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 ...Walking through Spell Design

I would like to take this time to walk through the how the Torg Eternity spell design looks today with examples of how current spells would appear as "on the fly" designs with explanations of the entries.

To recall, an "on the fly" spell design takes the important aspects of the spell and divides them among the four magic skills. Each one would then be put into a Dramatic Skill Resolution and played out.

When doing deliberate spell design, the process is done in a controlled setting over time, so each step would have effectively unlimited attempts at them. But what a deliberate spell design wants to do is create a new spell to add to the caster's repertoire, and what it values is balancing the amount of time spent working on the design with the final Difficulty Number of the spell. So a casting effectively repeats all the steps into one casting action, so counts as a Multi-Action on the four skills using the main skill for that spell, resulting in a +6 to the highest DN of the four. Trappings reduce this Difficulty Number, and I'm still working on how to factor the remaining adjustments needed to get the spells we have, probably through the Perk system.

Dancing Sword

Divination and Spell Pattern: The spell pattern is based on which of the Ayslish specialty lists it primarily falls into. For published spells, anything designed in Aysle or do not involve technology outside Aysle's Axioms are already put into one or more specialty lists. In cases where it's on multiple specialty lists, the one with this highest base DN applies. Here, this spell is only on the Elemental list, so this translates to a DN of 10.

The governing skill of a dancing sword is apportation. Searching the spell patterns requires bypassing the divination spells to get to the apportation spells. requiring a Multi-Target modifier of 2.

Step A: Divination 12

Conjuration and Spell Power: This involves determining the base effect value of the spe4l, together with any considerations for if this affects an area or a single target. Here, the spell deals a defined Damage Value (with the traditional bonuses for Good and Outstanding success), so we have a good candidate for effect value at 12. The spell only affects one sword, so there is no modifier needed for Area Effect.

Step B: Conjuration 12

Alteration and Duration/Focused/Ward: A duration value of "Instant" is effectively "one round". So anything with that as a duration has a DN of 10 (Stamdard). This is 5 higher than the Torg Value of 10 seconds (5) which represents one round. So longer durations take the Torg Value associated with that duration and add 5 to get a comparable Difficulty Number. 

In this case, the duration is Concentration. Concentration is considered equivalent to 10 minutes, which has a time value of 14, so when we add the 5 to that we get 19. (When we get to Trappings, we will take the fact of Concentration not being fixed into account.)

Is this spell focused? I would say no. The idea is the sword must stay within 50 meters of the caster, so there is no need to put the magic into the sword itself. Also this spell is not a ward that is waiting to trigger, so no modifier there.

Step C: Alteration 19

Apportation and Range/Speed: Range is easily determined in this case: 50 meters has a value of 8. An equivalent value for speed, however would only reach the end of the range one round after the spell is cast, which is normally too slow. So the speed gets 5 added to the value to allow it to reach the end of the range after one second. So another 13 (8 + 5) gets added for Range, making a total of 21. 

Step D: Apportation 21

Trappings: When it comes to trappings, these stand out as being worthy of potential inclusion:

  • The spell can only be cast on a one-handed melee weapon.
  • The spell can end due to lack of Concentration.
  • The spell cannot transfer control of the weapon to another person.

The first one has an element of Exclusion: the spell can't be used on non-weapon things you might want to move around and can't handle missile weapons or larger weapons that require two hands. But in another sense, it crosses the knowledge boundaries. The name of the spell suggests that it would be metal, but it can be used on small clubs (plant) and stone hammers (earth). So for our purposes, we will assume they balance out.

Concentration is a definite trapping. I am assuming a -5 for this, as well as the effective Self restriction of the third bullet point. 

How Trappings Apply

In terms of "on the fly" design, the thinking so far is to assign the Concentration to the alteration test and the Self to the apportation 

When it comes to designing for a spell for which a Perk is being spent, the Difficulty of the spell should be the highest total with a +6 for Multi-Target. Trappings would apply to this total. This would give our dancing sword spell a current DN of 17 ( 21 + 6 - 5 - 5), leaving only 7 points of Difficulty to be dealt with through Design Perks. 



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