What's up with the Magic Harmony ability?

I'm hoping this is the right place to put this question. There doesn't seem to be a section devoted to the Harmony abilities that I can find, and I'm not sure where else to post this.

I'm also going to apologies in advanced for this. This post is going to be long and rant-ey. I'm sorry for that. But I both need to vent on this, and beg for an explanation.

So, can someone please explain how the Magic Harmony ability isn't blatantly overpowered?


For the sake of this discussion, I'm going to break the Harmony abilities into two groups. Powerful abilities that are useful in very specific situations, and generally useful abilities that can be used with great flexibility.

The powerful abilities are

Loyalty, Honesty and Kindness:

All three are very powerful in specific situations. Have a monster that you can't beat? Kindness is the key. Some weird mental condition afflicting a party member? Loyalty! Powerful in very specific situations. However, they aren't peerless.

What I mean by this is that

Memory to Mist:

covers a lot of the same ground that Kindness covers. Sure, Kindness is a bit more powerful, but if you already have Memory to Mist you could probably make due without Kindness.

You can make the same argument for Honesty and

Zone of Truth:

And, to a lesser extent, Loyalty and

Medicinal Training:

Yes, yes. The Harmony abilities are much more powerful, but my point is that they don't provide entirely unique abilities. There is overlap between the Harmony abilities and certain utility talents. Or, to put it in different words, if you have the right utilities, you don't really need the Harmony abilities.

The next group is the Flexible. Containing

Laughter, Generosity and Magic:

Laughter was, I think, designed to be entertaing, not actually helpful. Sure, you can use it whenever, but the chances of it being helpful are slim. Sure, you could have designed your Laughter table in such a way that all the effects helpful, but even then you should never use it hoping that that one perfect effect pops up an saves the day because it just isn't going to happen.

Generosity on the other hand doesn't give you any kind of new ability at all, just an upgrade to the most basic use a magic point has. A powerful upgrade, yes, but still only an upgrade. Sure, you can use it whenever you want, but it doesn't let you do anything new, it just helps you to do something you could already do really, really well.


And then there is Magic... With the Magic Harmony ability you have access to all the abilities that mimic the other Harmony abilities. In simple terms, Magic is the key that will fit into any lock. Dragon attacking your party? Forget the ally with Kindness, just use Magic to calm the dragon with Memory to Mist. Need to get the truth out of a couple of thugs? Forget Honesty. Use Zone of truth. Or if that fails kill, wait a day, and use

Speak with Dead:

With the Magic Harmony ability, the ideal party is no longer six members, one with each of the Harmony abilities; the ideal party is six characters with the Magic Harmony ability. And if you take that one step further, all six of your party members shoud just take

Freaky Knowledge and I've Read A Lot About it:

over and over again instead of any other utilities. Because you have Magic and with it access to all the other utilities.

Yes, Magic has weaknesses. It only works for 5 minutes and under normal circumstances you can only use it once a day (unless you are using it in conjunction with Star Child or you have the Derp utility or your party has a whirly-gig, but I don't want to go there). But, I still feel like my point stands. The Magic Harmony ability is the key that fits every lock. In my opinion, it is far too flexible and far too powerful when compared to the other Harmony abilities.


So, I'll ask it again. How is the Magic Harmony ability not blatantly, aggressively OP?


I get that the game is out. I'm not trying to get the Harmony Abilities changed (although I think that would be a good idea). I just don't understand why they were made the way they were made.

The way I see it, Magic is undeniably better than any of the other abilities, and the only reason you would choose one of the other abilities is because you think Laughter is funny, or you picked it because it was more in-character with who you are playing as.

If someone who has more experience with this game than me can tell me that they think I'm wrong, I really, really want to hear it. In fact, I don't want to be right on this one... Please, convince me I'm wrong. Show me what I missed and how they are actually balanced; because right now, I'm not seeing it.

Magic... Isn't seen as OP, because to some people... IT'S BORING... I know that's how it is for me. I'd never wish to even use any character that owns magic as an actual thing... It's only useful if somebody thinks of a utility one needs within five minutes and unless you always know all the utilities options you got out there to summon at a moment's notice... Odds are you might not realize when or how to use it when needed. Hell those "powerful" talents you call? Yeah, I also see those as the weaker elements we've got. Loyalty is only as good as the GM who uses stuff that'd be used for it... Which if the GM wants, they still can troll the party and just DO IT AGAIN... Making it only just a waste of a magic point... Honestly's "Helpless" add on, makes it hard to be used when somebody really wants three questions answered... Element of Kindness... While really nice and sweet. How long it lasts is quite short, and only at best gives one an opening to try and help it stay calmed.

Xel Unknown wrote:Magic... Isn't seen as OP, because to some people... IT'S BORING...
...Which if the GM wants, they still can troll the party and just DO IT AGAIN... Making it only just a waste of a magic point...

It is boring. I absolutely agree. And if your DM is clever (or manipulative, depending on which side of the table you are sitting on...) he can negate a lot of the OP-ness of Magic. And perhaps you are right by saying that the other Harmony abilities aren't all that powerful either, but the point still remains, Magic is the most potentially powerful ability.

If anything, the weaknesses you pointed out in the other abilities only make me think that they need to be buffed up even more that I did before... I mean, my first character with this system is only level 2 and I know my way around the utility doc really well. If I wanted to I could make a new character that abuses the heck out of Magic (and I don't think I would miss that many opportunities...). I wouldn't because it would be cheap, boring and power-gamey. But I could...

To me it just seems like a design mistake to make one of the Harmony Abilities be (from a certain perspective) the "right" choice. I don't think one should be more powerful than the others. In my opinion, they should all dish out the same amount of power, just in different ways. And to me, Magic looks a lot more powerful.

Magic
Basically take derp and Spellchild and you have access to every UT and racial in the game three times over. it's overpowered, I agree.. fun to play? Depends on your character. I must admit magic is essentially my default element, because it is 1.5x better then every other Element.

Also magic's an element that's always growing in power as well... But still... I don't care to ever use it myself.

Personally, I feel Honesty is badly in need of a buff but I'm waiting for responses on a few other balance questions before I attempt to propose anything about it.

With the Element of Magic/Virtue of Versatility, one restriction it has that's sometimes ignored is that it's only five minutes worth of use and it includes preparation times with that. While still quite powerful, there's a number of things you can't get access to or have to be really smart about attempting. There's some stuff Magic's not supposed to have access to but it never got errata to note that.

Xel Unknown wrote:Loyalty is only as good as the GM who uses stuff that'd be used for it... Which if the GM wants, they still can troll the party and just DO IT AGAIN... Making it only just a waste of a magic point...

Unless the players are somewhere like a toxic bog, that sounds like a crappy GM.

Hayatecooper wrote:Magic
Basically take derp and Spellchild and you have access to every UT and racial in the game three times over.

Actually, you wouldn't have access to the 5 and 6 point racial traits.

Antiquated wrote:Dragon attacking your party? Forget the ally with Kindness, just use Magic to calm the dragon with Memory to Mist.

All things considered, the dragon might still be attacking in an even more blind rage since it doesn't know what's going on.

Don't disagree about how a GM doing such a thing would be, but any GM can do that if they want too... And still... Loyalty depends on the GM basically setting up something so the element to be needed to be used. Which is for whatever reason, if it's used and somehow the plot needed it work, the GM will have it work even if the element is used... If not, then what are the odds of something somehow related to mind-control would pop up in a campaign without it already being pre-planed into it? That's why it's totally "meh" to me...

And on the topic of "memory to mist" I don't totally see how it can be used in any way in place of Kindness.... If anything I'd put Memory To Mist as a talent that's a bit more complex in how to work it.

Guys, can we not nerf Element of Magic please? One of my favourite characters would be dead on two occasions if it wasn't for Element of Magic...

I don't think any nerf should happen to the element... And personally see it as a talent that's power level relies on how much the player can recall the ever growing list of utilties this game has.... (Though weird things happen if one mixes Element of Magic with Highborn/Pick of the Littler...)

Xel Unknown wrote:And still... Loyalty depends on the GM basically setting up something so the element to be needed to be used. Which is for whatever reason, if it's used and somehow the plot needed it work, the GM will have it work even if the element is used... If not, then what are the odds of something somehow related to mind-control would pop up in a campaign without it already being pre-planed into it?

I'd argue there's a number of ways such a thing could come up passively in a campaign but it seems to bring to mind a lot of differences in thought processes behind campaigns. Ideally, a GM should plan for both success and failure in each situation.

While I would agree that Magic is the "best" Element, I don't think it's so much better that it's the only one worth taking. As Zamuel mentioned, you can't use any talent with a prep time of greater than five minutes, you can't use Magic talents unless you happen to have an extra Magic Point or use Spellchild with your Element, and you can't take any talent that you don't meet the prerequisites for, meaning you're stuck at the very bottom of the tree for a lot of things. Don't have any flying talents? You get It's Almost Like Flying and a  -10 penalty to flight checks which I can say from experience makes it rather dangerous to attempt anything. Don't have Weather-Crafting? You get to spend your entire 5-minute duration making a single alteration to the weather without any of its upgrades, etc.

Of course, theoretical considerations aside, the real question is, "How does it work in an actual game?" And from my experience, Magic is balanced just fine. Having taken it in my first campaign precisely because I liked its flexibility, I think the number of times I ended up using it over the course of the campaign could have been counted on one hand. Another character has it in the campaign I'm in currently, and I'm not sure it's been used once, despite us being level 5 already. (Well, possibly once, but certainly not much more than that.)

I think part of the reason is that its very versatility and usefulness conspire to make it Too Awesome To Use. If you can use it to escape from pretty much anything, cautious players tend to hold back on using it because "you never know when we might need it in the future." It becomes a back-up plan of last resort: "Ok, yes, I could use Magic to give me Teleportation and get us all out of here, but we might need that in the next room. Let's see if we can use our utility talents we already have more creatively get us through this." I'd argue that it tends to increase player creativity in those that have it, rather than the reverse.

Philladelphus' last post covers a lot of what I'd probably say. 

I'd like to let the discussion develop further without any official weighing-in on my part. Magic is definitely a lot stronger now than it was when the system was originally designed (a lot more utility talents). It can also be annoying to try to remember ALL the talents ever.

A theoretical change might be to limit the versatility by having players select a set number of utility talents at character creation and let you spend your magic talent to access one of those number rather than every talent ever. Not saying we should do that, just putting out the general idea.

Stairc -Dan Felder wrote:Philladelphus' last post covers a lot of what I'd probably say. 

I'd like to let the discussion develop further without any official weighing-in on my part. Magic is definitely a lot stronger now than it was when the system was originally designed (a lot more utility talents). It can also be annoying to try to remember ALL the talents ever.

A theoretical change might be to limit the versatility by having players select a set number of utility talents at character creation and let you spend your magic talent to access one of those number rather than every talent ever. Not saying we should do that, just putting out the general idea.

Might be a good idea, actually - sure it limits the absolute power of it, but it also improves its practical power by reducing its toolbox to a specific set, which players will hopefully have an easier time remembering and be more likely to actually use.

In a wierd way, such a change would help, people like me feel like using it, maybe... *shrugs*

But still would always be a "meh" element to me

ZamuelNow wrote:
Actually, you wouldn't have access to the 5 and 6 point racial traits.

True.. cause you can't take Focused evo with Pick of the litter anymore. You used to be able to.

I think the better thing to do would be to give slight buffs to a few of the other Elements while adding more wholly unique Virtues to the system.

ZamuelNow wrote:I think the better thing to do would be to give slight buffs to a few of the other Elements while adding more wholly unique Virtues to the system.

I wholeheartedly agree. I don't think the real issue isn't that Magic is too strong, it's that the other elements are too weak.

Perhaps changing the other elements to hand out a wider range of benefits. Some small passive bonuses on top of the Magic point spending big one.

Laughter is probably fine Generosity might be ok too, but I think Loyalty, Honesty and Kindness could use a boost.

Welll people tend to have buffs go over better then nerfs... Even though that the power creep in this system is starting to make things go a little insane....

Of the Elements that need help, Loyalty has a rather glaring problem: it only serves as a single, non-repeatable (or unlikely-to-be-repeatable), "dispel" effect, but doesn't actually prevent the effects from happening again by providing something akin to immunity, temporary or otherwise.

If whatever is affecting you is easily re-applicable due to circumstance (e.g. an effect covering an area, an aura, or simply a spell the bad guy can re-cast instantly...), caused by an effect that Loyalty cannot remove fully or is semi-permanent (e.g. a disease, plague, or curse), or otherwise a "sustained effect" (e.g. mind-controlling slave neck-braces), Loyalty becomes wasted/useless, as the negative mind-affecting effect can indeed be dispelled, but then immediately re-applied due to lack of anything that allows you to resist it, essentially wasting an entire Magic Point to no benefit!

For a specific example: Bardic music. A bard serenades creatures into sleep, or uses it to charm creatures to do his bidding. The party uses loyalty to wake up / break mind control... And then immediately falls under the same effects again, because the bard didn't stop serenading. Such a situation cropped up once in a campaign I've been in, and caused a rules-squabble.

Zarhon wrote:Of the Elements that need help, Loyalty has a rather glaring problem: it only serves as a single, non-repeatable (or unlikely-to-be-repeatable), "dispel" effect, but doesn't actually prevent the effects from happening again by providing something akin to immunity, temporary or otherwise.

If whatever is affecting you is easily re-applicable due to circumstance (e.g. an effect covering an area, an aura, or simply a spell the bad guy can re-cast instantly...), caused by an effect that Loyalty cannot remove fully or is semi-permanent (e.g. a disease, plague, or curse), or otherwise a "sustained effect" (e.g. mind-controlling slave neck-braces), Loyalty becomes wasted/useless, as the negative mind-affecting effect can indeed be dispelled, but then immediately re-applied due to lack of anything that allows you to resist it, essentially wasting an entire Magic Point to no benefit!

For a specific example: Bardic music. A bard serenades creatures into sleep, or uses it to charm creatures to do his bidding. The party uses loyalty to wake up / break mind control... And then immediately falls under the same effects again, because the bard didn't stop serenading. Such a situation cropped up once in a campaign I've been in, and caused a rules-squabble.

It's worse, because it's a two sided problem.

1. Loyalty doesn't prevent recurrence of a mind affecting effect.
2. Loyalty categorically kills mind affecting effects.

If the DM throws a once off mind affecting effect and hasn't found a good reason to kill off the Loyalty user beforehand, then they've completely wasted their time and may as well have spent the time thinking of a non mind affecting obstacle that Loyalty can't just automatically bypass.

If the DM throws a recurring mind affecting effect then the Loyalty is screwed over, because they burned a magic point for no real purpose - the effect falls upon them again and they're toast.

There's a sort of grey area where you have multiple triggers for mind affecting but it does make the burden much heavier on the DM when they want to have mind affecting effects be part of the game.

The real burden of Loyalty on the DM is that they have to remember someone has Loyalty in the group and regularly throw mind-altering affects at the party so the Loyalty-user can feel cool. Luckily, the Magic talents can afford to be heavily situational since the +10-to-a-roll use is so awesome and always useful, but loyalty can be a bit annoying this way.

Xel Unknown wrote:Welll people tend to have buffs go over better then nerfs... Even though that the power creep in this system is starting to make things go a little insane....

There is already a pretty substantial power-creep problem with Magic. Every time a new utility is added to the game, Magic gets that much stronger. Especially if you have a build that is designed to make the best possible use of magic. If you build you character just right, you could be getting five uses of Magic each day by level six.

Just the right build:

If you can use magic this many times it lets you skip around any pesky prerequisites, and it handily eliminates the too awesome to use issue.

Power-creep we have. But I honestly don't think it's that big of a deal. If the party is getting a little OP, it just means the DM needs to step his game up and start throwing bigger challenges or a different kind of challenge at the party. My DM has already been forced to start making monsters that are immune to certain status effects (namely blindness) because of how we coordinated some of our combat builds. And I really can't blame him for doing it. If anything we were the ones being cheap.

Zarhon wrote:Of the Elements that need help, Loyalty has a rather glaring problem: it only serves as a single, non-repeatable (or unlikely-to-be-repeatable), "dispel" effect, but doesn't actually prevent the effects from happening again by providing something akin to immunity, temporary or otherwise.

And I agree about Loyalty. It should probably make everyone who stays inside that initial radius immune to that particular mind effect for a certain amount of time. But another issue can be recognizing when a party member or NPC is even under the mind effect in the first place. I would also suggest a passive bonus to detecting mind effects or out of character actions.

Heck, I would even go so far as to say that the Honesty, Kindness and Loyalty harmony abilities should also provide a small passive stat bonus of some kind and a free utility which matches with the harmony ability. I'll Rainbow Dash to Your Side for Loyalty, ect... I think this would take care of the issue of there being a "right" choice by making the other harmony abilities much more tempting if you are making a character that one of them really fits for.

And if we are willing to go that far for those three, perhaps we should add a little something to Generosity too. I'll hold that Laughter is probably still fine given the very unique idea and ability that it gives. And while I'm throwing around pipe-dreams, I think the wording on Magic should be changed so that if can't possibly be used in any other way but with a magic point. I think being able to build a character that can use it four times a day at level one is absurd.

Herp Derp is from an unofficial (and now very outdated) supplement and Whirlygig was removed in the Boon rework, so they both don't count...

Paper Shadow wrote:Herp Derp is from an unofficial (and now very outdated) supplement and Whirlygig was removed in the Boon rework, so they both don't count...

I was under the impression that those flaws could still be used if you like. I knew it was an optional doc but nothing in there told me it was unofficial or outdated. If those things are the case I would like for them to be reflected in the Flaws doc. However, I would rather the Flaws doc be updated. I like the idea of having optional flaws or official mechanics if your character has a phobia. (My current character does have a phobia and I've had a lot of fun playing her.)

And as for Whirlygig, I copy-pasted that directly from the Boons doc which is linked to the main document. If there has been talk of removing it or otherwise changing it, it hasn't happened yet.

The flaws document isn't official in any way. I like the idea, hence why we made Derp to begin with, but I haven't seen many other flaws that don't fall into the 3.5 problem of having a drawback that's easy to ignore or get around in some other way. If you know of any, feel free to submit them for this final weekly expansion.