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08-25-2020, 02:07 PM | #1 |
Join Date: Aug 2018
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does the maintenance penalty (-1 per spell) alter effective skill for maintain costs?
Example:
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... 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) Last edited by Plane; 08-25-2020 at 02:11 PM. |
08-25-2020, 02:28 PM | #2 |
Join Date: Dec 2009
Location: Saint Paul, MN
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Re: does the maintenance penalty (-1 per spell) alter effective skill for maintain co
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. |
08-25-2020, 03:30 PM | #3 | ||
Join Date: Oct 2007
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Re: does the maintenance penalty (-1 per spell) alter effective skill for maintain co
Quote:
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). Quote:
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. |
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08-25-2020, 04:21 PM | #4 |
Join Date: Feb 2016
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Re: does the maintenance penalty (-1 per spell) alter effective skill for maintain co
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. |
08-25-2020, 05:07 PM | #5 | |
Join Date: Oct 2007
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Re: does the maintenance penalty (-1 per spell) alter effective skill for maintain co
Quote:
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. |
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08-25-2020, 06:31 PM | #6 |
Join Date: Jan 2017
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Re: does the maintenance penalty (-1 per spell) alter effective skill for maintain co
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.
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08-25-2020, 06:52 PM | #7 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Wellington, NZ
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Re: does the maintenance penalty (-1 per spell) alter effective skill for maintain co
Quote:
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.
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Rupert Boleyn "A pessimist is an optimist with a sense of history." |
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08-25-2020, 06:53 PM | #8 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Wellington, NZ
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Re: does the maintenance penalty (-1 per spell) alter effective skill for maintain co
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.
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Rupert Boleyn "A pessimist is an optimist with a sense of history." |
08-25-2020, 07:03 PM | #9 |
Join Date: Feb 2016
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Re: does the maintenance penalty (-1 per spell) alter effective skill for maintain co
Luck does not work for ceremonial magic critical failures, it works fine for normal magic critical failures.
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08-25-2020, 07:07 PM | #10 | |
Join Date: Dec 2013
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Re: does the maintenance penalty (-1 per spell) alter effective skill for maintain co
Quote:
__________________
In which I post about a TL9-10 solar system http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=169674 If you don't know why I said something, please ask. Assumptions are the death of courtesy. Disappointed in the behaviour I have too-often encountered here. |
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lend spell, maintaining spells |
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