DwD Studios
Raise your dice hand high!
Spell Resistance Topic
Fri, 12/07/2012 - 2:23pm | 
w00t
Going through my notes I came across;
Spell Resistance
Some creatures might have SR, such as certain dragons. Perhaps a copper dragon has SR 30 against transform spell.
Some creatures might have SR, such as certain dragons. Perhaps a copper dragon has SR 30 against transform spell.
SR would soak damage from offensive strike, some armor has magical DR and finally the dragon in the core book has DR 20 normal and magical damage.
What are your thoughts on spell resistance?
| 
Tags: 
BareBones Fantasy RPG is not associated with Skaldcrow Games' Bare Bones Multiverse, despite similar names. Check out Glenn's products by clicking here.
Not quite following here. To me SR would be easiest applied as either a bonus to creature's resistance roll or a negative modifier to the spellcaster's roll (second case would be used if GM prefers not having to take time for both casting and resistance rolls in game.
Following on this--I think that the function of spell resistance is to make it harder for a spellcaster to affect a given target; it requires them to deliver a better-than-normal result to have an effect. So to that end, I think it is easiest to apply it as a penalty to the spellcaster.
This does set up SR as an all-or-nothing defense modifier. Either you overcome the SR or you don't. But--the other benefit to this approach is that you don't need to do additional bookkeeping for non-magical attacks; only the spellcaster needs to keep the modifier in mind.
If the target has a better chance to resist the effects of a spell, it is harder for the caster to affect the target. However, if you did apply a penalty to the caster's skill check, the odds of crit-success go down, crit-fail go up.
A bonus to the target's resistance check flows better imo, most of the penalties in the game are derived from GM's (give me a scout check -20, make a DEX-10 check, etc.) or the disadvantage rule.
Spell resistance is kinda-sudo-built into the game. For instance elves gain +10 to resist charm spells, dryad's can't be charmed, dragons are immune to charm and transform. The protection spell offers a type of SR as well, granting a bonus to the target resistance check. I was thinking of expanding this idea to include some type of game-coding.
---
SR allows the target to offset the -10 per spellcaster level to their resistance check. If we were to code it, maybe something like this would work;
SR - spell resistance, a bonus to resist spell and spell-like effects.
SRxx, SRxx-spellname
SR10-transport indicates a +10 to resist effects of the transport spell.
---
That's a good point. Penalizing the caster definitely has greater impact than buffing the target against the caster's attack. I didn't consider that the penalty increase the odds of critical failures.
Thinking about the Elven charm resistance in the same light makes a lot of sense; if SR ever became "canon" you could restate the Elven attribute as "SR10-charm".
I created a new feature on the site, Books. A lot of content is buried in the site already, this allows us to organize content. I created the top level topics and posted the SR idea under Game+Options
Spell Resistance