RQG Sorcery - Inscription Question

[PhilHibbs]

1 minute ago, Crel said:

So your reading is that the basic inscription always gives a free level of Intensity? When made with just one POW.

My thinking is that the first POW just stores the knowledge of the spell (opening up more Free INT) and that it takes extra POW to get bonus intensity.

Yes, the base inscription gives you the same as casting the spell with no manipulation, i.e. 1 free level of each Strength, Range (10m), Duration (5 min). It does indeed take extra POW to get bonus intensity. To get 20 Duration (an extra 19 on top of "base"), you need to add 19 more POW.

[Austin]

1 minute ago, PhilHibbs said:

the base inscription gives you the same as casting the spell with no manipulation, i.e. 1 free level of each Strength, Range (10m), Duration (5 min).

Ah, I see. I was looking at it as a different reading of the rules, whereas I just buggered the numbers. Those tricksy numbers are always out to get me...

Just to confirm, you still have to pay the basic MP cost of the spell when casting through an inscription with no manipulation, yes? I think my mistake is that I thought you were saying either that the first POW gave a free level, or that with an inscription (because POW gives free levels) even the basic version didn't cost MP. Hence my confusion.

[HreshtIronBorne]

I think it would cost 21 MP for the full spell. If the caster had a Free Int of 11 he could jack it up to 3d6 for that year and it would cost 32 mp per casting. Gather all the crystals in the land, my apprentices. 

[PhilHibbs]

7 minutes ago, Crel said:

Just to confirm, you still have to pay the basic MP cost of the spell when casting through an inscription with no manipulation, yes?

I don't know. Some people (@womble?) seem to be saying that the "base" gets boosted by the inscription for free. So the Duration 20 Boon of Kargan Tor scroll only costs 2 MP to get +1D3 for 8 years duration. I think that's... not quite right somehow.

Edited August 29, 2018 by PhilHibbs

[HreshtIronBorne]

Wow, that would be kinda ridiculous. Even if it costs a ton of permanent power it should still cost a boatload of mp. Boon for a year at just a strength of 12 is 3d6, a gifted sorcerer with 16 could get 4d6, and someone playing with enhance Int could get up to 5 or 6d6 without even doing a bunch more enchanting. If it were nearly free that would be terrifying, also reducing the mp cost would dramatically reduce casting times by my reading of the rules. 

[Joerg]

I wonder how this "free intensity" affects Dispel Magic and similar countereffects. Your 8 year +1D3 implement would need how many points of Dispel or comparable magics?

[Austin]

1 minute ago, HreshtIronBorne said:

If it were nearly free that would be terrifying, also reducing the mp cost would dramatically reduce casting times by my reading of the rules.

I agree that RAW it should reduce casting time, although it will still take over a melee round, so I'd hardly call it fast. I think speedier casting is probably an intentional feature, to give the sorcerer at least a chance of using his magic in combat, rather than in prep.

It's worth remembering that inscription isn't like the spirit magic or Rune magic Spell Matrix Enchantments; all the POW has to come from the sorcerer (instead of shared around, although I think he could get POW from contributors--apprentices, adventuring companions, etc--when casting Magic Point Enchantment), and only the sorcerer can use the inscription.

But it is terrifying. Even a more moderate +6 or +10 POW inscription, while still super expensive, gives the sorcerer access to crazy effects, which he can do basically every day. I'll try brewing up a kind-of moderate example:

Doric has POW 17, INT 15 (with a Free INT of 14, since he only has one spell memorized at the moment). He's sick of getting screwed with by these uncivilized barbarians in Dragon Pass, so he decides to inscribe his Dominate (Human). He decides to spend a whopping 10 POW on the inscription, giving him a bonus 9 Intensity to add to his spell's base strength or duration. He puts them all in strength. His basic Dominate (Human) will cost the base of 2MP and be treated as strength 10. Without any other items, he could manipulate it up to strength 16 (spending 6MP from himself, with 1 remaining to not go unconscious), although strength 10 should give a good shot at dominating most humans. If he had an MP matrix with 17+ MP in it (2 base + 15 Free INT manipulation), he could cast Dominate (Human) at strength 25, giving him a 70% chance to dominate those pesky Rune Lords (resisting the spell's strength with POW 21). It should also blow through pretty much any Countermagic-like effects in the way. Alternatively, he could use his base strength 10 to try manipulating his full Free INT into duration to give him a chance to dominate a long-term bodyguard. (Strength 10 v. average human POW 11, 45% chance of success, duration 15 for two seasons.) He can cast that anytime he's got the MP available (unlike Rune Matrices linked to Extension).

[Austin]

16 minutes ago, Joerg said:

I wonder how this "free intensity" affects Dispel Magic and similar countereffects. Your 8 year +1D3 implement would need how many points of Dispel or comparable magics?

RAW, I don't think they're very frail.

Sorcery's Neutralize Magic cares about the spell's "strength," not MP.

Spirit Magic's Dispel Magic requires 1MP per intensity of the sorcery spell. So the 8-year Boon requires 20+ MP.

Rune Magic's Dismiss Magic has the best chance. Each RP of the spell cancels 2 strength of sorcery (and it explicitly only cares about the spell's strength, not total Intensity). So that would knock down a small, long-duration Boon or similar spell pretty easily.

RAW, none of them seem to care about the actual number of MP spent in casting the spell, so the free Intensity is generally not worse at resisting countereffects than spells cast without inscription bonuses.

Edited August 29, 2018 by Crel
added last paragraph.

[David Scott]

2 hours ago, HreshtIronBorne said:

I think it would cost 21 MP for the full spell. If the caster had a Free Int of 11 he could jack it up to 3d6 for that year and it would cost 32 mp per casting. Gather all the crystals in the land, my apprentices. 

The first thing that the sorcerer in my game did was to spend three POW on a magic point matrix, on 3D10 he got 25. He realised that POW wasn't the key thing to casting sorcery, however he did need an offensive spell to use to get a POW gain roll to bump his POW back up.

[David Scott]

2 hours ago, HreshtIronBorne said:

Wow, that would be kinda ridiculous. Even if it costs a ton of permanent power it should still cost a boatload of mp. Boon for a year at just a strength of 12 is 3d6, a gifted sorcerer with 16 could get 4d6, and someone playing with enhance Int could get up to 5 or 6d6 without even doing a bunch more enchanting. If it were nearly free that would be terrifying, also reducing the mp cost would dramatically reduce casting times by my reading of the rules. 

I'm not sure that dramatically reducing casting time is true:

Quote

 

Casting Time

Sorcery is much slower than spirit magic or Rune magic. A sorcery spell takes one full melee round to cast, and takes effect on the DEX strike rank of the following round + 2 strike ranks per additional magic point used in the spell.

 

Then you'd want to always increase your chance of casting to at 95% (always 5% chance of failure) or more as a crit reduces mp cost to 1. My sorcerer alway used meditate - 10 mins for a max of +25% or more often a day's ritual preparation for a seasons worth of Boon of Kargan Tor for +50%, he'd always augment with his Death rune, avoid fertility week (-10%), use a sword (normally the recipient of the spell +10%) and in one case stand on a recent battlefield for (Moonbrth) +20%, so at least +70%. He did critical a few times.

Unprepared battle was always a problem as a Strength 12 +3D6 BoKT would take +11 MPs, so 1 round + DEX SR2 + (2 MPs (base) +11 MPs boost) = 26 Strike ranks, so overall 3 rounds and finally on round 4 SR2 he would roll for success. His Base for the spell was 37+5% bonus, +10% for a sword, and if he was lucky, someone had already died for another +10%.  Often he would fail, but he was known for coming in at the end of a fight and killing everyone left. As sorcerer of The Shadow Path (a minor Carmanian School), he was more than happy with this. As he had no other types of magic, this was his main tactic.

[PhilHibbs]

1 hour ago, Crel said:

Speaking of arms races and bendy systems... Running some numbers in my head, and here's an example of what seems to me like the craziest horseshit a Lunar sorcerer could get up to; like, if the Red Emperor wanted to destroy Whitewall without the Crimson Bat type of crazy is what I'm looking for. This isn't exactly a Linked Spell shenanigan, but this thread feels closest to appropriate for munchkinery. Using the interpretation of sorcery inscription (p.390 in Core) that the bonus levels given by extra POW don't cost MP, but even with MP costs just means a bigger MP Matrix is needed, or to cast the spell on Full Moon Day.

Assume a max-stat, fanatical sorcerer being directly commanded by the Red Emperor. He has 21 POW and 18 INT, and only has the spell Moonfire (p.396) memorized. He's willing to die for the glory of the Red Moon. He has all four Runes/Techniques required for Moonfire mastered. He creates an inscription of Moonfire with 20 of his POW. This makes an inscription which has a base cost of 4MP (the basic cost of Moonfire) and an Intensity of 20 (1 base, and 19 additional intensity because of the extra POW spent). He assigns all the additional intensity to add to the spell strength (for a default of strength 20, for 4MP). He can still manipulate this with his full Free INT. He uses 4 Free INT on strength (bringing the total strength up to 24; base 1, +19 from inscribed POW, +4 from free INT which costs 4MP), and 8 Free INT on range (340m), with the last 6 free INT on duration (160min). This costs +18MP, a total of 22MP (which is the average of a 4-POW Magic Point Enchantment, rolling on 4d10), or 11MP on Full Moon Day.

This spell has strength 24, range 8, duration 6 for a total intensity of 38. At strength 24, Moonfire deals 6D6 damage to a random hit location to everything within a 320m radius each melee round. It can be cast from up to 340m away (just far enough!) and lasts for 160 minutes, or 800 melee rounds (at 5 rounds/minute, I believe?). The spell's active, so if the sorcerer is inside it when he casts he'll quickly die and end it prematurely, but at raw strength alone he could effectively commit suicide and cast the spell at strength 36, with two more points for duration (because why not?), to deal 9D6 damage a round to random hit locations to everything within a 2,560m radius. Still costing 22MP (or 11MP on Full Moon Day).

Using the interpretation that the bonus POW extends how much the spell can be manipulated (but that it still costs MP) means that this spell requires +19MP, total of 41MP (about 8 POW), or 21MP on Full Moon Day, which is the average on that big-but-plausible 4-POW matrix.

Kablewey.

(Note: Not saying this is likely to happen in an actual campaign, unless maybe the very absolute end of one. Just theory-crafting.)

That's more a problem with the Moonfire spell than with the inscription mechanics. Strength both increasing damage and the area of effect, and damaging everyone, every melee round? That's pretty insane.

[David Scott]

1 hour ago, PhilHibbs said:

That's more a problem with the Moonfire spell than with the inscription mechanics. Strength both increasing damage and the area of effect, and damaging everyone, every melee round? That's pretty insane.

And it's meant to be. We know this has been done twice:

1279 Skyburn, took 2 years to prepare (+85% casting), duration 12 hours (Intensity 8), radius  80000m (Intensity 60, 81920m), range 80000m (Intensity 20), Damage was a lot.

1296 Moonburn, took 5 years to prepare (90% casting) ...

[PhilHibbs]

49 minutes ago, David Scott said:

And it's meant to be. We know this has been done twice:

1279 Skyburn, took 2 years to prepare (+85% casting), duration 12 hours (Intensity 8), radius  80000m (Intensity 60, 81920m), range 80000m (Intensity 20), Damage was a lot.

1296 Moonburn, took 5 years to prepare (90% casting) ...

There are plenty of epic feats of magic documented in Gloranthan lore, but making one of them reproducible just with one sorcery spell is... surprising. With a spell like that, I'm surprised it isn't happening every day all over the Empire and its provinces. It ought to be as common as mass shootings in the US.

We know that dragons have risen from the earth several times, but I don't see a sorcery spell that any adventurer can cast that raises a true dragon.

Ok, those examples are beyond a single adventurer, there's clearly some ritualized group casting or heroquesting going on to create effects on that scale. But the base Moonfire spell is ridiculous nonetheless! I don't think there's ever been a RuneQuest sorcery spell writeup with that kind of destructive power.

[David Scott]

15 minutes ago, PhilHibbs said:

There are plenty of epic feats of magic documented in Gloranthan lore, but making one of them reproducible just with one sorcery spell is... surprising. With a spell like that, I'm surprised it isn't happening every day all over the Empire and its provinces. It ought to be as common as mass shootings in the US.

We know that dragons have risen from the earth several times, but I don't see a sorcery spell that any adventurer can cast that raises a true dragon.

Ok, those examples are beyond a single adventurer, there's clearly some ritualized group casting or heroquesting going on to create effects on that scale. But the base Moonfire spell is ridiculous nonetheless! I don't think there's ever been a RuneQuest sorcery spell writeup with that kind of destructive power.

I think it is happening and that all these huge magics have a root in a much simpler form. The massive form clearly needs more magical effects that are not yet documented in RQG. However having had a lunar sorcerer in my game, they were certainly eying that spell up. The reality of playing a sorcerer is just like all the magic types - always a compromise between what you'd like to do and what you actually do on an adventure. Realistically you could get a POW gain roll every season, however that's not my experience in actual play.

[womble]

3 hours ago, David Scott said:

Realistically you could get a POW gain roll every season, however that's not my experience in actual play.

Once you're a Priest, if you're in one of the Big Cults with weekly Holy days, it's going to be trivial to get a POW gain roll as often as the GM allows (so, at least once a Season unless the GM is a big meanie  ). With a 35% chance of increase if your POW is 18 (cos Priests get +20% on their chance to gain, and they've got plenty  to do with any gains, so going higher is probably unnecessary). Plus the Sacred Time one. So six a year if there are no other (probably adventuring-based) "interstitial" chances to increase POW granted by the GM. So a Priest's 'resting' POW gain averages about 2 per year (compared to an Initiate's 1).

[metcalph]

11 hours ago, David Scott said:

And it's meant to be. We know this has been done twice:

1279 Skyburn, took 2 years to prepare (+85% casting), duration 12 hours (Intensity 8), radius  80000m (Intensity 60, 81920m), range 80000m (Intensity 20), Damage was a lot.

1296 Moonburn, took 5 years to prepare (90% casting) ...

I don't think the Skyburn was an example of a Moonfire spell.  p164 of the Glorantha Sourcebook points out that the two magics were different.

[David Scott]

10 hours ago, metcalph said:

I don't think the Skyburn was an example of a Moonfire spell.  p164 of the Glorantha Sourcebook points out that the two magics were different.

I think they are related, but different forms ( hence the names). The spell itself has a moon and a sky component. The text

Quote

The different forms of Lunar magic required five years to complete the spell, and allowed the defenders to prepare some countermagics as well, which dampened the final effect in comparison to the original Skyburn.

infers for me that that it was based on the skyburn, but manipulated with lunar magics. There is, however very likely a spell called skyfire, missing the moon rune, and that moonfire is an example of creating a new spell. All of this is conjecture I know.

[David Scott]

17 hours ago, womble said:

Once you're a Priest, if you're in one of the Big Cults ...

But none of this applies if you are a sorcerer with no rune or spirit magic. There are no holy days.

[PhilHibbs]

15 minutes ago, David Scott said:

But none of this applies if you are a sorcerer with no rune or spirit magic. There are no holy days.

Lunar sorcerers don't worship and observe holy days?

[womble]

Or Lhankor Mhy? Or has the context become specifically Godless Meldeks?  Rune Magic doesn't interfere with Free INT and you don't need any Sprit Magic to become a Priest. Sure, Atheist Sorcerors don't get POW gains from Worshipping on Holy Days, but the godless heathens probably have plenty of targets for Domination to get a POW gain roll from 'at will'.

 

[David Scott]

@PhilHibbs & @womble, I’m specifically talking about those that aren’t part of cults. The sorcerer in my game although from the Lunar empire, chose not be an initiate of a cult. He didn’t hold with “that god stuff”. “The Shadow Path needs no gods, only a willingness to send those who’s time it is to their fate”

[womble]

1 hour ago, David Scott said:

@PhilHibbs & @womble, I’m specifically talking about those that aren’t part of cults. The sorcerer in my game although from the Lunar empire, chose not be an initiate of a cult. He didn’t hold with “that god stuff”. “The Shadow Path needs no gods, only a willingness to send those who’s time it is to their fate”

Sounds pretty much like the second half of my post. Only he'd be using Tap, prolly. And twirling those mustaches

 

[David Scott]

2 hours ago, womble said:

Sounds pretty much like the second half of my post. Only he'd be using Tap, prolly. And twirling those mustaches

No Tapping on the shadow path...

[Joerg]

The Malkioni have a weekly "Worship Invisible God" service run by wizards. I suppose that works just like with priests wrt POW gain rolls - the officiating person handles a lot of magic, and that may increase their personal POW.

[Zozotroll]

Why does this sound to me like Scientologists?