You can find the rest of the series here: Part I: Wording and Whatnot and Part II: Limiting Wishes.
I've only had a few wishes used in my gaming history. But I've given a number out in GURPS, in the form of a Great Wish spell. So let's talk about the Wishing spells in GURPS Magic and then what happened with mine.
In GURPS Magic, there are three Wish spells - Lesser Wish, Wish, and Great Wish.
Lesser Wish - all this does is let you dictate a die roll's result before you roll it.
Wish - all this does is let you dictate a die roll's result after you roll it.
Both are cool, but they aren't really that exciting as wishes. They can be exciting in play - my players burned through some in a pretty amazing fight against some really tough opponents. But a called "3" to the head is nice but it doesn't have anything of an Aladdin-like feel to it. My players really like Lesser Wish, since tactically being able to call a critical hit on anything you can get a 3+ to hit with is potentially fight-turning. But again, it's pretty mechanistically "called luck" and not "magical wish-granting."
Great Wish - now we're getting somewhere. This spell can permanently add to your attributes, give an advantage, add to skills, or remove disadvantages. It can do the same to your enemies, too, if they are present. It can also replicate any spell at all, as if cast at 1000 energy (half of the cost of the Great Wish) - which is more than 3x as much as the next most expensive spell I can find in the book, Resurrection. So it can really cast a hugely powerful spell (by trading energy for skill) or a really big area spell (by dint of sheer energy expended.) It can also do "absolutely anything else that the GM feels will not ridiculously unbalance the adventure or the campaign!"
Pretty cool. But it's basically not castable. It makes a magical item, which anyone can then use, but the chance of a permanent power grant is hard to resist. This is especially true if what you ask for is something you cannot get by any other means. Great Wish is the ultimate excuse to suddenly be able to fly or be a Weapon Master or become a wizard. No one ever had one of these and used for anything except to gain some kind of power. One spell that could do anything is nice, yes, but when it is so important to cast such a big spell that it's more useful than a permanent new ability you can use session after session? How about a shot at asking the GM for some crazy effect, knowing what the limits are for duplicating spells and for granting/removing traits?
Yeah, exactly. Everyone goes for the permanent grant over the temporary but decisive usage. No room for argument, it says right here I can give myself +1 DX with it, so that's that.
There is also a Wishing enhancement for things like Serendipity or Super Luck in Powers. But since the ability to have lucky events happen to you isn't terribly strong, you can't really grant too much gain. There are ways to amp this up a lot, but again, it generally comes to down to giving someone better rolls, creation powers to make things, movement powers to move them, etc. and a pile of points (GURPS Powers, p. 119, has examples - be prepared to spend hundreds of points for some pretty narrow effects.) I haven't seen a lot of this used in play. If you do use it, the results are even more specific - no wishing someone dead from the guy who has Luck that works on others or can create object for you, it's just not covered. This can be good or bad, depending on how you limit wishes.
War Stories
In my previous, sprawling fantasy game, I granted two wishes apiece to the PCs, albeit with a lot of time between the first and second . . . and they knew the second could and would come. Like I said, I granted these - well, a pair of magnificently powerful stone heads granted them - as a power graft onto the PCs to help them fight the Big Bad Evil Guy.
I made people request the results in plain language, which gave me some wiggle room, and admittedly let me squash more munchkinly requests (like the guy who wanted Magery 1 plus 2 additional levels of One College Magery and tried to work that into a non-game terms wording.)
The first batch included getting Trained By A Master, Danger Sense, +1 to DX, Luck, Wild Talent (one unlimited, one spells-only with retention). The second batch was a bit more varied, since the players realized they could ask for more and (if they had points to spend) could exceed the limits of the spell a bit. One guys asked to be a better demon fighter, and I crafted a Demon Hunter meta-trait for him. Another got an Energy Reserve and a special Leech power. Another got the ability to ignore some spells on (which later became a more limited Perk in Magical Styles), still another got Heroic Archer (making him the first), and one got a big jump in Charisma. One even got a limited Invisibility power.
Even so, and even with this granted specifically as a power grant to the PCs and a chance to buy new stuff, it took a second Wish each before people really got into the idea of using it to ask for wild and crazy powers.
To be perfectly honest, I find the wishes in GURPS Magic to be a bit mechanistic. Cast the spell, and it lets you do something pretty specific. Even the limits of Great Wish are so specified out that I've found it limits what players will try to do with them. Instead of just giving guidelines, the terribly specific nature of what it can do means no one really tried to do anything terribly interesting with it. It was just a convenient way to get some extra power on their PCs, and get things they might not have been able to get otherwise.
In my current DF game, I haven't given any Lesser Wish or Wish items, nevermind a Great Wish item . . . but there are some Great Wish (or at least Great Wish-like) items out there. I fully intend to being a bit more generous with that "absolutely anything" clause and a lot more restrictive with the "power grant" clauses. After all, people can already gain all sorts of crazy powers just with points in my games. If they get their hands on a wish, I want it to be a bit more magical and awesome, not just a chance to get +1 DX without saving up 20 points for it.
I can't confirm or deny, yet, if there are also lesser versions of the Great Wish spell, or if they use the "redistribution" aspect of wishing I mentioned before. Or if all wishes hang together, or come apart all together or not. But they might, they just might . . .
Friday, February 7, 2014
Thursday, February 6, 2014
Melee Academy: Dealing With Superior Foes
How do you deal with superior foes? Not foes with superior numbers, but foes who are just better than you? That is the subject of this installment of the multi-blog series Melee Academy.
These tactics are generic. These days I usually play Dungeon Fantasy, where fodder is meant to lose and be a threat only in great numbers. In fact, the term is ensconced in the rulebooks:
"Fodder monsters appear in hordes that outnumber the party. [. . .] a mob of fodder is essentially a distributed monster that has lots of attacks [. . .] They often have the advantage of mobility advantage, though, nipping in and out like jackels or piranha [. . .]"
I'm writing this from the perspective of the GM - how do you make these fodder, especially fodder that is outmatched in all quality markers (damage, skill, DR, HP) by the PCs, into an interesting threat?
Obviously, you need to give them some ability to threaten the players, usually using one or more of the four basics - superior numbers, special weaponry, prepared battlefields, or superior tactics. It's the last I'm concentrating on today - tactics. Specifically, the minutia of running fodder. What should your orcs, goblins, giant rats, dinomen, etc. do on their turns to be a threat to a group of well-armed delvers with superior skills?
Threat Potential
First, the fodder must have some way to threaten their opponents. They must be able to potentially penetrate DR with attacks, get a hold with grappling, or have some special ability which puts some cumulative hurt on the PCs. If they don't, they aren't fodder, they are a nuisance at best. They won't get anything done in terms of being a threat, and aside from occupying time (real world and in-game), they're generally a combat non-issue.
So now you've got them as an actual threat, now what? But what about actual tactical choices? What are the GURPS manuevers and combat options they need to choose to make it all matter?
Let's break these up into tactics to emphasize, marginal tactics, and tactics to avoid.
Tactics to Emphasize
These are the money moves for inferior opponents, in my experience.
Make Sure You Hit
The most important thing to do is make sure you hit. Fodder don't have great skill, usually, so don't get too ambitious. Make sure you hit.
You can get cute and do Telegraphic Attacks (Martial Arts, p. 113) to ensure you hit and force defense rolls, too. It doesn't help you roll critical hits, but it helps you hit, and forcing your foe to roll and risk a Critical Failure is better than just missing.
Deceptive Attack
If you can ensure you're going to hit, or at least get enough hits, consider using Deceptive Attack. It's a good tactic against foes that are only a bit superior to you. Lowering a Parry 18 to Parry 17 is worthless, but lowering a 12 to an 11 might make all the difference.
One fun tactic is to mix Telegraphic Attacks from earlier strikers with Deceptive Attack from later ones. The first really only want to force you to defend, hopefully with a Parry or Block so you get a cumulative penalty. The latter ones want to hit your potentially reduced defenses with a larger penalty.
The reverse works okay, too - Deceptive Attack, but then Telegraphic Attack to follow up when you are sure defenses are weak and Retreats used up. But it's demoralizing to spend a lot of attacks setting up a shot and then have the defender make it by the +2 you just handed to him.
Multiple Attacks on One Target
To inflict damage, you need to get through the Active Defenses of your target. In order to do this, you must hit first.
This great thread covers PCs charging a pike formation. Formed up weaker foes with long weapons can represent a good pile of attacks, and limit your options for closing with them. Your goal is to swamp defenses, and hope for critical hits along the way and blown defense rolls as a result of cumulative penalties. GURPS isn't attrition-heavy in the way D&D is, but you can effectively attrit defenses over the course of a turn, given enough attacks.
This also goes for grappling, especially if you're using Martial Arts: Technical Grappling. Even if you aren't, dogpile your foes; the more people you have hanging on, the worse off the opponent is.
Flank, Flank, Flank
Aim for flank attacks. One aspect of outnumbering your opponents is you can often lap around them. Get to the flank hex on the weapon side to avoid shields (and the DB from shields). Get to the shield-side flank to avoid a weapon parry. Even if you just do it through superior movement, the -2 to defend is a big edge.
Committed Attack
If your fodder has multiple defenses, or at least one good one that doesn't depend on Retreat such as Block or a non-Fencing Parry, take a good look at this option.
This beats All-Out Attack (see below) because it means attackers still need to expend some effort overcoming the fodder's defenses. They aren't auto-killed when the PCs' turn comes up. But it also gives them some extra movement, damage, or attacking skill to leverage into a threat to the PCs. Shield-armed fodder should seriously consider this, since they can get off one good Block after getting off a Committed Attack. Use (Determined) for a better hit chance or (Strong) to get a little more damage, and the two step option combined with either can let them perform a runaround attack to give their target a -2 to defend (p. B391) and to force the target to keep backpedaling.
Perks
Take a close look at the Teamwork or Teamwork (Pack Tactics) perks. With the Teamwork perk, they can form up and use formations to threaten foes. With Pack Tactics, they can surround and harass foes more effectively.
Another good one is Shield Wall Training so fodder can block for each other, and make it a bit harder to kill them off with the old technique of Feint-and-Attack or overwhelming through multiple attacks. You can Feint Blarg the Orc, but if Lurg blocks for him, your deception was useless.
Tactics Of Marginal Value
These moves have their place, but they aren't your go-to moves turn after turn.
Aiming for Hit Locations
Useful if the targets have a specific weakness or if you must hit to inflict any useful damage. Or, if hitting a specific location trumps the value of hitting anything else. If the only way you can reasonably hurt your foe is an eye strike or a Chinks in Armor hit, you have to go for it. But it's not worth aiming for specific locations if a random strike or a torso strike will inflict some damage.
You must be able to hurt your opponent, so use aimed shots for penalized locations when that makes the difference between damaging or non-damaging attacks.
All-Out Attack
Another one to avoid, unless you're running berserker fodder. It seems tempting - +4 to hit, +2 to damage . . . but unless you dramatically outnumber your foes or they can't reliably one-shot incapacitate or kill your, you are toast. It's mostly useful when your opponent can't defend or can't retaliate, or to take advantage for a golden opportunity to rush in and whack someone who really needs hitting. But in general, you are just making it easy for your superior foe to kill you faster, and rarely for a good tradeoff.
Defensive Tactics in General
All the All-Out Defending in the world is useless when someone smashes your defenses with a solid Feint and then stabs you. AOD is useful if you are close in defenses, and you can force attackers to attack the fodder that are AODing while other fodder attack. If that is the case, do it. If not, avoid it.
Tactics To Avoid
These have a big failure mark all over them.
Feints, Beats, and Ruses
Useless, worthless, and pointless. All three of these require a competitive skill level to make them possibly useful, and a superior skill level to make them worth trying.
If a fodder monster tries a Feint, and you conceal the results (either by rolling secretly, or rolling the results on the following turn), you're basically just saying "Kill this guy now, he might be good." So it's got some use as a sacrifice, if you want to ensure the PCs kill a specific fodder monster by pretending it is some kind of threat. If you are using some version of Setup Attack, that can be useful.
Beat is possibly useful, if the fodder types are really strong, and can leverage their ST-based skill into a number that can potentially threaten the better of ST-based or DX-based skills of the delver. That's rare in normal GURPS games and rarer still in Dungeon Fantasy. It's better for, again, marginally less skilled guys.
Getting Fancy In General
Remember you are inferior in skill, and you must maximize what you have. Throwing skill away for Rapid Strikes, eye strikes, Lethal Kicks, defaulted techniques, etc. is a bad idea. Go for the money moves and apply as many of them to the enemy as possible.
And that's how I run my fodder to make them a threat.
Special DF Note: Remember they are still fodder. The odds are they are going to lose, and lose badly. Even in a minor victory (driving off the PCs, say) they'll probably take terrible losses. Many will die, and even if they fight in-game as if they all expect to live (and not like suicide troopers), they will take losses. Groups of fodder lose members like larger monsters lose HP, and "heal" them by getting replacements. The only way fodder can really win is through vastly superior numbers, in my experience, although they can occasionally present an obstacle by sheer threat of costing time or resources the group doesn't want to expend. If you juice them up until they are a real threat, then they aren't really fodder, or inferior foes, anymore. An army of orcs is a boss fight, even if individually they are all fodder versus your handful of adventurers.
These tactics are generic. These days I usually play Dungeon Fantasy, where fodder is meant to lose and be a threat only in great numbers. In fact, the term is ensconced in the rulebooks:
"Fodder monsters appear in hordes that outnumber the party. [. . .] a mob of fodder is essentially a distributed monster that has lots of attacks [. . .] They often have the advantage of mobility advantage, though, nipping in and out like jackels or piranha [. . .]"
I'm writing this from the perspective of the GM - how do you make these fodder, especially fodder that is outmatched in all quality markers (damage, skill, DR, HP) by the PCs, into an interesting threat?
Obviously, you need to give them some ability to threaten the players, usually using one or more of the four basics - superior numbers, special weaponry, prepared battlefields, or superior tactics. It's the last I'm concentrating on today - tactics. Specifically, the minutia of running fodder. What should your orcs, goblins, giant rats, dinomen, etc. do on their turns to be a threat to a group of well-armed delvers with superior skills?
Threat Potential
First, the fodder must have some way to threaten their opponents. They must be able to potentially penetrate DR with attacks, get a hold with grappling, or have some special ability which puts some cumulative hurt on the PCs. If they don't, they aren't fodder, they are a nuisance at best. They won't get anything done in terms of being a threat, and aside from occupying time (real world and in-game), they're generally a combat non-issue.
So now you've got them as an actual threat, now what? But what about actual tactical choices? What are the GURPS manuevers and combat options they need to choose to make it all matter?
Let's break these up into tactics to emphasize, marginal tactics, and tactics to avoid.
Tactics to Emphasize
These are the money moves for inferior opponents, in my experience.
Make Sure You Hit
The most important thing to do is make sure you hit. Fodder don't have great skill, usually, so don't get too ambitious. Make sure you hit.
You can get cute and do Telegraphic Attacks (Martial Arts, p. 113) to ensure you hit and force defense rolls, too. It doesn't help you roll critical hits, but it helps you hit, and forcing your foe to roll and risk a Critical Failure is better than just missing.
Deceptive Attack
If you can ensure you're going to hit, or at least get enough hits, consider using Deceptive Attack. It's a good tactic against foes that are only a bit superior to you. Lowering a Parry 18 to Parry 17 is worthless, but lowering a 12 to an 11 might make all the difference.
One fun tactic is to mix Telegraphic Attacks from earlier strikers with Deceptive Attack from later ones. The first really only want to force you to defend, hopefully with a Parry or Block so you get a cumulative penalty. The latter ones want to hit your potentially reduced defenses with a larger penalty.
The reverse works okay, too - Deceptive Attack, but then Telegraphic Attack to follow up when you are sure defenses are weak and Retreats used up. But it's demoralizing to spend a lot of attacks setting up a shot and then have the defender make it by the +2 you just handed to him.
Multiple Attacks on One Target
To inflict damage, you need to get through the Active Defenses of your target. In order to do this, you must hit first.
This great thread covers PCs charging a pike formation. Formed up weaker foes with long weapons can represent a good pile of attacks, and limit your options for closing with them. Your goal is to swamp defenses, and hope for critical hits along the way and blown defense rolls as a result of cumulative penalties. GURPS isn't attrition-heavy in the way D&D is, but you can effectively attrit defenses over the course of a turn, given enough attacks.
This also goes for grappling, especially if you're using Martial Arts: Technical Grappling. Even if you aren't, dogpile your foes; the more people you have hanging on, the worse off the opponent is.
Flank, Flank, Flank
Aim for flank attacks. One aspect of outnumbering your opponents is you can often lap around them. Get to the flank hex on the weapon side to avoid shields (and the DB from shields). Get to the shield-side flank to avoid a weapon parry. Even if you just do it through superior movement, the -2 to defend is a big edge.
Committed Attack
If your fodder has multiple defenses, or at least one good one that doesn't depend on Retreat such as Block or a non-Fencing Parry, take a good look at this option.
This beats All-Out Attack (see below) because it means attackers still need to expend some effort overcoming the fodder's defenses. They aren't auto-killed when the PCs' turn comes up. But it also gives them some extra movement, damage, or attacking skill to leverage into a threat to the PCs. Shield-armed fodder should seriously consider this, since they can get off one good Block after getting off a Committed Attack. Use (Determined) for a better hit chance or (Strong) to get a little more damage, and the two step option combined with either can let them perform a runaround attack to give their target a -2 to defend (p. B391) and to force the target to keep backpedaling.
Perks
Take a close look at the Teamwork or Teamwork (Pack Tactics) perks. With the Teamwork perk, they can form up and use formations to threaten foes. With Pack Tactics, they can surround and harass foes more effectively.
Another good one is Shield Wall Training so fodder can block for each other, and make it a bit harder to kill them off with the old technique of Feint-and-Attack or overwhelming through multiple attacks. You can Feint Blarg the Orc, but if Lurg blocks for him, your deception was useless.
Tactics Of Marginal Value
These moves have their place, but they aren't your go-to moves turn after turn.
Aiming for Hit Locations
Useful if the targets have a specific weakness or if you must hit to inflict any useful damage. Or, if hitting a specific location trumps the value of hitting anything else. If the only way you can reasonably hurt your foe is an eye strike or a Chinks in Armor hit, you have to go for it. But it's not worth aiming for specific locations if a random strike or a torso strike will inflict some damage.
You must be able to hurt your opponent, so use aimed shots for penalized locations when that makes the difference between damaging or non-damaging attacks.
All-Out Attack
Another one to avoid, unless you're running berserker fodder. It seems tempting - +4 to hit, +2 to damage . . . but unless you dramatically outnumber your foes or they can't reliably one-shot incapacitate or kill your, you are toast. It's mostly useful when your opponent can't defend or can't retaliate, or to take advantage for a golden opportunity to rush in and whack someone who really needs hitting. But in general, you are just making it easy for your superior foe to kill you faster, and rarely for a good tradeoff.
Defensive Tactics in General
All the All-Out Defending in the world is useless when someone smashes your defenses with a solid Feint and then stabs you. AOD is useful if you are close in defenses, and you can force attackers to attack the fodder that are AODing while other fodder attack. If that is the case, do it. If not, avoid it.
Tactics To Avoid
These have a big failure mark all over them.
Feints, Beats, and Ruses
Useless, worthless, and pointless. All three of these require a competitive skill level to make them possibly useful, and a superior skill level to make them worth trying.
If a fodder monster tries a Feint, and you conceal the results (either by rolling secretly, or rolling the results on the following turn), you're basically just saying "Kill this guy now, he might be good." So it's got some use as a sacrifice, if you want to ensure the PCs kill a specific fodder monster by pretending it is some kind of threat. If you are using some version of Setup Attack, that can be useful.
Beat is possibly useful, if the fodder types are really strong, and can leverage their ST-based skill into a number that can potentially threaten the better of ST-based or DX-based skills of the delver. That's rare in normal GURPS games and rarer still in Dungeon Fantasy. It's better for, again, marginally less skilled guys.
Getting Fancy In General
Remember you are inferior in skill, and you must maximize what you have. Throwing skill away for Rapid Strikes, eye strikes, Lethal Kicks, defaulted techniques, etc. is a bad idea. Go for the money moves and apply as many of them to the enemy as possible.
And that's how I run my fodder to make them a threat.
Special DF Note: Remember they are still fodder. The odds are they are going to lose, and lose badly. Even in a minor victory (driving off the PCs, say) they'll probably take terrible losses. Many will die, and even if they fight in-game as if they all expect to live (and not like suicide troopers), they will take losses. Groups of fodder lose members like larger monsters lose HP, and "heal" them by getting replacements. The only way fodder can really win is through vastly superior numbers, in my experience, although they can occasionally present an obstacle by sheer threat of costing time or resources the group doesn't want to expend. If you juice them up until they are a real threat, then they aren't really fodder, or inferior foes, anymore. An army of orcs is a boss fight, even if individually they are all fodder versus your handful of adventurers.
Wednesday, February 5, 2014
Wishes, Part II - Limiting Wishes
(For Part I, click here. I'll save the war stories for Part III on Friday - since Thursday is Melee Academy - since most of mine are GURPS related.)
The power of wishes is pretty broad - you are taking specific game-rule effects out of the equation and giving the players a chance to exercise a direct request from the GM.
Yesterday I edged up to the idea that wishes don't need to be adversarial to avoid being game-breaking. So if you aren't going to fulfill wishes with the most ruthlessly technically correct readying of the wording of the wish, how else can you limit them?
I have some suggestions.
Limit The Gains
Put some limits on what you can wish for; perhaps wishes can only directly affect immaterial objects and the wisher. So you can wish to be smarter, gain ability to cast spells, or ask for palace full of money and clothes and food . . . but you can't wish someone dead.
Perhaps you can wish for means, not ends - so if you ask to be smarter you get a big-ass magical book of knowledge that you can study for a higher IQ. You can ask for great strength but get a guarantee of quick success with your weight training. You can ask for knowledge but instead get a scroll that contains what you wanted to know. And so on - means, but not the end itself. A smooth and assured path to success but you still need to take the steps.
Redistribution of Wealth
Another option is that wishes don't create or destroy, but move and redistribute. Money you wish for comes from somewhere. Magical healing is possible so the wish just brings the health from the same place Minor Healing does. This effectively limits wish to being broad ways to get access to knowledge or the effect of any sort of other spell or power, not a way to transform yourself into Emperor.
Beings granting wishes might do this, and just call it wishing. You ask the djinni for food and he creates some with a different spell and says "Your wish is granted." You ask for money and he leads you to a hoard he's known about for centuries. You ask for a ring of unlimited wishes and he brings you the ring that summons his cousin, because, screw both of you guys.
Weaker Wishes
You can also limit how much they can do via weaker wishes. "Limited Wish" is a good example of this. It's a wish, but it simply cannot do as much. It's simply a flexible spell that affects reality in an undefined but limited way.
Limit The Number of Wishes
How about you just cap how many?
Great Cost
The Great Wish spell in GURPS costs 2,000 energy to cast. A normal human has 10 power, and spells in excess of 20-30 points start to be too expensive to cast. 50+ is crazy expensive. So yeah, 2000 power. It can do a lot, but it's generally easier to replicate other spell effects by just casting those spells, and its ability to permanently grant power isn't that great for 2K.
The 9th level 1st edition AD&D spell was sort of like that. You needed to be 18th level to cast it, and unless you wished for some specified healing/helping type effects you'd need 2-8 days of bed rest afterward. It wasn't clear to me if wish rings had the same, but if they did, I wasn't playing them right.
Three Wish Maximum
This is basically a wishing limit per person. I say "Three Wishes" but it can be any number. You can only handle so many wishes. This can be a hard limit, or an increasing chance of failure, or for skill-based systems a simple result of a failed casting. Fail, and it's done. Perhaps it's an IQ-based limit similar to AD&D's System Shock, and if you fail it, your wishing is done. Simply put, you can't alter reality that much that often.
A Wish Too Far
Perhaps asking for too much snaps you back to where you started, much like the fisherman's wife.
You can also limit wishes a bit by saying all wishes made from one source hang together. If you free a djinni from a bottle and he grants you three wishes, and somehow you blow the third, the first two go with it. Or if the djinni is slain or banished or whatever, the materials that came with wishes he granted all go away - no time limit on that. This makes it safer to ask for limited things, or knowledge, or to speed things that would have happened anyway, because it's harder for them to go away.
The adventure "Threshold of Evil" in Dungeon Magazine #10 took this approach. The wizard in the tower used piles of wishes, but it was strongly implied he could lose it all by wishing for too much some day . . . so he would be very careful with his Wish spells even under deadly assault by a group of adventurers.
This means the more wishes you use, the greater the risk of undoing everything. Couple that with unreliable sources and/or limits on their power, and they might not get pushed to the limit. If they do, you can always end up back in the shack with the fisherman's wife.
The power of wishes is pretty broad - you are taking specific game-rule effects out of the equation and giving the players a chance to exercise a direct request from the GM.
Yesterday I edged up to the idea that wishes don't need to be adversarial to avoid being game-breaking. So if you aren't going to fulfill wishes with the most ruthlessly technically correct readying of the wording of the wish, how else can you limit them?
I have some suggestions.
Limit The Gains
Put some limits on what you can wish for; perhaps wishes can only directly affect immaterial objects and the wisher. So you can wish to be smarter, gain ability to cast spells, or ask for palace full of money and clothes and food . . . but you can't wish someone dead.
Perhaps you can wish for means, not ends - so if you ask to be smarter you get a big-ass magical book of knowledge that you can study for a higher IQ. You can ask for great strength but get a guarantee of quick success with your weight training. You can ask for knowledge but instead get a scroll that contains what you wanted to know. And so on - means, but not the end itself. A smooth and assured path to success but you still need to take the steps.
Redistribution of Wealth
Another option is that wishes don't create or destroy, but move and redistribute. Money you wish for comes from somewhere. Magical healing is possible so the wish just brings the health from the same place Minor Healing does. This effectively limits wish to being broad ways to get access to knowledge or the effect of any sort of other spell or power, not a way to transform yourself into Emperor.
Beings granting wishes might do this, and just call it wishing. You ask the djinni for food and he creates some with a different spell and says "Your wish is granted." You ask for money and he leads you to a hoard he's known about for centuries. You ask for a ring of unlimited wishes and he brings you the ring that summons his cousin, because, screw both of you guys.
Weaker Wishes
You can also limit how much they can do via weaker wishes. "Limited Wish" is a good example of this. It's a wish, but it simply cannot do as much. It's simply a flexible spell that affects reality in an undefined but limited way.
Limit The Number of Wishes
How about you just cap how many?
Great Cost
The Great Wish spell in GURPS costs 2,000 energy to cast. A normal human has 10 power, and spells in excess of 20-30 points start to be too expensive to cast. 50+ is crazy expensive. So yeah, 2000 power. It can do a lot, but it's generally easier to replicate other spell effects by just casting those spells, and its ability to permanently grant power isn't that great for 2K.
The 9th level 1st edition AD&D spell was sort of like that. You needed to be 18th level to cast it, and unless you wished for some specified healing/helping type effects you'd need 2-8 days of bed rest afterward. It wasn't clear to me if wish rings had the same, but if they did, I wasn't playing them right.
Three Wish Maximum
This is basically a wishing limit per person. I say "Three Wishes" but it can be any number. You can only handle so many wishes. This can be a hard limit, or an increasing chance of failure, or for skill-based systems a simple result of a failed casting. Fail, and it's done. Perhaps it's an IQ-based limit similar to AD&D's System Shock, and if you fail it, your wishing is done. Simply put, you can't alter reality that much that often.
A Wish Too Far
Perhaps asking for too much snaps you back to where you started, much like the fisherman's wife.
You can also limit wishes a bit by saying all wishes made from one source hang together. If you free a djinni from a bottle and he grants you three wishes, and somehow you blow the third, the first two go with it. Or if the djinni is slain or banished or whatever, the materials that came with wishes he granted all go away - no time limit on that. This makes it safer to ask for limited things, or knowledge, or to speed things that would have happened anyway, because it's harder for them to go away.
The adventure "Threshold of Evil" in Dungeon Magazine #10 took this approach. The wizard in the tower used piles of wishes, but it was strongly implied he could lose it all by wishing for too much some day . . . so he would be very careful with his Wish spells even under deadly assault by a group of adventurers.
This means the more wishes you use, the greater the risk of undoing everything. Couple that with unreliable sources and/or limits on their power, and they might not get pushed to the limit. If they do, you can always end up back in the shack with the fisherman's wife.
Tuesday, February 4, 2014
Wishes, Part I - Wording & Whatnot
"When I wish to make a wish
I wave my hand with a big swish swish.
Then I say, "I wish for fish!"
And I get fish right on my dish.
So . . . if you wish to make a wish,
you may swish for fish
with my Ish wish dish.
~ Dr Seuss, One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish"
So how about wishes in your fantasy games?
Did you ever give your players access to wishes for their characters, either by spell, ring or dish of multiple wishes, or granted by some being with excessive power over reality?
I have, with mixed results (that I'll talk about next time.)
Be Careful What You Wish For
The idea that a wish is a very specific contract made with an actively hostile universe looking to screw you in the most nitpicky way possible seems to be fairly deeply embedded in the gaming world. I'm going to come right out and say this right away - I've never been a big fan of hostile, lawyerly wish granting. I think it turns "we have a wish, and it will come true!" into a long, grinding period of players carefully wording things to try to get a specific result without getting screwed out of that result because of a tense or grammar or word error.
I can recall my issues of Dragon magazine having reader questions, Sage Advice, and articles about wishes. They all seemed to come down hard on people asking for too much. It always seemed like the goal was to admonish GMs against giving too much away by swaying them over to giving nothing away unless forced to. I think these, combined with the very strict as-written way we played, meant that wishes were excessively rare. We all knew where in the modules to get that ring of wishing (cough, cough, G2) but we also all knew that guy who said he got it solo adventuring and that's why his character now has four character classes and all 18s and a magic crossbow that shoots energy bolts. Naturally, this made us even more leery of wishes.
It seems to me that granting a chance to make a wish or three to the PCs is giving them a chance to use broad magical powers to effect some change they couldn't otherwise. By making it both so unlimited, and so perversely twisted, it makes wishes potentially more dangerous than helpful. I'd like to have wishes be something more exciting than "this could do anything, but I need to hire a lawyer first to ensure it is helpful."
So here is basically how I run wishes.
Wishes From No Specified Source
Your spells and your wish rings probably go here. You aren't asking anyone in the game, just asking the wizard (who might be you!) to grant something to you. Here, I tend to err on the side of being a little generous. As long as what you ask for isn't game-breaking and abusive of course ("I wish for a thousand wishes!" or "I wish for the main bad guy to die permanently right now. Hey, game over, yay, we won, let's go play video games.") You have to be specific, but not crazily so - you're not handing over a signed contract to the devil to see if he can find a loophole, you're using your vague-but-powerful magic to change things in a way not specified in some other spell.
Generally, the more control you have over the granting, the less likely you are to get screwed. Wishes tend to be specific (you get what you asked for) but not necessarily bad (you technically get what you asked for, but with a serious problem.)
Wishes From Friendly Sources
Jake: I wish for - a sandwich!
Prismo: A sandwich, you're gonna waste your one wish on a sandwich?! You don't want anything else?
Jake: Nah, sandwich is good, [Demonstrates the size with this hands] maybe about . . . this big . . . or this big. On ciabatta bread maybe . . . mmm I don't know, whatever you have it's your choice.
Prismo: Dude, I'll just make you a sandwich! You should use your wish on something important.
- Jake & Prismo, Adventure Time, "Jake the Dog."
For these I am the most generous. Your wish-granter wants you to succeed, but just can't do it for you. You may get advice, you may get what you need instead of specifically what you ask for, and slightly vaguely-worded wishes that give leeway to the wish-granter to get you something better are probably okay. You can often even check first - remember, helpful creature. The worst a helpful creature is likely to say is that it can't tell you ahead of time if it's good or bad.
Wishes From Hostile Creatures
These, you're going to get screwed on. Be careful. You must word it correctly, because it's meant to tempt you to well-intentioned mistakes and not really help you. These you get from monkey's paws and from demons who can grant another's wish if you force them too. You are literally making a devil's bargain here. Don't mess up, and always be suspicious of what you got out of it. Also remember to worry about getting too cute - if you try to use the wish to force the demon to banish himself for eternity or something, remember that spells have limits, too - it might not be able to do that.
Next time, I'll look at some ideas for limiting wishes, making them a bit more flexible, and discussing some war stories. Then in Part III, I want to talk GURPS wishing rules.
I wave my hand with a big swish swish.
Then I say, "I wish for fish!"
And I get fish right on my dish.
So . . . if you wish to make a wish,
you may swish for fish
with my Ish wish dish.
~ Dr Seuss, One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish"
So how about wishes in your fantasy games?
Did you ever give your players access to wishes for their characters, either by spell, ring or dish of multiple wishes, or granted by some being with excessive power over reality?
I have, with mixed results (that I'll talk about next time.)
Be Careful What You Wish For
The idea that a wish is a very specific contract made with an actively hostile universe looking to screw you in the most nitpicky way possible seems to be fairly deeply embedded in the gaming world. I'm going to come right out and say this right away - I've never been a big fan of hostile, lawyerly wish granting. I think it turns "we have a wish, and it will come true!" into a long, grinding period of players carefully wording things to try to get a specific result without getting screwed out of that result because of a tense or grammar or word error.
I can recall my issues of Dragon magazine having reader questions, Sage Advice, and articles about wishes. They all seemed to come down hard on people asking for too much. It always seemed like the goal was to admonish GMs against giving too much away by swaying them over to giving nothing away unless forced to. I think these, combined with the very strict as-written way we played, meant that wishes were excessively rare. We all knew where in the modules to get that ring of wishing (cough, cough, G2) but we also all knew that guy who said he got it solo adventuring and that's why his character now has four character classes and all 18s and a magic crossbow that shoots energy bolts. Naturally, this made us even more leery of wishes.
It seems to me that granting a chance to make a wish or three to the PCs is giving them a chance to use broad magical powers to effect some change they couldn't otherwise. By making it both so unlimited, and so perversely twisted, it makes wishes potentially more dangerous than helpful. I'd like to have wishes be something more exciting than "this could do anything, but I need to hire a lawyer first to ensure it is helpful."
So here is basically how I run wishes.
Wishes From No Specified Source
Your spells and your wish rings probably go here. You aren't asking anyone in the game, just asking the wizard (who might be you!) to grant something to you. Here, I tend to err on the side of being a little generous. As long as what you ask for isn't game-breaking and abusive of course ("I wish for a thousand wishes!" or "I wish for the main bad guy to die permanently right now. Hey, game over, yay, we won, let's go play video games.") You have to be specific, but not crazily so - you're not handing over a signed contract to the devil to see if he can find a loophole, you're using your vague-but-powerful magic to change things in a way not specified in some other spell.
Generally, the more control you have over the granting, the less likely you are to get screwed. Wishes tend to be specific (you get what you asked for) but not necessarily bad (you technically get what you asked for, but with a serious problem.)
Wishes From Friendly Sources
Jake: I wish for - a sandwich!
Prismo: A sandwich, you're gonna waste your one wish on a sandwich?! You don't want anything else?
Jake: Nah, sandwich is good, [Demonstrates the size with this hands] maybe about . . . this big . . . or this big. On ciabatta bread maybe . . . mmm I don't know, whatever you have it's your choice.
Prismo: Dude, I'll just make you a sandwich! You should use your wish on something important.
- Jake & Prismo, Adventure Time, "Jake the Dog."
For these I am the most generous. Your wish-granter wants you to succeed, but just can't do it for you. You may get advice, you may get what you need instead of specifically what you ask for, and slightly vaguely-worded wishes that give leeway to the wish-granter to get you something better are probably okay. You can often even check first - remember, helpful creature. The worst a helpful creature is likely to say is that it can't tell you ahead of time if it's good or bad.
Wishes From Hostile Creatures
These, you're going to get screwed on. Be careful. You must word it correctly, because it's meant to tempt you to well-intentioned mistakes and not really help you. These you get from monkey's paws and from demons who can grant another's wish if you force them too. You are literally making a devil's bargain here. Don't mess up, and always be suspicious of what you got out of it. Also remember to worry about getting too cute - if you try to use the wish to force the demon to banish himself for eternity or something, remember that spells have limits, too - it might not be able to do that.
Next time, I'll look at some ideas for limiting wishes, making them a bit more flexible, and discussing some war stories. Then in Part III, I want to talk GURPS wishing rules.
Monday, February 3, 2014
Death, Resurrection, Raised Dead, and My Games
This started as a response to Erik Tenkar's post on the subject, but it got big.
In my elementary school D&D/AD&D days, dead was dead. No one had a character high enough level for Raise Dead so that was that - there was no such thing as NPCs except the ones in the adventures. Heh. Okay, there were, but no one allowed this.
In my junior high school and then high school AD&D days, it was possible but rare. We finally read the right section of the DMG, I guess. I can't tell you now why it was rare - probably cost and availability - but it did happen. I don't remember anyone losing a mid to high level character permanently. I'm not even sure if anyone died temporarily.
In my Rolemaster games and early GURPS games, you were out of luck. No one came back from anything. The spells just weren't available. The last 1st edition GURPS game I ran back in the day featured PCs getting resurrected, but man, it cost them long-term servitude to a powerful wizard.
In my previous GURPS game, Resurrection and Elixirs of Life were expensive and rare. Couple that with GURPS's aging rules meaning it wasn't a useful long-term cure for infirmity, just violence, and that took care of the larger world. The King gets resurrected from assassination and such but he's doomed in the long run anyway barring longevity magic, and that's a different issue. "Won't Die of Old Age" is nice, but it's not the most useful advantage for an adventurer with treasure to get or bad guys to deal with right now. Even with it available, it wasn't without issues (the cascading penalties per day for being dead for one, cost for another.) A few characters died and came back - off hand I think of three who each died once (one may have died twice, I'll ask his player when I get a chance.) Only one came back without permanent harm, and she had some temporary harm for a while (migraines from the head injury that killed her.) No one saw it as a non-issue; dying was huge and costly and possibly forever even with access to lots of money and world-class magic. Even then, the purveyors of such spells knew they had you over a barrel and bargains almost unfairly.
In my DF game, you can just go and pay $15K to be Resurrected at the local church. We even have a posted price list! As Mike aka Galen Longtread says, it's a paper Roguelike. If you want to spend in-game resources to keep playing your guy once he blows a Death Check, it's fine. GURPS has pretty strict rules on how much damage you can suffer and still come back, too - no bone fragments turning into a fully-healed character here. You die automatically at -5xHP and above -10xHP you're not coming back. Even our toughest PC in this over-the-top game has only 25 HP, which means 275 damage (high but not crazy given fire, lava, acid, hungry trolls, etc.) and you have to make a new PC no matter what. Even so, my players keep talking about a party Resurrection fund and wondering if you can pre-pay for one. It's that kind of game.
(One tiny addendum - in my GURPS games, it's a spell and a roll - and it's a one-shot roll-in-front-of-everyone one-try spell. An elixir is more sure - no roll - but more expensive and takes too long to prepare so you need to have one ready to go. No one has had that usually 15 or 16 or less on 3d fail, but it's possible, and I don't allow you to use Luck . . . )
So that's death and resurrection in my games. How about yours? Share here or at Tenkar's Tavern (or both!)
In my elementary school D&D/AD&D days, dead was dead. No one had a character high enough level for Raise Dead so that was that - there was no such thing as NPCs except the ones in the adventures. Heh. Okay, there were, but no one allowed this.
In my junior high school and then high school AD&D days, it was possible but rare. We finally read the right section of the DMG, I guess. I can't tell you now why it was rare - probably cost and availability - but it did happen. I don't remember anyone losing a mid to high level character permanently. I'm not even sure if anyone died temporarily.
In my Rolemaster games and early GURPS games, you were out of luck. No one came back from anything. The spells just weren't available. The last 1st edition GURPS game I ran back in the day featured PCs getting resurrected, but man, it cost them long-term servitude to a powerful wizard.
In my previous GURPS game, Resurrection and Elixirs of Life were expensive and rare. Couple that with GURPS's aging rules meaning it wasn't a useful long-term cure for infirmity, just violence, and that took care of the larger world. The King gets resurrected from assassination and such but he's doomed in the long run anyway barring longevity magic, and that's a different issue. "Won't Die of Old Age" is nice, but it's not the most useful advantage for an adventurer with treasure to get or bad guys to deal with right now. Even with it available, it wasn't without issues (the cascading penalties per day for being dead for one, cost for another.) A few characters died and came back - off hand I think of three who each died once (one may have died twice, I'll ask his player when I get a chance.) Only one came back without permanent harm, and she had some temporary harm for a while (migraines from the head injury that killed her.) No one saw it as a non-issue; dying was huge and costly and possibly forever even with access to lots of money and world-class magic. Even then, the purveyors of such spells knew they had you over a barrel and bargains almost unfairly.
In my DF game, you can just go and pay $15K to be Resurrected at the local church. We even have a posted price list! As Mike aka Galen Longtread says, it's a paper Roguelike. If you want to spend in-game resources to keep playing your guy once he blows a Death Check, it's fine. GURPS has pretty strict rules on how much damage you can suffer and still come back, too - no bone fragments turning into a fully-healed character here. You die automatically at -5xHP and above -10xHP you're not coming back. Even our toughest PC in this over-the-top game has only 25 HP, which means 275 damage (high but not crazy given fire, lava, acid, hungry trolls, etc.) and you have to make a new PC no matter what. Even so, my players keep talking about a party Resurrection fund and wondering if you can pre-pay for one. It's that kind of game.
(One tiny addendum - in my GURPS games, it's a spell and a roll - and it's a one-shot roll-in-front-of-everyone one-try spell. An elixir is more sure - no roll - but more expensive and takes too long to prepare so you need to have one ready to go. No one has had that usually 15 or 16 or less on 3d fail, but it's possible, and I don't allow you to use Luck . . . )
So that's death and resurrection in my games. How about yours? Share here or at Tenkar's Tavern (or both!)
Sunday, February 2, 2014
Even More Roll20
Doug and I messed around on Roll20 this morning, trying things out.
Move To Front - I've gotten a lot better with swapping around characters in the inevitable dogpile. But still, it's hard to see who is there.
Standing, Kneeling, Prone - I need to make some statuses that show the posture of standing folks, and have a way to quickly swap a one-hex standing icon for a two-hex prone icon (which we could mark face up or face down.)
Hex Facing - It's hard to see where folks are facing. One idea Doug said he stole from someone else was color-coded facing. Green for front hexsides, yellow for side (-2 defenses), and red for back (no defenses.)
Copying Monsters - Is there an easy way to copy monsters and then change the token? I can't seem to. I dropped down two identical monsters (same stats) but I wanted to then give them different tokens. How, I don't know yet. Seems like the "easy" way is to put down a new token, and then cut-and-paste details, then add in the various statuses, auras, HP, etc. Which isn't really faster to me.
Turn Order - I'd love it if I could click on someone in the turn order, and then, if it's a piece I control, that I select the figure. I'd also like to right-click on a piece I control in the turn order, than I get the right-click character details. In a messy fight, it would be nice to have a combined turn order and pick list.
I'd throw Roll20 some money if it was more natively GURPS supportive, but I can't justify spending money to then spend time making it more GURPS supportive. My gaming budget - in money and time - simply isn't that big. Heh.
And not really Roll20 related, but worth saying:
Stupid Ideas Are Worth Investigating - Doug and I are trying a rules variation out that we sort of like and are trying to turn into publishable material. One thing that happened with it, though, was an odd breakpoint issue. I put out what seemed like a bad idea - rescaling everything to make that breakpoint go away. Basically, what if we did this whole thing differently? Turns out that it might not be a bad way to go, and in fact smooth out other issues with this idea we're having.
Which just goes to show that, there are no truly stupid questions if they're on-topic. It's worth investigating even what seems at first blush to be a bad way to go in a game. Try it, look into it, and if it's truly bad, it will turn out badly. But it might emerge as a better choice, or at least reinforce the knowledge that the way you took was really a better choice.
Live Playtest Beats All - Doug and I would never, never, never have caught so many errors, odd behaviors, issues, places for improvement, and places to add cool stuff without trying this all out "face to face" in actual play. A couple hours on Skype or Google Hangouts with an open combat map in front of us vastly improved our "product" in less time than a hundred emails would have taken.
Move To Front - I've gotten a lot better with swapping around characters in the inevitable dogpile. But still, it's hard to see who is there.
Standing, Kneeling, Prone - I need to make some statuses that show the posture of standing folks, and have a way to quickly swap a one-hex standing icon for a two-hex prone icon (which we could mark face up or face down.)
Hex Facing - It's hard to see where folks are facing. One idea Doug said he stole from someone else was color-coded facing. Green for front hexsides, yellow for side (-2 defenses), and red for back (no defenses.)
Copying Monsters - Is there an easy way to copy monsters and then change the token? I can't seem to. I dropped down two identical monsters (same stats) but I wanted to then give them different tokens. How, I don't know yet. Seems like the "easy" way is to put down a new token, and then cut-and-paste details, then add in the various statuses, auras, HP, etc. Which isn't really faster to me.
Turn Order - I'd love it if I could click on someone in the turn order, and then, if it's a piece I control, that I select the figure. I'd also like to right-click on a piece I control in the turn order, than I get the right-click character details. In a messy fight, it would be nice to have a combined turn order and pick list.
I'd throw Roll20 some money if it was more natively GURPS supportive, but I can't justify spending money to then spend time making it more GURPS supportive. My gaming budget - in money and time - simply isn't that big. Heh.
And not really Roll20 related, but worth saying:
Stupid Ideas Are Worth Investigating - Doug and I are trying a rules variation out that we sort of like and are trying to turn into publishable material. One thing that happened with it, though, was an odd breakpoint issue. I put out what seemed like a bad idea - rescaling everything to make that breakpoint go away. Basically, what if we did this whole thing differently? Turns out that it might not be a bad way to go, and in fact smooth out other issues with this idea we're having.
Which just goes to show that, there are no truly stupid questions if they're on-topic. It's worth investigating even what seems at first blush to be a bad way to go in a game. Try it, look into it, and if it's truly bad, it will turn out badly. But it might emerge as a better choice, or at least reinforce the knowledge that the way you took was really a better choice.
Live Playtest Beats All - Doug and I would never, never, never have caught so many errors, odd behaviors, issues, places for improvement, and places to add cool stuff without trying this all out "face to face" in actual play. A couple hours on Skype or Google Hangouts with an open combat map in front of us vastly improved our "product" in less time than a hundred emails would have taken.
Saturday, February 1, 2014
Improving Power Items in DF
I've told my players I'm going to allow them to stick piecemeal additions onto an item to make it a better power item. Here are the simple rules I came up with for cost.
Improving Power Items - You can pay to improve a Power Item by having it gilded, gems mounted, improvements put on it, etc. The cost is 150% of the improvement in the value of the final item. If you have materials on hand (say, you have a $1000 gem), the cost is 50% of the added value. For example, you have a $1000 gem in hand and want to mount it on your Power Item staff. You pay $500 and the gem is mounted, improving the value of the item by $1000. If you lacked the gem, you could simply pay $1500 and have the item improved by $1000 in value.
Simple although really expensive. It makes adding on possible, but finding stuff to add on in more attractive, and finding a bigger item as-is is the best.
How has this worked in actual play?
It hasn't, yet, as it has only been on the books since December and we haven't played much in the interim. Needless to say, I don't think the wizard players in my group like this. It's kind of unreasonable that it's a sliding scale - that the value of the improvement determines the cost of making it (it's much more expensive to mount an emerald than an agate, or gold than silver.)
But on the other hand, money is directly turning into power.
Further, this is basically allowing piecemeal improvements. Add another piece of bling to your staff or amulet or whatever, and it's more powerful. You don't need to save up to go from Ornate +2 to Ornate +3, or worry about getting rid of this $12,000 power item and getting a $12,001 one to hit the breakpoint and get more power. You can simply add a tiny bit more to it.
I figured there were three ways I could rule:
No Improvement - sorry, you need to entirely replace the item.
Improvement, with a high cost - you can improve it, but with a steep markup. This is the above.
Improvement, with a low cost - you can improve it, with a nominal cost.
With one option to modify it:
Improvement By Level Only - you have to do it in a big jump, either by adding a prefix (Ornate, Fine, Balanced, etc.) or by making a full jump from a specific Power Item level to another.
I feel like the 50% approach is the middle road - it's still generally better to find a new item and keep it instead of improving your current one. But you can mill your coins into power. It's still pretty unrealistic - modifying jewelry can be a fraction of the cost of the item or more than the item is worth; modifying something so it's more valuable and not just a bling-studded piece of gaudy crap (which could reduce its value by making it less artistically valuable) isn't trivial. But it's DF and I'd like simple but costly.
Originally, I was thinking 100% of the cost if you lacked the item ($2000 to add $1000 to the value of the item) and 50% if you had it ($1500 to add a $1000 gem, say, to the item). But I realized that encourage the odd behavior of buying gems with your cash and and then bringing them to get mounted. So I went with the cheaper cost. You can still walk into the dungeon and score a sweet $15,000 pile of loot and turn it into $10,000 worth of improvements on your power item. Or just buy a $15,000 power item, if that's better.
So that's how I'm giving this a try. We'll see if people bite, or declare it's too much and just replace items entirely. If so, that's really okay with me - this is just giving wizards an option to turn money into power without sacrificing the sunk cost of the item they already invested in. I have some ideas on improving existing weapons, too, but I'll save them for when I have time to fully write them out.
Improving Power Items - You can pay to improve a Power Item by having it gilded, gems mounted, improvements put on it, etc. The cost is 150% of the improvement in the value of the final item. If you have materials on hand (say, you have a $1000 gem), the cost is 50% of the added value. For example, you have a $1000 gem in hand and want to mount it on your Power Item staff. You pay $500 and the gem is mounted, improving the value of the item by $1000. If you lacked the gem, you could simply pay $1500 and have the item improved by $1000 in value.
Simple although really expensive. It makes adding on possible, but finding stuff to add on in more attractive, and finding a bigger item as-is is the best.
How has this worked in actual play?
It hasn't, yet, as it has only been on the books since December and we haven't played much in the interim. Needless to say, I don't think the wizard players in my group like this. It's kind of unreasonable that it's a sliding scale - that the value of the improvement determines the cost of making it (it's much more expensive to mount an emerald than an agate, or gold than silver.)
But on the other hand, money is directly turning into power.
Further, this is basically allowing piecemeal improvements. Add another piece of bling to your staff or amulet or whatever, and it's more powerful. You don't need to save up to go from Ornate +2 to Ornate +3, or worry about getting rid of this $12,000 power item and getting a $12,001 one to hit the breakpoint and get more power. You can simply add a tiny bit more to it.
I figured there were three ways I could rule:
No Improvement - sorry, you need to entirely replace the item.
Improvement, with a high cost - you can improve it, but with a steep markup. This is the above.
Improvement, with a low cost - you can improve it, with a nominal cost.
With one option to modify it:
Improvement By Level Only - you have to do it in a big jump, either by adding a prefix (Ornate, Fine, Balanced, etc.) or by making a full jump from a specific Power Item level to another.
I feel like the 50% approach is the middle road - it's still generally better to find a new item and keep it instead of improving your current one. But you can mill your coins into power. It's still pretty unrealistic - modifying jewelry can be a fraction of the cost of the item or more than the item is worth; modifying something so it's more valuable and not just a bling-studded piece of gaudy crap (which could reduce its value by making it less artistically valuable) isn't trivial. But it's DF and I'd like simple but costly.
Originally, I was thinking 100% of the cost if you lacked the item ($2000 to add $1000 to the value of the item) and 50% if you had it ($1500 to add a $1000 gem, say, to the item). But I realized that encourage the odd behavior of buying gems with your cash and and then bringing them to get mounted. So I went with the cheaper cost. You can still walk into the dungeon and score a sweet $15,000 pile of loot and turn it into $10,000 worth of improvements on your power item. Or just buy a $15,000 power item, if that's better.
So that's how I'm giving this a try. We'll see if people bite, or declare it's too much and just replace items entirely. If so, that's really okay with me - this is just giving wizards an option to turn money into power without sacrificing the sunk cost of the item they already invested in. I have some ideas on improving existing weapons, too, but I'll save them for when I have time to fully write them out.
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