Spellburn baby, Yeah!

[James Harrison]

To long, don't read version: Changing spellburn from from a fixed bonus into a variable bonus keeps magic unpredictable, is mechanically suitable for DCC and is in the spirit of appendix N. Further limiting spellburn to 12 points (+1d24) still allows going nova, but requires luck and flair!

Hi,

James Harrison here, and this is my début post. I've been enamoured of DCC for a couple of weeks now, but not played it yet and will not be able to read my copy until I fly back to England in a few weeks, so my thoughts are purely of a theoretical nature.

I have read through bits of the forms that interest me and a few topics keep coming up; one of these is the limiting of Spellburn. I won't try and re-iterate what others have said, for many good arguments have been made both for and against spellburn, but I will highlight an understated issue spellburn brings to the game; consistency.

I do not mind the potential the wizard has for going "Nova", that is awesome and fun. What I don't like is the consistency spellburn seems to bring to the table... the magic tables in DCC bring randomness and unpredictability into magic - which I think is amasing. However spellburn can almost guarantee certain outcomes; when a first level wizard can have a 50% shot at the best result something in Risk vs. Reward has gone.

It comes down to static bonus' on a d20, at some point the static bonus can dominate, and variance in the d20 roll is mostly irrelevant. Being able to "buy" your d20+1 up to d20+22; you still get an awesome moment of "wow, that spell did what?" but the risk in getting there is, in my opinion, missing.

So, I suggest spellburn dice! This slightly increases the power of spellburn, but adds a random factor into using it. If you spend 4 points of spellburn you add 1d8 to your casting roll, not 4. On average you get rolls 0.5 higher than normal spellburn - but the thrill of the roll and the risk of the spell is back again. You might get a measly +1 to the roll, but you might get a massive +8. So without further ado the proposed table:

Spellburn / Spellcasting bonus
1 / +1*
2 / +1d4
3 / +1d6
4 / +1d8
5 / +1d10
6 / +1d12
7 / +1d14
8 / +1d16
9 / +1d18**
10 / +1d20
11 / +1d22**
12 / +1d24
15 / +1d30

So this is my core Idea. It makes Spellburn so much more unreliable, but potentially fantastic. I've travelled all the way up to the d30 to utilise more of the funky dice, but I can see stopping at 10 being fine. Rolling 2d20 for a spell is pretty impressive. Personally I think I will allow up to the d24 for spellburn.

I have read that potential to nova can be a problem, and especially using spellburn on permanent spells. If you do want to allow the d24 and the d30 this issue may still persist - the randomness means 1d20 + 1d30 can fuff, but you have a 50% chance of 27+, which is pretty good no?

So to counter this, for those of you who might like more excuse for the d30, I propose any spellburn dice rolling 21+ generates corruption. This still leaves the nova potentially in the game, but harnessing that much power is risky! Hopefully people would think carefully before buying d24 and d30 for spellburn. But here my inexperience with actual play and lack of core rulebook hamper me. I do not know how dangerous corruption actually is, and if it is not all that worrying I imagine d30's would be rolled with impunity.

Some final thoughts.

*If corruption is just fun, and not that debilitating I would consider doubling the chance of corruption/misfire when using spellburn (that is a natural one or two). This would make 1 spellburn (for +1) a seem very inferior to 2 spellburn (+1d4) given the "misfire risk". In this case I would increase 1 spellburn to +1d2; not very exciting, but better. I dont do that in the initial table simply because a d2 (although easy to simulate) isn't a dice.

I'm a big fan of the Alternate Spellburn table linked on these forums. I plan to edit it so the results run from 1 to 24 with each number being a unique spellburn; then 1d12+spellburn (-luck) works wonders with the above limits on spellburn (especially when capping spellburn at 12 points)

Ok thank you for listening to my ramblings! Thoughts and comments welcome!

God bless,
james

Edit: **With the d18 and d22 available from the impact-miniatures kickstarter spellburn for 9 and 11 points is also possible!

[GnomeBoy]

...Being able to "buy" your d20+1 up to d20+22; you still get an awesome moment of "wow, that spell did what?" but the risk in getting there is, in my opinion, missing....

I'm going to pull this out, to make the comment that in campaign play, the risk of big time spellburn is in having spellburned a big chunk of your stats. There are things that a Judge can play up, or that will simply happen in the general course of play that will make that ability loss a challenge to deal with.

Your method could be great for one-off style play, where the long-term implications of spellburn are lessened or lost altogether.

And, if I were playing a Wizard, I might prefer the certainty of spellburn -- especially after my dice have done me wrong. Rolling another die -- with the risk of it, too, doing me wrong -- could add insult to injury. The game should be fun, and years of experience tells me that too many rolls can make for a session that feels sour when the dice run cold all night. Spellburn as-is mitigates that, and keeps some power in hands of the player. It's not an endless power, in both one-off play and campaign play.

But I like the simplicity of what you've sketched out, and even if someone didn't want to use it as an all-the-time rule, it could be a great realm-where-magic-is-different rule.

[James Harrison]

Good point. I do see my "campaign" to be quite Lankmar esk. with not necessarily explaining the passages of time from one adventure to the next... basically I would like to play DCC to simulate those bits of appendix N, and the non-connectedness would be a thing.

However the entire idea is to remove the certainty of spellburn - to make goring for broke really risky! It could bite you. A far more reliable approach is to use spell burn in small quantities. 5 points to get +1d10 is nice, and bad if you luck out, but hopefully no so bad.

And it means you can't almost guarantee a top level effect every other dungeon; when you really need it it's a rick. And I think that's partly what magic in DCC is all about. Risk vs. Reward and all. Oh and after more though I've decided I would cap it at 12 points of burn.

If people wanted a more stable spellburn (at higher levels) you could use a slimier table to my "Experiment 2" now in the character thread (Wizards and variance). Meh! Just tinkering till I can play some

Oh and thanks for the nice reply! Paticulaly like the "alternate magic realm" idea, that would give ppl (and me!) a nice way to playtest it without straying from RAW

EDIT: The higher level = more stability version. Now I must stop posting zocchi dice tables! lol.

Spellburn / Spellcasting bonus
1 / +1*
2 / +1d3
3 / +1d5
4 / +1d7
5 / +1d9
6 / +1d11
7 / +2d6
8 / +2d7
9 / +2d8
10 / +2d9
11 / +2d10
12 / +2d11
13 / +2d12

[fireinthedust]

I like the full chart. I like it a lot, and while dice do me wrong all the time, it's still good and let's face it: more likely to let players use the whole spell chart at low levels, rather than wait fifty game sessions to get there.

[atlascott]

The upside to spellcasters is too great and the risk too low.

One 32+ roll on a spell turns a boss battle into a cake walk. These charts make that result substantially easier to attain, more often.

If a PC wants to do that, make him earn it. The variability of the spell check is variance enough.