Quote:
Originally Posted by ericthered
That's an awesome advantage, but you still need a magic talent. I'd use an energy reducing advantage (perhaps at 20/level or 15/level) alongside a talent that increases spell skill.
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Why do you need a magical talent? You could treat magical spells like combat skills, which do not normally benefit from talents, and just have Magery representing an individuals ability to efficiently channel mana. Any spell whose energy cost would not be reduced by high skill would likewise not be reduced by Magery 1+. Of course, you would probably want to have characters learning ritual magic rather than standard magic, as it would allow them to develop higher levels of spells without having dozens of secondary spells at level 12.
I would suggest having the benefits from ritual magic coming from the points invested in specific Colleges rather than from the points invested in specific rituals. The effective skill for determining ritual effects would be (College Skill-IQ) plus 15 (meaning that an IQ 14 mage with College of Healing 20 would have an effective skill of 21 for the purposes of determining ritual effects) before taking into account the effects of mana levels. While the effective skill for casting would depend heavily on the IQ of the mage, the effective skill for determining ritual effects would be independent of IQ.
Under that scheme, the typical mage would likely invest heavily in Thaumatology and specialize in a single College. For example, an IQ 14 female mage with Magery 3 could spend 32 points on Thaumatology to gain Thaumatology-20 and 24 points to gain College of Healing-20. She would therefore reduce the cost of any ritual of the College of Healing by five (minus three from her Magery 3 and minus two from her effective skill for determining ritual effects of 21). In low mana areas, she would reduce her effective skill for determining ritual effects by 5, to 16, meaning that she would only reduce the cost of healing rituals by four.
In the above example, the female mage's base skill for casting healing rituals would be equal to the (College of Healing minus Prerequisite Count), which she could improve by buying up the rituals of the College of Healing individually. If she wanted to cast Healing Slumber, her base skill would be 14, but she would be able to cast it by spending only 1 FP. In a low mana area, her base skill would be 9, her effective skill for determining ritual effects would be 16, and she would spend only 2 FP.