Behind the Curtain: Practical Spell Design · 4:40pm Nov 26th, 2017
Spoiler alert for chapter 160 – Breakthrough and Breakdown.
I’ve mentioned previously that, in writing Lateral Movement, I’ve relied upon the d20 System rules – the game engine which Pathfinder, Ponyfinder, Eclipse: The Codex Persona, and The Practical Enchanter (to name the four largest influences upon this story) are all built upon – to determine the “how” of things. By utilizing these resources, I can make use of a robust framework that clearly determines the scope and effect of spells, character abilities, monsters’ powers, and numerous other details that I would otherwise need to invent on my own. Naturally, this makes maintaining the story’s internal logic, and the self-consistency that derives from that, much easier.
But while that sounds good, it’s also rather abstract. Given that, I thought it might be fun to give everypony a glimpse at the sort of thing that I utilize the game rules for when deciding how the story will proceed. In this case, we’ll take a look at chapter 160, where Lex reveals that he’s developed a new spell in order to heighten his physical endurance and so channel greater amounts of magical amplification through his spells. So, here’s how he did it:
Lex Legis has decided to create spell that grants him a temporary increase to his Constitution score. Since he has – as per his stat block – the Glory modifier (Eclipse, p. 60) for his Amplify metamagic theorem (Eclipse, p. 56), he can add (Con modifier) levels of Amplification metamagic onto a spell, without increase the spell’s level, up to (Con modifier) times per day. Ergo, a boost to his Constitution score, even temporarily, will let him increase the frequency and power of those Amplifications.
Since he heard about the bear’s endurance spell – which grants a +4 bonus to Constitution for up to 1 minute per caster level – while on Everglow, saw it used by the green dragon Moss during their fight, and received a modest boost (+2) to his Constitution from the transformation spell he used when fighting Lirtkra, Monitor, and the Cripple/Aria before, he’s going to try and recreate that effect from scratch. Although he initially dabbled with the idea for a few hours during the ocean voyage to Vanhoover, he doesn’t start trying to create the spell in earnest until the aftermath of the battle with Tlerekithres.
Lex is actually creating a slightly stronger variant of the standard bear’s endurance spell, here. That’s because the bonus which that spell grants is an enhancement bonus, and Lex already has a permanent +2 enhancement bonus to his Constitution (see the Innate Enchantments under his “Fruits of Lesser Experiments” suite in his stat block). Since bonuses of the same type don’t stack with each other (barring one or two exceptions), that’s why he only received a further +2 bonus to his Constitution from transformation. Since he wants to make a spell that will grant him that same +4 increase that other characters receive, he’s actually researching a variation of the bull’s strength spell that grants a +6 enhancement bonus. According to The Practical Enchanter (p. 17), that’s a 3rd-level spell.
Since the Pathfinder rules regarding how a character designs a spell are extremely vague (something Pathfinder apparently did by design), we’re going to use the rules in The Practical Enchanter, found on pages 116-118.
Lex has four days of downtime in which to invent his new spell. During this time, he’s also trying to figure out how to cure the four ponies affected by the aboleth’s slime ability, realizing that he can use remove disease at the end of the second day and curing one pony then. He cures another pony each morning on the third and fourth days. At the beginning of the fifth day he cures the last pony, but will have no further time for research, since he subsequently meets Fencer and her gang, starting the next leg of his adventure.
The d20 rules are quite consistent that 8 hours represents the most work that can be accomplished in a given day; after that, no meaningful work can be accomplished due to stress, taking meals, and tending to other mundane tasks. Given that Lex will be spending those first two days trying to figure out how to cure the afflicted ponies, that would seem to leave him with only two days – that is, 16 hours – in which to invent his spell. This, however, is where we throw a monkey wrench in the works.
Said wrench is that all characters in Lateral Movement (not just Lex) are able to use the Multitasking and Time Management rules, which allow for characters who meet certain stat prerequisites to accomplish more work in a single day. In Lex’s case, he can’t use the second, third, or fourth rules listed on that page…but he is able to make use of the first one (“Work Smarter, Not Harder”). In his case, this means that he can accomplish 2.3 times the normal amount of work in a given day, so long as the work isn’t a simple physical task. Since spell design isn’t such an activity, Lex can therefore accomplish 18.4 hours’ worth of work in a given day. That gives him 73.6 hours to work with over those four days.
Since Lex is able to accomplish so much additional work in a given day, but is more concerned with helping the afflicted ponies recover, he’ll devote the bulk of his free time for the first two days toward figuring out how to help them. So 10.4 work hours each day for those first two days is expended. That leaves him with 52.8 hours in total to put towards creating his new spell.
Now ready to create his new spell, Lex takes stock of what he has to work with. According to The Practical Enchanter, attempting to create a spell requires 2d4+2 days per spell level (remember, one day equals 8 hours of work), costs [(2d4+5) x 15] gold pieces per day, and at the end requires a Spellcraft check whose DC (that is, the target number to be equaled or exceeded on the roll) is (11 + spell level, so 14 here). Since Lex has a Spellcraft modifier of +22 (his stat block shows +21, but he gained another +1 when he went up a level, as detailed over here) even before rolling a d20, that seems easy enough to meet. However, he doesn’t have any gold, and he’s facing a time constraint of 6d4+6 days, which would seem to make designing a new spell impossible!
In order to make this work, then, Lex is going to need to adjust the constraints he’s working under. Looking at the “Research Roll Modifiers” table (The Practical Enchanter, p. 117), that’s certainly possible…but it’s going to have some modifiers to the final Spellcraft check.
Now that he’s ready to create his new spell, Lex figures out the parameters that he’ll be working under. These fall under seven categories, each of which he’ll adjust as necessary to suit the constraints that he’s working under:
For Assistants, Lex is working alone. However, the other ponies in the shelter are taking care of mundane concerns such as cleaning and upkeep of the place. As such, we’ll bump this up from “None. The researcher is entirely on his own” to being “Ordinary servants (to cook, clean, etc.)” That raises this category’s modifier from -2 to +0. Of course, Lex could call on Sonata and/or Aria to assist him; if he did so, he might be able to utilize the “Another L4+ spellcaster of the same type” modifier, raising that +0 to +4, but his pride won’t countenance him asking for help. As such, his modifier in this category remains at +0.
For Expenses, Lex is in a lurch. He has no money or practical materials to devote to applied testing. As such, he has no choice but to use the “Reduce the daily cost modifier to x0 GP, and working on pure theory” modifier, which imposes a whopping -20 penalty to his roll! That’s going to be a huge hit to his Spellcraft check! Hopefully he’ll find some other modifiers to offset it!
For Information, things look a little better. Although he’s researching a slight variant of the spell in question, the effect is so close that the difference is negligible. However, he doesn’t personally know any variation on this spell, and so can’t use the modifier for that. Likewise, he expended the scroll with the transformation spell on it, so he can’t use it as a reference during his research now. The best he can get is the “Spell duplicates the effect of an item which you possessed briefly or a spell you observed” modifier, which is worth a +5 bonus. It’s not as much as he would have liked, but it’s something.
For Laboratory, Lex really doesn’t have much to work with. However, he does have the materials that he’s carrying around in his handy haversack. As such, we’ll go ahead and say that Lex has a “portable magician’s chest” in there, based on the various works of magic that he’s written and collected, as well as the other miscellaneous items in there. This gives him a +2 bonus to the final Spellcraft check.
This is a bit of fudging; Lex’s write-up doesn’t include a “portable magician’s chest,” costing 1,000 gold pieces, among his gear. However, that’s a criticism that cuts both ways; there’s a fair amount of gear on there that he doesn’t have in this story, such as those four semi-charged wands (which would have been extremely useful in some of those fights he’s been in!). Given that, as a 10th-level character with a template that’s worth +2 levels, Lex (who has PC-level wealth, rather than NPC) should have 108,000 gp worth of gear, and that he’s only showcased a fraction of that so far – his handy haversack (2,000 gp), circlet of wizardry (4,880 gp), ring of mind shielding (8,000 gp), amulet of natural armor +2 (8,000 gp), and cloak of resistance +3 (9,000) are the big ones, along with the 10,000 gp of “effective” currency we’ve set aside for his being able to produce “already-made” gemstones with embedded spells (i.e. scrolls), are the big expenditures (there are also numerous small items listed, but all of them are extremely cheap), and they don’t come to even half of his allotted gear value – giving him a 1,000 gp magician’s chest to use in creating spells seems more than fair.
For Library, Lex is in much the same position as he was for Laboratory. We’ll say that the magical writings he has in his haversack count as “basic references.” That’s another 200 gp worth of gear that we’re effectively assigning him as a retcon, but once again this is such a small thing compared to how deficient his gear has been that we’ll allow it. This grants him another +2 bonus.
For Situation, however, things are far less accommodating. While Lex is not “under attack or subject to other stress,” his living situation in the warehouse shelter is also not something that could be described as a “caravan, stateroom, or inn.” Like it or not, the most fitting descriptor is “camping out or in hiding,” which carries an attendant -10 penalty. Things are not looking good for that final roll…
For the final category, Speed, there’s more bad news on the way. Although Lex would prefer to simply halve the base time (which, remember, is 6d4+6 days; on average, that comes out to 21 days, where each day is 8 hours’ worth of work), that’s not likely to bust things down to the 52.8 hours he’s left himself. Not wanting to take a chance, he reluctantly settles for the “taking only one day per spell level” option. That will only require 24 work-hours – well within his available time – but incurs yet another -10 penalty.
Adding up all seven categories, Lex’s modifiers to his final check are +0 (Assistants), -20 (Expenses), +5 (Information), +2 (Laboratory), +2 (Library), -10 (Situation), and -10 (Speed) = -31 altogether. Considering that Lex has a +22 on his own, that leaves him with a final modifier of -9 to his check, and since he’s rolling a d20 and needs to get an adjusted total of 14 or higher, that would seem to make his attempt a failure.
Fortunately, Lex has an ace up his sleeve…
Said “ace” is the fact that, when he previously gained a level, Lex had 6 Character Points that weren’t accounted for in his level-up purchases. In fact, they were spent on the following:
- Skill Emphasis (Eclipse, p. 44) in Spellcraft, specialized for double effect/only for checks to create spells or magic items (3 CP).
- Luck (Eclipse, p. 36) with +2 Bonus Uses (Eclipse, p. 22), specialized for one-half cost/only for skill and ability checks, corrupted for two-thirds cost/may not be used with Charisma-based checks (3 CP).
To reiterate, the first item grants Lex a +4 bonus to Spellcraft checks when it comes to creating new spells or magic items, as he is here. That modifies his total check modifier to a -5, making it possible for him to succeed…albeit only on a roll of 19 or 20, a 10% chance of success.
Now, given that this is a story and not an actual game session, I could just declare that he happened to make that check, but that feels kind of cheap. While there’s certainly a lot of authorial fiat that goes into creating a narrative tale, I don’t like to abuse that by taking it too far. In this case, I’d rather have Lex actually spend Character Points to justify how he’ll succeed in the face of an overwhelmingly likely chance of failure, if only because that makes him allocate resources here and so limit what he could do elsewhere…which, as I noted before, is the entire reason that I use an RPG game engine as the framework for this story.
All of which is to explain why Lex has bought the ability in that second bullet point. This allows him to, up to three times per day, either re-roll a failed skill or ability check (so long as it’s not Charisma-based) or preemptively declare that he’s receiving a check result of 20. Naturally, he’ll put that latter ability to good use now.
With a final penalty of -5 to his check result, Lex elects to use Luck in order to receive a 20 on his Spellcraft check. This gives him a final score of 15, exceeding the DC 14 modifier to create his new spell. Success! Lex has now created a spell that works in all ways like bear’s endurance, save that it’s a 3rd-level spell that grants a +6 enhancement bonus to Constitution. Satisfied with his creation, Lex makes sure to prepare it twice so that he can conduct a field test later on. But later that morning, word comes to the shelter that a group of survivors have arrived…
And there you have it. As complicated and byzantine as this seems (and I’ll admit that it is, though once you’re familiar enough with the underlying rules it goes fairly quickly), this is the sort of thing I calculate ahead of time to measure just what Lex and other characters can accomplish with their abilities. In doing so, I can better chart their ability to accomplish things, and craft a more interesting story.
The number of details and planning,(I'll admit it took me a while to wrap my head around it) you've put into your story certainly shows your love for the story and the games in which they're based on.
4735721 Thanks! I get quite a kick out of working out the game-mechanics side of things, and I find that it nicely contrasts with the narrative portions, even as it explains what's happening in concrete terms!
I should note that, of the first four links in this post (the ones for the sources I use most), three of them are free. The Pathfinder link takes you to the Pathfinder Reference Document, and both Eclipse: The Codex Persona and The Practical Enchanter have shareware files made freely available by the authors (you just need to make an account at that store, also free, to download them). Only Ponyfinder costs money (though it's definitely worth it). For this blog post, though, The Practical Enchanter is the book I used most. If what's here is confusing, I suggest downloading a copy of it and checking the relevant page references that I made here - that should help to clear things up.
Incidentally, the takeaway from this post is that Lex has become incredibly skilled when it comes to designing new spells. By using Luck, and with a +4 bonus for creating spells on top of his normal +22 Spellcraft bonus, he has an effective +46 bonus for designing new spells, which means that he can effectively waive fiscal costs altogether (-20) and - in conjunction with the Multitasking rules - take penalties in the Speed category of spell research to absolutely throttle the amount of time necessary to create new spells. Presuming that he can raise his bonuses in other areas, such as by getting a larger library or more comfortable surroundings, and leverage some of the other Multitasking rules, he can lower the time requirement even more, potentially creating several spells over the course of a single day!
That's a major ability, because the only real limitations on spell design are material costs and time, and by effectively eliminating both Lex can essentially learn whatever spell he wants. He's still going to be at least somewhat limited by time constraints, and local conditions can make this much more difficult than it otherwise would be, but if he has access to even basic resources and a significant amount of downtime...he can increase his spells known by dramatic leaps and bounds. Given that he's a full-progression spellcaster who draws from the Sorcerer/Wizard spell list (i.e. he potentially has access to the strongest spells in the game), and that he technically - from a meta-character standpoint - can use his ranks in Foresight to utilize spells "on the fly" despite being a preparatory spellcaster (that is, he's "anticipated" needing a particular spell that day), this will make him an incredible powerhouse going forward...so long as he has Severance, and enough time to use it to prepare his spells (this remains, in other words, the major weakness in his primary magic).
To put it another way, this is another glimpse into just how far Lex can go if he continues to utilize his potential to the fullest.
A fascinating method of story development.
5331021 Thanks! I could go on at length about how beneficial I find it to hang this story off of a tabletop RPG framework, Doing so helps to ground everything, since it provides ready-made answers for how things function and interact, which ameliorates a lot of the problems that usually go into developing this sort of thing from scratch. I'm quite pleased with how well it's worked out so far, and I love writing articles like this.
5331091
I often work the other way - looking at existing scenes and breaking them down into RPG ideas, albiet generally in my own uncodifed homebrew rather than a published game.
5331222 There's a lot of that too; trying to just shove a particular series onto an RPG system can be an exercise in putting a square peg in a round hole otherwise. In this case, however, I had a bit of an edge, since the underlying theme of Lateral Movement is that it involves aspects of a "Everglow," another world that was built around the Pathfinder 1st Edition RPG rules.
5331264
The brilliance of my own system is that, not being written down, I can adjust it on the fly to fit any situation! (The catch, of course, is that you can't really play games with it.)
5331286 That's a trade-off, to be sure. I prefer to have a system that's not something I can just rewrite at will, since I find I need the constraints in order to better inform me what would happen when I ponder various scenarios that could occur in my story.
(Of course, the d20 System is large enough, with numerous rules and variations and alternative options that I can often find some way around a lot of restrictions, the major example being how the powers of Lex Legis - the main character in my story - are put together. For all the issues that come with a high-complexity system, the flexibility involved is something I find extremely useful.)
5331290
Indeed - the fact that my own system would be extrememly complex is one reason that I've never considered codifying it. (The others are my laziness and that systems ultimately rest on a great deal of maths.)