Is there a limit to the amount of power a character can put in a spell?

[Haru]

I've come to realize, that the number of shifts that are reasonable for a spell can be limited by the narration of the spell better than an arbitrary mechanical number.

For example, one of my players wanted to do a ritual to put up a block in a staircase, having plants grow wild and hinder anyone who wants to cross. He started out with seeds, earth and water, the typical things you'd need to have plants grow. We argued that it would be reasonable to add fire and air to fill the circle of elements (the seed was to be spirit), and when that was done, there was nothing that could reasonably be added to the spell. We could have gone back and changed everything to make it more complex, but this was fine for what we wanted to do.

What I want to say is, while it is technically possible to stack aspects to infinity, every aspect should have a place in the narrative of the spell. At some point, adding more aspects just won't make much sense, and that is where I would stop.

[Wordmaker]

Bingo.

[Sanctaphrax]

Do you have a formula?

Nothing solid. The guideline is that for every Declaration you previously made with that skill during a ritual's prep I'll add 2 to the difficulty.

I've come to realize, that the number of shifts that are reasonable for a spell can be limited by the narration of the spell better than an arbitrary mechanical number.

True enough.

Sadly, doing Thaumaturgy often involves computing a lot of numbers that don't actually matter because it all comes down to a  narrative judgement.

[Haru]

True enough.

Sadly, doing Thaumaturgy often involves computing a lot of numbers that don't actually matter because it all comes down to a  narrative judgement.

Honestly, by now if I have to start crunching so many numbers, I feel like I'm doing something wrong and look for a more elegant way to solve things.

[Sanctaphrax]

Do you use the Thaumaturgy rules at all, these days?

[Emperor Tippy]

To the OP, no not really. If a character is willing to invest the time in it then there is no real limit on the amount of power that he can pour into a ritual; and if he is willing to only invest Discipline-4 points shifts of power into the spell each exchange of casting then he has no chance of failure. This being said, if you are casting an 8 hour long ritual then you better be sure you have your Endurance high enough to cover things like "has to shit" "has to eat" "falling asleep" etc.

In game terms a ritual has one real limit; it's complexity. Pushing complexity up isn't particularly difficult but it takes time, potentially a whole lot of time. The other way to push up complexity (and the fastest method) is to break the Fifth law and use sacrifices.

In terms of the narrative rituals have two inversely proportional parts; the complexity, specificity, and control of the ritual and the power of the ritual.

Take Storm Front, Dresden says that performing the heart ripping curse is at the very limits of his power and skill but when he finds out what Sells is doing he changes to "oh, that is really simple". The difference here is the available power. If you have tons of it then you can cast a ritual that doesn't involve any of the tricks that make it far more efficient or require less raw power.

So for high complexity rituals you either need tons of power from an external power source or tons of little details that reduce the power required significantly.

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Remember, as we are shown in Changes, the only actual requirements for any magic are 1) a symbolic link, 2) power, 3) the ability to control that power. All of those physical items in a ritual and other external factors are a stand in for one of those three things.

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The other big constraint, in terms of the narrative, on high complexity rituals is the various powers of the world. When you are talking a 200 complexity ritual that is an amount of magic that any supernatural within a hundred miles will notice pretty much instantly. At a minimum you will have Wardens dropping in on your head in minutes to figure out just what you are doing casting a ritual more than powerful enough to obliterate an entire city. Every other super natural power in the world will also suddenly become interested in you and what you are up to.

If you want to get around this then you either need to go the route of mass necromancy and sacrifice a few dozen people (enough to cover the complexity, enough to power the ritual, and enough to eat the backlash from casting the spell in one exchange) or go the route of lots of time and preparation work.

Instead of necromancy you could put up a ten shift ward around the ritual site which will then conceal the casting of a fifteen shift ward behind it (only 5 shifts leak through the first ward) which will then conceal the twenty shift ward which will then conceal the twenty five shift ward which will then conceal the thirty shifty ward, etc. until you have enough wards up that the inner one is strong enough to conceal the power of the ritual and enough to step the wards power down so that people don't say "why do you have a two hundred shift ward here".

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As for how you go about doing this, you stack rituals. A lower complexity ritual is used to provide aspects that can be tagged for a later ritual which in turn can provide either still more aspects to tags or increase the duration for which those taggable aspects will hang around. Eventually you can built up enough of a pool of tags to cover the complexity of the ritual that you wanted to cast and potentially even the power and control of the actual ritual. It's just taken you six months to a year of constant work instead of a few dozen bodies and a few minutes of work.

If you put in the prepwork though, you can far exceed the power of necromancy without breaking any of the laws. It just takes a very long time and a lot of prep work.

[Haru]

Do you use the Thaumaturgy rules at all, these days?

I do, though I am always on the lookout for alternative approaches.

Especially if a spell (or any action, for that matter) starts to become too big, I am inclined to go fractal on it, split it into multiple parts and take it from there.
Or go at it from a narrative angle entirely. Like the often discussed summoning of Chauncy. I would not focus on the spell much more than I would make someone roll for using the phone. Once the demon is there, we are in a social conflict, which is the interesting part we actually wanted to get to, anyway.

Or look at some of the spells in the novels that backfire horribly. When you start calculating the power needed to bind the Erlking, and you decide that it would be more fun to have him run free, you don't have to count all the shifts, you just describe how Harry is summoning the Erlking and have Cowl enter and steal the show. Or the "Fire the Phages back at their summoner" spell. Oh yes, it works, all right, but...

[Xen10k]

Or, just have a phone ring to break their concentration. 

[Emperor Tippy]

Or, just have a phone ring to break their concentration. 

If you are casting a major ritual (or really most any ritual for that matter) in an area where something like a ringing phone can be heard then you deserve to get screwed over.

One of the final steps before casting that I recommend is to throw up a short duration low shift ward specifically stated to block noise, animals, bugs, etc. that will last the duration of your casting.

My wizards ritual rooms tend to actually have very strong wards around them that can only be bypassed by my wizard or with tokens kept inside the ward (except for the few minutes needed to bring another ritual participant into the area). Interruptions are bad when doing ritual work.

[Phantomdoodler]

Cracking discussion guys! I find that when there is no real risk, players can potentially create stupendously powerful spells and they have begun to get wise to this. Some good solutions to this. I may start all attempts to create an aspect at Mediocre, and increase the difficulty by 1 for each additional one created representing the casters fatigue.  Or use Sanctaphrax's +2 Difficulty per repeated use to encourage originality. Also how do you judge how long all this takes to prepare? The rules are a little wooly on this.

[Emperor Tippy]

Cracking discussion guys! I find that when there is no real risk, players can potentially create stupendously powerful spells and they have begun to get wise to this. Some good solutions to this. I may start all attempts to create an aspect at Mediocre, and increase the difficulty by 1 for each additional one created representing the casters fatigue.  Or use Sanctaphrax's +2 Difficulty per repeated use to encourage originality. Also how do you judge how long all this takes to prepare? The rules are a little wooly on this.

You really only need four or so aspects initially to start things off. That tends to be enough to meet the complexity of a ritual to place an temporary aspect on yourself, the environment, or an item for a day or so. A few of those and you can be hitting a year or so.

Now start stacking those up. Given a week or two of downtime you can stack up taggable aspects worth +50 or so without too much difficulty or issue. Now when you want to do your big ritual you just tag them all.

Note, however, that if you do this then your GM is liable to have NPC's do it as well. A wizard who has been around for hundreds of years? Well expect thousands of "temporary" aspects that he can tag at any time. Thousand shift evocations are perfectly possible.

[Phantomdoodler]

Those values sound ridiculously high to me. If that were the case, no one would be able to get through Harry's wards, or anyone attempting to would be instantly killed.

[Emperor Tippy]

Those values sound ridiculously high to me. If that were the case, no one would be able to get through Harry's wards, or anyone attempting to would be instantly killed.

Unless they did the exact same thing.

Besides, Harry really doesn't have the right temperament to make a good wizard. He's too straightforward and direct and it shows in pretty much everything he does.

Just look at the difference between how he shields and how McCoy shields. Dresden fights force with force, although now he tends to say deflect bullets instead of stopping them cold. McCoy has enchanted his robes to absorb the kinetic energy of any bullets that hit them (see Changes). What is the end result of these two approaches? It costs Dresden energy to stop bullets from hitting him, it gives McCoy energy when bullets strike him.

Dresden rarely "cheats", and it hurts him significantly as a wizard. It's honestly perhaps his biggest weakness. He's been getting better at it and he is young but he is still too direct.

The idea of using dozens (or hundreds) of prefatory rituals just to be able to use a greater ritual in the end? Does that sound like something Dresden would really do to you? Not that he can't do it, just that it would never occur to him to do it.

[Haru]

If you are casting a major ritual (or really most any ritual for that matter) in an area where something like a ringing phone can be heard then you deserve to get screwed over.

Screwing a player over is nothing I would want to do. But the things described are excellent points for a compel, which should make the game more interesting and more fun in the long run.

One of the final steps before casting that I recommend is to throw up a short duration low shift ward specifically stated to block noise, animals, bugs, etc. that will last the duration of your casting.

If you have the time to throw up a ward like that, then you have the time to cast that spell without any hindrance at all, and if that is the case: why roll? Just have the spell be a success, and you just have to worry about if the effect you want to accomplish should be within the abilities of your character or not.

A major action from your character that isn't opposed by anyone or anything just doesn't make for a good story, so I would always just handwave it and move on to the next interesting part.

Now start stacking those up. Given a week or two of downtime you can stack up taggable aspects worth +50 or so without too much difficulty or issue. Now when you want to do your big ritual you just tag them all.

The question remains: Is this really interesting? It's kind of like the "skip a scene" suggestion to add more shifts to a spell. Yes, you can do that, but if you want to fuel a big spell like that, you might as well not play at all.

Despite that, what are those 50+ aspects going to be? And how will ALL of them make sense in the narrative of the spell?

[Phantomdoodler]

Unless they did the exact same thing.

Besides, Harry really doesn't have the right temperament to make a good wizard. He's too straightforward and direct and it shows in pretty much everything he does.

Just look at the difference between how he shields and how McCoy shields. Dresden fights force with force, although now he tends to say deflect bullets instead of stopping them cold. McCoy has enchanted his robes to absorb the kinetic energy of any bullets that hit them (see Changes). What is the end result of these two approaches? It costs Dresden energy to stop bullets from hitting him, it gives McCoy energy when bullets strike him.

Dresden rarely "cheats", and it hurts him significantly as a wizard. It's honestly perhaps his biggest weakness. He's been getting better at it and he is young but he is still too direct.

The idea of using dozens (or hundreds) of prefatory rituals just to be able to use a greater ritual in the end? Does that sound like something Dresden would really do to you? Not that he can't do it, just that it would never occur to him to do it.

Yes, but players certainly will try this stuff.