A bit frustrated

[BumblingBear]

So here's where I disagree...and yet don't know how to do it mechanically.  Do you HAVE to affect your target?  Can you make yourself more alluring/charismatic/convincing.

Let's say you want to lift a car.  You use a power 9 telekenisis/ or more likely biomancy spell to give yourself the effective Might of 9 which enables you to lift the car.  As stated in YS, there may be consequences to the person lifting the car...just because your strong enough, it doesn't mean your bones can handle it.

For social combat, could you give yourself the equivalent of a 9 rapport.  It spell doesn't act as an attack, it just boosts your skill making you better in social combat. What kind of consequences would this cause. My only issue with this is that a wizard can be better than anyone at any skill.

A wizard could very easily do a thaumatergical spell that gives him or her like 3 aspects for a day that would lend to social combat.

This would allow the wizard to basically have 3 free fate points in social combat.

So yeah - to an extent Wizards are as good at pretty much everything as every other class.  They're the jack of all trades.  The downsides of course being that wizards are complicated, require creativity to play, and don't do well around technology (which is fun to compel the crap out of!).

[Kerberos]

So here's where I disagree...and yet don't know how to do it mechanically.  Do you HAVE to affect your target?  Can you make yourself more alluring/charismatic/convincing.

Let's say you want to lift a car.  You use a power 9 telekenisis/ or more likely biomancy spell to give yourself the effective Might of 9 which enables you to lift the car.  As stated in YS, there may be consequences to the person lifting the car...just because your strong enough, it doesn't mean your bones can handle it.

For social combat, could you give yourself the equivalent of a 9 rapport.  It spell doesn't act as an attack, it just boosts your skill making you better in social combat. What kind of consequences would this cause. My only issue with this is that a wizard can be better than anyone at any skill.

For evocation I think it's important to keep in mind that it's primarily a blunt instrument. Doing refined stuff is hard/impossible. In other words if you want to conjure up a big magical boot to kick a car so it rolls over on the side that's no problem. Doing more subtle things with the car could be quite a bit harder. Biomancing yourself to have might 9 would be hideously complex and IMO outside of what can realistically be done with evocation and would require a lot of time and research with Thaumaturgy.

As for rapport 9 how would you even begin to do that? Just because magic is used doesn't mean the player doesn't need to justify how the action is possible. The only way I can think of to do that would be mucking around with you own mind and even so you still have to figure out how a rapport 9 mind looks like. Hideously complex, only possible with Thaumaturgy, and likely to screw up your own brain the way mind altering magic tends to do. You could probably skirt the laws by saying you weren't invading the mind of another.

As BumblingBear says you could use Thaumaturgy to create aspects, but I don't think that necessarily amounts to X free fate points per day. There has to be a reasonable explanation for both how the aspect is created and how it benefits the character in the specific situation. Just casting a spell to create the aspects Charming and People-person each morning wouldn't fly IMO. Also of cause casting Thaumaturgy takes time so depending on the complexity of the aspects being created there might not be time. Personally I tend towards the opinion that the use of magic in social situations is limited, as seen in the books where magic rarely is used in a social conflicts. The rules aren't very clear though so YMMV.

[BumblingBear]

As BumblingBear says you could use Thaumaturgy to create aspects, but I don't think that necessarily amounts to X free fate points per day. There has to be a reasonable explanation for both how the aspect is created and how it benefits the character in the specific situation. Just casting a spell to create the aspects Charming and People-person each morning wouldn't fly IMO. Also of cause casting Thaumaturgy takes time so depending on the complexity of the aspects being created there might not be time. Personally I tend towards the opinion that the use of magic in social situations is limited, as seen in the books where magic rarely is used in a social conflicts. The rules aren't very clear though so YMMV.

Oh, I would let a PC do a thaumatergy ritual for 3 social aspects every morning for sure...

But it would take time.

It would cost a lot of money.

And it would charge up that character with magic, garnering unwanted attention and hexing the crap out of everything.

No power is free.  There are consequences for things like this.

So yeah, the PC /could/ do it in my game, but before long they'd be broke, and the rest of the group would probably engage them in social combat to stop so they'd stop hexing every piece of technology in 50 feet and attracting the attention of every nasty thing in town.

[evileeyore]

For evocation I think it's important to keep in mind that it's primarily a blunt instrument. Doing refined stuff is hard/impossible.

No it's not.  Evocation can Veil, which require subtlety.

Harry Dresden (our narrator) is just really bad at finesse, but Carlos, Elane, and Molly are great at subtle, finessed Evocations.



I really wish that was more defined in the rules setting, it's not.

[noclue]

For social combat, could you give yourself the equivalent of a 9 rapport.  It spell doesn't act as an attack, it just boosts your skill making you better in social combat. What kind of consequences would this cause. My only issue with this is that a wizard can be better than anyone at any skill.

Interesting questions. You could definitely give yourself aspects that would represent being more physically attractive, changing pheromones, making your voice more resonant, being taller, etc. Could you give yourself a Rapport 9 with psychomancy the way you could give yourself a Might 9? I could see doing this by channeling another entity who has more people skills, but just magically boosting your Rapport sounds strange to me.

[Taran]

I just thought about my last comment.  It would have to fall under some category.  Evocation is all about elements, so you couldn't do social spells with evocation.  Maybe it could be justified with one of the Thaumaturgy specialties...but I'm not sure.  So it'd be more likely done with sponsored magic: Soul-fire- a missionary's ability to turn people to faith/find peacful solutions through negotiation, or (Un)Seelie magic and their ability to circumvent the truth even when they're not lying.

That is why I made this statement.  So I'm obviously misinterpreting some of the rules of spellcasting.  You can't actually "buff" skills, especially social ones(which is why beast change doesn't let you increase your social skills). I'll re-reread the thaumaturgy section...

[devonapple]

That is why I made this statement.  So I'm obviously misinterpreting some of the rules of spellcasting.  You can't actually "buff" skills, especially social ones(which is why beast change doesn't let you increase your social skills). I'll re-reread the thaumaturgy section...

You can't buff skills, but you can replace them magically for awhile with Thaumaturgy. There is one apocryphal example in which Thaumaturgy *does* buff a skill: the Seeing "potion" (actually an ointment) which Harry uses to see past Faerie Glamour. But the community generally agrees that it is an exception to the general no-buff rule (and possibly an editing error).

[Taran]

So if I wanted to lift a car I would have to use thaumaturgy to give myself one of the Strength Powers, which would cost me a fate point.

If I(or the evil NPC sorcerer I'm was running) wanted to be better at manipulating people, the only thing I can think is be able to take incite emotion but that would break Laws, and it does mental damage, not social...but at least you could tag the consequences in social combat.  And it costs a fate point.

[BumblingBear]

So if I wanted to lift a car I would have to use thaumaturgy to give myself one of the Strength Powers, which would cost me a fate point.

If I(or the evil NPC sorcerer I'm was running) wanted to be better at manipulating people, the only thing I can think is be able to take incite emotion but that would break Laws, and it does mental damage, not social...but at least you could tag the consequences in social combat.  And it costs a fate point.

If this is for an evil NPC, why would it matter if you break the laws of magic?

If you're running an NPC where refresh doesn't matter, you can really kind of do whatever is thematically appropriate.

[sinker]

Oh, I'm not against magic making social attacks. I just think that directly attacking someone socially with magic, meaning dealing social stress with magic, is likely going to involve at least skirting close to law breaker for mucking with someone's mind.

I would like for you to then explain to me how people with no magic, simply high social skills are directly altering the minds of others. When one makes a social attack (regardless of how you make it) one is creating a situation. How the person deals with it is always up to them and the better the defense they make against said attack would determine how they deal with the situation (and thus how much social stress they take). Were I to use deceit to tell someone something upsetting to enrage them (which is a social attack) it isn't much different than if I was trying to create a physical situation (with magic or otherwise) that might enrage them like pulling down their pants.

I think people have a disconnect with some of the laws. There is no law of magic saying that you can't prevent someone from doing what they want. I could telekenetically hold someone in place for months if I desired and so long as I'm feeding them (so that they don't die) I haven't broken any laws of magic (though no one's arguing that people would like you for it). There is a law against going in to someone's mind and changing it so that they work in a specific way. As long as I don't alter someone's mind I'm not breaking the law. Also of note mind magic normally deals mental stress, it being the representation of your mental and emotional health. That's usually my indicator of whether they broke the laws. Did they deal mental stress in an attack? If yes lawbreaker, if not then the target still retains his will and chose how they dealt with the situation.

[Taran]

So in the example of the "calm the f- down" spell, it prevented them from doing hostile actions, but didn't change their desire to do those things and therefore doesn't break the law.  So, is it then irrelevant HOW it's preventing them from doing those actions?

The one thing I've seen that doesn't jive with using mental stress as the line between breaking and not breaking the laws:  Putting someone to sleep.  I've seen, somewhere on these forums, people doing mental stress until the person fall unconcious/asleep.  Or doing enough to cause a consequence you can invoke.  Is this breaking the law?

@BumblingBear:  I was just using the Evil sorcerer as a way of saying "laws of magic aside".

[sinker]

So in the example of the "calm the f- down" spell, it prevented them from doing hostile actions, but didn't change their desire to do those things and therefore doesn't break the law.  So, is it then irrelevant HOW it's preventing them from doing those actions?

It does depend on how you did it. If you physically prevented them from attacking then you're all roses, but if you made them calm down (I.E. altered their minds to make them chill out) then you're walking grey areas if not breaking the law outright.

The one thing I've seen that doesn't jive with using mental stress as the line between breaking and not breaking the laws:  Putting someone to sleep.  I've seen, somewhere on these forums, people doing mental stress until the person fall unconcious/asleep.  Or doing enough to cause a consequence you can invoke.  Is this breaking the law?

This is why I don't do sleep spells as mental stress though I suppose it could go either way. I figure you're causing a physical effect in making the body tired. It could be chemical or it could be that you're drawing off energy but either way I figure you're doing physical stress. Read the whole section on mental conflicts on YS217-218 and you'll get why I usually reserve mental stress for invasive mind magic and not more gentler effects.

[Kerberos]

No it's not.  Evocation can Veil, which require subtlety.

Harry Dresden (our narrator) is just really bad at finesse, but Carlos, Elane, and Molly are great at subtle, finessed Evocations.



I really wish that was more defined in the rules setting, it's not.

Evocation is very much a blunt instrument and while it's not enormously clear in the rules it is there. "Evocation is the quick-and-dirty method of using power; it’s basically the art of slinging magical energy around more-or-less directly."

Concerning the possibility of using evocation to move yourself it there's a coment of "Well... Yeah, you could use an evocation to push you along somehow, like a super powerful gust of wind, but it would just push you there in a straight line since evocation is so direct. Things like walls would mess you up en route; you’d hit them at full speed. So, doable. But foolish."

Granted veils do seem to require some subtlety and there's nothing to clearly indicate how much subtlety is and is not possible, but it is clear that there is a limit.

[Taran]

...  I shoot the bear to little effect and then this guy jumps up and shouts "Calm the F- down" and all my religious beliefs reinforcing non-violence are slammed into my head and I have to dig deep down just to point my gun at the very large bear blocking my escape route from the other crazies.  

@sinker: I'm using this quote because it probably is most thematically appropriate

Bombarded with religious beliefs the target already has...is this breaking the law?  He still wants to shoot, but he now has a conflict...

[evileeyore]

Evocation is very much a blunt instrument and while it's not enormously clear in the rules it is there. "Evocation is the quick-and-dirty method of using power; it’s basically the art of slinging magical energy around more-or-less directly."

I think we're arguingpast each other.  I'll conceed Evocation is direct.  However I believe with the proper control it can be subtle.

Granted veils do seem to require some subtlety and there's nothing to clearly indicate how much subtlety is and is not possible, but it is clear that there is a limit.

I disagree on this point.  The only limits should be based on your control and your target being in LOS.