[PnP] my first post - a few very noob questions

Dan Abbott dabbott68_bmd2 at yahoo.com
Wed Sep 26 08:52:51 CEST 2007


> >> 4) Can I assume that most P&P GMs are VERY liberal with spell success
> >> modifiers? It sure seems like the players can romp all over the NPCs
> >> without them. As an example, "Abandon"; I like to assign a 5 to 10
> >> penalty if the target is already leery of the caster, up to 25 if
> >> they
> >> are already in combat. Meanwhile, I would consider a bonus of around
> >> 10 if the caster can cajole the target into a discussion to at least
> >> consider "forgetting all your woes" before casting his spell.
> >>
> > Spells in P&P are *very* powerful. However, the big balancing
> > factor
> > for me has always been the uncertainty of the targets MDV. :) A
> > high MDV
> > and only a 'moderately bad' roll to cast can quickly result in an
> > Abysmal Failure. I also have a house rule that limits the number of
> > 'spells' a character can start with. The limit is based on a total
> > number of BMC's worth of spells. This way, a player can choose a list
> > with a few high-power spells, a lot of low-power spells, or (most
> > commonly) a general mix of them.
> > Adding modifiers in-game is also kind of expected in P&P. This
> > isn't
> > a game system that relegates the GM to nothing more than a player who
> > rolls for the monsters. P&P expects that the Referee to actually be a
> > master of the game. In this way, P&P is quite heavy on the "Referee
> > adjudication" aspect of play. This is GOOD! So, keep applying those
> > modifiers in an even manner and everyone will know what to expect.
>
> I've been doing this game for 20+ years (off and on) and even we are
> still looking at balancing tweaks. I'm currently playing with a
> combat option (spell casting allows a -10 on an attacker's roll) that
> makes any wizard/warriors a bit more cautious about popping off
> spells when they are in the front row.

I'm thinking about treating the casting of a spell the same as
switching weapons, possibly entitling armed and adjacent opponents to
free attacks.

Unnecesary.  Just have every intelligent foe you come accross dogpile the mages.  It's a realistic response given the lethality of magic in this game and will quickly teach your mages to tuck themselves safely out of the way before casting.  That or they will be hurting all the time which can be realatively entertaining to watch.  It took 9 months of gameplay, but even our resident chaos wizard finally started flying out of the way or staying in the back in battles because he decided he'd nearly died a few too many times.
       
---------------------------------
Tonight's top picks. What will you watch tonight? Preview the hottest shows on Yahoo! TV.    
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://www.powersandperils.org/pipermail/pnp/attachments/20070925/c6353fd9/attachment.html>


More information about the pnp mailing list