Some religions hold that a spell must be tweaked to exactly match the situation. Since changing a spell constitutes it being a new skill, that would mean over their life they would develop hundreds of spells for the same purposes. Can you only get an example bonus for the most similar skill? How do you handle having so many similar spells?
Example bonuses and slight spell variation
(5 posts) (4 voices)-
Tadeusz
MemberI think you'd handle it with something like the Champions disadvantage 'Variable Disadvantage' in which you're required to come up with fifty percent more disads than the Variable Disadvantage gives you as a cost bonus.
That's not quite right because Variable Disadvantage allows you to choose the disads you like. In your case, the environment chooses for you.
So...
The Vun realize that magic is a twisting of the world, and that day by day the world changes, and so to seek the least harmful, the easiest, the most pleasing to their Creator, way of doing magic,one should change day by day your magic.
Some Vun use the Calendar of Magics which helps to calculate the changes in magic for every day of the year.
In spring, a Vun uses apple blossoms and in fall apples for a Blessing, but in truth, its all the same...what is used is the Essence of the Fruit. (In this case, the category is wider than just apple, and so its worth less than apple.)
However, by the Calendar, you use water in spring, and black granite in winter to cast a Protection. (In this case, I would give no change. Just make sure everything is relatively equal in value. Don't have gold and bronze, but you could have brass and bronze.)
More advanced Vun move past the Calendar, and study the environment more closely. They see the bend of the tree branch, the shape of the cloud in the sky, the lay of the land, and thus they lay the branches in the right order to respect the Earth, and thus at some times, they gather just the right rocks and lay them well. (I'd call this a Preparation Skill, a metamagic possibly, with a Relative Success which would bonus your follow up spell.)
Hope this helps. I'm trying to pull a Wodium here, but I've got a ways to go.
Thu Oct 29 2009 2:12 pm # -
Tad is doing exactly what I would be inclined to do - define each basic spell broadly enough that all of the required tweaks fall into the original definition. As long as you don't change any of the really key values (duration, time factor, range, power, like that), this has the effect of reducing the value of requirements and restrictions due to their generality, but also of allowing the "tweaking" caster to reuse the skills he knows in multiple situations.
Mechanically, depending on how you did it, this could mean that the caster doesn't actually need to change up the spell to suit the circumstances - he just thinks he does, and since the spells he uses allow that, he never finds out otherwise. (Of course, since it's magic, belief in a limitation is equivalent to being limited.)
___That said, there's nothing inherently wrong with making a new spell every time you do magic. It would make bookkeeping a pain, and at a certain point you start to wonder how the caster keeps track of them all, but it's a valid approach. As a referee, I personally would look for ways to avoid it, as already mentioned.
To answer your first question: one example bonus and only one example bonus, ever. If there are multiple examples available, you may select the example with the highest SAL, but that's the only benefit you get from the variety. Think of it as not being able to imitate multiple people at once. ("I saw Dave Matthews and Elton John play the guitar, so thinking back to that, I'm going to try to do it myself." "Okay, which one are you imitating?" "Both!")
Thu Oct 29 2009 5:08 pm # -
We faced a similar problem with John Oakmaster's magic: he prays similar but not identical prayers. The solution was to frame those aspects that were consistent and state that he used "appropriate petitionary words" within the prayer. As Scott says, if you keep the essential details identical, you can vary what's involved.
The suggestion that it is water in spring and granite in winter falls into this category to some degree. Water would have a value of 1, maybe spring water (not from the season but from the source) would be worth 2; granite would be worth 2. That you could substitute one for the other might be thought to be an advantage, but in fact the caster cannot do that--he must have the correct one for the time of casting, and thus although he has two distinct material components, he gets credit for one, which is the same either way.
So you could include within the spell the instruction that the caster must compound a blend of herbs appropriate to the circumstances surrounding the casting, a material bonus given to the skill based on the probability that the "right" herbs would be available, and the skill success then includes whether you got the compounding right. Your gradual improvement through using/practicing the skill would mean that you were getting better at (along with everything else) getting the right compound for the right situation.
You could similarly state that the spell requires pronouncing a correctly formulated string of magic words specific to the circumstances, and treat this the same way. There would be a bonus if these were in a "magical" language (which is any language which is not the speaker's native tongue); there would be a bonus if the words expressed something appropriate (including asking for the result or speaking about it).
Even movement could be handled this way--what matters for the spell component is how involved you are physically (from no movement to complete involvement that prevents simultaneous other actions) and whether you get the movement right. That the movement could vary and you would have to know the right movement for this situation does not impact whether it is the same spell, if it is designed that way.
That's a rather advanced approach to the spell design problems, but it solves your question.
--M. J. Young
Thu Oct 29 2009 7:52 pm # -
Brock
Memberyes, it should reduce the spell variation to just those with different TFs, of which there are still a few. I'm practicing making character sheets whilst I wait for the spare money for the MV rulebook, and my mom's spells are like that-similar to Wiccan magic, but different, as she's an eclectic pagan.
Thu Oct 29 2009 11:49 pm #
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