Sorcery spell Tap(Characteristic) from Companion

[Hoitsu]

There seems to be something missing or i am just blind. How many points does the spell Tap? There seems to be no indication of that in the spell description

Help me please, i want to punish my players

 

[JohnLokiBeard]

It's Sorcery, so as many as the Magnitude of the Tap spell.

 

[Rurik]

It's Sorcery, so as many as the Magnitude of the Tap spell.

If that were true than it would always reduce the tapped stat to 1 permanantly because the spell states:

Tap will only work if its Magnitude is equal to or greater than the target’s specified Characteristic. Thus a Magnitude 6 Tap Strength spell would only work on targets with a STR of 6 or lower.

I can't imagine that is supposed to be right.

 

[Vadrus]

It's Sorcery, so as many as the Magnitude of the Tap spell.

If that were true than it would always reduce the tapped stat to 1 permanantly because the spell states:

Tap will only work if its Magnitude is equal to or greater than the target’s specified Characteristic. Thus a Magnitude 6 Tap Strength spell would only work on targets with a STR of 6 or lower.

I can't imagine that is supposed to be right.

Yep, that is just how it reads and works, so Tap is useless until your skill in Magnitude is at least 100%+ and then it snaps round to being a killer spell (Tap DEX anyone :twisted: ).


Vadrus

 

[Rurik]

I would say that spell needs a re-write worse than speedart. Seems pretty borked to me.

 

[gamesmeister]

Initially I assumed it was only 1 pt, as a permanent loss of even 1 pt of characteristics can be pretty damaging, let alone your entire stat.

However, applying a manipulation skill (such as increasing the Magnitude in order to make it possible to cast the spell) also costs 1 MP, giving a net gain of zero, but a drop in a stat to the target.

I envisaged a sorcerer keeping slaves to use as MP pools, in order to perform complex rituals or some such, but that doesn't work with the above.

So I've got no idea either! :?

G

 

[Rurik]

I was initially thinking 1 point too. You could still reap a gain by Combining multiple tap spells so you could Tap multiple stats for a gain of MP.

 

[gamesmeister]

Possible, but would require good levels in several different skills to be feasible.

However, Tap is such a potent spell that perhaps that's ok.

 

[Rurik]

Possible, but would require good levels in several different skills to be feasible.

However, Tap is such a potent spell that perhaps that's ok.

Well, since the magnitude must equal the Characteristic being tapped, and the human average is 10 (or 13) you pretty much need a 91+ in the tap spell already to even tap an average person.

You could always start on small children I suppose. Yup, sorcery can indeed be a dark art.

 

[Vadrus]

Initially I assumed it was only 1 pt, as a permanent loss of even 1 pt of characteristics can be pretty damaging, let alone your entire stat.

However, applying a manipulation skill (such as increasing the Magnitude in order to make it possible to cast the spell) also costs 1 MP, giving a net gain of zero, but a drop in a stat to the target.

I envisaged a sorcerer keeping slaves to use as MP pools, in order to perform complex rituals or some such, but that doesn't work with the above.

So I've got no idea either! :?

G

? Not sure why you think the sorceror would only gain 1MP, the spell says he gains 1 MP per characteristic 'point' drained, so if you drain someones STR say by 12 points then you gain 11 MP (12 - 1 for the magnitude manipulation).

It is a devastating spell, not only do you automatically cripple your opponent but your MP go through the roof given how cheap Sorcery spells are.


Vadrus

 

[Rurik]

? Not sure why you think the sorceror would only gain 1MP, the spell says he gains 1 MP per characteristic 'point' drained, so if you drain someones STR say by 12 points then you gain 11 MP (12 - 1 for the magnitude manipulation).

It is a devastating spell, not only do you automatically cripple your opponent but your MP go through the roof given how cheap Sorcery spells are.


Vadrus

The gist of it is that the spell description doesn't say how many points are tapped. The two most likely interpretations are points equal to magnitude or 1 point.

Points equal to magnitude make the spell extremely potent - since the spells magnitude has to equal the stat being tapped it would always reduce the stat to 1 permenantly. There is no way to tap 5 points of STR for example. This seems way overpowered.

The other way of looking it is to tap 1 point permenantly. This would result in breaking even unless the caster combines multiple Tap spells. This seems a bit underpowered, but then permenant stat drain is a pretty devastating effect.

The spell as written is just not clear, and seems poorly thought out. There should be some way to tap multiple points. Maybe each magnitude above the stat results in an additional point of drain, so for example a 12 magnitude Tap vs. a 10 stat would result in 3 points drained. (1 at mag. 10, 2 at Mag. 11, 3 at Mag 12, etc.).

As compared to Damage Boosting, which is clear enough but seems just plain overpowered under the new system. With a 51 Manipulation (Magnitude) you get +6 damage for 1 MP. :shock: Which becomes +9 for 1 mp at an 81 skill. Ouch.

Can you use Manipulation(Targets) on touch spells? Can I damage boost my whole party's weapons if I can touch them all? (I think I am going to rule NO on this one).

 

[CharlieMonster]

Can you use Manipulation(Targets) on touch spells? Can I damage boost my whole party's weapons if I can touch them all? (I think I am going to rule NO on this one).

According to the Spell Traits & Descriptions in the companion:

Touch: Touch spells require the character to actually touch his target for the spell to take effect. The spellcaster must remain in phyisical contact with the target for the entire casting.

Given sorcery spells also require some use of gesture, this pretty much eliminates multiple targets (unless the character has the advanced skill "Play Twister" at a very high level :lol: ). Incidentally this also puts a restriction on Tap, you have to remain in contact with the target for 3 Combat Actions, which means it's pretty much limited to captives or victims rendered hors de combat in some way. It's still very unpleasant, but then it was always meant to be. There's a reason it was banned by pretty much every civilised Malkioni church.

 

[phantomwhale]

The gist of it is that the spell description doesn't say how many points are tapped. The two most likely interpretations are points equal to magnitude or 1 point.

...

The spell as written is just not clear, and seems poorly thought out. There should be some way to tap multiple points. Maybe each magnitude above the stat results in an additional point of drain, so for example a 12 magnitude Tap vs. a 10 stat would result in 3 points drained. (1 at mag. 10, 2 at Mag. 11, 3 at Mag 12, etc.).

Sorry to bump this post up again, but I'm afraid Tap is broken and needs an errata.

It's good we have discussed what we THINK the drain should be and why, but at the end of the day it seems fairly obvious that the spell's author did not consider, or accidently ommited what the drain should be. Of the suggestions so far, I favour Rurik's idea (quoted) about using "difference in magnitude and the statistic + 1". But this is clearly a case where the book is missing the description, which should be clarified by mongoose (and then house ruled if felt neccasary, of course).

Otherwise, having not had a chance to play the new system yet, I'll keep my worries about sorcery being overpowered in the longer term to myself for now, esp. regarding the damage boosting example above. But high scorcery skills giving you better chance of casting spells AND making the spells more powerful at no extra cost does seems to overload their power somewhat.

 

[Quintus]

I remember Sorcery to be a major pain in the magic pool, due to the various magic points required to boost spells by range, duraction, magnitude etc. What I'm hearing is that: If I apply the Magnitude Skill of XX% to my spell, cast the spell and roll under the Magnitude Skill, then the spell ONLY costs me 1 Magic Point, no matter how much of a magnitude the spell is, due to my skill level? That seems...odd. If anything, a more powerfull spell must require more energy...or is that not so?

(Visions of Wizzard zapping 10 targets with a magnitude 10 Palsy...for 2 magic points...yikes)

Q...

 

[Rurik]

I remember Sorcery to be a major pain in the magic pool, due to the various magic points required to boost spells by range, duraction, magnitude etc. What I'm hearing is that: If I apply the Magnitude Skill of XX% to my spell, cast the spell and roll under the Magnitude Skill, then the spell ONLY costs me 1 Magic Point, no matter how much of a magnitude the spell is, due to my skill level? That seems...odd. If anything, a more powerfull spell must require more energy...or is that not so?

(Visions of Wizzard zapping 10 targets with a magnitude 10 Palsy...for 2 magic points...yikes)

Q...

You are correct. Of course, they need a 91% or more in Magnitude and Targets.

Sorcery has always been the hardest to master but potentially most powerful magic system. It is very hard to become a powerful sorcerer. You need to improve your Persistence, your Manipulation skills, and each spell seperately with your 3 or so Improvement Rolls. Enchanting too if you want to do that. Doesn't leave much room for other skills, such as weapons or resilience. A powerful sorcerer can cast a LOT of big spells now, rather than one or two before running out of MP. And they go off faster.

Compare to a Divine Magician. One Theology(God) Skill and you are good to go. Plenty of rolls left over for weapons, or persistence/resilience/dodge, or enchanting, or Play(instrument) or whatever floats your boat.

 

[barasawa]

I haven't played RQ in ages, glad to have a chance to get back into it.
Tap was always a rather limited availability spell. Some considered it evil, others as extremely bad taste. The rest tended to think of it as something to keep to themselves, just incase an apprentice decided to get a magic library the easy way...

First step to control Tap, just make those spells extremely rare. And if a few mage-slayers come hunting folks who are known to use it, then so be it.

That sucker has got to drain more than 1 point, otherwise it's just a null gain. In which case you might as well use a diminish spell.

One of the opinions on this is easy. Magnitude == Charactaristic yields 1drain/1mp gained (net nothing). Each Magnitude > Characteristic yields +1drain/+1mp gained. This is like others have said. Each point of magnitude greater than the target characteristic increases the permanent drain by 1 and the mp gain by 1.

Alternate Form. After thinking about how resistences work, that can be used for this if you think about it. Here is a really sketchy shorthand version of it. Make an effect table like Dodge and Parry. Failures, obvious result. With the normal success being the difference between casters spell check and the defenders lower(but not critical) persistence check. Just look that number up on the Sorcery Manipulation table as a magnitude, that's how much the defender looses (not to exceed magnitude or drain past one, of course).

For example, Evil Fred spends his mp and casts Tap succussfully with a roll of 73, while Roadkill George rolls a successful persistence check of only 40. Evil Fred wins by a margin of 33 (73-40=33). Looking on the chart, that yeilds an effective magnitude of 4. So poor Roadkill George looses 4 points while Evil Fred gains 4mp.

That form is a little more complicated, but it has variable results. You may even limit the maximum effect to not exceed 1 greater than the magnitude of the spell minus the characteristic targeted.

Until we get an official ruling, this is going to be rather contraversial. I'd heavily suggest restricting access to that spell. Let's face it, it's either a screw yourself spell, or torture prisoners spell.

 

[Gnarsh]

Perhaps they intended for there to be a table, similar to the one in the RQ3 spells book. Basically, different stats get you different amounts of magic points. Thus, you could limit the stat drain to one point per application, but the magic points gained vary based on the stat drained.

The main reason for this is to make the more damaging stats less valuable to tap. That was the main reason why tap was never too horribly nasty in RQ3. If you wanted to use it for extra magic points when doing some ritual magic (like a big summoning), you got vastly more bang for the buck tapping POW then INT. And POW is a lot easier to recover then INT. If you implemented a similar table for MRQ, it would make the taps *work* but make the nastier taps (like tap INT) effectively something you do purely to damage the person, and not to gain MPs.

 

[weasel_fierce]

Just a thing.. you cant combine a spell with itself, so no tapping multiple targets.

Since the loss is permanent, Im highly tempted to make it just a single point, 2 on a critical. The MP recovery just makes it "free" essentially.

 

[Gnarsh]

Just a thing.. you cant combine a spell with itself, so no tapping multiple targets.

Since the loss is permanent, Im highly tempted to make it just a single point, 2 on a critical. The MP recovery just makes it "free" essentially.

The problem with that IMO, is that the original purpose of these spells is not to give a sorceror a nasty thing he can do to player characters to make their players annoyed at the GM. Under your rules, there'd simply be no reason for the spell to ever have been developed. If you've got someone in a position where you can tap them, you could just kill them... Hence a "free" spell to reduce a stat by a point or two is somewhat silly. It's *only* purpose is to annoy players...

The original point of tap spells is to allow an evil necromancer type a way to gain some magical ability to help him in his rituals. This was abstracted in RQ3 as having the ability to tap stats and add magic points (or fatigue points, but who would do that?) to the caster. This has *huge* applications when doing large summonings, since it gave the caster a higher magic point total (well. In theory. The theory was borked by the fact that all dominate spells were intensity versus mp...).

In any case, the "point" was for the caster to be able to raise his MP, even above his own species maximum. He could only do it for a set period of time (it was an active spell, so you couldn't just wander around for a year with the extra points), but for that period of time it gave great potential power. Making it a "free" way to destroy stats is kinda pointless. If we assume that sorcery spells were researched and created by some wizards of the past or something, why on earth would anyone have bothered?

 

[weasel_fierce]

Hmm. true.