Mechanical solution for making something rare?

[Peter Knutsen]

This is a sub-rule for the spellcasting system of Sagatafl.
Things work much as they did when I posted about the FFRE
spellcasting system a long while ago, except things are a
bit more elegant now that I use d12s instead of d10s. (But
you don't have to go back and read the old posts to
understand this problem).

Spells are cast as a Task, meaning a series of dice rolls
each accumulating progress towards completion of the spell
(this was inspired by reports of the original non-d20
Soverign Stone RPG).

Spells can be cast normally, which means that you must chant
words and use mystical gestures, and each dice roll takes 1
Round (for most spells - some are natively faster or slower).

Or they can be cast using Casting Options. At an initially
severe penalty, you get get rid of chanting or of the need
for gestures, or you can cast much faster so that each roll
takes only 1 Second (1/6 Round). These can be combined, so
that you are both No-Gesture casting, Silent Casting *and*
Fast Casting, but at an extreme penalty to the Roll
Difficulty. (One can switch options from roll to roll).

Each of these penalties can be reduced by learning a series
of binary skills. The best you can get is a skill that
reduces the total for Silent Casting plus No Gesturs casting
to +1 Rd, from an initial penalty of something like +6 RD
(+3 for No Gestures, and +3 for Silent Casting). Likewise
the penalty for Fast Casting can be reduced from an initial
+4 RD to +1 RD (so that the best you can get is "Stealth
Casting" plus Fast Casting at +2 RD).

Now, the problem is, how do I avoid *all* the serious
spellcasters in the game world maxing out these binary skills?

Given that Sagatafl uses point-based character creation, I
can't require some kind of "quest" in order to learn these
binary skills, because the players are completely free to
simply purchase the privilege of their characters already
having gone on such quests and seen the light - and I'd be
doing the same with my NPCs.

So that's not a recipe for rarity.

Also, the recommended point values lead to generous skill
point budgets. So making those binary skills expensive won't
really work either. Even if I make them so expensive that
primary spellcasters built on 80 Goodie Points will most
likely not have them, primary spellcasters built on 100 GPs
will, and also part-time spellcasters built on 140 GPs.

My current solution is to have the higher of those binary
skills costs a small quantity of Essence (formerly called
"Life Force", but Bradd suggested Essence as an alternative
when I asked on the RPG-Create list). The highests and
next-highest skill from each "skill series" costs a small
amount. Essense is a personal and non-renewable ressource
that is used to render magic permanent (e.g. Enchant a
magical item, or turn an animal into a Familiar). The
Essence cost is not great, but I'm thinking that it will
serve to reduce the number of spellcasters who have maxed
out those skills, to a percentage that is less than 100% of
the population.

Because as soon as it costs Essence to max out Silent
Casting and No Gestures Casting, each individual spellcaster
will ask himself if it's worth the expense. Does he really
*need* "stealth capability" that badly? Is there something
else, something more useful (or fun - let's not forget that
many NPCs will use magic to fulfill various fantasies, even
if PCs very rarely do this), that he can spend the Essence on?

(The same question applies to Fast-Cast, although the
ability to cast spells quickly is of somewhat greater
general utility)


But can any of you people come up with an alternative
solution? It's not 100% metaphysically clean to use Essence
in this way. I can live with it, but if there is a better
solution, I'll be happy.

(And keep in mind that everything has to work from the
character's point of view. "Talking to the players" is a
nonsensical solution).

[Neon Fox]

Given what I've seen of your roleplaying philosophy, you're
screwed. :)

Well, that's a little too glib, but only a little. If the options
can be improved after character creation, people will save
up for them; I think your best bet is to make the Silent and
Fast and whatnot *only* available during chargen, since
that's the biggest resource choke point you'll ever get. If
Silent etc are such big advantages, anyone who *doesn't*
take them will be at a big *dis*advantage, and anyone
who can buy them, will. But if you limit them to chargen
(with handwaving about having to have the innate talent
to Fast Cast, or whatever), *players* will decide that
having more Int (or whatever) is more important, and the
lucky *characters* who happen to have the Fast Casting
talent will be envied.

Making it cost a nonrenewable resource is also a decent
plan, and sort of a variant on "only during chargen". Or
you might consider the following: if a given trait or skill is
so valuable that everyone who *can* have it *will*, do you
really need it in your game system?

--Neon Fox

[Mary K. Kuhner]

I think, in the specific case of making fast-casting rare, you
are likely to fail.

In every system where I've encountered it, fast-casting is so
extremely powerful and useful that it's worth almost any cost.
It will frequently decide a close battle, if your spells are
at all powerful.

A skill like this is liable to be seen as a defining professional
skill--anyone serious about their profession will have it, because
you won't be competitive if you don't. If you make it terribly
expensive the result, in my experience, may actually be to
discourage taking characters of that type at all--you can't make
a "real" or "reasonable" mage on the given budget because you
can't afford fast-casting, so don't make one at all.

We encountered a similar situation with Wired Reflexes in our
Shadowrun variant. If you make them affordable every fighters
whose conception allows will have them. Anyone who doesn't
will be screwed in combat. If you make them very, very expensive
the players of fighters will be grumpy, because the NPCs will
demonstrate to them that a serious fighter *does* have Wired
Reflexes, but if they take it for their PCs the PC will be stunted
in other respects and less than fun to play. Then you end up with
whole parties of mages and adepts, to duck the issue.

I have also seen this happen with Magery in GURPS; raising the
cost of Magery didn't produce Magery-less mages, it produced
parties with no mages at all.

Perhaps it would be better to investigate an ongoing mechanical
cost to *using* fast-casting. I don't know your system, but you
could cut the number of spells castable in return for fast-casting
a few of them; that might be balanceable, though it is painfully
dependent on the daily encounter density. (Or whatever the
refresh rate of your magic is.) In Shadowrun it might work to
increase the Drain of a spell if it was fast-cast. You would
still probably see most casters taking fast-cast skills, but
at least this wouldn't lead to a world default that every spell
cast in combat is invariably fast-cast.

Alternatively, you could get rid of the slow-cast option altogether,
but I presume you want it for flavor.

Mary Kuhner ***@eskimo.com

[Charlton Wilbur]

MK> In every system where I've encountered it, fast-casting is so
MK> extremely powerful and useful that it's worth almost any cost.
MK> It will frequently decide a close battle, if your spells are
MK> at all powerful.

I can think of a couple of options, but the common theme is "give them
*lots* of things to spend points on."

One option would be to make fast-casting one of a set of perhaps a
dozen Really Cool Things That All Mages Want. Exactly what they are
depends on your magic system, but I can see (for instance) being able
to cast spells without using gestures, without using words, in much
less time, with more precise control over the effects. This list was
inspired by D&D's metamagic feats, but I'm sure you can come up with
others that aren't so D&D-tied.

Another would be to make fast-casting something you purchase on a
per-spell basis - perhaps the mage purchases the *ability* to
fast-cast (and all mages do), but the specific spells that the mage
fast-casts vary by mage. Ars Magica does this with Spell Mastery.
This won't have quite the effect you want - all mages will probably be
able to fast-cast, because it's so useful - but it will allow for more
varied mages.

Another option would be to increase the energy requirements for the
spell so that a single mage casting it is prohibitive - or alter them
so that a single mage casting it *might* succeed, but a group of magi
casting it in concert *will* succeed or will produce more wide-ranging
or permanent results. This way, magi would have a fast-cast option
for times such as combat, but would have to resort to the slow-cast
option whenever it seemed most appropriate.

This is one of the nasty tradeoffs in point-based systems: if you
price based on rarity, you get things appropriately rare, but players
will choose the most powerful ones. If you price based on power, you
give up control over rarity. And if you try to price based on both
power and rarity, you get a weird degenerate system where common
powerful things mingle with rare and more powerful things --
reflecting neither power nor commonality very well.

Perhaps one solution would be for everything to have a power cost and
a rarity cost, and for characters to buy traits according to both
budgets at once? This might produce a degenerate system as well,
though.

Charlton

[Peter Knutsen]

Post by Neon Fox
Given what I've seen of your roleplaying philosophy, you're
screwed. :)
Well, that's a little too glib, but only a little. If the options
can be improved after character creation, people will save
up for them; I think your best bet is to make the Silent and

There is no such thing as "saving up".

A character may do certain things which cause him to earn
experience points that go towards certain skills. There's no
such thing as earning experience points and then *deciding*
what to spend them on.

If you go to your mentor and ask him to teach you how to
Silent Cast spells, then you will earn experience points
towards the Silent Cast binary skill, proportional with the
number of hours he spends teaching you, and the quality of
the tuition (nitpickingly, a fraction of the experience
points should go towards the particular "Realm" magic skill
that your mentor and you use during the excercies, e.g. Fire
Magic or Illusion Magic, and possibly another fraction of
the experience points should go towards the Magic Theory skill).

Likewise, if you use lots of Earth Magic during an
adventure, or use Minor Healing Magic on a daily basis
working as a village wise person, you'll earn experience
points that go directly towards improving those skills, with
no choice on your behalf and no choice on your character's
behalf.

Post by Neon Fox
Fast and whatnot *only* available during chargen, since
that's the biggest resource choke point you'll ever get. If
Silent etc are such big advantages, anyone who *doesn't*
take them will be at a big *dis*advantage, and anyone
who can buy them, will. But if you limit them to chargen
(with handwaving about having to have the innate talent

But I don't want them to be inborn.

Another aspect of my roleplaying philosophy is that I want
to distinguish properly between that which is inborn and
that which can be learned. And I decided, long ago, that the
various Casting Options (Silent, No Gestures, Fast) are
learnable.

(In fact I didn't so much decide this as I inherited it,
from Quest FRP v2.1, which was the original rules system for
my Ærth historical fantasy setting - but I like it being
learnable).

Post by Neon Fox
to Fast Cast, or whatever), *players* will decide that
having more Int (or whatever) is more important, and the
lucky *characters* who happen to have the Fast Casting
talent will be envied.

Yeah, except it's not inborn.

Characters may have generic inborn Talents with various
magic types, for instance one of my NPCs has an -1 RD inborn
Talent with Illusion Magic, which comes in handy. But it's
in effect all the time, not only (e.g.) when he Silent Casts.

Post by Neon Fox
Making it cost a nonrenewable resource is also a decent
plan, and sort of a variant on "only during chargen". Or

Yup, that's my line of thought, but it's just not 100%
metaphysically clean. It's slightly contrary to what Essence
is supposed to represent.

Post by Neon Fox
you might consider the following: if a given trait or skill is
so valuable that everyone who *can* have it *will*, do you
really need it in your game system?

Because of character improvement.

To quite a large extent, Sagatafl is about characters who
are born the way they are. Your attributes don't change. You
can't earn up enough points to buy up your Appearance or buy
Eidetic Memory. You're born with it, or else you ain't got
it. This means that I'm less interested in character
improvement than most roleplayers (or rules designers) are,
and can easily appear, at times, somewhat hostile towards
the notion.

On the other hand, lots of stuff *is* learnable.

In addition to this, character change is fun, in a "power
up" sort of way. It's *fun* for the player when his
character reaches the next step on the Fast Cast "ladder" of
binary skills, or maxes out his ability to Stealth Cast.
(I'm not saying this isn't fun for the character too,
although one should be careful not to confuse
game-mechanical steps with in-world events. Learning the
various binary skills represents, from the character's point
of view, a gradual process of figuring out how to work magic
in a non-standard fashion. Thus from the character's point
of view it is not meaningful to talk about the character
having finally learned, e.g., the 3rd Fast-Cast binary skill).

[Neon Fox]

Post by Peter Knutsen

Well, that's a little too glib, but only a little. If the options
can be improved after character creation, people will save
up for them; I think your best bet is to make the Silent and

There is no such thing as "saving up".
A character may do certain things which cause him to earn
experience points that go towards certain skills. There's no
such thing as earning experience points and then *deciding*
what to spend them on.

Then I fail to see the problem. GMs who don't want their
characters learning these skills will have two options, over
and above "only at chargen": the PC knows of no one who
*can* teach him the skills, or no one who knows the skills
is *willing* to teach him. Problem solved.

Post by Peter Knutsen

Making it cost a nonrenewable resource is also a decent
plan...

Yup, that's my line of thought, but it's just not 100%
metaphysically clean. It's slightly contrary to what Essence
is supposed to represent.

Hrm, well, you might have some sort of "mana-pool" mechanic;
some number of stats and advantages contribute to it, and
that's the maximum number of points the PC can devote to
'metamagic' like Fast Casting.
It'd make for another number to keep track of, though.

--Neon Fox

[Bradd W. Szonye]

Peter Knutsen describes a set of spellcasting options for his Sagatafl
system. Characters can omit some elements normally required for casting,
like gestures and chanting. Doing so imposes penalties, but you can buy
skill levels to offset the penalties. Peter worries that players will

Now, the problem is, how do I avoid *all* the serious spellcasters in
the game world maxing out these binary skills?

First, consider whether variety is really appropriate here. If the
skills are generally useful and have few drawbacks, there's little
reason for a character to have less than the full suite, if he can
afford the investment (in points, training time, practice, whatever).
Eventually, all sufficiently talented or diligent casters will learn
them. The simplest "fix" is to adjust your expectations to match.

For the sake of argument, I'll assume that you have a solid reason (if
only personal taste) for enforcing variety. I'd recommend any of three
major approaches, all of which increase the opportunity cost for the
options. If the opportunity cost is high enough, players will only
purchase the options if they forsee a clear need. However, the use of a
"slush fund" point system makes it harder to set a fair price, as you

Given that Sagatafl uses point-based character creation, I can't
require some kind of "quest" in order to learn these binary skills,
because the players are completely free to simply purchase the
privilege of their characters already having gone on such quests ....
Also, the recommended point values lead to generous skill point
budgets. So making those binary skills expensive won't really work
either ....

In short, these options are too valuable at any price. While small
budgets may restrict the character, eventually you can afford to soak
the cost. My three suggestions avoid this problem by making the options
expensive at any level.

SCALING

First, you can scale the cost to the budget, either directly or
indirectly. The direct approach sets the price at a fixed /fraction/ of
total points (including earned experience), instead of a fixed number of
points. This makes sense, balance-wise, for abilities that multiply the
character's power or flexibility. From the character's point of view,
the ongoing cost represents the need to keep his skills sharp.

However, players may resent this "XP tax," so I'd recommend indirect
scaling instead. HERO uses this approach for gestures and incantations:
They reduce the cost of every spell that uses them (by about 1/3). This
approach has another advantage: You can choose the options for just some
of your spells. For example, you might want to buy them for your getaway
spells, so that you can escape when bound and gagged, even if you don't
want the options for general use.

SECONDARY BUDGETS

Next, you can use a secondary accounting system. For example, you could
give characters a "time budget" analogous to the regular point budget.
This would let you use the quest idea above: If quests use up a big
chunk of the point budget, then you'll only find the full suite of
options in characters who are both powerful and long-lived. This
differentiates talented youths and old masters: The former may be
powerful, but only the experienced spellcasters have learned all the
tricks. Of course, you'll need a system to support the extra budget
(including a way to earn "time points").

The Fuzion and HERO Systems recommend something similar, called the
"Rule of X." Each major ability area has its own limit (X), based on
actual ability scores rather than points. For example, you might set a
campaign limit on "speed plus best defense bonus plus armor rating."
This lets players customize characters while maintaining an overall
effectiveness standard: You might focus on speed or dodging, or you
might choose a balanced defense, but you can't just dump points in to
maximize all three. An appropriate "Rule of X" for Sagatafl might be
"spell power + spell selection + casting skills can't exceed X." That
way, players must choose between the three regardless of point totals.

Both of these examples create stricter trade-offs for buying these
skills, so that you can't get them all without giving up something else
you care about.

DIFFERENT BUT NOT BETTER

It may be sufficient to design the casting options so that they offer no
net benefit to the character, effectiveness-wise. The player pays for
flexibility, not power. You've already got a bit of this element -- even
with the penalty-reducing skills, there's still a small penalty.
However, you may want to add some concrete costs for unconventional
casting: extra time, higher fatigue/mana cost, something like that. The
general idea is to make the option unattractive except in specific
situations. If the option isn't /generally/ useful, players are less
likely to spend points "just in case." They'll only buy the option if
they forsee specific uses that they care about.

D&D's metamagic system works like this. It also lets characters
eliminate gestures and incantations, but doing so makes the spell
costlier. In general, a metamagicked spell costs a little more to cast
than an equivalent spell with the metamagic effect "built in." That is,
a spell metamagicked to 4th level is a little less powerful than
ordinary 4th-level spells. When you spend a feat for a metamagic option,
you're getting more flexibility but no more power. Many D&D players feel
that the opportunity cost is too high; metamagic feats are rare in many
groups, and very few players load up on them.

(And keep in mind that everything has to work from the character's
point of view. "Talking to the players" is a nonsensical solution).

Character selection is inherently a meta-game activity, so talking to
the players (regarding which characters they should select) is eminently
sensible. Also, the players may need some guidance when it comes to
opportunity costs -- many players IME simply don't think about what
they're giving up when they dump a bunch of points into some "must have"
power. Likewise, they may not understand which options are well-suited
for which characters, which can lead to taking all of them "just in
case." No amount of mechanics or price tweaking will help if the players
don't understand the trade-offs.

[news]

Post by Bradd W. Szonye
DIFFERENT BUT NOT BETTER

[...]

Post by Bradd W. Szonye
It may be sufficient to design the casting options so that they offer no
net benefit to the character, effectiveness-wise. The player pays for
flexibility, not power. You've already got a bit of this element -- even
with the penalty-reducing skills, there's still a small penalty.
However, you may want to add some concrete costs for unconventional
casting: extra time, higher fatigue/mana cost, something like that. The
general idea is to make the option unattractive except in specific
situations. If the option isn't /generally/ useful, players are less
likely to spend points "just in case." They'll only buy the option if
they forsee specific uses that they care about.

[..]

I don't visit here much anymore. But reading Peters original post an
answer suggested itself to me and the quote above is the closest I've
seen to it.

If I understand things correctly certain skill are too useful given your
rules system. If that is the case, the best solution would be to make
them less useful, as opposed to more expensive.

You would be in a better position to decide on how. But as an example
Fast-Casting could be a separate binary skill for each realm of
magic(like fire). That way many mages will have some fast casting but
very few will have all.

That may not be the kind of rarity you want, but I'm sure you can think
of other ways the make them less useful. Because, to me, that seems to
way to go.

Enjoy,
Eduard

[Mr. M.J. Lush]

Post by Peter Knutsen
Now, the problem is, how do I avoid *all* the serious
spellcasters in the game world maxing out these binary skills?
Given that Sagatafl uses point-based character creation, I
can't require some kind of "quest" in order to learn these
binary skills, because the players are completely free to
simply purchase the privilege of their characters already
having gone on such quests and seen the light - and I'd be
doing the same with my NPCs.

I'm not familiar with your skill system but perhaps you could
make the cost of the binary skills cumulative like Feng Shui
schticks?

ie the first skill costs say 10 points, the second 20, the third 30
so its cheap enough for everyone to have a few skills, but
prohibitively expensive to have them all.

[Warren J. Dew]

Peter Knutsen asks about a system that allows gaining skill in
silent, still, and fast spell casting:

Now, the problem is, how do I avoid *all* the serious
spellcasters in the game world maxing out these binary
skills?

In my opinion, the issue with skills like this is that they are
orthogonal to other skills - that is, they act as a multiplier
to the character's power, rather than an adder. As a result,
you can expect these skills to be more and more necessary as
characters increase in power.

If what you want is rarity, is it sufficient for these skills
to be restricted to the rare characters who are experienced
enough to have extremely high point values? If so, simply make
these skills more expensive. The corollary to this type
of skill being increasingly useful to higher power characters is
that they are less useful to lower power characters; make them
sufficiently expensive that they are clearly not worthwhile
except for characters who already have very powerful spells.

Mary Kuhner:

A skill like this is liable to be seen as a defining
professional skill--anyone serious about their profession
will have it, because you won't be competitive if you don't.
If you make it terribly expensive the result, in my
experience, may actually be to discourage taking characters
of that type at all--you can't make a "real" or "reasonable"
mage on the given budget because you can't afford
fast-casting, so don't make one at all.

I think this would be less of a problem with gamesmasters who
use enough restraint that very few of the gamesmaster
characters have the skill either.



Given that Sagatafl uses point-based character creation, I
can't require some kind of "quest" in order to learn these
binary skills, because the players are completely free to
simply purchase the privilege of their characters already
having gone on such quests and seen the light - and I'd be
doing the same with my NPCs.


Warren J. Dew
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