Shataina/CastelessSorcery - Revision history

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MeiRen: comments.

2005-05-29T20:20:16Z

comments.

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MeiRen: comments.

2005-05-29T20:20:16Z

comments.

MeiRen: comments.

2005-05-29T20:20:16Z

comments.

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FlowsLikeBits: re-confused, but thanks

2005-05-29T15:15:17Z

re-confused, but thanks

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 Sorcerous Specialties would formerly have applied to Occult (for example, a mage under the canon system might have taken a Specialty in Fire Sorcery, which would formerly have added dice to all his rolls to perform or understand fire sorcery).  Now, they are free-floating.  However, sorcerous Specialties are <b>only</b> added to sorcery rolls, so, for example, a mage with a sorcerous Specialty in Fire Magic would only get his sorcerous Specialty added to his roll to perform a fireball spell; he would not get the Specialty when trying to research fire magic or perceive fire magic -- that all fits under a separate Occult specialty.
-The reasoning behind sorcerous Specialties is that, although book-learning and understanding of Essence has nothing to do with actually casting a spell, it is still possible to be better at casting a certain kind of spell simply because: one becomes familiar with bending that particular kind of Essence to one's will; one has a greater purely magical mastery over a particular kind of Essence; or perhaps one is more used to doing a certain kind of thing with the power of the mind.  It is better to think of sorcerous Specialties not the way one would think of Ability Specialties, but -- perhaps -- as a kind of Willpower, Essence or Virtue Specialty.  They are not something that can be taught.  They are something that comes from the sorcerer's understanding of himself and his <b>personal[[Shataina/CastelessSorcery/B]]> usage of sorcery.
+The reasoning behind sorcerous Specialties is that, although book-learning and understanding of Essence has nothing to do with actually casting a spell, it is still possible to be better at casting a certain kind of spell simply because: one becomes familiar with bending that particular kind of Essence to one's will; one has a greater purely magical mastery over a particular kind of Essence; or perhaps one is more used to doing a certain kind of thing with the power of the mind.  It is better to think of sorcerous Specialties not the way one would think of Ability Specialties, but -- perhaps -- as a kind of Willpower, Essence or Virtue Specialty.  They are not something that can be taught.  They are something that comes from the sorcerer's understanding of himself and his <b>personal</B> usage of sorcery.
 Characters can have as many sorcerous Specialties as they want and can raise them as high as they wish; the cap on sorcerous Specialties is not 5 or the character's Essence, but the character's Willpower.  Sorcerous Specialties never stack, so if a mage has two sorcerous Specialties that could apply to the same roll, then he uses the higher one.  Experience-wise, they are treated as an Attribute.
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 ::Hmmm... so why did you remove Occult as assisting in things like demon/elemental banishing? If I wanted to use this system, I'd probably keep most spell rolls based on Occult, just to reflect that Occulty-types make better sorcerors. - [[szilard]]
-:::Because it wasn't the most appropriate option.  Should you be using Occult to aim?  No.  You should be using an <b>aiming</b> Ability, like Thrown.  Should you be using Occult to howl?  No, you should be using a howling Ability, like Performance.  The same goes for every single other change I've made.  I changed every roll into rolls that I consider more appropriate for <b>using</b> the spell.<br>Here's the difference between sorcery and the Occult Ability.  Occult is understanding and perception of Essence.  Sorcery is, plain and simple, bending reality to your will using your mind and sheer magical power.  This is why Willpower and Essence are so important.  Your understanding of the Occult has nothing to do with how good you are at bending reality to your will using sorcery.  Therefore, the actual creation of these spell-effects is confined almost entirely to Willpower and Essence.  (And once the effect has been called into reality, your <b>use[[Shataina/CastelessSorcery/B]]> of the effect depends entirely on how good you are at utilizing that type of effect; hence, you can use your pure strength of will to call a horrifying razor-chain of ultimate damage into reality, but you have to know how to aim things in order to hit people with it.)<br>Now, your understanding of the Occult <b>does</b> help you figure out <b>what a spell is doing[[Shataina/CastelessSorcery/B]]>, or how magic is working / works in general, or general occult knowledge like what a given spirit might like for breakfast based on its Essence-nature, or how to shield yourself from magic's backlash.  This is why Occult still allows you to develop spells, determine what spells are doing, and control the backlash if you're hit while casting a spell.<br>Demon and elemental banishing could have been left at Occult, I admit.  At least, I would far sooner leave Occult as the roll for banishing a demon than I would for aiming a flying razor-chain.  However, I just don't feel that Occult is relevant when banishing a demon (or elemental).  This probably has more to do with my own conception of the spell; you use pure will and power to call the demon, and in order to send it back, your will should serve you better than your knowledge.  Because, in reality, all a summoning / banishment is is a contest of wills and magical power, and I think it's dumb to say that while power and will calls the demon into the world, power and will has nothing to do with forcing it back to Malfeas.<br>As I've pointed out before, Occulty-types <b>do[[Shataina/CastelessSorcery/B]]> make better sorcerers.  You may be able to make a sorcerer with no Occult under my system, but will they be able to develop new spells?  No.  Will they understand the wider effects of the spells they cast?  No.  Will they be able to figure out what to do if their force of will fails them and the spell-effects get out of control?  No.  In effect, a sorcerer with 0 Occult is like, "Hey, look, I can use this giant flamey bird to kill that guy just by concentrating!" whereas a sorcerer with higher Occult is more likely to be like, "I summon an elemental of flame that the spell binds into attacking that target.  This will have X effect on the Essence of this area; this type of attack will be more useful against Y opponent, and entirely useless against Z opponent.  If I want, I can redesign this spell to make it better in a certain way, or I can extrapolate from this spell in order to create a different spell entirely.  And if I should be suddenly wounded while casting this spell, my ability to understand and perceive Essence will help me keep the fiery backlash from destroying us all.  Furthermore, it's useful to note that if I use this spell here, it will offend the local Water spirits, so I guess I better not do it at all."  Wouldn't 0-Occult boy have been glad if he'd known that?<br>~ [[Shataina]]
+:::Because it wasn't the most appropriate option.  Should you be using Occult to aim?  No.  You should be using an <b>aiming</b> Ability, like Thrown.  Should you be using Occult to howl?  No, you should be using a howling Ability, like Performance.  The same goes for every single other change I've made.  I changed every roll into rolls that I consider more appropriate for <b>using</b> the spell.<br>Here's the difference between sorcery and the Occult Ability.  Occult is understanding and perception of Essence.  Sorcery is, plain and simple, bending reality to your will using your mind and sheer magical power.  This is why Willpower and Essence are so important.  Your understanding of the Occult has nothing to do with how good you are at bending reality to your will using sorcery.  Therefore, the actual creation of these spell-effects is confined almost entirely to Willpower and Essence.  (And once the effect has been called into reality, your <b>use</B> of the effect depends entirely on how good you are at utilizing that type of effect; hence, you can use your pure strength of will to call a horrifying razor-chain of ultimate damage into reality, but you have to know how to aim things in order to hit people with it.)<br>Now, your understanding of the Occult <b>does</b> help you figure out <b>what a spell is doing</B>, or how magic is working / works in general, or general occult knowledge like what a given spirit might like for breakfast based on its Essence-nature, or how to shield yourself from magic's backlash.  This is why Occult still allows you to develop spells, determine what spells are doing, and control the backlash if you're hit while casting a spell.<br>Demon and elemental banishing could have been left at Occult, I admit.  At least, I would far sooner leave Occult as the roll for banishing a demon than I would for aiming a flying razor-chain.  However, I just don't feel that Occult is relevant when banishing a demon (or elemental).  This probably has more to do with my own conception of the spell; you use pure will and power to call the demon, and in order to send it back, your will should serve you better than your knowledge.  Because, in reality, all a summoning / banishment is is a contest of wills and magical power, and I think it's dumb to say that while power and will calls the demon into the world, power and will has nothing to do with forcing it back to Malfeas.<br>As I've pointed out before, Occulty-types <b>do</B> make better sorcerers.  You may be able to make a sorcerer with no Occult under my system, but will they be able to develop new spells?  No.  Will they understand the wider effects of the spells they cast?  No.  Will they be able to figure out what to do if their force of will fails them and the spell-effects get out of control?  No.  In effect, a sorcerer with 0 Occult is like, "Hey, look, I can use this giant flamey bird to kill that guy just by concentrating!" whereas a sorcerer with higher Occult is more likely to be like, "I summon an elemental of flame that the spell binds into attacking that target.  This will have X effect on the Essence of this area; this type of attack will be more useful against Y opponent, and entirely useless against Z opponent.  If I want, I can redesign this spell to make it better in a certain way, or I can extrapolate from this spell in order to create a different spell entirely.  And if I should be suddenly wounded while casting this spell, my ability to understand and perceive Essence will help me keep the fiery backlash from destroying us all.  Furthermore, it's useful to note that if I use this spell here, it will offend the local Water spirits, so I guess I better not do it at all."  Wouldn't 0-Occult boy have been glad if he'd known that?<br>~ [[Shataina]]
 ::::Oh! Well i get your reasons a lot better now! I like it! It gives you a way of making a character that is very powerful magically (like by birthright or some-such),and completly at the whims of his/her own power. I admit i'm still a little wary about using it myself, but like i said before "thats just me". Also there are a lot of literary examples of this in most of the books that are inspiration for Exalted ( one that comes instantly to mind is the Twins from "Wish Song of Shannara"). Once again nice job. Now with Demon summoning I do think you should get bonuses for Occult (know thy enemy), but I do agree with your point about it being Willpower and Essence being the main factors of demon summoning factors (again examples are found all over literature about the weak-willed mage summoning a demon they couldn't control). Unfortunately i didn't really catch on to the "flavor" of what you were trying to do until you wrote your reply. Sometimes i'm slow that way. - [[Issaru]]<br>PS: I love the "cheese" player hosing factor involved in this system.<br>PPS: I love the whole line-up on Adult Swim, but i admit the comedy is my fave cause i'm insane enough to have a hidden joke inside of everything i do (even the charms i post here on the Wiki).
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 :--Sennou Yukari
-::Heh.  I, too, apologize, for I fear that I came across as overly harsh in my post-fixing-the-[[Errata]]-page self-righteous officiousness.  I need to get over that.  Anyway, it isn't a huge deal if you have tangential discussions here -- I mean, I'm not really offended except at your repeated implications that if I was thinking harder, I'd have a different opinion -- but most tangential discussions do better in the [[Discussions]] arena than they ever do on personal pages.  This is particularly true because people who read comments on this page is a rather smaller subset of wiki-users than people who could / would contribute to a discussion on sorcery and meta-sorcery.  (Incidentally, if you're still confused about how to start your own Discussion, then the steps I would suggest are these: (1) Go to the [[Discussions]] page. (2) Edit in a subpage link with a brief but descriptive name, e.g., "<nowiki[[Shataina/CastelessSorcery/HowToWorkSorcery]]</nowiki>". (3) Save, then click on the yellow question mark next to what you wrote in.  (4) You will be directed to a new page.  Write up your basic arguments and questions, then save it -- don't forget to put a quick synopsis in the "Summary" text box located right above the "Save" button.)  (Also, if you are still generally confused about the wiki, [[QuickStartGuide]], [[TextFormattingRules]] and [[BestPractices]] are good pages to start with, in case you've missed them.)<br><br>Now I'll try to address your questions, starting with the last first.  I do not approve of having Occult be the only sorcerous Ability; as I said, it overpowers Occult.  Thus, I would not allow a player who came up with some sort of justification for such a path to do so.  Your point about a Solar Melee-ist defeating a Solar Occultist is irrelevant to how powerful canon-sorcery is: (1) Solars are not the only people who get sorcery -- in fact, almost <b>everyone</b> gets some form of sorcery.  Thus, Solar power scale should not be the only balance consideration.  (2) Sorcery is generally useful for all 25 Abilities.  Saying that a specialized Ability-user could defeat a sorcerer is therefore missing the point.  Yes, a Solar swordswoman would beat the hell out of a Solar sorceress ... but the Solar swordswoman is out of tricks if you take away her sword, whereas the Solar sorceress can almost flawlessly hide herself, change herself into a flight of birds, kill someone with a razor chain from 500 yards (long before the swordswoman would get to her, incidentally), etc, etc, etc, and that's all just at the Terrestrial Circle.  You say that sorcerers "only" have a breadth of powers available to them; this is exactly the problem; someone with high Occult should not be able to ignore the other 24 Abilities simply because they have high Occult -- that is, high Occult should not subsume other, irrelevant Abilities.  Furthermore, I disagree that sorcery is not the "domain of true munchkining"; according to the canonical rules, your 200-XP sorcerer could have Solar Circle Sorcery, which means he could have a spell that, say, destroyed absolutely everything organic for hundreds of years for <b>miles</b>.  Again, however, as I've said before, if you honestly think sorcery is not very powerful, you are playing in very different games from mine, and we will probably never agree.<br><br>I'm going to ignore all your points about natural sorcery, because I think I've made it clear that my conception of sorcery is more something I prefer from my own fantasy background etc than something I'm interested in justifying from a canonical perspective.  And I, incidentally, totally disagree that the setting loses any dramatic effect and consistency at all.<br><br>Yes, I do consider these modifications superior to the original rules. :P If you're tired of reading my stuff, don't.  I say these things only to make the point extremely clear that there's no need to be snippy about someone's houserules; if you actually intend to give feedback, I advise that you make your point as neutrally as possible.  As for my unnecessary complexity, if you can think of a way to both separate sorcery from the normal Charm sets and have the spells manipulated without Occult that's simpler than this, then please feel free to detail it.  Oh, and trust me, you don't need to lecture me on game design.<br><br>Re: Thunder Wolf's Howl.  If I recall correctly (and I might not), the spell text actually says that the sorcerer opens his mouth and howls to do this.  I interpret this as the sorcerer modifying his shouting ability rather than the wind.<br><br>[[FlowsLikeBits]], I thought about making a Sorcery-type stat when I first made up this system, but ended up deciding that it would only be another name for what Essence and Willpower already do.  I tried to cover people being good at certain kinds of spells as spells with the whole sorcerous Specialty thing.<br><br>Again, Sennou, about the only way you annoyed me here was with your implications that if only I were thinking, I'd agree with you.  Yes, I thought about sorcery's manipulation of the laws of Essence being like a hacker in a computer system.  Amazingly, I can think of ways to justify a system and yet still think the system should be different!  You're free to take the approach that "instead of changing the system we should find reasons to leave it the way it is!" -- lots of people do.  I prefer the approach of trying to understand the system, and then changing it if I still don't like it.<br>~ [[Shataina]]
+::Heh.  I, too, apologize, for I fear that I came across as overly harsh in my post-fixing-the-[[Errata]]-page self-righteous officiousness.  I need to get over that.  Anyway, it isn't a huge deal if you have tangential discussions here -- I mean, I'm not really offended except at your repeated implications that if I was thinking harder, I'd have a different opinion -- but most tangential discussions do better in the [[Discussions]] arena than they ever do on personal pages.  This is particularly true because people who read comments on this page is a rather smaller subset of wiki-users than people who could / would contribute to a discussion on sorcery and meta-sorcery.  (Incidentally, if you're still confused about how to start your own Discussion, then the steps I would suggest are these: (1) Go to the [[Discussions]] page. (2) Edit in a subpage link with a brief but descriptive name, e.g., "<nowiki[[Shataina/HowToWorkSorcery]]</nowiki>". (3) Save, then click on the yellow question mark next to what you wrote in.  (4) You will be directed to a new page.  Write up your basic arguments and questions, then save it -- don't forget to put a quick synopsis in the "Summary" text box located right above the "Save" button.)  (Also, if you are still generally confused about the wiki, [[QuickStartGuide]], [[TextFormattingRules]] and [[BestPractices]] are good pages to start with, in case you've missed them.)<br><br>Now I'll try to address your questions, starting with the last first.  I do not approve of having Occult be the only sorcerous Ability; as I said, it overpowers Occult.  Thus, I would not allow a player who came up with some sort of justification for such a path to do so.  Your point about a Solar Melee-ist defeating a Solar Occultist is irrelevant to how powerful canon-sorcery is: (1) Solars are not the only people who get sorcery -- in fact, almost <b>everyone</b> gets some form of sorcery.  Thus, Solar power scale should not be the only balance consideration.  (2) Sorcery is generally useful for all 25 Abilities.  Saying that a specialized Ability-user could defeat a sorcerer is therefore missing the point.  Yes, a Solar swordswoman would beat the hell out of a Solar sorceress ... but the Solar swordswoman is out of tricks if you take away her sword, whereas the Solar sorceress can almost flawlessly hide herself, change herself into a flight of birds, kill someone with a razor chain from 500 yards (long before the swordswoman would get to her, incidentally), etc, etc, etc, and that's all just at the Terrestrial Circle.  You say that sorcerers "only" have a breadth of powers available to them; this is exactly the problem; someone with high Occult should not be able to ignore the other 24 Abilities simply because they have high Occult -- that is, high Occult should not subsume other, irrelevant Abilities.  Furthermore, I disagree that sorcery is not the "domain of true munchkining"; according to the canonical rules, your 200-XP sorcerer could have Solar Circle Sorcery, which means he could have a spell that, say, destroyed absolutely everything organic for hundreds of years for <b>miles</b>.  Again, however, as I've said before, if you honestly think sorcery is not very powerful, you are playing in very different games from mine, and we will probably never agree.<br><br>I'm going to ignore all your points about natural sorcery, because I think I've made it clear that my conception of sorcery is more something I prefer from my own fantasy background etc than something I'm interested in justifying from a canonical perspective.  And I, incidentally, totally disagree that the setting loses any dramatic effect and consistency at all.<br><br>Yes, I do consider these modifications superior to the original rules. :P If you're tired of reading my stuff, don't.  I say these things only to make the point extremely clear that there's no need to be snippy about someone's houserules; if you actually intend to give feedback, I advise that you make your point as neutrally as possible.  As for my unnecessary complexity, if you can think of a way to both separate sorcery from the normal Charm sets and have the spells manipulated without Occult that's simpler than this, then please feel free to detail it.  Oh, and trust me, you don't need to lecture me on game design.<br><br>Re: Thunder Wolf's Howl.  If I recall correctly (and I might not), the spell text actually says that the sorcerer opens his mouth and howls to do this.  I interpret this as the sorcerer modifying his shouting ability rather than the wind.<br><br>[[FlowsLikeBits]], I thought about making a Sorcery-type stat when I first made up this system, but ended up deciding that it would only be another name for what Essence and Willpower already do.  I tried to cover people being good at certain kinds of spells as spells with the whole sorcerous Specialty thing.<br><br>Again, Sennou, about the only way you annoyed me here was with your implications that if only I were thinking, I'd agree with you.  Yes, I thought about sorcery's manipulation of the laws of Essence being like a hacker in a computer system.  Amazingly, I can think of ways to justify a system and yet still think the system should be different!  You're free to take the approach that "instead of changing the system we should find reasons to leave it the way it is!" -- lots of people do.  I prefer the approach of trying to understand the system, and then changing it if I still don't like it.<br>~ [[Shataina]]
 :::As far as I could tell, the general approach of your spell changes was to substitute Essence for Occult in cases where the value was a paramenter, and some other ability for Occult in skill rolls.   I think this would have two general results. (This entire thought ignores summoning, which you already dealt with and is a whole different kettle of things that look kinda like fish, only more so.)

← Older revision		Revision as of 20:20, 29 May 2005
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	::::::I still think you should start a Discussion, Yukari. I have no patience with conversations like this; I've already had them too many times. I may actually respond to what you've said here at this point, but, to make it as clear as possible since I have evidently failed to do so so far, I am not interested in the sorts of things you evidently want to talk about (meta-sorcery, ways to ignore the issues with the current system, etc) and I'd prefer it if you moved it -- not because it offends me, but because if it's on my page, I end up feeling obligated to pay attention and respond to it. I mean, as repeatedly noted, it's pretty obvious we're coming from radically different places here (for example, so-called "XP sinks" are not a problem I even feel the need to address), so all this overall sorcery balance talk is basically a waste of time. Oh, and one side note: focusing on plausible and interesting characters is not mutually exclusive with trying to fix the system; I consider that a highly annoying and patronizing misconception; as I said, working around the system and working within the system is all very well, but it's not an argument against working on the extreme cases.<br>~ [[Shataina]]		::::::I still think you should start a Discussion, Yukari. I have no patience with conversations like this; I've already had them too many times. I may actually respond to what you've said here at this point, but, to make it as clear as possible since I have evidently failed to do so so far, I am not interested in the sorts of things you evidently want to talk about (meta-sorcery, ways to ignore the issues with the current system, etc) and I'd prefer it if you moved it -- not because it offends me, but because if it's on my page, I end up feeling obligated to pay attention and respond to it. I mean, as repeatedly noted, it's pretty obvious we're coming from radically different places here (for example, so-called "XP sinks" are not a problem I even feel the need to address), so all this overall sorcery balance talk is basically a waste of time. Oh, and one side note: focusing on plausible and interesting characters is not mutually exclusive with trying to fix the system; I consider that a highly annoying and patronizing misconception; as I said, working around the system and working within the system is all very well, but it's not an argument against working on the extreme cases.<br>~ [[Shataina]]
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		+	Damn, that's a lot of commenting. Anyway, here's my thought: Having to pick favored Occult to be a Sorceror isn't a big deal. Its just one favored ability out of 10. The bigger issue is that Sorcery is a huge XP sink, and that buying Essence to 3 during chargen is a big chunk of bonus points. If you want to see more Sorcerors, I'd let the PCs start with Essence 3 and open up the Sorcery background from the Outcaste book. What you've got here is cool, but I don't think it will get the results you may be looking for.
		+
		+	(I wrote this next bit, then realized it was unnecessarily long winded. But its still sort of interesting, so here goes:) I've spent a lot of time looking at different system's approach to game balance. What you're suggesting is very similiar to what D&D does. Every character is going to have to fight, so every class gets some combat abilities. They create things like the Bard, so even if your concept is "socialite fop" you're not bored during the fight scenes. Exalted takes the opposite approach. Even the socialite fop guy can fight, cuz its so cheap for a Solar to learn how to fight. It doesn't matter that Dexterity is way, way better than the other attributes, because you have a lot of attribue dots and its easy to justify almost any Exalt as having Dex 4. Having to buy up your Dex and a favored combat ability is factored into character creation. If it wern't necessary, you'd have to tone down Solars a bit. I think the same goes for a character in a very high XP game - favor martial arts or favor occult. In a lower XP game, there's plenty of other stuff to spend XP on so its not as much of an issue. -MeiRen