Enchantment and Ceremonial Magic from a Magic-Powered Spaceship

[RaRaRasputin]

In Spaceships 7 (Divergent and Paranormal Tech), it says that mages can draw power directly from any power plant which provides magical Power Points, without necessarily needing any of the Tech college spells designed for drawing power (p. 14).

Each ship-scale power point provides a maximum number of FP per second equal to [the ship's mass in tons]/4, (with [mass]/80 FP available per second if no power points are dedicated to being siphoned off). A mage can safely draw power each turn equal to (HT * 0.7 * Magery^2), so a fairly generic HT 10 Magery 2 mage can take 28 FP a turn. This would bump up against the limit of a SM+6, 100 ton ship (25 FP per power point), but it would not even scratch the "negligible power draw" limit of a much larger craft (A SM+10, 10,000 ton craft can provide 2000 FP/s per power point, or 125 FP/s for no power points).

I'm curious about how this would interact with Ceremonial Magic or Enchanting. If the mage is taking part in a Ceremonial Magic ritual that lasts one minute, can they funnel the whole 1680 FP (28*60) into it? If they're doing something that takes an hour (such as a Quick-and-Dirty enchantment), would they really have 100800 FP (28*60*60) available for it? The only other limit suggested by the text is to give them access only to the power they have available in the very last second of the ritual (ignoring the previous 3599), which in my opinion goes a bit too far in the other direction.

I like the idea of enchanters being able to seek large external power sources (because otherwise, larger enchantments will always take years or decades to create, which may or may not be an appropriate limitation to the setting one is trying to create), but this seems like an awful lot. Before I start imposing arbitrary caps, however, I thought I'd ask the forums if there are any other limiting factors I've overlooked.

Enchanting Facilities

A separate but related query involves enchanting in high quality workshops. Thaumatology (p 108) suggests that enchantment requires appropriate facilities, and should gain a bonus (somewhere between +1 and +TL/2) for particularly high-quality facilities. But if you require skill-15 in all relevant spells before you can even try enchanting something, and a roll of 16+ is always a failure, exactly what is this bonus good for?

Does it let you attempt enchantments based on spells you only know at 13 or 14? Does it mitigate penalties, allowing more assistants into an enchanting circle? Does it increase the final Power of the item (Magic p 17)? Does it allow assistants who know the necessary spells at 14 or less, so long as the primary caster knows them at 15+? As far as I know, this isn't explicitly defined anywhere- if it is, I'd appreciate a page reference.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by RaRaRasputin

I'm curious about how this would interact with Ceremonial Magic or Enchanting. If the mage is taking part in a Ceremonial Magic ritual that lasts one minute, can they funnel the whole 1680 FP (28*60) into it? If they're doing something that takes an hour (such as a Quick-and-Dirty enchantment), would they really have 100800 FP (28*60*60) available for it? The only other limit suggested by the text is to give them access only to the power they have available in the very last second of the ritual (ignoring the previous 3599), which in my opinion goes a bit too far in the other direction.

The rule is that _all_ energy to be used n casting a Spell or creating an Enchantment must be available in the last second. The only way to Enchant gradually is Slow and Sure and that doesm't benefit from Draw Power.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

The rule is that _all_ energy to be used n casting a Spell or creating an Enchantment must be available in the last second.

This typically means you want a special purpose capacitor (magical capacitor, in this case), since there's no reason to produce a megawatt-hour when a megawatt-second will work.

[RaRaRasputin]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

The rule is that _all_ energy to be used n casting a Spell or creating an Enchantment must be available in the last second.

That seems reasonable, could I get a page reference on that, please?

This seems to suggest that exploiting a ship's power plant to the fullest will also require large capacitors (eg: Powerstones or Manastones). Does the limitation of "One Powerstone Per Spell" generalize to "One external Powersource Per Spell"? Or can you draw from your own FP+ER, from the ship's power plant, and from a power stone (which you presumably charged from the ship's power plant) for the same ceremonial spell?

Are there rules for dedicated capacitors for this sort of thing, or will I be stuck casting "charge powerstone" into the same piece of banded agate over and over again, with a non-negligible chance of it blowing up every time?

[Refplace]

Its your FP + ER plus one external power source, such as a power stone.
It is well established that tis the last second when casting the spell but I am not going to dig it up at the moment.
However since you have the Draw Power spell for getting it from a Machine you could also use the one for drawing from a battery and fill up that and use those to power your spells.
This also makes those power plants a commercial operation with an export if you so desire.

[jeff_wilson]

Originally Posted by Refplace

However since you have the Draw Power spell for getting it from a Machine you could also use the one for drawing from a battery and fill up that and use those to power your spells.

Steal Power only refills your FP from a battery, it doesn't add to what you would have by resting alone.

[Jerander]

Originally Posted by Refplace

Its your FP + ER plus one external power source, such as a power stone.
It is well established that tis the last second when casting the spell but I am not going to dig it up at the moment.
However since you have the Draw Power spell for getting it from a Machine you could also use the one for drawing from a battery and fill up that and use those to power your spells.
This also makes those power plants a commercial operation with an export if you so desire.

For the sake of clarity, you can use:

FP (as much as you want)
HP (as much as you want to risk)
1 ER (in case you have more than one)
1 external source*

Correct?

*External sources include powerstones, manastones, power items, cones of power, Draw Power...Anything else I'm missing?

Where do things like the energy boost offered by Spirit-Assisted Magic and Threshold Magery (Variable Energy Access) go? Are they external or can you use them in addition?

Thank you,
Jerander.

[jeff_wilson]

Originally Posted by Jerander

For the sake of clarity, you can use:

FP (as much as you want)
HP (as much as you want to risk)
1 ER (in case you have more than one)
1 external source*

Correct?

*External sources include powerstones, manastones, power items, cones of power, Draw Power...Anything else I'm missing?

Not entirely correct. Mutliple external sources are allowed, but some sources don't allow multiples of themselves (like Powerstones and Share Energy). Multiple ER's are allowed, provided the ER's are suitably built.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by RaRaRasputin

A separate but related query involves enchanting in high quality workshops. Thaumatology (p 108) suggests that enchantment requires appropriate facilities, and should gain a bonus (somewhere between +1 and +TL/2) for particularly high-quality facilities. But if you require skill-15 in all relevant spells before you can even try enchanting something, and a roll of 16+ is always a failure, exactly what is this bonus good for?

You need both a base and an effective skill of 15+, so it will offset penalties (specifically, the penalties for assistants). Also, it will increase the Power score of the item being enchanted.