Incantation Magic - Price of Damage

[Varyon]

I don't have Incantation Magic, but I am familiar with Ritual Path Magic, upon which it is based. That does indeed have a bit of an issue in that, because damage and area (and just about everything else) are each assessed separately for pricing, you can wind up with something where you can start with something with, say, a really large area effect being rather cheap to boost with more damage, or a really high-damage spell being rather cheap to add area to. So while a 3d firebomb with radius 7 may be appropriately priced, and a 9d firebolt (single target) may similarly be appropriately priced, the combination - 9d firebomb with radius 7 - may be rather on the cheap side.

That said, 76 energy sounds like a Greater Effect multiplier may be in play. Going off of memory, in RPM Create Energy is a 6 energy effect, a 3d external (which I assume maps to "indirect" in Incantation Magic) damage ritual wouldn't add any cost for the damage, and radius 7 would be +5 energy. You don't mention a Range, but let's say 20 yards; that's +6 energy. Toss on the Lesser Control Energy wrapper, for another +5 energy IIRC, and we're looking at a starting cost of 22 energy. Assuming I missed something somewhere (I am going off a faulty memory and some guesswork, after all), around a x3 multiplier (appropriate for 1 Greater Effect - appropriate, as a big firey explosion should probably call for Greater Create Energy) to get to around 76 energy would make some sense (there is the issue that 76 isn't a multiple of 3; maybe the "wrapper" only costs 4, and doesn't have the multiplier apply to it, making the base spell 24 energy, x3 for 1 Greater Effect).

With that in mind, while +8 to base energy would indeed be enough to have external damage go from 3d to 9d, that base would have the Greater Effect mutiplier in play, for a net +24 energy, or a total of 100 energy. It's still not a huge price bump - you're paying around 1/3rd again as much for x3 to damage - but not quite the no-brainer that ~+10% is. You may also want to consider increasing the multiplier beyond some amount of damage - maybe it's a Lesser Effect (x1) up to 2d, a single Greater Effect (x3) up to 5d, two Greater Effects (x5) up to 10d, three Greater Effects (x7) up to 20d, and so forth.

Originally Posted by MakDemonik

(Unrelated Sidenote: Wouldnt the Cone of Flame spell have a a 2 yard 1/2D range? I believe Cones still have 1/2D ranges right? And there is no Increased 1/2D range modifier on it)

Cones do indeed typically have 1/2D Ranges. But IIRC, RPM doesn't generally build abilities quite the same as Powers, and typically there aren't 1/2D ranges involved at all* - I think a 10-yard cone in RPM would simply be built with a Range of 10 yards (+4 energy) and Cone put onto the Damage as an Enhancement (with the +% value applied to the base energy in Damage or 20, whichever is higher - a +50% Enhancement would always be +10 energy or more).

*If there isn't already, there should probably be an option to get longer range and half damage at a discounted price; an easy option would be that you build the spell with whatever Range you want it to have full damage out to, and any additional Range - beyond which the effect does half damage - is half price. So Range 10/100 would be +4 energy for Range 10, and +3 (Range 100 would normally be +10, or +6 beyond Range 10) to have half damage out to Range 100.