A magical tangent

[Claymore]

OK,

I downloaded the file and have had alittle time to review the new Sorcery Chapter. Much cleaner, alot easier to understand. It answered many questions I had concerning Sorcery in general. Ron Very well done!

I noticed that the rules for "Holding" spells were absent in the PDF. Has this rule been eliminated from the new edition? (please forgive me if this has already been covered, just point me to the post :)

I'd also like some idea on the cost to increase a Sorcerer's spell pool. I believe I saw this mentioned in an earlier post going into the  Sorcery and the Fey supplement, but since that's not coming out until next year some guidlines for use until then would be most helpful.

Thanks for your time,


Clay

[Jake Norwood]

Thanks. Clarity was the main thrust. Holding is--at least for now--removed. It has been replaced with improved rules for casting dormant spells. Feel free, though, to continue using holding in your own play.

Raising the SP? Someone suggested spending points as if it were a proficiency, paying the current SP to up it by one.

Jake

[Ben]

Jake said

Raising the SP? Someone suggested spending points as if it were a proficiency, paying the current SP to up it by one.

That's the way I do it in my games. Book keeping can be a little complicated though because a players can raise both the SP and att.
In case you didn't catch it, an example:

During one session, Jack decides to raise his SP with the optional rule from 8 to 9. and does so. A session or so later he raises an attribute which figures into his KAA or FORM which will bump his SP up by one except that it only totals to 9. This is because when the SP was raised seperately from the attributes, the attributes which figure into the SP were not and still totaled 8 even though the SP had been raised to 9. So when the att.s  were raised, their increase only toatled 9. (I can't believe I just said so little with so many words)

There are quite a few remidies to this.
1) Just not do it, but that sorta defeats the purpose...
2) Declare that after character creation the SP is no longer derived from attributes and that it can only be raised as a prof. I'm not a big fan of that  one.
3)Keep track of the point increase (I jot it down under profs.) seperate from the SP. eg: an increase from 8 to 9 would be noted as 1. and if the SP is ever raised by attributes, recalculate the SP and then add the increase. Thus, as with the example above, the attributes are raised and then totals 9, the prvious increase of 1 is then added in for a total of 10.
4)create a proficency that will factor into the SP along with KAA and FORM.
as a similar option, you may wish to make that proficency an attribute(for the sake of cost) so that it isn't too easy to raise the SP

So there you go, I hope that made some kind sense other than the non kind.[/color]

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

Hey Ben, I like #2, but I haven't played enough to be sure. Jake, clarify for me, Ben's #2 option treats improvement of Vagaries just like improvement for Proficiencies, right? Or am I missing something?

Side note about the Sorcery chapter revision - the main re-write itself is Jake's, and my contribution was further amputations, suturing, and a few solid kicks.

Best,
Ron

[Jake Norwood]

Hi there,

Hey Ben, I like #2, but I haven't played enough to be sure. Jake, clarify for me, Ben's #2 option treats improvement of Vagaries just like improvement for Proficiencies, right? Or am I missing something?

Side note about the Sorcery chapter revision - the main re-write itself is Jake's, and my contribution was further amputations, suturing, and a few solid kicks.

Best,
Ron

Actually, ben could probably answer that better than I could, but what I think is going on in #2 is that once the SP is initially calculated it is forever removed from its connection to other stats, and becomes a proficiency in-and-of itself.

Jake

[Jaif]

I definately want the cost to be tough, i.e. attribute level rather than proficiency level.

More generally, I think it's important to consider a) how fast it'll rise in the beginning few adventures, and b) what effect this has on the potency of certain advantages.

More thoughts:

- Max SP, w/o a proficiency, is 15 (KAA) + 10 (FORM) +5 (Gift of Ancients) = 30.

- If you say you can raise SP from 0 (at start) to 10, you make that a 40.

- If you can buy up SP like that, is "Impotent Blood" (-2 dice) that big of a deal?

- If I were min/maxing the system right now, I'd probably take Gift of Ancients & Mindful at the start.  However weak and impotent I may be, one day I'll be a veritable god.

Just some quick thoughts.  Not sure if I've been useful here, but I think the issue is a complicated one.

-Jeff

[Ben]

Jake hit the nail on the head up there.

And Jaif brought up something I forgot to mention is that in all the options listed above, the SP is always calculated normaly (kaa + form) for character creation. otherwise "the 9" might quickly become "the 9000"