Threshold magery and Very High Mana

[Zoomfarg]

Hey folks, first time poster. I have a question about how Very High Mana affects the Threshold Limited Magery power tally.

Very High Mana restores FP spent on magic at the top of a mage's turn (Magic p. 6). If a campaign features Threshold Limited Magery instead of the standard magic system, should Very High Mana recover a mage's power tally like it restores FP? What about if a threshold system accompanies an FP system?

If not? What is the benefit of Very High Mana for threshold magazine?

[Prince Charon]

Huh. I think it could restore Threshold, but more slowly than it restores fatigue. Maybe an order of magnitude faster than the normal rate for the game (so, if you regain one point of Thresh per day normally, you regain ten points per day, or one every 2 hours & 24 minutes, in Very High Mana)?

[Zoomfarg]

Not disagreeing, just curious: why a lower restoration rate rather than full recovery?

[johndallman]

If you have full recovery, it rather destroys the point of threshold-limited magery. It means the only way to have problems is to exceed your threshold in a single turn.

[Prince Charon]

Originally Posted by johndallman

If you have full recovery, it rather destroys the point of threshold-limited magery. It means the only way to have problems is to exceed your threshold in a single turn.

Exactly this.

[wmervine4]

Originally Posted by Zoomfarg

Hey folks, first time poster. I have a question about how Very High Mana affects the Threshold Limited Magery power tally.

Very High Mana restores FP spent on magic at the top of a mage's turn (Magic p. 6). If a campaign features Threshold Limited Magery instead of the standard magic system, should Very High Mana recover a mage's power tally like it restores FP? What about if a threshold system accompanies an FP system?

If not? What is the benefit of Very High Mana for threshold magazine?

A quick perusal of Thaumatology doesn't give me any notion of an official ruling on how Very High Mana benefits threshold-limited magic other than to say by default it doesn't. I think this is largely your call as for how it should work, but I will point out a few things.

As others have already stated, allowing threshold-limited magic to work like spell-based magic where the caster recovers his tally immediately at the start of his next turn makes magic supremely powerful. The only limit to how much energy a mage can tap in such a scenario is limited by his maximum safe threshold, and even then, he can exceed that threshold at the risk of triggering a calamity check. If the mage recovers his tally completely on his next turn though, in my opinion, it really nerfs the whole point of threshold-limited magic to begin with. Specifically, the concept is that you can only draw on your magic so much before you strain your connection to your power source and risk a calamity. It hardly causes any strain at all if you can wait 1 second and dump 30+ energy (the recommended default threshold) into a spell.

In my world, I have threshold-limited magic, but I limit it to use by clerics and it is unaffected by mana levels. This approach is cleaner for me because clerics can cast anywhere regardless of mana level, but they are limited to how much they can cast by their threshold. If they push beyond their threshold, well, then they risk getting divine backlash in the form of a calamity check so this keeps them from getting too nonchalant about casting frivolously.

At the end of the day, I think it's up to you as far as how you want to handle this situation, but immediate recovery for both spell-based and threshold-limited magic only has one major difference I can see. Spell-based casters rely on their FP, which typically limits them to 9 FP (unless they want to risk passing out) per second. Threshold-based casters rely on their threshold, which by RAW allows them to access 30 energy per second unless they want to exceed this and risk a calamity. Threshold-based magic then gives a mage a larger energy pool to draw on each second, and that's a pretty big advantage.

[Gedrin]

IMC we use TM and I treat high mana areas as adding levels of (usually aspected) Magery to those who already have Magery.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by johndallman

If you have full recovery, it rather destroys the point of threshold-limited magery. It means the only way to have problems is to exceed your threshold in a single turn.

Unless you use the rule that every act of magic costs some minimum tally above and beyond external energies used.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Unless you use the rule that every act of magic costs some minimum tally above and beyond external energies used.

I don't see how that makes much difference, if you're recovering all your tally each turn. Can you give an example?

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by johndallman

I don't see how that makes much difference, if you're recovering all your tally each turn. Can you give an example?

But you don't recover all your tally, just most of it. It's like how most radiation damage heals, but not 10% of it.
It will accrue over time meaning frivolous use of magic still catches up with a caster.
Whether the minimum is only a flat X per spell or some percent of total energy would lead to a prevalence of either few big spells or more smaller magics.