[Torg] Announcement: Compleat Magick

[Dominick Riesland]

Dominick Riesland, aka Rabbitball
Speaker, 5-Color Rules Committee
Creator of the Cosmversal Grimoire
"There are always possibilities, my sergeant told me. But he never had
his possibilities torn away like wings from a fly."


2008/7/2 Phil Dack <philipdack at yahoo.co.uk>:
> Dont know how it might change the state path, but a mechanism of True
> Knowledge would presumably allow the message to travel instantaneously, as
> if teleported, meaning that speed would become an irrelevant factor? The
> message is impressed in the ward, then when the spell triggers it alters the
> TK of the message meaning it reappears in the desired location. The 40
> second delay might then be put down to a 40 second pause before the message
> itself was recorded (*whispers to his wizard colleague* "Is this switched on
> yet? What? It's already running? But I'm not ready....")
> A ward always has a divination element, but doesnt mean it's a divination
> spell. Can't remember the details, but if the effect of the ward is to
> deliver a message, its the delivery of the message which defines the spell -
> perhaps Apportation/Inanimate Forces (sound) - which has a Divination/Folk
> ward element? However, I'll confess, although I once felt I was nearing guru
> status as far as the magic system is concerned, that was many years ago now
> and I'm very rusty!!

This spell is a Pre-Aysle spell, meaning it was published before the
Aysle Sourcebook came out. As a result, it anticipated elements that I
assume were scheduled for inclusion in Aysle and never made it, or
failed to account for things placed in after the fact. In this case,
it's probably the latter, as the spell was designed with speed being 3
lower than range, which results in the spell covering 1/4 the base
range in a round. Four rounds later, the spell would reach full range
and then take effect.

It was likely assumed that this 40-second delay would continue no
matter what the range was, but that ran into problems with spells like
Pathfinder, where the spell clearly does not change speed just because
the range is different. But changing the speed of a spell is a
positive effect, which cannot happen unless willed by the caster. As
of now, we have no way to do this. Given the story context of the
spell, it makes more sense to assume the designer didn't understand
the process fully and got a spell that doesn't work as expected than
it would be to assume that the spell was made to work as described
using a process that has yet to be defined (although it may be so
defined in Compleat Magick).

Could this be avoided using True Knowledge as a mechanism? It would be
possible to define this as a special effect of that arcane knowledge,
and I would consider making a new version of this spell that took
advantage of such a definition. But according to the rules as they
stand now, such an effect is not possible. Part of the Primary Rule of
Magic is that a spell cannot have any positive effect beyond what is
willed by the caster, and that will must include both the range of the
spell and the speed by which the caster's will can extend to affect
that range. The problem isn't the arcane knowledge; True Knowledge can
affect anything or anyone at any place and at any time, but the will
of the caster as defined by the spell pattern can't reach that far
that fast.

As for the pattern, the spell can be made with divination magic
because divination is the skill for sending or receiving information.
It can use folk as the pattern knowledge by defining the effect as
only conveying information from folk (appearance and voice).