WOIN Duration Costs with Elements of Magic

Suskeyhose

Explorer
The Elements of Magic system presented in chapter 5 is my favorite magic system in any TTRPG, and I've been following it since the early days of the idea with the Elements of Magic supplement for D&D 3.5e.

With the 1.2 version of WOiN however it seems like some of the duration effects haven't been altered to keep pace with the updated duration costs.
The 1.2 update to Elements of Magic changed the costs of durations to Instantaneous being 0 MP, 1 round being 1 MP, concentration being 2 MP, and 1 minute being 3 MP.
However, the duration, spread enhancement doesn't seem to have been re-balanced with this in mind, as it still says that one minute has no duration cost and as such spreading effects over one minute is a pure savings of 3 MP (or half the cost of the effect, whichever is lower).
With the duration costs being updated to 3 MP for one minute, that makes spreading over 1 minute a break-even, and higher duration costs in general in the 1.2 version make spread duration practically irrelevant, as even with a 1 hour cost of 5 MP and its possible 200 MP max reduction of effects it only provides any kind of buff to a spell cast with an effect that costs more than 10 MP (5 MP for duration cost, -5 MP for spread savings), and the actual application this has is quite situational as the only spells it really affects are ones with the Grow Plant enhancement, as that's one of the only effects which persists after the spell's duration ends. For damage spells this reduction is entirely irrelevant because the MP cost reduction occurs at 1 MP per 3 rounds while the cost for additional damage increases by 2 MP per 1d6 damage, so spreading it out evenly results in <1d6 damage per round. For most other spells spreading the effect over time just does nothing as normally the entire effect persists for the full duration anyway (e.g. evocations could benefit by having damage occur multiple times, but SOAK increases with abjure apply instantly and for the full duration anyway).

What would be a recommended way to rebalance this effect?

An additional aspect here is the introduction of the Instantaneous effect duration in the first place. The cantrip spell chart wasn't updated to reflect its inclusion and has a 1 round duration (which normally costs 1 MP), and this seems to imply that some spells have effects that persist past the spell's end. This both makes sense to me as many cantrip spells would becomes useless without the 1 round duration (e.g. Soak not being applied for a round, or transform not allowing you to make use of the transformed state), but also doesn't as the costs are distinct, costing 1 MP in complex spells, but 0 MP in cantrips.

EDIT: Added reasoning for why duration, spread is useless for damage spells
 

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Suskeyhose

Explorer
So I see that Morrus has been more active around here lately, so I'm hoping maybe I can get some attention here, and if not by him maybe just someone else's homebrew for this.
 


Suskeyhose

Explorer
I also want to note here that this can also tie into which duration costs are actually supposed to be used. The one in the book has all the problems I say, but the one on the woinrules website doesn't match any of the drafts I can remember or the 1.1 books. This means there's some chance that it is the intended cost now, and it could solve some of the issues with spread.
 

Morrus

Well, that was fun
Staff member
It's so long ago I wrote that I'd have to reverse engineer to remember, so I would think at this point your reasoning would be as good as mine on the topic! Let me crack o[pen my book.... yes the sentence "note that 10 rounds or less is equal to one minute and has no duration cost itself, so this is a pure saving" looks like it is outdated and can be ignored.

So as written you do 6d6 damage. You decide to spread it over 6 rounds, doing 2d6 per round. Normally that would cost 10MP for the damage. 6 rounds is 3MP (it's less than 1 minute) so the spell costs 13MP total. You get a -2 MP discount, so it costs 11 MP instead.

Does that answer the question?
 

Suskeyhose

Explorer
It's so long ago I wrote that I'd have to reverse engineer to remember, so I would think at this point your reasoning would be as good as mine on the topic! Let me crack o[pen my book.... yes the sentence "note that 10 rounds or less is equal to one minute and has no duration cost itself, so this is a pure saving" looks like it is outdated and can be ignored.

So as written you do 6d6 damage. You decide to spread it over 6 rounds, doing 2d6 per round. Normally that would cost 10MP for the damage. 6 rounds is 3MP (it's less than 1 minute) so the spell costs 13MP total. You get a -2 MP discount, so it costs 11 MP instead.

Does that answer the question?
All of this makes sense except how you deal 2d6 damage per round for 6 rounds and still only have to spend MP to buy 6d6.
 


It's so long ago I wrote that I'd have to reverse engineer to remember, so I would think at this point your reasoning would be as good as mine on the topic! Let me crack o[pen my book.... yes the sentence "note that 10 rounds or less is equal to one minute and has no duration cost itself, so this is a pure saving" looks like it is outdated and can be ignored.

So as written you do 6d6 damage. You decide to spread it over 6 rounds, doing 2d6 per round. Normally that would cost 10MP for the damage. 6 rounds is 3MP (it's less than 1 minute) so the spell costs 13MP total. You get a -2 MP discount, so it costs 11 MP instead.

Does that answer the question?
What's not clear to me is why one would deal damage over time instead of all at once at the beginning, and still manage to spend more MP to do so.
I thought that dealing damage over time would result in a net saving of MP wrt dealing all damage at the beginning, and this saving would work in terms of game balance because the opponent may have time to get healing, or also because with a lower damage every round more of it could be SOAKed.
But now I'm confused on why one would choose to do so.
 

Morrus

Well, that was fun
Staff member
What's not clear to me is why one would deal damage over time instead of all at once at the beginning, and still manage to spend more MP to do so.
I thought that dealing damage over time would result in a net saving of MP wrt dealing all damage at the beginning, and this saving would work in terms of game balance because the opponent may have time to get healing, or also because with a lower damage every round more of it could be SOAKed.
But now I'm confused on why one would choose to do so.
Healing over time is more the usage. If you’re taking small amounts of damage each round, or maybe environmental, it can compensate for it.
 

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