The Capabilities of Conjuration

[ian0251]

What are the exact capabilities of conjuration? If I conjure a brick wall in front of a door then do I raise the border value by the equivalent value of a brick wall border? What about if I do the whole enough frogs to fill a city park? How do the effects of that translate mechanically?

[Taran]

Conjuration, mechanically, works like any other spell (blocks, aspects, maneuvers, attacks - or the solve impossible problems.)  depends on the flavour you're going for.

The brick wall would be a border equal to the shifts you put into the spell.

The Frogs would be a scene Aspect.  If you want other mechanical (dis)advantages, you build them into the spell.

Frog spell:
- 4 shifts (raining frogs, scene aspect)
- 10 shifts for 5 zones - probably more to fill a whole park
- 3-shift (weapon 0), attack in all those zones (I remember cars taking damage from the falling frogs but that might just be fluff)
- 2 shift zone border ('cause squished frog guts are slippery)
Total shifts = 19

It depends how you want to design the spell.  A scene aspect might be all you need...3 or 4 shifts.  Then let players and NPC's tag/invoke the aspect for whatever creative stuff they can think up.

[ian0251]

Sorry, I think I should have been more specific in my original post. I can see how you'd use the normal applications of thaumaturgy to model the different effects conjuration.

However, I'm curious about how you mechanically simulate the effects of conjuration given the rules stated in YS or one of the homebrew systems.

For example, the frogs in the park, YS states you'd need about 11 shifts to conjure that quantity of frogs. But once you've conjured those frogs does it behave as a scene aspect in which case you're generating a lot of shifts for just a scene aspect or like you stated, as an attack, in which case you are not putting that many shifts into a few zone wide attacks.

Or perhaps its just easiest to just disregard those rules and model the effects with normal thaunaturgy rules.

[Haru]

In spellcasting, there's one what and two hows. At least that's the simplest way I like to think of it.

What: What are you trying to accomplish? Keep someone from going after you would be a good answer.

How (mechanical): This is the question of which Fate mechanic to use. You could make it a block or a zone border, like Taran described. You could say "I don't want to deal with that, let's make it a scene aspect and tag it for effect and just get it over. You could attack to knock him out and keep him from going after you that way.

How (narrative): What happens in the story. This is linked to what your spellcaster can actually do with his magic. A conjurer could summon up a rain of frogs. A frost mage could freeze the ground and make it so slippery, that his opponent can't follow. A warden could throw a fireball at the bad guy. The important thing is that there doesn't have to be a correlation between the narrative and the mechanical. A fireball can just as well be a block, if it is meant to deter your opponent from following you. The frozen ground can just as well be an attack, if you describe it in a way that you time it just right so your opponent trips badly. And the rain of frogs can be anything you want, either, as long as you can justify it to your table.

[Sanctaphrax]

Mechanically, the effects of conjured objects are the same as those of real objects. A conjured wall has whatever mechanical effects a wall has. Conjured frogs have whatever effects frogs have.

In other words, the GM can choose to represent the objects in whatever way seems convenient.

[ian0251]

Hmm that's what I assumed.

 I can see the validity in both approaches, one just allows a lot more versatility than the other.

Does anyone have much experience using conjuration in their games?