Magnitude of Sorcery Spells

[Itto]

When a character casts a sorcery spell, say Damage Boosting 65% using the Manipulation(Magnitude)skill at 65% what level of magnitude is it cast at?

The rules say "the maximum Magnitude to which the spell can be increased to is noted in the Manipulating Sorcery Spells table."

Looking that up thats a max Magnitude of 7. So does that mean the spell IS cast at 7 or someother number, as it says above maximum not the spell is cast at. It seems a little unbalanced (to say the least) as it will only cost 1mp to cast the spell. Plus if they had Manipulation(Targets) at 45% they could cast the spell on 4 people at the same time at Magnitude 7 for a mere 2mp.

I keep thinking that I've missed a paragraph somewhere.

I've been thinking that the magnitude should be based on the level of success, so if the character rolled a 45, it would be Magnitude 4. Or that a sorcerer has a number of points to use with Manipulation Skills equal to the Magic Spell Skill being used divided by 10. So with Damage Boosting 65% you could do Magnitude 7 on one person, or Mag 3 on 4 people depending on your skills in the other Manipulation skills.

Just wondering what other folks think as Sorcery will be used allot more with all those God Learners kicking about. Though there is that loverly looking book Magic of Glorantha looming that may straighten it out, maybe, or describe something totaly different.

 

[Halfbat]

According to the example on p26-27, the adjusted skill level determines the maximums to which the spell can be Manipulated and the write-up on Manipulation(Targets) on p26 implies this very strongly as well.

The character chooses the number of targets, time, etc, he wants to effect, all of which must be within the range/duration/magnitude for the relevant skills after all penalties. The single roll determines which of the various Manipulation skills apply (as well as whether or not the base spell succeeded).

For example, if a character has a skill of 53% in Manipulation(Targets) he could elect to adjust a spell to affect up to 5 targets. If there are only 3, great. If his result is under his Manipulation(Targets) skill and his spellcasting skill, the 3 targets are affected. If his result is above his Manipulation(Targets) skill but below his spellcasting skill then only one target is affected.

Hope that helps!

PS: MS - If this isn't what was intended, please let us know!

 

[Itto]

Cheers for spending the time to do an example Halfbat.

I understand the rules as written, but I just the relative cheapness of casting quite powerful sorcery spells I'm having issues with. I know that there is a case where the limit is based on the level of sorcery spell skill will limit the level of casting. As Each spell is a skill, someone using sorcery will have to devote all there IPs to become skilled in a number of spells.

I have a witch (using rune magic) and a wizard (using sorcery) in my game and at the moment, and sorcery is looking by far the most attractive. The witch looks how much its going to cost them to get bladesharp 4 and then sees the Sorcery getting a similar effect for far far less. The balance just does not seem to be there.

I've been holding off on the Divine until I get the Cult Book (maybe today the shop will get it in) so no-one has any cults yet. Which is very weird playing RQ with no cults, I've been playing for 23 years...so its very very odd.

I quite liked sorcery in RQ3, it took a bit to get your head round and then you had to get the players to understand it too. I had one or two who took seeing the potential but then to find that couldn't hope to be any good at using sorcery and a sword (or wear any armour due to the ENC penalties)

 

[Mugen]

I've been thinking of using a "Degree of success" system quite like the one you suggest in my RQ games for many things (for instance : Dmg in a fight = DoS + weapon's Attack Value), and I had quite the same idea as you for Sorcery.

I see 2 ways Sorcery could work wuth such a system :

Version 1 :

1) The Sorcerer chooses which spell(s) he wants to cast.

2) The Sorcerer pays 1 MP rolls dice under the (lowest) spell skill. In case of a success, Tens die = success. Critical success provide a DoS of 10.

2b) In case of skills over 100, 1 is added to DoS for each 10% over 100. So, rolling 63 with a skill of 136 results in a DoS of 6+3 = 9.

3) The Sorcerer can add any number of MP to the DoS rolled in step 2) to get the Spell's total level (STL).

4) The Sorcerer can distribute his STL among all the different Manipulation skills he knows, up to (Skill/10).

Example :

A Sorcerer know the following skills :

*Boost (STR) 65%
*Boost (CON) 35%
*Manipulation (Magnitude) 75%
*Manipulation (Targets) 25%
*Manipulation (Duration) 45%
*Manipulation (Multispell) 33%

He wants to cast a spell that boosts both STR and CON of 2 of his friends.

First try :

He spends 1 MP then rolls under Boost (CON) -the lowest skill between the 2 spells he wants to cast-. He gets a 45 : a failure.

Second Try :

He spends another MP and gets a 27. He decides to add 7 MP to the 2 DoS, and spreads them among the different Manipulation skills accordingly :

*Multispell : 1 (he can't do otherwise as he decided to cast 2 spells at once in first place
*Targets : 1 (so he can affect both friends)
*Duration : 1
*Magnitude : 6

However, the final magnitude of Boost (CON) will be 3 as his skill in this spell is 35. So he ends up with a spell affecting 2 targets for 2*POW minutes and boosting STR by 6 and CON by 3.

Version 2 :

Exactly as written in the companion, except that the maximum magnitude for each spell is equal to the greatest between :

*Skill/10
*DoS + Extra MP put in the spell.