Scroll use by PCs?

[MShady]

I remember in early ALFA, you would have PCs buy up to level 9 spells at insanely low levels and use them for player killing. A favorite PK tactic was for a fighter to take 1 level of wizard or sorc so they could use wands and high level spells. Or worse, a rogue using death magic during a sneak attack with 1 wizard level to bypass any need for a UMD check.

A large part of the solution is just not making these spells available like that. Adding some kind of check may not be such a bad idea either.

MShady

[AcadiusLost]

Suppose the spell target happens to be another PC. Just for the sake of argument, let's assume this PC was just happening by, spawning into the area, etc. If the miscast spell kills this PC, is this going to be ruled a legitimate IC death, or one subject to appeal/tech raise?

I'd say it's just as IC as happening by a battle going on where area affect spells are in use, and getting caught in the range, which happens from time to time. The only spells that are going to be dangerous hitting a PC are the ones being used in combat, and generally that's a dangerous thing to log into the midst of / wander through in the best of circumstances.

Speaking of edge cases, suppose the delayed spell effect kills a monster in battle with another PC. Who gets xp for the kill? If it's the original caster and he or she is logged off, does the xp get awarded on next log in, or is it lost?

The XP would be "lost", at least the way the scripts are now. The scripts would look for who was responsible for finishing off the creature, and come up thinking it was a suicide. A bit like if a rogue's leftover trap gets stumbled over by a spawn later, should XP find it's way back to the rogue? Currently it doesn't, and I think that's generally accepted as OK.

[psycho_leo]

Suppose the spell target happens to be another PC. Just for the sake of argument, let's assume this PC was just happening by, spawning into the area, etc. If the miscast spell kills this PC, is this going to be ruled a legitimate IC death, or one subject to appeal/tech raise?

I'd say it's just as IC as happening by a battle going on where area affect spells are in use, and getting caught in the range, which happens from time to time. The only spells that are going to be dangerous hitting a PC are the ones being used in combat, and generally that's a dangerous thing to log into the midst of / wander through in the best of circumstances.

Not that it doesn't make sense. Realisticaly if you run into a sorcerer lobbing fireballs like a maniac you just might get burned. Same deal with a caster trying to untap the power of something he doesn't understand, but the situation you described is likely to generate a good deal of drama if it arises. Its not like you know what's going on before you log in every time, specially if said PC is killed by a delayed spell effect (assuming that's possible).

[AcadiusLost]

Currently, a mishap effect is either misdirected or delayed (or magical damage backlash, or harmless VFX), and not a combination of the above- so the only scenario involving a delayed spell effect would see it directed against it's original target. I suppose a botched fireball scroll that triggered delayed on the same orc shaman that killed the unforunate scroll user might, by a case of extreme poor timing, catch the rescue party in the radius as they battled that shaman, hours later... but we're getting a bit farfetched there.

Maybe Dergon can run a wild beta session where a party of adventurers happens on a giant cache of high-level scrolls, and watch what comes of it- I suspect even in the extreme case (low-level casters with low wisdom + many high-level scrolls), mishaps are going to be rare, and something that adds to the gaming experience- the risk of pushing beyond the frontiers of your PC's study and knowledge.

[guess I'll have to script the Use Magic Device check(s) as well, unfortunately- hopefully if so, we can still pick up non-caster UMD checks and push them through the same formula, so it's not one rule for the rogues, and another for the multiclass UMD users.]

[Inaubryn]

I think it's a great system, AL. And, there are inherent dangers of living in a magical world. It's just like RL. You may be sitting at a drive through ordering lunch for you and your coworkers, only to have a stray bullet meant for someone else, come through your windshield, hit you in the head, and kill you (really happened). There are everyday risks in life and in the gameworld. Anytime you log on, be aware of that. Hey, it happens. Go make another PC and stay away from spellcasters.

[psycho_leo]

I think it's a great system, AL. And, there are inherent dangers of living in a magical world. It's just like RL. You may be sitting at a drive through ordering lunch for you and your coworkers, only to have a stray bullet meant for someone else, come through your windshield, hit you in the head, and kill you (really happened). There are everyday risks in life and in the gameworld. Anytime you log on, be aware of that. Hey, it happens. Go make another PC and stay away from spellcasters.

Sure. But we're not trying to mimick RL here, that would be boring. Saying to a player "hey bad timing .. sucks.. well.. roll another PC" might be realistic, but it's not a whole lot of fun. Btw, this is NOT in any way a statment against permadeath. I've had plenty of dead PCs and never, ever whined about it. But it's one thing to lose a PC in a heroic battle against impossible odds, or even doing something stupid. It's another thing to lose your PC over something you have no control whatsoever, like walking into an area and get blown apart by a meteor swarm that was cast 2 hours ago and got delayed. I do however, trust DMs to use better judgment in cases like this. That said, the system you're proposing sounds good and it's definitely worth testing.

[AcadiusLost]

Committed these scripts last night, they're on the OAS2 now, and I believe Exodus is installing them this evening, so they'll get some playtesting over there.

Worked out my quandry with respect to misfires and Use Magic Device with Inaubyrn's spotting of a passage on p.84 of the PhB, which indicated that failure by 10 or more automatically results in a mishap, whereas normal failure allows the DC 5 WIS check to avoid mishap. (KMJ had spotted this earlier, but was dissuaded by my "not a blind activation" argument, heh).

The upside of this, is that casters no longer have it worse off than use-magic-device folks in terms of backlash. The downside: may see more misfired scrolls ingame, since it becomes a more common result with PnP DCs on the UMD checks.

One thing that's important for perspective- high-level scrolls should be an extreme rarity in the game-world, so the "delayed meteor swarm" should be mostly a theoretical concern. In three years of ALFA, the highest I've seen in circulation was a 6th level Blade Barrier scroll (dropped as a DM reward for a highlevel party) - that'd be pretty deadly on a mishap, granted- but I still don't expect this will do much other than limit/add risk to habitual users of high-level scrolls.

I may revisit the mishap results down the line, or if we have some crack coders about, I could post the source and see what improvements might be suggested.

[psycho_leo]

Meteor swarm was just an extreme example. Could as well be a fireball scroll. For a lvl 1 PC it would hardly make a difference. Again, I like the idea of mishaps and making casters think twice before activating "ubber scroll of everyone is dead" and all that. I'm merely concerned about players that are not involved in the situation and get caught in a delayed backlash.

[AcadiusLost]

Just to reassure the discomfort with the delay mishaps, the actual code looks like this:

Code: Select all

DelayCommand(HoursToSeconds(nDelay), AssignCommand(oTarget, ActionCastSpellAtObject(nSpellID, oTarget, METAMAGIC_NONE, TRUE, 0, PROJECTILE_PATH_TYPE_DEFAULT, TRUE)));

So, it's essentially waiting 1d12 game hours, then adding the spell to the action queue of the target. So, a fireball or meteor swarm targeted at an arbitrary position on the ground will never produce a delayed effect (as it can't be assigned commands). Similarly, one targeted on something like a placeable or door, will likely not fire either (as they don't have action queues). A delayed fireball that actually targets a PC directly, who then stays logged in the whole time, would still fire after the delay. Similarly for an NPC targeted by a spell effect, assuming they don't despawn before the timer runs out.

So, most of the time, a delay mishap really isn't going to do anything. A delay-mishapped CLW scroll might revive a stabilized unconscious PC, I suppose... or the failed attempt to CvC via botched disintegrate scroll might sneak up on the victor 1d12 hours later- but delayed area effects are going to be exceptionally unlikely- most casters know the dangers of casting /on/ an opponent with such spells, and target the ground instead in any case. (namely, that they're likely to rush you and catch you in the radius while you cast).

[Rusty]

Bah, I wanted to see delayed fireball after some jerk fails his UMD.

[AcadiusLost]

Bah, I wanted to see delayed fireball after some jerk fails his UMD.

Down the line we could always code it to queue up an invisible badger to spawn in at a location and then fire off the spell at the appointed time (veiled badger of the apocalypse?), but I'm not seeing that as a coding priority currently.

[Runestaff]

So, most of the time, a delay mishap really isn't going to do anything. A delay-mishapped CLW scroll might revive a stabilized unconscious PC, I suppose... or the failed attempt to CvC via botched disintegrate scroll might sneak up on the victor 1d12 hours later

Be that as it may, I think you may be better served shortening the delay time to, say, 1-3 game hours. The longer the delay, the greater the chance a PC mage that suffers the rare catastrophic mishap with a disintegrate scroll can simply log off until the coast is clear. Of course, it's more likely that PCs simply won't cast potentially dangerous spells from scrolls, despite the extremely low chance of untoward results. In my experience, most scroll users only used healing scrolls, particularly since they were considerably cheaper than potions.

Basically, the point is that (near) instantaneous results, whether good or bad, are probably a better choice. Having a long delay is of little use if there's never anyone around to see/experience it.