Basic Fantasy RPG Forums

I have a question about spellcasting. Let's say I had cast charm person on Filibert. My understanding of the rules are:
- my chance of casting successfully is 65% (base) - 10% (level 1 spell) = 55%
- Filibert's chance of resisting is 16% (intuition) + 20% (racial) = 36%

Is that correct? If so, that means the chance of success is 35% and would likely take three attempts (and cost 3 MP).

Comparing to the AD&D version, the same spell would be cast 100% of the time with a saving throw target of 13 (base 16 - 4 (racial) +1 (wisdom)), a 65% success rate.

My initial thought is that spellcasting is going to be very unreliable, between the cast failures and the resistance. I don't think it gets much better in higher levels, because I expect the defenders' resistances to rise faster than the spellcasters' skill.

Just initial feedback.

Another thing that confuses me is

When making an ability skill roll, a character’s base skill is modified by their relevant ability bonus, with each +/- 1 ability bonus translating to a +/-5% adjustment to the target percentage

I'm not sure where/how this is applied. In the charm person example above, does that mean that Elena would get +10% on her casting (+2 INT -> +10% casting skill) and Filibert would get -5% (-1 WIS -> -5% intuition) on the resistance?

Woe wrote:I have a question about spellcasting. Let's say I had cast charm person on Filibert. My understanding of the rules are:
- my chance of casting successfully is 65% (base) - 10% (level 1 spell) = 55%
- Filibert's chance of resisting is 16% (intuition) + 20% (racial) = 36%

Is that correct? If so, that means the chance of success is 35% and would likely take three attempts (and cost 3 MP).

Comparing to the AD&D version, the same spell would be cast 100% of the time with a saving throw target of 13 (base 16 - 4 (racial) +1 (wisdom)), a 65% success rate.

My initial thought is that spellcasting is going to be very unreliable, between the cast failures and the resistance. I don't think it gets much better in higher levels, because I expect the defenders' resistances to rise faster than the spellcasters' skill.

Just initial feedback.

Many thanks for the feedback Woe, this is exactly what the playtest is about. You've broadly got the gist of it, although a few of your numbers above are a bit off.

To cast Charm Person, Elena's target percentage would be casting skill (65%) + relevant ability bonus (it's an MU spell, so INT is +10%) + difficulty level of spell (-10% for a 1st level spell) = 65% (not the 55% you have above).

To resist the effect of the spell, I would use, as you suggest, Filibert's Intuition skill. Filibert's base intuition skill is 16%, and this is modified by his WIS ability bonus (-5%) and his halfling racial bonus 20% to give a target percentage of 31%.

So, overall the chance of the spell being cast successfully and taking effect is 65% (spell cast successfully) x 69% (Filibert fails to resist) = 45%. So, again, a bit higher than you had in your example.

In standard Basic Fantasy the chance of successfully casting the spell is, of course 100%. However, the class that Filibert is closest to is a 5th level thief (he has 5 hit dice and his highest skill is Open Locks / Remove Traps) and so his chance of saving vs Spells would be 55% (9 or more required on D20 for a 5th level Halfling Thief). So, again, the chance of the spell being cast successfully and taking effect is 100% (spell cast successfully) x 45% (Filibert fails to resist) = 45%, i.e. exactly the same as above (that worked out much better than I thought it would ).

(although actually, of course, Filibert would be immune to the spell as he has 5 hit dice and it only works against creatures with 4 hit dice or less).

Let's check the maths again with a standard orc ...

BFQ = 65% (cast successfully) x 75% (orc fails to resist) = 49%.

Standard BFRPG = 100% (spell cast successfully) x 85% (orc fails to resist) = 85%.

Which works out kind of where I hoped it would be. In BFQ the spell is markedly less reliable (but not overly so), but the trade-off is that it can be cast many more times. If I was playing a low level magic-user, I know which system I would prefer .

Woe wrote:Another thing that confuses me is

When making an ability skill roll, a character’s base skill is modified by their relevant ability bonus, with each +/- 1 ability bonus translating to a +/-5% adjustment to the target percentage

I'm not sure where/how this is applied. In the charm person example above, does that mean that Elena would get +10% on her casting (+2 INT -> +10% casting skill) and Filibert would get -5% (-1 WIS -> -5% intuition) on the resistance?

Exactly, spot on.

that worked out much better than I thought it would

I'm not sure where/how this is applied.

It's a bit confusing though because all of this needs to be remembered to be applied. For the basic RQ supplement, it would only be a problem with multi-class characters (cleric/mu). For the classless option, it needs to be remembered every time.

How about instead, breaking casting up into two subskills, wizard and cleric? That way it's applied once. Similarly for intuition -- instead of applying for specific scenarios, change intuition to be 2%*WIS+(5%*WIS bonus). Or are there times when the skills shouldn't include the bonus?

Perhaps I need to make it clearer in the supplement, but there is a single unified mechanic running throughout which is ...

Target % = base skill + relevant ability bonus + situational modifiers

... where situational modifiers are specific to the skill being performed, e.g. opponent's armour class, level of spell being cast, range of missile weapon, type of undead being turned, etc. Every skill roll follows this same basic formula. The detail that needs to be remembered is in the situational modifiers, but that is also true for standard Basic Fantasy.

Separating the two schools of magic might not be a bad idea - I'll give that one some more thought.

The difficulty with combining the ability bonus into the base skill (as you suggest for Intuition) is that if you do that for all skills it really screws up the character hit dice progression tables, particularly for the vanilla (no optional rules) version of BFQ.

The magic aspect is a tad confusing (I'm very glad the GM is rolling/figuring/deciding on the dice). I feel like I did when learning the THAC0 thing years ago. Eventually it'll make sense.

Also unclear: do targets of magic missile get a resistance check? There's no saving throw in the regular game so I'd say 'no' but as mentioned, it's a tad confusing.

BTW, I'm not actually GOING to throw some magic missiles around. That'd be very unladylike. I'm quite sure she is headed back to the pub for a pint and to continue working on her backstory.

Woe wrote:Also unclear: do targets of magic missile get a resistance check? There's no saving throw in the regular game so I'd say 'no' but as mentioned, it's a tad confusing.

BTW, I'm not actually GOING to throw some magic missiles around. That'd be very unladylike. I'm quite sure she is headed back to the pub for a pint and to continue working on her backstory.

About that pub thing. How is it that she has a childhood friend (who happens to be a DWARF!) that she never takes drinking..... really.... elves are so self centered.....

She's a bit like that. Her low CHA isn't because her looks (because she's kinda hot), but because of personality. She's irritable, moody, insensitive, you get the idea. You can come up with your own reasons you hang out with her. Maybe it's because she's not very aware of the fact that when she goes to the pub, you put your pints on her tab.