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.)
