Your calculations pretty clearly show my issue with it. Advanced Spells are (to me anyway) not usable until late T2. If I have 100% chance to case each base spell but only 45% chance to cast the advanced spell in "late t1/early t2", I'm going to use the base spells 99.99% of the time. If you can't reliably cast an Advanced Spell until over a tier after you potentially gain the spells, there's a problem...

Thinking a little more, my problem is mostly with T1 advanced spells. By your math, T2 advanced spells are 70% chance to cast by late T2 (still lower than I'd like but not horrible) but T1 advanced spells are only 45% chance to cast by late T1 (horrible - the only thing saving that from being abysmal is that failing to cast a spell doesn't waste the full speed/strain of the spell).

To me, advanced spells are for doing "interesting" things (mostly dmg+something or something+something spells). The real flexibility (and usefulness to me) comes in with using adaptations on the advanced spell to achieve something you can't do with the base spells alone (which further bumps the CTN up). With the sum-15, you might rarely pull off an adapted advanced spell in T1 - with CTN+6, you have effectively no chance whatsoever until well into T2 (and that's just for T1+T1+single adaptation).

Which previously meant it was easier to combine a Tier 1 and a Tier 4. Now it is virtually as easy to combine a Tier 4 and a Tier 4. Hmmm. Can you combine a spell with itself and call it “greater” whatever for more bang? It undermines some of the usefulness of the low CTN spells by making them just as hard to combine with spells as higher CTN spells.


Except that in many or most cases, the newer available spells can accomplish more or the same thing as lower tier spells at a lower cost. Look at elemental bolt and elemental tempest. You can get an area effect out of elemental bolt with an adaptation, but elemental tempest does it with a lower CTN. So scaling things up from the base spell is a losing proposition, as adaptations usually cost more in CTN than you gain in skill in a tier. (I haven’t actually crunched this, but it seems that most adaptations cost around 4, and I assume an average advancement for a caster of 3)


I think what most low tier spells bring to a combination is their adaptations. Combine a higher tier 1 target spell with elemental bolt, than apply the elemental bolt adaptation to make it an area of effect. That used to require a small cost to combine, and then the still significant cost to adapt. Now it’s a total cost of +12 CTN, which will essentially make that undoable for the campaign. The cost of combining the spells is excessive enough that you can’t afford to do any adaptations; or at least not until late tier 5 or unless you are totally max yourself out, and even then it will be tier 1 with tier 1.

With the old rules, combining a Tier IV + Tier IV would give a CTN: 39 (27 + 27 - 15). a Tier IV with a Tier III would have been 36. Now it's 33. I'd argue that in the previous system you would never be able to combine Tier IV spells with anything.

John

I'd have to agree with that. I hadn't looked at the numbers for T4 (which would be very hard for anyone to pull off under the sum-15 rule). On the other hand, T4+T1 would be pretty easy (CTN 30 (now 33)).

As I said above, I'm mostly concerned with T1 (and have looked at T2 some). Most play will happen at T1-T2 even as more material comes out. Most campaigns will start at 1.1 and last for a while but will never reach T3 (in my experience, most games last 2 years or less of 4-5 hours of play every week or two). The living campaign will eventually reach T3 (and above eventually) but nobody is even close to T3 yet. As such, I'm much more concerned with things being useful and usable at T1-T2 and CTN+6 isn't (as toodeep and I both said, it's not really +6, it's more +9 or so for advanced and an adaptation (never mind multiple adaptations)).

A new char can look at CTN 23-24 (T1+T1-15+adapt) and attempt it every once in a while hoping to get lucky and see that they'll be able to successfully cast it most of the time by late T1 whereas CTN 27-28 (CTN+6+adapt) is late in T2 before they can cast it most of the time. Personally, I see this as a major problem (and it will likely cause me to create/play even fewer arcane casters).

Even with the current sum-15 CTN rule, I see adapted spells used more often than advanced spells (though I haven't played at ArcaniCon/Origins much so that "level" of play may be significantly different).

Another of the *big* advantages of the Advanced Spell is being able to get 2 effect off on one Clock Tick rather than waiting for Speed and possibly Strain to wear off. Even if you Fail to cast once, that's 1 Tick delay and some Strain (which you could eat or Fate point away).

We always hear that Action Economy and Speed are paramount in Arcanis. Advanced Spells are a primary way for casters to increase their action economy tremendously. It's not supposed to be easy to do.

John

There is that. The current rules turn a lot of advanced spells into interruptible actions so the action economy is much less.

I would much rather see advanced spells be slower than the new errata and easier to cast (ex highest speed+2 and highest+tier+tier CTN). That makes it inconsistent with advanced maneuvers (which I would prefer were consistent) but the attribute dice are already treated differently between the two.

One thing to remember in this discussion is that only so much can be discovered in playtesting before a rulebook is printed. As this is a new system, discrepencies are going to arise.

Legends of Arcanis has been "Break Testing" the system, and certain parts of the spellcasting system have shown to be broken at lower tiers and need addressing.

I wouldn't call Arcanis a new system at this point (it was published in 2011 and the Quick Start was around for a year (more?) before that). New systems always have issues that need errata but a major change to the accessibility (eg significant increase to CTN) of something as fundamental to spellcasting as advanced spells after 3 years seems like a bad idea. For comparison, Catalyst is considered horrible in getting errata out in a timely manner (often taking them a 6-12 months for major books and minor books sometimes never getting needed errata).

In all the tables I've played at (many fewer than a lot of others who frequent these boards), I've never seen anyone abuse advanced spells. I'm certainly not saying that can't be abused or that nobody is abusing them but I think significantly increasing the CTN for T1+T1 advanced spells is an unacceptable change (as I've said in this thread and others, I don't have any issues with any other aspect of the advanced spell errata (I'd prefer they follow the general exploding dice rule for consistency but understand the reason for changing a second Primary to +2 and am okay with it)). I like the highest+tier+tier (or possibly with a small multiplier on one of the tiers) as it gives variability depending on tiers of spells used and does not significantly increase T1+T1 advanced spells.

Just to take a step back and view the big picture, to me it appears as though the issues raised in the last 10 or so posts are no longer about the math of advanced spells, but are instead about the philosophy of advanced spells. The flat +6 works, mathematically with the vision of advanced spells that Pedro listed, earlier. The problem is that the vision does not agree with some of the players' visions of what advanced spells should be.

Personally, I don't really have a horse in this race. My primary is one of the (apparently) few straight-up Marshal characters in the campaign. I also don't really care much which vision for advanced spells is implemented. But it seems to me that the vision behind the math needs to be made available to the player base so that they understand why the changes are being implemented.

The idea that an advanced spell should be about as difficult to accomplish as a base spell with two adaptations was never one that I was aware of until this errata discussion. I'm fine with it. Does that change the math from pre-errata? Yup, sure does. And changing the math will make some aspects easier and some aspects harder. Some examples:

Tier 4 + Tier 4 = significantly easier with the new rules.
Tier 1 + Tier 1 = Somewhat harder with the new rules.
Tier 4 + Tier 1 = Mixed. While combining a base T4 with a base T1 will generally be harder, you can now adapt the T1 spell multiple times before making the advanced spell, and so long as the CTN does not surpass the T4 spell's CTN, it costs you nothing. In the pre-errata rules, that would have been expensive.

My point? There are pluses and minuses to each set of rules. And as with most decisions, you will be able to please some of the players, but certainly not all. And in my opinion, the proposed changes seem a bit easier to implement and clean up an area that has always been a bit messy. In general, I like them. I suggest taking a step back and looking at the whole forest for a moment... While you may not like aspect X or Y of the rule change, do you agree with the vision?

Scott

Scott, I don't believe that the +6 works at higher tiers. but that's why i hijacked this to another thread