I'd like a spell that did thus....
1. It covered the globe, and was accessible to everyone.
2. It healed those who accepted the condition of the spell, and children and the child-like.
3. Everyone heard a whisper in their native tongue: "If you swear to protect the Earth from unjust harm, then you may receive healing by the grace of the Creator."
4. It would not count as an individual spell to each person as they accepted, but only as one spell.
5. It healed everyone full up. Two damage categories shift up to Fatal healing. -20 cost.
Construction of the spell:
1. Paladin taboo +10
2. Loud voice, foreign language "Latin", Appropriate. +13 total.
3. Full Body Involvement +15
4. Time spent, baseline is one minute. 64 minutes +60.
5. The Wicked Brought to Repentance. I'm thinking about bringing the Goth to a location, and preaching a sermon to them. And each one that trusts in the Creator helps spread my message. If none do, then it fails.
6. Location: An Alliance church in a wooded area which combines the message of the Creator and the woods for more appropriateness even if I don't get another apro. bonus, but still a location that only can be in certain areas will count.
7. Time: Dawn for the ending bit of the spell.
8. Holy Symbol +10
9. Be charged by a pastor to heal +5
10. Sensitivity: Anyone within global range that is magically sensitive is going to know the location. This extends sideways into Border Supernaturals. Which is why, Ed gets loaded with a Plasma Cannon, and some magic to face off against any Agent of Darkness that shows up to spoil what I hope is God's work. +15
11. Character will be tired thereafter. +5. All others involved who help will be tired. +4??
12. Spell requires a Bonus Check success. This Bonus Check is RS/5 with a Loud Voice, Latin and English, and Full Body Involvement "Hands raised to Heaven", and an early morning sun in the sky. "Bless us Most High in this endeavour, O please bless us, send down your mercy, if it be your will, Amen." This spell will bless whatever next Alliance based action the group is intent on. Which in this case will be the finale of the Heal.
13. Conditional healing--if the wounded agrees within the following twenty-four hours, if they have the ability to do so, then they are healed. Otherwise, the chance is over.
14. 2@5 BRA +25
15. 2@9 Religion +19
16. Example: I've met people, not many, with huge healing abilities. I'm not sure this counts, since they probably did not cast this precise miracle. 3@2 +32
17. I flip through my notes to some quotes by a renowned miracle worker. 2@4 Willpower +12 as half of examples BRA>
18. Now the miracleworker would be better, but I can use eidetic memory, and my notes....so 1@7 for teaching ability +17 ????
19. Character bias 15@10----He's played around with Time a very little bit. +15
20. Character must fast and pray the whole of the night up until the miracle--which leaves arranging some of it up to his partner.
21. Fire the Plasma Cannon into the sky on a continuous pulse until it drains dry, if it can. For the duration of the ceremony if it lasts. Stand far enough back not to be fried from the heat. If it drains all the way, then so be it. If it recovers later, or keeps active, then so be it. This symbolizes my willingess to sacrifice a prize to make amends. +10 X 2 (Its uncertain whether it will break or not, but its extremely valuable.)
To cover the planet, I look at my Vampire Tidbit chart and come up with -330 disad.
I don't think you want number 12, because it makes your spell impossible in the flatlined bias.
If I read you right, number 5 means that you must attempt to convert someone or someones during the Time Factor, and that failure to do so means failure for the spell. Yes?
I'm inclined to think that 10 is a function of the particular skills held by such "sensitives", and thus isn't really a special quality of the spell. If MJ feels otherwise (perhaps bonusing attempts to detect the spell in exchange for a sit-mod on performance), that's his call.
Number six is probably worth +10.
I'm not sure about seven. I got plus ten for my "only on Setting Orange" restriction, which comes once every five days; perhaps +5 for dawn, which comes once a day? Or maybe plus ten. Like I said, not sure.
For number nine, being charged by an Alliance servant gives a bonus on its own; are you angling for an additional bonus by saying that the spell will fail without this charge, or are you just planning to get a priest's blessing?
Number eleven: to get the full +5 for fatigue, I'm expecting "too tired to use any more magic for a while without penalty, and certainly no more 'tiring' magic." Unless everyone else gets that same level of fatigue, too, I probably wouldn't bonus for including them.
_
I think that requiring the recipients to agree is balanced by the fact that they're agreeing to something you want, for no adjustment. Allowing a delay in the effect might be -10, along the lines of Graeme's potions. (In case it's not obvious why this merits a penalty - in theory, you could use this spell before a battle, and let the individual soldiers "accept" just as they become badly wounded.)
Lastly, I expect that the message has to be included as another skill, a M7@ Informations. Your best shot is to convince your referee that this is a M7@1 Concealed Message with a big fat penalty for multiple targets.
Speaking of the bias, Tad knows that the magic here is flatlined; even if he hadn't figured it out on his own, I think the Architect said so. A M2@7 Unlimited Damage Repair won't work. He'll have to try a M2@1 Limited and just pray that it's enough. Again, though, it will only be possible if the message component is @1, and even then, it'll be a M7@1 spell.
I see, for #12, I can do a 2@ skill as long as its @1. Okay.
Five--correct.
Right, now, I've got something like -29 as I consider my spell--in other words an automatic failure, and likely a botch of really collossal proportions.
"Did you really mean to drop the planet into a black hole?" Asked the spectating demon who's munching on popcorn as the planet spirals to its doom.
Time for numbers.
Ritual bonuses:
V,S,M : 13, 20, 10 : +43
TF : x64 : +60
Conditions: 10 (pal), 10 (church), 10 (dawn), 10 (pastor) : +40
I didn't tally the requirement for the pastor, because I'm not sure you're doing that [Edit: Yes I did, extra +5], and I'm not tallying the Sensitivity because I'm not sure of the exact mechanics of the limitation. That's +153 inherent to the spell. Now for you specifically:
BRA: 2@5 : +25
Religion: 2@9 : +15
Bias: 15@10 : +160
World Bias : 0@2 : +0
I'm not sure I buy those arguments for example, instructor, or teacher, but MJ might rule differently. For now, I'm skipping them.
Speaking of right now, you've currently got +153 for ritual and +200 for you, for a total of +353.
Now for negatives.
Skill bias: 7@1 : -71
Power : x4 : -20
If that were all, you'd have 353 - 91 = 252, plenty. It's not.
Targets: whole world: -???
Why "???" ? Well, I'm not sure that counting doublings is really the way to go here. Yes, that's a large area, and yes, it deserves a big penalty, but it's magic. I feel like at some point we stop counting individuals and start making up numbers.
And, since it's not my game, I'm not making up the numbers.
If it were me, I might be willing to go as low as -150, or I might go as high as -330. Which leaves you anywhere between 102% (certain success) and -78 (certain failure with a side of 17% to botch).
Oh, and I never assessed the bonus for "must convert some folks." Maybe +15?
I missed some of that editing while I was typing. Extending the time factor to twelve hours gets you +45, bringing your lower bound up to -33%. I'm not sure about the cannon - if you guaranteed its destruction, I'd give +18, but since you're only risking it, I'm thinking +10.
Anyway, you're still in the "anywhere from certain doom to certain victory" range because of the ad hoc targeting modifier, so in one sense it hardly matters.
Oh, and silly me, I left out the -10 for including another skill! Down to -43 to +137, plus the plasma rifle plus the "sensitivity."
And, of course, we've yet to consider world affiliation and deity approval, both of which only the ref can decide.
And, of course, the promise these people make isn't binding unless you want to include a M1@8 Geas, raise the bias to 7@2, and curve out the spell. It's still useful for psychological effect, of course.
The Ladyfaire opened my eyes a bit to the concept of 'healing the planet' as if it were a person. It might be too.
I think one of my limits would be 'not testing'. I'd do something that was a check, and then not check to see if it works before moving on to the other spell. This might have been considered something like 'faith' or that concept in the Magical Limits List.
Eric
I have a problem. I NEED to cast some huge spell or spells as PC. But as a player, I NEED to let Ed take center stage.
I might resolve this by telling MJ what I plan to do, and then having him have most of it happen off-stage.
I've considered adding some psionic stuff to the spell too...
Toss some small rocks high into the atmosphere, let them drop and ignite....which yields a flaming cross visible for a hundred miles or so.
I'm agreeing with most of Scott's post, and making a few other notes.
Scott, the ability to completely cure was based on two damage category bonuses from dangerous to fatal. That's got a good chance of curing everyone, since the original explosion did 18 intensities of damage, so a roll of 35 or better will cover that completely--and he's already brought everyone at or below 0 up to 1 intensity, so if he does 17 he heals everyone who started below 19.
You'll have to scratch #18, because the value of an instructor or teacher is that you have an outside party observing and correcting--you cannot teach yourself in that sense, period. You would have to have someone who already knows how to do this (or something extremely close to it) teach you.
The full +5 for fatigue means that you are completely exhausted. Walking would be a challenge, and lifting a plasma rifle is out of the question. I expect people who are "fatigued" to rest for fifteen minutes before being able to do more than the very simplest of tasks, and nothing that would ordinarily require a roll, and I would probably require rolls for those things.
The thing about attracting the attention of "sensitives" was one of the things on Eric's list of possible limitations on spells--that you would get a bonus if the casting revealed your position to other magic-using persons or creatures. I've never liked it, but I concede that it is a limitation. I probably would not give more that +5 for it, because unless you happen to be involved in some sort of guerilla combat at that moment other magic using beings are unlikely to take an interest in the fact that someone cast a spell, no matter what the spell happens to be. Also, the qualification that this extends into border supernatural areas that are adjacent strikes me as nonsense--there are probably no border supernatural areas that are not adjacent to every point in every universe, and anyway, natives of such regions probably have the ability to observe what you're doing at any moment in time or space without having you call attention to it--they probably can see that you did it before you've done it.
I think perhaps, though, that the limitation ought to be that merely attempting to cast the spell has a stated probability of summoning an opposing magic-user or magical creature (without providing means of delivery). I'd give +10 for that.
I also agree that it's an incorporated 7@1 concealed messages skill with multiple targets; however, I'll only penalize for the multiple targets once. There's also the translation problem, but I'll allow that as a function of the concealed message in this particular case.
The idea that you must convert at least one person as part of the casting is interesting, and hard to adjudicate. The "on condition of acceptance of terms" switch is a tough one, too.
On the former: the preacher must make a difficult persuasion check; if it is successful, each member of the audience makes a difficult will power check. If any one of those will power checks fails, or succeeds but at a level equal to or less than the persuasion check roll, you have your convert. This equates to confirmation that you have been commanded to do this by the deity, but that replaces the bonus for the preacher's command with the one for the deity's command, +10 instead of +5. Oh, and this is a Neutral affiliated world.
On the latter, while I can see it being a limitation on some skills, it's not a limitation on this one, but an extra effect (because in addition to healing you're coercing agreement with your goals). The other side of it, really, is that every individual who does not agree reduces the number of people who have to be healed, and so in some sense increases the chance of success overall. Thus I think no bonus for that, as it's not really a limitation on the casting but a way of getting something else out of the spell (and that at no penalty).
I also like the idea of using the spell not a so many billion individuals but on the single entity, the creatures of the earth. Of course, there are by now many species that are lost forever, but in this odd mutated world there might be some good things coming from it. I'll set the penalty for "every living thing on the planet" at -200, just because every time I try to persuade myself to make it lower than that I start to think someone's going to take advantage of that ruling someday and I'm going to have to justify giving a different number.
What does that give him?
--M. J. Young
Scott, the ability to completely cure was based on two damage category bonuses from dangerous to fatal.
I happened to be on while he was posting and thus cross-posted with a few of his edits; but, I made sure to go back and fix the math to account for them, so we're good.
Let's see; switching in a plus ten for a plus five, for a total of +5 for the conversion; +10 for the chance-to-summon; Neutral world for -5; assuming Tad's okay with the full value for the fatigue and we're only risking the destruction of the plasma rifle, that brings our range up to -23% (if the penalty were -330) to 157% (if the penalty were -150). Since the penalty is -200, our success chance is . . .
107%
. . . contingent on a successful conversion of at least one member of the audience, and risking both destruction of a prized weapon and the summoning of an unwelcome guest. Activity immediately following casting severely limited.
Sound good?
Oh, and for subsequent attempts in this universe, success drops to 28%. That's assuming Tad still has a plasma rifle.
Ok. Thank you, both of you.
I'll do it. I'd like most of this to be off-stage as much as reasonably possible since the game is really about Ed. And something like this, unless handled carefully, is going to completely take over the game.
And the advantage of Skill Acquisitions compared to use skills was one reason I went for a new spell. The other was, I couldn't think that even Tadeusz of the Thousand Plus Spells would have one like this in his back pocket. Fourteen different ways of starting a campfire....sure. Planetary Full Heal....uh unh.
And yes, a Difficult Persuasion Check....but then "I am not an angel, but I am the Servant of the One God, that very God who gave through me the grace to rescue you from the jaws of death....He calls you now again, wanting to save you from another death. Your planet is dying. Your life is not lived as it ought to be. The God who saved you from one death wants to rescue you from these other deaths as well." Might make that whole persuasion thing a touch easier.
Well, you've already got a 3@3 persuasion, but I'll boost it to 3@6 based on your identification with the angel.
As to what has to be in the game thread, you and Ed will have to find the appropriate location (you've defined it, but you must seek it), find a way to bring the audience to it, and he's got to be involved in firing the plasma rifle (which means he has to be told in the game thread to do it and must agree).
The rest I'll draw from here.
--M. J. Young