[Haalyr] Assigning difficulty for conflict based magic

[kenjib]

Hello everyone,

Haalyr, Adventures in the Age of Dreams, is a fantasy game that revolves around the central theme of a contest of will and the ability to impose your motivations on the world around you with the force of your will.  Will is a pool that gets depleted through opposed ability checks and when it runs out, bad things start happening.  Resolution is conflict based with dice pools and scales to different levels (action-by-action or goal-by-goal) depending on how important a given conflict is.  The victor of any role gets to define what that victory means, exactly, giving players a defined space for narrative control over the game.  Dreams also figure prominently in that they can have a powerful effect on what happens in the real world.  In addition, they are the basis of magic.  Magic is the ability to dream lucidly in the waking world.

That's just a rough sketch to give some background for the game.  If any further info is needed on any of that as regards my question please let me know.

My question pertains to the magic system.  My first attempt at making a magic system has the basic outline of ten circles of magic:  command, summoning, creation, transformation, etc.  Each of these has a defined realm of abilities that you combine in various ways to create a spell.  Pretty standard stuff.  The power of the effects used within these circles determines the number of dice in the pool opposing the caster.  The TN of the caster's roll is defined by the parameters of the spell such as target, range, duration, casting time, etc.  The TN of the opposition roll is fixed.  If the caster loses he suffers lots of will damage and fails to cast the spell.

I think the system itself works fine, but after I created it I realized that I don't think it fits in well with the overall design concept of the game.  It is very task-oriented, since the cost of the spell is based on the details of the spell rather than the desired outcome.

I have decided to move the system to a conflict based model where the difficulty of the spell is determined by what the caster is trying to achieve rather than the details of the effect he is trying to achieve.  I think this fits in better with the theme of power being derived from will.  The problem I have is that I have trouble thinking of a way to assign difficulty since the issue of classifying goals is much more broad topic than that of assigning effects.

Here is the desired end goal:

- A character has the legendary item, Saochan's Marvellous Cloak.  It is a cloak that gives him the ability to deceive the senses and create illusions.
- The cloak does not need any mechanical statistics assigned to it.  Just the description above is sufficient.
- The character can use this rough description to achieve any goal that he can creatively use the stated powers of the cloak to achieve.
- To succeed, the difficulty of the goal is ascertained, and he checks for success against this difficulty.  The specifics of how he is achieving that goal are irrelevant mechanically.  If he is trying to sneak past guards, making himself invisible or making an illusion to divert the guards so he can run past are considered roughly equivalent.  What's important is that he is trying to slip past the guards.
- As the victor always describes the outcome of a conflict, failure means that the GM can determine the specifics.  Perhaps one of the guards saw through the illusion.  Perhaps the sorcerer did turn invisible, but accidently bumped into one of the guards when trying to pass through.    Perhaps he had to open a door and the guards, seeing a door mysteriously open and close, sounded an alarm.  The GM can make the call.

How can I approach guidelines for assigning difficulty to such a broad and open-ended range of possibilities?  Should it just be an ad-hoc assignment by the GM with some examples to use for a reference point?  In the case of the guards above I can use their perception to oppose the roll, which is easy enough, but something that doesn't involve an NPC, such as turning lead into gold, doesn't have that easy yardstick with which to measure.

[Mike Holmes]

Very cool topic, and not an easy one.

How can I approach guidelines for assigning difficulty to such a broad and open-ended range of possibilities? Should it just be an ad-hoc assignment by the GM with some examples to use for a reference point? In the case of the guards above I can use their perception to oppose the roll, which is easy enough, but something that doesn't involve an NPC, such as turning lead into gold, doesn't have that easy yardstick with which to measure.

Well, how do you deal with wealth in the game? Is it, too, abstracted? If so, then perhaps you want to have the result of the lead to gold spell be a new level of wealth. The diffuculty would be the target level that you wanted to create. So, basically, magic abilities could create other abilities that were lesser than themselves with some security, but going for larger ability levels would be more risky.

Even more simply, assume that the caster casts the spell whenever he finds lead, which results in the ability level in question being, effectively, a wealth ability. That is, when he wants to buy something, he rolls the spell's ability level against the cost of the item.

Rules like this are why I hardily advocate wealth be just another ability for a character. As well as everything else.

Mike

[kenjib]

Hi Mike.  Thanks for your response.

I hadn't actually gotten to handling wealth yet.  I think it's one of the few areas that aren't defined yet.  I was leaning heavily toward having it be an ability though, like you suggest, and now after your comments I'm definitely going to go with that.  It really addresses the lead-to-gold, or illusory gold, issue very nicely.  However, I'm having difficulty determining how I can apply this case to the larger problem.

My initial idea for assigning difficulty was to make magic just a blanket substitute for all other skills, and when possible you could use your magic skill as a proxy for any other kind of activity.  This sounds like what you are implying in your response.  So the real question is, what kind of conflicts should magic be able to resolve that other skills can not?

Let me try another example.  Let's say the caster casts a spell to have a stand of trees grow overnight, the goal being to reforest the area.  While I could substitute magic for some kind of wilderness, ranging, or forestry type skill, there is no mundane solution to reforesting an area *overnight*, so how difficult is this task?  Is it impossible?

One more example.  The caster wants to cast a spell to fly up to a ledge far above.  It would be nearly impossible to climb to the ledge and it is too far for a grappling hook.  How difficult is this task?  Should it, too, be nearly impossible?

Would a magic system be boring if it couldn't accomplish any goals that one also couldn't achieve through mundane means?  Granted the dramatic descriptive task-effects would still be there, but it almost seems that there needs to be a different set of criteria to give some allowance for the fantastic.  On the other hand this could be a very interesting way to make magic more low key and insidious and it has very interesting and wide-ranging setting implications.  I must ponder this...

[Mike Holmes]

I don't know where you got the mundane limitation from. The answer is no, that should not be a limit, magic is magical.

Now, think it all through again, and see if there's still a problem.

Mike

[kenjib]

I think I'm having problems wrapping my head around this.  Let me go back to my two recent examples.

1. The caster casts a spell to have a stand of trees grow overnight, the goal being to reforest the area.

2. The caster wants to cast a spell to fly up to an otherwise inaccessible ledge far above.

I don't want to measure difficulty based on the specifics of the spell (i.e. how hard is it to fly X amount of weight or grow X amount of plant matter) because it feels too task oriented.  Instead I want to measure difficulty of the goal - reforesting an area or reaching an otherwise inaccessible ledge.  The method used is irrelevant (in the second example having him climb like spiderman up the wall would be the same difficulty).  What tools can the game provide to assist a GM determine the difficulty level of these activities?  Is it just an arbitrary call that the GM makes, deciding how difficult he wants it to be?

[Walt Freitag]

One possibility that I've seen discussed here recently (sorry, I don't recall the specific game names) is that the difficulty of a spell be related to the importance of the effect to the character. The scale could be something like:

(least effort)
passes the time
gives a small benefit
solves a minor problem
solves a significant problem
saves the caster's life or resolves a major conflict
(most effort)

So, setting fire to stacked wood from 20 feet away in a rainstorm could be minor if it's to save the caster the trouble of walking over and starting a fire in the conventional way, or it could be major if you're lighting the fabled Beacon of Arthlan seconds before the moment of the Great Conjunction to keep the demon hordes away for another thousand years. (In this case, though, keep in mind that you'd want to define "difficulty" in terms of amount of resources that need to be expended to ensure success, rather than the probability of success, since you almost certainly don't want to enshrine "the more important, the more likely to fail" in your core mechanics.)

I don't think that's what you're looking for, but I mention it just for completeness.

I like the general idea of gauging the difficulty of doing the same task without magic, as a way of determining the difficulty of the magic. What could make it work is a set of guidelines based on what is being "saved" by doing the task magically. The idea is there is some benefit to resolving the confict with magic, or else it's no different from a non-magical action and might as well be resolved the same way. The benefits are such things as being able to act from a distance (such as from a safe location), getting results faster than normal means, or avoiding the need to use equipment or tools. Each type of possible benefit has its own difficulty scale. Such as:

1. Without Tools
Doing a task without a normally needed tool is quite magical enough, even if it's done no faster or better than it could be were the tool at hand. Cut a man without a blade; strike a heavy blow without a club; kindle fire without flint; cross water without swimming and without a boat; climb to a window without a grapple; heat metal without a forge; withstand cold without a fur coat; make light without a lamp or torch. Cost/difficulty would be based on the mass and/or the rarity of the tool done without. Hurling a boulder without a trebuchet would be a challenge for a powerful wizard.

2. At a Distance
Even an act that would be trivial can become magical when performed at a distance. Kindle a fire; strike a man; listen to conversation; whisper in a co-conspirator's ear; startle a horse; lift a table. (This effect doesn't apply to transporting anything to or from the caster, which requires the In Less Time effect instead.) Cost/difficulty would be based on the distance and on intervening barriers. Eavesdropping on a foreign court or unlocking a cell door deep within a fortress from outside its walls would be challenges for a powerful wizard.

3. In Less Time
Doing rapidly or instantly something that would normally take minutes, hours, days, or longer is magical -- even if the task itself is simple, or is just a matter of passive waiting.
Make bread; heal a wound; grow a plant; seek a clue in 300 pages of unfamiliar text; walk a great distance; build a shelter. Cost/difficulty would be based on the normal time scale of the task. Growing a forest or wrutubg a book overnight would be challenges for a powerful wizard.

4. Of Many Men
Some tasks are impossible for a single person in any amount of time, but are possible with many people working at the same time -- or by equivalent magic.
Move a menhir; attack a company of enemies; locate a person hiding in a city; row a galley; build a wall. Cost/difficulty would be based on the number of people normally required for the task. Withstanding a cavalry charge or erecting a stone monument would be challenges for a powerful wizard.

5. Enhancement
Some things can be achieved with magic that are out of reach of conventional means -- though the difference has to be of extent, not of kind. The effectiveness of an action or tool can be doubled or increased manyfold. This effect is responsible for many stories of enchanted objects but often it's the wizard, not the object, that's responsible for the effect. (Though enchanted objects might exist too.)
Throw a grapple twice as high; propel an arrow twice as far; make a torch burn twice as brightly or twice as long; make food twice as filling; leap twice as far; make a door twice as strong. Higher increases are also possible. Cost/difficulty would be based on the increase factor. Hurling a spear a mile, or feeding a multitude with a few loaves and fishes, would be challenges for a powerful wizard.

Many magical acts would be combinations of these factors. Casting fire at a foe would be Without Tools (unless flint and tinder were at hand; perhaps the physical tools are destroyed in such cases), At a Distance, and (unless a burning fire were already present) In Less Time. Such combinations multiply the challenge. So wounding a foe at twice the normal arrow range would be far more difficult if one didn't have an actual bow and arrow to fire (requiring Enhancement and Without Tools to be stacked). Creating a lavish banquet with the snap of one's fingers would be a challenge for a powerful wizard, requiring some combination of In Less Time and/or Of Many Men, possibly Without Tools if full kitchen facilities weren't available, and possibly Enhanced if the food and other material aspects of the feast of sufficient quality and in sufficient quantity weren't already available, and At A Distance if the wizard wants to show off by standing nonchalantly in place while the feast materializes.

Even with such combinations, many things remain impossible. Flying in mid-air, making something invisible in broad daylight, animating the dead, or turning people into frogs cannot be done regardless of the tools, number of people, or time taken, so they woudln't be possible with magic either (at least, not without adding more effects to the list). Some additional effect beyond those listed would be required for illusion capabilities such as the Saochan's Cloak example.

One problem that might arise would be if players start thinking of the effects as actual descriptions of how the magic happens, which they're not supposed to be. For example, players cannot assume that In Less Time effects mean the wizard must actually be speeding up subjective time and therefore should be able to e.g. dodge a speeding arrow or enter a guarded place using that effect. That's not the intention. Similarly, just because a wizard can stab someone with a dagger At A Distance doesn't mean he could easily assassinate a king. He could only stab someone At A Distance if he could do it up close, and stabbing the king up close wouldn't normally be possible because of guards etc. The listed effects are really metagame rules that sometimes take on the appearance of in-game-world "rules of magic" but will break down if interpreted that way too closely.

It clearly needs a lot of work, but is this close to what you're looking for?

- Walt

[kenjib]

I think that's a very interesting way to handle it Walt, primarily for two reasons.  The first is that the GM can set a difficulty for the goal and use that number no matter what means a character uses to accomplish it.  He can use sneaking, magic, climbing, fighting, engineering, whatever.  As long as his described use of the skill applies he has the same difficulty.  Second, it fits in well with the theme of bending the world to your will.  The more ambitious you are in how you are trying to use magic to "cheat" toward your goals, the more will power you need to accomplish the feat of magic.

Now there are still two issues I want to address.  The first is search and handle time.  Ideally I want it to run very quickly.  So, I don't want to have to worry about things like calculating mass and percentages of changing in size or time, etc.  The second is uniformity.  Ideally I would like magic to use the exact same rules that any skill uses.

So, here is my proposal, which would work for all skill resolution and not solely magic.  It's kind of like a -lite version of your suggestion.

---------------------------------------------------------
- The GM determines a difficulty for a given conflict.  This can come from NPC statistics, object statistics (i.e. this house has a rating of 10 dice in security), and failing the availability and/or applicability of those the GM's subjective decision on how hard a goal should be to achieve.

- The player decides on his approach to achieve the goal and explains how his approach applies to the situation.  From here the GM applies a modifier, something roughly like the following, as an example:

The player's approach greatly simplifies the task in an unexpected way:  -2 or greater difficulty
The player's approach somewhat simplifies the task:  -1 difficulty
The player's approach matches the task:  difficulty unchanged
The player's approach is not the easiest and/or most direct way to accomplish the task:  +1 difficulty
The player's approach is an obtuse way to accomplish the task:  +2 or greater difficulty

- Using magic to accomplish something not mundanely possible is considered a complicated solution and thus increases difficulty subjectively proportionate to the amount by which the caster is "cheating".
---------------------------------------------------------

So, in the case of a caster trying to grow a stand of trees overnight, the difficulty of planting a grove of trees would be pretty low, perhaps even trivial.  However, because he has no seeds and wants to condense the time frame to overnight he will have a significantly increased difficulty because his plan is far from being the easiest/most direct way to accomplish the task (which would be to plant the trees and wait for them to grow).

It's a condensation of all the factors you have described as deviations from mundane skill use (without tools, at a distance, in less time, of many men, etc.), but simply rolled up into a quick off-the-cuff call instead of requiring a codified system to calculate it.  This allows the game to move quickly and also encourages creative solutions from the players, but puts a burden of subjectivity on the GM which could possibly lead to disagreements.

Does that sound like a reasonable mechanic or is it too ambiguous to be effective?

[Walt Freitag]

I like it, because as a GM I prefer to use lots of judgment calls anyway. A good rationale for making reasonably consistent judgment calls is better, for me, than a lot of specifics that I end up having to override with judgment calls for every unique situation that comes up. (Using the version I described would still be a lot of judgment calls, just many small ones instead of one big one. And, short of having a system of specific enumerated spells, or a system like Hero's magic that completely codifies every possible individual effect, you're going to end up with judgment calls in some form or another anyway.)

What could be confusing in your suggested system is what factors to take into account when assigning the base difficulty of the task. For an example, let's use cleaning the Aegean Stables, one of the Labors of Hercules. The stables are numerous and piled with vast amounts of accumulated manure, but otherwise ordinary. Hercules is required to clean them in one single day. With several people working, without the time constraint, the task would be straightforward though time-consuming. For one man, it's impossible by normal means, even without the time constraint, because the horses in toto generate manure faster than one man could possibly haul it away. With a group of men (say, ten), and without the time constraint, it's straightforward but time-consuming. With ten men and the time constraint, it's impossible to finish in time. With an army, though, doing it all in one day would be straightforward.

Hercules' solution was to divert a river (itself a heroic task, but one for which his strength, was more of an advantage) to wash the stables clean. Presumably this is the kind of thing you have in mind for "an approach that greatly simplifies the task in an unexpected way." Well and good. This could be represented in your system with the task defined as "one man cleaning the Aegean Stables in one day" with a difficulty of "practically impossible." The player's (Hercules') approach decreases the difficulty to a "reasonably possible" range which becomes a likely success when the character's aptititude for the task (strength) is figured in.

Now, this also sounds like a task where magic should be effective as well. But if magic increases difficulty, we have a starting difficulty of "practically impossible" and we're increasing it from there. Can the character's magic skill offset such a high difficulty enough to make success likely?

If instead we define the task without the time constraint: "Clean the Aegean stables," then the base difficulty might be much lower. Then, doing it by magic would make it more difficult due to the favorable cheating (one man getting it done quicky), which would have to be offset by the character's magic ability to succeed. That seems more reasonable -- but not factoring the constraints in the difficulty makes it an easy task for Hercules, even without his clever approach. The same things happen if we define the task with the time constraint, but declare its difficulty moderate because, in theory, an army could do it with little trouble.

We want the magic approach to be both easier and more difficult at the same time. Easier relative to the exact current situation, resources immediately at hand, and results needed (or else, magic would never help solve any specific problem for the characters); but more difficult relative to some ideal neutral version of the task (the task as performed in "normal" conditions with "normal" equipment etc.) or else magic would always be more effective at everything. The "ideal" difficulty can only apply to the magical solution. When lifting a rock, the difficulty of doing it by magic might be based on the difficulty of lifting the rock with a crane, with a plus to difficulty for doing it magically without the crane. But for the guy lifting the rock with brute strength, the hypothetical difficulty of lifting it with a crane is irrelevant if there's no crane there.

I still think this can work, I just haven't gotten my head completely around it yet.

- Walt

[kenjib]

I'd say that the solution has to set the timeframe and other requirements, such as tool usage and number of people required, rather than the problem, because there is no pre-determined solution.  It's the players' job to come up with that.

With your Aegean Stable example, Hercules can't come up with a simple solution without requiring extra manpower or time that he does not have.  As a result I would say that he creates a solution that is actually more complicated and less direct, the diversion of an entire river using his strength (one heck of a feat!).  So, a task that is trivial using an obvious approach suddenly becomes much more difficult using a new approach that has a much smaller man-power/time requirement.  However, because Hercules has managed to change the conflict into one that allows him to bring his legendary strength to bear, he can manage the increased difficulty.  This showcases Hercules' talent and makes it something that only he could have done.

So, if a sorcerer wants to clean out the Aegean stables, he could present several solutions.  He could snap his fingers and have all of the mess vanish.  He could divert a river with magic to clean the stables.  He could animate tools to automatically clean without man-power.  He could compel all of the citizens of a nearby city-state to work for him.  He could create numerous clones of himself to do the work.  He could create an army of undead to do it for him.  I would subjectively rank those solutions in that order of increasing complexity, and all of them would be more complex than just having a willing army come in and clean it.  However, that increased difficulty is the price he must pay to circumvent his lack of willing manpower regarding the most obvious solution.  So why wouldn't he always just take the first option?  Well, he can only do that if his magical focus allows him to do something like that (Saochan's Marvellous Cloak certainly doesn't, although it could give the illusion of having done so) - the textual description of a player's range of power means that the player is forced to think creatively to come up with a solution within his means.

I'm not sure that magic ever needs to make anything easier to do, because it always has the advantage of doing things that perhaps just couldn't be done otherwise.  I think the in-game effect of this mechanic would be that it would discourage people from using magic for goals they could accomplish with mundane means at their disposal.  The exception would be trivial actions, which they could just handle in whatever way is fun for them.  I think this is a useful limitation considering that magic can be used as a surrogate for just about any other skill.  If it's not harder to do with magic, then why would anyone ever take any skills other than magic?

This also means that I probably don't need any other checks against magic use, such as loss of will, mana points, corruption, etc.  It also means that the person that focuses on magic won't outshine the people who focus on other mundane skills, yet they will still have their part to play when mundane methods run into insurmountable limitations.

[kenjib]

We want the magic approach to be both easier and more difficult at the same time. Easier relative to the exact current situation, resources immediately at hand, and results needed (or else, magic would never help solve any specific problem for the characters); but more difficult relative to some ideal neutral version of the task (the task as performed in "normal" conditions with "normal" equipment etc.) or else magic would always be more effective at everything. The "ideal" difficulty can only apply to the magical solution. When lifting a rock, the difficulty of doing it by magic might be based on the difficulty of lifting the rock with a crane, with a plus to difficulty for doing it magically without the crane. But for the guy lifting the rock with brute strength, the hypothetical difficulty of lifting it with a crane is irrelevant if there's no crane there.

I still think this can work, I just haven't gotten my head completely around it yet.

- Walt

So a sorcerer who tries to lift it with just magical levitation of some sort might have a higher difficulty than someone using brute strength.  However, if a sorcerer magically creates some kind of crane like situation (animates trees to lift it, for example), then the difficulty compares to using a crane.

Hmm...this is getting confusing and perhaps hard for a GM to adjudicate.  I'll think about it some more.

[Mike Holmes]

If I can walk, and there's a door across the room that I want to walk to, and I have one minute to walk there, there's no conflict. We just say that I walk to the door. If, OTOH, I can't walk (because, say, someone just broke my legs), then I'll have a conflict using my strength to drag myself there or something in the time limit.

If I can fly, then I can get to the ledge in the example, because there's no conflict. In fact, something very similar happened in the last session of Hero Quest that I ran. There was a balcony that two PCs wanted to reach. One had super abilities of leaping, the other has wings. I had the first character roll (and he made an amusing landing, but got there). The winged PC we just narrated flying up alongside him. The difficulty of the leap was based on the height of the ledge, and I came upon it using standard methods.

So, yes, magic allows you to do things that you can't do without it. Which makes it precisely no different from any other ability one might have. If you have Read English as an ability, and you have an hour to decode a page of English prose, that's not a conflict. If you don't have Read English, but you have Read Dutch, then decoding the page of English in an hour might make a reasonable conflict.

In all cases, you determine the difficulty the same way. Take the cliff example, you said, "almost Impossible to climb" what's that in your system? There's a rating involved, right? If the flight had a time limit, then I'd have the character roll against the height factor to see if he got there in time. Note that this is completely unlike climbing in that the flying character is going to get up there in very short order.

The trees example is a tad more difficult, but not hard. The question is what the constraints are. If the spell says that it makes trees grow, then, given enough time the person can make the trees grow - no conflict. If, however, the idea is to see who can grow trees faster, then you simply roll against the other tree-grower's ability. If it's to make the tree's more impressive, then, again, you use the grow tree's ability directly against the target's resistance to being impressed.

Again, identify the conflict, and you'll always know what to roll against.

Mike

[kenjib]

Mike,

Your last post has really helped to re-orient my thinking and I think I can grasp it now.  What I really like is that this method really reinforces magic just being a "literary crutch" for exerting will and accomplishing a goal.  It fits the theme of the game well.

If the sorcerer is trying to stop an opponent from escaping, it's not important whether the rock he is trying to lift to do so is 100 pounds or 2,000 pounds or 100,000 pounds.  What's important is how good the opponent is at escaping.  The focus remains fixed on the conflict between the opposing forces while the methods remain where they belong, as literary devices to bring this conflict into focus.

This also meshes really well with another design feature that is already part of the game - that any skill use can potentially be used to whittle down an opponent's will as long as the player's intent justifies it.  During combat, for example, a swashbuckler's witty and biting insult or a bear's terrifying roar can do just as much damage as a sword stroke, since what you are really trying to whittle down is your opponent's resolve.  Now magic just becomes another approach to take, subject to how you apply the skill like any other.

[Mike Holmes]

Have you seen Hero Quest, by any chance?

Mike

[kenjib]

No, but I've been planning to take a look based on comments I've heard regarding it.  Thanks for all the help Mike and Walt.