As I mentioned in the last post, my first goal for Dragon Hack this year is to get cracking on the spell conversions to bring a lot of Pathfinder spells into the AGE game, to give Dragon Hack players more options and flexibility, and to again more mirror the Pathfinder game’s high-fantasy feel in the AGE system. Longtime commenter and collaborator Vaelorn posted on his own blog a while ago about his thoughts on spell conversions for Dragon Hack, and I recently commented on his post with some of my own thoughts. The following is basically a distillation of my comments on his site, but I thought Dragon Hack fans would like to read where I’m coming from, and hopefully that will spark a conversation about how best to approach spell conversions between the two systems.
My initial thoughts on spell conversions:
First, I like what Vaelorn has done with remapping the plentiful Pathfinder schools into the handful of schools that exist in Dragon AGE. After all, each Dragon AGE school needs not only a focus but a dedicated talent tree, with novice, journeyman and master levels, which adds another level of complexity to creating schools for each of those that exist in Pathfinder. That said, I think we could probably afford to match up most spells to existing AGE schools while leaving the door open for adding one or two more schools to the list (and creating the focuses and talents for them).
For example: While illusion would fit in the spirit category broadly, there really doesn’t seem to be a lot of spells in AGE canon so far that would fall under the illusion category to use as templates for Pathfinder conversions. And maybe it’s just the old-school DnD player in me, but I would love to see an Illusionist Specialization the way the school was broken out in the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2nd Edition Player’s Handbook (even if we’re veering a little bit away from a core Pathfinder conversion.) I don’t have an example yet of exactly how I would break it down, but I’m thinking 6-7 spell schools in total, with four of those being the ones from the core Dragon AGE game. The new ones would all get dedicated focuses and talent trees, of course, which would be included in the Dragon Hack manual.
Second, as Vaelorn mentions in his post, there are waaay too many spells in the Pathfinder core book (not to mention resources such as Ultimate Magic, etc.) to transfer into AGE. And I don’t think transferring every single spell should be our goal. One thing that I think will make our job a lot easier (and I discovered as I was converting spells for the upcoming Midgard campaign setting book) is the way that Dragon AGE spells stack, or essentially have a line of requirements that force a player to pick up earlier/weaker spells in order to cast their more powerful cousins later in the game. For example: A player can start the game with the Flame Blast spell, but can only cast Flaming Weapons (from set 2) if they already possess Flame Blast. If the RPG follows the video game at all, Flaming Weapons will be a requirement in order to pick up the Fireball spell, which will be a requirement in order to eventually cast Firestorm. (If I’m remembering my spells names correctly/it’s been a while since I played the video game). This greatly reduces the number of spells that need to be converted to Pathfinder because in each case we should be looking for spells that fit a theme that can be grouped together by requirements. After all, spells in AGE do not have spell levels, so the requirement entry of the spell description serves that role by limiting what spells a mage can choose at a given experience level or prior dedication to a spell school. Similarly, a group of higher level spells can be grouped together by making the first spell in the “chain” require the journeyman or master level of a spell school talent, meaning the player would have to at least be 5th or 7th level before they could take the intro spell for that chain.
An example of a possible spell “chain” taken from Pathfinder could include the “acid” line of spells in the conjuration school. 0-level Acid Splash, 2nd level Acid Arrow, 6th level Acid Fog. Because of the differences in the spell levels, we would have to balance the spells out to be an appropriate power level for when a mage could choose them in the AGE game. The key characteristic of acid is that it continues to burn, or finds gaps in armor to burn the skin beneath, so it should probably have the Penetrating spell effect. To balance that against existing mechanics, we could say that Acid Splash functions pretty much as the Shock spell, but is a spray of acid coating the creatures in its area of effect. Acid Arrow works like Lightning (though we could reduce the damage a bit, or increase the spell’s TN in order to make its effects last for more than 1 round with a test to resist the ongoing damage), and Acid Cloud would do similar damage to the Chain Lightning spell that we can expect to see in the third boxed set, but have game mechanics (it hangs around in a given area) equal to the Pathfinder spell.
Essentially my thoughts for converting Pathfinder spells to AGE is that while the names and broad effects should be the same, the power level and when mages can acquire them needs to be more in line with what’s available for the base AGE game to keep things balanced. In short: they need to have Pathfinder flavor, but AGE mechanics.
I would love to get feedback on these ideas from my readers, as for now they form the basis of my plans for converting Pathfinder spells to AGE.
So, thoughts?
There are only 8 schools in Pathfinder/D&D, so if you’re going to end up with 6-7 anyways it doesn’t seem like you’re saving much as far as the number of talents. I think having all 8 schools would really lend a good amount of D&D flavor to wizards. For clerics and other D&D casters, the schools aren’t as important though and don’t really have much story support.
Speaking of other casters, are you planning to have mage characters limited to a certain set of spells based on the class talents they take (ex: mages with the Cleric talent can cast cure but not mages with the Wizard talent)?
Glimm,
Thanks for responding! The problem with bringing over all the Pathfinder spell schools is that there already are four existing spell schools for Dragon AGE, which are not the same as those in Pathfinder. So to bring over all the Pathfinder schools wouldn’t be just adding four more, it would be adding all eight more. I want to leave all the spells that are available in Dragon Age in Dragon Hack. After all it’s an add-on to the rules, not a rules replacement. You can’t play Dragon Hack without owning Dragon AGE, otherwise I’m just stealing Green Ronin’s gaming system and re-coloring it with Pathfinder PRD material. And I don’t want a Dragon Hack player restricted to just the spells we convert.
I suppose another method we could take is to flip the conversion process and produce a list that puts all the existing Dragon AGE spells into Pathfinder spell schools and then adds converted Pathfinder spells to the spells list. That way the only spell schools that would exist would be the Pathfinder ones, and existing Dragon AGE spells would just have their schools changed to match the Pathfinder rules. Again, though, that means creating eight new spell school talents. (Though some of the talents could essentially mirror the Dragon AGE schools they most closely match). Does that make sense, or did I misunderstand your comment?
As for spell school limitations, I don’t plan on having any in Dragon Hack. I love that in Dragon AGE, a mage can cast Heal and Fireball. The Dragon Hack “cleric” talent adds a specific (mostly martial) benefit to the character. I don’t see a need to add spell restrictions to that because leaving them out adds greater flexibility for both the player and the game master. I want it to be possible for a “Cleric” of a war god to not have any healing spells if that fits the character conception, while another player might envision his mage character as more of a hedge wizard, renowned in this home region as a healer of the sick and poor.
Does that make sense? Do you think I’m veering to far from the core Pathfinder experience by leaving things like that alone?
I think you have a good plan there. I like the idea of just adding the existing Dragon Age spells to Pathfinder schools. Quite a few of them have obvious analogs already. I’ll post more when I’ve had time to think on it.
For the spell schools, I was thinking of the second approach you mention. Remap the existing spells into Pathfinder schools and then go from there. At least some of the talents could definitely be re-used (Entropy becomes Necromancy and Primal becomes Evocation for instance). That’s the approach I’ve been taking for my Diablo hack (http://dragonageoracle.com/2011/11/30/age-age-of-terror-magic/ and http://dragonageoracle.com/2011/12/30/age-of-terror-spell-schools/).
I like the idea of avoiding spell limitations based on class. D&D historically has been somewhat fuzzy on what effects can be done with arcane vs divine magic anyways (bards can cure with arcane magic for instance). If a DM or player wants to stick closer to what Pathfinder allows, they can always limit their own selection to what fits the class talent.
You guys make good points. And, for example, if you matched up Necromancy to Entropy and Evocation to Primal, those spell talents would just mirror the ones in Dragon Age, but with a new name.
Another thought I had, and this is something I was just about to post over at Vaelorn’s blog, is that in ADnD 2nd Edition, magic users could choose to specialize in a certain spell school, and they received a static benefit for doing so, but also couldn’t cast spells from the opposing spell school. While I don’t want to restrict spell use, what if there was a Mage specialization for every spell school that granted a small set of thematic spells that only specialists could cast, the way the Spirit Healer specialization works in Dragon AGE. Only the necromancer would get Raise Dead spells, only the Conjurer get Summon Monster I, II, III etc. Is that something you guys would like to see as either players or GMs?
Also, Jesse, I was on vacation last week at the top of Northern Michigan with limited Internet access, but I got a notification that you and Daniel Perez were talking about Dragon Hack on G+. I haven;t had a chance to check out those posts yet and respond if you needed me to, but I’ll try to make time today.
And Glimm, I’m in 100 percent agreement with your last paragraph of your second post.
The school-based specializations would be great for wizard-themed characters, but I’m not sure they fit the story elements of the other Pathfinder spellcasters. Deity or domain specializations would be a better fit for clerics for instance.
With regards to some specializations gaining access to a thematic set of spells, I think that’s a great idea! But there may not be one such set for each school to course. And some sets may effectively be their own school. Summoning would be a good candidate for that – in PF there’s Summon Monster 1-8, Summon Nature’s Ally 1-8 and you could probably create a set for undead/demons etc. Either that’s a ‘Summoning’ school or the summoning ability is tied to another talent: e.g. if you have expertise in Nature you can summon beasts, a degree in Necromancy allows you to summon undead.
But one thing to consider is: should these be available to 1st level characters (as a talent, which would kind of be a school in DA), or are we happy to have them as specializations only?
Right, but in Dragon Hack each of the “class talents,” such as cleric, druid, wizard, etc. gain static bonuses through 5th level, and then those characters have a wide range of specializations to choose from for levels 6-10. Those specializations are not all built yet, but that’s the plan anyway. So clerics and druids wouldn’t be picking from the spell school specializations anyway. Those would be “wizard” specializations only.
Actually, the simplest way to create domain specializations for the Cleric, Druid and even Paladin would be to allow them to pick a Divine Gift domain from the Kobold Quarterly article by Steve Kinson for their specialization, and allow them to automatically advance in that talent at 6, 8, and 10th level.
Magic is a pretty slippery slope. You can easily crush the balance of the game if you let the magic system get too out of hand by adding in new spells willy nilly. I wouldn’t feel the need to try and convert a lot of the spells. Part of the reason why I prefer the AGE system to Pathfinder is because you have magic without it dominating the game like it does in Pathfinder. Be very selective about which spells you convert or how you go about it. For instance, I think Haste is a really broken spell in Pathfinder. I probably wouldn’t convert it to AGE, but if I did I would likely have it do something like, grant +2 to speed, and perform lightning attack or quick casting stunts at 2 SP instead of 3. Basically, when adding spells to AGE I think they need to be flavourful and interesting, but they need scaled back a little powerwise.
The key to making spell conversions work is to base their power levels on existing spells. Damage spells are the easiest to do this with because they have very straightforward parameters. If you want a low level spell that attacks one target at range, have it do the same base damage, have the same range, cost and requirements as Arcane Bolt. A similar, but more powerful spell would have the same characteristics of Lightning. If doing an area effect damage spell, you start with Flame Blast and Shock as your base, and work from there. As damage goes up, so does the cost and TN.
Where power balance gets difficult is in spells such as haste, like you mention. That’s one where you really have to weigh the costs against the benefits. Giving every character two attacks a round would be crazy powerful, unless the spell cost say 20 mana, had a TN of 21, and you had to pay an additional 15 mana per round to maintain it for more than one round. Even the huge mana pools of high-level mages would suffer under a spell like that.
Another thing that has to be balanced between Pathfinder and AGE is the fact that in Pathfinder it is a given that a person cannot cast the same spell more than once (sometimes rarely twice, if they memorized it more than once) a day, whereas in AGE they can cast the same spell until their mana runs out. This makes spells that rob opponents of actions particularly dangerous, because it would be easy for a mage to spam such a spell and allow the rest of the party to act with impunity each round.
To answer some of your concerns, I do not intend to recreate every Pathfinder spell in the AGE system. Some, such as Wish spells and the like, just don’t seem to have a place in the game. Also, I would like to avoid the CoDzilla problem by not granting mages the ability to become better warriors than regular warriors through a few carefully chosen spells. That’s also why playtesting and feedback will be so important after the updated playtest document is ready.
I hope you’ll stick around and help out.
I’m currently running an AGE game in my homebrew setting using Dragon Hack. We are just converting to the 1.75 version this weekend, which I think is much more in line with how the Dragon Age system should work. I’ve run about 6 sessions using the 1.3 Dragon Hack and we had a lot of fun with it, so I’m looking forward to implementing the upgrade. I believe that party will have 1-2 rangers, a Wizard and likely a Sorcerer. I’ll let you know if over time I notice anything funky about how they operate.
FYI My game isn’t quite RAW. The biggest change is that characters get new hp at even levels and a +1 to defense at odd levels. The theory being that they won’t get hit as often, but when they do get hit it will hurt more. I’ll see how that works in the long round, but so far I like it.
I also have a wound point system, to distinguish between the bruising and battering of health loss and the more serious and difficult to recover damage of actual injuries.
This is awesome. I’m really excited you guys are enjoying the hack and I look forward to reading about how it’s working out for you.
This just cements that I have to get off my behind and get the 2.0 playtest done, it’s just that I’ve been so busy with work and other freelancing lately. Thanks again for dropping by. Your comment made my night.
Seeing Byron Mollix release the Mystara Adversary Companion vol 1 (see http://dragonageoracle.com – it’s awesome!) prompted me to have a proper re-read of his Mystara conversion. There are lots of converted spells in there that I’m sure could be used right off the bat. (As well as some specializations which I’m going to shamelessly steal!)
BTW, Josh – did you get the PDF I emailed to you?
The Eberron one? Yes. I’ve read through it once, but I never found the time to really go through slowly and offer critique. I would still love to do so when I get the time, though.
Thanks for the link to the Mystara update. I hadn’t seen that yet.
Ok, cool! I have made a large number of minor changes since then, so I may send you an update once I think it’s fairly stable. I would very much be interested in any feedback you have!
So far the Dragonhack 2.0 is serving my group fairly well. However, I do have a player rping a fighter, and I think I will need to scale back the abilities of the Fighter Talent. I feel that the scaling benefits are far too powerful. In my opinion the abilities granted by a “class talent” should be about on par to a regular talent. Allowing a fighter to keep increasing his bonus to hit and a damage with a weapon group as he levels up as well as gaining bonuses to new weapon groups far exceeds what a rank in a talent would give a character. It looks to me like you did it that way because that is essentially how the pathfinder fighter works, but the two systems are very different in terms of how they balance. A +1 to hit means a lot more in dragon age due to the bell curve of the 3d6, so eventually getting a +3 to hit will make it far too easy for a fighter to hit his enemies and really throw off the balance of the game. I would propose just allowing the fighter a +1 to hit and damage with a weapon group and leaving it at that for the novice rank in the talent.
Over the past couple of months I’ve been working through a lot of the class talents. Here’s my latest take on the Fighter:
Novice: You are skilled with all manner of weaponry: you gain an ability focus in a weapon group of your choice. You can also use the Threaten stunt for 1 SP rather than the usual 2. In addition, you can use it multiple times in a round, affecting a number of foes up to your Communication, using the same Strength (Intimidate) roll against each one.
Journeyman: You are used to wearing armour on the battlefield. All armour penalties to Speed are reduced by 1. You are also accustomed to being in the front line, standing against a tide of enemies. By using the Activate action you can enter a defensive mode which allows you to use the Stand Firm action as a free action until the end of the encounter.
Master: Your skill at arms has grown. You gain an ability focus in another weapon group of your choice, and gain +1 damage when wielding a weapon you are proficient in.
Also, all armour penalties to Speed are reduced by 2, and you can perform the Seize the Initiative stunt for 3 SP.
(Note: This was thought up before the Set 3 play test rules came out, and with the ‘double focus’ rule and other bonuses the warrior gets from 11-20 I’m thinking about changing the Fighter again!)
However, what I am now thinking is that giving a free ability focus is too overpowered for a talent. Lots of the Dragon Hack class talents do this: the wizard gets a free choice of magic focus, sorcerers get a focus based on their bloodline etc. Now I’m not trying to balance the talents particularly – it just seems to me that the focuses a character gets should be separate from his talents. It also means that if you wanted to use a class talent as a specialisation (i.e. for multi-classing) then the Dragon Hack classes would be preferred over, say, the Set 2 ones – “hey, free ability focus!” etc.
If you analyse what talents give to a character, it breaks down into something like this:
1. Re-roll a specific test
2. Re-roll a choice of test
3. A conditional +1 bonus to a test
4. A stunt bonus (use a specific stunt for fewer SP)
5. A new stunt
6. A new effect
7. A weapons group
8. A spell
9. Allow the character to take a talent that they otherwise wouldn’t (e.g. Arcane Warrior can take Armour Training etc)
10. Do something as a free action (once per encounter)
11. Use a major or minor action to perform a stunt for no SP
And this is per degree – very rarely does a talent degree give more than one ‘thing’. I think Arcane Warrior, for example, is an exception because you need a minimum set of ‘things’ just to make it work. The nice thing about focuses though is that they can be used as shorthand for a class feature: You’re a sorcerer of the celestial bloodline? Here’s the Magic (Creation) focus! Without them you must make something else up!
For my own game, I think I’m going to go with the fighter getting a +1 to hit and +2 to damage with one weapon group, for its novice rank. The reason for the +2 to damage being that a damage increase IMO has less of an impact on the game than a bonus to hit. There will be no scaling as the fighter levels up. It also makes the fighter look a little sexier and appealing than just a +1 and a +1, and IMO the fighter should be the default option for most warrior characters, so you want the class to stand out a little, but not be broken.
At journeyman I’m going to stick with being able to wear armour with 2 point reduction to the speed penalty. I may also allow training in another weapon group, but given that the warrior gets that at 8th level, I’m not sure that it’s necessary.
For master I think I’ll leave it as is in the Dragon Hack, but I will require an activate action to enter the defensive stance, as per Vaelorn’s suggestion.
FYI, I was excited to check out the new spells in the playtest of set 3. They were a much needed addition to the game. I still feel like they need a few more specializations, but other than that the system is now feeling a lot more complete. Although some rules for ritual type magic would be cool, and something I’d still like to see added to the game.