Shamanism for fun and Prophet

[PhilHibbs]

I am refering that a sorcerer can do a spell like FLY or DAMAGE ENHANCEMENT many times spending only 1 mp, again, again, again...

If he has a POW of 16, say, he can do that 32 times in a day. With a Manipulation skill of 65 he can make it last 3 hours, so yes, he can keep one spell up all day excluding sleeping time. If he casts all his spells independently, he can keep up 5 spells for 18 hours a day by using all his MPs. So, I guess it is possible, but that leaves nothing left for casting any other spells. Some spells can only be cast together with Combine, though, and that reduces the duration while keeping the same MP cost.
*Edit* I'm wrong, it does leave him with most of his MPs available at any one time, but dipping into that reserve means not casting some of his regular spells in order to get those MPs back. And he might fail some of his casts as well, although it's always worth taking an extra CA or two for the +20% bonus when doing routine spell maintenance, or even taking 10 times as long for the I-can't-remember-how-big bonus.

 

[Deleriad]

Is Blood Magic another book, or a future article in S&P?

Blood Magic is a book written by Pete Nash. I don't know when it's coming out but he was kind enough to give Gary and I some information abut its contents and he collaborated with us to ensure that what we wrote would be compatible.

On the comparison with sorcery and flying.
A sorcerer with 70% in Manipulation can spend 2 Magic Points to cast Fly at extended duration POW*8 minutes (likely to be around 2 to 2.5 hours). For 8 Magic Points he can fly for say 10 hours. Roughly speaking it costs about 1 MP per hour to fly.

A shaman can bind a nature spirit that gives him the Flight trait. For 1 Magic Point to activate the spirit he can fly for as long as he wants.

Generally speaking Shamans aren't brilliant at magical artillery. I doubt anything is better than Wrack at doing that. However they are the only tradition which can have their abilities always one by default. A divine magician can use Extension and a sorcerer can keep recasting spells by spending Magic Points but a shaman simply spends 1 Magic Point and has the ability for as long as he wants.

 

[PhilHibbs]

On the comparison with sorcery and flying.
A sorcerer with 70% in Manipulation can spend 2 Magic Points to cast Fly at extended duration POW*8 minutes (likely to be around 2 to 2.5 hours). For 8 Magic Points he can fly for say 10 hours. Roughly speaking it costs about 1 MP per hour to fly.

No, it's 1MP for Fly at POW*X minutes.

sorcery spells cost as many Magic Points to cast, as
the number of manipulation components applied to it; with a
minimum cost of 1.

Manipulation is not optional, there is no benefit to not using it. If you're doing nothing else with it, such as Range or Duration, then dump it all in Magnitude because it costs nothing to do so and it makes your spells harder to dispel.

 

[PhilHibbs]

You aren't supposed to be able to do it, so I wouldn't expect to find rules for how to do the impossible.

Why did you say that I am not supposed to be able to do that? :roll:

I was going by Deleriad's post:

The default is that it is either impossible or very hard (time-consuming, expensive in some way) to replenish the Magic Points of a bound spirit.

*Update* Removed additional comments, I said I should stay away from this topic and I could be coming over as overly negative again.

 

[Deleriad]

On the comparison with sorcery and flying.
A sorcerer with 70% in Manipulation can spend 2 Magic Points to cast Fly at extended duration POW*8 minutes (likely to be around 2 to 2.5 hours). For 8 Magic Points he can fly for say 10 hours. Roughly speaking it costs about 1 MP per hour to fly.

No, it's 1MP for Fly at POW*X minutes.

sorcery spells cost as many Magic Points to cast, as
the number of manipulation components applied to it; with a
minimum cost of 1.

Manipulation is not optional, there is no benefit to not using it. If you're doing nothing else with it, such as Range or Duration, then dump it all in Magnitude because it costs nothing to do so and it makes your spells harder to dispel.

Phil I think you're reading MRQ 1. A sorcery spell costs 1 Magic Point to cast plus 1 Magic Point for each Manipulation used. Unmanipulated Duration for a sorcery spell is POW in minutes.

On the ghost front, S&P 89 gives a mechanic for allowing ghosts to recover Magic Points by tapping the environment. That said, it is perfectly possible for a centuries old ghost to dwindle away to nothing but 0 Magic Points over time. The central principle is that a spirit which is bound to the mundane plane has no natural way to regenerate MPs. It is cut off from the natural cycle. It is unnatural. Therefore any way of gaining MPs is going to be unnatural. A reasonable analogy is a vampire.

 

[PhilHibbs]

sorcery spells cost as many Magic Points to cast, as
the number of manipulation components applied to it; with a
minimum cost of 1.

Phil I think you're reading MRQ 1. A sorcery spell costs 1 Magic Point to cast plus 1 Magic Point for each Manipulation used. Unmanipulated Duration for a sorcery spell is POW in minutes.

That quote of mine is from MRQ2, I've never owned MRQ1. Is it incorrect? There's nothing in the errata about it.
Ah, I see a contradictory rule:

Magic Points
Sorcery spells cost 1 Magic Point plus as many Magic Points as
the number of Manipulation effects applied to it. Jedekiah, for
example, casting a sorcery spell upon himself with no Manipulation
uses only a single Magic Point. Applying five Manipulations would
cost 6 Magic Points (one for the basic spell, plus one point per
Manipulation).

I've been playing it by p47, looks like that's a carry-over from MRQ1 then. OK that makes a big difference to my example, and makes Combine comparatively more cost-effective.

 

[Deleriad]

I've been playing it by p47, looks like that's a carry-over from MRQ1 then. OK that makes a big difference to my example, and makes Combine comparatively more cost-effective.

You found some errata. As you say the last sentence in the description of Manipulation on p47 is a carry over from MRQ1 and should be deleted. Well caught.

 

[ThatGuy]

I had an interesting question from a player, and I wasn't sure of the answer, so I thought I would ask my trusty powerhouses of info here at the forums.

If a shaman has, lets say, 10 spirits hanging around, and suddenly wants to recall them all as an automatic action, how many can he recall at once?

1 at a time (per CA?)

2 per CA?

All at once?

Inquiring minds want to know...

 

[Deleriad]

I had an interesting question from a player, and I wasn't sure of the answer, so I thought I would ask my trusty powerhouses of info here at the forums.

If a shaman has, lets say, 10 spirits hanging around, and suddenly wants to recall them all as an automatic action, how many can he recall at once?

1 at a time (per CA?)

2 per CA?

All at once?

Inquiring minds want to know...

I'm not sure what you mean by hanging around in this context so I'm afraid I can't answer the question without more detail. Sorry.

 

[ThatGuy]

By "hanging around" I mean: the Shaman has released the spirits and commanded them to do whatever they do (provide AP, step up dam bonus, whatever).

Suddenly, he becomes aware of a threat to the spirits, and wants to recall them ALL.

How many can he recall at once?

 

[Deleriad]

By "hanging around" I mean: the Shaman has released the spirits and commanded them to do whatever they do (provide AP, step up dam bonus, whatever).

Suddenly, he becomes aware of a threat to the spirits, and wants to recall them ALL.

How many can he recall at once?

Good question. Without the rulebook in front of me I can't see if it reads that it is a free action or a combat action to command a spirit to return to a fetish. Normally commanding a spirit is a free action. The rulebook never actually defines a free action as I recall. How I would define a free action is:

You can perform a single free action at any time you perform a CA. That includes a reaction CA like a parry.

You can also perform a 'free action' as a reaction without any other reaction attached but it still uses up a CA.

Therefore in my world you could recall one spirit per free action which also works out at 1 spirit per CA.

If you wanted to recall a spirit before something nasty happened (e.g. a sorcerer casting Banish) I would rule it as an opposed contest of your spirit binding skill vs the sorcerer's grimoire skill. Basically you try to recall the spirit as a reaction to the spell. If you win, you get your spirit into the fetish before the banish takes effect.

However this is one of those cases where you might want to assess on a case by case basis rather than generating an invariable rule.

 

[PhilHibbs]

If you wanted to recall a spirit before something nasty happened (e.g. a sorcerer casting Banish) I would rule it as an opposed contest of your spirit binding skill vs the sorcerer's grimoire skill.

If he's casting the spell in 2 CAs (1 for the cast, 1 for range) you are far better using Countermagic, because you know that he has no Magnitude. And, it's a single-target spell, so which spirit is he targetting? If he's taking three CAs, then he's either multi-targetting, in which case Countermagic again because he still has no Magnitude. If he's using Magnitude to target a single spirit, again, which one is he targetting? You could recall your biggest spirit if there's an obvious one that he's going to go for broke on, like a 3 steps damage bonus or an auto Bleed CM spirit, but you've actually got time to recall two safely in the first two CAs and maybe a third as you suggest with a contested quickness contest on the third CA.

 

[Pruneau]

Man, I'm so slow at things sometimes. Here I am all surprised that there is this excellent article on Shamans in S&P, and another one the month after, and look: there is an 8 page thread on the new article ánd there's a S&P RQ article reference sticky as well.

Guess what I've been doing last night? Right, going through 25 or so S&P indexes writing down everything RQ related :roll:

Anyway, I started with printing it all out now and neatly binding it into an additional rulebook. Excellent stuff, and I'm more chuffed every day that my homegrown system has been replaced by a new system that actually has support and new ideas. Great stuff!

 

[sdavies2720]

...Excellent stuff, and I'm more chuffed every day that my homegrown system has been replaced by a new system that actually has support and new ideas. Great stuff!

Isn't it nice? You can just hand a rulebook to a player to look something up. It's been so effective that I'm slowly dropping my remaining houserules as well.

Steve

 

[Deleriad]

Guess what I've been doing last night? Right, going through 25 or so S&P indexes writing down everything RQ related :roll:

It almost feels mean to mention that there is a RQ index for S&P stickied at the top of the board. It might also be on Mr Qwiki too.