Spells I have an issue with

[David Johnston2]

Seek Air: OK, I'll admit it, There's a remote possibility that it might be useful for a Wizards IIIIIN Space! campaign. But save it for that source book. In the main Magic book its just clutter included because there are Seek Earth Water and Fire spells. It's not even useful as a prerequisite. But those are actually useful. What might be useful is a maintained "Sense Bad Air" spell so you can walk along and not be taken off guard by a patch of mine damp.
Animal Control: The spell itself is fine, but the cost to cast being based on the racial IQ of the most intelligent species within the category is absurd.

Hybrid Control: This spell is redundant. Just include it as another category of animal to control.

Spider Silk: I have mixed feelings about this one. It does give Animal magicians a much needed offensive capability. But it's just not connected well enough in a college that is otherwise all about communicating with, control and transforming into animals. If you're going to throw spider webs at someone outside of a specialized college of spider magic then maybe an application of Partial Shapeshifting is the way to go. Or if you are going to have it, have a Create Object prerequisite.

Tickle: I have my doubts as to whether tickling would be effective on an injured person. It's kind of an easy and undignified way to win by paralyzing someone for a minute.

Timeport: Actually timeporting back ten seconds to the start of a fight is much, much more problematic than timeporting ten centuries. So the cost and penalty table is all messed up.

Recover Energy: Recover Energy pushes every wizard towar dabbling in Healing. I'[m actually inclined to give every college their own Recover Energy spell.

Youth: It's kind of weird for the super old ancient wizards to all end up being young adults. Also it invalidates other very interesting life extension spells.

Create Animal/Mount: OK, the spell's fine, but really...shouldn't this be an Animal spell as well?

Create Warrior: Where does that skill 16 come from? Maybe include a Summon Spirit prerequisite?

Enlarge Object: There seems to be a bit of a scaling issue if you've got a lot of energy to dump into it.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

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Recover Energy: Recover Energy pushes every wizard towar dabbling in Healing. I'[m actually inclined to give every college their own Recover Energy spell.

Youth: It's kind of weird for the super old ancient wizards to all end up being young adults. Also it invalidates other very interesting life extension spells.

Enlarge Object: There seems to be a bit of a scaling issue if you've got a lot of energy to dump into it.

Recover Energy<shrug> Mages whgo are living beings are highly incentivised to dabble in Healing anyway. I'm not of a miod to try and lessen the penalties of One College Magery either.

Youth: Nerf Spectators in Ceremonial Magic and the only handy energy source for casting this 100 pt Spell goes away. Except inrather cinematic campaigns you have to work at it to get up the 20pts for Halt Aging. If you use a Powerstone to ge the extra energy you won't be selling Halt Aging in mass quantities either.

Enlarge Object the problem is more than just a bit it's literally world destrying but it's not the Spell it's the scaling rule where cost goes up by SM. The scaling problem is seen in other spells too. My priest of Ra once used Mirror to de-vampirize an entire hemisphere once. It was amusing at the time but vampires weren't a central enemy either. Jettison the cost by
SM rule. sM<scales wrong for this. Affecting the entire Earth is only 44x as hard as affecting a human being. Replace with the old rule that had cost go up by hexes or something like that.

[edk926]

I like Spider Silk for the fact it's one of the few things in the Animal college that doesn't involve shape-shifting, which doesn't even require knowing any animal spells to learn. The Animal college desperately needs more spells with requirements within the college itself to make it a college people would truly learn instead of just "dabbling with physically changing yourself".

[edk926]

Seek Air is much more useful at higher TLs because it allows you to seek a specific type of air if you are aware about chemistry and gases.

[khorboth]

Originally Posted by edk926

Seek Air is much more useful at higher TLs because it allows you to seek a specific type of air if you are aware about chemistry and gases.

TL4 is plenty for the basic knowledge. Especially if we have magic. We can then seek out "sulfurous air" for volcanos or "salty air" for the sea. I've used it to locate wizard's labs in cities and to find air pockets in undersea adventures. Not a great spell, but not worthless.

[dcarson]

For Timeport if they go back 10 seconds to the start of a fight we have to re run the fight. If they go back 10 centuries I have to rewrite the history of the world. The latter is a lot more effort on my part.

[Anders]

Recover Energy is just a weird spell. It should be an advantage. Maybe 5 points for the skill-15 version and 10 points for the skill-20 version.

[Anaraxes]

Mages are pushed toward dabbling in healing because in games, they're generally associated with adventuring parties, whose members tend to get injured a lot. And few players want to sit around healing naturally for weeks.

Recover Energy is a must have (to the point where you might as well put it in Magery 0 and note the rule change there). But moving it to some other College, or eliminating it, wouldn't keep mages from continuing to dabble in healing.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

Mages are pushed toward dabbling in healing because in games, they're generally associated with adventuring parties, whose members tend to get injured a lot. And few players want to sit around healing naturally for weeks.

Recover Energy is a must have (to the point where you might as well put it in Magery 0 and note the rule change there). But moving it to some other College, or eliminating it, wouldn't keep mages from continuing to dabble in healing.

There's something to be said for niche protection. Someone who wants to build a pyro mage might be inclined to put Fire College Only on their Magery - except then such a character is crippling their ability to recover FP, by not allowing for Recover Energy. Certainly the party generally needs some sort of unrealistically-fast healer, but there are other options there (a potion-maker, a mage specializing in the Healing college, a priest of some sort, etc). It's reminiscent of the issue with Path of Magic in RPM - pretty much every mage needs that as or tied with their highest Path, due to needing it for Charms and Conditional Rituals (and to a lesser extent, restoring their ER). I'd say it would probably work better if Recover Energy is either a "neutral" spell (one not associated with any College, and thus available to any mage regardless of restrictions on his Magery) or, better, just use Anders' suggestion of making it an Advantage, roughly comparable to Fit/Very Fit.

[AlexanderHowl]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Recover Energy<shrug> Mages whgo are living beings are highly incentivised to dabble in Healing anyway. I'm not of a miod to try and lessen the penalties of One College Magery either.

Youth: Nerf Spectators in Ceremonial Magic and the only handy energy source for casting this 100 pt Spell goes away. Except inrather cinematic campaigns you have to work at it to get up the 20pts for Halt Aging. If you use a Powerstone to ge the extra energy you won't be selling Halt Aging in mass quantities either.

Enlarge Object the problem is more than just a bit it's literally world destrying but it's not the Spell it's the scaling rule where cost goes up by SM. The scaling problem is seen in other spells too. My priest of Ra once used Mirror to de-vampirize an entire hemisphere once. It was amusing at the time but vampires weren't a central enemy either. Jettison the cost by
SM rule. sM<scales wrong for this. Affecting the entire Earth is only 44x as hard as affecting a human being. Replace with the old rule that had cost go up by hexes or something like that.

One possible solution to the SM rule is to inflict a skill penalty equal to the SM of the target. A -44 to skill will likely prevent anyone from targeting the Earth with any spell. Another possible solution would be to multiply the energy cost of a spell by (Longest dimension/2 yards).