My issue with pre-buffing is that too many players want each and every possible thing cast and often they have some 'perfect' combination that makes their character (or the party) significantly more powerful.

I like the situations, like often happens in a BI, where there is something 'coming' and the group has 2-3 rounds to cast buffs, then its on. I think is realistic, story-appropriate, and pretty balanced.

This is a good way to do it. You have X Ticks to buff prior to the start of combat (As do the bad guys of course).

Thanks for bringing this up. It's been an interesting discussion.

I think a number of really good points have been brought up. Anything with a duration of Scene obviously expires and needs to be refreshed periodically. Scene spells have "real" durations measured somewhere between minutes and hours. Whether these should be available and up prior to box text ending should in my mind either

1. Be specified by the mod as to whether there's time to do buffing in advance
2. Be at the discretion of the GM

So much of the above is situation dependent. As a player however the GM wants to handle it is fine by me.

Responding to some specific thoughts, I agree with Matt that having obvious effect spells are about the equivalent of walking around with weapons drawn. Certainly not recommended in civilized areas.

To I think it was John's comments about as tiers go up, buffs are expected, I'd say yes, but. Many of the buffs stage up with higher CTNs. I don't think that it's expected that they're up going into a combat. That buff may be the best choice for a caster or not in combat, but it should be their choice. As mentioned above, I think whether it's reasonable or not is situational. More importantly, the combats aren't going to be built with a set of combat monster builds in mind. Henry's been clear he doesn't want an arms war. Also consider that mods have to be playable by as few as 3 people.

One other thought is that Eldritch casters who do this should be reminded that constantly having active spells up is likely to attract the attention of Harvesters. If they had this mindset, I'm not sure how long they would have lasted without being discovered.

With a sweep of his hat,

Paul

Yes. I agree with this. Sometimes these circumstances come up outside of BIs and if it makes sense I'm fine with it. But I also don't like the expectation that you always have everything up.



Hey I'm not knocking the guy with the shield. But its not Displacement, Improved Invisibility and Stoneskin either...where I don't know where you are and will still have an extra 50% chance to miss you even if beat the invisibility/find the right square to attack, and the first 10 hits bounce off you (AR infinite).

Can you auto-cast that?

One thing players need to remember is that just because the judge says you have time to cast a buff spell or two does not mean that you can auto-cast your maximum adaptation. I don't know any PC that can hit a 30 TN even 50% of the time. (assuming tier 2.3 with a D12 casting stat and +10 to Arcanum, the average roll is 27.5. A PC could easily try 2-3 times and fail that.

Players need to remember that they still have to roll, even when combat hasn't started, yet.

Scott

i can auto cast the +2 verions of those spells iirc

I never let players out of combat roll for scene/tick buffs. A ruling was made on granting players one binding role per scene last Origins so I let that one go.

Edited

the one attempt at a binding spell per scene isnt a ruling its in the book, ARPG 346



does this mean you never let them roll for the precast ones or just never at all?

They can roll in combat for those, not scene buffs.

Lothair will not rely on man made weapons and armor. His primary weapon is his claws from "Claws of the Beast" I auto-cast the D8 version. Come 2.1 he will awaken to having "Bestial Hide"

I will agree that in a city mod it would not make sense to have either one of these spells going all the time. However if I am in the country with limited chance of being seen I would probably have the bestial hide going. Just be covered by a cloak so I don't scare some poor farmer. If I am in hostile territory were other party are going to be riding with Weapons ready, it would not be unreasonable for me to have my weapon "drawn" as well.

Doing those two things does not give me an unfair advantage as it makes me at level with the Martial who has his AR at 4+ and can do serious damage. Sure I have a few spells that I can sling arround however the Martial character has all kinds of weapon tricks/maneuvers that make him so bad.

It seems that this thread is saying that a caster pre buffing is to much of an advantage of non-casters. The game is pretty well balanced where one person is not going to break a mod. The ones that I have seen just as many outrageously built Martial characters as Casters.