Dresden Magical Musings
Real spellcasting came up for the first time in our brief play time during gaming last night. And... it slowed us down seriously trying to walk through the process. I think adjucating non-combat effects is going to be the hardest part once we get the process down, but I've been thinking today about how it works and going back over the rules.
One thing that strikes me is that I see nothing - not in the general rules, nor in any of the example spells or items - for casting spells that directly grant supernatural Powers. You can grant temporary aspects. You can do some things that aren't well covered in other areas (like Harry's escape potion). But I don't see any example of using magic to give someone "Inhuman Strength" or any other Power (outside of Items of Power, which are a Power themselves).
Spellcasting. Ugh. Offensive/defensive spell effects are laid out in fair detail. Move beyond that, though, and you get into the realm of judgement calls. I both love and loath that. I love the supreme flexibility. I loath the weak guidelines and thus lacking consistency.
The Official How to Cast steps:
1. Determine effect you want.
2. Make that effect fit in one of the types of actions: attack, block, manuever, counterspell.
1. Determine effect you want.
2. Make that effect fit in one of the types of actions: attack, block, manuever, counterspell.
"Manuevers" are sort of the catch-all, and where things get real fuzzy.
3. Decide how many shifts of power to put in the spell. Some effects require a certain amount, and with more you can pump them up or make them last longer or hit more targets. This also determines how much mental stress the caster takes from casting.
Stress taken: shifts up to (modified) Conviction = one mental stress, then one additional stress per shift over that limit
Page 251 and 252 cover shift cost for attacks and blocks. Shields are blocks against attacks, veils are blocks against alterness.
Counterspells are pretty straightforward - you need to successfully cast with a power equal or greater than that of the magic in place.
Manuevers... usually place a temporary aspect on something. The default shift cost is 3 or the resisting skill, if that's higher. So if you want to make yourself temporarily "Really Fast," that's probably a manuever requiring three shifts (plus one for any exchange after the first you want it to last). If you want to grant yourself the Inhuman Speed power... that really doesn't seem to be covered anywhere.
4. Roll Discipline to match or exceed the number of power shifts gathered.
If you succeed, the spell goes off fine.
If you fail by an amount, you can take some of that as physical stress (backlash) to mitigate side effects or potentially get the spell to go off otherwise as normal. If you don't take enough backlash to make up the difference, you get fallout - unintended consequences to the area that's mostly left up to the GM.
Having a spell as a rote allows you to set the traits of the spell "in stone" and treat it as if you rolled +0 on your dice for the Discpline roll as far as control goes. In a practical sense, this means setting the traits where you can control it automatically, thus never risking backlash/fallout. You still technically have to roll Discpline, but the roll is only used to determine whether the spell "hits." You only get backlash fallout if you deliberately make your rote set with a higher power than you can control - which people generally won't do.
Technically, that's just Evocation/Channelling.
Thaumaturgy/Ritual is very similar.
Thaumaturgy/Ritual is very similar.
It uses "complexity" (tied to Lore) for the spell design rather than power and theres sort of an additional sub-step where you have to jump through hoops to make up any difference in a complexity that's higher than your Lore.
When casting you still channel power in chunks based on Conviction until you meet the complexity.
You still roll Discpline for each exchange and can have to cope with backlash/fallout on failure. Because you can channel the power in pieces, it can take a long time and you can get much higher-power effects.
That's a serious design flaw. There's a lot of ideas that I'd have for magic, and it seems that none of them would really be covered by what I'm seeing here. :
ReplyDeleteWell, it does pretty much cover what's in the books. Attack and defense spells, veils... There are details under Thaumaturgy that cover summoning, warding/binding, and info-gathering. I haven't noticed anything that magic does in the source material that isn't covered in the RPG. But the "escape" potion does seem a little bit awkward to me - without it being a specific example, I'm not sure how you would model that effect. I can't see any way to magic up a Power, which is a really natural thing for a gamer to think of but doesn't really happen in the books. I think I could do similar, designing a spell that will grant all the individual bonuses of a certain Power, but it would be rather complicated. So... I'd say the magic system doesn't appear (and maybe I'm missing something right now) to do everything I want, but it seems to cover everything it needs (which is to reflect the magic portrayed in the novels). I'd also have to add that I run into similar problems with just about any "open" magic system. Covering every contingency is almost impossible. Heavens know I've run into brick walls trying to figure out how to do some things in the system on Faire over the years (including two things I was trying to plot out in the last week).
ReplyDeleteWhich two things? I've yet to run into anything in FFa that I can't actually design. Shadowrun also tends to do a good job, and until they'd put in the 'no teleport' limitation, I even had teleport spells in SR. Mage is another good open system I find.
ReplyDeleteI was trying to come up with a 'dispel magic' and a 'create temporary airship.' Both complicated by attempting to do them as activated spells under artificing. The former I sort of see now that I look again - I was looking under Schools, where most of the "here is what you can do" is listed. Even seeing it now, it's hard to set the dispel stats in advance (as required by artificing) when the Difficulty is variable depending on what you're trying to dispel. Eh... I could probably figure out how to do that now, though going back and forth threatens to give me headaches. The latter... I ended up looking at probably dramatic environmental transmutation. Even the examples there, though, don't really address anything as complicated and functional as an airship,leaving me wondering if that's reallyt he way to go. And theoretically this spell already exists for those Carcassone light-ships.
ReplyDeleteFor airships, it is best to build it using artificing / conjuration. Dispelling can be considered a major transmutation however, you are countering an effect. That's one way to do it.
ReplyDeleteHeh. See... totally askew from what I was thinking. The dispel, after looking today, seemed to me it should fall under 'counter magic' which is on the general sorcery page, completely apart from any school. I didn't see that before and it makes the most sense now that I have. Conjuration won't do it the way I really want to do it. I think. Hell if I know. All the stuff on the conjuration page addresses calling up entities. On top of that, the Artificing conjuration requires you to build the form first - which utterly misses the point of making a device to create a temporary "pocket" airship. If you build it... well... you've got a "real" one, and I was conceptualizing this as a way to get around the horrid time scale involved in that.
ReplyDeleteClosest I can find: http://www.jimbutcheronline.com/bb/index.php/topic,16887.0.html Further down in the forum post there's a mod talking about how each benefit from the Power you want is a shift in the spell you're trying to cast. The example given of ... Inhuman Strength does all of the following: +3 Might for lifting/breaking stuff +1 to Might in grapples +1 to modifications with Might regardless of actual score Weapon:2 on Fists attacks. If you want it all, that's 7 shifts' worth of effects, before we even get into talking about duration and what it'll cost your physical frame. See the previous post for that stuff. Said previous post had ... So, let's look at a Might enhancement. You have no Might, and want to be able to use a Might of Superb for a certain length of time. So that's a 5-shift complexity ritual right off the bat. That's going to tax your body, and system logic suggests you'd express that as a consequence. You want to have this enhancement for a whole session, so we assume the consequence is a self-inflicted moderate one. You have a physical stress track of 3 boxes, and a moderate consequence is worth 4 stress, so inflicting a moderate consequence on you takes 7 shifts. You're looking at a 12-shift ritual. (Maybe, if you're generous, you don't charge for the stress and only ask for the 4 shifts, and it's a 9-shift ritual. It's up to you. I'd charge the 12, but whatevs.) Now we can tell a story about how you prepare for this and do it. Make sense?
ReplyDeleteI'm unclear on that second part's necessity, but that's sort of what I came up with for the first. You can't give a power (which is probably good, actually, since powers include things like... spellcasting), exactly, but you may be able to duplicate the effects of the power in some cases. Even at that, it all appears to fall under Transformation/Biomancy/Crafting under Thaumaturgy/Ritual. Going by what's written in the book, the closest you can come with Evocation/Channelling is a short-term aspect "Great Strength" or somesuch that could be tagged for a bonus. That appears to be the best you can do using fast magic. I think. Still, not a bad potential use for a potion or something. And on that, I find myself rather fond of the enchanted items/potion rules thusfar. It hasn't come up much, but I like the look of them.
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