I’m working on a project concerning hirelings, so I’ve been throwing all kinds of hirelings towards my son in our 1-on-1 game. He had never used an Adept, because he was using hirelings to fill the roles his Wizard couldn’t. My adult players had never even used hirelings until I started my project, and when they finally did they didn’t use an Adept either because they didn’t have a spellcaster to take advantage of Arcane Assistance.
So in play-testing last night I had a Wizard and an Adept (plus a Druid and Fighter) in the party. An Adept has the Arcane Assistance move which aids spellcasting to give the spell’s effects greater range, duration or potency. The question that came up last night was “If Tendil (the Adept) aids Cedric (the Wizard) with an Invisibility spell can they make everyone invisible?”
Invisibility requires the Wizard to touch an ally to make that ally invisible (I had to look it up). So I told them “Sure, if everyone stands in a circle holding hands with the Wizard casting and the Adept aiding then they can all get Invisibility, but if one person loses it they all do because the magic is broken.”
So they did it (rolled a 7 and chose to forget the spell), sneaked past a BUNCH of Orcs, and Regnar (the Fighter) assassinated the Orc Warchief by decapitation.
ALL of that just to ask how you all have use an Adept to aid a Wizard in your games LOL! Also, do you think allowing the entire party to go invisible too powerful?
Very cool! Big fan of the players here.
Ive never had to use an adept either. Isn’t that odd? I think there is a pattern here.
As for the “brokenness” of turning everyone invisible. I dont think so. Hell, the wizard could have done that on his own if he wanted to with some poison.
The trick is to make the sneaking difficult. Orcs have other senses that can give the characters away. Traps may be set. A horde of orcs moving about may bump into a character. Allot can happen to cause the heros to lose grip of one another’s hands or cause the invisibility to fade away.
I know I could have made the sneaking more difficult. I only had them roll twice during the sneak and the rolled 10 and 13 lol. I was really hoping for a 7-9 to make it more interesting, but they thought it was super cool to sneak past and cut the chiefs head off. The other Orcs scattered when they saw these people pop into sight behind their leader moments before his head came flying through the air at them.
The lesson I learned in that instance was, as you said, make the sneak a little more difficult.
I can’t wait to see what they do with something like Mirror Image. It is for the caster only, but I think I can include other with the “Greater Range” option in Arcane Assistance. I’ll wait until they try it though, I don’t want to lead them on!
Here’s something else I’m thinking about with regards to the Adept: The Adept doesn’t roll + skill, his thing is he can aid with a spell lower than his skill. Tendil’s cost is “To learn and grow my power”, so I made a move for him to “level up”.
But with the Arcane Assistance his aid can giver greater 1) range 2) duration or 3) potency. I’m thinking of doing a tiered structure for the Adept where for every three levels of skill they can choose one more aid option. So level 3 can choose one of those options, level 6 can choose two of the and level 9 can do all three at the same time. Is that too much work? Should I just decide at the table what the effects will be?
Sounds solid to me. But id probably keep it simpler and just allow them to pick 2 on a 12+, or 3 on a 12+ with a complication on the 7-9 list.
Brian Holland “they thought it was super cool to sneak past and cut the chiefs head off.”
That, right there, is way better than making it appropriately difficult. Filling the characters’ lives with adventure can sometimes mean letting them get away with something clever.
Thanks Robert Doe, that is a much easier way to handle it!
Logan Howard, yeah that’s why I didn’t really push for another roll. One of my players said it would be awesome to get all the way to the warchief without being noticed. So on one hand i was hoping they’d fail a roll so I could make a move (7-9 I was going to have them be noticed by sound, 6- I was going to have one of them lose their grip and have everyone pop back into visibility), but on the other I was actually nervous both times they rolled because I REALLY wanted them to be able to pull it off!
It worked out for them, so we were all happy lol