Need Opinions concerning spell resists

[Linkamus]

Wisdom -

Affects your chance to *completely* resist any given spell, magic, elemental, poison, death damage or effect. (pretty much ANYTHING detrimental that is non physical)

Intelligence -

Affects your mitigation to any given spell, magic, elemental, poison, death damage or effect. (pretty much ANYTHING detrimental that is non physical)

When writing the rules for our game, we are trying to accomplish two things.

1. Simplicity (Easy for the player to understand)
2. Suspending disbelief

As far as our spell/magic protections go, as you can see I think we have accomplishment #1 handled. The issue is possibly #2. We are debating whether or not it is believable that Wisdom and Intelligence scores can affect all of your spell/magic protections.

So my question is. If you guys saw these rules in an RPG, would you hate like them or hate them? What would be a good way to explain HOW these stats affect said spell protections?

Thanks guys.

 

[Linkamus]

Another thing to note. One reason we were considering throwing all non physical resistance related stuff into your wisdom and int scores is mainly to entice warriors and rogue types to invest into those stats. So I guess the 3rd motivation besides suspension of disbelief and simplicity would be *balance*.

 

[Excidium]

I wouldn't like it much.

If you change the characteristic name from wisdom to willpower it makes more sense, willpower can work as the mental / spiritual version of Consitution.

As for the intelligence mitigation, I don't know...don't you have other ways to make the attribute more attractive to all classes? Like skill points in D&D.

 

[Overweight Manatee]

Both at the same time?

The difference between intelligence/wisdom is already fairly murky territory, and you want them to both resist spells but in slightly different ways? If both intelligence and wisdom are performing such similar functions they either be combined into a single stat or, at least, for the purpose of resistance they should obey the same formula regarding how they protect you. Otherwise its the opposite of a simple system, it is a needlessly complex system in which different stats are acting under different rules to provide the same effect. Who wants to perform a statistical analysis of whether +1 int or +1 wis gives more spell protection every time you add a point?


As for Wisdom/Intelligence affecting so much, no it doesn't make sense. Elemental damage? I consider myself a rather smart person in real life, but I can confirm that being able to withstand burning flames is not one of the perks that comes along with that ability. Poison? You would think a frail mage would be a lot more susceptible than a buff warrior. Now, a smart character should probably be better at treating a poisoned character than an idiot, but that could best be folded into a first aid skill.

As far as trying to make wisdom and intelligence a decent investment for physical characters, I can't give you much specific advice without knowing a lot more of your system mechanics. But ideally the stats should figure into their combat ability. A wise rogue could have a thorough knowledge of anatomy, translating into stronger critical hits or more debilitating wounds inflicted. A smart warrior could have knowledge of some low level cantrips that would boost his combat ability, etc.

 

[Linkamus]

Thanks for the advice guys. It is sound advice, and I think we are going to take it.

I agree that the suspension of belief just isn't there, and you make a good point about confusing the player on which stat would help protect from magic more.. int or wis?.. I love these forums, I'm so glad i found them.

 

[Linkamus]

Here's how we've refined it. Here is a list of all the possible protections:


Fire Protection - Protects from any fire damage/effect.
Cold Protection - Protects from any cold damage/effect.
Lightning Protection - Protects from any lightning damage/effect
Poison Protection - Protects from any poison damage/effect

The above are boosted by your Endurance Score
----------------------------

Magic Protection - Protects from any magic based damage/effects
Death Protection - Protects from any death damage/effect

The above are boosted by your Intelligence Score
----------------------------

Enfeeblement Protection - Protects from any enfeeblement damage/effects

The above is boosted by your Wisdom Score
----------------------------

Stability - Protects from any Physical effects. (example: knockback or stun from a warrior)

The above is boosted by your Strength Score
----------------------------

This method both makes more logical sense as far as realism is concerned, and also combines both resistance and mitigation of spell effects into 1 stat (protection). At that point the calculations would be as follows:

Fire Reistance = (Fire Protection * X) Where X = Protection to Resistance Tuning Factor
Fire Mitigation = (Fire Protection * Y) Where Y = Protection to Mitigation Tuning Factor
----------------------------

So 4 out of out 5 ability stats will affect your protections over all in a more sensible manner. And just FYI if you're curious our 5 ability stats are:

Strength
Dexterity
Endurance
Wisdom
Intelligence

As far as keeping every stat attractive to every class, we've got that figured out as well, but I won't go into that in this thread.. I mainly just wanted to talk about spell protections here.

 

[Overweight Manatee]

I don't particularly like the idea of a flat % chance to ignore all damage. Too random. Casting a spell on a group of 30 enemies with 33% chance to take 0 damage would require 4 castings on average to kill them all. Thats kind of ugly if a mage is casting Tactical Nuclear Strike and a single lucky warrior keeps getting hit in the face and taking 0 damage. On the other hand, if you reduce that chance really low to something like 5-10%, it becomes so rare that it appears more like a game bug that the enemy isn't taking any damage once in a blue moon. For players it then becomes a completely unreliable stat, and completely unreliable protections are a nice way of saying reload the game until you survive the big attack.

Consider a situation in which you have 50% mitigation and 25% chance of total resistance. In that situation you reduce damage on an average attack by 62.5%. Why not simply drop the total resistance chance, tell the player he has 62.5% mitigation, then have a random factor that scales it between 42.5% and 82.5% every time something deals damage? In this way, you keep the original idea of sometimes avoiding damage really well and sometimes not, but its a lot more smoothly graduated probability curve. Of course, it gets somewhat silly when something with 100% resistance can actually take damage half the time, but pretend that the mage casting the spell scored a critical hit that managed to barely overpower the creature's defenses.

 

[Bulba]

I don't particularly like the idea of a flat % chance to ignore all damage. Too random. Casting a spell on a group of 30 enemies with 33% chance to take 0 damage would require 4 castings on average to kill them all. Thats kind of ugly if a mage is casting Tactical Nuclear Strike and a single lucky warrior keeps getting hit in the face and taking 0 damage. On the other hand, if you reduce that chance really low to something like 5-10%, it becomes so rare that it appears more like a game bug that the enemy isn't taking any damage once in a blue moon. For players it then becomes a completely unreliable stat, and completely unreliable protections are a nice way of saying reload the game until you survive the big attack.

Consider a situation in which you have 50% mitigation and 25% chance of total resistance. In that situation you reduce damage on an average attack by 62.5%. Why not simply drop the total resistance chance, tell the player he has 62.5% mitigation, then have a random factor that scales it between 42.5% and 82.5% every time something deals damage? In this way, you keep the original idea of sometimes avoiding damage really well and sometimes not, but its a lot more smoothly graduated probability curve. Of course, it gets somewhat silly when something with 100% resistance can actually take damage half the time, but pretend that the mage casting the spell scored a critical hit that managed to barely overpower the creature's defenses.

in the case of total resistance, a mage could have special abilaty/skill to penetrate it. thus it would make mages stronger magicians than rogues.

 

[Jaesun]

How does Intelligence protect against Magic Attacks, yet Elemental attacks are protected by Endurance?

 

[felicity]

Tying both resistance and mitigation to one attribute kind of defeats the purpose of distinguishing them IMO.

 

[Shemar]

How does Intelligence protect against Magic Attacks, yet Elemental attacks are protected by Endurance?

About the 2nd part:

It depends on the definition of Hit Points/damage. If HP is defined as "Health Points" and damage is actual physical wounds, then it makes no sense. But if, as in many combat systems, Hit Points is defined as the measure or the character's ability and willingness to keep fighting and damage is defined as anything that reduces HP, including effects that would cause fatigue or loss of morale, in addition to actual physical damage, then it makes sense that a more sturdy character with better natural tolerances to extremes like cold and heat would fare better against such elemental attacks.

 

[villain of the story]

Banal.

Boring.

Shit.

 

[Norfleet]

Wisdom -

Affects your chance to *completely* resist any given spell, magic, elemental, poison, death damage or effect. (pretty much ANYTHING detrimental that is non physical)

Intelligence -

Affects your mitigation to any given spell, magic, elemental, poison, death damage or effect. (pretty much ANYTHING detrimental that is non physical)

Really, one should not be able to "resist" an elemental effect. D&D was always silly about that. If I conjure a magical lightning bolt, no amount of intelligence or willpower is going to really change the reality of the fact that a high-voltage electrical discharge now exists. Spell resistance should have little relevance to this, since it really shouldn't matter whether I generate a high voltage electrical discharge through magic, or a giant tesla coil. Similarly, I really doubt something as concrete as "poison" is affected by intelligence, unless the poison is some kind of strange magical spirit-poison. Otherwise it's an elemental effect, like, say, a large cloud of chlorine gas.

In this regard, I think the Dominions series did it right: "Resistance" affects the ability to resist direct magic, as opposed to stuff like, say, fireballs. How does one have a "non-physical" elemental or poisonous effect? Elemental and poisonousness is very much a physical phenomenon.

 

[Mystary!]

Elemntal should be physical yeah, d&d had reflex and fortitude saves, for fireball dodging and poision resist.

 

[Norfleet]

Elemntal should be physical yeah, d&d had reflex and fortitude saves, for fireball dodging and poision resist.

Yeah, but D&D is still weird: Spell Resistance, for instance, affects your ability to resist a fireball, like the entire "decidedly non-magical air has now been heated into a firey combustion reaction" problem somehow just overlooks your existence because of strong spell resistance, while you would not able to use this against, say, an ordinary non-magical FAE. You would think the origin of the ignition matters somewhat less than the entire "on fire" thing, given that a fireball or lightning bolt really targets the environment, transforming it to something that is hazardous to your well-being, rather than you, personally.

 

[Shemar]

The D&D premise is that magical fire is not the same as physical fire. Indeed physical fire would require fuel to keep burning, it is magic that keeps the fireball burning all its way to the target and magic that makes it actually explode and if you negate that magic the fire is diminished or extinguished just like physical fire is put out if it runs out of fuel or oxygen.

Trying to mix real world physics with magic is a sure fire way to paradox and silliness. It is a much better approach to figure out how you want things to work mechanically and then add the pseudo-science necessary to support that. Reality is boring, it is the opposite of what games should be. Gameplay always trumps realism when the two are in conflict.

 

[laclongquan]

"Reality is boring" my ass! That excuse is used by incompetent game devs, story teller, novel writers the world over.

Reality is fun and interesting. It's you who dont know how to discover that and translate that into the medium of your choice.