Spell Matrices - bias against diversity?

[True Neutral]

I appreciate the solution based response, Slim. I don't want this to be a whining post of why it's so hard to be a magic user. I appreciated that there would be some difficulties and made a character (Windling Illusionist) that was meant to be a social character primarily, someone that would offer options other than combat. I'm trying to find ways the system will allow that, which is why I am speaking of the pressure or bias I am feeling when playing. The primary issue is that outside of combat you have many choices but once combat begins you only have what are already in your matrices.

Raw magic is not an option unless you have no regard for yourself or your group by opening yourself to Horrors. Destroying your character and unleashing devastation on your companions and likely many surrounding communities is just not reasonable. Unless your character suffers from a dangerous level of arrogance, selfishness or fear of whatever is happening, or perhaps in the extremely rare circumstance that a raw magic spell would prevent even worse threats, if it works, Raw magic is never a choice as far as I can see.

Re-attuning your matrices on the fly is also not an option in Fourth Edition for much the same reason. The very likely chance that an Adept will miss the roll and the completely castrating effect of that failure leaving you with no spells whatsoever once again puts magic users in the situation of having no useful option other than precognition to expect exactly what is going to happen to them and plan their two or three spells accordingly. No other class faces this kind of pressure. I don't know of any other system where if you if make one mistake your character's primary abilities just disappear. It would seem much more reasonable to me that if you try to reattune in combat and you miss your roll, that you just wasted the time to do it, which is already critical enough. In the ridiculously dangerous ED combat where a mosquito can decapitate you with an exploding d4 damage roll, spending any time doing anything but attacking or defending yourself is already a huge investment. Imposing such a massive penalty on magic users seems to have no purpose other than to prevent the option of re-attuning from every being used.

[Mataxes]

I don't quite understand why you think reattuning on the fly isn't an option.

Simple failure doesn't wipe your matrices. It's only if you have declared that you are reattuning on the fly and fail a Concentration check does it wipe them all clean. If you try and fail... you lose time. You can try again the next round, or not as you wish.

Aside from DNs being tweaked, it's actually slightly more forgiving than it was in ED1, where there wasn't even a concentration check as an option.

[Kosmit]

And to fail Reattuning on the Fly someone has to reserve action to attack you while reattuning. Because when you roll Threadweaving and succeed - no concentration check needed.

[Kosmit]

And to fail Reattuning on the Fly someone has to reserve action to attack you while reattuning. Because when you roll Threadweaving and succeed - no concentration check needed.

[RazanMG]

Well...
Actually you have to declare you intentions before Initiative roll, and your intentions are to change spells in matrix, anyone with higher Initiative can attack you, no need to Reserve Action.

[Lys]

Yeah in order for a Concentration test to happen, you have to get hit while Reattuning, and even then your Matrices aren't wiped unless you actually take damage and fail the Concentration test. This is highly unlikely if your team martials are doing their job and protecting the casters. In my game after a couple dozen fights we've yet to even see a Concentration test ever happen. Additionally if you're playing a Windling it's pretty trivial to get Full Cover, in which case you can't be targeted directly unless they flank around the cover. Again if your team is on the ball you should be fine.

[The Undying]

Well...
Actually you have to declare you intentions before Initiative roll, and your intentions are to change spells in matrix, anyone with higher Initiative can attack you, no need to Reserve Action.

I think we're kinda of diverging into "I want this to be a problem" territory here. Other people don't know your intentions, and if your GM uses his omnipotence to try to wang your magician when he otherwise wouldn't just because it would TOTALLY SCREW you now thanks to that mind reading power, then shame on him/her. Similarly, your table is free to run it differently, but why would Threadweaving for Reattunement look any different than regular Threadweaving for spell casting? It's not like a giant "HIT ME NOW, I'M WEAK" flashing icon appears above your head. Lastly, as I think Lys said earlier, a magician likely does (or should have) people pulling attention away from them, so some dude in the background fapping about with his hands shouldn't be much in the grand scheme of things when you have people punching you in the face.

[RazanMG]

But the enemy looking in to astral that knows how Reatuning looks looks like, will definatelly try to hurt mage that round. Or maybe archer/javeliner just showed up and doesnt know who to shoot at, I roll in such cases, and sometimes its a mage. If I was a mage I would like to know what can happen, to prevent it by hiding in previous round.

[The Undying]

Some of this smells of a GM trying explicitly to kick a character when he stops to tie his shoe, but that's my opinion. I see it as very unlikely that a magician would be targeted specifically during Reattunement. For me: A magician may be randomly targeted at the start of combat until someone or something takes the heat off him/her, a magician may become a target for a while after landing a strong effect, opportunistic enemies (like wild animals) may start off targeting characters that appear weak (like magicians), or a "boss level" enemy or henchman may determine a magician is more potential danger than the Adepts currently or imminently punching them in the face; otherwise, magician should be okay to Reattune and otherwise likely made a very bad or desperate choice to reattune while they have heat on them.

By the by, I'm talking small skirmish stuff where the players more or less equal the number of enemies. In those cases, players can usually control targeting through positioning and basically apply AI "hate" logic. If the enemies outnumber the players, magician should be confident they can pull that reattune off post haste - no good reason for every enemy to pile on the tank and leave someone completely unengaged.

[Slimcreeper]

Maybe it's just how I was raised, but if some guy in the back started fapping about I would just pretend I couldn't see him.