Spell Casting Variation

[sadkitchen]

@Torilen
1: I agree that the 2 spell points didn't feel right for the spell ring. (Didn't make it feel special) so I have proposed the following alteration;
Spell Ring: Once per quest this ring enables the Wizard or Elf to cast one spell without paying any power for it.

My thought process behind this is that the Spell Ring allowed 1 free spell originally and this way it only allows 1 free spell again.

2: In this variant if the wand of magic is left alone, it is just too powerful. But I agree that it should be somewhat powerful so I propose the following;
Wand of Magic: By paying an amount of power equal to the number of counters on this care this magic wand allows the Elf or Wizard to cast two separate and different spells on his turn. After the second spell is cast place a counter on Wand of Magic. The wand of magic starts each quest with no counters on it.

If you can get past the very MtG feel of the counters this actually works very well. Though the growing cost is very not HQ, but the mechanic seems to work much better than putting a flat cost on it. If anyone has any suggestions please throw them at me.

@Daedalus
1. I agree that raising the cost of Fire of Wrath to 3 is a good idea.

2. Pertaining to the Elf and healing spells, the costs are going to stay the same. If I do anything I will add a spell to the Elf set that restores 2 BP for 4 Power, but I am not going to make him 'better' than the Wizard at casting Healing Spells just because he has less power.

3. Pertaining to artifacts I have been toying with crystals. An example is as follows;
Water Crystal: The Water Crystal comes with 3 Water Power tokens. Whenever a Hero who possesses this crystal casts a water spell he may spend these tokens as if they were his own power tokens. When all 3 tokens have been spent the Water Crystal is useless.

4. Courage. Even though your number crunching is very accurate I am leaning toward lowering the cost to 5, because in the 2 games I have run with this variant Courage has never been cast. I don't know if this will work or not, but there is no point in having a 6 cost spell that never gets cast. If at 5 it get's cast in every room with more than 1 orc, then I'll put it back to 6.

-SadKitchen

[thios]

Hi everyone, first post here!

Sadkitchen, why don't you use 1d6 to set the power level, like in WQ? The caster could then chose to lower their actual intelligence points to supplement their casting. This would eliminate the need both for power tokens and for rolling 6 dice, while keeping things simple and fairly balanced.

The caster could also pay twice the cost to double the effectiveness of some spells. I'd also go for casting courage/rock skin on self as a free action, but making spellcasters too powerful is sort of my thing.

I was thinking of ripping of WQ for a while, but I was also too lazy to come up with costs for the spells on my own... So, thanks Daedalus!

[sadkitchen]

Hi Thios and welcome to the Inn!

I put it with the counters and temp power because that was my first guess and it worked rather well.
I am always open to suggestions.

The next time I have a chance I'll see how your idea goes.

I also have not yet tried to implement any of Daedalus' bonus effect ideas but was going to get around to seeing if that would work soner or later.

-SadKitchen

[Daedalus]

Lost track of the thread for a while, but I'm still interested. So...

2: In this variant if the wand of magic is left alone, it is just too powerful. But I agree that it should be somewhat powerful so I propose the following;
Wand of Magic: By paying an amount of power equal to the number of counters on this care this magic wand allows the Elf or Wizard to cast two separate and different spells on his turn. After the second spell is cast place a counter on Wand of Magic. The wand of magic starts each quest with no counters on it.

If you can get past the very MtG feel of the counters this actually works very well. Though the growing cost is very not HQ, but the mechanic seems to work much better than putting a flat cost on it. If anyone has any suggestions please throw them at me.

Another way to go is to have the wand allow standard casting costs for two spells the first turn, but then turn the card 90 degrees to the right. This indicates that thereafter casting a secondary spell with the wand incurs a double cost for that spell.

@Daedalus
1. I agree that raising the cost of Fire of Wrath to 3 is a good idea.

2. Pertaining to the Elf and healing spells, the costs are going to stay the same. If I do anything I will add a spell to the Elf set that restores 2 BP for 4 Power, but I am not going to make him 'better' than the Wizard at casting Healing Spells just because he has less power.

I was wondering (only a bit) about a 2 Body Point healing spell. Certainly more efficient for healing Mercenaries and the Wizard. Let us know how it works out if you implement it.

3. Pertaining to artifacts I have been toying with crystals. An example is as follows;
Water Crystal: The Water Crystal comes with 3 Water Power tokens. Whenever a Hero who possesses this crystal casts a water spell he may spend these tokens as if they were his own power tokens. When all 3 tokens have been spent the Water Crystal is useless.

Is a Water Crystal found or purchased?

4. Courage. Even though your number crunching is very accurate I am leaning toward lowering the cost to 5, because in the 2 games I have run with this variant Courage has never been cast. I don't know if this will work or not, but there is no point in having a 6 cost spell that never gets cast. If at 5 it get's cast in every room with more than 1 orc, then I'll put it back to 6.

Score 1 for Tott! Playtesting is a luxury I can't afford, so I look forward to the results of your adjustment. Educated guesses are still just guesses- mine didn't take into account player's values. Bringing the cost down to tempt use of the spell is a good idea. Like you said, if it goes too low, you'll find out and can readjust it upwards later to more practically match their value level.

[sadkitchen]

Well I'm back with an update.

-The wand of magic. I remove all objections to leaving the wand of magic as it is listed. All my attempts to 'fix' it made it never get used. So when I gave up and put it back to normal, I found that it still either gets used in extreme situations with a cost of at least some power tokens or in not so extreme circumstances when the hero wouldn't have use it if not for rolling 5 or 6 white shields at the start of his turn.
-The spell ring allowing the hero to cast one spell for free during a quest has been weakened even more to the hero must choose the spell that is free to cast at beginning of the quest.
-Wrath of Flame works wonders at a cost of 3. The wizard still uses it more than all the other spells, but not a crazy amount.
-The 2 point healing spell for the Elf actually came across as a little over powered (it might be my elf player, as he was very lucky with rolling 3 or 4 white shields regularly) so I decided that the Elf could just scuk it up and live with the 6 cost healing spell and guess what. It works. My elf player grumbeled a bit when he had to spend 3 of his 4 Power Tokens to cast the heal body spell but he did it when he had to.
-The Water Crystal and similar elemental crystals are artifacts that I give out sparingly. They effect the game in unforseeable ways, but since they are one (or three) and done items I am not afraid to give them to the heroes once and a while.
-Courage at a cost of 5 seemed to work just fine. It didn't get cast a crazy amount so that's good.

Has anyone else done anything with a system like this while I was out? or with any other types of spell casting variants?

-SadKitchen

[Daedalus]

OK, you got me to post my next iteration of my spell cost variant. Check out this link if you havent already seen the thread.

Glad to see Flame of Wrath, Courage, and Heal Body are working correctly for you. Playtesting works.

[davidnewaxe]

i am about to play test a spell / power usage variation . i found a set of " tali " or bone dice at " great hall games " ( very popular throughtout the roman empire and medieval europe ) which i will use to represent a pc's or npc's focus . one bone dice for every focus point ( mind point ) that the character has . on that characters turn he rolls his focus points , calculates the total , and checks his or her spell / power menu which will feature the focus cost of a particular spell / power . for example the barbarian wishes to use his blade sweep power ( 3 weapon damage ) which has a focus cost of 12 , he rolls his focus points / dice and rolls only an 8 , he cannot use the blade sweep but he can use his martial strike power ( 2 weapon damage ) . all of my undead monsters boast poisoned weapons which subtract from a player's focus points making it more difficult to utilize powers or spells and thus far the only way to regenerate focus points is with holy water or specifically focus regenerating potions. i would appreciate any critizisms , thoughts , questions . thanks guys !

[Daedalus]

@davidnewaxe-

OK, tali are new to me. I checked it out and I think the values you plan to use are 1, 3, 4, and 6. Is that right?
Going with those numbers, I think 1 in 16 odds for the Barbarian to score well enough to use his special power is biased against him. Can't be too sure, though, as there aren't other numbers for other Heroes to compare this to.

Why wouldn't the Barbarian always want to roll for his highest possible power result? Failure seems to default to a lower result that has been reached, anyway. I don't see a real choice here. Is that intended?

My feelings are to stay away from special dice. I like to keep Hero Quest flavor intact, and splitting to new dice removes some of the game's original flavor. Calculating and referencing tables in my opinion also turns away players who look to Hero Quest for faster, simple mechanics. Perhaps your group would like this sort of thing, however. You are the best judge of that. Do you plan to make a special card for each player?

I am in favor of a Hero having a special result other than the standard weapon attack. I too am working on this sort of thing, from my own angle. If you implement this in your game, post the results--I'm interested.

[sadkitchen]

I too, agree that the other heroes need something more than attack. But since in the later quests the barbarian could say, "Why are we sharing loot with the Wizard? All he did was roast an orc and damage a chaos warrior while I killed 8 goblins, 12 orcs, 2 chaos warriors and a gargoyle, while damaging countless other enemies. Oh yeah and he healed the dwarf, causing him to continue to have no use for the 27 healing potions that he has in his inventory." I decided that the wizard was more important. My ideas on combat advances are not fully formed, but I know that I will not be basing it on Mind Points as the barbarian would be at a disadvantage, and he should be leading the pack.

-SadKitchen

[Daedalus]

I'm basing combat/weapon related advantages on Body Points. Things seem to work well enough, but I've set it aside for now. I'm hoping a new look will clear up some undecided issues. So many rules to play with...