Post/Author/DateTime	Post
dragonman407 01-07-06, 09:00 PM	I was watching a show the other day where scientists looked at the spiritual energy, chi, to see if there was some fact to it. They reached the conclusion that its affect on you was determined by your belief in it. I thought that this could be turned into an interesting house rule for magic, but I can't think of any way to implement it. The basics would be: 1. if you don't believe or have no faith in magic, you are not affected by it, but you can't benefit from it either and cast cast it as strongly. 2. If you do believe or have a large amount of faith in magic, then you can cast it very strongly, but you are also more vulnerable to it. I know that there was a system like this in Final Fantasy Tactics for the PS1, but I never really understood how it worked. Does anyone have any ideas?
Lord Welkerfan 01-07-06, 10:55 PM	My idea: Make all spells require saving throws, even harmless or beneficial ones. Harmless and beneficial spells provide a -1/spell level penalty to the saving throw. I'm not quite sure how the level of devotion would be determined, but you could provide a bonus/penalty to saves based on devotion and belief in magic. This, combined with the above change, allows for a simple mechanic for both resilience to magic and inability to benefit from it, and it keeps the game playable, as no person is entirely immune to the outside force of magic (no villains can completely ignore wizard characters). Character believes magic is... Non-existant +5 All In People's Heads +4 Mostly Superstition +3 Hardly Effective +2 Exaggerated +1 Real +0 Effective If One Believes -1 A Fine Tool -2 Stronger Than Science -3 Very Powerful -4 God-Like -5 What do you think?
Lina_Inverse 01-07-06, 11:09 PM	So charecters who dont believe in it cant use magic items i assume? If not every charecter is going to disbelieve in magic and thus be immune. If it is, everyone will believe in magic because you are your gear. Also saves for beneficial powers is bad, spell resistanse would be a better mechanic, but still a bad one.
dragonman407 01-08-06, 02:24 AM	The point of the system is that, if you do not believe, you are not or barely affected by anothers spells. The drawback to this is that magic items do not work or are not as effective in your hands and beneficial spells do not work on you either. If you do believe, magic spells and items are used at greater effectiveness in your hands, but you are also affected by spells to a greater degree, including harmfull and beneficial. An example of this would be a fighter who does not believe in magic one bit and shrugs it off as a figment of many peoples' minds. His +3 Flaming longsword is no different than the one he used way back when in his hands, but he also can not be affected by the enemy mage's magic. Any magic cast is not visible to him and he can see nothing but one person wiggling his fingers and another acting as if he had just been hit with a boulder. Also, if he is wounded in battle, he has to heal the old fashioned way. Conversely, his partner, an elven wizard, relies on magic daily and uses it as his main tool in battle. the +1/+1 quarterstaff he has found hits with greater effectiveness in his hands and his fireball can incinerate any enemy in a second. Unfortunately, so can his enemy's. Magic is different things to different people, but no one is immune to it. A person who does not believe in magic at all will still be affected if the spell is cast has enough power. Also, a characters belief in magic can change over time. A non-believer who sees a particulary powerfull display of magic may decide to consider its existence, and maybe even use it himself one day. I am also considering putting a limit on the amount of faith required to be able to cast spells.
Cymraegmorgan 01-08-06, 02:38 AM	In D&D, magic is a real force, akin to gravity. It seems a silly overcomplication to try to implement because some lab rat on tv made a baseless assumption about chi.
FriendlyBiscuit 01-08-06, 07:47 AM	This is an interesting idea, but probably deserves its own roleplaying system and unique cosmos. Cymraegmorgan had a point; magic is as much a part of D&D as your liver is a part of you. It's hard to disbelieve magic when it's real and visible, especially in the case of explosive Fireballs and glittering Color Sprays. In a world where belief or disbelief matters, many people will care more about whether you believe in magic than if you're good or evil. Some will devote their whole lives to converting others to their belief or disbelief. And in such a world, magic would have to be a lot more subtle than it is in D&D for people to have any chance of disbelieving.
dragonman407 01-08-06, 03:26 PM	How is this variant any different from other created alternate magic systems? It is just as different from the 3.5 magic system as Xeviat's is. Also, there are low and high magic campaigns, so what about one where magic's importance shifts on an almost daily basis? I believe this variant would add another layer of roleplaying and strategy to D&D that you don't get with the standard magic system. It's hard to disbelieve magic when it's real and visible, especially in the case of explosive Fireballs and glittering Color Sprays. If you read my above post, you would know that not everyone sees magic. If a person does not believe in magic, he can not see it, or it is very faint. Also, this is not so much whether or not you think magic is real or not (though that may be a factor), it is more about how much faith you place in it. Think about it as similar to religion. There are people who acknowledge that there must be some higher force in the universe, but don't neccessarily believe in a god or practice a particular religion. There are also people who are intensely faithful to their religion or do not believe there is any higher force at all.
FriendlyBiscuit 01-08-06, 05:08 PM	So when someone uses Disintegrate on a door, is it impossible for nonbelievers to walk through the door? (because they don't believe in magic and thus believe the door is still there) Or can an observer's belief affect the success or failure of the Disintegrate spell? Does the owner of the door instead affect the door's level of "belief"? When fireball is cast on enemy infantry, what do you do if some of the units believe in magic and some don't? How do nonbelievers explain away the fact that their clothes have caught fire and the ground is charred and blackened?
TLomon 01-08-06, 05:55 PM	This system does seem rather complex for a world of swords and sorcery. It may work for d20 Modern, but I don't feel it is appropriate for Dungeons & Dragons. Every warrior will choose to disbelieve, as that is their weakest area and you have now turned it into a a strength. I believe I know what show is being referenced above. What was being demonstrated was more like hypnotism then any real force. I also question why they didn't use spectragraph photography during the demostrations.
Hodo 01-09-06, 02:57 PM	Gotta parrot what others have been saying. In DnD, "magic" is real and relies on predictable, repeatable, and observable phenomonah. Arcane magic is practically a science. 2 hydrogen and 1 oxygen makes water no matter how much one doesn't believe it. Some bat dung and a combination of certain hand movements and sounds actually makes a flaming fireball independent of one's ability to believe or comprehend it. A fighter with a +1 flaming sword can't not believe in his sword to keep it from flaming anymore than a soldier in our world can deny the physics behind, say, and atomic bomb, and therefore keep one from going off. The saving throw already mechanic does what you're attempting to do. Someone hit with a death spell needs an ability to resist it, so they roll with the appropriate modifier (usually asscoiated to how healthy and resiliant they are) to see if they can stave off death. To escape damage from a fireball, they need to dive out of the way (reflex save), or somehow gain immunity to fire (magical resistance, natural resistance, special clothing etc). But saving throws on the part of a player can't negate the effects of things like wall of iron, rock to mud, or fly when they aren't even cast on him/her. However... Your system, or something like it, MIGHT work in some situations for divine magic as it's manifestation is controlled largely in part by higher powers from other planes of existence that might actually care about how much people believed in them. Strong believers in Corellon would recieve an increased effect from spells cast through Clerics or Druids of Corellon since that deity wants to help his followers, but take more damage from spells cast by Clerics or Druids of Grummsh, since that deity hates Corellon and by extension, all those who have faith and trust in him. Nature and curative spells cast by a cleric of Corellon get a benefit if cast by someone especially devoted to Corellon. Spells that are more destructive and negative would gain a negative penalty. Or a fighter who has a +1 flaming sword that was created by a cleric of Pelor would lose that weapon's fire trait if he somehow displeased or lost faith/trust in Pelor. This would work better if you elaborated upon the relationships between deities, planar beings, and divine magic in your campaign. This would undoubtedly make it more complex, but I'm sure there are some who might enjoy the extra depth.
Seerow 01-09-06, 03:55 PM	Note: If you really want something like FFT, the system they use is easy enough. Faith ranges from 03-97. A character with a faith above 94 becomes an NPC. The Damage, chance to be affected, etc, are multiplier by the casters faith and the targets faith divided by 100. You'd probably have to rebalance DCs and Damage Dice to affect targets normally when the Caster's Faith is 70 and Target's Faith is 55. Faith is something that should be hard to change, and a normal character can't get out of the 40-70 range. Say for example you have a level 10 Fireball coming from a Wizard with 70 faith hitting a Kobold with 55 faith. Assuming it fails the save(Im not going to try to figure out how to rebalance DCs for you) the damage as is would be 10d6(av 35)*.7*.55, for an average damage of 13.475. So you'd have to increase the damage dice so that the average damage at this point would be back up to 35, but when you hit someone with lower faith they'll take less, or someone with higher they'll take more. Note that this makes mages -very- deadly to each other, especially if you apply the same to DCs(as you should if you intend to do this). It might not really be worth it.
Ruhl-Than Sage 01-09-06, 08:13 PM	Sounds like Mage or Changling, they are both white wolf games set in the world of darkness.
Millennium 01-10-06, 07:22 AM	If you've ever played Final Fantasy Tactics, characters in that game have a "Faith" statistic. Characters with high Faith are better at casting magic, and they derive more benefit from beneficial spells, but they're also more vulnerable to harmful spells. The stat runs from 0-99, though you can't keep a character with a Faith above 95; if they go any higher they run off and join a monastery. If your Faith is 0, you're completely immune to magic, but I do mean completely immune: you can't be healed by magic either and you can't cast spells at all. This sounds very similar to the sort of thing you want to do with your own spellcasters. It's not an exact match, of course, and I wouldn't suggest porting it straight across, but you may want to study it. The game is hard to find nowadays, but the engine has been studied intensively; there's a ridiculously-detailed Battle Mechanics Guide (http://www.gamefaqs.com/console/psx/game/197339.html) at GameFAQs. [EDIT: D'oh; it seems I'm not the only one who's played FFT. Just count this as another endorsement then, I guess.]
Hodo 01-10-06, 01:18 PM	I'm assumming then that these systems only apply to spells with DC saves.
Millennium 01-11-06, 07:49 AM	I'm assumming then that these systems only apply to spells with DC saves. The Faith system from FFTactics doesn't; it also applies to spells with variable damage or healing. This is why at Faith 0 you're completely impervious to magic, for good and for ill. Now that I think about it, though, there are some questions that would need to be addressed when porting this to D&D: How should the scale work? Should it be the usual 3-18 as for D&D stats, 0-100 as in FFTactics, 1-20 to match the d20, or something else? What do the factors given in the PHB represent? What Faith should a caster and target have to get those exact figures? What about magic items? Items which duplicate spells such as potions, wands, and staves are easy enough, but what about weapons or miscellaneous items? If Faith affects the damage you deal or take from weapons, should those affects be applied before or after damage reduction? Should a character's Faith have an effect on certain skill checks, particularly Use Magic Device? Off the top of my head, this is how I'd do it: Faith goes from 0-20. Players may initially set this score however they like and change it later through roleplay, with two restrictions: your Faith can't be 0 unless it's always been 0 (or you're under some kind of nonmagical mind-altering effect), and you can't change your Faith by more than one point up or down per week. "Average" Faith is 10. Faith can affect almost any aspect of a spell which is expressible in numbers: duration, damage, bonuses, and so forth; the only things it never affects are casting time and spell range. To determine how Faith effects an aspect of a spell, take the "normal" effect and multiply it first by (caster's Faith / 10) and then by (target's Faith / 10). Don't round any fractions until you've done all the multiplications, and then round them down. If for some reason there is no "caster" or "target", treat whoever is missing as having Faith 10. If a caster or target has Faith 10, then his side of the multiplication is just multiplying by 1. This means that if both have Faith 10, the whole thing reduces to exactly the figures from the PHB. This also means that if one side has Faith 10, they essentially don't factor into the equation in any significant way; that's why "missing" casters or targets are treated as having Faith 10. I highly recommend that if you use this system, you ask casters to precalculate their half of the equation for duration and other non-variable effects, since as long as the caster's Faith doesn't change these will always be the same. It can really speed things up. Magic items are affected by Faith. In most cases (i.e. anything but weapons and armor), the user is the target and there is no caster. Faith affects all aspects of the item which can be expressed in numbers: damage, duration, bonuses, and so forth. The only exception to this is that Faith never affects the number of charges used for a given effect, if charges are used at all. When dealing with magic weapons, treat the wielder as the caster; for magic armor treat the wearer as the caster. Either way, "The Other Guy" is the target. Faith affects both the enhancement bonus and any extra damage-dealing effects from magic weapons or armor. An epic weapon whose bonus is "reduced" below +5 by the wielder's or target's Faith is still considered epic for damage-reduction purposes. When dealing with magic weapons, apply the Faith calculation before taking damage reduction into account. Faith affects Use Magic Device normally: the user is the caster, and there is no "target". This sounds complex, and it is, but it should achieve roughly the effect you want. It is, however, completely unplaytested, so use at your own risk.
Hodo 01-11-06, 03:23 PM	The Faith system from FFTactics doesn't; it also applies to spells with variable damage or healing. This is why at Faith 0 you're completely impervious to magic, for good and for ill. But most spells that affect a person have a save DC. Not everyone wants to be hit with fly, bear's strength, or invisibility. I was thinking more of what you'd do with spells like Black Tentacles or Iron Wall. These spells create actual material things that take up space and don't reauire any kind of save on anyone's part in order to manifest themselves. How would a faith mechanic account for something like this? Could characters of low faith just function as if they didn't exist without any kind of penalty?
dragonman407 01-11-06, 11:33 PM	After listening to a lot of feedback, I have realized that no character cannot believe in magic, but if you instead measure it as one's faith/how much they rely on it, it might just work. Millennium's system has been the best one presented thus far, so I hink i will use his. Thank you Millennium! Also, I think that, under his system, if a sell has a DC, it is affected by faith just as damage and other affects are.