From: | Razor Girl <sprawlg@*******.COM> |
---|---|
Subject: | Sorcery and Spellcasting (long) |
Date: | Fri, 11 Sep 1998 19:44:39 PDT |
on spellcasting has me confused a bit. So if people could look at the
following examples and questions, and tell me if I understand things
properly, I'd appreciate it.
Take an example of spellcasting in combat. For our examples we will use
a Mage with a sorcery of 6, spell pool of 6, Willpower of 6, magic of 6.
(She may be a munch, but this is an example.) She is in combat with four
cops at a retirement party. Her team has just kidnapped a Knight Errant
Police chief who wants to defect to Lone Star. The first thing she does
in combat, after determining initiative; is identify to who, what and
if she is going to offer spell defence. She can only cover 6 people,
herself included. Now, here is where things begin to waver. Does she
allocate the spell defence dice now, or when the situation comes up? Any
of the dice she allocates are not allowed to be used for any other
sorcery actions, is that right? She can allocate any amount of sorcery
dice up to her magic rating. And she can allocate any amount of spell
pool dice up to her contributed sorcery dice.
She covers herself, three runners, the mission's extraction target and
their getaway van. She can see all of the things she allocated defece
dice for clearly. She puts 2 of her six sorcery dice and 1 of her spell
pool dice into a spell defence "fund". (it isn't a pool so it doesn't
refresh and it can vary depending on the owners wishes) This means that
she has 4 sorcery dice to cast spells with and 5 spell pool dice to
adjust things with.
Now when it comes to her first action of the turn (she rolls an 11 for
initative), she decides to cast a Force 5 Medium Powerball at the
pursuing police officers. She potentially has 4 Sorcery dice and 5 pool
dice, with which to cast this spell. She has also noticed that one of
the cops is out side of the area of the spells effect, by one meter. So
she expands it by 1 meter by reserving a Sorcery die. Is this die
considered spent for the remainder of the turn? She then casts the spell
throwing in all the dice she can. That equals 3 sorcery dice and 3 pool
dice, correct? So with six dice she casts the spell against the police.
She rolls the dice and gets a 2,3,3,5,5 and a 11.
The police officers, four of them, now make a spell resistance test.
Their combat mage buddy is still inside and not involved for this combat
turn. There are two humans with a body of 3, one is a dwarf with a 5,
and an ork with a 6. (They are really out of shape, but bare with me for
purposes of example ;-).) She has five successes against the two humans,
3 against the dwarf and one against the ork. All the police roll body
tests against target number 5, the force of the powerball. For the sake
of example lets say they one of the humans gets one body success and the
other three cops get 2 successes each. The first human takes deadly
damage (M dam +5 sorcery successes -1 resistance success = net +4 or
stage up two damage levels), the other human takes serious damage (M dam
+5 sorcery success -2 resistance success = net +3 or stage up one damage
level), the dwarf takes medium damage (M dam +3 sorcery successes -2
resistance successes = net +1 or damage level stays at medium) and the
ork takes no damage (M dam +1 success -2 resistance success = net -1 or
no spell effect). Is that all correct?
The mage now has to resist drain for the spell. She cast a Force 5
Medium Powerball. This means she resists 3M stun drain (Force 5 divided
by 2 and +1 for power, medium damage because it was a medium damage
spell and stun because force 5 is less than her Magic stat of 6). She
rolls her willpower of 6 and has two remaining spell pool dice to roll
if she chooses to. (6 spell pool dice less 1 in spell defence, 3 in
augmenting the spell success test, and two for drain.) She uses one
spell dice, rolls seven dice versus target number 3 and rolls 4
successes, staging the drain to nothing. She is left with one spell pool
dice.
Now it comes to her second action. What is the situation now? Is it she
cannot cast any spells since she has tied up all her sorcery dice in the
last initative pass and has only one spell pool die? Or does her full
sorcery become available again? Can she reset the spell defense dice to
get at those two sorcery dice? Or because the spell defence has the
option to break at the beginning of her action she has 6 sorcery dice
and 2 pool left to do stuff? Can she readjust her spell defence?
Lots of question, eh? Is sorcery like the pistol skill where you can
always use it at it's base level every time you test with it? Does it
refresh with every initative pass or does it diminish with use and not
recharge till the next combat turn begins?
It seems that the best way to play a magic user is to have a pile of
dice in front of you an physically move them around to track what is
your character's current magical options.
Thanks for reading this. Please insert comments, corrections or answers
at the point in the text you are referring to.
Ciao
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