Suggestions for caster
Posted: Sat Jan 26, 2019 5:49 pm
Hello. I would like to have some inputs from you all concerning casters in Earthdawn.
Context: I'm part of a gaming group who played Earthdawn for about 18 months now. I have experience in Earthdawn for more than 20 years but all the others are brand new. Furthermore, in all those years I never really bothered to play a caster as I was too lazy to read 'that other part of the books'.
Also; we are... playing First/Second Edition (yeah, I know). I was not part of the group when they started and that was all the GM had. I'm still working on trying to make him switch.
The problem: one of my friends is playing an Elementalist and he is starting to find it boring in combat. (Remember; Elementalist are much more 'combat' in older editions).
All decent combat spell at his circle are 1 or 2 threads so basically combat is:
step1: spend a round thread weaving
step2: spend another round thread weaving
step3: spend a THIRD round spellcasting
step4: if all of the above went well, roll damage.
If ANY of those steps fail, he has to start all over and even if everything works, the damage/effect roll might still suck. In fact, even when the damage is decent, it's still 'just' comparable to the damage our Swordmaster, Archer and Skyraider are doing... EVERY ROUND.
I'm trying to find ideas to help him out and I don't find any:
- The extra-successes and extra-effect mechanics of 4th edition is not available to him.
- We are still in the low circles so attempting to cast more than 1 thread in a round is a substantial risk and the ratio of fail/success is making it, on average, the same as just casting a single thread per round.
- Willforce is still 2 circles away so no karma on damage.
Now, even tho 4th Edition mitigate that a bit with the Extra-Successes mechanics, I would think the situation is still rather the same for casters now so I must be missing something critical.
I would appreciate any 'power-up' suggestions you can give me.
Thank you.
Context: I'm part of a gaming group who played Earthdawn for about 18 months now. I have experience in Earthdawn for more than 20 years but all the others are brand new. Furthermore, in all those years I never really bothered to play a caster as I was too lazy to read 'that other part of the books'.
Also; we are... playing First/Second Edition (yeah, I know). I was not part of the group when they started and that was all the GM had. I'm still working on trying to make him switch.
The problem: one of my friends is playing an Elementalist and he is starting to find it boring in combat. (Remember; Elementalist are much more 'combat' in older editions).
All decent combat spell at his circle are 1 or 2 threads so basically combat is:
step1: spend a round thread weaving
step2: spend another round thread weaving
step3: spend a THIRD round spellcasting
step4: if all of the above went well, roll damage.
If ANY of those steps fail, he has to start all over and even if everything works, the damage/effect roll might still suck. In fact, even when the damage is decent, it's still 'just' comparable to the damage our Swordmaster, Archer and Skyraider are doing... EVERY ROUND.
I'm trying to find ideas to help him out and I don't find any:
- The extra-successes and extra-effect mechanics of 4th edition is not available to him.
- We are still in the low circles so attempting to cast more than 1 thread in a round is a substantial risk and the ratio of fail/success is making it, on average, the same as just casting a single thread per round.
- Willforce is still 2 circles away so no karma on damage.
Now, even tho 4th Edition mitigate that a bit with the Extra-Successes mechanics, I would think the situation is still rather the same for casters now so I must be missing something critical.
I would appreciate any 'power-up' suggestions you can give me.
Thank you.