[Sorcery] Regarding Hardcore Improvisation and Psi (Magic) Amplifiers

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by JulianLW

I was under the impression that "Abilities at Default" were limited to one use or one minute. Does Sorcery hardcore improvisation not have the same limits?

Abilities at Default requires a reroll and paying the FP over again every minute for a continuing power. It does not say that the power turns off and has to be restarted.

Sorcery says that you can maintain a hardcore improvised spell like normal (so 1FP every minute). However, sorcery also allows spells of fixed duration, and these do not require maintenance. As written, that means you can improvise a spell with as much duration as your point investment into Sorcerous Empowerment allows.

So, I want a Scryguard (Sorcery, p.21) that lasts longer, and I've got Sorcery-6 (and thus a 70 point cap). Scryguard has a full ocst of 68-points. I hardcore improvise one that instead of 100x duration (+80%), has 300x duration (+100%), and this version has a full cost of 70-points and will last 15-hours. With one more level of Sorcery I could bump that to Permanent, and with two more to 'unremovable permanent' if the GM was careless enough to allow it.

Part of the problem here is that the duration extension is a modifier to the affliction that's 'carrying' the main effect, and is thus really cheap. The other is that fixed duration spells are complete 'fire and forget' (though if they weren't Sorcery would be very limited because of only being able to have one spell running at a time), so a Sorcerer can just stack them up.

Having the FP spent in casting them remain committed to durational spells is quite appealing. As that's only 1FP per spell (because the extra FP cost for hardcore improvisation is not for casting the spell, but for 'creating' it), it'll provide a definite limit to the number of long-duration spells a sorcerer will want 'up', especially as they have to pay FP to kill them.

I was considering using Threshold Magic, which wouldn't be a strong limitation on sorcerers, but it'd be interesting with durational spells holding their casting cost, because that means those spells' costs would never go away while the spells were up. With a low threshold and reasonably quick recovery that could be an interesting limit on buff-happy sorcerers.