The Question: Is offensive Magic too weak in Shadowdark (SD)?
I need to do a full analysis (mathematical), but my initial worries are coming back. What follows is just the beginnings of an analysis, so take things with a grain of salt for now.
My Basic Tenets on why magic spells should hit hard (harder than a melee martial type guy's avg attacks):
- Limited spells per day. As a mage/magic-user/blaster, you have a limited number per day. You have to guess when preparing (SD fixes the guessing at least, thanks for that, but high chance for spells to fizzle).
- Compare to a melee guy who might swing 10 times per fight and hit 5+ of those 10 times.
- A Mage-caster type in the char level range of 3-5 during an average fight might cast 1 big spell, and if it misses, he might try another big or medium spell. If it hits, that could be his main contribution. In between those things he might be doing some very minimal ranged damage, at least in non-5e combat where there are no free high dmg Cantrips.
- Chance to fail. Often times in D&D or SD the chance for spells to fail is significant, so even more limits on "doing your thing" and doing it well. So when you do get off the full "hit" of your spell, it needs to be large and impactful. If you are doing average damage per round and not anything more, and with no option to do much more, then why pick a magic using class with all the costs and potential fizzles and failures?
- Tactical and coolness variation. If everybody just an avg. of 10 HP of dmg each round, it would sure be a boring game.
- Mages die easily/ glass cannons. Mages need to concentrate on defensive movement in order to deliver hard hitting offense. If they get out of position, it hurts them more than most (all other?) classes.
- The "Controller" thing that gets thrown around in 5e analysis. True, a mage sometimes is using his spells to break up the enemy and control the battlefield. Sleep/Web/Wall of Force (where is wall of fire, I missed it?) seem to be the ones in SD that at least sort of do that job. Wizards in SD aren't casting those every single battle, but they are critical spells.
- Consider the flip side to what a magic caster is
- High HP, armor and shield options,
- infinite attack chances with a melee or ranged weapon,
- variety through gear.
- Every roll of 20 is a crit (SD giving crit rolls to magic users is something).
- Missing has no direct penalty (you don't run out of swords at least, might run out of missile weapons like arrows) other than to delay killing of a foe.
- I'll give a funny example, which explains things clearly and annoyingly:
- I had a magic user type character in a Shadowdark game, was doing almost no dmg with my magic missile (which BTW, I had to use a luck token on to not lose the spell after the first failed attempt... first spell even in Shadowdark was a failure, how appropriate. You figure if it is a 25% chance to fail your first advantage spell roll, 25% of people playing SD have experienced this annoying failure. Or without advantage, a 45% chance to fail your level 1 spell at level 1 char... 45% failure is a lot. No wonder it's so common to give folks a luck token to start off.)
- 1 dmg (plus luck token wasted). 2 dmg. 1 dmg. Those were 3 rounds of trying to kill a monster with magic missile.
- Switched to an Obsidian Dagger, thrown, hit for 6 damage. Killed a monster. Yeah, that's about right. It seems better to use the luck token on an Obsidian Dagger throw than a Magic Missile in SD, if you need to kill a monster ASAP at low level.
- Not casting spells early in the session/dungeon is encouraged in Shadowdark to avoid losing spells... that makes the magic user caster types horde spells till a big fight. I hope you as a caster "know" when a big fight is occurring... pretty sure some DMs will not give a hint. While holding back has always been a mage thing in D&D, you normally get some magic options to use during the session.
- This person thinks Fighters are the strongest class in SD. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crkkwY8XHKI
- One thing to consider is that new lower level spells that help with combat could possibly become a thing to boost caster types in combat.
- DM/GM heavily dependent, but the DM can throw in extra scrolls and even higher than your normal level scrolls for your magic caster to try to use.
- Can be much more powerful than in other game systems.
- But the risk is higher b/c it is harder to pass the spellcheck at higher level spells with higher penalties/easier to die.
Assuming monster hitpoints are about half (verify/compare) of what 5e is, and approx. the same HP as B/X... are the offensive magic spells good enough?
FIREBALL in SD - OK at first then weak - Fireball in 5e is 8d6 without upcast.
- Fireball in SD is 4d6, cannot upcast(?). Might be similar to 5e. But probably roughly half the power of B/X at higher levels.
- Fireball in B/X is 5d6 at level 5 (perhaps comparable to level 3 char in SD), and 20d6 at level 20 char (comparable to level 10 in SD).
MAGIC MISSILE in SD - conclusion, maybe total junk?
- SD's MM does 1d4. At all levels. No +1, no nothing.
- 5e at 3d4+3 at base level casting. So much better at level 1, decent/avg later.
- B/X is 1d6+1 and increasing... 5th level char, I think it'd be 3d6+3. Seems kinda strong from level 3 and up.
Arguments that SD's Dmg is lower across the board
- Spell Crits vs. Spell Backfires - So the argument might be that you can spell crit in SD. But the counter argument is that you can die from your own spell on a roll of 1 in SD.
- Do melee characters do less dmg?
- We see a range of melee weapons, mostly the same as D&D 5e including a SD Greatsword doing 1d12 (SD Greataxe does 1d10 I think instead of 5e's 1d12 , that feels more like anti-lawsuit differences).
- And IF the SD AC is more like 5e where you hit much more frequently than B/X or 1e D&D, then I would say melee is very very roughly 75% of where it is in dmg output in 5e
- because SD doesn't use the STRength Modifier doing extra damage.
Anti-Magic Sentiment is a common theme with the OSR new school old school folks
- SD has Spell backfires (like the DCC spell backfire detriment but without the spellburn to nuke things and without the cool magic tables that do crazy powerful things if you roll high and/or spellburn and/or luck... soo SD has probably almost all of the bad, almost none of the good.)
- There are way more martial or mostly martial character classes in SD.
- SD has right now 8-9 or so Martial Classes (including Ranger + Knight of St. Ydris AKA a palandin, and the Warlock which is 90% melee).
- Fighter - 1d8 HP per level
- Knight of St. Ydris - 1d6 HP per level
- Warlock - 1d6 HP per level
- Ranger - 1d8 HP per level
- Desert Rider (the Camel dude) - 1d8 HP per level
- Pit fighter - 1d8 HP per level
- Sea Wolf - 1d8 HP per level
- Basilisk warrior - 1d8 HP per level
- Thief/Ras-Godai maybe - 1d6 HP per level
- SD had 3 semi-offensive magic-caster classes so far, only one is mostly offensive... the Wizard.
- Wizard
- Has 12 spells per spell level
- witch
- Has 10 spells per spell level.
- seer - - 1d6 HP per level - - leather armor (so much more support roles, much more like the Cleric)
- Has only 4 spells per spell level
- The Necromancer class is coming, so maybe that will be another offensive caster.
- SD Specialist/Mixed/Support Classes
- Thief
- Cleric
- Bard
- Ras-Godai (assassin with some powers, looks like a Ninja)
- Compare to D&D 5e's (this is hard b/c subclasses can change a lot)
- Fighter, Ranger, Barbarian, Monk(?), Rogue, Paladin, (Thief/Assassin?)
- Wizard, Sorcerer, Warlock (true caster)
Devil's Advocate, here are people who say the Magic in Shadowdark sounds good:
