A normal spell takes 1 round to cast and lasts either one round or one hour, depending on the sort of effect desired. e.g.- a fireball lasts a round... a conjured light lasts an hour.
If you take an extra round to do it, you can reduce the MP cost by 1.
The local mana level is also subtracted from the MP cost... if it's a positive mana area, the spell costs fewer MP... if it's a negative mana area, the spell costs more MP.
Ritual Magic: if you take one minute per level of the spell desired, (with an extra minute if you want to reduce the MP cost by 1), you can make it a ritual spell. This extends the duration to 1 day. Ritual magic is tightly constrained... if you roll a higher level spell than the one you were aiming for, the extra MoS is wasted. If you roll a lower level spell, it fails.
Ritual Magic can also create maintained spells. These last as long as the mage still has a connection to them. Maintaining a spell imposes a cumulative -1 penalty on all additional spellcasting for the duration. Furthermore, the MP spent on that spell can't be recovered while the spell is in effect. If the mage leaves the same realm or perishes, a maintained spell will become a regular ritual spell and end 1 day later. Getting rid of a maintained spell requires reversing the ritual and basically casting the spell again... it's not impossible for a mage to end up with a maintained spell that he just can't manage to get rid of.
Note that if a mage creates a maintained spell with an MP cost greater than 1/2 of his maximum MP, he's liable to be stuck with it.
Finally, there are Enchantments. These drain the caster's life force as he puts part of his will into the spell permanently. These require the use of Ritual Magic and cost the mage XP equal to their level to create. It's basically a maintained spell that is given its own lifeforce to power it and thus can maintain itself.
There are items which can power enchantments as well (so that the mage doesn't need to spend XP). Soulstones can sustain an enchantment of up to level X, where X is determined by the size and quality of the soulstone.
Now... do I like Ritual Magic or do I want to use the tSoY method and say that you can extend the duration by spending extra MP if you have the right Secret?
Hm... well, Ritual makes boost spells more potent by letting you increase the duration to a day without blowing extra MP. And I kind of like the "targetted" difficulty, where you have to get level X or fail and extra MoS is wasted. Perhaps I could come up with a better benefit than just extended duration?
Posted by Kiz at March 26, 2005 10:41 AMCommentsPost a comment