Rule of Five Questions

[Skarg]

Originally Posted by TippetsTX

Speaking of pg 162... "Other effects – like potions and Aid spells – are cumulative with magic items, but only to the limit of 5. You could have a DX +3 ring, and have a +3 Aid spell cast on you – and both would help, but increasing your DX only to +5."

That seems to imply that the max you can boost any stat is +5 from any source. So for example, do others limit the amount of DX a character can receive from the Aid spell alone? What about a combination of sources that do not include attribute enhancing magic items?

I don't read it that way. Repeating what I wrote before, with bold for emphasis:

Attribute Enhancer enchantments are cumulative with potions and Aid spells "but only to the limit of 5", but just because there is a limit to the "cumulative" improvement, does not mean that the Aid spell has any limit itself. In fact, the Aid spell mentions no limit, and says, "ST given to another figure (for instance, to allow another wizard to cast a spell with a very high ST cost)."

If nothing could increase spellcasting ST more than 5, then indeed hcobb's question would become an important one, because how could someone cast the higher-ST spells? Seems to me only through staff mana, or powerstones IF the GM thinks powerstones can do that (again it's not quite clear there, because it says you can "draw" ST, and replenish fatigue, but "draw" isn't defined so some people think this means they can only replenish fatigue - but in any case, large powerstones are a very non-trivial thing to try to get and keep).

Staff of Mastery allows building mana up to 2xIQ. So let's see how much magic power we think we can get possibly get at 40 attributes (human) without buying massive powerstones:

ST 8 DX 8 IQ 24, Staff of Power, Mana 48, Aid/potion/item +5

That's 61. So you could theoretically get that much without a powerstone helping. Not enough to ever dispel a greater magic item enchantment (cost 100).

Again, I'm pretty sure the intent is that it's just a limit on what Attribute Enhancers can contribute, not a limit to the Aid spell that's not mentioned in the spell, just buried in the magic item rules in the advanced magic section.

I do think it's interesting to think about house rules to limiting spellcasting that way, if you want to make high-ST spells very difficult to cast. (It would certainly cut down on demon summoning.)

I also think it's probably good to limit all enhancement of attribute values the way Attribute Enhancers are limited to modify DX - i.e. +5 max, no resulting stat higher that 14... but I would still allow Aid to increase ST available for spellcasting, unless I wanted to effectively restrict access to the high-ST spells.