Templates
Powers exist as a global list of all possible (hard-coded powers). They are as atomic as possible (e.g. what can you do with hand blasters?) while being suitably generic. They are conveniently organized into groups and schools.
How you get them is the interesting thing:
- You might invest in skills which allow you to attempt to cast spells. You would invest in Knowledge (fire magic), Knowledge (blood magic), etc, and call upon skills like Spellcraft and Willpower. If you got tired of rolling so many dice, you could take a feat to master a given power.
- Instead of ranks, each power has uses with proper DCs. Hell, it's worth a try at some point. Fireball: low DC. Firebrand: higher. Lightning strike easy, electric loop hard. Etc.
- Another approach is to take a skill that lets you access the powers through resources. For instance, Alchemy, Armortech, or the like could give you open access to large parts of the list, knowing that you'll have to expend resources to commit to specific powers.
DCs
A point worth elaborating on.
Right now, everything's all about rank. Lame Fire = rank 1, Cool Fire = rank 3, Badass Fire = rank 5. That might work, if games ever lasted long enough to level into a new rank. They really don't.
Instead, what if it was really all about DC? 7.1 tried that, but the mistake was making it all about DC...even damage multipliers, which just got into some silly math. We still have Mana to handle that, but skill checks for everything else. For example:
Fire| Use | DC | Description |
|---|---|---|
|
Flame Fan |
0 |
Flames! |
|
Flame Jet |
10 |
Turn fire into a line 5. Spend 1 Focus to add +5 (stackable). |
|
Fireball |
20 |
Range 20, burst 3. Focus to add more range, Mana to add more burst. |
|
Wall of Fire |
20 |
Wall 1 per Focus reserved within range 10. |
|
Firebrand |
30 |
Flaming brand can move at speed 5 within range 20. Spend 1 Focus/rd. |
A number of things:
- Simple DCs establish "tiers" of ability. Higher DC = more complex = potentially a more efficient use of the power. Electric loop, grudge, any sort of situation where complexity is channeled into more oomph.
- The Focus attribute is repurposed as a generic attribute to add bonuses to skill checks (+5 or +10 per point, maybe). This answers the question "what do I do now that there are no rerolls?".
- Focus finally lives up to its name, being all about skill checks. It's a stand-in for higher numbers, but also for any situation where it seems like being a little better at the skill would yield numeric results (such as a longer wall of fire, or a flame jet that stays coherent to a longer range). Sure, you could just use DC, but that's 7.1 territory, and we don't want to encourage ridiculous number stacking for casting skills.
What would these skill checks be? Well, that depends. Perhaps:
- Each use of a power has a Complexity rating from 0-5 (or more, perhaps, at epic level).
- Wizardly types gain access to several core Knowledge skills (Int-based) governing magic use: perhaps Thaumaturgy, Invocation, Evocation, Mentalism, etc.
- In this case, the DC = Complexity * 10.
- Meanwhile, Resource types deal in one of several ways:
- For consumptive skills like Alchemy, higher complexity means a higher DC to craft (taking 10 is advised when expendables are in play) and probably more expensive mats
- For a skill like Armortech, it may be that you need a higher skill in Armortech to wire up more complex powers, and they consume more of a certain resource.
- For example, an Armortech's suit might have two resources: Module Slots and Power. The latter is great for adding +100% bonuses to damage, but the former is consumed more quickly by more complex powers.
- The sorcerer types probably have to spend a feat for each level of complexity: i.e. Fire I, Fire II, Fire III, etc.