[RPM] Storing power

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by johndallman

The classical MH campaign with patrons, lots of research and a good idea of what you're up against allows for creating mission-specific charms. Our Florida! campaign doesn't have patrons, or resources other than those owned by the characters, none of whom are wealthy (a fugitive, a high-school teacher, a singer in a small-time rock band and a security camera installer). It's all a bit casual and organised-on-the-fly, befitting the campaign's basis in the stories of Carl Hiaasen and Tim Dorsey.

It would be very useful to have an equivalent of paut for RPM, a way to store energy for use later. I can't find anything like that in published material; the nearest thing is enchanted items that boost Magery and thus personal mana reserve. The GM and I reckon such a thing may have been deliberately omitted, to keep RPMists from being too good at everything, but we aren't sure.

Doing it looks as if it would be based on Greater Control Magic in some way. An idiom of pouring your personal reserve into a "container", refilling it and pouring again seems vaguely plausible.

What's the forum's opinion on this idea?

I already did this (I know you must be tired of me saying that when it comes to RPM). See here.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Christopher R. Rice

I already did this (I know you must be tired of me saying that when it comes to RPM). See here.

I'm not going to get tired of good solutions. This is fairly simple, looks plausible, and yields the right kind of amount of energy. It also gives me considerable motive to buy Path of Magic from its current 16 to 17, since that almost doubles the amount I can store.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Christopher R. Rice

See here.

OK, I thought I understood this, but on reading the comments I may have made a mistake or two.

The first roll is against Lesser Transform Magic, which costs 8 for Transform and 0 for weight on any sensible battery. Does one need to pay for duration?

The second roll is against Lesser Create Magic, which costs 6 for Create and 0 for weight. Your comments on the blog post seem to say that's all one has to do to charge the battery. Is that correct? It isn't necessary to make gathering rolls for the energy before putting it in?

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by johndallman

I'm not going to get tired of good solutions. This is fairly simple, looks plausible, and yields the right kind of amount of energy. It also gives me considerable motive to buy Path of Magic from its current 16 to 17, since that almost doubles the amount I can store.

It likely needs some playtesting.

Originally Posted by johndallman

The first roll is against Lesser Transform Magic, which costs 8 for Transform and 0 for weight on any sensible battery. Does one need to pay for duration?

No, just roll Path of Magic until you get 8 energy and the vessel is prepared.

Originally Posted by johndallman

The second roll is against Lesser Create Magic, which costs 6 for Create and 0 for weight. Your comments on the blog post seem to say that's all one has to do to charge the battery. Is that correct? It isn't necessary to make gathering rolls for the energy before putting it in?

The second roll works like refilling your mana reserve: you keep rolling till it's full. In this case the batteries' reserve is equal to some multiple of your safe threshold. So if you could store 19 points in it you'd roll until it had 19 points or until you reached some number you wanted - you don't have to fill it up entirely if you don't want to.

[johndallman]

Thanks, that's clear now.

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by johndallman

Thanks, that's clear now.

Excellent. Glad I could help.

[The Colonel]

Thematically I like the idea of forcing a bound spirit to store power, sort of like a honey ant. Probably more a sorcery than a shaman thing to do though as I could see very few spirits enjoying being used like that...

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by The Colonel

Thematically I like the idea of forcing a bound spirit to store power, sort of like a honey ant. Probably more a sorcery than a shaman thing to do though as I could see very few spirits enjoying being used like that...

A spirit may be fine with a symbiotic arrangement - the mage feeds it plenty of energy, and the spirit uses some for its own needs/desires while the rest is available for the mage to tap into when needed. Of course, if the mage treats it as just being a (perhaps-leaky) mana battery, it may get fed up with the arrangement in short order, but so long as it's treated more like a partner, I'd imagine things would work out. I think there's a way to build a Familiar with a Mana Reserve that is freely available to its master, but I'm not certain where that's located.

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by The Colonel

Thematically I like the idea of forcing a bound spirit to store power, sort of like a honey ant. Probably more a sorcery than a shaman thing to do though as I could see very few spirits enjoying being used like that...

For something like that you'd need a Lesser Control Spirit for most spirits and then a reaction roll. Success would let the spirit "hold" extra energy equal to it's HT + Will. So if a spirit had a HT of 12 and a Will of 18 it could hold 30 energy for you. If the GM wanted to they could hold more, but each multiple of energy held would inflect -3 on reaction rolls to convince the spirit to do it. So if you wanted to hold 60 with the previous example you'd have a -3 to reaction rolls.

This assumes a friendly spirit. If spirits are hostile or never voluntarily hold energy like this you'd need to drop it to 0 HP and then capture it with a spell. Once captured you'd make a Will-based Path of Magic roll vs. its Will to "shove" energy into it using the previous guidelines for how much it could take. The upside is there is no penalty to Reaction rolls and you can shove in up to HT + Will x 5 energy into a given spirit.