Most of the discussion has moved to the other thread but I thought I'd reply to this.

Just for the record, I don't really have a horse in this race either (my primary is a dabbler who won't have enough spells to play with advanced until at least 2.2, my secondary is a templar (eg divine so no advanced spells), but my tertiary is a primal (who could have fun with advanced spells)).

Yes, I agree. A lot of the later discussion is about the philosophy of how advanced spells should work. I fundamentally disagree that advanced spells should be as hard to cast as two adaptations (eg +6 or sum-12). I think low tier is far more important than high tier (I expect 90% of Arcanis games will never go higher than T2 (not counting the living campaign eventually)). My view is that advanced spells should be an unreliable option at 1.1 and auto-cast (without adaptations) before the end of tier 1 but I seem to be in the minority. I would much rather see more restrictions (such as making them slower and often interruptible again) than have a higher CTN.

Sorry. I didn't get to the other thread before this one. (I didn't check the boards over the last couple of days.)

So as not to open up two conversations on the same topic, I'll try to speak only to the philosophy, here and leave all math discussion out of it. And if you like, let me know and we can move this to the other thread....

Why do you think that +6 is not a good fit for higher tiers? Can you elaborate on that?
So, while I disagree with your assumption that, "90% of Arcanis games will never go higher than T2" I think that point is irrelevant. Because, even if we agree that only 10% of games will go beyond that, if you are in one of those 10% of games, the rules need to be just as clear and playable as they do for the first two tiers. Otherwise, players will play something else, where the rules allow for a full range of character growth.
I can't say whether or not you''re in the minority, there. But I do disagree. Tier 1 casters should not be able to auto-cast an advanced spell. Here's my reasoning... Tier 1 casters are beginners. They've just "graduated from school" and are learning to use their skills in the real world. They have enough experience to manipulate the leftover energy from creation, or to bargain with some spirit or another, etc. in order to get some effect. And they may even be experienced enough to perform a basic adaptation on the spell. But they are not yet skilled enough to perform multiple adaptations without risking failure to cast. For that they need to move up to tier 2. At tier 2, they learn more complicated spells. And while they can now easily (auto-cast) add an adaptation (possibly 2) to a tier 1 spell, they have the same difficulties with tier 2 spells that they had before with tier 1 spells. So where *should* advanced spells fall? I strongly agree with the concept that making an advanced spell is more difficult than adding a single adaptation to a similar spell. The very concept of it, taking two spells and smashing them together into a single, combined spell, seems more complicated that taking an existing spell and extending the range, widening the area or speeding up the casting time. To me, two adaptations seems on par. I'm good with that.

But you suggest that players might lose interest if they cannot make advanced spells more than 50% reliable by late tier 1. I disagree with that assertion as well. I see advanced spells as something that tier 1 casters will look forward to. And I don't believe that the rules should be used to mitigate whether or not a player will remain interested in the game. (Now, that's a difficult blanket statement to make. I know that it can be taken to extremes. I know that if I made an RPG with horribly boring and arbitrary rules, no one would remain interested in it for long. That's not where I'm going with this.) Game developers cannot control a person's interest level. And they shouldn't try to. Instead, the rules should be internally consistent and reasonably easy to adjudicate. That's what a game developer can control. Trying to do more only ends up muddying up the rules system.

Scott

I think we mostly agree on what game developers can and should do. We just disagree on where advanced spells should fit.

Another important thing that can't be overlooked is that the rules have made unadapted advanced spells pretty readily available to casters for the last 3 years. I expect a lot of current players not active on these boards will hate the significant increase in CTN for advanced spells. Similarly, I expect some players will read the rules and then check the errata and ask "WTF? Why was this rule changed from useful in tier 1 to being marginal until well into tier 2?".

As I've said many times in these threads, I'm fine with all of the changes (and really like most of them) except the significant increase in CTN for low-tier advanced spells. However, most other people commenting (including Pedro) seem to disagree with this so I expect to lose the argument. For my home Crusade game, since none of the players are interested in taking their characters to outside games, I will likely ignore or modify the new CTN (or possibly rule Metaphysical Understanding stacks with other talents giving casting bonuses (as written, Metaphysical Understanding is a sub-optimal talent if you already have Prodigy netting an effective +1 to rolls to cast advanced spells)).

I have to agree with Scott (and I think Cody) on the progression. Players need things to look forward to at each Tier. With the way the game works, a caster most likely is going to get their spells with their first advancement each Tier. When they learn a new Tier of spells, they can easily cast the Base spells. That doesn't really change throughout the Tier, except for the ability to add Adaptations and create Advanced Spells.

So here's how it looks:

Early Tier X: Autocast Tier X Base Spells. Hard to cast Tier X Adaptations/Advanced Spells
Late Tier X: Autocast Tier X Low Adaptations. Good chance to cast Tier X High Adaptations/Advanced Spells.
Early Tier X+1: Autocast Tier X+1 Base Spells. Hard to cast Tier X+1 Adaptations/Advanced Spells. Autocast/Easy to cast Tier X High Adaptations/Advanced Spells.

John

I still think that making tier IV spells just as easy to combine with another spell as a tier I spell is a mistake. I think the starting TN of the second spell should have some factor in the equation. I think this change greatly devalues the "scalable" value of tier 1 spells. Rather than seeing Tier one spells live on welded to newer spells through creating a combined advanced spell, I suspect we'll just be seeing more high tier spells combined together (which was harder in the old rules) into more of an uber-punch.

The change to CTN -12 means that added a Tier I spell to a Tier IV is way easier than 2 Tier IV's, so I think it's achieving what you want?

Whoops! My bad. Fell behind in my review and though it was still just a flat CTN+6. Thank you. At -12 it makes everything harder, which I'm not sure yet is a good thing or a bad thing, but I like the scaling.

At this point of the review process, we will just have to see it in play for 6 months and see if any issues arise.

My gut feeling is that CTN-12 is going to be too harsh in practice as the tiers go up, even if it does fix the TI Advanced problem.

As someone who play tested up through Tier 4.5 with 4 dedicated spell casters in the group I can tell you that spells out powered physical combat easily. Hopefully enough has or will change that will help move that balance point.

I think it's fair to say that in most fantasy RPGs spell casting out powers physical combat in most situations and by its nature, spell casting is more versatile than a physical combatant.

You may be right, as we play over the next year or so maybe we'll need to move back. It's not an easy balance to find especially if you want individual spells to be able to stand on their own rather than only becoming parts of other spells. The goal is for everyone to have fun playing and feel like they're contributing to the story be they Gandalf or Aragorn.

With a sweep of his hat,

Paul

I've staid out of the advanced spell casting debate so far just because I'm not really sure how the Math will play out and I am divide on the issue of big changes to advanced spells.

On the one hand I naturally lean toward conservative rulings so a -12 CTN (or whatever more difficult new metric is applied). Also like Paul, I agree that magic dominates in most fantasy RPGs...this could further help.

On the other hand, this is not a small change for an issue that should have come up during play testing for the fast play edition. Why wasn't this discussed then, and why are we tackling it now? So far advanced spells have had a smaller impact on combats than Smiting Heretics & Murderous Precision IME. (I'm also not looking for the Errata to create a "1.5" edition of the game. I also believe that with no save or die spells, limited mobility spells, and no raise dead spells that many traditional issues of magical dominance disappear).

Tukufu will presumably cast advanced spells as a psionic caster at some point. At present the cost in speed and strain rarely seems worth it to me. I like my strain to be gone after I stab someone with a sword or move and shoot with a flintlock.