Magic in Donjon: Power Level

[dyjoots]

I've been looking over threads here and the game itself, particularly with concerns about magic.  In several threads, it was mentioned that the magic system may be a bit overpowered, and that even Clinton has expressed this opinion at some point.  I'm sorry I'm not able to point directly to the threads in question, but I think it will suffice to say that I can see where the people who make this claim about the magic system are coming from.

One of the proposed fixes is to increase the difficulty for the gather magic power roll, and I think this could work well, but I was wondering if there are any other particular "fixes" or "adjustments" that have people have come up with.

One of my concerns is that magic users might be a little too flexible, but I haven't gotten the chance to run through a game, so I'm not sure if this is actually the case.  Maybe I have misinterpreted the sections about restricted abilities and magic, so if anyone could help, I would be grateful.

[jdagna]

The only fix I've used is to limit the word use more strictly.  When I was playing, any word could be used for just about any effect (one player used the magic word "grave" to create a "bridge of grave stones" to help us cross a river).

Instead, I only allow certain connecting words free (as, of, and, but, into, and the like).  Nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs can only come from the list of magic words, though you could change the type of word.  The word "rough" could be used to "rough him up" "roughen ground" or "treat him roughly" for example.  The  "bridge of grave stones" would require three magic words, though.  Of course, you could cross the river if you had the word "bridge" only, but I felt like creating bridges with the word "grave" was too lenient (even if the Clinton was the GM at the time).

The result is that magic remains powerful, but becomes much less flexible.  This flexibility was one of the reasons Clinton and I discussed as far as its power though he didn't want to get as strict on it as I did.  It seemed that having magic could almost replace every other ability.

One of the reasons I like limiting the wording in magic is that it makes high-level mages that much more impressive.  With a wide selection of words to choose from, a skilled mage can do almost anything with those words (in addition to having that many more dice pumped into it).

Anyway, the only other change I considered was increasing the success cost for certain things, but increasing the difficulty to gather power has the same effect (and more simply).

[rafial]

A simple tweak I have found useful, and which was proposed by Clinton in an earlier thread, is to have casters roll only spellcasting + extra spell dice when releasing a spell, rather than spellcasting + cerebrality + extra spell dice.  This makes casters work harder for those big effects.  Magic is still very effective this way, its just not crazy out of control.

[dyjoots]

jdagna:

Restricting associations of words seems reasonable.  I was thinking that this would be a good solution.  You described my biggest worry with your example about the summoning of grave stones, because, with such flexibility, there's no reason not to take a spell-casting ability.  It would let you do anything you want, which seems to go against the design idea of  abilities.  I'll have to see how it works out in play, of course.

rafial:

I did see a mention of that, and I was wondering how it actually works in play.

[rafial]

I did see a mention of that, and I was wondering how it actually works in play.

I've used it, and it seems to work quite well.

[Bob McNamee]

I believe some folks had a thread quite a while back where All the characters had 'magic' of some sort... it just took the form of their characters 'idiom'.

The Ninja had "Ninja powers/magic" with words like "Silent, Invisible, Darkness, Kill" and such...

I forget what all characters they used... but everybody had them...a
Swashbbuckler type could have... "sword, charm, escape, duel" that kind of stuff.

It was obviously much more over the top... and I forget where I saw it.

[dyjoots]

I believe some folks had a thread quite a while back where All the characters had 'magic' of some sort... it just took the form of their characters 'idiom'.

The Ninja had "Ninja powers/magic" with words like "Silent, Invisible, Darkness, Kill" and such...

I forget what all characters they used... but everybody had them...a
Swashbbuckler type could have... "sword, charm, escape, duel" that kind of stuff.

It was obviously much more over the top... and I forget where I saw it.

This seems like it would work well for certain types of games, but it seems like it would definitely have a significantly different feel.

[jdagna]

jdagna:

Restricting associations of words seems reasonable.  I was thinking that this would be a good solution.  You described my biggest worry with your example about the summoning of grave stones, because, with such flexibility, there's no reason not to take a spell-casting ability.  It would let you do anything you want, which seems to go against the design idea of  abilities.  I'll have to see how it works out in play, of course.quote]

I found it to work very well during play, especially if you talk with your players extensively beforehand on what they want their words to do.  For example, if a player wants a signature fireball spell, does he need words other than "fire" to make it happen?  (In my definition no, because the rules build in the ability to have spells happen at range and to affect multiple targets).

Once some advance discussion and examples were given, we were all pretty comfortable with the concept.  Once we started playing, I noticed that some players had managed to pick a much more flexible set of words than other players, which may or may not appeal to your group but seems entirely fitting given Donjon's Gamist leanings.  In particular, words with double meanings seemed to do better.  But the magic and damage rules for Donjon really give a lot of leeway to the effects.