[Amber] Spell Decay

[noman]

Hi.

Silly Amber Question: Where do the rulebooks talk about spells decaying?

I know the Amber rulebook mentions it in the section on Logrus Spell Storage.  But only dealing with spells stored in the Logrus.  I've seen numerous references to spells decaying when stored in another manner (such as an artifact) on the Web, but I can't find this actually mentioned in the rulebooks outside of the Logrus entry.  I've gone through Amber and Shadow Knight repeatedly and not found anything about this.  Am I missing it somehow?  Am I wrong in assuming spells don't decay if stored in  a stable artifact or creature, and only decy if stored in the Logrus?

Thanks!

[Arref]

page 60

Spell-Hanging and House-Cleaning
A lot of elder Amberites have full knowledge and power of Sorcery. Most of them rarely use it. Spells have to be studied, pre-prepared, maintained, refreshed, and constantly studied. All in all, a lot of trouble. Frankly, it's just too much bother.

A careful, well-prepared sorcerer should have a dozen or so spells on hand at any given time. Which means spending about twenty hours a week on nit-picky maintenance. How would you feel about spending twenty hours on the same chores, week after week? How would you feel a year later? A century later?

More important, what kind of person would spend centuries on this kind of busy work?

[jibbajibba]

page 60

More important, what kind of person would spend centuries on this kind of busy work?

that would be any PC where spell maintenace comes down to "I spend 2 hours maintaining my enchantments before sleeping"

[Artifacts of Amber]

Speaking of Spell decay, How do most people handle it.

I run it as a function of what source/thing you hang them on. Logrus spells fall apart faster than Pattern based spells etc.

The converse is a Pattern hung spell does exactly what it was made to do with no real adjustment allowed on the fly where as Logrus can be tweaked as the lynchpins are inserted to be more effective.


Sorcery is one power I have more "rules" guidlines for so people have a better understanding of it. It is more structured / restricted then say my Pattern rules which pretty much come straight out of the rule books. Sorcery needed more "house" rules for me not to have to explain every time someone crafted a spell how exactly it works.

Just  my thoughts

[noman]

Thank you Arref.  I honestly don't know how I missed that.  Sure it has nothing to do with my never running Amber while sober.  

[Doughdee222]

This is one subject I disagree with in the basic rules. I understand that Erick Wujcik didn't like magic powers but felt he had to include something. So he wrote up Sorcery and Conjuration then purposefully gimped them. I would suggest ungimping them by removing some of the restrictions.
 
Spell decay: make it a week or two weeks. Or remove it entirely. My father could recite poems he memorized in High School forty years previously. He could speak French fluently, which he learned in High School, although he never needed to use it. This whole idea of constantly "memorizing" spells comes from D&D and even then seemed silly to me.

Personally, I'd prefer a system that uses mana (based on Endurance) as a limiting factor and perhaps uses a focus to cast the spell: a wand, a staff, a holy item, a trump, etc. Maybe "hanging" a spell means putting it into a focus but then can be cast any number of times until mana runs out.

The concern, of course, is that every campaign will become one of endless magic duels and arms races. So you have to balance it out, make sorcery and conjuration useful and worth buying sometimes but not all powerful. I suppose it's a delicate balance. Tie it closely to character concept. Not everyone wants to learn sorcery, just like not everyone wants to learn to pilot airplanes or motorboats. (I live in a coastal community, there are lots of boats and boat clubs here. But I have zero interest in boating. That's just part of my character.)

As it's written though, Sorcery is primarily an NPC power. Leave it for the evil mages and priests.

[Croaker]

Personally, I'd prefer a system that uses mana (based on Endurance) as a limiting factor and perhaps uses a focus to cast the spell: a wand, a staff, a holy item, a trump, etc. Maybe "hanging" a spell means putting it into a focus but then can be cast any number of times until mana runs out.

This, in a way, is backed by the books, with Mandor's Spheres being described as a sorcerous tool.

In my revised sorcery rules, at best, you only need words or gestures. But otherwise, you need total concentration and a focus item, the range going from something fairly common like a flame to a dragon's teeth, or a special item, like your "crown of sorcerous might".
And you can cast better spells if you downgrade your casting method. That is, a juvenile sorcerer needs his crown, period. An experimented one doesn't, but if he ties his spells to it, they're more potent.

[RPGPundit]

I would say all magic decays and must be maintained.  Magic hung on the logrus just decays faster because of the entropic nature of the Logrus.  But you would still have to maintain magic in items; the exception being if those items had their own intelligence (and thus could maintain the spells themselves), or if they were some artifact where there was some real power doing the maintaining for you.

RPGPundit

[RTrimmer]

If you ease the decay and/or the hanging time is it really a 15 point power any more? Particularly with the teleport/summon-across-Shadow feature?

[Doughdee222]

If you ease the decay and/or the hanging time is it really a 15 point power any more? Particularly with the teleport/summon-across-Shadow feature?

Perhaps not, but I'm okay with that.
As I said before I think Sorcery is nearly useless as it is currently written in the main rules (at least for PCs.) I have no problem with upping the cost to 25 or 30 just to remove some of the onerous time constraints and thus make it more flexible and useful.

I agree that Pattern, Logrus and Trump are the Big Powers that should be dominant. But as such they have their limitations too. There's much they don't cover and they too have their own time constraints. Sorcery should be the catch-all (or catch-alot) for the smaller, more nimble effects players could find useful. Think of Patten as a large truck: it's powerful, carries a heavy weight, is your main work tool. But Sorcery is a motorcycle: light, nimble, fast, it can dodge around obstacles and you can do tricks with it. Or at least it should be.

See, this is something I noticed in the rules that bothered me. Let's say a character is confronted by a half dozen opponents. The high warfare guy pulls out his axe, dances a while with them and soon chops them up. A high strength guy moves in closer and starts snapping limbs and busting ribs and also soon has them all down. A high endurance guy might take a little more time but also can easily defeat them. But a high psyche guy, what could he do? Oh I suppose he could touch or stare into the eyes of a couple goons and brain-smash them but as he's doing that the four others punch, club and skewer him. Like in many game systems, the mage-type character is screwed when confronted with multiple melee opponents.
But if the high psyche guy had some quick sorcery to rely on then he too could easily bypass the attackers. For example: oil spell! Three fall to the ground, the other three move to get around it. A couple of bolt spells and two of those are dead. The third gets to the PC but is touched and mind blasted. By now the three in the oil manage to stand. A flame spell and all three catch fire. A couple more bolt spells and one is left alive but injured and ready for questioning.

And that's just one easy example of smaller but quicker spells. More than Power Words, but less than the Big Powers. Is that worth 25 points to you?
(Try doing the simple example I described with Patten or Logrus. Doesn't really work well does it? At least not as those powers are generally described and imagined.)

[noman]

I'm actually okay with the sorcery system as written except for one thing.

Casting times, especially lynchpins, are waaaay to long.

If I understand the rules correctly...

If Prince Spellsplatter of Amber has a couple of spells hung, it takes him around five minutes per lynchpin to cast that hung spell - that's about five to fifteen minutes to cast a hung spell depending on the situation.  This is fine if there is no time pressure.  But it's useless for combat.  It could be useful in extended battles involving armies where the fighting could go on for days, but in small-unit engagements it's just too slow.

I've been trying to modify the sorcery rules while keeping as close as possible to what Wujick wrote.  The best idea I've come up with so far is...

Sorcery Casting Time:
* 30 minutes per microspell.
* 2 minutes per lynchpin.

I'm thinking I may need to reduce lynchpins to 1 minute, or drop them altogether and come up with something else.

As for point cost.  I wouldn't raise the cost of sorcery past 20.  It's a very versitle tool, but its got more drawbacks than any other power.

[RTrimmer]

Nope.
It takes all that time to hang the spell. Using the hung spell takes something like a quarter second per lynchpin -- four syllables or gesture equivalents per second.

[Panjumanju]

Nope.
It takes all that time to hang the spell. Using the hung spell takes something like a quarter second per lynchpin -- four syllables or gesture equivalents per second.

This has been a source of great confusion for me as well.
Do you have a page number to reference?

//Panjumanju

[noman]

This has been a source of great confusion for me as well.
Do you have a page number to reference?

//Panjumanju

I will second this request.

We've already established that I have major reading comprehension problems with the sorcery section.  That being said, I went through the sorcery rules line by line last night trying to find any reference to lynchpins being cast in just a few seconds.  I found none.

RT I appreciate your input here.  I hope you're right.  It'd sure as hell make things easier.

But I'd like some confirmation on this.

[RTrimmer]

Well... hell, you're right. The book is murky at best on this.

It's clear in the Merlin books that it works like I said to use a spell. Spells go off in seconds at most.

In the ADRPG book there's the Blood of Amber quote on pg 61 where Merle hangs a spell by saying it and leaving out the four lynchpins (key words) which he'll use to release it / complete it by saying them.

Then there's the paragraph beneath it, "Lynchpins take time. Each lynchpin adds time to the Base Casting Time. Lynchpins also add time to the unleashing of a spell."

Not a word about how much time.


I figure that if you can use one-syllable words for the lynchpins it comes out to about 1/4 second each. Longer words required: more time.