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Old 07-29-2017, 06:21 PM   #6
Kelly Pedersen
 
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Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Saskatoon, SK, Canada
Default Re: High Magic Spells

Quote:
Originally Posted by TimTimmy View Post

How do I cast these with the 400+ energy needed. Assume I have lots of time to cast.
The answer to all your questions is the enchanting system. To enchant an object, you need to know the Enchant spell, and you need to know the spell you want to use, both at skill 15 or higher. Enchanting always takes time, but how much time depends on how much energy you can put in at once. If you can collect all the energy you need in one go, you can use what's called "Quick and Dirty" enchanting, which takes 1 hour per 100 energy. The other way is "Slow and Sure", which takes 1 day per energy spent, but since you don't actually spend this FP, you can potentially make an item with any number of energy required as long as you can take the time.

Both methods can benefit from assistants. For Quick and Dirty, each assistant can contribute as much energy as their FP, any HP they choose to spend, and a single Powerstone for each assistant. So, for example, if you and 5 assistants each had 20 personal energy (from FP and having, for instance, a 10-point Energy Reserve, which is basically FP you can only spend on magic), and each of you also had an 80-point Powerstone, that would mean that each person could contribute 100 energy, so you could create an item worth 600 energy or less, in just 6 hours.

For slow and sure-style enchantment, you can divide the number of days required by the number of people who can help. So, with the same 5 assistants, plus yourself, doing that 600-energy item would only take 100 days - the normal 600 days, divided by 6.

The trick with assistants is that each one reduces your effective skill with the spell by 1, and your effective skill must stay at 15 or better. So, to have 5 assistants help you, each of them needs to know the spell at skill-15 or better, and your skill needs to be 20 or higher.

Basically, the enchantment system using the Basic Set/Magic system is designed to be pretty slow unless you have a lot of money to burn on hiring skilled assistants and powerful magic items like 80-point Powerstones. There are some suggestions to tweak this in Thaumatology, but they're setting-level decisions the GM makes.

Quote:
Originally Posted by TimTimmy
I can start at stats of 10 and spell level 15, and some people say that is low. But how would even doubling the above stats change anything when casting 400+ energy spells?
Well, changing your attribute won't help much (though it's generally more efficient to buy a high attribute so you don't have to put as many points into each spell to get it to a useful level). If you doubled your skill in the spell, to 30, you would be able to do a circle of 15 assistants, which means each could contribute only a few energy and still add up to a lot for Quick and Dirty enchanting, or it would divide the time required by 15 for Slow and Sure, both of which are significant advantages.

So, hopefully this clears it up a bit?
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