tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2805991960213130257.post4311419045862842704..comments2024-03-26T01:10:28.463-07:00Comments on DMiurgy: Campaign Retrospective: Wizard College review & Heleologos Academy Graduate GLOG ClassWizzzarghhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03062572480736404210noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2805991960213130257.post-56782247878765530332023-03-06T01:19:45.869-08:002023-03-06T01:19:45.869-08:00The solution is always to make spells quadratic in...The solution is always to make spells quadratic instead of linear. [sum]x[dice] damage (healed or inflicted), [dice] targets with [sum] duration, that sort of thing.Spwackhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07247063374457045751noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2805991960213130257.post-21785302201419630982022-08-11T13:25:14.016-07:002022-08-11T13:25:14.016-07:00Indeed, I had the same thing occur with a teleport...Indeed, I had the same thing occur with a teleportation spell. No point in risking bigger casts when 1-dice casts did just as well. (Teleportation is in general a problematic sort of spell imo but that's a tangent within a tangent).<br /><br />Honestly, I'm just not sure if GLOG style magic casting makes sense as a choice for longer campaigns- they definitely seem to be more focused on short, low-powered campaigns that prioritize wackiness over 'balance' so the cracks start to widen in longform or higher-level campaigns.<br />Wizzzarghhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01275138733482156801noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2805991960213130257.post-43203309347507249652022-08-10T22:47:13.621-07:002022-08-10T22:47:13.621-07:00A common design flaw in GLOG spells — so common th...A common design flaw in GLOG spells — so common that I'm not sure it's a "flaw" as much as it's a personal preference of mine — is that they lack a reason for a wizard to cast them with 2MD instead of 1MD twice. <br /><br />Consider the hypothetical spell "Translate Book", a touch-range and concentration-based spell which animates writing supplies (paper, pen &c) to translate and transcribe [sum] pages of a targeted book at a rate of ten minutes per page. As written there is no reason for a caster of this spell to ever, ever cast this spell with more than 1MD and risk mishap. Its outcome is exactly functionally identical when cast with 1MD twice sequentially as when cast with 2MD. I will call these spells "temptationless", as they don't tempt a player to push his luck. <br /><br />It's not a terrible crime for a wizard to have one or two temptationless spells; we might consider these spells to be equivalent to 1st-level spells in Vancian systems, or beefier cantrips. Some ideas can't really be scaled. But when I see a wizard school which has *several* such spells, I wonder why it has to be a GLOG wizard school at all, instead of some OSR system without this fiddly magic-dice-pool business.<br /><br />Obviously any spell which *doesn't* have a [dice] or [sum] element to it is temptationless, and the magic dice pool in that case serves only as a less predictable spells-per-day rule. But just adding [sum] or [dice] to a spell's description doesn't make it temptationful. Consider the "Translate Book" example above. <br /><br />Corollary: a spell that deals [sum] damage or heals [sum] HP is *not* a temptationless spell, because there's a very good reason for a wizard to cast it with multiple MD: they're using it in combat and only get to cast one spell per round. <br /><br />I'm now realizing this comment is kind of tangential to your point, but I started to complain and then kept complaining. I'd be interested in reading more of your thoughts on how to improve the GLOG's spell library. G. R. Michaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16076993341999529525noreply@blogger.com