What does everyone think that if your final spontaneous casting total before dividing by 2 could have created the effect when dividing by 5, that you don't lose fatigue? You must state the full effect you are going for, and cannot leave anything open ended, to try and get the best possible result when doing this.
That's really awkward, so on to the example.
For example, say Ambrose wants to create a wind that's a 5th level spell (Base 2 effect, R:Touch D: Momentary T:Ind, +2 Unnatural) and his die explodes, his total before dividing comes to 25. If he divided it by 5, it would still work, and he would keep the fatigue. IF he botches, he botches, with all the risks that it entails. Basically it gives something to the cases where the Arts are almost sufficient to divide by five and cast it automatically without fatigue, while still keeping the same element of risk.
I'd rather that were some kind of virtue or discovery to be honest. I like the fact that there is still the risk involved, but not without a Virtue or maybe a Mystery.
It is a pretty ineffective minor virtue, IMO. It's a virtue that only becomes available upon a roll of the dice, no other virtues work in this, and it's a pretty "expensive" proposition to trade a virtue for something that works only sometimes, and only if you're relatively lucky. Look back at all of the spontaneous spells you've cast qcipher, and how many of those castings would benefit from such a virtue?
My goal is to reward the exploding die roll above and beyond simply being able to cast a specific spell of a certain level. By and large this is a forgone conclusion that people will only cast spontaneous magic if they have a pretty decent chance of casting the effect. Spontaneous magic is generally unlikely in situations where your CS/2 is 3 less than the effect level, meaning I need to roll a 6 or better to get the effect off. This will only effect the low effects and those with superior Arts in their forms.
I have to agree that it sounds a bit itchy to have this be a virtue that only works some of the time and is entirely based upon the roll of a die to even work. And isn't there already a Virtue that allows for one to not become Fatigued when spontaneously casting?
OK, decent counter point. There has to be some give and take them IMO. How about for this to become an option, first you have to roll high enough, and then maybe say if you choose this option you can add nothing else to the spell that can normally be done with Spont. spell. Can't increase any of the spell's R, D, or T, nor add to its base power or Penetration.
Saving the fatigue would be reward enough i would think. How's that?
How about instead of rolling high enough it is exploding the first die?
I've already stipulated that the base and R/D/T and other parameters need to be fixed. Can't try for the highest possible effect or longest duration. Including penetration is fine as long as it is stated up front. All castings have no penetration unless specified.
I like the idea of it, for sure. Since I'm less experienced with the rule-set, I'll leave the balancing to others. The only reason I mention the virtue was that it's how I think - adding new options should have some kind of cost, unless people feel that the current rules for spontaneous magic are slightly sub-par in efficiency.
I don't think that they are bad, exactly. But I'm struck by the number of times where I am forced to use fatigue to spontaneous cast a spell and then roll well enough that I could have done the same without expending fatigue, if only I'd been able to add the roll and divide by five. This happened in a session I recently played in, and my magus eventually passed out due to fatigue (tried to spontaneously relocate a woman being eaten alive by dogs into the wagon, but failed, actually he botched, but it was a spectacular attempt after a pretty entertaining combat session). Two of his fatigue points resulted from spells which would have succeeded had he been able to divide the total by five, and were on exploding dice.
So, in many cases, for spontaneous magic we have situations where magi only undertake something that they know they can do with a reasonable degree of certainty, or they are doing a last ditch attempt as I was doing above. In the first case, when they explode for something that they could do without the benefit of the exploding die, the exploding die isn't a bonus. If I explode on a formulaic spell (especially a combat spell) I'm getting increased penetration. Or if I explode on the finesse roll, I'm getting a better attack advantage. The spontaneous spell exploding die roll adds...nothing.
On its face it seems like a reasonable house rule.
As you point out, there's no payoff for a really good exploding roll. Typically, the spell was going to work unless it botched anyway. A really high roll is just icing on the cake. But it doesn't do anything.
Adventure Experience, by RAW, takes a season to earn or realize, even if it only took a couple of days. It is an unwritten house rule in virtually every game that you can take adventure experience in the same season as performing lab work, but this actually isn't the case.
This particular saga is vastly different, and that opportunity to double dip the season with labwork and earn adventure experience doesn't exist as in other games. In order to reward players, I will be giving professors and students adventure experience for the stories, but it won't be very much, probably never more than 1 xp per class that has a thread (don't start any new ones). I will award confidence points.
Extracurricular threads, will open up access to the abilities used for experience, and will probably also receive an additional experience point for particularly interesting events.
