Limitations... sort of?

[JamesDJIII]

How would you implement the following?

 

I want Gestures and Incantations, but still have the ability fo use a spell without them. If you cannot make the gestures and incantations, you get a penalty to the casting. If you can make extra loud and forceful gestures and incantaions, you get a bonus.

[Talon]

1) Call it a -1/4 for "combined optional Gestures/Incantations". There's a technique in the upcoming Fantasy Hero which combines with Variable Limitation to do this as well, but it's pretty much the same as just taking what you want and calling it -1/4.

 

If the character wanted just optional Gestures /or/ Incantations, I'd probably call that -0.

 

2) Buy bonuses to the Magic Skill, only with extremely loud Gestures and Incantations (which I would rate at the standard rate plus -1/4, so -3/4 for Gestures and Incantations).

[AnotherSkip]

If a limitation is not really limiting make it an sfx,

 

other options would be an Aid with a Trigger: Gestures and Incantations with another Aid with Trigger: Louder Gestures and Bigger Incantations......

[Lord Liaden]

When you talk about having a "penalty" or "bonus" to the spell casting, are you referring to an increase or decrease in the power of the spell (i.e. more or less Active Points), or a higher or lower chance of successfully casting the spell (because it Requires a Skill Roll)?

 

If the former, I'd suggest putting the Gestures Limitation on only part of the Active Points of the spell. Further Active Points could be given an extra -1/4 Lim for having to use extra-big Gestures and Incantations, similar to Gestures that "Require Both Hands" (see the writeup for Gestures p. 191). Alternatively the louder/bigger stuff could just be the visible manifestation of Pushing (q.v.).

 

If it's a bonus or penalty to casting success, my advice would be to not take the Gestures Limitation on the spell, keeping it as a Special Effect only; but to apply the Skill Roll Modifiers on p. 28 of the 5th Edition rulebook. In that case the ability to use extra-big Gestures and Incantations would count as "Excellent conditions for performing the skill", while restrictions on same would be "Poor conditions for performing the skill."

 

For either alternative you should have clear in your mind the drawbacks to using extra-big Gestures and Incantations so that you'll know under what circumstances you can and cannot use them. They would probably draw attention to the character making them impossible to use in a stealthy situation; maybe they're unusable when the character is Encumbered with armor, has a weapon in hand, or the like; and so forth.

 

Hope that's of some use to you. If my assumptions about the effect you want are off, please post a clarification.

[Killer Shrike]

Buy more dice of effect as Partially limited with Incantations, Gestures, and "Noisy".

 

There is an example in Fred at the begining of the Limiations chapter on how to build a scaled/Partially Limited power IIRC.

 

Noisy is a variant of the Visible limitation described in Fred whereby an already "visible" power is made EXTREMELY noticable. The extra loud Incant and exaggerated Gestures would probably serve in this case.

[Killer Shrike]

Alternately, if this behavior is something that you want to make intrinsic to your Magic system and not just a schtick for a specific spell, then there are several ways to "lock in" that behaviour.

 

The HERO System generally doesnt consider it a valid lim if you can either Gesture at the -1/4 level OR Incant at the -1/4 level. Because they are already both at the lowest increment of limitation you can get a point break for, the ability to switch back and forth effectively nullifies them out and results in no limitation at all.

 

However, if you want to make it part of your Magic system you can use GM Fiat, or you can add another layer to reach an actual limiation value.

 

If you said that each spell must have some combination of Limitations adding up to -1/2 taken from a list (say Extra Time, Incant, Gesture, Concentration), then you can fit that into a Variable Limitation for a -1/4 overall Limitation.

 

If you went the other way and said that Magic doesnt _require_ Incant or Gesture, but using them helps, then there are several ways to do that. As Lord Liaden points out, you could simply take "Requires Skill Roll" for all spells instead, and then adjudicate that as part of your Magic system for the campaign, Incant = +1 to the roll, Gesture = +1 to the roll, Loud = +1, and Exaggerated = +1.

 

Alternately you could take 4 identical Succors Self Only Usable on any 1 "Spell" 1 at a time 0 END; by applying Trigger at the + 3/4 level (for a self setting trigger) you can define "Me casting a Spell w/ Gestures"; "Me casting a Spell w/ Incantations", "Me casting a Spell w/ Exaggerated Gestures"; "Me casting a Spell w/ Loud Incantations" as the Trigger events. Thus when a spellcaster casts his spell, depending on what variation/combination of Incant & Gestures they use the Succor fires off and gives them a power-up. If they use all 4 options their spell is at peak efficiency.

 

Of course, thats quite expensive, but there you go.