Regarding raising difficulties

[Papa Gruff]

Hello guys. Today I'd like to ask you about your opinion regarding raising difficulty on skill tests in general and on evocations as a special focus. It is something I have been thinking about lately, because it is something that comes up in the novels on a regular basis. Raising difficulty on skill tests is pretty well described in YW. But is it transferable to discipline rolls for evocation actions?

On several occasions Harry states that some kinds of magic are more difficult and taxing then others. Tiny Changes Spoiler ahead:

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Harry for example states in changes that earth magic is pretty difficult and not really his forte and that he basically can do only this one digging spell (when he hides his contraband in Leas garden).

Apparently moving earth still needs the amount of energy it would if you'd be digging with a shovel.

In my opinion this does not translate to the rules very well. In game terms what Harry did is a simple maneuver on the scene. Thats just a good effort and not nearly as difficult to pull of as Harry makes it sound. You can argue that Jim did make him say this for dramatic effect and that it shouldn't translate into the game, but then again isn't dramatic effect a large part of the game?

I bet you can come up with several more occasions where Harry claims that some sort of magic is more difficult then an other. When he says it he always make it sound like a general statement and not something that is only true for him...

I'm not inclined to changing anything in the rules. All I want to know is if somebody else is bothered by this and if there are ways other GM are handling the problem.

[Haru]

The books are written from his point of view, so we do not have a lot of different viewpoints. I always understood those statements as only being true for him and his understanding of magic.
Morgan for example would probably disagree, as he does quite well with earth magic, as far as we know.

I think it mostly depends on the wizard itself. If the character resembles one element better than another, the odds are good, that he is going to be better with that element than the opposite. Harry is the Wind/Fire guy, as stated in YW: "not so subtle, yet quick to anger". Morgan on the other hand is always described as rock solid, never wavering, which fits earth pretty well.
Changes spoiler:

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Remember Lea's comment about Harry being able to use opposite elements with such ease.

I think that this is reflected in the evocation rules pretty good. You start out with 3 of 5 elements, specialising in them before you can even think about casting anything from the other elements. Getting the other elements is in fact quite expensive, and you are never going to be great in all of them.
Maybe Harry's "earth evocations" aren't even earth evocations, but spirit evocations using brute force to create the effect he wants. That would explain, why he thinks that they are hard to do, because he has to use way more energy to create the same effect than someone with a specialisation in earth evocations would have to.

Although I had a problem creating a character. The player wanted to specialise in earth evocations, and he wanted to be able to put up walls if he was followed or create a hole in the wall to get through. I told him, those would have to be maneuvers which he could then tag. He was not satisfied with this, because he said he should be able to cut of anyone following him completely. Same with blocks, he said if he raised a wall between himself and his attacker, the attacker should not even be able to hit him. Well, he is a bit of a powergamer, borderline munchkin, so that might have been the main problem.

[TheMouse]

Well, there's raising difficulties, and there's raising difficulties.

Things being harder in FATE can come from four general sources:

1. Your bonuses for that thing are lower than for other things,
2. One (or more) of your Aspects is getting in the way,
3. The actual difficulty of the roll is higher,
4. Someone is resisting you.

For this instance, I think that 1 and 2 pretty well cover your bases. If you're used to getting, say, +8 at something and you're only getting +4 on something else, the thing to which you're applying the +4 would seem a lot harder. Likewise, one of your Aspects getting in the way of a particular application of Evocation would seem within the context of the narrative to be the thing being harder for you.

You can certainly resort to 3. I personally would not do so in this instance, because I believe that 1 and 2 are sufficient to reflect something being more difficult for a particular character. I don't think that earth magic is simply more difficult across the board, just that Harry isn't particularly good at it and thus represents it as being more difficult; it is after all more difficult for him, and the books are from his perspective.

My reasoning on this is that it would be less fun for the player of an earth wizard if all his spells were simply harder to cast when accomplishing the same thing.

[Kordeth]

Yeah, Earth Magic isn't intrinsically harder than any other type of magic, Harry just hasn't invested a bunch of Refinements and focus item slots into getting his bonus up. It's harder for him because his bonus is lower than it is for fire or spirit magic, and given Harry's general characterization of "throw lots of power at the problem till it works," his "player" chooses to describe that as him trying to brute-force the spell energy.

[Becq]

Agree with the above.  Difficulty should be set based on the effect produced, not the element used to produce it, unless it's a real stretch to use the element to create the effect.  For example, throwing a bolt of fire at someone (6 shift attack) should have the same difficulty as launching a rock at someone (6 shift attack).  On the other hand, you should not allow someone to light someone on fire using an earth-based maneuver, no matter how many shifts they throw at it.

As to your example of digging a hole, well, I guess I'd probably say that digging a hole instantly would carry the same difficulty as digging a hole with a shovel (0), but add 8 shifts to move the timescale from "a few hours" to "instant" on the time chart.  Of course, no shovel is necessary for the magical method, but some stress might be required.  In Harry's case, this would be 4 stress, because Harry has no specializations or foci to help him boost his earth magic, whereas Morgan would only need to spend 1-2 (2 per the stats on OW, but I notice he has no listed foci and unspent focus slots).  Harry'd also have just a bit more trouble on the control roll part, too.

The above deals only with the "internal" side of the equation.  There might also be external factors that affect the difficulty of the spell, too.  These are largely handled by aspects, either on the spellcaster or his target, or on the scene.  In some cases, you might justify a GM "Declaration" of an aspect that hadn't previously been specified, but you should probably be careful with this.  For example, if a wizard is in the desert during the peak of summer, and wants to use water magic, he's probably going to be affected by "Not even a drop of humidity in the air" and "No moisture in the ground, either" even if you didn't think to point that out when framing the scene.  After all, where's the water for his spell coming from?

[Lanir]

I just want to point out a different example. In the graphic novel a Hecatean Hag is encountered. One statement made is that it's a better spellcaster than Harry is. This is a pretty serious thing to say if you think about it. The way the system reflects this, if you look that creature up in Our World is through Refinements. Free power, free control. This is intended to make a pretty big deal and kind of another side of the whole thing being discussed with Harry and the earth magic. He'd basically only have basic, unrefined earth magic at that point while his other magic would have extra control and/or power via refinements. And that accounts for your difficulties being different. Expert caster in fire and spirit, apprentice newbie in earth.

[Dumbledresden]

The above deals only with the "internal" side of the equation.  There might also be external factors that affect the difficulty of the spell, too.  These are largely handled by aspects, either on the spellcaster or his target, or on the scene.  In some cases, you might justify a GM "Declaration" of an aspect that hadn't previously been specified, but you should probably be careful with this.  For example, if a wizard is in the desert during the peak of summer, and wants to use water magic, he's probably going to be affected by "Not even a drop of humidity in the air" and "No moisture in the ground, either" even if you didn't think to point that out when framing the scene.  After all, where's the water for his spell coming from?

I like that idea, but on the other hand, where does all that fire that Harry is slinging around come from? He doesn't use existing flames to manipulate them, he creates them from nowhere (as far as i can see..)
I would say you can use such aspects for typical compels, giving a water caster some problems to use his water magic, but its no reason to raise the basic difficulty of a spell.

[mostlyawake]

Harry's statement regarding Earth Magic isn't actually a claim that HE finds it harder, but that the magic is harder in general.  I'd love the exact quote, to see if he really is talking about it through his experience, or if he mentions it being less used by other wizards due to the difficulty.  

If it's his own view - "It's harder because you have to do X instead of Y" can still be his own view, as he isn't thinking about his own trained powers in Y" - that's pretty easy to cover with the refinement differences.  If he's talking about others, well, I still don't think that's a good enough reason to make it more of a bitch for anyone to take Earth over anything else... there isn't a real mechanical benefit  to earth, so why penalize it?

As for the player who wanted to be able to shut off people from him: if he raised a wall it should be treated just like increasing a border, which I am pretty sure there's a spell strength for (isn't it just a block, really?).  Logically, yes, if he threw up a wall that's block 4 and you stated that this means it's a solid wall 10 feet high, then he has cut off line of sight and the bad guy shouldn't be able to fling a spell at him or fire a gun until he is back in sight.  So the bad guy jumps on a garbage can and now he can see you. Or he blasts through the wall with magic (overcoming the block strength with a spell) or gets you by targeting the entire zone that the wall is connected to on your side (hey, he can see some part of that zone; above your head is legit.) The werewolf just scales it.

Plus, that wall you throw up is evocation, so it literally justs lasts one action unless you pump some duration into it.  I mean, if he rips up the cobblestones and stacks them in a wall, they may not topple instantly but they will be super easy to kick down once the magic fades (no mortar).  If he summons raw earth to put there "I make a big stone", then his big stone crumbles into dust pretty easy if hit. There's no reason earth magic SHOULD get a permanent benefit (like permanent walls) that another element wouldn't get. You could be generous and leave an aspect up over the area, that can be tagged as needed and give a potential boost to the block strength there.

Hrm.. compare that to fire... you could make a block 10 wall of fire. A round later, the wall just poof, dies out, but now the ground and walls around it may have caught fire.  You can give it the famous "on fire" aspect and can that be tagged to make passing it harder.

Really, you're being generous, because his block action isn't really a declaration so he's not really creating an aspect, and he could be charged an extra 4 shifts to have a sticky aspect hang around.  But I kinda see treating the damage/long term effect as an aspect as working pretty well.


Anyways, he can block of pursuit or block line of vision.  It's just very short duration, and all he's doing is forcing the opponent to take some other action to get to him.  Seems legit.  The only issue I see is just making sure he knows that he isn't creating a permanent object, because that's not what evocation - even earth evocation - does.
 

[Wyrdrune]

I like that idea, but on the other hand, where does all that fire that Harry is slinging around come from? He doesn't use existing flames to manipulate them, he creates them from nowhere (as far as i can see..)

i would say, that the spell pulls ectoplasm from the nevernever and the spell construct turns it to fire...

[Dumbledresden]

i would say, that the spell pulls ectoplasm from the nevernever and the spell construct turns it to fire...

So where is the difference between fire and water?

[Wordmaker]

For Harry, because of his affinity with fire magic, it's a lot easier to super-heat the air or draw heat from enough sources that even the dust particles in the air combust.

Similarly, Ramirez has such skill with water magic that he can manipulate the moisture in the air for his shield or green disintegrator spell.

Earth magic would, in setting-terms, seem much harder to both these wizards because stuff is made from earth. So unless you can tap into the Nevernever and draw some ectoplasm to create a temporary wall, you have to take that solid mass from somewhere.

Now, a really skilled Earth Evocator, say like Morgan, might be able to pull dust and dirt from the air to create that wall, especially in a city with bad pollution. It wouldn't be a pretty wall, but it'd hold up for long enough to be useful. And it'd have the added benefit of cleaning the air in the surrounding area!

[Lanir]

You guys are overthinking the earth effects and handwaiving the other elements here. What you're basically saying is that earth is heavier so it takes more energy to move. That isn't necessarily the case. Stopping a bullet cold takes an awful lot of energy but Harry does that with a spirit based shield. Creating a blast of fire hot enough to cause serious burns on contact also sounds pretty energy intensive. If you pinned down enough variables you could turn them all into physics equations but that sounds too much like work to me. And your values for a lot of the variables would be pure guesswork.

Something else to keep in mind is how few earth spells Harry really casts. I can only think of one and two things about that make it a horribly bad comparison. First, it used an external power supply and secondly it was the biggest spell he casts in any of the books.

[Becq]

It was also Thaumaturgy, if I recall correctly, not Evocation.  Thus the size.