Making sure I know how Thaumaturgy math works

[Richard_Chilton]

Just to make sure I know Thaumaturgy works, number wise, I thought I'd post an example here and see what others say.  Of course since every spell should have a story I've started the example with why the spell is being cast then listed several variants that the caster might have picked.

Example: Stan is a college basketball player - one of the stars of the team.  As such he's living the high life as local Romeo, loving and leaving girl after girl.  He's not always up front with "this is a temporary thing and I'll be looking for a new girl soon" and often says that four letter word beginning with L, the one that rhymes with dove, so he's leaving a string of broken hearts behind him.  One of those hearts belongs to Cathy, who happens to be Eric the Towel Boy's kid sister.  Needless to say Eric is not happy.

Eric also happens to be a sorcerer with thaumaturgy, coming at from a voodoo like tradition.  At first Eric wants to end Stan's life, but remembering the first law of magic (and wanting to make it hurt more) Eric decides to screw with Stan on the court.  He didn't want there to be a medical reason for Stan's poor performance so he decides on non-permanent means to do this.  After a practice he keeps track of which towel Stan used, collects some hairs from it, and he's in business.

The prep work for the spell happens over a couple of days, giving him more than enough time to use skills to generate aspects to tag, so we can skip over that.  Then, right after the Big Game starts, Eric locks himself in the towel room and starts to cast.  Since he's fine with the spell going off anytime in the first five to ten minutes of play there's no need for rolls - with his symbolic ties to Stan (the hair) Eric will eventually complete the spell.

Stan has Athletics at Great but only Fair Endurance (he gets swapped out when he starts to tire and swapped back in when he's rested) giving him a Physical track of 3.  The best he can roll on an Endurance roll is a 6.  Eric has had plenty of time to watch Stan play and knows this.

Eric had many options for his "get back at Stan" spell and decided which to use before the prep phase started.  Here are some possible spells.

1) an aspect
Eric decides to twist the doll's arm slightly, a maneuver that gives Stan aspect of "Aim's a bit off".  He needs
6 to overcome the best Endurance roll that Stan can make
2 for duration so it lasts roughly an hour as opposed to a 15 minute scene.
For a total of 8

2) a mild consequence
Eric decides to push in the doll's chest to give Stan the mild consequence "Winded".  He needs
6 to overcome the best Endurance roll that Stan can make
3 to fill Stan's stress track
2 for a mild consequence
For a total of 11

3) a moderate consequence
Let's make them both PCs as opposed to NPCs.  Eric's player decides that he doesn't want to screw around with scenes.  He thinks that Stan's player might convince the GM that being benched is "a recovery scene" and then heading to the locker room during the break could be another scene, so rather than risk that he goes for a moderate consequence that will last for at least for the rest of the session for that Stan's player can't weasel out.  Eric pushes the doll's chest harder to give the moderate consequence of "bruised ribs" - something that the team doctor can find but it will bench Stan for a while.
6 to overcome the best Endurance roll that Stan can make
3 to fill Stan's stress track
4 for a moderate consequence
For a total of 13

If Eric's player decided to risk the 1 in 81 odds of Stan's player getting a +4 he could drop the complexity by one.  Then, should Stan get lucky with the dice Eric's fails to work.  He would have to prepare the spell again before he could cast it, which means he would be rushing things to get it off during the game (maybe taking stress or consequences to prepare it again).

If Eric's player knows that Stan's player has a bunch of FATE chips he could set the difficulty higher before he starts preparing it.  He knows that one of Stan's aspects is "Always in the Game" which could be tagged for a +2 and Eric can spend a FATE chip for another +2 - adding for to all the difficulties, making them 12, 15, and 17 to ensure that the spell works.

If Eric somehow blows his first spell he could quickly refashion his doll (prepare the spell again) with a "maybe I'll get lucky" version of the "give aspect" spell - using 3 to overcome Stan's Endurance (hoping that Stan rolls a 0 or less) and skipping the duration.  With a total difficulty of 3 Eric can prepare and cast this spell time after time (until he runs out Stan's of body hair), giving Stan the aspect of "Aim's a bit off" as often as Eric needs to.

Or he could decide to punish Stan another way
4) Eric prepares his doll for the next time Stan is on a date, then pushes the doll's crotch to give Stan the mild consequence of "Can't Get It Up" and hopefully ruining Stan's rep as a great lover.
6 to overcome the best Endurance roll that Stan can make
3 to fill Stan's stress track
3 to account for a Good threshold
2 for a mild consequence
For a total of 14

Have I got all that right?

Now for the first question - does Eric have to assign the steps before the rolls? This is why that last example is there: say when that spell is cast Eric rolls a -1, making his Endurance roll a total of 1, while he happens to be behind a Great threshold (+4).  Eric would have still generated a total of 16 shifts when all he needs is a total of 12, but while he has 5 more than he needs to overcome Stan's Endurance he didn't assign enough for the Threshold.  It seems clear to me that since 16 > 12 the spell goes off - but I'd like to hear others opinions.

A second question:
Could Eric have a prepared a "a get back at Stan" at difficulty 8 (the difficulty of the aspect spell) and when Stan rolled that -1 decided to boost the harm to a mild consequence (1 for the defense, 3 to overcome his stress, 2 for the mild consequence = 7)? My gut says no, that a spell has to be designed for one thing and Eric prepared and cast a maneuver spell.

And a variant of the second question:
If Eric was casting a "inflect mild consequence spell", going for Winded, and got lucky when Stan rolled that -1, could he boost the consequence to moderate? Unlike the "aspect to a consequence" both are conflict spells - but again my gut tells me no, he designed the spell to do one thing and that's what it does.  Then again, I like the idea that he could take advantage of Stan's bad luck.

Again, just making sure that I've grasped how the numbers work here.  Any feedback is welcome.

Richard

[Belial666]

1) You can't quickly "prepare the spell again" if the first preparation took several days.
2) Yes, the spell has to do a specific thing before you start preparing it - you can't change it on the fly unless you use the rules for redirecting energy.
3) If you are aiming for a specific effect, you can't boost it on the fly. If however you make an exhaustion spell that is just a straight physical attack, if the opponent rolls badly you get more physical stress - and thus more consequences.


Note however that you are talking about a preparation over a couple of days. Say you start with a +4 Lore and you want to spend three evenings on that spell before you cast. That is a base power of 4. Plus +1 bonus per evening (scene) of preparation makes +3. Plus +2 from knowing the character's name, tagging that. Plus you put one mild consequence into the spell per evening before you rest it off during the night makes another +6. Plus a fate point makes +2. Take a final mild consequence and one more scene of preparation the morning before you start casting and you get a total of 20, before you even start on declarations.


That's a big enough spell to try for a semi-permanent "disruption". A 6 to apply 2 aspects, a 6 to overcome his best endurance roll and 8 more shifts to boost duration from one scene to one month. If you could spend not only an afternoon but an entire day before the big game (4 scenes or so) you could curse him for several years. Add "bad luck" and "never get 'lucky' " aspects to him.

[crusher_bob]

I'd assume that your ritual can have a lesser effect than what you wanted, but not a greater one.  If I'm trying to break you legs with thaumaturgy (a severe consequence), but I didn't account for the beefed up threshold you're hiding behind (or something) then I assume that the spll can still inflict lesser but still leg related consequences.

[Richard_Chilton]

1) You can't quickly "prepare the spell again" if the first preparation took several days.

I put in the 'couple of days' thing to avoid writing out what he was tagging - and assumed that if he had to he could handle the preparation step by rushing things, taking consequences, etc.

I was basically thinking of Proven Guilty, where Harry is clearly taking unlimited time to do some (meditate etc) and just before he casts the spell Molly calls for bail money.  Later he goes to cast the same spell, only time matters so he tags aspects (probably spending FATE points on some of them) and probably ends up with a mild consequence.

2) Yes, the spell has to do a specific thing before you start preparing it - you can't change it on the fly unless you use the rules for redirecting energy.

Thought so.

3) If you are aiming for a specific effect, you can't boost it on the fly. If however you make an exhaustion spell that is just a straight physical attack, if the opponent rolls badly you get more physical stress - and thus more consequences.

Okay.

Note however that you are talking about a preparation over a couple of days. Say you start with a +4 Lore and you want to spend three evenings on that spell before you cast. That is a base power of 4. Plus +1 bonus per evening (scene) of preparation makes +3. Plus +2 from knowing the character's name, tagging that. Plus you put one mild consequence into the spell per evening before you rest it off during the night makes another +6. Plus a fate point makes +2. Take a final mild consequence and one more scene of preparation the morning before you start casting and you get a total of 20, before you even start on declarations.

That's why I didn't bother with the math of the preparation - given enough time and resources you should always be able to prepare a spell.  Of course during game play you rarely have that luxury.

That's a big enough spell to try for a semi-permanent "disruption". A 6 to apply 2 aspects, a 6 to overcome his best endurance roll and 8 more shifts to boost duration from one scene to one month. If you could spend not only an afternoon but an entire day before the big game (4 scenes or so) you could curse him for several years. Add "bad luck" and "never get 'lucky' " aspects to him.

Now that is nasty.

And thanks for the reply - again, just wanted to make sure I had a handle on things.

Richard