Sorcery Question

[Itto]

I picked up my lovely copy of MRQII yesterday, it gives me a very warm feeling looking at it and reading it. I had the red hardback copy of RQII given to me 26 years ago, and it stirs a lot of great emotions. Well done Mongoose for producing such a high quality tomb!

Anyway that aside, a question about Magnitude in Sorcery spells. I was quite enjoying mechanism that has been devised to manipulate sorcery spells, I think it is very good and well thought out. But then I started to read the spell descriptions and things appear to be disjointed from the rules presented at the beginning of the chapter.

The core thrust of sorcery is that its’ weak until you start manipulating it, as I’ve just said the new rules look good, balanced and very workable. As I was reading the I was applying these rules to the spells as I know them in previous incarnations of Sorcery, the way you would. When I started to read the new spell descriptions, well things started to go a rye.

With the thought that here is a little snip of Castback “It reflects hostile magic of up to 1 Magnitude per 10% of the caster’s Sorcery (Grimoire)”. A bit of Enhance (Characteristic) , “Enhance temporarily increases the specified characteristic be 2 points per 10% of the caster’s Sorcery(Grimoir)”. I could go on, each spell description talks about its effect in terms of points per 10% of the caster’s Sorcery(Grimoir), rather than points per magnitude.

Reading the spells I can’t actually work out what you are now meant to do with the Magnitude part of the Manipulation Spell. It’s a bit like whoever wrote (rewrote) the spell discretions was working to a different rules set for sorcery, or did a find and replace on “points per Magnitude” with “points per 10% of the caster’s Sorcery(Grimoir)”.

So back to question, how does the Magnitude part of the Manipulation Skill effect spells?

Would it be points per 10% of the caster’s Sorcery(Grimoir) + the Magnitude added from the Manipulation Skill? Or the effect is multiplied by the Magnitude? Do I just ignore the “points per 10% of the caster’s Sorcery(Grimoir)” and read it just as
“points per Magnitude”?

Anyway aside from this one point everything I’ve read has been coherent, thought out and extremely well presented.

 

[Mongoose Pete]

So back to question, how does the Magnitude part of the Manipulation Skill effect spells?

It states specifically on p128, under Magnitude, second paragraph, hat "For sorcery spells Magnitude is only used to see if it will overcome magical defences or resist magical attacks."

Splitting the effect of the spell from the size of the spell was a deliberate design change. It prevents sorcery spells from being castrated by bundling the effect under the single Manipulation skill's limitations.

 

[RosenMcStern]

Let us try with an example. Say you have Castback 1 on you and you are attacked by a Befuddle spell and a Palsy spell cast by someone with 100% Grimoire skill, manipulated only to give it range but no Magnitude.

Befuddle is Magnitude 2, so it is not blocked by the Castback spell.

Palsy is Magnitude 1 by default so it is blocked and sent back to the caster, who suffers the ill effects if he cannot make a Resilience roll. However, since the casting skill is 100%, the Palsy spell affects hit locations up to 10 Hit Points, not just 1 (it is the equivalent of Palsy 10 in the old rules or AH RQ3).

 

[Itto]

So back to question, how does the Magnitude part of the Manipulation Skill effect spells?

It states specifically on p128, under Magnitude, second paragraph, hat "For sorcery spells Magnitude is only used to see if it will overcome magical defences or resist magical attacks."

Splitting the effect of the spell from the size of the spell was a deliberate design change. It prevents sorcery spells from being castrated by bundling the effect under the single Manipulation skill's limitations.

Cheers for clearing that up for me, your quite right it's very clearly written under the heading of Magnitude I guess one of the problems with looking at new versions of rules is that you carry the mental baggage of the previous editions so start. I'd obviously skimmed over that paragraph, making the assumption it was the same.

 

[Mongoose Pete]

Cheers for clearing that up for me, your quite right it's very clearly written under the heading of Magnitude I guess one of the problems with looking at new versions of rules is that you carry the mental baggage of the previous editions so start. I'd obviously skimmed over that paragraph, making the assumption it was the same.

No problem!