Specialization and Channeling

[Kolat]

I have a character that has Channeling: Earth Magic. Has focus items giving +1 to offensive power/control respectively. Just hit a major milestone, and was thinking of taking Refinement for specialization...

He is an offensive minded character, and I am a bit unclear what Specialization can do for me. The character, and myself, are very new to spellcasting! Any help would be appreciated...

His conviction is a 3 and lore/discipline is at 2. So yea, very new to casting! lol

I'd be taking this to allow the Specialization:

 Focused Study [–0] Musts: Channeling and/or Ritual. Description: Experienced focused practitioners learn in time how to refine and focus their abilities, gaining a deeper understanding of their one particular area of study. Skills Affected: Discipline, Conviction, Lore. Effects: Intense Focus. You have chosen to focus heavily upon one particular application of spellcraft. When you take this power you forever give up the ability to upgrade Channeling to Evocation or upgrade Ritual to Thaumaturgy. Focused Specialization. You may now choose to gain specialization bonuses when buying the Refinement power.

[Haru]

You can take specializations for power or control, it is not split up in offensive/defensive like focus items are. However, you have to stack up your specializations just like skills. One refinement gives you 2 specialization bonuses. You can not take +2 earth power or +2 earth control, you first have to take +1 earth power and +1 earth control.

If you want to take any more specialization bonuses, you would only be able to put 1 point into either earth power or earth control, leaving you with +1 for one and +2 for the other. If you want to take more, you would have to take full evocation and stack up other elements before you can put more points into earth specializations.

For example:
+1 water control
+2 earth control
+3 earth power

would be ok, while
+1 water control
+2 earth control
+2 earth power
would not be ok, because one of the +2 specializations would not be supported by a +1 specialization. You need to have at least as many specializations in a lower row than you have in any above.

hope that helped.

[Kolat]

So for my character currently as stated above by taking refinemen I could get +1 Earth Power and +1 Earth Control?

If so, that sounds good to me! Thanks for the input!

[Haru]

Yep, exactly.

[Sanctaphrax]

I don't think I'd allow Focused Study. It's a significant upgrade in exchange for cutting off a future choice, which is bad design space.

[Mr. Death]

So for my character currently as stated above by taking refinemen I could get +1 Earth Power and +1 Earth Control?

If so, that sounds good to me! Thanks for the input!

That would, however, limit the caster to a max of +2 on only one of those, since they have to stack like skills, so if he wants to be significantly powerful, he'll have to either stock up on focus item slots in the future, or upgrade to full-on Evocation.

[UmbraLux]

I'd be taking this to allow the Specialization:

 Focused Study [–0] Musts: Channeling and/or Ritual. Description: Experienced focused practitioners learn in time how to refine and focus their abilities, gaining a deeper understanding of their one particular area of study. Skills Affected: Discipline, Conviction, Lore. Effects: Intense Focus. You have chosen to focus heavily upon one particular application of spellcraft. When you take this power you forever give up the ability to upgrade Channeling to Evocation or upgrade Ritual to Thaumaturgy. Focused Specialization. You may now choose to gain specialization bonuses when buying the Refinement power.

Err, this is worth far more than 0 refresh.  Frankly, I agree with Sanctaphrax, it shouldn't be allowed.  If you did allow it, I would change the cost to -1 and restate it so it only allowed one Refinement to be taken.

You can already use foci to get high bonuses, adding another easy method of gaining bonuses is very overpowering.  When it comes down to it, Refinement is the major reason to take more than one element.

[Tedronai]

Err, this is worth far more than 0 refresh.

And yet far less than the 1 refresh that it would cost to upgrade to full-blown Evocation.
Quite a conundrum, wouldn't you say?

If you did allow it, I would change the cost to -1 and restate it so it only allowed one Refinement to be taken.

Essentially charging 2 refresh and any future chance of upgrade to Evocation for the pitiful benefit of +1 power and control...
For that price I could upgrade to Evocation and buy a level of Refinement, gaining +2 control +1 power (or +1/+2) to my primary element AND 2 additional elements to play with.


This all comes down to whether you think the penalization of focused practitioners supported by the early novels, and thus by the game system, is sufficiently proven thematically inappropriate by the later novels.  Because it's certainly not mechanically necessary to preserve game balance.

[devonapple]

And yet far less than the 1 refresh that it would cost to upgrade to full-blown Evocation.
Quite a conundrum, wouldn't you say?

Perhaps one could create an additional benefit (like a Stunt-equivalent bonus on Knowledge checks having to do with the element of specialization) which brings that up to a worthwhile -1 Refresh?

[UmbraLux]

And yet far less than the 1 refresh that it would cost to upgrade to full-blown Evocation.
Quite a conundrum, wouldn't you say?

No, it's worth more than taking full evocation as written.  It's probably worth more than -1 as I modified it...though that's situational.

Essentially charging 2 refresh and any future chance of upgrade to Evocation for the pitiful benefit of +1 power and control...
For that price I could upgrade to Evocation and buy a level of Refinement, gaining +2 control +1 power (or +1/+2) to my primary element AND 2 additional elements to play with.

Nope.  It's charging 2 refresh to break the requirement for following a ladder / pyramid.  The higher you are on that pyramid, the more it's worth.

This all comes down to whether you think the penalization of focused practitioners supported by the early novels, and thus by the game system, is sufficiently proven thematically inappropriate by the later novels.  Because it's certainly not mechanically necessary to preserve game balance.

You don't think so?  As written, a 7 refresh character can dump 2 into channeling, take the 0 cost focus thing, and put 4 more into refinements which don't follow a ladder.  What would that be, +4 to power / control?  Of course if you really want to break it you only put 3 into specializations while putting the last into foci.  Then you'd have the potential for something like +3 from specializations and another +4 from a single focus.  Personally, I call it overpowered.

Edit:  corrected power numbers

[Tedronai]

I would be hesitant to tie the ability to purchase refinement exclusively to an effect granting a bonus on knowledge, but I wouldn't see a problem with that being one option among possibly several others.
I would suggest such a quasi-stunt follow a pattern similar to Occultist (a bonus which grows as the question draws closer to the character's specialty).

ex:
Joe the Pyromancer
Channeling (Fire) [-2]
[Skilled Focused Practitioner] [-1] (+1 bonus to Lore on research related to evocation effects, with an additional +1 bonus if that research focuses on effects associated with the element of fire; further, Joe may purchase refinement for the purposes of specialization applied to Channeling-fire)
Refinement [-1] (+1 power and control for evocation with the element of fire)



Alternately, we could replace the 'stunt' with a half-refinement/half-stunt, which would also solve the issue of the pyramid and whether refinement choices can be split.

ex.
Joe the Pyromancer
Channeling (Fire) [-2] (+2 control, +1 power)
[Skilled Focused Practitioner] [-1] (+1 bonus to Lore on research related to [element//functional/thematic group] and +1 power, complexity, or control with [element//functional/thematic group])
Refinement [-1] (+1 power and control for evocation with the element of fire)

Nope.  It's charging 2 refresh to break the requirement for following a ladder / pyramid.  The higher you are on that pyramid, the more it's worth.

And here's where we differ.  I don't see it accomplishing that as written.
To short circuit the argument, though, let's give you the benefit of the doubt that this incarnation of the power is broken in that way (which, if it were, would indeed be powerful).
Let us then envision an otherwise identical power which did not suffer from the same problem (ie. did not obviate the need to follow the pyramid).  How would you price that power?

[UmbraLux]

And here's where we differ.  I don't see it accomplishing that as written.
To short circuit the argument, though, let's give you the benefit of the doubt that this incarnation of the power is broken in that way (which, if it were, would indeed be powerful).
Let us then envision an otherwise identical power which did not suffer from the same problem (ie. did not obviate the need to follow the pyramid).  How would you price that power?

If it's not breaking the ladder/pyramid requirement, I agree with you -0 would be appropriate.  I wouldn't require giving up the ability to upgrade either. 

Edit:  You'd get the specialization by spending the same point of refresh upgrading to full Evocation anyway.  I'm a bit confused as to why you'd want to do otherwise if still following the pyramid.  Obviously I do need to ask questions before jumping to conclusions though...   

[devonapple]

Maybe Focused Practitioners can follow the same Refinement pyramid if we do the following: give them "placeholder" elements among which to also distribute those bonuses. The "bonuses" for those "elements" would be wasted, of course, but they would legitimize the bonuses of their Focus Element.

Much the same way that NPCs that are sufficiently powerful will end up with skill points they cannot spend unless they are allowed to have phantom "placeholder" skills rounding out the bottom of the pyramid at +1 or so.

[Haru]

Hmm, I was under the impression you could take specialization refinement even with channeling, just that it was limited by the pyramid. Probably because if you take more than one refinement as a channeler, you'd be better of taking evocation in any case. I guess I missed Focussed Study, too.

I kind of thought that was the whole point. If you start out with channeling, you could add refinement to make it a bit more powerful if you had enough refresh, and if you wanted to go any further you'd transform those 3 points of refresh into evocation to continue. Breaking the pyramid should not be done in any case, and then I can see no reason to disallow specialisations for focussed practitioners, which means there should be no need for a special power.

It makes the most sense from the narrative point, too. You don't just study quantum physics and get perfect at that. You have to cover your bases, broaden your knowledge of the field in general to be able to excel in a small part of it. Which is exactly what the specialization pyramid represents.

I don't really dig the placeholder idea. It's basically just wasted refresh. If you really wanted to make a one trick pony, sponsored magic would be a way to get a bit more oomph out of an element, and an interesting one to boot.

[devonapple]

If you really wanted to make a one trick pony, sponsored magic would be a way to get a bit more oomph out of an element, and an interesting one to boot.

Wait a minute... (Ghost Story spoiler)

(click to show/hide)

Maybe that *is* the best way to model Mort's Ectomancy power, with the "Sponsor" being the spirits of the dead for whom he and advocates, protects and serves.