Glamour & Ritual Sorcery

[Lance D. Allen]

Two topics, both involving Sorcery, and both things I noticed after my read-through of the Revised Sorcery Chapter. Maybe it was just that it was laid out better, so I noticed these things better, or.. I dunno. Anyhow, while it's a bit late to be making these suggestions now that the revised edition is already ready for print... Better late than never, I guess... And no, I've still not played or run a Sorcerer, so maybe I'm talking totally out my ass, but I don't think so.

Glamour: I realized this idea, something I'd almost grasped in my first read-through, but was too distracted to formulate then. The idea that illusion ought to effect more than just sight, and to lesser extent sound and feel kinda.. disagrees with me. So I came up with the following.

Instead of Tangibility, I would have a different aspect... Call it Scope or something. It would be something like this:

Scope is how many sensory aspects of illusion the caster may project, such as visual, audible, tactile, even olfactory and gustatory.

1. The illusion may be of only one sensory aspect.

2. The illusion may contain up to 3 sensory aspects.

3. The illusion may effect all 5 senses.

This would allow stuff like.. disguising the taste of a poisoned food, or the pain spell as illusion rather than conquer, both at level 1. At higher levels, it might involve making a wall seem to be there to touch, sight, even smell and bouncing sound as a solid object would.. But the instant a character puts any real pressure on the object, they'll find that the resistance they felt with their hands isn't actually there...

Anyhow.. I can work with it as is, I just think it'd be a mite more effective if it could be used to effect different senses.

Ritual Sorcery: Okay, so here's the biggest chunk of problems I noted. I hope this doesn't come off bad, but... Here I go.

Actually, before I go into my issues/suggestions with Ritual Sorcery, a bit about Spells of Three... As I understand it, Spells of Three do not get a -2 when formalized, instead they only ignore the other Vagaries included. I'm not sure how I feel about this, as it makes a 2 Vagary spell (such as the So3 version of Flight) still 2 points higher than their maintained So1 cousins. Just a small gripe, not one that really bothers me.

What does bother me is the Spells of Many. They are always considered to be formalized, so they get the -2 automatically. Fair enough. But what I'm not sure I like is that it's assumed that Gestures and Dialogue are already included. The disadvantages to Ritual Sorcery are pretty hefty (CTN in HOURS, rather than seconds or 10 seconds.. eesh) And chances are, you're already going to have a damnably high CTN for any spell you do as a SoM. Allow me an example to illustrate..

Animal is a SoM. However, if the caster were willing to maintain the spell, it could be cast as a So3, likeso.. (also, noticed some typos here.. T should be 0, as it's the caster, and it ought to say CTN = 7 (casting time: 7 hours) in the book. No biggie)

Animal
Formalized Spell of Three
CTN = 5 (casting time: 50 seconds)
T) 0 R) 0 V) 2 D) 0 L) 3 (3+1+1-2)
Vagary(s): Sculpture 3, Growth 2, Vision 3
Effect(s): Composition 3, Expand 2, Clairvoyance 3
Instantaneous/Maintained

A lower CTN, the spell only takes 50 seconds rather than 7 hours, AND, get this.. I can gesture and use dialogue, which has the potential to bring my CTN down by 1 or 2 more points... Suddenly, I'm casting Animal at a CTN of 3!

Okay.. So ritual spells can use more than 3 Vagaries.. This is sometimes necessary. They also get the potential to use meditation to lower the CTN another 1 or 3 points (though that adds several more hours to the process) and a rather nice bonus of + Discipline to my SP... But considering that I'm now rolling against 3s, have the potential to age only 3 months... That's not quite so necessary.

Okay, so now that I've pointed out my problem with this, what would I do to fix it? First, I would say that it ISN'T assumed that gesturing and dialogue are included.. That would put a rather nice amount of potential CTN lowering into it. Honestly, that's all I'd do. Getting rid of summoning for a lot of spells is possible whether or not it's a Spell of Three or a Spell of Many, so long as the caster is willing to maintain the result, so I can't count that against Spells of Many. It's just that, the way I'd imagined it before, is that I'd be able to cast a spell of Three, or even a Spell of One as a Ritual Spell to have a greater chance/margin of success, or a lowered chance of aging. As it stands, the CTN is pretty damned prohibitive, as is the time limit..

I want to cast a CTN 12 spell, Transform for instance, which means it's going to take me 12 hours, and I might get 1 success. If I choose to meditate, I add 6 hours to the total (18 now) and may take 1 or 3 points off of the CTN. That's 18 hours I'm going to have to concentrate on a single thing, without falling asleep. Even with other sorcerors helping.. that's 18 (or 12, immediately after my own 6 hours of meditation, if they don't have to join me in it) that I've got to keep a bunch of individualistic habitual loners focused on a single spell. Eesh... It'd better be worth my time.

Other things I'd do.. I would allow the CTN modifiers from meditation to effect the time for casting, if this is not already the case. The justification for this is that I'd be focused, and able to accomplish the work in a shorter time.

I'd also have some sort of CTN modifier for additional sorcerors.. More people can do a ritual more efficiently and in less time, if they work well together. Perhaps something along the lines of... having all assisting sorcerors roll WP/the number of Sorcerors in the ritual, with every 3 sorcerors who succeeds lowering the CTN by 1. If even a single participant fumbles, all successes would be negated, and the spell would be interrupted, as per the rules. That would reflect that smaller groups would have less effect, but would cooperate more easily, while larger groups would have more effect, but it would be harder to coordinate their efforts. This would mean that it would require at least 4 total sorcerors to have any such effect, 7 to have any additional effect, 10 for more.. getting considerably harder each increment of 3. This would be in addition to the effects already mentioned in the book. If this is too much, perhaps the time of the ritual could be reduced this way, and the CTN could stay the same... I just can't imagine focusing on a spell for over half a day, s'all.

[Jaif]

I'd also have some sort of CTN modifier for additional sorcerors.. More people can do a ritual more efficiently and in less time, if they work well together.

I'm not sure if you missed this, or mean to add to it, but on page 113 of the revised manual there are cooperation rules already.  First additional sorcerer adds his discipline, and others add 1 die each.

The other advantage to ritual spells that I think you missed was symbol drawing (also 113).  If you try to turn someone else into an animal, you may want to do it as a ritual so that you can increase the TN they use to resist the spell.

-Jeff

[Lance D. Allen]

Didn't miss the cooperation rules, just thought to add to 'em, at least as an optional rule. I don't even know if *I* would use what I suggested, but it's there. My issue was hitting the CTN, and with it being 11+, that's not easy to do, and actually resist any significant amount of aging too... Not gonna happen.  

I also didn't miss the Symbol Drawing. It just doesn't apply to what irked me. I'm not even talking about using Ritual Magic to effect someone else let alone involuntarily. It is an advantage, sure, but not one which applies to all situations.