Failing Spells
There are no limits to how many spells you can cast per day, other than the practical ones. Fatiguing spells will eventually wear you out and even basic spells take at least a round.
Some basics:
- On a critical failure, you have overextended yourself and take an extra level of Fatigue. This generally only happens when you're trying to perform a really difficult spell or have big penalties to your roll.
- On a failure, you can just try again. [A simple rule for repeated attempts is that it takes as many rounds to pull off as the number of points you failed by. That's a bit quicker to resolve than just rerolling constantly and seeing if you hurt yourself. Eh, that doesn't really work when you rolled a 19 and it was still a failure.]
- [On a mishap on a failed spell-casting roll, you manage to hurt yourself internally and take 1d4 points of damage. Yes, it's possible for a badly wounded mage who tries something difficult to kill themselves. Actually, isn't a Crit Failure defined in my rules as a failure plus a mishap? This might not work, then unless I make Crit Failure different from Mishap.]
- On a mishap on a successful spell, you apply it wrong. Perhaps you instill the wrong emotion in someone, or your fireball hits the wrong target.
- Should I say that combat actions are Risk 2 and thus mishaps occur about 4% of the time?
- Taking extra time is a +1 to your roll. Taking lots of extra time in a calm situation is a +2.
- If no other effect is defined for a Crit, assume that it increases your effective Magic rating by +2.
Another new thought... rather than just a -1 or -2 penalty for maintaing spells, your effective Magic rating is reduced by 1 per spell being maintained. This both penalizes your rolls (since your Magic rating always applies to spell-casting skills) and weakens the new spells. If your rating is reduced to -5 or less, the roll is considered a failure automatically. Note that a really good roll could give you a +2 Magic and still work, but any "succcessfully" cast spell with a Magic rating of -5 or less will simply fail instead.
Posted by Kiz at February 28, 2006 08:55 AM