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.

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

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

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*

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...

Wolfen wrote: 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 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

Jake Norwood wrote: I'm also very interested in "house rules" on making spells permanent.

Jake

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.

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

Atomic Requiem wrote: 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*

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

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.

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

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).

Ron's anwer, above, is exactly the idea.

(a) I want to say concerning "lasting effects," however, that if you use an instant spell to turn someone into a toad then they become a toad. Do the "spring back" when the spell is up...that's really a matter of group taste. What I mean is in rules-lawyer-heavy type games an instant spell that turns you into a toad is permanent. The change was made and now no longer requires any magic to sustain it. Other magic (inverting the spell, I suppose) woud un-do, restoring you to your original shape. This, I believe, is how it was intended.

Don't forget that I didn't write the Sorcery for TROS...

(b) Another way of looking at it is that it takes sustained magic (like a constant spell) to keep you as a toad, in which case you'd have to spend a die to make that permanent.

I'm actually quite fond of the "kiss to break the spell" method, and that is going to be in Sorcery and the Fey.

In both (a) and (b), however, spells such as illusions, flight, etc, with effects that are upkept or sustained due to a nature of constant change, control, whatever, must use the one spent die to be made permanent.

Do this: Decide what your group's interperatation is (a or b, above) for permant spells, and go with it. Ron's ideas are right in line with my thinking.

Yeah, I agree. It's confusing. Hopefully some stuff we'll be releasing onto the web soon will clear a lot of this up for good. Until then you'll have to decide how your group wants to handle it. Sorry I can't do more offhand...Sorcery wasn't (and really sort of isn't) my bag.

Jake

Ron Edwards wrote: 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.

Ron

Thanks for the replies. I have a much better picture of spell durations now.

*AR*

Brian,

Agreed. Only the Pool itself is affected, and the Vagary phrase in my post was incorrect.

Best,
Ron

If I may put in my two-sense worth (pun intended)...

I think that a sorceror should be able to make spells permanent, but with a great loss to his sorcery pool. An "out," or some sort of mundane activity to break the spell could be added and chosen by the spellcaster to reduce aging, reduce difficulty or reduce the number of dice lost. The effectivity would be determined by the difficulty of the "out." If the "out" was for the subject to, as a frog, jump, then it would drastically reduce the difficulty and the bad effects of making the spell permanent, but it would be broken once the frog jumped anywhere. This would give sorcerors who make spells permanent great incentives to make such a way out of the enchantment.

Additionally, I think that places of magic, help from other sorcery-using people/creatures, and other great magical resources should give plenty of bonus dice for casting spells or lessen the cost of making them permanent.

These would explain why most sorcerors in fables make a way out of their enchantments, and why they always seem to do their magic in their own homes, etc.

Getting dangerously close to content from Sorcery and the Fey...

;-)

Jake

I haven't seen it yet, honest!

Sorry about resurrecting an old thread.. but I'm a little curious.

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

Yeah, this whole thread came from the pre-release version. Magic underwent the biggest change, and has been significantly streamlined. It's a good thing, I promise.

This thread it is now closed.

(I so feel like Ron saying that...ooooh the power ::grin::)

Jake

Jake Norwood wrote: Yeah, this whole thread came from the pre-release version. Magic underwent the biggest change, and has been significantly streamlined. It's a good thing, I promise.

This thread it is now closed.

(I so feel like Ron saying that...ooooh the power ::grin::)

Jake

LOL...no chastisement! I was mostly poking fun at Ron Edwards, the general forum moderator. If you have any questions about permanent spells feel free to post here, but remember that everything on this thread is from the old version of magic (which is 90% the same, but cleaned up a lot now). Maybe a new thread is in order?

Feeling like an ass,
Jake

Brief note into the spell cancelling "out"...

I'm really fond of this, as it can be a great kickoff point for many stories, ranging from, "For a year and a day, you must never sleep in the same bed twice", to "Remain encased in stone, until the sky burns" type prophecy(which of course has to take serious chance of occuring).

My general rule in games is that I measure the prophecy by its likelyhood/frequency of occuring.

-Once a day: "Before you eat the first meal of the day"
-Once a month: "On the first full moon when the birds sleep"
-Once a year: "Upon the solstice, you must quench the blade in blood to renew its weavery"
-Once in a lifetime "When the sun eclipses and the rivers have dried"
-Once in a really long time..."When the last dragon awakes, and breaths his last breath..."

Generally, I look at the out as being seriously part of the magic and almost being a necessary condition of hardcore, longterm magic. Just something to keep in mind.

Chris

My take on permanant spells is the costs and effects should be decided between you and the seneshal. For instance, lets say i'm makeing animate stone gargoyles to guard my library, they will never leave it, only protect it and me when in it. perhaps when making this spell i can merely use a duration variable of 4 or 5 that make sit perminant without cost beyond the increased CTN. For spells that affect general areas or other people, i'm all for 1 dice per vagrary levelk, or all dice used to cast are lost, or somehting to that extent. just ask the seneshal.