Devlog #2: Spellcasting

Last Week Recap

In the previous week of Ambition development I wrote posts about v0.1.1, the upcoming roadmap, Imps, Harpies and Harpy playtest material.

Ambition v0.1.1: https://www.patreon.com/posts/ambition-v0-1-1-115665161

Roadmap: https://www.patreon.com/posts/roadmap-for-v0-1-115762178

Imp Art Blast: https://www.patreon.com/posts/imps-imps-imps-115765212

Harpy Art Bible: https://www.patreon.com/posts/harpy-anatomical-115822399

Harpy Bloodline Playtest: https://www.patreon.com/posts/harpy-bloodline-116212143

Posts Coming Next Week

Next week in Ambition I have posts planned to talk about Deserters playtest material, Investigator playtest material, and Pookah playtest material.

• Deserters are bastard cutthroat fighters, wielders of ultraviolent weaponry, and fight with a complete lack of principles or fairness.
• Investigators are tribunal and narrative powerhouses, assembling their casefile, and flipping the odds of tribunals with their turnabout clock.
• Pookahs are small, adorable, and feisty bat characters. They have an exceptional amount of combat prowess with their scurry and small stature. They are proud little warriors.
• A Devlog with what I’ve been working on longterm with Ambition.

Devlog #3: Spellcasting

This week and next week are going to be spent on some broad restructuring of how Ambitions spellcasting works. In its current state, it is a very derivative vancian magic system found in your standard fare of fantasy ttrpgs. With spell slots, spell levels, prepared casting, spontaneous casting, concentration, etc. Its only purpose for creation has been to create a scaffolding to build Witch off of, and play with magic in my design space before making the system.

Right now Witch needs a pretty substantial rewrite for the upcoming v0.1.2. Papercraft Mage and Weaver need more design space to mechanically express than what the current spell system allows. Its time to remake the system.

Goals Outline

1. No more magical saving throw, there are now three saving throws. Physical, mind, and voice. Wands are good at targeting saving throws in general, but better at targeting mind. Swords are only good at Physical. Cups are only good at Voice.
2. Replacing spellslots with spell costs. Each core wands class has a different resource they are pulling from, which is how spells are sorted by class. Pentacles classes borrow from a certain wands classes costs, and thereby their spells.
   1. Spell costs can now have unique intrinsic mechanics.
      1. Witches/Untamed have Spite, where they can trade health for more resource.
      2. Papercraft Mages/Perfumers have ink, which lets them get meta-magic like effects depending on the ink being used.
      3. Weavers have Aether/Materia (undecided on name), which treats almost all of their "spells" as first level and the quality (spell level) of the cast is very modular, tacking on additional effects as you upcast.
      4. Oracles/Accursed have their deck, which is their resource and spell level. They get to do their draw cards minigame. Accursed carry tarot cards on them like daoist fulu, as inhibitors or latent releases for curses.
3. There is a new 0 cost spell-type called a ritual, that is basically a "use one per downtime" kind of spell. It costs a downtime action, and as narrative play/downtime specific influences.
4. I gotta a little silly with naming the different spell levels, because spell levels are trade marked and I personally hated uttering them in any in game context.
   1. Wheel - Spite
      1. Ex: Ponderous Orb of the 3rd Wheel/3 Spoke Wheel Ponderous Orb
   2. Quality - Materia
      1. Ex: Ferrous Lash of 2nd quality materia
   3. Stroke - Papercraft Mage
      1. 7 Stroke Fox Fire
   4. Rank - Oracle
      1. Ex: 3 of the Lovers Divination
5. Fundamentally changing concentration. I like the tax, but I don't know if the interrupt mechanic is working. Basically I want spells that need an action to be sustained, become mutually exclusive, can be broken by something the enemy can do, or some combination of the three.
   1. Borrowing from pf2e before I find my verbiage
   2. Sustain. Requires the sustain action to continue casting.
   3. Concentrate is a trait attached to spells or actions. You can not do two things that have the this trait, and there are some actions or states that you can be in that prevent the use of concentrate actions.
   4. Fragile. Can be broken by x.

Old vs New Rules

Old Spellcasting Rules

The old spellcasting rules were barebones, about two pages in length.

• Spellcasting
  • Casting a Spell
  • Spell Attack Modifier and Spell DC
  • Spellslots
  • Prepared Spellcasting
  • Spontaneous Spells
  • Concentration
  • Upcasting Spells
  • Cantrips
  • Spellcasting in Different Modes of Play

New Spellcasting Rules

New spellcasting rules create the space I am looking for the other more unique spellcasters in Ambition, while also existing as a better glossary for terms. Some rules, like prepared and spontaneous spellcasting are staying pretty similar to before but overall the foundations of resource for management are being reworked entirely. The overall goal of it being, that the resource you are managing to be a spellcaster is a mechanical expression and choice in of itself.

This design idea is a reverberation of the design goals of how Swords archetypes were constructed in Ambition. All Swords archetypes use weapons and engage with the system through the strike action. But the kinds of weapons they can use, the way their strike actions work, and their special exceptions to the base system rules is where the differences come from. Bulwarks get to cheat the multi-attack penalty to feal like a walking armory, Sundancers have elaborate combination weapons that have unique actions and resources to let them excess their style, and Deserters use weapons that are a size class larger than they are.

Wands classes are different from each other, not just in the features they can take or spells they can learn or how many spells they can bring into an encounter. But their specific, mechanical expressions of the spell actions and resources are different. A spite caster plays the game differently than an ink caster even without features, or archetype identity. In the same way a bulwarks multiweapon expression with strikes is fundamentally a different subsystem than Sundancers trick weapon strike expression.

• Spellcasting
  • Arcane Forms
    • Spell
    • Cantrip
    • Ritual
  • Arcane Reservoir
    • Spite
    • Materia
    • Ink
    • Cards
  • Spell Magnitude
    • Upcasting Spells
  • Spell Ability Modifier
  • Saving Throw Difficulty Class
  • Learning Spells
    • Known Spells
    • Prepared Spells
    • Bloodline Spells
  • Casting Spells
    • Spontaneous Spellcasting
    • Prepared Spellcasting
    • Casting Times
    • Casting Requirements
  • Spell Origins
    • Nameless
    • Calamity
    • “Wisp”
    • “Whisper
  • Spellcasting in Different Modes of Play
  • Scrolls, Inscriptions, and Papercraft Magics

Snippets from New Ruleset

Introductory Text

*A spell is language. A stories lesser form, a metaphors realization, or the pressure of archetype on culture. The essence of spellcasting stems from a “re-”, redefining, reshaping, reimagining, or restructuring of the rules that language has already set forth on Imbrier. Witch’s respond to this base language of creation with spite, ***Papercraft Mages redefine the arcane with ink, Weavers reshape the mothers natural language with materia, and Oracles restructure the narrative of fate and destiny with cards. This chapter explains that language, so that you may reshape Imbrier as well.

Snippet from Arcane Reservoir

The first choice narrows possibility substantially. It crashes down infinity into a section of only a couple hundred billion possibilities. The art of Papercraft magics is this refinement, reducing the possibilities of a spell until the spell can be the only thing it could ever be. The work is done when infinity comes down to one. The lesson of today is that the first choice you will ever make, on any spell, is your medium. You have already stepped into the ballpark of completion before your brush hits the canvas. A spell cast with spite can only be in the form of spite, that is true for the inks as well. Your narrow your potential before you may feel its borders, remember that, and make sure to lean into it. Not against it.

All wands and pentacle spellcasting is limited by their arcane reservoir. A resource that is spent to cast spells, rituals, and use certain archetype features. All arcane reservoirs operate share a fundamental set of rules and limitations, while each individual reservoir has their own unique peculiarities that distinguishes it from the rest. Each archetype that uses an arcane reservoir has a table on their page describing how much of reservoir they have and how much they gain per level.

Spite first pass

Spite is the arcane reservoir of Witches and Untamed. It runs hot through the body, overwhelmingly so if the reservoir is full. It is a emotional skill to manage and handle ones own capacity for spite. Spite is the only exclusively internally driven reservoir, it is fueled by emotions and because of that Spite spellcasters have more freedom in regaining their reservoir than others.

Spite spellcasters exchange their health to generate more spite on the fly.

When casting a spell that costs spite while your arcane reservoir is full. It is upcasted by two orders of magnitude with no additional spite cost.

Design Notes on Witch, Papercraft Mage, and Perfumer

Originally while planning this rework for v0.1.2, I knew that there would have to be some pretty substantial changes to Witch. From the outline it looked like Nameless and Gunwitch would be more or less the same, Whisper would get a partial rework, and Wisp would get an entire rework. The biggest chunk of work being in reworking Witch’s first level to be less complex and easier to understand.

While some of that is true, the new spell system is laying groundwork that I want Witch to be utilizing more fully, so much so that base 1st and 2nd level Witch is being entirely reworked as well. Gunwitch and Nameless witch are still in really good places and I want to keep most of their core features. Things might change with curses and witch sight but I am currently unsure, a lot of what is informing how I want spite as a resource to work comes from these two expressions.

For the core first level rework, the first change coming is to the familiar system. With a generic familiar that all pre-expression witches get instead of each expression having a large preliminary wall of text in this section.

For Papercraft Mage, the primary design goal for them is the utilization of different inks to give casted spells unique effects. Excited to do a full write up later when the shell for that class has enough support that I can start writing spells for it.

Perfumer is about 40% written and it is the first Pentacles class. A half-caster. With the new spell rework, and tying this class to Papercraft Mage’s ink spell system. There are a lot of new opportunities for mechanics that I was struggling to find a good way to implement. Right now a lot of Perfumers core mechanics don’t involve any rolling to hit, or saving throws to be made. Which has led to a game feel of things just happening on their own, which is cool in some ways but very unsatisfying to play. Their new Arcane Reservoir gives a shared mechanical structure that lets them keep the incremental unavoidability of how their perfumes work while giving them active control over the battlefield or social situations.