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Anaraxes · 05-13-2021, 06:54 AM

It's entirely setting dependent. Magery could be anything from a rare gift of the gods to specific individuals to a Talent that anyone could train at a vo-magi-tech school any time they wanted to. I've done it different ways in different games, from one end of that spectrum to the other.

In most of my games, there's something you theoretically have to do to improve a trait. But that's a narrative excuse for being able to spend the CP on it. I generally don't care for rules like the learning-by-study rules where you explicitly account for so many hours. The most common convention in our games is the notion that you spend CP on stuff that you used, or a couple of things you've declared you want to improve.

Actually spending time studying books or finding that guru on the mountaintop might have minimal impact on the actual game session (just a mention that it's the thing you're studying in your off time and narrating the couple of occasions where you get interrupted) to something a little more descriptive (a montage or quick resolution style scene in the Danger Room) to an entire adventure (locating that guru and convincing her that you're worthy to be trained).

Even in the "inborn gift of the gods" kind of setting, if a PC really wanted to acquire Magery in play, I'd try to come up with a way to make it happen. That one's definitely going to wind up in the in-game-visible-action category, as in those settings it's the sort of thing that would be a dramatic event. If we're talking about magical settings, "can't be acquired during play" isn't a terribly hard and fast rule, unless the gods themselves are pretty strict followers of the Word As Written.

Magery is a levelled Advantage, so if Magery is improvable by use, then I personally would find it odd to treat Magery 0 as different from Magery 1. The rationalization (should you want one) is of course that you only get better when you challenge yourself, so you can only qualify for training Magery N+1 if you're using Magery N. But that's a distinction that doesn't really make a difference to the "justification for spending CP" requirement, but only for the detailed "track accumulated qualifying uses" style of gating the right to spend the CP.

05-13-2021, 06:54 AM	#3
Anaraxes Join Date: Sep 2007	Re: Magery as an improvable advantage? It's entirely setting dependent. Magery could be anything from a rare gift of the gods to specific individuals to a Talent that anyone could train at a vo-magi-tech school any time they wanted to. I've done it different ways in different games, from one end of that spectrum to the other. In most of my games, there's something you theoretically have to do to improve a trait. But that's a narrative excuse for being able to spend the CP on it. I generally don't care for rules like the learning-by-study rules where you explicitly account for so many hours. The most common convention in our games is the notion that you spend CP on stuff that you used, or a couple of things you've declared you want to improve. Actually spending time studying books or finding that guru on the mountaintop might have minimal impact on the actual game session (just a mention that it's the thing you're studying in your off time and narrating the couple of occasions where you get interrupted) to something a little more descriptive (a montage or quick resolution style scene in the Danger Room) to an entire adventure (locating that guru and convincing her that you're worthy to be trained). Even in the "inborn gift of the gods" kind of setting, if a PC really wanted to acquire Magery in play, I'd try to come up with a way to make it happen. That one's definitely going to wind up in the in-game-visible-action category, as in those settings it's the sort of thing that would be a dramatic event. If we're talking about magical settings, "can't be acquired during play" isn't a terribly hard and fast rule, unless the gods themselves are pretty strict followers of the Word As Written. Magery is a levelled Advantage, so if Magery is improvable by use, then I personally would find it odd to treat Magery 0 as different from Magery 1. The rationalization (should you want one) is of course that you only get better when you challenge yourself, so you can only qualify for training Magery N+1 if you're using Magery N. But that's a distinction that doesn't really make a difference to the "justification for spending CP" requirement, but only for the detailed "track accumulated qualifying uses" style of gating the right to spend the CP.