Quote:
Originally Posted by phiwum
Evidently, something about the memorization process allows one to skip the ingredients. When you read a spell from a book, you need those ingredients.
Don't ask me why.
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One rationalization for why "learned" spells don't need ingredients and more than one turn (usually) to cast might be this.
When learning a spell, a wizard could be doing far more than just memorizing the words and hand gestures. They could, by regular repetitions of the spell the slow way, be altering their own brains, permanently imprinting a circuit of neurons with the psychic "code" that, when executed, telepathically alters the material universe for the desired effect. Something like adding a sub-routine to an existing program, but you can't just type it in once and hit "save" -- brains are mushy organic things, not hard drives. But repeated enactment of a spell causes something analogous to screen-burn on an old CRT monitor. If the same text is displayed at the same location long enough, the image sticks. Once a spell is burned into a tiny spot in the brain, the mind only has to jump to that spot to run the spell. Perhaps the whole point to the incantations and gestures is to guide the mind to the desired scar tissue in the brain for that particular spell rather than another, but when you're smart enough you can find and trigger the spot without the crutch of words or gestures.
Un-learning a spell might be difficult if it's imprinted in this way. Probably why you'd need the Wizard's Guild to get into your head to erase it. Better hope they don't do anything else while they're in there <evil grin>