Gaining sorcery spells

[Knight_of_Justice]

If you start out playing a character with the profession sorcerer do you know all the spells in your grimoire, or do you have to spend 2 Improvement rolls to learn a spell as indicated on page 194 of the Legend core rulebook?

 

[PhilHibbs]

MRQ2 was always a bit vague about this. Some people say that you get 4 spells because that's how many there are in a custom grimoire, but there's no basis for that conclusion in the rules.

 

[alex_greene]

Interesting.

The Sorcery (Grimoire) skill allows you access to all the spells in the grimoire, and the skill description says that your character can memorise as many spells as the grimoire holds, subject to the INT limit.

It doesn't say how many spells you get at the start of play.

This looks like something to thrash out between you and the GM. The GM will need to come up with specific grimoires and the spells each contains anyhow - but subject to the INT limit, if your character has two grimoires, one with five spells, one with eight spells, and he has an INT score of 17, he could theoretically start play with thirteen different sorcery spells and still have four INT slots free for another grimoire. If he then picks up a third grimoire containing six spells, he'll only have room for four of those spells from the third grimoire.

It would seem that you only have two restrictions, then: the whims of the GM and the character's INT score.

 

[alex_greene]

As for the improvement rolls issue on p. 194, that applies to learning new spells (that the character has not seen before) from a grimoire; to swap out a spell he has memorised for one he already knows, for instance because he has reached his INT limit, he needs 1d6 hours to swap out the old spell from the new one from the same grimoire.

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

I would severely limit the number of spells in a Sorcerer's first Grimoire. But, it does depend on how powerful the party is at the start of a campaign.

I would use the number of spells known by any Divine Cultists as a guide. But yes, it seems that the rules allow the GM and Player to figure it out.

 

[SJE]

The official answer back in the day was 'All of them'!

SJE

 

[Prime_Evil]

How about a house rule that allows an adventurer to start the game with one spell for every 10% in Sorcery (Grimoire)? This presumes that a character who has a high skill rating in Sorcery (Grimoire) has either started the game with a potent grimoire or has mastered most of the spells contained within that grimoire?

 

[alex_greene]

What applies to tools and equipment in Legend also applies to spells of all sorts. Arms of Legend said it best: "a resource, not an entitlement."

The GM can rule that, even though theoretically a Grimoire could contain every sorcery spell ever heard of, and that anything is possible, in practice a character can only learn from a limited range of spells initially, and learn other spells as and when they become available to him. Otherwise every starting adventurer's player will be queuing up to have their character learn Disruption, Frostbite, Hand of Death and the sorcery spells Extract Heart and Transmute Blood to Solid Gold.

 

[rust]

In our campaign we distinguish between the character's personal
grimoire and the grimoire of the organization he belongs to. While
the organization's grimoire contains all the spells known to the or-
ganization, the character's grimoire contains only the ones he was
already allowed to learn. These are the spells connected with the
core activities of the specific organization, the spells a character
has to know to take part in these activities at all. The number de-
pends on the specific organization, but usally is rather low. All the
other spells from the organization's grimoire are made available to
the character on a "need to know" base or as rewards for his suc-
cessful activities for the organization (and in rare cases for favours
or money ...).

For example, the only spell absolutely necessary to take part in the
activities of the Order of Phalanos is Abjure (Air), so a new member
of the order will be taught that spell as soon as possible. Depending
on the first mission he will be sent on he may also be allowed to co-
py two ot three other spells useful for this mission from the order's
grimoire into his personal grimoire - and that's it, at least until he
has demonstrated that he either needs another specific spell or that
he is a valuable enough member of the order to be trusted with an-
other spell.

 

[alex_greene]

Of course, the sorcerer character could develop spells entirely without reading someone else's Grimoire, developing his own philosophy and Grimoire and being the Leonardo daVinci of sorcery - in which case the spells don't exist for the character until he invents them, even if he hears of other sorcerers that can do the feats he is interested in, like flying or going without air for a day or some such.