I'm sure I'm not the first to think of this. Not even close. My Munch-Fu is very weak compared to some Munch-Fu masters of these boards. I admit it, I read fluff and ignore rules and mechanics till it becomes pertinent =/ Bad Metagamer! BAD! <slaps wrist>


Ahem, anyways. So I'm playing around with some NPC's and was looking up the rules on learning a new spell. Ouch, force 10 can be quite a pain in the arse. TN of 20, or 18 if I make it exclusive. That's a pretty nasty target number to reach. Not really much differance between the two. If I get a 18, there's a damn good chance of getting a 20, however you'd cry if you failed I'm sure


Anyways, so I'm reading through MitS and I notice Astral Quests. Now, this is grossly twinkish in my opinion, but there is really nothing to exclude one from spending a good bit of time doing Astral Quests over and over again, to gain as many dice as one would imagine they'd need.


This combined with using a few elementals, and whatever other bonuses you could apply would make such a spell much more attainable if time consuming. Though not as time consuming as actually failing the test over and over again would be I imagine!


Technically at 20 you have a 1/259.2 of hitting this.


I'd postulate that one would not learn a spell of this force unless they were initiate grade 4 or higher. Thus it's entirely plausbile to presume a fairly decent Karma pool for a Human that *should* give us a minimum of 3 rerolls. and I don't think it'd be entirely inplausible to have up to 5 rerolls. Lets go with the worse case scenario, and take 3.

Assuming you'd taken your time to be prepared and didn't mind spending the money to summon 6 Force 6 Elemtals of the approriate type for their spell. (A true twink might note that if a friend were available he could summon Force 8 Elementals, and take only a max of S Stun, with almost the same drain level (8 vs 6), then the friend could just heal him up afterwards to get him ready for tomorrow's summoning - assuming a base of 6 Karma. However, we'll just settle with 6's. Also, said friend could also provide a number of Elemtals as well <boggle>. Also, I might note, that one interpretation of the text might take it to mean that only one elemental can Aid Study a Magician at a time ... )


Anyways, I'm thinking 9 Dice from Sorcery and Magic Background (assuming 6 for both, though they may be higher), 36 dice from Elementals. That's 45 dice. Now take 260 - (3x45) = X/3 for number of Astral Quest points needed to statistically garauntee the spell.

X = 41.6 or 42 for sake of simplicity. This would require 21 Rating 2 quests, and take 42D6 hours for an average of 147 hours. Assuming you're able to do an average of two quests a day (reasonable at an average of 14 hours) it would take 11 days of ritual to *statistically* garauntee success, plus elemental summoning time.

Now why all this trouble, a couple points:

A) There is nothing that states specifically that you can't redo Astral Quests at a level 2 rating (the easiest) over and over and over again to lower Karma costs for any new spell to 1 (The minimum) and gain enough dice to garauntee statistical success. This makes ANY spell learnable is learnable eventually. This gets a bit rediculous once you start getting to the higher end spells of course. Still anything in the range of Force 12 is potentially available. Basically an average of 7 hours Astral Questing could net you 2 extra dice. There's no specified time limit on how long you have to use these dice either.

B) A Hermetic Mage with Hermetic Mage friends. Say there happens to be 4 hermetic mages that are friends with one another, and all are willing and able to grab up to 6 Force 8 Elementals. That's 24 Force 8 Elementals for 192 Aid Study dice, and at a low end (6 Karma Pool) that worth 576 dice thrown against a target number. That more then enough dice to garauntee *statistically* a Force 12 Exclusive Spell. (TN 22 is a 1 in 432 chance by my calculation (6*6*6*2) before even Astral Quests and considering sorcery dice et al.

The above become even scarrier with higher Karma Pools and if you happen to have a conjuring specialized friend. I've been in a campaign before that had 3 Hermetic Mages one of who was conjuration specialized and had at least 3 Elementals Bound that were greater then force 10 with 2 or more services. In total if my recollection is correct the group could possibly have bound all together 21 Elementals at the time. All of which would be Force 6 or higher. The conjuring adept only summoned Force 8 or better Elementals if I recall correctly.


Just makes learning high force spells quite scary in how simply it could be done. Imagine the force of an Elementals someone with a Cabal of Hermetic Mages at their command could possibly pull together for the purpose of learning a High Force Spell! WOW!

1) the -2 is to the effective force of the spell to learn it. So a 12 exclusive is a TN of 20 ((12-2)*2).

A) Remember that astral quests do take time. Since you don't actually suffer any permanent failures when learning a spell, you just have to have enough time. 2 dice from 7 hours (at most two a day if you have any sense) will take time as will retrying the learning test. GM can whim that you can only take one quest each attempt, but it is not explicitly stated in the book (haven't checked errata on this).

B) No. "A character can only use one spirit" means that you can't use more than one to learn that spell. The phrasing is actually more restrictive than you suggest as the worst reading, because its current form prohibits using a new spirit to aid on a new test to learn the same spell. That line, as written, states that only one spirit may be used to try to learn a specific spell ever, no matter how many times you need to take the test, only one of those tests gets aided by a spirit.

1) From the Errata

Ah, indeed. Yes, it is to the final karma cost and TN, not to the effective force. The consequences of never having anyone want to use that option.

As for my counterpoint on B, as long as you don't try to wildly abuse an odd phrase, no one should bring in an argument like mine. If you're going to be a rules laywer and munchkin, make sure you are the best debater in the group, otherwise the drama queen on the debate team can argue your character into worthlessness.

It seemed like a great idea at the time, and now you have me doubting the validity of it, so I've sent it away to someone I know, whose skills in the english language and picking it apart exceed my own.