Adaptive Casting

Sounds reasonable to me.
It will make Spell Mastery a bit more powerful overall, but I don't see that as a real problem.

It will however also make the Flawless Magic virtue more desirable. Not for the automatic Mastery ability when learning a spell, but for the bonus xp when studying Mastery abilities.
Flawless Magic is already widely considered one of the best virtues in the game, so it probably doesn't need to be made even better. But even so, Flawless Magic won't suddenly become the virtue everyone must have - so probably not a serious problem.

However, since this increases the importance of spells being Similar, I think the definition of Similar spells need to be clarified somewhat. In particular the definition of "same effect". I have added a post to the errata thread about that.
(Why I think that needs to be clarified? I was recently involved in a discussion where we didn't quite agree on what counted as "same effect", so obviously it wasn't clear as it could be )

Yes, they can certainly give them any name they would like just like you could call me Mr. Allen, Christopher Allen, etc. and always be referring to me. However, I didn't choose Aegis of the Hearth randomly. They all know this is the one effect invented by Notatus, only usable at exactly this R/D/T but with varying power levels, right?

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Something about this revision just rubs me wrong. I think it might be the expansion of the coverage allowed by Adaptive Casting, along with the requirement to judge if spells are Similar or not. It just seems like it will result in more complexity, more bulk, more power/meta gaming.

Almost every variant of HR I have seen and/or used of Adaptive Casting has been to consolidate the Spell Mastery ability. Reducing all the the Spell Mastery for a general spell (one with Gen in the level) to a single skill reduces complexity. Reduce the number of books and the number of skill.

Maybe I am more sensitive to it right now since I have been playing a character with Flawless Magic who masters lots of spells. I am at the point where tend to take Adaptive Casting as the first mastery ability for a new Gen spell I learn, so that I only ever have one skill to worry about for it (since our HR forces the consolidation into one skill after taking Adaptive Casting). I have 94 Spell Mastery skills, it would be 133 without that forced consolidation.

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Yup. And it is worth noting this has been done in canon, too. There is at least one book on Spell Mastery for a General spell somewhere that does not have a level attached to it. So if Adaptive Casting remains roughly as is, we should track down those instances to give them levels in the errata.

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The one element I am in disagrement about is Aegis of the Hearth, which is not just a regular spell but something special. I would think all magi know it by its standard name (the latin equivalent of Aegis of the Hearth) rather than Magus Antonio calling it Master's Home and Maga Jane calling it Domicile of Health. Considering every covenant casts this spell every year there is of course going to be a commonality to it.

So I totally think the Hermetic world knows that there are some Hermetic effects that can have varying power levels while still being the same spell pattern.

Also lets not forget that while we just call it Form and Technique and spell within the game itself there are many many rules and logics and written codes and elements of mystical math and stuff about each spell.

So, what are the General spells in the core rules (I'm not checking all the books right now…)?

Ward Against the Beasts of Legend (ReAn)
Ward Against the Faeries of the Waters (ReAq)
Ward Against the Faeries of the Air (ReAu)
Sight of the True Form (InCo)
Ward Against Faeries of the Wood (ReHe)
Dispel the Phantom Image (PeIm)
Restore the Moved Image (ReIm)
Lay to Rest the Haunting Spirit (PeMe)
Ring of Warding Against Spirits (ReMe)
Ward Against Faeries of the Earth (ReTe)
Shell of False Determinations (CrVi)
Shell of Opaque Mysteries (CrVi)
The Invisible Eye Revealed (InVi)
All MuVi spells
All PeVi spells
All ReVi spells except for Gather the Essence of the Beast

Note that, while Wizard's Communion is a General Spell, Wizard's Vigil is not. It is listed as MuVi 40 on page 75 of Through the Aegis. So, as written, Adaptive Casting does not apply to Wizard's Vigil.

That does not strike me as a sensible distinction. The fact that it was, in the real-world history of the line, helpful to write Wizard's Communion as General, and Wizard's Vigil as a particular level, is not reflective of anything important in the fiction. So, I think "Is it described as General in the books?" is a non-starter. "Is it based on a General guideline?" is not much better, as @callen has pointed out that quite a few of the non-General guidelines can be written as General, with minimal effort — certainly no more special cases than Sight of the True Form. (With my philosopher's hat on, all spells can be rewritten with a General guideline, although the notation would be less than totally transparent.)

This is why I am inclined to rely on Similar Spells, which does reflect something significant in the fiction.

I am not inclined to merge Mastery Abilities, however. That is a significant power boost to Flawless Magic, even if you merge the XP rather than the levels, and Flawless Magic really does not need a significant power boost. (I think it probably is the "best" Major Hermetic Virtue, but it is not so good that you should take it regardless of character concept, so it is OK. It should not be made stronger by errata, though.)

(I also agree that Aegis of the Hearth is a special case, but it is a special case, and so we cannot generalise from that to any other General spells.)

Actually, Wizard's Vigil is listed with the same name at both level 20 and level 40. Meanwhile, the identical Day of Communion is explicitly written as a General spell.

As you know, I totally agree.

I'm a little confused here. First, without any errata Flawless Magic is immensely boosted by there being many different Mastery Abilities. It lets you pile the options that are based on Mastery level in one spot and then pick up a ton of others on the cheap that can augment that one favorite, big one. Or split things across a couple or similar. Right now condensing them into a single Ability does two things:

  1. It stops some of the Flawless Magic grossness, and
  2. It simplifies a whole mess of things that can show up.

However, if your earlier suggestion on editing Adaptive Casting is also necessarily included to limit the Flawless Magic grossness, then not merging them won't boost Flawless Magic that way.

Second, won't Flawless Magic get a noticeable boost through using Similar Spells? Those with Flawless Magic are the ones with lots of Mastery Abilities, so they're the ones who can best take advantage, and this way they can use their tricks on quite a few different spells. This doesn't make it the wrong choice, it just confuses me when you talk about not boosting Flawless Magic.

Now, given this is the way it's likely to go, I have two suggestions:

  1. We need to scour the books for the errata. I know there are instances where the Mastery Abilities for General spells have been merged in canon.
  2. The statement about Similar spells "Two spells have the same effect if the rules description of the spell is the same, apart from the Range, Duration, or Target." needs to be clarified. General spells, regardless of the level (neglecting the crossing the level 50-51 threshold issue - see below) are written with the same rules. Meanwhile, if we're clever we can write a spell like Ball of Abysmal Flame with a level-based formula instead of with fixed numbers and get the rules to work differently.
  3. There is also a question of whether there are one or two General spells in the case of General spells that are not Rituals at levels 50 and lower. This is because the rules for the spell change noticeably as it crosses the threshold into being forced to be a Ritual. That currently plays into understanding General spells as well as Similar Spells.

You got most of them right. I only see:

Missed this one:
Discern the Images of Truth and Falsehood (InIm)

Misnamed this one:
Ward Against Faeries of the Mountain (ReTe)

So far I've found three instances in Through the Aegis where books on Mastery were given for General spells as a single Ability rather than separating them into different Abilities.

p.124

Calvacius of Tytalus, Destruet Extremum
Preiudicium, Demon’s Eternal Oblivion Spell Mastery, Quality 8. (8BP)

p.157

Helveticus of Flambeau, Scourge of the Infernal, Demon’s Eternal Oblivion Mastery Summa, Level 3, Quality 15 (24 Build Points)

Amadeus of Bonisagus, Fortress of the Home, Aegis of the Hearth Mastery Tractatus, Quality 14 (14 Build Points)

I fully expect to find more in more books. Not a lot most likely, but I've already found three examples from two different authors here.

"Similar Spells" is a power boost for Flawless Magic. A rather major one at that. It lets them get the benefit of Adaptive Casting in places it currently does not. It lets you do something like put all your XP into one of the PeVi Might Strippers or ReVi Might Wards, then use that single one for all of them. Or even better, put half of the XP into one of them to use as the primary, then putting groups of 15 or 30 XP into others to pick up another Mastery Ability or two that you have the option of using for all of them. If you have Flawless Mastery then you are looking at a total cost of 5 XP to get 15 in a Spell Mastery. You could actually build "Casting Packages", where you put several Mastery Abilities that are beneficial to use together in groups, then pick the package that best suites the situation.

Forced consolidation (without "similar spells") is not a straight power boost. While you will often end up with a single higher skill, the total XP in one area will result in a lower total level. 200XP in a single skill will result in a skill of 8, while in four skills would result in four skills of 4 (16 total Mastery Abilities). Even reducing each of them by one to account for taking Adaptive Casting results in 7 vs 12. It also blocks the putting a large chunk of XP in one ability to get a high bonus, then putting the remaining XP into small chunks to cheaply pick up other Mastery Abilities.

EDIT: And all of them result in increased complexity. The whole reason my group went with Forced Consolidation is to reduce it. So Similar spells is in my view horrible since it increases complexity and increases power (dramatically). It is actually making a case for Flawless Magic being a "Must Pick".

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Thanks! Could you repost these in the errata thread so I don't lose them? I am working my way down that thread, but I'm currently stuck in the animals section, because we really don't seem to have checked those as carefully as we should…

Okay I am a bit confused here.

Let us say there is a ward expert with a bunch of spells. Is the consensus saying something like

a) His spell sheet might look like this

Ward Against the Beast of Legend (ReAn 5); Mastery 1
Ward Against the Beast of Legend (ReAn 10)
Ward Against the Beast of Legend (ReAn 15)
Ward Against the Beast of Legend (ReAn 20); Mastery 2

b) Or could his spell sheet look like this
Ward Against the Beast of Legend (ReAn 5 to 20); Mastery 3

Cause I would figure in such a growth of capability the spells would sort of condense into one slot, with the magus having options when he cast for all that its basically the same spell.

This is rules-as-written, and rules-as-intended. Spells do not condense into a single slot.

Nope, definitely not. Those are not similar spells. The effects are not closely related. (Obviously, this is just my opinion, but I once again get to write errata to make my opinion correct.)

Similar spells clearly needs a new thread, even if I don't use it with Adaptive Casting.

Is this really that useful? You need to put 30 XP in to get two mastery abilities, because one of them has to be Adaptive Casting. You will also get a low bonus, and quite a few of the mastery abilities are based on the level of the mastery ability. You can only use one Ability at a time, so while you do get some increased flexibility, the most sensible one here would seem to be putting all the XP into one ability to get a decent bonus from penetration mastery.

When you us Mastery Ability to talk about both the skill and the special abilities that come from increasing the skill then it causes weird parsing. Like abilities based on ability. That is specifically why I use the word skill, to make it clear which I am talking about.

As for the spells being closely related or not, that is very much just your opinion with the way the rules are written currently. They use the exact same general write-up, with [Realm]. And while you might get to write the errata to "make your opinion correct", that just puts more in the errata that people will ignore if they dislike it. In the short period of time I have been on the forums, I have seen many instances where the reaction to someone pointing out the errata has been "Oh heck no, I am ignoring/HRing that!".

I would much rather burn Adaptive Casting to the ground and nuke it out of existence than use it with "similar spells". And I play a character with Flawless Magic. It has been so broken as to be unusable without HR since it was originally written.

Yeah, Demon's Eternal Oblivion at level 5 and also Faerie's and Dragon's Eternal Oblivionses at level 5 seem to fall well within the current similar spells guidelines for "closely related effect, at the same Range, Duration, and Target", the spells are even the same level! An example is "causing damage with Creo Ignem" and "reducing might with Rego Vim" feels much the same.

I can definitely see where being for different realms means they don't count, but as written right now I don't think that's a slam dunk at the table.

You're making two mistakes here.

The first is that you can only use one at a time. Adaptive Casting lets you use the options from one with the other. It doesn't stop you from using the other's options, too. That's something you were considering above for the errata because it isn't how Adaptive Casting currently exists. That's why I explained above that normally the condensation to one Ability does not raise the power of Flawless Magic as you could basically already do that with Adaptive Casting or you could use this method to go nuts.

Given that, the second is a mathematical issue. Consider someone with Flawless Magic with DEO 30 Mastery 11, with every level-based Mastery option. Now the magus wants to get faster with it. Option 1: spend 6 seasons of practice to improve to Mastery 12. A few things will get a touch better, but initiative will only go up by 1. Option 2: spend 1 season inventing DEO 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7, and then spend 2 seasons of practice on two of them. Now initiative goes up by 2, you've spent 3 seasons rather than 6, you've picked up 2 experience of exposure for that lab season, and you've got three more spells already developed and ready to be similarly improved.

That's why it's currently so useful.

The mathematical issue is horrible. Doing things like you and I have suggested also made it extremely complex. Hopefully David will better understand what I was trying to get at with your input.

Are you sure about that? HoH:TL 99 only says "You may use your mastery score and all the special abilities associated with this spell whenever you cast the same spell at a different level". It doesn't say "You may add up all mastery scores that you have". That's really quite a jump, because you can normally only use one mastery score with a spell. Does the other location (which I forget) make that explicit?

In any case, UHO, that interpretation makes Adaptive Casting seriously overpowered, so the minimum change needed is a clarification that you cannot use more than one mastery at a time.

(UHO = ut humiliter opinor = In My Humble Opinion in Latin. I haven't had a chance to use that for decades.)

I didn't say you could add all the Mastery scores. Look at what I did. Using the level-30 spell with its Mastery of 11 and options, I then have Adaptive casting with another which lets me use its Quick Casting with the level-30 spell, and then I have another that also let's me use it's Quick Casting.

Notice it doesn't say anything about replacing other things. Just that you can use these Mastery options with the other spell. That's precisely what I'm doing.

The sacrifice is that I didn't get an extra +1 for Penetration, Multiple Casting, etc. since I didn't increase that Mastery 11 to Mastery 12, but that wasn't the goal.

This is especially effective in other circumstances. Let's say you have Flawless Magic and you want Quiet Casting x2, Still Casting, Fast Casting, Disguised Casting, and Obfuscated Casting with your level-20 version of a General spell in your specialty and you're not worried about Casting Total nor anything that triggers off the level. Option 1: after developing the spell you spend 10 seasons of practice to reach Mastery 6. Option 2: after developing the spell you spend a season developing levels 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7, choosing Adaptive Casting with each; then you spend 6 seasons practicing Mastery with each. 7 seasons gets you 2 extra experience and all the Mastery options you wanted compared to 10 seasons the other way. Sure, you don't get the other perks of Mastery 6, but you didn't need them.

There are so many variants on this. Your suggested erratum to restrict everyone to using a single Mastery Ability and its options for a single casting gets rid of this mess, as does merging all the experience.