Sorcery variants

[Joerg]

Carrying a thread back from Glorantha to RQ:

 

Quoting Peter Metcalfe:

Quote

As for the Asian spell effects mentioned, that's probably handled by the Kralori having a ritual of pre-cast caligraphy.  Cast your magic and most of the MPs while drawing down the spell on the special paper.  Then at the moment of casting, cast a magic point or lose 1 hit point and invoke the spell in 1 strike rank.  There'll probably have to be some additional limitiations on how much paper one can be walking around with at any one time (ideally far fewer than 100).   

5 hours ago, simonh said:

11 hours ago, Joerg said:

Ways to limit this in RQ might be temporally blocking Free INT for a spell effect, with a limited stack of applications (and paper sheets) of that ability tied to the intensity of the pre-cast. While it could be possible to block more Free INT, the maximum intensity of the pre-cast will be reduced with each additional stack - a game of diminishing returns. The MP cost during activation, even if drawn from a storage, provides another limiter. Tapping hit points creates all sorts of mechanical problems and should be avoided.

I like that, I was thinking about using a familiar to 'store' spells for quick casting but I really like the idea of sorcerers using scrolls. So the sorcerer creates a scroll for a spell capturing the potential for the spell to be cast rapidly, but thy must devote a point of Free INT to hold enough knowledge, linked to the expression of the spell in the scroll, in memory to be able to use it. Nice.

Is the scroll expended in the casting though, or is the the Free INT released when doing so? What's the rationalisation for that? Perhaps the spell is actually cast into the scroll, which has to be destroyed in order to release it?

I thought that keeping a spell at the ready should diminish the ability to cast other spells a bit. In my example of the movie-style taoist, he could have a few stacks of papers linked to different spells, and activate those at combat speeds (with one SR, probably up to two or three of these per round). When all prepared papers are used up (or get destroyed, the point of Free INT is freed again. Each of those castings should be pre-paid in full, with the activation point an extra expenditure. For more powerful spells, that's an awful lot of MP to put in.

RQG sorcery doesn't have a multispell, but the Combine technique might be useful to chain several spells of the same kind. Alternatively, there is one spell to prepare the recipients of this pre-cast, and then each of them needs to be cast individually.

Not sure whether this is balanced for RQG, but it might be a nice way to have a wuxia magician with RQG-based rules.

If using a scroll, that would be expended in the casting, or probably the seal on it will be expended. Without the seal, the remains of the scroll would be just a piece of parchment (clay tablet, papyrus, or whatever). For some reason (possibly just indoctrination from an exposure to AD&D) I think I would prefer scrolls to hold one seal/spell activation per item only.

Creating these scrolls and seals should have some material cost, too, in addition to production time.

Creating scrolls for someone else might be possible, but should involve that other person in the making of the scroll. The blocked point of Free INT might affect both the spellcaster and the scroll user. A procedure not that different from Issaries' spell trading rune magic, there applied to rune points.

With a scroll, the person activating it would still have to target the magic (the taoist variant above would target by touch - the paper touching the target, released from short range), involving a skill roll (for touch a roll on unarmed combat?).