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The Dresden Files => DFRPG => Topic started by: Fandraen on August 04, 2010, 02:47:21 PM
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It mentions several times in the fluff text of the Magic section that Thaumaturgy is slow, with even the fastest spells taking a minute or so. But when you actually look at the rules, the slowest part of Thaum (preparation) can be skipped if you're doing a reasonably simple spell and you have a high lore; then there's some number of exchanges to build up power. Which looks on the face of it like a character doing a really simple spell-- like, oh, pretty much any maneuver to add a temporary aspect to a scene, at difficulty 3, when done by a carefully built Submerged wizard-- might well be able to get it off in one exchange of power-building.
There isn't any kind of reliable time-to-exchange converter: a single exchange in a social conflict is liable to be far more than a minute, while a single exchange in a gunfight is likely to be far less.
So, given that, what does it really mean for Thaum to be slow compared to Evocation? I have a player who *really* wants to play a useful-in-conflict-time Thaumaturgist, but I also want his character to have a reason to fall back to his less-favored Evocation skills in some circumstances.
Things I've considered:
1) Yes, very simple Thaum spells really are as fast as arbitrarily complicated evocations; however, Thaum also always has the symbolic link restriction, so you're going to need to do some prep-work if you want to be applying even temporary aspects directly to an enemy. Use Evocation not necessarily for speed, but for lashing out at/defending against something you don't have any links to.
2) Thaum always takes some minimal number of rounds; even if you're skipping the serious prep phase, gathering your mind to prepare to cast the spell always
takes one round. (This seems clumsy, especially since it's nothing but a speed bump; there's not even a Lore role involved.)
3) Thaum spells can be cast in one exchange, but their effects are not instantaneous. The player only needs to spend one exchange creating and powering the spell, but whether the effect settles in on the next round or in a few rounds will depend on the GM's estimation of the speed of the conflict. (This seems like it would cause GM headaches, as well as reducing the coolness factor.)
4) As 1, but performing a Thaum ritual with no prep in a high-stress situation-- which will be most conflicts, but not necessarily all-- adds to the complexity. This departs a little bit from the book (after all, you're already making Discipline rolls to control the power) but encourages the player to go ahead and spend a round or two on maneuvers to create a more optimal spellcasting environment, thereby effectively slowing Thaum down without actually changing the power-building or spell-prep mechanic.
Anyone else have any insights, or suggestions as to which of these might work best in play?
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From the way I interpret it, Thaumaturgy can never work at the speed of evocation without sponsored magic. 15 minutes of casting time for simple things that can be done without preparation makes it prohibitively difficult to use in combat. If you are letting Thaumaturgy get used in a physical conflict at speeds of evocation, you are negating the very important power balance of evocation giving mental stress.
If a thaumaturgy focused character wants to be effective in combat, he will have to take a different route to that effectiveness. He will have to prepare for the conflicts ahead of time, performing the rituals he thinks will be useful for upcoming fights, and activate the effects of those rituals when the fight starts. If he isn't prepared for a specific fight ahead of time, he will have to fall back on enchanted items or evocation or another method of survival. The price paid for the perfect versatility that thaumaturgy gives characters is that it can never be used impromptu.
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I wouldn't let Thaumaturgy be used at Evocation speed without Sponsored Magic, otherwise that infringes on the benefits of Sponsored Magic.
Thaumaturgy needs at least a minute to set up, and needs a sympathetic connection to boot, so that's not really possible in combat exchanges.
What I would allow, though, is for someone to use their Lore to make Maneuvers using Thaumaturgical principles. Roll Lore to set up a Closed Circle that you can tag when casting a Block with Evocation. Roll Lore to declare that you have something with a Sympathetic Connection to an opponent that you can tag to cast an Evocation Attack or Maneuver against them.
Otherwise, using Thaumaturgy for combat means making Enchanted Items or Potions.
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Exchange 1: Build a magic circle, runic word or other symbol of power to begin the ritual.
Exchange 2: Decide on and build the spell-construct (essentially the effect of the spell). This takes only 1 exchange if the complexity is within your modified Lore and you don't need preparation. (i.e. if you have Lore 5, a +5 focus item and a +1 specialization, you can do any complexity of 11 or less as a singe exchange)
Exchange 3+: Cast the spell. You do this by summoning enough power to fuel the spell-construct, using conviction and discipline. Do note however that neither evocation focuses nor thaumaturgy complexity focuses can help with summoning and controlling this power. If your conviction is 4 and your discipline 5, you need at least 3 exchanges to call enough power for a complexity 3 ritual. In this step you also need to provide a sympathetic link of some sort.
So, minimum time of a complexity 11 ritual: 5 exchanges. Minimum time for a complexity 5-8 ritual: 4 exchanges. Minimum time for a complexity 1-4 ritual: 3 exchanges. That's for a submerged, ritualist wizard.
A similarly focused evoker can do an effect of similar power in only one exchange, at 1/3 to 1/5 the time.
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Remember that lore is not 'without' prep, it is without extra prep. You may be fishing lint out of your pockets, turning to face north by northwest (for a very Hitchcock style spell), doing some mental warmup exercises, or just talking though your simple little spell, explaining to your buddy the cop how it works as you cast. It takes a moment of non-combat time.
I would let you spend refinement on can cast specific specialty in combat time. The Merlin can Combat Ward for example.
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But when you actually look at the rules, the slowest part of Thaum (preparation) can be skipped...
This is an unfortunately common misconception - and the answer is, no, you can't. It can be skipped in out of character terms, yes; you can assume that whatever esoteric ingredients you need are available at your lab. But there is nothing in the rules to imply that you can get away with skipping that preparation *in* character. Now, in some cases, you may be able to pull off a tracking spell with a piece of chalk and some string - but it's still going to take time to set up. There are a couple of specific page references - YS261, for example, has a passing reference to minimum thaumaturgy cast time; there's another one on YS275 under the heading of "Can I conjure a sword?"
If you want a book-legal way to do combat speed thaumaturgy, I suggest looking into sponsored magic; an appropriate choice here (maybe rune-magic from Odin?) might allow some decent options for thaumaturgy with the speed and methods of evocation.
Otherwise, you need a house-rule.
For example, you might rule that, before you can cast, you have to prepare the spell, using one or more maneuvers to put spell preparation aspects into play - things like "a circle drawn in chalk" or "ritual foci arranged just so" or whatever. How many of these you need before you can start casting would be up to the GM; a conservative option would be needing one such aspect in place for every two points of complexity; I might allow one per three or four points, though, subject to the qualifier "This is a probably unbalanced house-rule and I reserve the right to change it if it doesn't work out in play."
By contrast, in a long-running social conflict where each exchange is several minutes, you might be able to get by with just one preparation aspect for any ritual up to equal to your lore (or, well, equal to your lore + any bonuses you're getting from spending fate points to invoke existing aspects or from taking consequences.)
These preparation aspects would also tend to be fairly fragile; a circle drawn in chalk can be rendered useless by a guy just happening to step over it, nevermind one deliberately trying to mess up whatever you're doing.
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The Merlin can Combat Ward for example.
Maybe. Or maybe those were just really good Blocks. Or maybe the headquarters of the White Council sit on a Ley Line (useful dontcha think?) and he's using Sponsored Magic by tapping into that.
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Or maybe the Merlin wasn't in the thick of battle, and cast the ward from behind the front lines using normal thaumaturgy procedures.
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Or maybe the Merlin, like some High-Council wizards, has some sort of power tied to his specialty beyond vanilla magic. The Blackstaff has a very serious item of power. Listens-to-Wind has serious shapeshifting abilities. The Gatekeeper has some level of seeing the future, perhaps even Chronomancy. Ancient Mai can create serious constructs.
Why not some special Warding Magic for the Merlin that works like Sponsored Magic for wards?
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Or maybe the Merlin, like some High-Council wizards, has some sort of power tied to his specialty beyond vanilla magic. The Blackstaff has a very serious item of power. Listens-to-Wind has serious shapeshifting abilities. The Gatekeeper has some level of seeing the future, perhaps even Chronomancy. Ancient Mai can create serious constructs.
Why not some special Warding Magic for the Merlin that works like Sponsored Magic for wards?
Possible, though the Gatekeeper would need to have a similar ability as well since the Merlin and Gatekeeper cast the Ward together. Either way, it ends up working out to the Merlin & Gatekeeper either not being in actual combat when casting the Ward, or both having some form of Sponsored Magic which supported and allowed it.
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See YS 288 Side Bar, "With Evocation's Methods and Speed".
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If you wanted to do something then i would suggest using the time scale. If you assume the simplest ritual prep takes "15 minutes" then 4 shifts would reduce that to "a few moments".
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If you wanted to do something then i would suggest using the time scale. If you assume the simplest ritual prep takes "15 minutes" then 4 shifts would reduce that to "a few moments".
I had assumed that this is the way you make Thaumaturgy faster. Is this incorrect? Also, I figure that if you prepare a bunch of the stuff in advance (like attaching the circle and materials to cloth, and then unfolding the cloth in combat, rather than drawing it on the ground), you could fire off spells that way.
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As far as I have seen in the books you don't actually need anything other than your mind to cast any thaum. You'd have to be crazy or desperate to try and pull it off without it but you could (and Harry actually does) do the entire ritual in your mind, chances are it goes horribly wrong and you fail though since you lack all of the material aids that make it easier to pull off.
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Interesting question about Thaumaturgy: Can you reuse the components of a ritual again for another ritual? For instance, could you have, some piece of equipment for example, that has all the ritual components built into it and thus all you would need to do would be to channel energy into the spell? For instance, lets say a character wants to build a knife that when it cuts an enemy, it collects some of the enemy's blood and built into it ritual components necessary for some kind of harmful spell that you could channel through the knife. I think this could be a pretty cool application of Thaumaturgy.
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I'm sure you can find some justification to allow Thaumaturgy to be done fast enough for combat, but I still wouldn't recommend it for any GM out there. It blurs the line between Thaumaturgy and Evocation and Sponsored Magic in a way that I don't think is good for the game. Someone who has created their character to be good at Evocation might not like being outdone by someone who made their character a good Thaumaturgist, and what would be the benefit of taking Sponsored Magic, if Thaumaturgy can be almost as good just on its own?
You want to let each character shine at the thing they're good at, give everyone some screen time. This means separating out what different characters are proficient at. This is why the game system has Skill levels and why powers cost Refresh in the first place.
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The Merlin can Combat Ward for example.
Also you have to remember that this is the Merlin the most powerful wizard alive he gets to do all sorts of borderline plot device things
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As a GM I probably wouldn't let this happen in my game w/o some kind of sponsored magic or a consequence fitting what they're trying to pull off but even with the sponsor and/or the consequence I'd severely limit how far they could go with an on the spot thaum spell
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As far as I have seen in the books you don't actually need anything other than your mind to cast any thaum. You'd have to be crazy or desperate to try and pull it off without it but you could (and Harry actually does) do the entire ritual in your mind, chances are it goes horribly wrong and you fail though since you lack all of the material aids that make it easier to pull off.
yep, but we should add: and when harry did it in he still needed several minutes to an quarter of an hour to do it.
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"Sponsored magic" is probably the best and simplest way to handle it.
Remember, Kemmlerian Necromancy is considered Sponsored Magic, yet it's really nothing more than a specific type of knowledge/training.
So, a simple -2 refresh for some bonuses to a type of Thaumaturgy + at the speed of Evocation. Seems easy enough to me.
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Still reading the relevant chapter. Two things I notice though... The White Council's headquarters at Edinburgh is a nexus of ley lines. So if using that is Sponsored Magic then it looks like the simplest explanation. Also, the example with a dagger for gathering blood wouldn't work out so hot in practice. It sounds fine on paper but you'd have to get a pretty horrific stab wound on someone and let the dagger sit in there for a few seconds at least to be sure it was filled with blood. A slash wouldn't really do it because you'd be as likely to have centripetal force fling the blood off of the blade as not. Assuming you can bury a dagger in someone's guts and let it soak for a few seconds, you have to then retrieve it and go through all the mental exercises which sound like they make you utterly out of touch with combat. Which is not only dangerous but it's hard to ignore, probably making the task more difficult. And you wouldn't have a circle to keep out any unpleasant influences. The mat idea has similar problems.
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In the end how it works is already defined (See my previous post). Its up to GM to call it as they see it. Cannon has examples of it being done. If you as GM think its bad news, then its bad news. But i'd be sure you have good answer when player start asking questions.
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ahunting: The thing is, it's not already defined. That sidebar covers a particular effect of *sponsored magic*. Among other things, it allows you to cast in one round, but also *requires* you to cast in one round, and on targets in line of sight. It's very clearly thaumaturgy *with evocation methods and speeds*-- and constraints--, not just what thaumaturgy looks like if you're a master of ritual.
The question is, what breaks (if anything) if the "you can skip preparation for spells with complexity below your lore" rule is interpreted to be "preparation takes no time/happens offscreen because you're a boy scout and always prepared, and only casting time counts". So, a maneuver-only spell of complexity 3 would probably only be one round, but a thaumaturgist could also spend several rounds casting in the usual way for a spell of much higher complexity (say, 14).
Pros and cons relative to other powers I can see:
- An evocator is building up stress much faster than the thaumaturgist (evocation requires one stress per spell when building power; thaum doesn't, advantage to thaum)
- An evocator can use rote spells for zero risk casting (this is one advantage to the sponsored magic approach as well)
- A failed thaum spell is likely to hurt more/cause more problems than evocation (advantage to evocation and sponsored magic)
- A thaumaturgist can spend several rounds to build up to more powerful spells (I think this is advantage thaum; larger spells are higher-risk, though. Evocators and sponsored magic users can create maneuvers that can be tagged for Conviction and Discipline rolls for higher-powered spells, but that's an effective +2/round, versus an expected +min[Conviction, Discipline]/round; for a wizard, the latter seems likely to be higher.)
- A thaumaturgist/sponsored magician can create arbitrary effects, not just unsubtle/high force effects like Evocation (advantage thaum/sponsored)
- A thaumaturgist is not limited to line of sight, although unlike an evocator/sponsored magician he needs a symbolic link to target (....wash?)
- A thaumaturgist doesn't get to buy a power bonus, just a control bonus; complexity is going to be a ceiling for the power of the spell, but doesn't actually contribute to raising that power quickly. (Slight bonus Evocation/sponsored magic.)
- An evocator was not required to have a high lore in order to create powerful spells in combat, thus potentially saving skill points for better Conviction/Discipline (Slight bonus evocation, maybe; two relevant skills instead of three, but we're currently just looking at combat casting and the world is more complicated than that.)
- A thaumaturgist preparing an enhanced evocation effect (like a ward) can add complexity to enhance duration; an evocator has to channel power each round. Given a one-complexity-shift-per-duration-increase
- A thaumaturgist's one shift bump in spell duration for enhanced evocation is, as written, longer than an evocator's. Even assuming it is scaled back to match evocation (one shift per additional exchange) a thaumaturgist can spend one extra round to gain an expected min(Conviction,Discipline) additional rounds of effect. The evocator can do the same under the Prolonging Spells rules, but it costs stress. Then again, that extra turn for evocation won't cause the spell to explode with more power if you fail the roll, unlike thaum. (Wash?)
Outside of combat, the high-lore character is spending more exchanges building power, while the low-lore high-discipline/conviction character is spending scenes of preparation/exchanges of maneuvers to create taggable aspects.
This seems to boil down to "Evocation is much safer, but is guaranteed to wear you down"; "Thaumaturgy is very flexible, you can do it all day, and it will usually get you completely awesome effects, but will occasionally blow up in your face and cause massive damage". Sponsored magic gets you the safety of evocation and the flexibility of thaumaturgy, but constrains you to less totally awesome effects than straight thaumaturgy. (You only get one round to build power, and there's probably a limit to how much power you can gain from going into debt.) That seems to make the thaum-with-evocation-speed-and-methods power useful but not in and of itself worth 2 refresh; you're also probably getting some power boost, but it's probably a wash or even a little weaker than a point of refinement. (Kemmerlites, for example, get the equivalent of a Refinement in necromancy, although it doesn't appear to follow the usual specialization-stacking requirements; Summer, however, doesn't.) Then again, is the added flexibility and potential power of thaumaturgy in combat worth 1-2 refresh in general? (i.e, is sponsored magic from, say, the fae actually worth the cost for a wizard? Discounting the "ooh, fun plot" factor; I don't think we generally assume that plot should cost refresh.)
Has anyone run a long enough campaign with wizards in it to get a sense of how big an advantage the lack of stress from Thaumaturgy (vs Evocation) would be?
Do conflicts normally resolve in four exchanges or less, or are they longer? And if you're going to chime in with data, please talk a little about the number of players and character strength.
(Alternately, if any of the gamewriters want to chime in with a "No, thaumaturgy ought to take some minimum number of exchanges, and here's how many and why", I'd love to hear it.)
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Consider that the basic effect of most thaumaturgy spells is stronger than the equivalently powered version of the evocation spell. Thaumaturgic wards can block and reflect for the same cost it takes evocation to block, and thaumaturgy can veil entire buildings for the same cost evocation can veil a single person. There are many more cases where thaumaturgy is just flat out stronger than evocation, and letting a player use those at evocation speeds, without costing refresh, just breaks stuff.
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Consider that the basic effect of most thaumaturgy spells is stronger than the equivalently powered version of the evocation spell. Thaumaturgic wards can block and reflect for the same cost it takes evocation to block, and thaumaturgy can veil entire buildings for the same cost evocation can veil a single person. There are many more cases where thaumaturgy is just flat out stronger than evocation, and letting a player use those at evocation speeds, without costing refresh, just breaks stuff.
Why would it cost the same to block and reflect with thaum as it would to block in evocation? You still have to beat a target value don't you?
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Why would it cost the same to block and reflect with thaum as it would to block in evocation? You still have to beat a target value don't you?
A 5 shift ward blocks at strength 5, reflects damage if the attacker rolls under that strength, does not disappear if the attacker beats it (unless he uses his attack to reduce the power of the ward), and lasts an entire day. A 5 shift evocation block can block at strength 5 for one exchange, goes away if beaten, and does not reflect attacks that don't beat it.
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Thank you, makes sense now.
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Also you have to remember that this is the Merlin the most powerful wizard alive he gets to do all sorts of borderline plot device things
I figure the impressive things you see senior council folk do make good things to aspire to. Combat warding sounds much saner to me then combat shape-shifting, or soul magic (4+ and 3+ refresh respectively).
That said, we have have been seeing him tossing around +8 or +9 evocation blocks around on screen...
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Not just 8-9 evocation blocks. We've seen him holding a fiend made out of Mordite and prevent it from attacking the rest of the wizards. That's seriously powerful magic.
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For that matter, how do you work portals to the Nevernever? Characters seem to be open the Ways quickly and without any real prep but they are still Thaumaturgy.
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Portals need no sympathetic link since you are not targeting a creature or object. Also, opening a Portal is a number of shifts equal to the difficulty of the barrier - superb in most cases but where the barrier is thin, it can be considerably less.
So, in a thin enough place, the difficulty is less to or equal than most wizards' Lore. Therefore, initiate the casting by focusing or speaking and gesturing instead of the usual circle (takes the same time and flavor-wise fits better) then in the next exchange simply gather the power and open the way.
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I just the part in SK where during the battle above chicago there is a group of sidhe cavalry charging at Harry and crew and the knights actually create wards right there on the spot within what amounts to a few seconds :o
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I just the part in SK where during the battle above chicago there is a group of sidhe cavalry charging at Harry and crew and the knights actually create wards right there on the spot within what amounts to a few seconds :o
Umm ... wouldn't that just be an Evocation Spirit Block using pure force?
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Possibly. It could've also been sponsored magic. Six of one, half dozen of the other.
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Or maybe the Merlin, like some High-Council wizards, has some sort of power tied to his specialty beyond vanilla magic. The Blackstaff has a very serious item of power. Listens-to-Wind has serious shapeshifting abilities. The Gatekeeper has some level of seeing the future, perhaps even Chronomancy. Ancient Mai can create serious constructs.
Why not some special Warding Magic for the Merlin that works like Sponsored Magic for wards?
Why not say that the different wizards on the high council do have a sponsored magic in place by right of their positions? The position of Merlin is enhanced by the number of wizards under him like, or the Blackstaff can tap into all of the talents of the Wardens. Just a scary and interesting thought...
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Umm ... wouldn't that just be an Evocation Spirit Block using pure force?
Probably more like a Counterspell-Block.
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So, given a very high Lore character (Superb, plus several points of Complexity focus bonus), and given that maneuvers can create free taggable aspects (like "There's a suitable circle here", "the enemy is distracted"), and given that we don't have any kind of time-to-exchange conversion: Where do you say "No, you cannot cast now, it's too fast?" I can't just say "not in conflict", because as my player has pointed out, the Lincoln-Douglas debates (social conflict) would have provided *plenty* of time to cast moderately complex spells, let alone really simple ones. And there *is* no "this is a social conflict so it's slow, while this here is a physical conflict so it's fast" division in the Dresden Files.
I can stat up a Thaumaturgist who can toss off complexity four rituals trivially (so, a sticky maneuver a round) and who is likely to take no stress from it most of the time; she'll need to take a minor consequence very occaisionally, when her control role fails. Then again.... maneuvers are maneuvers, any skill should let you do them. The thaumaturgist *can't* be the attack monster the Evocator is, because Evocation's discipline roll counts as the attack roll while the spell strength counts for the weapon; it's effectively twice as powerful as the thaumaturgist's attack. The Thaumaturgist can do much more complex rituals (9-15) in combat time with a bunch of free tags from maneuvers, but then the magician or the party is spending a non-trivial number of in-conflict exchanges setting up for the spell (whether officially spell prep, or used for control and/or paying off for things like transformation effects); but that actually seems pretty cool, and encourages the wizard to enlist the group's cooperation instead of stealing the show solo. (Running around sticking candles in appropriate places while yelling for the party to keep the enemies off of your back while you concentrate seems to fit nicely into this universe.)
So... is there really a problem that results from taking the "you can start casting as soon as you have enough lore + taggable aspects to finish spell prep" literally, and handwaving the exact time?