There were a couple problems that came as a result of mystical puppet strings. Basically, it allows to ruin the excitement of an otherwise tense situation by allowing the player (more or less) anything he/she wants on a 10+. I know this can come at a cost, but honestly the cost in our situation was kind of forced into the mechanics to limit them.

Eventually we came to the conclusion that mystical puppet strings in this situation was too good, which led us to alter the rule slightly and make it only affect those of lower level, the problem came after that yet again, when we realized that I had still rolled a 10+ on the parley move which pretty much left the npc doing what I wanted.

One of the things we had trouble with was just how good to make parley in general. ben pretty much covered mystical puppet strings... it seems all around insanely good, and honestly if ANYTHING it shouldn't allow a parley roll to be 20 times more effective than the charm person spell. Essentially, the way it's worded, mystical puppet strings is a slightly less effective dominate spell, the difference is that it is a parley roll and 3 classes have easy access to the ability (multiclassing). While I can see a lvl 7 spell being this effect, it's hard to imagine a lvl 2 ability being the same.

My suggestion would be to get rid of mystical puppet strings and either change charm person to become a minor version of this, or just nix it all together. imo any ability that let's you pick the results of parley is entirely too good, however if you're sacrificing 3/4 of your spell book to do it, it's not so intensely good.


This leads us to the other questions about parley. How effective is parley at convincing others to do something? on a 10+ you're pretty much guaranteed to get what you want, which is ok for lower level encounters, but rolling a 10+, according to the rules, against a high dragon would take with it the same result. There's no real rules for opposing parley and, at lvl3 a character can be as good as he'll ever get at it. I don't really know how this is solveable or how other games are dealing with the parley skill, but it would be nice to get some feedback. 

as for the wizard ongoing -1. I think that option is amazing and extremely hindering at the same time. Truth be told, I think once you hit about lvl 3 or 4 it is a very awesome option, but before then it pretty much limits the wizard to the point where he is even less effective than he already is.

The main issue I saw with it is that at lvl 1 you basically have the option of being completely ineffective in future fights (forgetting a spell) potentially getting yourself killed (putting yourself in danger) or delaying both of those options (taking an ongoing -1). even at level 2 the selection can be fairly disastrous. at lvl 3 you get the stat increase, so the -1 is slightly less of a hinder.

Mainly what I saw in our game in regards to this is the combination of an ineffective wizard and an overly effect party combined with a lack of reward for camping. When the warrior is healing himself 10hp with health potions, not having cure light wounds isn't a big deal, when the fighter and the rogue both deal well over twice the damage that the wizard can do, damaging spells seem fairly ineffective (even fireball can be fairly ineffective depending on what you're fighting, though I didn't prove this theory yet). The combination of these things leads to a couple different scenarios; the first being that the entire party camps for the sole reason of regaining wizard spells (which, when the wizard only has 2 and neither one of them prove to be effective is really not so much an option to help the party as it is an option to give the wizards player a way of relieving boredom), the second is that the party presses on and leaves the wizard in a state of complete uselessness.

How it played out in our game was simple, I, as the wizard, chose to pretty much hide in every fight, or shoot my bow just so I could roll the dice (and gain xp) because with a -3 to my spell casting I was pretty much asking to be whacked by an enemy (which had a high percentage chance of putting me at 0 hp).

To me, until camping is more useful for everyone, the ongoing -1 is a bit harsh. I felt in our game that camping in almost any dungeon would prove to be far more risk than reward for the group in whole, being that the wizard, at the time being, is the only one to truly benefit from this. Given that, the ongoing -1 might be a better option once camping rules are revised, but for now it pretty well made my wizard useless in the party.

Also, I believe that health potions are a bit too powerful at the time being. 10hp is alot, even up to around lvl 5 it seems that health potions are the best way to heal. they heal more on average than cure light wounds and cure moderate wounds (if that is the 2d8 one can't remember). Not to say that they should be taken out of the game, just perhaps that they shouldn't be so available. Even with the sketchy encumbrance rules we're using, they are very very highly effective. Though, other opinions on this would be helpful.