Old Charter at the bottom is the unedited version, if you want to compare.

I thought more on sending your mind out and what you can effect etc. I think you need line of sight to any noun you begin to cast a spell on; whether that sight is physical, astral or mental. Physical sight is what you see with your eyes; astral sight is what you can see on the Astral plane (so only magic stuff, really, but you can pick a mage out of a crowd when you can't see them physically); and mental sight is where you send your mind out. However, when you send your mind out, it counts as a spell in terms of the number you can control at once; you see as if you were scrying wherever your mind is sent out to; and you can only cast spells from where your mind is, not where your body is. So a mage becomes extremely vulnerable to physical attack while their mind is sent out.

On linking Teleport cost to distance; when you use Epic Teleport you should be able to go 15 000 km (enough to get you from one side of Micras to the other); and when you use base level teleport you should be able to jump up to, say, 10 m (so for WC3 fans, it's like Blink). Triple teleport (a standard level spell) shouldn't get you more than a km; and Incredible Teleport should allow you to get from Novatainia to Laranel; but not all the way to New Myzoria [and, obviously, people would only use Epic or Incredible to set up gates].

[Gerk]

as for being able to see null, i think some of us were forgetting that the charter originally described it as kind of a void of nothingness - which i would assume to be visible. i don't think null should render things invisible on the astral plane, it should only be able to cover up magical signatures.

[Bayen]

I'm still for getting rid of Null. If our magic system is fair, there shouldn't be an easy way to protect against almost all magic (especially since most mages don't have Null, so they can't just Channel it away).

[Andreas the Wise]

as for being able to see null, i think some of us were forgetting that the charter originally described it as kind of a void of nothingness - which i would assume to be visible. i don't think null should render things invisible on the astral plane, it should only be able to cover up magical signatures.

No, not invisible. BUT given that the majority of the Astral Plane is empty; how noticeable is lack of space in empty space?

@ Bayen - purely IC I'm going to agree, because your move was horrible and nobody should have that power. But OOC ... Null makes it easy for non-magical people to protect their units from magical interference ...

[Bayen]

If we want magic to be a fully integrated part of Recwar, though, there shouldn't be an easy out to get rid of it. And Null, as it is, makes for an easy way to block unexperienced magic-users, but people who know the system can still easily work around Null zones with Channeling units and so on. So it's more of a boon to experienced magic folks (who should have to figure out creative magical ways to stop other magic attacks ). I don't really see the need for it...

On an unrelated note, it might be a good idea to include a person's gear as part of the Person noun. This could even be extended to vehicles they're piloting. Just to avoid Mages Shifting away guns and engines and stuff...

[Andreas the Wise]

Ok, while I was working I had some more ideas on Null and mental, which fit together quite nicely.

First, as Bayen suggested, we drop Null.
Second, we drop the range on Nullify. It now only effects the noun it is cast on. We also remove the Person, Animal and Plant nouns from Nullify (so it can only be cast on non-living things)

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.

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.

Telepathise will be rewritten to include images and scenes, and have a 'Strength'; and maybe a bearing on range.

Finally, another new Verb - Influence - which replaces using Transfigure for Mind Control (it would be specifically written into transfigure that you can't use it for mind control). Note that I only propose this for if proper mind control is rendered impossible in the system.
Influence - Word Cost 3 - "You influence a weaker mind. You can cast no other spells while you are casting this one. While you can be physically seen by a unit of base cost 1 or below, you can influence them to do one simple action you verbally request. It must be an action they can and would do normally. If the unit is owned by an opponent, they must agree with your request is appropriate." - DC 5 - 0 seconds.
This is basically Jedi mind tricks. Can and Would do means that you can't get them to play a sonata on the piano if they can't play it; and you can't get them to murder their beloved, because they wouldn't. It's for simple orders, like "You will let us go on through customs" to a guard; or "Log into the system" to a person who has access; or "Tell us truthfully how you got here," to someone you're interrogating (yes, this would also replace truth potion). Note the heavy limitations imposed - this can, at standard strength, only be used on people with base cost 1 or below (eg security guards and civilians). You have to physically present and can't cast anything else while you do this. And, this is the crucial way to stop it being broken - your opponent must agree your request is reasonable.

I'm not 100% committed to any of these, but I think, in combination, they're a reasonable solution to Null being too easy; and mind control being too broken.

[Bayen]

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)!

[Andreas the Wise]

Yeah, I can agree with dropping the decrease time thing. While useful for mage duels, 90% of the time it is unnecessary and 8% of the time it ends up broken.