"As long as it takes."

Fate is a narrative game, so time is a bit more fluid than in most other games. One exchange is the time it takes for everyone in a conflict to do one action. Whatever that action might be. Including gathering power for a spell.

If it's a fairly minor spell, that works quite well. But then again, a lot of the time when you are in a conflict, you don't need a minor spell. You need the big guns. And to power those in time, you need to take a risk.

Keep in mind that the control 5 thing for 1 shift of power is there to put the risk of fallout to 0, because you can't roll worse than -4, so 5-4 is still able to control that 1 shift. Usually, you want to do things faster than that, so you take a risk. Usually, a fairly mild one, though.

The more important question would be: does the spell fit into the scene? If it's a minor thing that you can just take your time with or do the next day or whatever, it doesn't need to be in the scene. You just deal with the opposition and try again, unopposed and probably even without a roll, since it isn't interesting if you can do the spell then.
Then the spell could be so big, that your group thinks it would take far too long to do it in a conflict, even if the number of shifts would fit. Maybe the spell is too delicate to do with that much distraction. Maybe the vibe of a conflict would disturb the spell. In that case, casting it in a conflict wouldn't make much sense either.

The thing is that preparation basically isn't possible during a conflict. It usually takes far longer than your average conflict to set up a decent thaumaturgic spell. However, if you've got everything you need, you can throw up a quick ward or whatever you might want to do. The idea is that you've prepared the spell to defeat the bad guys and then the bad guys show up and now you're in a hurry to cast the spell, before they can overwhelm you. And that's when powering up per exchange comes into play.

Ah... okay, thanks!! I get it a bit better now. It's not exactly the case that you're assuming (because, i think, it's actually the GM that's doing things a bit strangely...)

I'm often told that, even after prep is complete a spell would "take too long to do in a day" to just do the exchanges to get the spell cast, because the spell was so complex (like 24 shifts). I think that's just... (wrong?) so I think that my confusion is lessening.

Thanks for the info!!!!

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!!

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?