Friday 14 March 2014

Random Wands and Leaky Casting

“The wand chooses the wizard… it’s not always clear why.”
         - Ollivander, Harry Potter
Wand of Hitting Things

I've read some things on wands lately, including from Courtney at Hack & Slash (Ideas about Wands and On wands) and from Brendan at Necropraxis (Basic Wands and Attack Wands). I'd thought I'd write up a little table that can fit in Fate games if the players decide to loot some magic pile of stuff.


Elements
Control
Bonus
Disability
Value
1
Fire
Will
Extra Type
Unwieldy
5
2
Water
Will
Extra Control
Short
4
3
Earth
Lore
Flexible
Dangerous
3
4
Air
Lore
Accurate
Leaky
3
5
Spirit
Magic
Strong
Weak
2
6
Physical
Magic
Double Bonus
Extra Disability
2

Wand Types:
Extra Element and Control: Roll on the appropriate column again, re-rolling until all results are different.
Extra Bonus and Disability: Roll twice on the appropriate column again, re-rolling on a 6.
Strong: Raises minimum weapon value by 1.
Weak: Lowers maximum weapon value by 1.
Unwieldy: Must be held in both hands, or causes a -1 penalty to casting.
Leaky: Roll an extra leak dice when normally required.
Accurate: +1 to hit.
Flexible: Can be used to make either spray attacks, splitting the attack roll to multiple targets, or to make area of effect attacks at -2. Can do both on a double roll.
Short: Can only be used to effect one adjacent zone. On a double, can only be used in same zone.
Dangerous: Leaking also causes a 1-stress physical hit.

Wands normally have a weapon value of between 0 and 5. Anyone using a wand selects the wands current weapon value or lower, and rolls to make a ranged attack with the appropriate control skill. Whether the attack is successful or not, the caster rolls a number of  'leak-dice' equal to the selected weapon value. Any leak-die that appear as a 1 reduces the wands current weapon value by 1.

Example battle: Jean confronts some goons in a warehouse with his Weapon:5 wand. He doesn't want to use too much power now, as he wants to save it for later. He chooses to make an attack at Weapon:2, and makes an attack with Will. He misses, and rolls his leak dice, which land as 2 and 4. A brute of a goon appears from around a corner, and Jean decides to hit with the full Weapon:5. He makes a successful attack, and the leak dice are 1,1,3,4 and 6. The wand is reduced to Weapon:3.

This makes about 450 'regular' wands, with out including extra elements, controls, bonuses, disabilities, or any variation that comes from weapon value when found.
If you count every different type of wand that can be produced here, regardless of weapon value when found, it's a total of 20,520 different variations.

Little girl with wand, ready to
slaughter some orcs for loot
For d20 games, the weapon values could correspond to the stepping stones of polyhedral dice: d4, d6, d8, d10, and d12. Since there isn't really a Weapon:0 equivalent, d4 could be the lowest, default wand strength, or it could possibly be d2 or d3.
Other variations could be in leaking. For example, only a single leak die could be rolled and leak occurs if the die results in equal or lower than the weapon value of the attack. It could also be a variation that only a single point of leak can occur per round, regardless of the number of ones. You could just roll one dice, and if it's a 1, the weapon value drops, with no select-your-weapon-value jazz.

Example Wands:
Undine Rod: Water element. Will and Lore controls. Extra Control. Leaky. Found with 3 charges.
Demon Spike: Fire element. Magic control. Strong. Dangerous. Found with 5 charges.
Wand of the Griffon: Air and Earth elements. Lore control. Double Bonus: Extra element, Flexible:spray. Double Disability: Unwieldy and Short. Found with 2 charges.

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