Mage Factor

From Sagataflwiki

Latest revision as of 22:31, 22 March 2011

Mage Factor is a statistic that is used during character creation. It attempts to estimate the character's total potential for magic, so as to increase the fairness of the compensatory points given for some DisAdvantages. It is very often abrevieated MF.

Calculating MF

A computer can calculate a character's MF very easily. For humans it is slightly more tricky. First take four times the character's Psyche, three times the character's Faith, twice the character's Will, and the character's Mystical Intelligence, and add these four numbers up. That's the easy part.

An average person has a 3 in each of the four attributes, so the numbers added would be 12 (4xPsyche), 9 (3xFaith), 6 (2xWill) and 3 (Intelligence (Mystical)), and the sum would be 30. A character with Psyche 5 and Will 4 would instead have a sum of 20+9+8+3=40.

Once the sum has been found, either perform the following arithmetical operations, or else un-hide the lookup table in the next section and use that, to look up the final value.

Doing it manually, square the sum (multiply it with itself), so that e.g. 30 becomes 900, and 40 becomes 1600. Then divide that result by 300, and round to one decimal place (round to nearest). Thus the MF for an average person is 3.0, and the MF for the other example character is 5.3.

MF lookup table

Insert lookup table here, for sums from 1 to 120. (A sum of 120 comes from a character with Psyche 11, Faith 11, Will 11, and an Intelligence (Mystical) of 20.)

Note the collapse-table function isn't working yet.

(test of hide function)

test table taken directly from MediaWiki article

Uses of MF

Mage Factor is currently only used during character creation, and it is used for deriving the amount of compensatory points given for certain DisAdvantages, because the suck factor (how annoying they are for the character) of those DisAdvantages depends completely or partially on how much the character's ability to use magic is reduced. Examples of DisAdvantages that depend completely on MF for the amount of compensatory points they give are Spellcasting Incompetences and Reduced Mystery Slots, while the various Speech DisAdvantage have their cost influenced by the MF.

Design Notes

Mage Factor is one mechanic, among many, intended to increase the fairness of character creation. The root of the problem is DisAdvantages that impair spellcasting. Should they be in the game, available for choice? The obvious answer is yes. Greater capabilitistic variety among the characters, including among the player characters, is inarguably good.

The problem is getting players to actually take those DisAdvantages. If they give many compensatory points, then it is no problem, players will flock to them like sharks to blood. But another problem occurs, which is that these spellcasting-impairing DisAdvantages will then also be taken by players whose characters wouldn't be good spellcasters in the first place. So they're getting compensated for choosing DisAdvantages that do very little (or even nothing) to impair their characters. The alternative is to have the spellcasting-impairing DisAdvantages give only a small amount of compensatory points, but then no player would choose them.

The third solution is to give many compensatory points, but apply social pressure, i.e. utilizing metagame methods, to deter players with non-spellcasting-suitable characters from choosing these DisAdvantages. That can't be done, though, because metagame solutions to game mechanical problems are morally and intellectually repugnant.

What's left? The best and most elegant solution is the one used in Sagatafl, to calculate one single stat that tries to measure how well suited a character cn vbe expected to be to learning various kinds of learnable magic, and how likely he is to be born with various kinds of innate magic (chosen by the player, but hugely influenced by the fact that the cost of inborn magic, Powers, is affected by Attribute values).

It just so happens that it seems as if one such stat, Mage Factor, is enough to do all this work, because it measures both the character's potential for arcane/wizardly magic and for religious magic (e.g. Divine, Lunar). If it turns out that one single stat cannot do perform all necessary work, that two or even three such stats are equired, then they will be created and become an integral part of the magic system's character creation mechanics. But so far, things are looking good for Mage FActor.

A little analysis of MF values

As stated earlier in this article, the MF for an average person with 3s in all Attributes is 3.0. If we raise Psyche to 5 and Will to 4, MF goes up to 5.3. A typical PC-grade spellcaster built on 100 Goodie Points might have a Psyche of 6, a Mystical Intelligence of 5, and a Will of 5 (Faith is average, 3). This gives a MF of 7.8, about 2.5 times higher than that of the average person.

Let us also examine two more cases. One is a powerful wielder of Divine Powers, with Faith 8 and Will 8. MF 10.0. A more powerful spellcaster might be Psyche 8, Will 6, Mystical Intelligence 6, and even Faith raised to 5 (raising Faith to get more Essence would be a common choice made by a player, or even by a GM). MF 14.0.

This seems good to me (The Designer), striking a good balance between simplicity, and performing a lot of highly valuable and objective game-mechanical work.

See also