Thaumaturgy prep

[Pauldk]

Hey y'all,

So, a Wizard wants to be able to transform herself.
She cooks up a ritual with a complexity of 28.
Her starting complexity rating is 5. (Lore 4 + a Specialty Bonus to Transformation Complexity).
She needs to do a bunch of prep, to add 23 complexity.
Say she does that. She then casts the spell, it goes well, and everyone is happy.

Then, later (days, weeks, whatever) she wants to cast the same transformation on herself. Is there any sort of discount built in to the system?  I get that the player can be creative in upping their prep score... but is there a way for some of that prep to carry over?    Kinda like a Rote for Thaumaturgy?

I mean, at minimum, I'd think that they could take a TAG of the last time they did it, to get a +2... but it seems strange that they'd have to redo it every time, from scratch...

Ideas?

[Haru]

How do you get to 28 shifts? That's quite a lot.

A ritual should be there to solve a one time problem, at least in my book. If you want to do a ritual like this more often, it becomes part of your character concept and should be bought with refresh. That would be your discount then.

[Sanctaphrax]

As GM, I might let them re-use some Declarations. But the thaumaturgy system assumes that each spell is a unique story, so it doesn't accommodate this sort of thing terribly well. If she wants to transform herself that way on the regular, she should probably buy a Power.

Anyway, welcome to the forum.

[Pauldk]

How do you get to 28 shifts? That's quite a lot.

Maybe I'm doing it wrong.... I thought that for large, self transformations, a Wizard had to overcome all of the possible consequences, plus 1 shift to "take them out" which would put it at 21. The extra shifts were to add duration...

I know there's a *different* way to do it in VOL 3, but my GM just uses VOLS 1&2....  and I'd love to buy a Power, but my GM is also adverse to increasing our Base Refresh... we've been playing 2/month for more than a year and we started at Refresh 7 and are just now at 8....

So I'm trying to work while a bit hobbled.

Thanks for the quick replies!!!

[Haru]

Well, taking yourself out in order to cast a spell like that would be a 5 shift thing in my book. You don't have to take a consequence if you don't want to, and I typically treat it as satisfying the catch as well, so no toughness powers to reduce the spell power either. Everything that comes after that is much more interesting, what do you use as ritual components to transform yourself?

Hmm, that is indeed not very much refresh. You're barely a full wizard. In that case, if you want to be the "wizard who regularly transforms himself", maybe going for a wereform full time would match your style more? Then again, the beast change power is only 1 refresh, you might be able to squeeze that out somewhere. You'd only be able to change, nothing more, but maybe that's already enough to do a lot of cool stuff with the new skill-list.

[Pauldk]

Well, taking yourself out in order to cast a spell like that would be a 5 shift thing in my book. You don't have to take a consequence if you don't want to, and I typically treat it as satisfying the catch as well, so no toughness powers to reduce the spell power either. Everything that comes after that is much more interesting, what do you use as ritual components to transform yourself?

Wow... a five shift spell (+duration shifts) would be awesome. I may float that at my GM

As for what to use, ritually: the character is a wizard with a medieval flavor (not unlike Harry), except heavier on the Celtic and Bardic influences. So, for ritual tools for the occasion:
1. Transformation Circle drawn with mercury.
2. Remains of an animal of that type.
3. Body Paint from Rare plants/dyes.
4. Rare Dyes Harvested at special times.
5. A Book with the names of many animals in hundreds of languages. (that's a Focus item)
6+ From there, the usual increases in terms of gathering supplies, watching stars, waiting for the perfect night, etc...

Thanks again for the reply!!

[Lonelylurker]

As GM, I might let them re-use some Declarations. But the thaumaturgy system assumes that each spell is a unique story, so it doesn't accommodate this sort of thing terribly well. If she wants to transform herself that way on the regular, she should probably buy a Power.

Anyway, welcome to the forum.

A power would be far more convenient certainly, but many thaumaturgy rituals are used over and over in the books; Harry's tracking spell, summoning Toot-Toot, Scrying through Little Chicago, etc.

[Taran]

A power would be far more convenient certainly, but may thaumaturgy rituals are used over and over in the books; Harry's tracking spell, summoning Toot-Toot, Scrying through Little Chicago, etc.

Mechanically, there's a slight difference.  Most of what you are describing are skill replacement rituals

Tracking Spell = Investigation or Survival skill replacement
Summoning Toot-Toot = Contacts skill replacement
Scrying = Investigation/contacts/alertness - probably a bunch of skills rolled into one big ritual in order gain lots of aspects/information.

Acquiring powers through rituals is different.  If you are going to turn yourself into a wolf using Thaumaturgy in one session, then GM should let you do it, given the proper prep.  If you are going to turn yourself into a wolf every session, then you should buy the powers with refresh - with thaumaturgy as the justification for said powers.

Also, welcome.

[Quantus]

Wow... a five shift spell (+duration shifts) would be awesome. I may float that at my GM

As for what to use, ritually: the character is a wizard with a medieval flavor (not unlike Harry), except heavier on the Celtic and Bardic influences. So, for ritual tools for the occasion:
1. Transformation Circle drawn with mercury.
2. Remains of an animal of that type.
3. Body Paint from Rare plants/dyes.
4. Rare Dyes Harvested at special times.
5. A Book with the names of many animals in hundreds of languages. (that's a Focus item)
6+ From there, the usual increases in terms of gathering supplies, watching stars, waiting for the perfect night, etc...

Thanks again for the reply!!

Honestly, my knee-jerk reaction would be that any bonus from rote practice would counter the fact that presumably the 2nd try isnt quite "the Perfect Night" that it was the first time.  If "The Perfect Night" happens all that often, on a daily or weekly basis, it wouldnt be rare enough to give the bonus for the initial casting, and if it's been months since then the insight gained from a single past casting would have faded by then.  After several repetitions then sure, but by then there are more permanent character mechanics to cover it.

But, with the refresh limits you are looking at, significant permanent character growth like that is going to be difficult no matter what you do (from character sheet/refresh standpoint at least).  So perhaps there is something else that changed since the first casting, or something other than casting skill/experience that can improve from the first one.  Perhaps after the first casting, you gained the True Name of the specific inhabiting animal spirit that was called (if that's the correct Transformation flavor being used here) and by adding it to the Book Focus Item it becomes cheaper the second time? Similarly, perhaps a sample of Hair/Blood/etc of the wizard in their initial transformed state can replace the "Remains of the animal of that type" component, similarly empowering the spell by its specificity.   From the DM's perspective, this might mean that your character can access a specific list of animal forms a bit more easily, but need a much more rare and complex ritual to add a new form to your repertoire, depending of course on how much of a discount they give you. 

[Lonelylurker]

Mechanically, there's a slight difference.  Most of what you are describing are skill replacement rituals

Tracking Spell = Investigation or Survival skill replacement
Summoning Toot-Toot = Contacts skill replacement
Scrying = Investigation/contacts/alertness - probably a bunch of skills rolled into one big ritual in order gain lots of aspects/information.

Acquiring powers through rituals is different.  If you are going to turn yourself into a wolf using Thaumaturgy in one session, then GM should let you do it, given the proper prep.  If you are going to turn yourself into a wolf every session, then you should buy the powers with refresh - with thaumaturgy as the justification for said powers.

Also, welcome.

If it's something that he's going to be doing routinely then he'll probably want to, but I wouldn't say he must. Though if I were GM and he was really over-using it I'd find ways to make it bite him sometimes.

As for re-using preparations, there's precedent for that too. Harry has a permanent Circle in his basement and a wide variety of components stored in his lab. Arguably that could be said to be the source fore the "lore" bonus that rituals get, but that applies anytime, not just in a characters home lab.

In this case preps #1, #2, #5 look like they should last. In game terms maybe allow an increased difficulty on the initial declaration to make appropriate preparations re-useable?

Thanks.

[Haru]

True, with recurring things, it's either "it's part of the character or city" or "it's boring".


If you look at the three examples, they are covered by who Harry is:

- Tracking spell
It's exactly what you'd expect a Wizard PI to do.

- Summoning Toot
It's exactly what you'd expect the Za-Lord to do.

- Scrying with Little Chicago
Basically just a grown up version of the tracking spell. Instead of walking the streets of Chicago like a regular PI, he uses magic, since he's a Wizard PI.

Also keep in mind that a lot of the time, these things are covered by sentences like
"After repeating the tracking spells a couple of times..."
"I worked 20 different angles on Little Chicago and got nothing."

Hell, even the spell to summon Toot-Toot isn't detailed every time like it was the first times around, because that part just isn't interesting anymore. Summoning Toot-Toot is probably more along the lines of making a phonecall for the Za-Lord in terms of effort than it is a spell like it would be for Harry before.

Also, as Taran pointed out, they are generally rather minor things that mostly bring the story along, not things that completely change a character.

[Lonelylurker]

So a ritual you do often might well fall into the "don't bother rolling unless it's interesting" category, but under any kind of time pressure it's not nearly as useful as having the effect as a power.

[ironwolf16]

you might be able to talk you gm into letting you declare a maneuver "I've done this before" t get a +2

[dragoonbuster]

you might be able to talk you gm into letting you declare a maneuver "I've done this before" t get a +2

I wouldn't ever allow that. You should be invoking aspects to get something like that through into the Complexity.