Sorcery Duration

[PhilHibbs]

Has anyone come up with a decent house rule for exponential duration on Sorcery spells? It used to be this way in the old pre-Mongoose RuneQuest (I'd call it Classic RQ, but Drive-Thru RPG are using that term for Mongoose First Edition RQ), with basic duration of 10 minutes, doubling for each point of manipulation, so you could get up to 2.5 years of a 1-point spell or 8 weeks of a 5-point spell if you had a Free INT of 17.

Applying the same escalation as Range would allow a 100% skill 15-POW sorceror to cast a 1-point spell for nearly 30 weeks. Is that overpowered? Compared to 1 Divine Magic making another spell "permanent" for the cost of 1 spell (Extension), maybe not. Of course the Divine spell can be dispelled, but so can the Sorcery spell, although it's a bigger spell and so is more resistant to dispelling. Beyond that, the table is linear (+5000xPOW, nearly 7½ weeks at 15 POW). And that's for a 1-point spell, but that's enough for Abjure Ageing as it automatically scales up in SIZ with your skill. You'd need to be casting Magnitude 5 (41%) to get away with Abjure Age once a day, Magnitude 8 (71%) for once a week. Is that too easy? Lets try a slower progression:

Mag Duration
  1      POW
  2    2xPOW
  3    5xPOW
  4   10xPOW
  5   20xPOW
  6   50xPOW
  7  100*POW
  8  200*POW
  9  500*POW
 10 1000*POW

That gives Magnitude 7 (61%) for once a day, and Magnitude 10 (91%) for every 10 days, again assuming a POW of 15.

Thoughts?

 

[Titus]

I generally agree with you. I just looked at my old AH RQ (RQ3 by my reconning) and I see that both the Range and Duration affects were based on powers of 2. (10 minutes, 20 minutes, 40 minutes, 80 minutes, etc. and 10m, 20m, 40m, 80m, etc.)

Going with the same basic progression as the Range for Duration seems okay to me, though your slower rate is fine, too. To go with the same progression as range, I would have one point of duration manipulation be 2xPOW minutes since you already have POW with no duration manipulation. Then it would be 5min X POW, 10min X POW, 50min X POW, 100min X POW, etc.

Also, just to be clear, for the rest of this I assumed that when you said Magnitude, you really meant points of Manipulation applied to Duration.

I got a little lost on the arithmetic.
If you were using your table for durations, 5 Duration would last 5 hours for a 15 POW caster. (20*15=300 minutes)
And 8 Duration for a 15 POW caster would give 50 hours. (200*15=3000 minutes)

Either of these spells would cost 2 MPs to cast. (1 MP base, plus 1 for the manipulation of Duration.)

Either would require a 1 point Countermagic spell to knock it down because it has only 1 Magnitude.

With the durations in MRQ2 RAW, many uses of the Abjure group of spells don't make much sense. Our 15 POW sorceror could get 90 minutes with 5 Duration with Abjure (Food). Does that mean he is just not hungry for 90 minutes? 90 minutes of Abjure (Sleep) lets you stay up past your normal bedtime?

Now 90 minutes of Abjure (Air) might be very useful. It would be a good counter to Smother or let you spend time underwater without needing to breathe.

I am sure that the reason Range does not have the same progression as Duration are spells like Project (Sense) and Teleport. Many Abjure spells sure seem to want longer durations to be effective.

Yes, I think a better (longer) progression on Duration would be nice. In RQ3, the wizards could cast say Damage Resistance, Spell Resistance and Spirit Resistance with a extended durations on the knight heading into danger which would stay active on the knight for a few days. Of course, in RQ3 those spells cost a lot more MPs to cast.

 

[Titus]

I moved my post about Abjure (Air) from this thread to the Abjure Rules thread. It wasn't really about Duration and I didn't want to dilute this conversation.

 

[Deleriad]

In my opinion, exponential increases in duration are a bad thing. One of my least favourite aspects of RQ3 were people wandering around for days on end with huge amounts of protection, weapon and stat buffing. Sorcery became a meta-game of accounting: what was the most efficient way of spending Magic Points in order to balance size of buff with duration. It was pretty much magic by spreadsheet.

Comparing RQ3 duration to MRQ2 is also a moot point because in RQ3 the balancing factor was meant to be the need for massive numbers of MPs (errata for Multispell notwithstanding). Conversely, in MRQII, sorcery is much cheaper in terms of MPs. In general in MRQ2 however it's hard to recover the MPs you spent on a spell before its duration expires therefore spells aren't permanently on. Allowing exponential duration with lowered MP costs and significantly increased MP recovery would recreate one of the, to me, biggest turn-offs of RQ3 sorcery.

Personally I would prefer to use the sorcery enchantment rules from A&E to simulate permanent effects.

Finally, just because Divine Magic allows for some permanent effects I don't think that means every magical system should be able to.

On a minor point, every sorcery spell is Magnitude 1 by default unless you actually apply Manipulation to Magnitude. The effect of the spell scales with skill but its Magnitude doesn't. So for example, a Damage Resistance 7 with 10 points of Duration is still Magnitude 1. This is the huge weakness of sorcery because to increase its Magnitude to prevent dispelling you eat into its flexibility.

On another point, I think that people might be over extending the use of abjure. As I understand it, abjure is meant to allow for doing without vital things rather than avoiding the effects of harmful things. So abjure (sleep) seems reasonable but abjure (ageing) is a misapplication.

So my thoughts are that obviously if it's more fun for you then do it. Personally I prefer a differentiation between relatively short-lived spells and permanent enchantments.

 

[PhilHibbs]

One of my least favourite aspects of RQ3 were people wandering around for days on end with huge amounts of protection, weapon and stat buffing.

Perhaps some limiting factor could be placed on it, so that the sorceror couldn't just maintain an arbitrary number. Maybe the sorceror has to dedicate 1 POW per spell, so if you go underwater for 1 hour you have 1 less POW and 1 less MP for that duration (even if you cast the spell from an MP storage reserve), but if you keep up Damage Boosting, Damage Resistance, and 5 skill buffs for a week, you are down by 7 MP for that whole week.

Or, different spells could be tagged with different base durations, so Abjure Age could have a base duration of 1 day, and you stay with linear duration.

On another point, I think that people might be over extending the use of abjure. As I understand it, abjure is meant to allow for doing without vital things rather than avoiding the effects of harmful things. So abjure (sleep) seems reasonable but abjure (ageing) is a misapplication.

It's in the rules as an example of an exotic variant.

 

[Deleriad]

One of my least favourite aspects of RQ3 were people wandering around for days on end with huge amounts of protection, weapon and stat buffing.

Perhaps some limiting factor could be placed on it, so that the sorceror couldn't just maintain an arbitrary number. Maybe the sorceror has to dedicate 1 POW per spell, so if you go underwater for 1 hour you have 1 less POW and 1 less MP for that duration (even if you cast the spell from an MP storage reserve), but if you keep up Damage Boosting, Damage Resistance, and 5 skill buffs for a week, you are down by 7 MP for that whole week.

Or, different spells could be tagged with different base durations, so Abjure Age could have a base duration of 1 day, and you stay with linear duration.

On another point, I think that people might be over extending the use of abjure. As I understand it, abjure is meant to allow for doing without vital things rather than avoiding the effects of harmful things. So abjure (sleep) seems reasonable but abjure (ageing) is a misapplication.

It's in the rules as an example of an exotic variant.

For me its an issue of principle rather than balance. My experience was that long duration magic ended up becoming an exercise in book-keeping. Adding extra limits would reinforce that. I don't personally see what allowing spells to last for days, weeks or months adds to a campaign. I see spells lasting for such a long time being the result of extensive undertakings and enchantments rather than a daily cycle of "It's Monday morning, I have Damage and Spell Resistance on my schedule for the day."

Ageing is mentioned in the corebook along with dreams and pains but I personally wouldn't allow a straightforward abjure (ageing) spell in any campaign I ran. I go with the written description of abjure "to forgo a specific substance or process necessary for life." I think the examples muddy the water. That said, abjure as a spell more often that not would be pretty pointless if it only had a duration of a few minutes. There is an argument, as you say, for making the base duration of Abjure into hours or days rather than minutes.

Alternately, I would allow enchantments with a trigger condition which states that an enchantment's spell triggers when a condition is met. One of which would be simply "as soon as the refresh rate has been met, recast the spell." For an abjuration you would create a suitable enchantment (e.g. breathing into an enchanted leather bag) and then the enchantment continually recasts its spell.

E.g. Bigby's bag of breathing. A sorcery enchantment for the spell abjure (air)requiring the following conditions:
Duration: +3 (lasts 1 hour for a person with 15 POW)
User (only me): +1
Trigger (auto-cast): +1
Optional:
Magnitude (to make it harder to dispel), Range (in case you lose contact with it), Extra Duration (for obvious reasons).

 

[PhilHibbs]

I got a little lost on the arithmetic.
If you were using your table for durations, 5 Duration would last 5 hours for a 15 POW caster. (20*15=300 minutes)
And 8 Duration for a 15 POW caster would give 50 hours. (200*15=3000 minutes)

5 Duration requires 4 points of manipulation. I was wrong, however, when I said that Magnitude 7 required 61%. I think it's 51%, as it only requires 6 manipulations. here's my calculations.

Either of these spells would cost 2 MPs to cast. (1 MP base, plus 1 for the manipulation of Duration.)

Really?
*Edit*: Good grief, you're right. A 10-point spell spell cast 10km away lasting 2.5 hours only costs 4MP, although it needs a skill of 261% to cast.

 

[Mugen]

As for myself, I'm quite satisfied with the spirit of MRQ, with relatively short spells and semi-permanent enchants asking for the sacrifice of permament MPs.

I also liked Sandy Petersen's view on the subject, in which you had a "Presence" attribute that acted as a limitation on the sum of spells Intensity you could held active.

 

[PhilHibbs]

I also liked Sandy Petersen's view on the subject, in which you had a "Presence" attribute that acted as a limitation on the sum of spells Intensity you could held active.

Sandy's system, with Vows to improve your magical power, probably came in after the God Learner cataclysm, the High Vow probably contains an "I will not be naughty like the God Learners were" clause.

 

[PhilHibbs]

I think that if I do use the accelerated duration progression, it should become linear at the same point that range becomes linear, otherwise it gets silly very quickly as soon as you hit 100% skill. I have updates my online spreadsheet with this progression up to 20 points of manipulation, and included hours and days calculations for POW 10, 12, 15, and 18.

 

[Titus]

One of my least favourite aspects of RQ3 were people wandering around for days on end with huge amounts of protection, weapon and stat buffing.

I always liked the image of western church wizards bolstering the church's champion before he set off on a mission/quest that might last days or weeks. But I have to admit that I only tried doing that in solo games where I was experimenting with the RQ3 rules. The only player who ever tried playing a sorcerer got frustrated by how many MPs it cost to do anything interesting with sorcery. He fairly quickly retired the character and created a new one without sorcery.

Considering that sorcery spells no longer cost a fortune in MPs to cast, the extended duration probably makes less sense than it did in RQ3 sorcery. But I still like the idea of the church wizards bolstering their champion for an extented mission. I think I will do that with a variation on the sorcery enchantment rules.

The sorcery enchantment rules in A&E don't feel right to me. When I first read them, I mostly liked them. The "dedicated POW" mechanic (or MPs not regained) meant to me that those POW were in effect powering the enchantment. The MPs generated by those POW were going to the enchantment and that was good. I didn't like that if someone else broke the enchantment, that the sorcerer lost those MPs permanently. But then the discovery that any old MPs that the sorcerer could get his hands on were good enough to create a permanent enchantment messed with that concept.

I plan to require POW investment in permanent magic items. The sorcerer can recover the lost POW over time and the magic item has its own POW powering its enchantment(s).

But I also plan to retain the A&E sorcery enchantment, with some modifications, as a type of temporary enchantment. If the enchantment is broken in any fashion, by anyone, the "dedicated POW" is freed up and the MPs from it will again be usable by the sorcerer. In addition, the sorcerer will be able to break the connection with enchanted item and reclaim the dedicated POW. I am not sure of the game mechanic for this, but it may require a reversal ritual of some sort, or maybe just a persistence roll. It still requires POW backed MPs to create the enchantments, so you can not just use any MPs you might have lying around.

This would let the church wizards provide long term aid to their champion without potentially crippling all of the wizards who helped if the enchantments were broken on the mission.

My RQ will vary.

 

[Slade]

I was thinking about using the Open Quest sorcery manipulation table for duration in my MRQ2 game, however with damage spells being non-instant the thought of a week long Wrack or Smother could get stupid.

Allowing sorcerers to make a "Spell Mantle" for enhancement or protection magic that costs points of dedicated POW to keep active sounds like a better idea, it can still be taken down by magic but allows spells like Abjure and Enhance to last longer.