Friday, November 06, 2009

Proposal draft: Spellcasting

Add a new Rule to the Ruleset.  Call it “Spellcasting” and give it the following text:

There are a number of Spells, listed in this Rule’s subrules.  Each Spell has one or more Activation Sequences, each of which is a Rune sequence containing one or more Vowels and no Damaged Runes.  Each Spell also has an Effect. 

Any Apprentice whose Workbench contains a Spell’s Activation Sequence may Cast that Spell.  Upon doing so, he must select a subsequence of his Workbench with a Value that is the Activation Sequence, change the last Rune in the selected subsequence to a Damaged Rune, then perform the Spell’s Effect.

No two Spells may have the same Activation Sequence.  A spell cannot be Cast if its Effect cannot be performed.

Since this is likely the most important proposal of the dynasty, I’d like feedback on it before I propose it.

The Spells will probably all be listed in the same subrule.

posted by Bucky at 06 Nov 2009 05:56:17 UTC Comments (4)

Comments

arthexis: he/him

06-11-2009 07:41:04 UTC

This was more or less what I was thinking about. What about letting players change any rune into a damaged one, not just the last one?

Hix:

06-11-2009 14:52:31 UTC

This is what my SAP and SORT do, but it’s more restrictive.  This one says that every spell has to work the same way (Spell out a Runeword as a subsequence, and the last rune breaks just before you use it).  But that would effectively discourage other creative ways of making spells.

*a very minor effect that doesn’t destroy its own Runeword when used
*a “Runeword” that is allowed to appear out-of-order (Such as the way “TRAP” appears scrambled in “XOPARTSXS”)
*Rune breakage _after_ the spell’s effect

Kevan: he/him

06-11-2009 14:57:55 UTC

Those could easily be exceptions, as part of the individual spell’s rule. It’s good to have a baseline, rather than defining the same thing over and over again.

Bucky:

06-11-2009 18:02:04 UTC

“*a very minor effect that doesn’t destroy its own Runeword when used”

I have other plans for this type of effect, namely sequences that have some continuous effect while they are on your workbench.