Reworking Mastery of Magic

[Neros]

The 1 panel is a draw back for spellcasters, but its to symbolize that they are taking their time making the spell... However a whole panel is from 1-30 seconds... Im no spellcaster, so i cant tell you have long it takes to make a spell. But as i mentioned earlier, the more power the spell (complex), the longer it should take... Like creating small illusionary faries should hardly take a whole panel to activate.

As for telepathy, its to cheap compared to how useful it can be... But do you guys really think that the magic rules are fine as they are*?

[WildKnight]

Having played with them, I really do. Its a major drawback not being able to conjure up your effects right away. In alot of instances, circumstances have changed so much by the time your effect actually goes off that its not as useful as it would have been a page ago.

MoM gives you alot of stuff at a relatively cheap rate... but its drawbacks are severe, and honestly, it doesnt compete in power with something like Mastery of Magnetism or even Mastery of Fire with the right options.

[thanos]

The rules for Magic, as is, are fine. The drawbacks, IMHO, outweigh the gains for starting characters. Once Sorcery and Summoning become a bit more developed and characters can get effects to last a week or three, then things become a little more complicated. The great strength of Magic is its Versitility and Utility, not its speed. Preperation is everything. A magic user, given time by his teammates can certainly turn the tide of the battle...he just needs a bit of time.

[malice]

I'm w/thanos and WildKnight. Even if the rules for MoM weren't any good, I would never replace them with the incredible mess presented here. In straight game terms, the most powerful things about magic are Sorcery and the accumulate energy advantage that can be added to MoM, NOT the ability to do a ton of different things. Just like the guy with a ton of actions, sure he's got a solution to every situation, but he can only do so much at once.

[WildKnight]

As a GM, the abilities that give me nightmares are Inventing (completely broken if you allow players to apply their max Invention stones to something every day... which theoretically they should be able to do. In the course of 3 sessions, I've seen a Power Armored character triple his damage output and make himself nearly invulnerable to any form of harm via a Force Field/Toughness combo), Telepathy, and all the 30 stone abilities (Steal Superpower is THE WORST... not only does it give a character near unlimited power, its impossible to defend against and knocks the target out for a minute... oh, and Toughness doesn't work against it!)

[malice]

I can only recall one of my PCs using inventing, and he never got to make anything beyond some bionic eyes for the guy who got his eyes torn out, the rest of the time was spent on the run or under fire. Telepathy IS tough to GM for, the telepath took over nearly everyone in the Avenger's mansion except the two terrifying NPC villains that were attacking the place. None of my PCs ever sprung for 30 stone powers.

[Neros]

This discussion have touched my eyelids... The magic rules does work well, however some of them dont, since they dont have a restriction (Voodoo and Asgardian Magic).

[quixoteles]

The thing seems perfect with that power word effect as a given but lock it down to three stones, you see anything natural and it does all of those holy shit weird stuff with in limits.

[thanos]

Voodoo and Asgardian Magic have restrictions 1 & 2 just like Sorcery.

[Grimsolace]

As a quick note, the aspect stones of any created device is limited to half the inventing+int score of the character, rounding up. Thus a character with int 5 and inventing 2 could make a device up to 7/2, 4 stones. There is no way for an inventor, save for GM meddling, to make a Steal Superpower action, or any other 30 stone action, as he would need an impossibly high total of 60 amoung his inventing, intelligence and misc modifiers.

[Kaimontfendo]

Funny... I've seen Doctor Doom take the Silver Surfer's powers twice. Granted, he's got magic he can use too, but I seem to recall that he used technology.

Magic, inventing, and telepathy are still some of the most abusable abilities in MURPG, and magic is probably the worst. Heck, I've even built a character with Manipulate Mutagenic Fields and not felt bad about it.

To be completely honest, Hex-Spheres and the various magical actions are probably the only ones I'd completely disallow if I ever run another game. You want Genetic Engineering? Fine. Supress Mutant Powers, permanent? Sure. Time Travel? Well, Okay. Deadly Touch? That'll make for an interesting hero, so I'll even give you a GM discount on it. Power Cosmic? Physical Immunity? Cosmic Awareness? Transform Self by Touch? Absolutely. These powers actually cost what they're worth, if not more. But shouldn't an action that tampers with the fabric of reality cost more than a parlor trick like teleportation?

[Brainstem]

I wouldn't say that Hex Spheres are broken. If you want a specific effect, it takes quite a while to prepare (if it's going to be decent at all, that is) and if you don't take the time to prepare, it's all up to the GM. The player can add some input, but otherwise it's just up to the GM what happens.

Example....

4 stones are put into Hex-Spheres to disable an opponent, with no time spent to prepare a specific effect. First, the GM decides if anything is going to happen (if you're playing with probability, there's always that probability that nothing is going to happen at all) and then the GM decides what will happen. This could be anything, really. Maybe the Hex-Sphere increases the gravity in their area to slow them down (stopping their actions for this panel), sticks their feet to the ground (difficulty 4 to escape because of the Hex Spheres), or turns them all into slugs (Durability vs. the 4 put into Hex-Spheres, the leftovers are the amount of time they remain transformed for on the Duration row of the D&R chart). I've always been a proponent of the Hex-Spheres power because it really is just something fun to play with that can make the game a little more interesting. Although, I think Witchcraft should be considered underpriced considering you get Hex-Spheres, in addition to the other powers, for the price it would cost otherwise (factoring in the drop in CL from MoM).

[seadog]

Alright, I just now read all of this. First on the issue of telepathy, I do think it is a little overpowered with the contol others option. I saw someone mention that Jean Grey's ethics wouldn't stop, but I have to disagree. Her and Charles are two of the more powerful mutants and both of them struggle to not abuse that power. Jean has the added struggle of not releasing the Phoenix so I would definitely say that she wouldn't abuse the power. No villain has a reason not to though. Someone mentioned increasing the cost to keep control. I don't think they should have to pay the full cost of the other players actions because that is too expensive and it does come from that character's durablilty. Maybe the player should have to overcome the character's mental defense every turn instead of just spending 1 red stone per turn. That would increase the difficulty in proportion to the character's mental defense. That way you have a reasonable cost that doesn't go too overboard, but still requires a fair amount of effort.
I also agree with all of the people that think it is okay as is. The limitations make it balanced. I think the only problem with the MoM is the limited detail. I think it would be helpful to have a list of things that each branch can do. I think a good starting place would be to take a D&D book (for example) and put all of those spells into different branches of MoM. BTW I think that the one panel rule is fair because saying a spell is basically the same as saying a prayer. You are calling out to a supernatural being for aid. It takes a little time to accomplish that even for something simple. I do like the power word modifier for the easy actions.