[Torg] Another round of magic questions

[Kansas Jim]

Jerry S Fisk wrote:

> Lets take my TK mage again with a group of SKs breaks into a gang 
> hideout and founds a treasure trove of items.  Two of the items happen 
> to be a grimorie book or maybe a chip that has the spell "Freeze Time" 
> within it.  Another treasure is an arcane knowledge chip that contains 
> "Time +5."  Freeze Time would be a good spell for our hero to learn.  
> However he does not possess any ranks in the arcane knowledge of Time.  
> So with an alteration skill of 17 and the chip with the arcane knowledge 
> of Time +5 our mage would have the prerequisite of Alteration/Time 22 to 
> learn the spell.  And since all you need is the magic skill of 
> Alteration to cast the spell our hero would then be able to cast the 
> spell.  :)

I want to say that there was an official WEG answer to a similar
question but again I can't track anything down.

But there is one hitch to your example, the skill requirement on a
spell applies to casting as well as learning, you can't cast a spell
if you don't have the associated AK even if you have learned the
spell - mental damage causes you to lose the ability to use AKs and
that keeps you from casting spells of that AK.

But we can get around that by simply saying that he keeps the AK
chip slotted, so the question is if he can then learn the spell with
that setup. What I'm remembering is that the answer is no, you
can't use an AK chip to learn spells. But again, I can't track
down where that may have been said.

Though it should be noted the writeup of AK chips in the Tharkold
SB specifically says that you cannot use an AK chips to design a
spell, if you're unable to envision new patterns perhaps you also
are unable to learn established ones? But then on the same page it
contradicts this restriction by saying that "any combination of
natural knowledge and technomagical enhancement is allowed" so
who knows. Being internally inconsistent is what Tharkold is all
about after all. ;)

-- 
Kansas Jim, Torg guru (ksjim (at) sdc (dot) org)
Torg website: http://www.sdc.org/~ksjim/index.html