Number of Spells

[Klaus]

In your campaigns, how many spells do Sorcerers usually have racked? Merlin says three is average: one attack, one defense and one escape, but Merlin has a lot of other powers to draw on.

[scottishstorm]

My experience is whenever it says "named and numbered", in the case of an item capable of racking spells, for instance), it is almost always 10-12.  Players want to feel they are getting the best "bang for their buck" and some players can come up with very creative ways to somehow justify all the busy work for their character or "justify" the time time maintaining spells.

[jibbajibba]

One of the most cunning Players I GM'd had a deck of cards each card had a spell hung in it and made permanent he drew the card and the spell triggered when the card was torn. As an item it was cheap and very effective. Personally I think it depends on the character. Hanging spells and maintaining them is time consuming and a chore so a conciencious chanracter will do that 2 hours a day on spell maintenance. Other characters just don't bother and so only set stuff up when they are ready for trouble in which case they usually go fully loaded.

[scottishstorm]

Nice one, jibbajibba!  Do you you remember the item stats?   It seems that a full deck would be worth more than "able to rack named and numbered spells" (2).  Then again, individual cards could be lost or damaged perhaps more readily than, say, a sword.  So I could see some form of "price discount" on a single deck of spell cards.

Hmm.  Considering 52 cards in a deck.
  * Able to rack named and numbered spells (2)
  * Psychic sensitive - the spell you want is always 'on top' or ready to be instinctively picked from the deck (1)
  * Named and numbered X2
   6 points seems appropriate

[scottishstorm]

...made permanent he drew the card and the spell triggered when the card was torn.

Hmm.  That changes things and circumvents the use of linchpins (alternatively, without linchpins, it makes the item far more limited).  How did you handle this as a GM of target, magic of shadow, location, area of effect, etc. were not needed as linchpins?

[jibbajibba]

Hmm.  That changes things and circumvents the use of linchpins (alternatively, without linchpins, it makes the item far more limited).  How did you handle this as a GM of target, magic of shadow, location, area of effect, etc. were not needed as linchpins?

Well it was rack a single spell (each card is a spell)  - 1
Psychically senisitve (the spell was self healign in effect it coudl keep itself hung)  - 1
Horde quantity x3

so 6 points

And yes the lynchpins were set so he had a range of cards for Amber, Chaos his home shadow.
The way we ran it he gave me a list of his spells and when he needed a spell card we determined in game if that combination woudl be available (logic +stuff). He also had ad pattern and conjuration so some of the spells were pretty complex. Like a spell to conjure a suit of Armour imbued with Pattern protection.

So the deck was both hugely powerful but very limited. Move to a new shadow and useless and he could get a suit of pattern enchanted armour but he was standing next to it rather than in it so .. not a rapid response. He could summon a pattern enhanced sword but obviously he had spent all his points on powers so his warfare was rubbish

I could see some one expanding the idea into a Construct though give it a route to power sources in shadow make it able to rack and use spells imbue with pattern so it can detect the shadow environment then it could generate a spell card that would work in any shadow as it would parse in the lynchpins etc
Of course then it would cost an additional 40 or 50 points and at the end of the day its still only casting spells

[Trevelyan]

In your campaigns, how many spells do Sorcerers usually have racked? Merlin says three is average: one attack, one defense and one escape, but Merlin has a lot of other powers to draw on.

IIRC, Merlin suggests that three is the minimum that a decent sorcerer should keep hanging, which makes sense given that this selection gives them an option in most situations.

I find that the number of spells hanging depends on a wide variety of other factors which can include the relative strength of sorcery, the time it takes to cast spells (I don't use the over inflated times in ADRPG) and the time needed to maintain them. It can also depend somewhat on the creativity of the players as more inventive players will often devise more interesting spells which they then want to have available.

In practice, most dedicated sorcerer PCs seem to have upwards of a dozen spells hanging which includes a mix of offensive, defensive, utility and transport spells. Of that lot, the offensive spells are almost always the most creative.

[RPGPundit]

Usually, boringly, too many.
Occasionally, interestingly, not enough.

RPGPundit

[finarvyn]

One of the most cunning Players I GM'd had a deck of cards each card had a spell hung in it and made permanent he drew the card and the spell triggered when the card was torn. As an item it was cheap and very effective.

First of all, let me agree that the player was clever and I would probably reward him for this. However, a couple of "devil's advocate" type thoughts come to mind.

1. The phrase "made permanent" makes me nervous. With 52 spells in the pack, I could see that a character would have to spend most of the day trying to make sure the spell didn't deteriorate. Imagine trying to cast a spell which is a week old, only to find that it wouldn't fire off as desired. As a GM I might have a lot of fun with this one.

2. Suppose I allow #1 to fly. What about the "spell triggered when the card was torn" part of this? I assume by your statement that the card is destroyed when the spell fires, so that means that the item has a limited number of uses. What do you do when the character uses up all 52 cards? (I can see where the player would want his six points back, but that's not entirely fair....)

[jibbajibba]

First of all, let me agree that the player was clever and I would probably reward him for this. However, a couple of "devil's advocate" type thoughts come to mind.

1. The phrase "made permanent" makes me nervous. With 52 spells in the pack, I could see that a character would have to spend most of the day trying to make sure the spell didn't deteriorate. Imagine trying to cast a spell which is a week old, only to find that it wouldn't fire off as desired. As a GM I might have a lot of fun with this one.

2. Suppose I allow #1 to fly. What about the "spell triggered when the card was torn" part of this? I assume by your statement that the card is destroyed when the spell fires, so that means that the item has a limited number of uses. What do you do when the character uses up all 52 cards? (I can see where the player would want his six points back, but that's not entirely fair....)

As noted in the cost the pyshci sensitivity of each card enabled it to be 'self-healing' so it coudl maintain itslef. I saw no issue with this as its pretty similar to a spikard.
Yes there were a limited number of cards (78 not 52 as we are using tarot decks). He used 8 or 9 in play. When a card was gone it was gone. No points returned.

We discussed, although he never used a meta-spell to maintain the deck. So a spell you cast that you then hung the speall with that created a new card.
Again for playability and maintenance the idea was that the actual new spell card cast was not defined precisely. The process to create a new card took about 2 hours in Amber (I tied conjuration times to amber timeline to remove the breaker of a conjurer heading out to shadow and comeing back with uber items).

[gabriel_ss4u]

Hmm.  That changes things and circumvents the use of linchpins (alternatively, without linchpins, it makes the item far more limited).  How did you handle this as a GM of target, magic of shadow, location, area of effect, etc. were not needed as linchpins?

Great building on the deck artifact, but I went with the horde quantity for 52 cards also, and by the by, why not 101 in that Horde? *wink*

I'd think Psychically Sensitive could also activate the lynch pins if they are sensitive to the target as perceived by the Spellcaster/Trump sorcerer and the environment/place that he/she is aware of. (if the GM is nice )

Or you can build a power that does it...

That's the beauty of Zelazny's Amberverse... Anything's possible.


Thanks again Roger & Erick

[gabriel_ss4u]

One of the most cunning Players I GM'd had a deck of cards each card had a spell hung in it and made permanent he drew the card and the spell triggered when the card was torn. As an item it was cheap and very effective. Personally I think it depends on the character. Hanging spells and maintaining them is time consuming and a chore so a conciencious chanracter will do that 2 hours a day on spell maintenance. Other characters just don't bother and so only set stuff up when they are ready for trouble in which case they usually go fully loaded.

I had an NPC that was like Gambit with his Trumps.
A Chaos Lord from Chanicut
I have always thought of Marvel's 'Gambit' of the X-men like that since i read the Merlin Books.

[gabriel_ss4u]

IIRC, Merlin suggests that three is the minimum that a decent sorcerer should keep hanging, which makes sense given that this selection gives them an option in most situations.

yeah, but he suuuurrre luvd that Spikard!