Sorcery rules

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From: 8hum190@violet.Berkeley.EDU
Date: Sat 18 Aug 1990 - 09:56:33 EEST


[This is taken from a letter Elliot Wilen sent me around the time of creation
of this mailing list.]

Yes, the current rule on Free Intelligence sucks. I couldn't believe it when I read it, and I immediately knew I was going to throw it out. I replaced it with the following, which is part of a general revision to the magic rules:

  1. A sorceror may learn any number of spells. Having learned a spell means having a percentile to cast it.
  2. However, a sorceror may only cast a spell which he has memorized. A sorceror must allocate 1 INT to each spell he has memorized; he may memorize no more spells than he has INT (plus that of his familiar, if he has one and it is within range--10 km). He may only use INT to manipulate spells which has not already been allocated to spell memorization.
  3. Spells may be forgotten at the rate of one per hour. They may be rememorized from a magic book or scroll (or other written source) at a rate of one per hour. This may be done concurrently with forgetting other spells. Committing a spell to writing is a special process, [possibly requiring a Ceremony Ritual and certainly] requiring special materials (fine ink, fine quill, vellum, parchment, or fine papyrus); in other words, it can't be done at the spur of the moment.

[The material in brackets is optional.] As far as my general revision goes,
it's really not all that extensive--it consists mainly of limiting the availability of magic by increasing the duties and restrictions at each stage of learning. In the case of Sorcery, this means that I call Apprentice what the rules call a Student, and an Apprentice has the duties of an Apprentice in the rules. This is entirely a world-background decision, because I want magic to be available only to those who study it seriously (everyone else will have to depend on magic items).

[The "you" below is Steve Maurer]

As for your complaint about higher degrees of spell manipulation not requiring greater ability, I agree absolutely, and I'm happy you pointed that out. The solution, which you mentioned, is simple: each point of manipulation (beyond 1) decreases the sorcery skill percentage by 5%. So if you want to heat something at a range of 80m (3 points of manipulation) to a heat of 5 (4 points of manipulation), your range skill is at -15% and your intensity is at -20%. If you have Heat 60%, Range 30%, and Intensity 40%, your chance of casting is 15%. If you want to heat something to 6, you only have to spend one more Magic Point; your casting chance remains the same.

An alternate system would be to figure the basic casting chance by the regular rules (30% in the above example) and then subtract from that. In the example, then, if you use 4 points of Range and/or intensity, your chance is reduced to 10%. Another point and it goes down to 5%. After that it either stays at 5% or becomes miniscule (by whatever method you like for approaching zero).

The second alteration (penalties for degree of manipulation) comes from Steve's complaint that the system as it stands makes it dangerous to have sorcery spells which get significantly powerful at higher degrees of intensity--otherwise, a novice with a spell that heats things up could use all his MP in one shot and have a fair chance of frying the Witch-King. I noticed after sending this rule off that it pretty much obviates the need for any concept of Free Int at all, since it provides ample limitation on sorcery spell manipulation (which is what Free Int is there for anyway, right?). So my Free Int rule can be retained, or Free Int may be thrown out altogether, depending on taste (of course, you still can't memorize more spells than you have Int).

My own implementation will most likely be:

  1. Retain my rules on Free Int (they make some intuitive sense to me).
  2. Use the first option for skill reduction based on amount of manipulation.

    -Elliot Wilen

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