permanent spells

[malum]

can someone point me to the pages in the rulebook where it talks about how to make a spell permanent? i have heard it can be done, but dont see anything in the book about it.

[Casey Goddard]

Page 135-136 has a spell called "Sustain."  Maybe that will help you out...

[Jake Norwood]

You can make a spell forever permanent by permanently sacrificing the dice used to cast the spell. That's pretty stiff, and I'm pretty sure it's in there (if not, it's a mistake)...but again, I'm not sure where, either. Anyway, there's a rule for you.

Jake

[Atomic Requiem]

Obviously I need to reread the Sorcery chapter, but I thought
a spell with the duration of constant was permenent?

Example, the Wall of Air spell that gives the caster AV 12.

If not, how long do they last?

Or was the sac dice for casting for instantaneous spells to become
permenent? If so, does it include the dice used to resist aging?

I would guess not, since that'd be all your dice pretty much. :)

*AR*

[Lance D. Allen]

You know, when I was reading through the sorcery chapter, I think this question came up in my mind, as well. I don't know if I asked it in my massive list of questions about Sorcery, but I will now...

According to the Vagary of Summoning: Magic, You can sustain a spell of appropriate level, but you automatically age, with no chance of resistance... For anything less than permanent, this is far too steep of a price, methinks.

Also, looking in this section again, I see the rules for making a spell permanent are under Inprisonment: Magic. You do not, according to what it says there, lose all SP used to cast the spell, but you do permanently sacrifice one Sorcery Pool die per level of the spell to make it permanent.

That raises another question... The dice you lose... where do you lose them from? Your SP is based on your Kaa+Form... so do you just decide which derived attribute loses a point? And for that matter, how does your derived attribute lose it? Does it instead come out of your main ten attributes? Or is it more like, your Sorcery Pool now equals Kaa+Form- 1? If so... you're eventually going to run into a wall... The maximum amount of spells any Sorceror, if this were the case, could ever have made permanent is 20, which would also relegate them to 0 SP. Gah.. now I'm confused...

[The_Fey]

That raises another question... The dice you lose... where do you lose them from? Your SP is based on your Kaa+Form... so do you just decide which derived attribute loses a point? And for that matter, how does your derived attribute lose it? Does it instead come out of your main ten attributes? Or is it more like, your Sorcery Pool now equals Kaa+Form- 1? If so... you're eventually going to run into a wall... The maximum amount of spells any Sorceror, if this were the case, could ever have made permanent is 20, which would also relegate them to 0 SP. Gah.. now I'm confused...

I'm not sure how Jake feels about this.....but my take of it is that your Sorcery Pool would now be Kaa + Form - 1.  The Sorcery Pool is initially determined by the combination of Kaa and Form....but once you start playing I think that it can be affected by positively or negatively.  I don't think that sacrificing dice in the SP should affect Kaa or Form at all.

[Jake Norwood]

The permanent-ization of spells is going to be handled in depth in sorcery and the fey (the part that I'm writing-don't freak out, dave). For now, what The_Fey says is right. A rule from sorcery and the Fey will say that you can increase and decrease the sorcery pool like a proficiency (still expensive, I realize).

I'm also very interested in "house rules" on making spells permanent.

Jake

[Brian Leybourne]

I'm also very interested in "house rules" on making spells permanent.

Jake

Given the extreme power of magic, and the almost limitless boundaries, making spells permanent should be almost impossible or at least EXTREMELY costly to the character, and in terms that hurt, not simply extra aging (which hurts, sure, but it's not a hard decision for your average roleplayer to sacrifice a few or even 10 years of aging to get a permanent AV12 is it?).

It should be very very hard and very very expensive, or it's wide open to abuse.

[Casey Goddard]

The way I play it is by adding a limit on magic which says "Anything done by magic will eventually undo.  But any after effects of magic may remain."  A good analogy is to think of reality as a pool of water.  A mage can create ripples in that water by dropping a stone (casting a spell) but eventually the ripples will dissipate and the water will be smooth again.

Some spells like Fling, Wall of Stone and Destruction are instant.  The effect that the magic had remains but the actuall energy has dispersed.

Other spells such as Flight, Armor of Air and Dominate are dependent on on the "Duration" variable which adds to the spells CTN.  The magical energy has to be kept from dispersing for awhile becasue the effect has to be constantly renewed.  That makes things a little more difficult.  Hence the higher CTN.

If a sorcerer wants to make a spell effect permanent he/she must in turn permanently give up die from their sorcery pool.  Even then the spell-caster has tied his or her own life force to the spell effect which means when the caster dies the spell ends.

[Atomic Requiem]

It should be very very hard and very very expensive, or it's wide open to abuse.

This was what led to my previous post regarding balance. Without
making too sweeping a generalization, I think most other rpg's have
led us to believe in magic that is balanced in a very tight way,
with a very visible power scheme (fighters>mages until mage.level=10 when mages>fighters or whatever) that everyone knows and expects.

TROS is a) new (thus "we" are not used to it and its ideals are not as ingrained as our current conceptions of balance) and b) radical in some sense of the word.

I'm not sure, using what I know and interpret of TROS's ideals of balance and power, that permanent spells should be any more hard than its modified CTN would indicate.

That doesn't really answer my real question: what is the current, in-book system for constant spells?

IE, how long does does a constant spell last if it's not permanent?

*AR*

[Brian Leybourne]

That doesn't really answer my real question: what is the current, in-book system for constant spells?

IE, how long does does a constant spell last if it's not permanent?

*AR*

Well, I don't have the book in front of me (or at all, since it was in my laptop bag when my laptop was stolen, sigh) but from memory, it's dependant on how high you set the duration component. Duration 1 is hours, 2 is days and 3 is weeks. It lasts as many hours/days/weeks as the number of casting successes. So if I have duration 2, and I roll 3 casting successes, 3 days.

Instant spells (no duration component) will become constant if you get as many successes as the CTN of the spell (not usually very likely) and in that case they last 1 hour/day/week per success OVER the CTN. The day/hour/week is determined by the sorcerors base skill level in the summoning vagary.

As you can see, they're good enough already without needing to make it too easy to make them permanent.

Brian.

[The_Fey]

It should be very very hard and very very expensive, or it's wide open to abuse.

Generally I'd agree with except in a few particular cases.  I'd agree that the Gifted should have to pay a pretty steep price when trying to cast a permanent spell except when casting it in their home/santuary and when that spell will not affect anything outside the sanctuary.  Personal opinion of course...

[Valamir]

Caveat:  I have not done more than glance at RoS's magic system.

BUT I think if one wants a magic system that captures traditional magical imagery (i mean cultureal traditions, not D&D RPG traditions, of course), one can't limit permanent magic too severely.  Enchanted places, things, and people run rampant through folk lore and fairy tales.  

Better I think would be to define the permanence with an "out".  What can you do to break the spell...you're a frog permanently...until kissed by a princess.   Eating the apple, pricking the spindle makes you fall asleep permanently...until kissed by a prince.  You're empowered with super human strength permanently, until you cut your hair.  That sort of thing.

I suggest that even the most powerful spell can be made permanent with little additional cost with a proportionate "out".  A very powerful spell would have an easy and obvious means of canceling.  A more moderate spell would have an easy but obscure, means of canceling it, etc.  If you wanted to to a very powerful spell, with a very difficult and obscure means of canceling it...THEN you could pay for the extra factor in some manner.

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

I am very confused by this thread, and I think it's because people are using "permanent" to mean a whole bunch of different things.

1) Permanent/lasting effects - this can be written off instantly. We all know that a fiery-blast spell burns something, and the thing stays burned even though the spell is "over."

2) Constant or any other duration indicated in the game rules that affects the CTN.

3) Permanent in the sense beyond #2 - it's no longer a spell, but a fixed piece of reality now. Say you Grow a toad to the size of a mammoth. Say it's part of a spell of Three, and you've given it a Constant Duration using Summoning (or it becomes Constant due to a really good roll). Fine, so far it's #2 above, and you don't have to bother yourself with it until the Duration runs out.

But then you decide to spend a point from your Sorcery Pool, forever. Gone. A whole Vagary point, gone forever, just scratch it off your sheet. Now you have a real, honest-to-the-Three, mammoth-sized toad, just as if that's how that toad was born and functions. It's a piece of the universe now, and the spell can never be disrupted or altered.

(That's not to say the toad is "immune" to more magic. If someone now wants to affect your toad's size, it's just as if they were starting with a plain old mammoth-sized toad, just as you started with a normal-sized toad.)

(Also note that the foundation spell could have been a Spell of One, in which case the toad would be huge only for a moment anyway - which would be a useless spell, except that you just sacrified the point, so it's now permanent. Pretty big aging/Pool price to pay for a mammoth toad, though.)

Jake, correct me if I'm completely off-base with this. My point is that "Permanent" as described in the rules (in which you sacrifice a Sorcery Pool point) is not a Duration - it's a radical, rather shocking act by which you turn a "spell" into a hunk of mundane reality (with qualities that are decidedly not normal or mundane-seeming).

Best,
Ron

[malum]

My point is that "Permanent" as described in the rules (in which you sacrifice a Sorcery Pool point) is not a Duration - it's a radical, rather shocking act by which you turn a "spell" into a hunk of mundane reality (with qualities that are decidedly not normal or mundane-seeming).

yes, thats what i meant when i started this thread. thanks :)