Scott A

Here's my take on the various other spells implied by Enhance Int. They're roughly balanced against the spirit magic spells. Enhance STR [Air][Summon] 2 Points Touch, Passive, Temporal This spell temporarily increases the STR of the target by 1. Every 2 levels of strength added to the spell increases the target’s STR by +1. Thus, if the spell’s strength is increased to 5, it adds +3 to the target’s STR for the duration of the spell. This spell can increase the target’s STR beyond species maximum Enhance DEX [Water][Summon] 2 Points Touch, Passive, Temporal This spell temporarily increases the DEX of the target by 1. Every 4 levels of strength added to the spell increases the target’s DEX by +1. Thus, if the spell’s strength is increased to 9, it adds +3 to the target’s DEX for the duration of the spell. This spell can increase the target’s DEX beyond species maximum Enhance CON [Earth][Summon] 2 Points Touch, Passive, Temporal This spell temporarily increases the CON of the target by 1. Every 4 levels of strength added to the spell increases the target’s CON by +1. Thus, if the spell’s strength is increased to 9, it adds +3 to the target’s CON for the duration of the spell. This spell can increase the target’s CON beyond species maximum Enhance SIZ [Dark][Summon] 2 Points Touch, Passive, Temporal This spell temporarily increases the SIZ of the target by 1. Every 2 levels of strength added to the spell increases the target’s SIZ by +1. Thus, if the spell’s strength is increased to 5, it adds +3 to the target’s SIZ for the duration of the spell. This spell can increase the target’s SIZ beyond species maximum. This spell does not, however, increase the size of whatever the target is wearing. A target wearing restrictive clothing or armor may suffer damage or be incapacitated, at the GM’s discretion. Enhance MP [Moon][Summon] 2 Points Touch, Passive, Temporal This spell temporarily increases the maximum magic points of the target by 1. Every 2 levels of strength added to the spell increases the target’s max MP by +1. Thus, if the spell’s strength is increased to 5, it adds +3 to the target’s max MP for the duration of the spell. This spell does NOT provide any additional MP at the time of casting, but MP recovery rates are based upon the new maximum. Any MP left over the maximum when this spell expires remain, but do not regenerate. It is a source of great frustration to lunar sorcerers that they have been unable to create a true Enhance POW spell, despite great efforts. Unfriendly traditions point to this failure as proof of the moon rune’s lesser status.

I like that, between Rogue Wave and Create Wall of Fire, sorcerers are absolute terrors in in anti-ship combat.

At present, the only Sorcerers that are actually detailed enough to play RAW out of the book are Lhankor Mhy sages, which work more than ok in my book. I mean, have you *looked* at Logician? It's crazy good!

Shamen are Rune Master level characters, on par with Rune Priests or Rune Lords. They aren't equivalent to starting sorcerers any more than an assistant shaman is. It's true that there's currently no Rune Master level of status that a pure sorcerer can aspire to, but that's not really a balance concern, and will presumably show up in future supplements and/or fan material.

I'd strongly recommend keeping the rule where INT acts as a cap on how many MP a sorcerer can pump into intensifying a spell. Otherwise they're only really limited by available MP, and can abuse their uniquely long durations/ranges even harder than they currently can.

I kind of like the idea of house-ruling that a character can choose the higher of INT or POW to provide the Magic Skills category bonus that POW currently does. Makes INT a little more broadly useful. Alternately just adding another row where INT acts like CHA.

As is, a starting wizard with 15 SIZ and free INT could fly for a week.

The fly spell is all and all much better than its rune equivalent, which I feel breaks setting convention. Sorcerers should struggle to be better flyers than Orlanthi. At the minimum I'd reduce the strength to SIZ tradeoff drastically to 1:2, 1:1, or even 4:3. I also don't like the use of a rune in place of a skill check. Orlanthi get away with that because they're channeling a god, sorcerers should have to learn it the hard way.

Sorcerers can "forget" spells, then recall them later with a meditation session. It's a bit unclear whether forgotten spells count towards the INT cap, but I think that they don't.

Sure, that's perfectly reasonable. It'd also be fine to let the PC initiate only to Donandar, if they wanted to. Sure it'd be unusual, but PCs are exceptional.

They would get three RP from Orlanth, and sacrifice X POW to get X RP from Donandar.

Next trick: Hordes of elementals. I'm assuming that we're using a min-maxed sorcerer with 24 INT and have enough spare MP lying around for our needs. Master Truth, Spirit, Summon, Command, and your target elemental rune. Locate a suitable target elemental. This is the trickiest bit, actually, since the core book doesn't have any spirit sight sorcery spells. You might even have to (gasp) cooperate with a barbarian. Get within range, and cast Identify Otherworld Entity from a safe distance. Learn your target's true name and power. Alternately, you can try summoning it and overcoming its POW, then resummoning it for a longer duration when once you've learned its true name. Cast Summon Elemental. With 23 points of free INT, we can summon a small elemental for four years (+5 strength, +18 duration), a medium elemental for two weeks (+11 strength, +12 duration), or a large elemental for six hours (+15 strength, +6 duration). This is obviously a spell that benefits from increasing your free INT. So, yeah, a suitably motivated wizard could have dozens of small elementals following him around at any given time. The same technique works even better for other spirits, as well, since RAW you don't need to overcome POW if you know the spirit's true name. Our example wizard could have *any* spirit he knows the name of obeying him for 128 years! 😮

The secret to being an effective wizard is to be a min-maxing bastard. To quote myself from the facebook group: I elided a lot of fiddly details (eg, avoiding learning spirit magic), but that's one of the better paths to wizardly power.

I'm not seeing a contradiction. The rule on 194 is clearly the same rule as on 314, with a clarification added for how it interacts with the SR readiness table on 193, which reads "Each magic point used +1."

It increases the casting time. The rule is unambiguous here: "If more than 1 magic point is used to boost a Rune magic spell, or otherwise increase its effects, 1 strike rank is added for each additional magical point after the first." The bolded bit there is the catchall that handles this case. As for whether or not you can combine unengaged movement with casting a long spell, I'd say RAW doesn't allow it, but MGF does. The larger question of whether or not you can move and then cast a rune spell in the same round is likewise a bit ambiguous. I'd personally rule that you can, because it seems more fun and dynamic that way.