does the maintenance penalty (-1 per spell) alter effective skill for maintain costs?

[Plane]

Example:

1) Mage knows Phantom Flame at skill 15 (-1 to energy cost = 0 to create or maintain)

2) Mage casts it twice: due to -1 penalty of maintaining 1st flame, 2nd flame is effective skill 14 (not high enough for discount) and costs 1 to create and 1 to maintain

3) is it still 0 to maintain the 1st Phantom Flame, or would the 1st be reduced to effective skill 14 (no discount) due to also maintaining the 2nd Phantom flame, meaning it also costs 1/minute to maintain?

I'm thinking that counting a maintained-1st-spell as having lowered effective skill (this doesn't effect getting the discount for initial creation, no spells were on at that time!) could be a solve to this following trick of ally-handoffs...

1) Mage with Phantom Flame 16 and Lend Spell 14 has non-mage ally with Phantom Flame 15
2) Mage casts Phantom Flame for free, then Lend Spell (effective skill 16 due to +2 for target knowing spell) at -1 to skill for Phantom Flame being maintained (final effective skill 15) also for free.
3) Ally is able to maintain Phantom Flame for free due to having it at skill 15
4) Mage is able to cast a 2nd Phantom Flame at skill 16 due to not being burdened with maintenance penalty.
5) rinse and repeat: ally is able to maintain thousands of phantom flames due to the -1 penalty for spells on not applying to effective skill for maintenance costs

If we allow the "spells on" penalty to recalculate effective skill for determining the energy discount on maintenance then this prevents this kind of exploit, and it doesn't lead to a weird situation where the "first past the post" (first cast) spell remains indefinitely the strongest spell, with only later ones being compromised.

This type of exploit was attempted with Compartmentalized Mind which conveniently gives you an ally who knows the same spells you do. So I was trying to think of what might stop it, and I think the 'spells on' penalty could do that.

Basically, even if the ally you lend to can maintain the spell for free, eventually penalties will bring their skill low enough that they don't enjoy the energy reduction anymore, and suddenly all of them (or at least the later ones) are going to start costing them energy, so they can't just host millions of phantom flames (or Warmths, or Flaming Armors, etc) that you could never maintain yourself due to cumulative penalties preventing you from casting the spell after you did it a dozen or so times.

Also I think once you get to the point where effective skill on the ally you've used Lend Spell on is reduced below 3, you could treat them as not knowing the spell at all, and thus being unable to give a +2 benefit to the mage using Lend Spell too.

- - -

another issue where "changes to effective skill for maintenance" would be important is if you cast a skill 15 spell in normal mana, then walked into a Low Mana area and still wanted to maintain it. If all that matters is "effective skill at time of casting" then you could maintain the skill indefinitely in Low Mana (despite the -5 to skill normally making maintenance cost 1 energy due to being skill 10)

[Dalin]

According to Magic, p. 8, the cost reductions come from your base skill rather than effective skill. The only modifier that affects this is the mana level (-5 for low mana).

I hadn't thought of the exploit you mentioned though. Changing the cost reduction rule would certainly prevent that, but would be a fairly serious nerf for starting wizards.

[WingedKagouti]

Originally Posted by Plane

1) Mage with Phantom Flame 16 and Lend Spell 14 has non-mage ally with Phantom Flame 15
2) Mage casts Phantom Flame for free, then Lend Spell (effective skill 16 due to +2 for target knowing spell) at -1 to skill for Phantom Flame being maintained (final effective skill 15) also for free.
3) Ally is able to maintain Phantom Flame for free due to having it at skill 15
4) Mage is able to cast a 2nd Phantom Flame at skill 16 due to not being burdened with maintenance penalty.
5) rinse and repeat: ally is able to maintain thousands of phantom flames due to the -1 penalty for spells on not applying to effective skill for maintenance costs

Since the cost reduction is from base skill, Lend Spell would have to be at 15 to enjoy the discount. There are also 2 spells being cast, so 2 chances for a critical failure for every spell transfered. Unless the mage has lots of Luck, it would be advisable that they limit the amount of times they do this.

There is obviously the need for the recipient to know the spell being transfered at 15 (or more), which can be a major limiting factor to the usefulness of the trick. An IQ 12 non-mage partner would pay 17 or 18 points (depending on prereq. path) to get Phantom Flame 15 and the majority of useful spells will have a similar cost. This is essentially a trick that a GM should just not allow to go past character creation, including not letting non-mage Allies have spells at 15+ (unless that is common for the setting).

another issue where "changes to effective skill for maintenance" would be important is if you cast a skill 15 spell in normal mana, then walked into a Low Mana area and still wanted to maintain it. If all that matters is "effective skill at time of casting" then you could maintain the skill indefinitely in Low Mana (despite the -5 to skill normally making maintenance cost 1 energy due to being skill 10)

As far as I'm reading the rules, changes in local mana levels have an immediate impact on maintenance costs of spells.

But yes, Magic is broken in many ways, this is merely one of them and a GM isn't required to let it (or any other trick) fly.

[AlexanderHowl]

This is especially true when it comes to medieval economics. For example, Essential Earth plus Earth to Stone allows practitioners to create adamant and orichalcum by the cubic yard, meaning that no society with the two spells should have quarries or mines except for high value products. Copper, tin, iron, etc. mines would be practically nonexistent, since orichalcum is superior to bronze and steel.

In a high mana area, nonmages could learn Essential Earth (which does not require Magery) to support mages that learned Earth to Stone (which requires Magery 1). Essential Earth cost 8 FP per cubic yard, so a nonmage with a skill 12 could produce 45 cubic yards every two weeks (assuming eight hour work-days and five work days per week [and a 75% success rate]). Earth to Stone costs 3 FP per cubic yard for stone and 6 FP per cubic yard for metal (which are adamant and orichalcum when cast on Essential Earth). Using the same assumptions of skill, a mage can transform 90 cubic yards of Essential Earth into 90 cubic yards of orichalcum per two weeks.

With two nonmage assistants, the mage could produce 360 tons of orichalcum per week. If the team can sell the orichalcum for $100 per ton, it would be cheaper than good steel, and the team would earn $36,000 per week. Even if they hired 10 soldiers to protect them from accidentally summoned demons and paid them twice as much as normal, the team would still make $32,500 per week.

[WingedKagouti]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Even if they hired 10 soldiers to protect them from accidentally summoned demons and paid them twice as much as normal, the team would still make $32,500 per week.

Demons aren't the worst things to happen on a critical failure. For these types of operations the 17 roll on the default critical failure table is even worse: Forgetting the spell for at least a week and requiring an unmodified IQ roll once per week to regain it.

It's a really nasty roll for the Compartmentalized Mind scenario, as the maintenance compartment will also forget the spell and thus be unable to maintain all the ongoing instances.

[edk926]

If you are playing some ultra powerful mage with the Compartmentalized Mind trick, odds are you are also have Luck or that Stabilizing Skill Perk in your back pocket.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

This is especially true when it comes to medieval economics. For example, Essential Earth plus Earth to Stone allows practitioners to create adamant and orichalcum by the cubic yard, meaning that no society with the two spells should have quarries or mines except for high value products. Copper, tin, iron, etc. mines would be practically nonexistent, since orichalcum is superior to bronze and steel.

Even without the Essential Earth part, Earth to Stone ruins mining as an industry if mages are at all common, and it doesn't take many mages working as full time iron makers to cover the demand of historical medieval Europe. I think I did the maths on this somewhere in the depths of this forums past. Using Create Earth as well they can do this from thin air.

The only downside of this comes from the fact that these spells are all 'permanent', and not 'instantaneous', and thus can be undone or 'suspended' by counter magic spells and by no-mana zones.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by edk926

If you are playing some ultra powerful mage with the Compartmentalized Mind trick, odds are you are also have Luck or that Stabilizing Skill Perk in your back pocket.

Luck doesn't work on spell critical failures, so you have to use it to reroll the fumbled skill roll, which greatly reduces the chances of a critical failure but does not eliminate it. However, given that critical failures are simply counted into the cost of powerstones and are considered an acceptable overhead (and that the same applies to things like designing and making bridges, etc. in both fanstasy worlds and the real world), I don't think it's anything like a deal breaker.

[AlexanderHowl]

Luck does not work for ceremonial magic critical failures, it works fine for normal magic critical failures.

[Say, it isn't that bad!]

Originally Posted by Rupert

Luck doesn't work on spell critical failures, so you have to use it to reroll the fumbled skill roll, which greatly reduces the chances of a critical failure but does not eliminate it. However, given that critical failures are simply counted into the cost of powerstones and are considered an acceptable overhead (and that the same applies to things like designing and making bridges, etc. in both fanstasy worlds and the real world), I don't think it's anything like a deal breaker.

"...and twenty-four field cannons, twelve on each side of the bridge, to deal with any demonic incursions while construction is underway."