Quote from: ggroy;604212Magic is something that would be hard to price in a precise manner.
 
For example, how would one price a "wish spell" or an "insta death" type spell.

The pricing is easiest for evocation-type direct damage spells. Instadeath is in theory equivalent to inflicting an unlimited amount of damage to a single target, but in practice the actual value isn't higher than [damage = HP of the strongest creature in the game]. Chance of the spell failing then weight the final value I suppose.
I think in point buy games there can also be a sort of 'feedback loop' that operates in the cost process; the rules don't just get created and then used to set point costs, rules tend to be added after the point cost to justify them. In cases like "instadeath" for example, it may be that the spell will have a Hit Dice cap that assigns an upper limit to the possible damage it can inflict. Or D&D Minis had a dragon that had about 500 HP and treated "death" effects as just dealing it 100 damage; again that sets a maximum value for the effect for pricing.
 
For wish? - not sure...damage as a measure is perfect, just an idea. If wish can do anything then the fair cost is "priceless" (minus cost of drawbacks caused by the casting), while if it duplicates the effect of other spells or abilities I guess you start with the cost of the costliest spell it can copy, then add a premium for the versatility??

Quote from: Ladybird;604216The advantage to using a tree-system, though, is that you can do that, and add "professions" as options characters could pick up to support their non-adventuring lives. Add a "servant" class to your game (Or maybe even a "slave" class... BoL has one), make "wizard's apprentice" one of it's career exits, mention wizards in the fluff texts for them, and you're good. Keep magical scholar as an alternative route into the wizard class tree, too.
 
You'd probably want to be careful about the amount of crunch each class adds to a character, but it doesn't need to be very much.

Thanks Ladybird. Yep I like the idea, though I'll have to ponder a bit further what direction to go in (out of all the ideas floating around here) before definitely doing anything specific.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;604226The pricing is easiest for evocation-type direct damage spells. Instadeath is in theory equivalent to inflicting an unlimited amount of damage to a single target, but in practice the actual value isn't higher than [damage = HP of the strongest creature in the game]. Chance of the spell failing then weight the final value I suppose.
I think in point buy games there can also be a sort of 'feedback loop' that operates in the cost process; the rules don't just get created and then used to set point costs, rules tend to be added after the point cost to justify them. In cases like "instadeath" for example, it may be that the spell will have a Hit Dice cap that assigns an upper limit to the possible damage it can inflict. Or D&D Minis had a dragon that had about 500 HP and treated "death" effects as just dealing it 100 damage; again that sets a maximum value for the effect for pricing.

Awhile ago I was trying to figure out how something like the cleric's turning undead ability (from older editions) can be defined in such a manner.

It was very much opening up a can of worms, in attempting to define abilities which don't always involve direct damage, such as spells like sleep, fear, hold, dispel magic, etc ...

You could genericize the tree with apprentice/journeyman/master for each class.

Wizard would be student (no magic)/ritualist (slow magic)/full caster (rituals plus spells).
Fighter could be conscript (hp and attack bonuses)/soldier (proficiency bonuses, armor use)/warlord (featlike entities or leadership stuff).

And so on.

@beejazz: yup could do. Or as with WHFR there could be more complex trees for the classes, with multiple entrances/exits to each package...the mercenary fighter might skip the 'conscript stage' for basic training that real soldiers get, instead needing just basic fighting from some other occupation? Otherwise the stages are really "levels" rather than being distinct classes.
 

Quote from: ggroy;604237Awhile ago I was trying to figure out how something like the cleric's turning undead ability (from older editions) can be defined in such a manner.
 
It was very much opening up a can of worms, in attempting to define abilities which don't always involve direct damage, such as spells like sleep, fear, hold, dispel magic, etc ...

I get what you're saying - these are more tricky.
 
For sleep, I've played solo PbP games...for lone PCs (or monsters) sleep = death. Other systems I've seen, LegendQuest for instance use fatigue points with sleep giving the target Fatigue i.e. its still damage, but a different sort of damage.
 
For Turn Undead, fair costing is tricky since I guess how often undead are going to come up will be campaign dependent. If a game comes with random encounter tables, perhaps that gives some idea of frequency, but if a game has no undead its worthless. Or giving the ability some alternative uses (as 4E channel divinity?) built in could perhaps give the ability a minimum usefulness.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;604414@beejazz: yup could do. Or as with WHFR there could be more complex trees for the classes, with multiple entrances/exits to each package...the mercenary fighter might skip the 'conscript stage' for basic training that real soldiers get, instead needing just basic fighting from some other occupation? Otherwise the stages are really "levels" rather than being distinct classes.

Whether they act like levels or classes depends partly on the specifics of the surrounding system. If age penalizes XP, the conscripts will get to a higher level faster, while the warlords would have less of a numeric boost and more tricks. If there's room for a barbarian and a fighter in the same system, I could see this working too. Naming conventions could be less specific than "conscript" as well. Maybe just leaving it at apprentice/journeyman/master for all classes could work.

I'd be against branching unless it made a really big mechanical (and not just flavor) difference.