Casting Modifiers
There are a lot of factors that go into determining how hard a spell is to cast.
Base Difficulty: the power level of your spell determines its base difficulty. This is the target number you have to equal or beat to cast it. Your roll may be modified by other factors.
- Trivial: 10
- Minor: 15
- Major: 20
- Dramatic: 25
- Legendary: 30
Art Tier: how suitable your art is will modify your casting roll.
- Primary (what the art specializes in): +0
- Secondary (a different art would be better at it): -5
- Tertiary (on the fringe of being completely disallowed): -10
- Worse: impossible
Ritual: by taking extra time to cast a spell, you get a +1 to your roll, with a maximum bonus of +5. The amount of time that you have to take per +1 depends on the power level of the effect.
- Trivial: 1 minute
- Minor: 10 minutes
- Major: 1 hour
- Dramatic: 5 hours
- Legendary: 1 day
So to get a +4 bonus on a Minor spell would require a 40 minute ritual. Getting a +5 on a Legendary spell would require a continuous 5-day ritual and would probably be beyond the capabilities of a mortal caster.
Area of Effect: spells which affect multiple targets or large areas are inherently more difficult.
- Single target or no target: +0
- Small cluster of targets (max 5): -5
- Big group of targets (max 15): -10
- Huge group of targets (army, single town): -15
- Swath of countryside, valley, island: -20
- Excluding a specific target: -1 per target left out
- Excluding a readily identifyable class of targets (e.g. all humans or all non-humans): -2 per class
Duration:
- Spell happens and ends immediately: +0
- Spell with an ongoing effect that lasts as long as you continue concentrating: +0
- Spell that lasts indefinitely without concentration: -10
Mana: the local mana level has a big effect on spellcasting.
- Add the local mana rating to all casting checks unless you are using another mana source. If it's negative, it will give you a penalty.
- If you tap into your personal mana, ignore the local rating. Instead, add the amount that you choose to spend to your die roll. The maximum amount that you can spend is equal to your Drive rating.
- Priests and similar sorts have a mystical link between themselves and their deity. This means that the mana level that they experience is generally higher than their environment. The rating of a priest's connection is added to the local environment's rating but cannot increase it above the rating of the priest's connection. So a priest with a connection of +2 who enters an area with a mana rating of -5 will experience a mana rating of -3. In an area with a rating of +0, he'll see a +2. In an area with +1, he'll also see a +2 (it can't be increased above +2). In an area with a +3 or higher, he'll see no benefit at all. The strength of the connection is generally commensurate with the priest's rank, but can never be higher than the mana rating of the deity's own immediate vicinity (generally their mana rating divided by 2 and rounded down). Note that if they tap into stored mana, they do not receive this bonus.
- An alternate idea for priests is to say that they have to cast a Portal magic spell to open the link to their deity. A trivial one can give you a +1 for the scene. A minor +2, major +3, dramatic +4 and legendary gives you the deity's full mana rating as though you were right there beside him. Naturally, for really weak deities, the bonus can't exceed the benefit of being right beside them. Of course, if a priest goes to a low-mana area, they may not be able to get off this spell and thus can't open the link. Also, if the local mana is +0 or higher, you only get the higher of the local mana or your spell's bonus... you can't sit around a deity who grants +4 mana and open a link to them and get +8 in total... it'll max out at +4. What about opening a link to a +0 area, though? And would the effect benefit the caster or the whole area? I could easily see it benefitting the whole area, especially if you took a -5 to the casting roll. Perhaps it should just average the two ratings.
Misc:
- If you have a book or instructor whose skill in this art is at least 5 points higher than yours and they walk you through it, you can get a +1 bonus for every 5 points better than you they are.
Posted by Kiz at January 30, 2005 01:50 PM