Flexible Formulaic Magic

Games Discussion Ars Magica
52

What about this for the boosting set?

Boosting (p. 97): Replace the description as follows: "By spending a pawn of vis when casting boosted spells or activating a boosted effect in an item, you may increase the Range, Duration, Target, or size of the effect by one magnitude. You can do this multiple times for the same spell. For example, boosting Range from Touch to Sight and Target from Individual to Group would cost you four pawns of vis. You may not reduce any of the parameters of the spell, nor may you exceed the limits of Formulaic magic unless the spell is already a Ritual.Casting success, Fatigue loss, and Penetration are all calculated based on the original level of the spell, but you do add one additional botch die for each pawn of vis used. Mutantes picture this process as "feeding" the magic, using vis to make it grow bigger and stronger."

Boosted Casting (p. 99): Replace the description as follows: "When casting this spell, you may use vis to increase the Range, Duration, Target, or size by one magnitude for each pawn spent. You may increase more than one aspect of the same spell. You may not reduce any of the parameters, nor exceed the limits of Formulaic magic unless the spell is already a Ritual. Casting success, Fatigue loss, and Penetration are all calculated based on the original level of the spell, but you do add one additional botch die for each pawn of vis used."

Boosting (p. 101): Replace the description as follows: "By spending a pawn of vis when casting boosted spells or activating a boosted effect in an item, you may increase the Range, Duration, Target, or size of the effect by one magnitude. You can do this multiple times for the same spell. For example, boosting Range from Touch to Sight and Target from Individual to Group would cost you four pawns of vis. You may not reduce any of the parameters of the spell, nor may you exceed the limits of Formulaic magic unless the spell is already a Ritual.Casting success, Fatigue loss, and Penetration are all calculated based on the original level of the spell, but you do add one additional botch die for each pawn of vis used. Mutantes picture this process as "feeding" the magic, using vis to make it grow bigger and stronger."

Boosted Magic (p. 104): Replace the description with the following: "By spending a pawn of vis when casting Formulaic spells you may “boost” the Range, Duration, Target, or size of the effect by one magnitude. You can do this multiple times for the same spell. For example, boosting Range from Touch to Sight and Target from Individual to Group would cost you four pawns of vis. You may not reduce any of the parameters of the spell, nor may you exceed the limits of Formulaic magic. Casting success, Fatigue loss, and Penetration are all calculated based on the original level of the spell, but you do add one additional botch die for each pawn of vis used. This has no effect on Spontaneous or Ritual spells, though you can still use vis to boost your Penetration as normal. Note that while magi with Mutantum Magic (below) can invent spells that allow this, they cannot boost spells that were not designed to do so without taking this Virtue."

7 Likes
53

Looks good to me.

Just noticed an oddity in the boosting rules which I am not sure if it was intentional or not.
With Mutantum Magic you can invent ritual spells that can be boosted; you can learn the Boosted Casting spell mastery ability for a ritual spell, allowing it to be boosted; but the Boosted Magic virtue does not allow you to boost rituals.
It is not that the rules are unclear on this point, it just seems odd that of the three possible ways to boost a spell, two work on rituals while the third doesn't.

1 Like
54

Yes, I noticed that when I was making all the revisions. It is clearly deliberate, and given the flexibility of the Virtue (which doesn't require a specially-designed spell or a Mastery ability), I think it was probably deliberate. At this remove, I can't remember…

Anyway, I plan to leave it in place.

55

There are equivalent errata needed for the Gruagach innate flexibility (HM p59) and the Flexible Casting spell mastery on the same page. The latter IMHO needs a complete rewrite.

56

Good catch, thank you. I plan to use the following errata.

Inflexible Magic (p. 58): Change the description as follows: "The gruagach’s Formulaic spells are not as versatile as most. Instead of being able to vary the Range, Duration, Target, or size of a known spell by 2 magnitudes, the gruagach is only able to vary his spells by 1 magnitude."

Gruagach Spells (p. 59): Revise the final paragraph of the section as follows: "Gruagachan are able to vary the effects of their Formulaic magic to a certain extent. They may cast any of their known spells with a different Range, Duration, Target, or size. They may only vary one parameter in a single casting. The final spell must be within 2 magnitudes of the original spell and the new Range, Duration, Target, or size must be one that is available to the character. Casting success, Fatigue loss, and Penetration are all calculated based on the casting level of the final spell. This works the same as the Hermetic Virtue Flexible Formulaic Magic, but allows the gruagach to alter 2 magnitudes of spells."

Flexible Casting (p. 59): Revise the description as follows: "For every full five points in the gruagach's Mastery Score, add one to the number of magnitudes by which he can vary the Range, Duration, Target, or size of a known Formulaic spell."

Flexible Formulaic Magic (p. 78): Under Integration Effects, change the second sentence of the first paragraph to read as follows: "A magus with Spell Mastery in Flexible Formulaic Magic is able to vary one parameter of a Formulaic spell (Range, Duration, Target, or size) as long as the final level of the spell is within one magnitude for every full five points of the magus’ Mastery Score. Otherwise, it works in the same way as Flexible Formulaic Magic."

Change the end of the second paragraph to read as follows: "by making the magnitude difference two instead of one".

2 Likes
57

This seems underwhelming. I posted about the Gruagach Flexible Casting mastery ability a while ago, and my opinion hasn't really changed; that's one hell of an investment of experience points for not much gain.

58

I wouldn't take it until I had 5 in a Mastery Ability, but it does seem like a nice ability to take at that point.

I'm reluctant to issue an erratum for something that might be a bit weak in a marginal part of the rules; there'd need to be quite a lot of discussion of the balance, and I'm not sure it's worth it.

1 Like
59

Fair enough, but I do think it's more than "a bit" weak. 75xp is a very large investment in a single spell, even with the equivalent of Flawless Magic.

1 Like
60

I think his point is that this is not an investment of 75 points to get this one thing. You also get 4 more choices and everything else you get out of Mastery 5.

Honestly, there are other, weaker, Mastery options, and some of those are still worth taking. If he’s not going to go through rebalancing them all, which aren’t even errors to correct, it’s probably best not to make such a change.

61

Learn from Mistakes is probably the worst one.

62

Yes, that's my point. Spell Mastery is not worth the bother for every spell, and not all the options make sense with every spell. On the other hand, there are some spells that are massively enhanced by the investment. Because it is optional at every level, you can choose for each spell individually.

63

Since I'm fairly sure in my saga the amount of experience not from virtues that has been spent on masteries is a round number (specifically 0), I'm going to carry right on being doubtful about this.

64

Well, if you think Mastery is underpowered, you could have it bought as an Art rather than an Ability. But I don't think we can make that sort of change in errata…

65

If Mastery were really so weak, people wouldn’t consider Flawless Magic to be one of the best Major Hermetic Virtues.

Sure, this one option isn’t any good if you don’t get to 5, but when you do advance from 4 to 5, it seems like a much stronger choice than most. That would make it more limited, but not a weak option.

2 Likes
66

Another clarification about FFM: What about target material? If a ReTe spell is changed to affect metal instead of stone, does that qualify as a one-step adjustment within the same Target, as with size? Or, on the other hand, is material adjustment a change to the effect, and so not allowed by FFM?

67

I'm inclined to leave that to troupe discretion. I can see arguments either way, and I am not convinced it is important enough to specify in the rules. A troupe with a FFM Terram specialist is going to need to decide, though.

1 Like
68

In my saga I would say no. It is the basis of the effect, not "just" some parameters. We can say it is in the Base part of the spell design.

5 Likes
69

Hah! My troupe considers it one of the best ones :slight_smile:

70

My current character has Flawless Magic and has built up a huge list over the closing on 7 years of play. For Formulaic Spells, Fast Casting seems to be his most common. A little surprising at first, but thinking about it that has saved him many times since he can use them to counter spells without using Spontaneous.

For Rituals he is not a good source for the published Mastery Abilities since his two most common are Efficient Casting and Soft Magic, both of which are not published (we use a rather large list that is detailed in my HR thread). Ignoring (our modified version of) Adaptive, Rebuttel and Stalwart tie for a distant third.

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71

The dual primary effects of mastery, increasing casting total and reducing botch dice, make its effect less likely so unless you have a character with Unpredictable Magic flaw or houserule it to happen on the first zero or something then it’s pretty pointless mechanically.

Edit: personally I think Learn from Mistakes being a general rule would be good though 5xp may be a bit much in that case.