Post by Gaea on Jan 29, 2017 21:22:42 GMT -8
Ok, by this point I can only hope you have read the rules and know the basics of magic - Power, Range, and Area are the three big stats, and quite frankly they're pretty self explanatory. Spoilers, more Range makes your fireballs go further, and your boom gets bigger with more Area. But those numbers aren't and should never be the be-all, end-all of combat; mixed with what elements you have available they're just a framework for constructing a coherent and unique fighting style.
If you think of a generic fireball as a finite mass of magical energy rather than just a fireball, there's all kinds of things you can do with it. You can turn the fireball into a beam, a jet, an arc; you can make it go faster or slower; it can be densely packed or bloated and set to detonate, or maybe it doesn't actually travel the intervening distance and just blows up on target. You can absolutely have a fire laser or a nuclear fireball that makes full use of your Area stat.
But at the same time, you're working with a finite quantity of magical energy - each advantage comes with downsides somewhere else. You CAN'T just say "my magic is an instant laser that kills 1000 guys" even with 3/3/3 magic; you aren't sacrificing anything for those advantages. Using a laser instead of a fireball may make the spell cost significantly more to fuel the refining process that calibrates and intensifies the beam, or maybe there's a significant cast time. That gigantic AOE nuke probably won't hit as hard as the laser, either, unless you add other downsides (cost, cast time, backlash, etc) to balance it out. Magic Area 3 by itself is meaningless - it doesn't make ALL your spells that big - it just allows you to turn the Area of Effect (AOE) up to 11.
Projectile speed is similar; it's not an actual stat, but you can totally play with it. There's nothing wrong with just tossing fireballs instead of lasers, not having to waste magic on speeding them up so much means you have more magic to play with to make them go boom. Is your spell at all guided? You guessed it, that means less power or speed or some other significant downside.
Of course there are a bunch more elements than Fire to contend with, but the same issues are relevant to all of them. If you want your Wind magic to slice people in half - it's simply not gonna be as large scale as an anti-army spell unless you add a friggin' ridiculous amount of cost to it. Earth magic creating massive chasms? You best be adding a cast time and some serious cost to that, hun.
Also consider your character's overall power level - even if you rocked magic area 3 at 100 posts, that doesn't mean that you'll necessarily have the magical reserves and supporting Magical Power stat to make a proper tactical nuke, much less spam it - whereas if you're chilling at 980 posts and have been sitting at 3/3/3 since your Legendary start, using high power magic the entire time, it's a lot more reasonable to say "hey, my character is a badass who's been doing this for years, I probably have enough magic to do that nuke thing without killing myself from overexertion."
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As always, if you're confused about the rules or uncertain if an idea is overpowered, PM me or ask in the questions section, I'd much rather work with y'all so we can all be badasses than have to come down on anyone for spamming maxed out magic endlessly without any downsides.
If you think of a generic fireball as a finite mass of magical energy rather than just a fireball, there's all kinds of things you can do with it. You can turn the fireball into a beam, a jet, an arc; you can make it go faster or slower; it can be densely packed or bloated and set to detonate, or maybe it doesn't actually travel the intervening distance and just blows up on target. You can absolutely have a fire laser or a nuclear fireball that makes full use of your Area stat.
But at the same time, you're working with a finite quantity of magical energy - each advantage comes with downsides somewhere else. You CAN'T just say "my magic is an instant laser that kills 1000 guys" even with 3/3/3 magic; you aren't sacrificing anything for those advantages. Using a laser instead of a fireball may make the spell cost significantly more to fuel the refining process that calibrates and intensifies the beam, or maybe there's a significant cast time. That gigantic AOE nuke probably won't hit as hard as the laser, either, unless you add other downsides (cost, cast time, backlash, etc) to balance it out. Magic Area 3 by itself is meaningless - it doesn't make ALL your spells that big - it just allows you to turn the Area of Effect (AOE) up to 11.
Projectile speed is similar; it's not an actual stat, but you can totally play with it. There's nothing wrong with just tossing fireballs instead of lasers, not having to waste magic on speeding them up so much means you have more magic to play with to make them go boom. Is your spell at all guided? You guessed it, that means less power or speed or some other significant downside.
Of course there are a bunch more elements than Fire to contend with, but the same issues are relevant to all of them. If you want your Wind magic to slice people in half - it's simply not gonna be as large scale as an anti-army spell unless you add a friggin' ridiculous amount of cost to it. Earth magic creating massive chasms? You best be adding a cast time and some serious cost to that, hun.
Also consider your character's overall power level - even if you rocked magic area 3 at 100 posts, that doesn't mean that you'll necessarily have the magical reserves and supporting Magical Power stat to make a proper tactical nuke, much less spam it - whereas if you're chilling at 980 posts and have been sitting at 3/3/3 since your Legendary start, using high power magic the entire time, it's a lot more reasonable to say "hey, my character is a badass who's been doing this for years, I probably have enough magic to do that nuke thing without killing myself from overexertion."
------
As always, if you're confused about the rules or uncertain if an idea is overpowered, PM me or ask in the questions section, I'd much rather work with y'all so we can all be badasses than have to come down on anyone for spamming maxed out magic endlessly without any downsides.
