Learning spells outside your magical style

[arnej]

Say you've a mage with the magical style "Master of the Elements" that gives you all the spells in the Earth, Air, Water, and Fire colleges. Said MotE finds a book with a nifty spell, say, Weather Dome, or Divination: Augury. Both of these require spells from the 4 elements as prerequisites.

Anything wrong with him picking up either of those spells, on his own, even though they're out of his "Style"?

Okay, now for a more complicated one:

A different mage has a style that includes Create Object. But it goes a different way than requiring half the Earth college as prerequisites. This mage finds a book with Create Servant in it. Create Servant is not in his style. It has Create Object as it's only spell prerequisite. Can he learn Create Servant on his own, since he has the prereq spell Create Object, or is his learning 'different' and not sufficient?

arnej

[roguebfl]

I'm not an expert with styles, but what I understand is you can still learn spell out side of your style is you meet the prerequisites, however they don't count as points in style.

It might even be worth a plenty to those 400 hours of self study for that first cp for learning something that is not in style.

[Anders]

If he has limited Magery (Elemental Magic) then he can learn them, they can count as prerequisites... but he can't cast them. Otherwise it sounds like a 'call of the GM' situation.

[cbower]

Originally Posted by arnej

Say you've a mage with the magical style "Master of the Elements" that gives you all the spells in the Earth, Air, Water, and Fire colleges. Said MotE finds a book with a nifty spell, say, Weather Dome, or Divination: Augury. Both of these require spells from the 4 elements as prerequisites.

Anything wrong with him picking up either of those spells, on his own, even though they're out of his "Style"?

I'd say that depends on the style. You could have one school that requires its practitioners never learn a spell outside their teachings, and another that doesn't care one way or the other.

Originally Posted by arnej

Okay, now for a more complicated one:

A different mage has a style that includes Create Object. But it goes a different way than requiring half the Earth college as prerequisites. This mage finds a book with Create Servant in it. Create Servant is not in his style. It has Create Object as it's only spell prerequisite. Can he learn Create Servant on his own, since he has the prereq spell Create Object, or is his learning 'different' and not sufficient?

arnej

I'd read it pretty loosely; as long as he has the spell he can use it as a prerequisite regardless of what prereqs he used to get it.

[Black Rose]

Originally Posted by arnej

A different mage has a style that includes Create Object. But it goes a different way than requiring half the Earth college as prerequisites. This mage finds a book with Create Servant in it. Create Servant is not in his style. It has Create Object as it's only spell prerequisite. Can he learn Create Servant on his own, since he has the prereq spell Create Object, or is his learning 'different' and not sufficient?

Originally Posted by cbower

I'd read it pretty loosely; as long as he has the spell he can use it as a prerequisite regardless of what prereqs he used to get it.

Depends, though. I'd agree with you normally, but I could see an argument for this alt!Create Object being sufficiently different in conceptual structure that it doesn't really help in terms of support* the learning of RAW!Create Servant.


* In my old campaign, the in-game point of prereqs was to serve as the foundation for learning ever more complex spells. Then again, that's much of the reason why I switched to 4e Ritual Magic and then to Magical Styles with Ritual Magic skills. I dislike spells being as difficult to learn as they are in RAW, and compensating with uber-high levels of IQ and Magery was getting annoying.

[Gef]

Originally Posted by Black Rose

I dislike spells being as difficult to learn as they are in RAW, and compensating with uber-high levels of IQ and Magery was getting annoying.

I compensate with limitations on spells. Frex, the "Imperial School" teaches spell formulae which require a wand (+1) and the tip of the wand glows when casting (+1), so any spell in the Imperial School gives +2. That means that wizards of the Imperial School will be bright, like the people in real-world professions with complex educational requirements, but not necessarily a club of geniuses. Likewise, the Deacons' School taught to the gifted among the faithful of the church of man requires a holy symbol instead of a wand, and requires keeping the disciplines, for its own +2 bonus. Nothing keeps a student of either school from learning a pure formula as an ace in the hole, except its greater difficulty.

GEF