Re: Re: Specialists; sorcery

From: David Cake <dave_at_...>
Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2001 02:43:36 +0800

>
>>Better range and duration are
> >not a significant advantage (unlike improvisation).

        Emphatically agreed.

>One could make sorcery spells more potent by introducing
>reasoning that they also have an "intensify" ability. This
>could be handled by the sorcerer using his grimoire rating
>to add edges or augments to his spells within that grimoire.

	An interesting suggestion - but I have two issues with it.
	One is that it only partly reverses the issue. Effectively, 
even if the augment always succeeded, it would only be worth a fraction of the disparity. Effectively, augment improves at one fifth the ability, so the sorcerer would be gaining only a little more, hardly enough to compensate for the increased cost.

        Eg for 50 HP, the sorcerer would now be gaining 12 points (his 50 gains him 10, which also allows him to increase the amount he can reasonably augment by +2), while the theist has got 16, nearly 17. And this is ignoring the risk of failure, which reduces the effectiveness of augmentation by quite a few points.

        The second is that it really seems a fairly roundabout way of achieving a simple aim. We would be giving the sorcerer the ability to get a higher ability value, by using an action, and a cumbersome game mechanic, and taking a significant risk of failure - why not just give them a higher ability value? It appears to achieve much the same aim and is easier. The sorcerer would have the option of edges, which isn't that important in the long run, though.

        Augments are an interesting, and important, game mechanic - but where we can avoid making them relatively routine, we should. Once they become routine, they become an additional dice roll with little narrative purpose.

	Cheers
		David

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