Thaumaturgy declarations and time

[Taran]

Our group has come up with a formula for doing Thaumaturgy rituals.  We're stealing the format Crusher_Bob uses. 

My question is the length of time it takes to do the declarations.  I know the big answer is "it depends", but I was hoping for a bit more guidance than that.

Last night we played a game where we had 20 minutes to make a ward before the enemy came rushing in.  A complexity 14 ward was going to take 15 minutes, and we spent 5 minutes doing declarations.  starting at Lore 6 - so 4 declarations.

I ask because I'm taking the GMing reigns soon and there's a bit of a disagreement between myself and the player playing the wizard.  I just want to get a sense of what other people adjudicate.

[devonapple]

Perhaps the clearer answer is "it depends on what the players can justify being able to reasonably lay their hands on." Declarations can span an incredible variety of things. There just can't be a hard and fast rule because of the breadth of options.

Keep the Time Chart handy when players suggest Declarations and cross-reference that with their proposed plans.

"Pixie Dust" could be a simple Resources check of +6 taking a minute to acquire. But if they can't make the roll, they may want to add extra time ("I know it was around here somewhere - I'll turn my lab upside down looking for it") and make it take an hour or more. Or they may want to say "I run out to the field, find a Pixie, challenge it to a race, and while it is catching its breath, I mug it for some dust" - that could be an Endurance check of +5 taking a half an hour (to find a field with pixies, to summon one, then challenge it).

You may opt to say that the first Declaration using a given Skill takes X amount of time, but each Declaration after than is an increase on the Time Chart or an increase of +2 difficulty, to encourage them to vary the Skills they use for Declarations. Maybe the third Declaration on a particular skill requires both +2 difficulty *and* a step up on the Time Chart (allow them to opt for a simple +4 difficulty, or +2 on the Time Chart).

Edit: Ultimately, you want to reward creativity and plausibility in their ritual Declarations. Maybe if the players can come up with two creative and completely different Declarations, which happen to be using the same Skill, then give the most lenient difficulty and time index for each one, rather than charging a 2-shift premium for "going back to the same well." But definitely feel free to use the Time Chart as a factor in how difficult a Declaration could be.

[Taran]

"Pixie Dust" could be a simple Resources check of +6 taking a minute to acquire.

See, to me, a resource roll means going out and buying it which can take up to a half a day.  Maybe shorter if you roll well.  The guy playing the wizard would see it as you've stated:  "I bought one and it's in the lab here somewhere."

BTW, here are the declarations we made in the game.  All of which took only 5 minutes:

Lore - The right ward in the right place

Conviction – Call power

Discipline – Focus mind

Endurance – Sore knees for a stable result

Resources – Fancy chalk makes the best lines

[devonapple]

I just want to get a sense of what other people adjudicate.

What *I* do is take any Declaration they could feasibly do in an out of combat Exchange (1-5 minutes) and make it a difficulty of 3 to make the Declaration. Any Declaration using that same skill takes another exchange *and* is rolled at a Difficulty 4 or 5 (unless they want to take even more time). But these are things like "Focused Mind," "Artfully Crafted Circle," "Breathing Exercises," "Ritually Purified," and other "navel-gazing maneuvers."

A quick visit to the Master's magical library may take 15 minutes or more. A navel-gazing maneuver involving the creation of a "sweat lodge" purification could take half a day to do with a +1 or 2 Endurance skill check, but doing it faster may require a +4 to +6 Endurance skill check.

Getting a ritually significant focus item could be a Lore check of +6 taking a minute, or it could be an Empathy check of +3 taking 15 minutes as the player questions the target to suss out what means the most to him or her (adding shifts on the Time Scale to lower the difficulty of the skill check required).

[devonapple]

See, to me, a resource roll means going out and buying it which can take up to a half a day.  Maybe shorter if you roll well.  The guy playing the wizard would see it as you've stated:  "I bought one and it's in the lab here somewhere."

Either can be a valid strategy, depending on the story needs, the dramatic tension, etc.

[Becq]

Keep in mind that the basic Lore contribution toward complexity is meant to take into account the stuff you have within easy reach.  So if you're getting an extra bonus from something, then that something is not necessarily something you simply have lying close to hand -- because if it was, then it would be included in your Lore bonus.

That said, keep in mind as well that when adjudicating Thaumaturgy preparation, you can set a base time for a particular Declaration, then make use of the time chart on YS315.  So, for example, if the ruling is that a particular component is easy to acquire in 30 minutes, and the wizard gets 4 extra shifts on the relevant roll, then those shifts could bump the time to complete that step upwards on the chart to 'half a minute' -- ie, the character turned out to have that item squirelled away somewhere, and just needs to go grab it.  Likewise if a character makes a research-based declaration and rolls extremely well, it might represent knowing exactly where to look --- or who to call to get the information very quickly.  Likewise, a poor role trying to acquire something that should reasonably be available could be interpreted as not a failure, but as having taken much longer than normal.  Perhaps the traffic on the way to Walmart was truly horrible, or the mom-and-pop store you planned to go to was closed due to 'Pop' being rushed to the emergency room.

Sometimes making the above adjustment might not be reasonable, and in any case any or all of the above should only be used when doing so benefits the game.

[Michael Sandy]

I like that solution, Becq.

That brings to mind a stunt:
Why I do declare!  You are skilled in making preparations to use magic.  Your declarations resolve two time steps faster on the chart.

[crusher_bob]

The reason I don't like this sort of solution is that it doesn't communication to the player (and the GM) what the capabilities of thier characters are.

For example, a scourge of black court vampires has moved into your town and is nom-nom-nomming all the delicious peoples. 

Your character:
Knows that attracting their attention is a bad idea, because him and all his friends are going to be nothing bugs on the windshield to them.
Knows that he'll need all the help he can get (and some good tactics to take them on).
Knows that have have to make some serious preparations before he can take them on.
Knows to book "Tomorrow, 9:00 - 9:30 AM, destroy scourge" on his calendar.

The combat system is sufficiently well defined that I have at least some idea of where my character would fall on this spectrum.

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Describing thaumarugy complexity declarations as "whatever" means that I have no real idea if my character can:

Use thaumaturgy to find my lost car keys quicker than just looking for them normally.
Find my lost car keys, at the bottom of the lake.
Find my kidnapped mom with the car keys, because the car used to belong to her.
Call down a Tunguska class even down onto the clan of ghouls that kidnapped and ate my mom.

All of this things might be plot relevant in some way, but without some good guidelines, how can I know what my character can do.

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Consider, at the start of storm front, where everybody sorta assumes that Harry did it, because Harry is one of the few people know around town to have that kind of power.

Notice how that defines a lot of how things go.  There are other magical practitioners in town, but killing two people with magic like that is a big enough deal that they probably couldn't have done it, and anyone big enough to have done it would have probably been well known.  And that was something like a 30-40 complexity ritual.  But what about, say, a 20 complexity ritual?  If our characters are investigating that, how does our pool of suspects look?  What about a 60 complexity ritual?  Does our pool of suspects include people like Harry, Luccio, Morgan, etc?  Or is that something only a member of the senior council could do?
But what if the senior council was in session yesterday, with everyone present?  Could any of them have put together a complexity 60 ritual between when the meeting ended yesterday and today?

All those questions can't be answered when to rules for how you do thaumaturgy amount to "magic tea party".

[Taran]

@ crusher_bob:

O.k.

So what are you saying?  That practitioners should be limited some way?  A complexity cap?  If you do as devonapple and increase the base difficulty for using the same skill, a complexity 60 is going to be quite hard to do because there's a good chance you'll be using skills multiple times for declarations.

How do you deal with it?

[crusher_bob]

I'm saying that players (and GMs) should already have a pretty good idea of what kind of complexity a character can reach, and how long it will take them to get there without having to have a 30 minute (in game) discussion about it first. 

Now, I'm not entirely happy with how the rules I wrote turn out, mostly because they shaft 'innocent" players who want to do big thaumaturgy but can't muster discipline 5, but players who min-max for maximum evocation combat power get big thaumaturgy as a side effect of having discipline 5.  But I like to think that I threw in enough minor speed bumps that a wizard two organizes his skills, foci, etc to be good at thaumaturgy is actually put together differently from a wizard who goes straight to the biggest fireball he can throw.

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So, as an example:
We'll consider a wizard at 8 refresh, with:
Great: Conviction, Discipline, Lore
Good: Endurance, 2 other skills

He used his thaumaturgy specialization to get a control bonus, so hey can do big thaumaturgy in one category, at least.

What kind of stuff can he pull off?
Complexity 3 or 4 things he can do with no prep and around 5 minutes of ritual if he's in a hurry, so 10 or 15 minutes of ritual if he's not.

In any thaumaturgy category:
around complexity 6-8 stuff, requiring 5 minutes of prep and 10-40 minutes of ritual, depending on how in a hurry he is.  He's limited here more by the risk of losing control of the spell, rather any any inherent limitations.

In favored thaumaturgy category:
On good days, complexity 10 stuff, after 5 minutes of prep and around 40 minutes of ritual.  Otherwise, it'll take hours of prep.
With hours of preparation, roughly complexity 18, plus another hour to hour and a half for the ritual.
With days or preparations, somewhere on the order of complexity 30-36, depending o how generous the GM is feeling an how lucky he is with declarations, with around 2.5 hours for the ritual.
With weeks of prep, roughly complexity 40, with around 3 hours for the ritual.

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So, without any long discussion, I can look at my character sheet and know roughly what complexity I can pull of, and in what time frame.   Of course, thing like fate points mean I can do more, if I have more available to spend, but that's almost all on the lower end of the scale, reducing ritual or preparation time.  If I want to take or inflict consequences, things can be considerable speeded up, and we can go all the way up to my limits of ritual endurance, which happen somewhere around complexity 40 or 50, depending on how much risk I feel like taking.

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I have no real attachments to this particular implementation of the system, but notice how it answers any questions I might have about what I can do and how long it will take.  Now the only precious game time I have to take up with mechanics discussion is what the base complexity of the thing I want to do it.

[crusher_bob]

Now, we'll show how the system scales, consider a character with 45 skills points and 15 refresh.  They have the standard wizard package and the tireless endurance stunt, but otherwise, all their specializations are not relevant (instead in things like enchanted item power, and stuff)

Skills look like:
Superb: Conviction, Discipline, Lore
(3 skills in every other tier)

With no prep: complexity 5, with 5 -20 minutes in ritual, depending on how much in a hurry he is, with some risks at 5 minutes
With 5 minutes prep: on a good day, complexity 17, with about an hour in ritual time.
With hours of prep: around complexity 30, with around 2.5 hours in ritual time
With days of prep: somewhere around 50-60 complexity, Around 4-5 hours of ritual time.
With weeks of prep: somewhere around 68 or 69 complexity; 5.5 hours or so of ritual time.

With the tireless stunt, you have no real control limit on maximum complexity, so if you have a cult or something that will take consequences for you, you can manage very large rituals.

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Putting more specialization points or foci into thaumaturgy mostly increases the complexity that you can do with low prep time, and can greatly speed up your ritual speed, but doesn't do much for your maximum complexity.  That's mostly determined by your skill total.

[sinker]

I'm a little surprised that no one has brought this up. I think it's really important to differentiate between declarations and maneuvers. Declarations are a statement of fact. This is or I have. Thus they are instantaneous. Your character makes no effort because that is how things are. You happen to have the thing that is useful or there happens to be something nearby that is useful.

A maneuver is your character doing something to benefit the situation. I make the surroundings beneficial or get this thing that is useful. These things could take anywhere between a few seconds to days.

What you need to keep in mind though is that declarations are entirely within the GM's purview. Is the declaration interesting or reasonable? If not the GM is perfectly within their rights to just say no or set the difficulty as high as he or she likes.

Also based on Taran's descriptions none of those things seem like declarations as they all seem like characters making effort to create a beneficial effect.

[Taran]

I'm a little surprised that no one has brought this up. I think it's really important to differentiate between declarations and maneuvers. Declarations are a statement of fact. This is or I have. Thus they are instantaneous. Your character makes no effort because that is how things are. You happen to have the thing that is useful or there happens to be something nearby that is useful.

A maneuver is your character doing something to benefit the situation. I make the surroundings beneficial or get this thing that is useful. These things could take anywhere between a few seconds to days.

What you need to keep in mind though is that declarations are entirely within the GM's purview. Is the declaration interesting or reasonable? If not the GM is perfectly within their rights to just say no or set the difficulty as high as he or she likes.

Also based on Taran's descriptions none of those things seem like declarations as they all seem like characters making effort to create a beneficial effect.

But maneuvers don't add to the complexity, declarations do.  It seems like a fine line.  So are you saying that you can make all your declarations and they take no time at all?  You just happen to have all that stuff available to you at any given moment - assuming you made the check?

How do you adjudicate prep time?  Let's say the PC's have 2 days to find "the missing girl".  They decide that wipping up a big Thaum spell is the way to go.  Assuming they make all their declarations, Can they just go do it?  Or would you say, "it's gonna take a full day to prep" and then they decide if it's worth the time and risk that the spell will actually work?

[Sanctaphrax]

I thought that you could only make maneuvers during conflicts.

I just treat out-of-combat maneuvers as declarations.

Am I wrong, here?

[sinker]

Those are really good points/questions that I don't have an answer to. It seems to be true that you can't maneuver to deal with complexity, however it says that when making declarations to deal with prep that they are dealt with exactly like normal declarations (YS269), and normal declarations are instantaneous statements of fact (YS116).