Learning spells from books

[GWJ]

I'm GMing fantasy campaign, with templates from DF. I have necromancer in team, from DF9: Summoners, and he found mystery book in foreign language. I decided that in this book are spells for Gray Necromancer (something like "Necro to GrayNecro Manual") from Pyramid Dungeon Fantasy II.

So, I don't want handling this like "ok, you have access to spells from this list, enjoy". I want to handle this in way:

* he doesn't know what exactly and how many spells is in this book
* he also doesn't know what are requirements. When he will meet requirements, I will say something like "your magic-understanding level is enough to let you understand details about new spell and start to using it -from this moment you can learn this spell in standard way"
* he doesn't know how EXACTLY work spell. At minimum, I want him to know with which spell is the new spell related (each spell is related with required spells to learn this spell). I want to give him option to know more details about certain spells, if he pass check Thaumatology or something. I very need your ideas about how handle this.

for example:

success - he know class of spell (regular, area, etc.)
success by X - reveals also details about energy costs
success by Y - reveals also... what?
Critical success?
Critical failure?

I totally can't estimate how should be margins of success for knowing details...

[johndallman]

Well, first of all, he needs to be able to read the book, which requires identifying the language it's in, and then learning that language to at least Literate level.

If the language is dead, or the version of it in the book is significantly different from that used at the time of the campaign, that could be hard. If the language is one only used for necromancy, or he shows enough of it around for people to realise that the book is about necromancy, then he may encounter anti-necromantic prejudice.

Once he can read the book, doing that and making a successful Thaumatology roll for each spell could be enough to learn what the spells are meant to do. Given that it probably isn't written as an instruction manual in a clear style, time studying each spell will be required. It the book is fairly obscure, than learning the requirements and statistics of one spell could take a week and a Thaumatology roll. Doing that for all the spells in the book will let him know what he's got in some detail, and decide which ones he wants to learn, and which others are requirements for that.

If you want more complications, damage to the book, such as missing or blood-stained pages, could make life harder. If it's volume 2 of a three-volume set, he'll need the first volume to make sense of the second, and so on.

Learning the spells could be 400 hours of studying the book per character point (self-teaching at half the speed of being taught by a teacher), or less if you let him use experience points.

Learning stuff from obscure books is more a question of time and persistence than dramatic dice rolls.

[The Colonel]

Not sure if DF has rules for spell research, but if you felt like it you could oblige the PC to research each spell based on the writer's formulae (with a substantial bonus for having the formulae) ... sort of like reverse engineering captured tech.

[GWJ]

No, I simply don't know how shoulde be "levels" of details, and how margines of success should be for each of them. And effects of critical success or failure.

[whswhs]

I worked out an approach to this when I was writing the Worminghall supplement.

The standard GURPS spells can be cast in one turn, that is, in one second; so whatever verbal component they have must be pretty minimal, about as long as "one hippopotamus" or "hackertybackertyone." It can't take very long to learn a string of syllables that takes one second to say. And yet, canonically, it takes 200 hours to learn a spell! So I figured that a large part of the training was learning the proper stance and gestures, the way to line up variables in your mind, and the visualization of a set of symbols.

So in Worminghall, you can take 8 hours and gain a "familiarity" with a spell you don't know. And that gives you a default in the spell, equal to (IQ + Magery - 6). Then you can spend 200 hours of practice to buy it up to (IQ + Magery - 2). In the meantime, in class, you're making a series of spell rolls that often go wrong.

In Worminghall, I had Symbol Drawing provide aid in casting a spell. So you take 1 second to sketch out a diagram with the proper symbols (planetary sigils, magic squares, runes, and so on) and roll vs. Symbol Drawing, and you get half your margin of success as a bonus with the spell. But you can take Extra Time drawing the symbols! That lets you spend up to 30 seconds, and roll vs. up to Symbol Drawing+5, and then get a much higher typical bonus to the spell. That means your chance of casting the spell goes from minimal to marginal, and once you have actually learned the spell, you can get a pretty decent chance.

Now, this may not be a good structure for DF. It's just one solution. But the issues it addresses seem to follow from the rules about magic. So they might be a starting point for thinking about this further.

Bill Stoddard

[GodBeastX]

Dungeon Fantasy does have rules for books and learning from them. I -believe- it's in the Sages book. I forget which book, but it gives rules for studying books, bonuses for having books on hand, scrolls, etc. And how GMs can handle players picking up skills from books during travel and such.