Magery Enhancement: Longer Range

[Kallatari]

As an alternative to your approach, in my games I use "metaspell perks".

Each "Metaspell" is a Perk in which must specialize to a specific Enhancement (e.g., Affects Insubstantial, Long-Range, Rapid Fire, etc.). With the Metaspell perk, it allows the mage to, when desired (so it's not always in effect), cast any spell they know with the metaspell enhancements but at an increased cost of 2 Energy and a penalty to skill equal to -1 per 10% value of the enhancement added.

This +2 energy applies to the final cost of the spell (e.g., after all built-in modifiers, such as multiplying by radius, etc.). Reduction to energy cost for high skill then applies to the final energy cost, after adding the +2.

You can apply multiple metaspells at the same time to a given spell (e.g., an Armor Piercing, Long-Range, and Affects Insubstantial Fireball). In this case, the skill penalties for all metaspells are cumulative, but the added energy cost is a flat +2, regardless of the number of metaspells applied.

Anyway, for your desired effect, to go from short range (-1/yard) to standard range (SSRT) needs Long-Range 1 +50% enhancement. So you'd have this:

Long-Range Metaspell [1]: lets you, when desired, improve the range penalty of your spell by one or more steps (e.g., from short range to SSRT, or SSRT to long-range, or long-range to no range penalty) for your spell. Doing so will increase the energy cost of the spell by +2, and it will also impose a -5 to your spell skill if you improve the range penalty used by one step, -10 if you improve the range penalty used by 2 steps, or -15 if you improve it by three steps.

I also allow the skill penalties (so, in this case, the -5, -10 or -15) to be bought off as a technique, either individually spell by spell or as a "Wildcard Technique" (i.e., x3 to the cost) to apply it to all spells.


This approach comes from psi techniques, where for +2 energy and -1 per 10% of enhancement you can apply any enhancement to a psi ability, and use techniques to buy off the penalty. However, instead of getting all the enhancements for a single ability, you get a single enhancement (i.e., the metaspell) for all abilities (i.e., all spells).

And yes, a mage with a lot of metaspells can create some very powerful effects, so you do need to keep an eye out for it.

One houserule I've added to keep a bit of a power check sanity is that if you add Area Effect Metaspell, you must first multiply the base energy cost by the radius, then add the +2 to that total. Other built-in restrictions to metaspells I creater are that I've capped RoF (from Rapid Fire) at level of Magery, and I think it's one level of Armor Divisor per level of Magery. There might be one or two more hidden restrictions I added that I don't remember off hand to keep things manageable, but most are enhancements/metapslles can added without issue.

Oh, and you can't have "Reduce Fatigue Cost" as a metaspell as that defeats the main balancing factor of Magery spells, which is the Energy Cost.

My players love this extra flexibility.