rare spells no longer seem rare in Ultimate Edition

[Axelmania]

Guilds control knowledge by controlling people; if they want a spell to be more rare than it is, they can restrict sales of that spell to drive up the price.
If a guild tells its members not to sell a spell, they will not as a rule sell that particular spell.

So far only restricting members of the guild and not freelancer 1st level shifters.

If a guild doesn't want a college to teach or sell a particular spell, even if the college isn't staffed by guild members, there would still be various pressures that the guild could apply to the college to get them to NOT sell/teach the spell.

This external pressure thing is what I was getting at earlier. They could be bumping off shifters who disobey them, along with their customers. So even though everybody could know Shifters know Dimensional Portal and could teach it to you, only a minority of crazies would attempt to purchase or sell because if they were found out, both of them and all their friends/family would be murdered by a squad of Lasae in their sleep sent by the Cadre of Colleges who agreed that nobody but Shifters ought to be taught this spell.

Demons might be trickier, but I'd say that there are still pressures that could be applied by a guild to various demons to discourage them from teaching certain spells.

Probably not a major concern, I assumed only those with a magical OCC like Raksasha could even have a chance of learning/teaching spells, otherwise I figured it was intuitive magic like a mystic.

I like your thinking with the Mind Wipe option too; that could make some decent adventure fodder with the PCs on either side of the bargain.

It's something the gentler guilds might do, as a mercy, to help protect the teacher/taught from being murdered by the more brutal guilds.

A more interesting thing for us to think about it ... what kind of intelligence network could exist to reliably learn when Shifters are teaching Dimensional Portal to a slew of Techno-Wizards / Ley Line Walkers for hundreds of thousands of credits?

Is it possible that they make a habit of keeping tabs on Shifters and monitoring their activities? That's probably a good idea since every time a rift opens, poltergeists sneak through.

I should point out knowing how to do something is not the same as being able to teach others how to do it. You could be really good at something and not be able to convey it to others. Not every one has the ability to be an effective teacher even in real life more so if you look at the rules for learning magic.

The pursuit of magic list who you can purchase spells from(Rue PG 190) lets see- elder master (9th level). That means the rules are saying it takes a 9th level mage to teach magic other wise it would be just another spell caster or another mage. The listed sources Magic shop (most likely a high level mage on hand) adult or ancient dragon or 9th level mage. All are experts at magic, a level 1 Shifter is not in the same league as them when it comes to the amount of magical knowledge they posses.

You can not learn from a 1st level shifter as it is not possible to purchase spells from him no matter how much he wants to sell the spell. He is not on the list of things you can learn spells from.

"Practitioners can sometimes purchase spell magic from ... elder masters of magic" doesn't actually have anything restricting teaching to what it defines as 'elder masters'. The entire list under "Purchasing magic" are examples, not the solitary options.

The unfortunate thing is that we have never been told what level you need to be to train other people in your OCC or trade your spells, so a pair of 1st level sorcerers / wizards / LLW could pick entirely different starting spells and then swap their entire repertoires.

As a house rule, to make it harder (and better explain the rarity of spells) I would say that the stated learning times (I think it was 2/days per level in PF or Nightbane, can't remember where Rifts/RUE had it) is simply to allow both parties to roll on their Scroll Conversion Skill (10+2% per level) and both rolls must succeed for the spell to be taught.

"Succeed at the same time" if you want it to take really long, or success regardless of time if you want it to take less.

Or maybe to take even less time, ADD both parties' scroll conversion skills and roll against that. So a pair of 1st levelers would only have a 24% chance, while a 15th level guy teaching a 15th level guy would have an 80% chance.

[Blue_Lion]

Actually it is a restriction. Got it the rules defy your idea by setting a level restriction to who you can buy spells from, so you want it ignored. If any mage could teach you a spell then it would have been any mage.(you are dancing around a stated fact that countgers your whole idea) You are right the only thing they told us is you can buy from mages that have reached 9th level so that is a rule that you buy spells from 9th level mage is a rule that 9th level mages are the only ones that can teach. It is a list of acceptable sources to buy spells from and your level 1 sifter does not make the list.

***The ability to do something is not the same as the skill to teach people to do it.****


Lets take a look the logic.

A-
LVL 1 mage can have a rare spell(fact)
The mention of a level in who you can buy spells from is not a restriction(assumtion)
LVL 1 mage can teach a spell( assumption)
because a lvl 1 mage can teach the spell and logically they would it is not rare.(theory that conflicting with cannon statements)

B
LVL 1 mage can have a rare spell(fact)
The mention of a level in who can buy spell from is a restiction.(assumption)
only 9th level or higher can teach a spell otherwise why list level 9 as who you buy spells from(assumption)
because it is rare for high level mages to sale the spell is rare(theory that support of cannon statements)


So we have two theories each with two assumptions however one has a conflict with cannon. So the one that does not conflict with cannon (how things are stated to be) is logically the most correct theory.
*Why because you are making assumptions to say the book is wrong lacking any support it is truly wrong.*

[Axelmania]

If someone could find a level 8 character who is explicitly the teacher of another, would that settle it?

Your "actually it is a restriction" is misleading. We know "elder master" refers to 9th level or higher. We do not know that teaching spells is limited to elder masters. That is speculation.

"I can obtain fruits from trees and the supermarket" is not saying you cannot obtain fruits from your mailbox.

You're introducing a false dichotomy, thinking that level 1s being able to teach means their spells become pluripotent. The middle ground I proposed earlier is that if we established a system where people became gradually better teachers (AND easier to teach) as they gained experience, that would fix it.

This would also fit with TTGD where higher level mages were better at inventing spells or adapting them, too.

[Blue_Lion]

If someone could find a level 8 character who is explicitly the teacher of another, would that settle it?

Your "actually it is a restriction" is misleading. We know "elder master" refers to 9th level or higher. We do not know that teaching spells is limited to elder masters. That is speculation.

"I can obtain fruits from trees and the supermarket" is not saying you cannot obtain fruits from your mailbox.

You're introducing a false dichotomy, thinking that level 1s being able to teach means their spells become pluripotent. The middle ground I proposed earlier is that if we established a system where people became gradually better teachers (AND easier to teach) as they gained experience, that would fix it.

This would also fit with TTGD where higher level mages were better at inventing spells or adapting them, too.

That is why I lised it as an assumption. It may be a supported assumption, but still an assumption.

(are you sure you are using Pluripotent correctly it is a biology term if memory serves me. Has to do with developing into different cells.)
Your statement is misleading to what is being addressed. Your theory was that 1st level shifter could be selling high level spells making them common, so the book is no longer correct in saying they are common. You are now attempting to dance around the issue that I was introducing a counter the theory to the theory you started with to maintain the book not being wrong.

I see this as a case of your statement having no book support so you are now dancing trying to have a moving goal post and introduce a middle ground. You are also throwing in 5 dollar words to attempt to sound smart. -How about this teaching is by the book limited it is a special class feature of rouge scholars. If any one could teach as you are implying we would have general teaching rules not instances of special cases being able to teach. The way the book is written does not support your theory, as your theory as you pointed out would lead statement in the book to be false when they do not need to be. You would need written evidence of some one being able to teach spells bellow lvl 9, to disprove my theory.

I discard your there is more than two choices and middle ground false hood. Either a 1st level mage can teach or he can't saying a level 1 is not as good at something as a level 15 is not a middle ground compromise but how the level system works. The one introducing false ideas is you claiming it there is more options on this than weather or not a 1st level mage can teach spells. You started saying they can I said they can't, you create a false compromise saying they can but not as well.

[Killer Cyborg]

Guilds control knowledge by controlling people; if they want a spell to be more rare than it is, they can restrict sales of that spell to drive up the price.
If a guild tells its members not to sell a spell, they will not as a rule sell that particular spell.

So far only restricting members of the guild and not freelancer 1st level shifters.

Key words being "so far," yes, the unknown hypothetical number of freelance 1st level shifters wouldn't care about this part.

If a guild doesn't want a college to teach or sell a particular spell, even if the college isn't staffed by guild members, there would still be various pressures that the guild could apply to the college to get them to NOT sell/teach the spell.

This external pressure thing is what I was getting at earlier. They could be bumping off shifters who disobey them, along with their customers. So even though everybody could know Shifters know Dimensional Portal and could teach it to you, only a minority of crazies would attempt to purchase or sell because if they were found out, both of them and all their friends/family would be murdered by a squad of Lasae in their sleep sent by the Cadre of Colleges who agreed that nobody but Shifters ought to be taught this spell.[/quote]

On the extreme end, yes, exactly.
Anybody going around selling spells carelessly without guild permission would be taking money away from the guild.
And I personally don't think that it would be uncommon for that kind of reaction to occur, although it wouldn't need to happen every time in order to serve as a rather persuasive incentive to avoid crossing the guilds.
Other results might be blackmail, broken body parts, extortion, and so forth.

I like your thinking with the Mind Wipe option too; that could make some decent adventure fodder with the PCs on either side of the bargain.

It's something the gentler guilds might do, as a mercy, to help protect the teacher/taught from being murdered by the more brutal guilds.

A more interesting thing for us to think about it ... what kind of intelligence network could exist to reliably learn when Shifters are teaching Dimensional Portal to a slew of Techno-Wizards / Ley Line Walkers for hundreds of thousands of credits?

That could be a thread all on its own.
Clairvoyance could potentially help, as could magical equivalents. Crystal balls and other scrying tools.
Mostly just word of mouth, I'd think.
People like to gossip, and rumors would buzz around about people selling spells (in order to sell something, you often need to advertise), people buying spells, people using a new spell that they hadn't previously seemed to know, and so forth.

Is it possible that they make a habit of keeping tabs on Shifters and monitoring their activities? That's probably a good idea since every time a rift opens, poltergeists sneak through.

Guilds wouldn't have the manpower to monitor everybody, but shifters might be a higher priority than most.
A lot would depend on the guild's various agendas.

"Practitioners can sometimes purchase spell magic from ... elder masters of magic" doesn't actually have anything restricting teaching to what it defines as 'elder masters'. The entire list under "Purchasing magic" are examples, not the solitary options.

The unfortunate thing is that we have never been told what level you need to be to train other people in your OCC or trade your spells, so a pair of 1st level sorcerers / wizards / LLW could pick entirely different starting spells and then swap their entire repertoires.

Yup.

[Blue_Lion]

We may not be told what it takes but we do know other than rough scholars who can teach in rifts? It could very well be that two first level mages can not trade spells(this would explain why no one has done what axel is proposing keeping magic rare). After all if you could buy a spell from a level 1 why specify buying from a level 9+. (this could be said to be a implied intent of the writers.) If 1st levels can not teach spells then the issue of them spreading rare spells making the book wrong is mute, I see it as a limit of who teaches spells that prevents this whole issue from arising and keeping the book statement true without having to ignore rules.

[dragonfett]

I could see spell casters being able to teach spells that are of their level or lower, so that level one LLW could only teach other mages his first level spells, while a 5th level Shifter can teach spells up to 5th level.

[Eagle]

I'm not buying the idea that lower level characters can't teach spells. The book says that scrolls are uncommon because people can learn from them. Just because you would normally purchase magic from higher level casters does not mean it is restricted to only high level casters. Nothing specifically says that, that's a restriction that people are reading into it.

I also don't buy that guilds can exert serious control. Sure, you probably can't set up a magic shop in the middle of town without being a member of the guild. But random Joe Adventurer? How is anyone going to possibly learn that he taught someone a magic spell? There's no centralized authority of Rifts Earth, little coordination or cooperation between different magical societies, and people showing up from far away lands or other dimensions is the defining trait of the setting.

Joe the Shifter meets some people at a hotel in town. One of them wants to buy a spell. "I hear you're a man who knows how to cast energy sphere. I wanna learn that." Joe says "okay, meet me tomorrow at this place outside of town. Don't tell anybody, we don't want company." The next day they go off on their own for a few hours. The guy pays Joe, Joe teaches him the spell, and they part ways. The end.

I don't care for the idea that NPC organizations have vast, untapped power that they use purely to spy on PCs and make sure they aren't making too much money. These guys spy on every Shifter in the world, all the time, to keep people from selling a spell? No way.

[Blue_Lion]

I'm not buying the idea that lower level characters can't teach spells. The book says that scrolls are uncommon because people can learn from them. Just because you would normally purchase magic from higher level casters does not mean it is restricted to only high level casters. Nothing specifically says that, that's a restriction that people are reading into it.

I also don't buy that guilds can exert serious control. Sure, you probably can't set up a magic shop in the middle of town without being a member of the guild. But random Joe Adventurer? How is anyone going to possibly learn that he taught someone a magic spell? There's no centralized authority of Rifts Earth, little coordination or cooperation between different magical societies, and people showing up from far away lands or other dimensions is the defining trait of the setting.

Joe the Shifter meets some people at a hotel in town. One of them wants to buy a spell. "I hear you're a man who knows how to cast energy sphere. I wanna learn that." Joe says "okay, meet me tomorrow at this place outside of town. Don't tell anybody, we don't want company." The next day they go off on their own for a few hours. The guy pays Joe, Joe teaches him the spell, and they part ways. The end.

I don't care for the idea that NPC organizations have vast, untapped power that they use purely to spy on PCs and make sure they aren't making too much money. These guys spy on every Shifter in the world, all the time, to keep people from selling a spell? No way.

Does any thing say they can?
I get you disagree but if low levels could just swap spells would that not worth being noted in pursuit of magic?

Basically the initial idea is rare spells are no longer rare because he house ruled that any one can teach.

If any one can teach why is teaching a special ability of rouge scholars limited to a a certain type of skills they can teach?

Learned Spell casting is a special skill (if I recall right they had a table one time for how long it takes to learn spells something like days per level) and I would think bending realty with your mind a certain way would be really intense mental training, and not just spend X energy and say these words.

[Killer Cyborg]

I could see spell casters being able to teach spells that are of their level or lower, so that level one LLW could only teach other mages his first level spells, while a 5th level Shifter can teach spells up to 5th level.

Seems reasonable.

[drewkitty ~..~]

If any one can teach why is teaching a special ability of rouge scholars limited to a a certain type of skills they can teach?

The class ability is knowing how to teach a student in the most effective way possible.

While everyone else has not 'learned how to teach effectively' and fumbles about from time to time. *shrugs*
----------
Teaching spells...
As far as I know there is no level restrictions (in canon) on mages about who can and can't teach magic to other mages.

⁍The only restrictions I know of are that those people with granted magic (Priests, witches, and shifters) or have intuitive magic (Psi Mystics & their variants & other like classes) can't teach the magic they were granted or intuitively 'know'.

[Mack]

It may not be canon, but I like the idea that a mage can only teach spells of the same or lower level. It provides a nice balance and comes with the reasonable in-game explanation that a mage simply doesn’t have the magic mastery to teach anything higher.

“I know this high spell works, but I don’t understand the intricacies enough to really explain it to you.”

[Axelmania]

are you sure you are using Pluripotent correctly it is a biology term if memory serves me. Has to do with developing into different cells.

I realized shortly after that it made no sense but figured I would leave it in place in case anyone could help me figure out what term I was going for. "Plentiful" is the closest I can think of ATM.

Your statement is misleading to what is being addressed. Your theory was that 1st level shifter could be selling high level spells making them common, so the book is no longer correct in saying they are common.

Did you mean that last one to be "uncommon"?

My argument is simply that 15th level spells which more people know would be more widely available than 15th level spells which fewer people knew, and this lack of scarcity would drive down cost compared to rarer 15th level spells.

My argument is not that the book is wrong, but rather, for it to be right and for that to make sense, we should come up with a rational explanation for why it would make sense for Dimensional Portal to be as costly as other 15th level spells to learn.

Something like "Shifters are mostly a very moral bunch who would not endanger the Earth by teaching this spell to others" for example, could work, but I find it harder to believe. "Shifters will murder competition and other good mages will execute people who endanger the earth by recklessly teaching portal-opening" on the other hand, I could swallow easier.

You are now attempting to dance around the issue that I was introducing a counter the theory to the theory you started with to maintain the book not being wrong.

I'm having trouble following what you're saying here. I'm saying: for the book being right to make sense, we should come up with plausible explanations to restore scarcity to spells which no longer appear to be scarce.

Every 1st level Shifter knowing Dimensional Portal would not decrease scarcity if we restore scarcity by having a "portal-killer" cult who monitor Shifters (and anyone else they know who learns the spell) and mind wipes / murders any who are irresponsible in using or teaching the spell.

I see this as a case of your statement having no book support so you are now dancing trying to have a moving goal post and introduce a middle ground.

The book support of my statement is that Shifters now know Dimensional Portal, a 15th level spell it costs at least 500,000 to buy, at 1st level, as of Megaversal Builder / RUE.

You are also throwing in 5 dollar words to attempt to sound smart.

A brain fart of using "pluripotent" because "plentiful" (or whatever else I had in mind) couldn't register doesn't mean I was trying to sound smart.

How about this teaching is by the book limited it is a special class feature of rouge scholars.

Rogue Scholars having an OCC ability to easily impart secondary skills does not mean that this is the only way to learn. The OCC does not say this anywhere. We simply lack a complex system for learning, which would be fun to have.

If any one could teach as you are implying we would have general teaching rules not instances of special cases being able to teach.

EXAMPLES of who you would normally learn from, not 'special cases'.

The way the book is written does not support your theory, as your theory as you pointed out would lead statement in the book to be false when they do not need to be. You would need written evidence of some one being able to teach spells bellow lvl 9, to disprove my theory.

While that would help to quash your theory, I don't actually need to find it since the theory lacks explicit support to begin with. We are never told that only 'elder masters' can teach.

I discard your there is more than two choices and middle ground false hood. Either a 1st level mage can teach or he can't

My point here is that allowing a level 1 to teach doesn't mean we need to allow them to teach as well as a 15th level. If we developed level-based %s (such as borrowing from the Scroll Conversion skill) you'd still have higher level mages as the ideal teachers.

saying a level 1 is not as good at something as a level 15 is not a middle ground compromise but how the level system works.

This is how it works for spells or abilities with level-based statistics. It isn't how it works for things which have locked results. A 15th level Detect Concealment isn't any more effective, for example, than a 1st level Detect Concealment.

The one introducing false ideas is you claiming it there is more options on this than weather or not a 1st level mage can teach spells. You started saying they can I said they can't, you create a false compromise saying they can but not as well.

Suggesting a house rule where teaching is not always an automatic success is not a 'false compromise'. I don't even think that's a thing.

We are told people can learn spells, without any qualifier as to what level they need to be to learn them.
We are told people can teach spells, without any qualifier as to what level they need to be to teach them.

The reason elder masters would be a common source of teaching is probably because high level characters tend to know more spells and have settled down, more likely to take on students. It's one of those RP guidelines.

There aren't any hard rules saying "8th level, you cannot teach anybody ever" then "9th level, you can teach anybody perfectly, without fail", we simply have a void of teaching rules which is why level based % guidelines would be good for filling in such a gap, like many other gaps which exist in Palladium rules for situations you might want to resolve with some dice and not handwaving.

We may not be told what it takes but we do know other than rough scholars who can teach in rifts?

We know that Temporal Raiders train Temporal Wizards / Temporal Warriors despite actually not being those OCCs themselves, as an interesting example.

I imagine the Witch OCC could be a similar situation. In cases of Witch NPCs there hasn't been any mention of needing an elder witch to teach the skills, they seem as if they could be plausibly self-taught so long as they make a pact.

Cyberknights also appear to be able to teach new Cyber-Knights. Sot4 doesn't mention levels anywhere I can see under "Squires and Mentoring". Pg 79 lists knight Taloquin (an "elder Cyber-Knight", now 11th level) who I believe explicitly taught Baltacle who is (now 4th level) per page 83. Far as I can tell, Taloquin was taught by (now 14th level) Cross (pg 80, now 14th level) who in turn was taught by Coake (now 15th level). The problem being we only know their levels NOW but not what their levels were while teaching. This informs us of minimum-allowed but not maximum-disallowed.

It would be interesting to find other teacher/student statted pairs throughout Palladium's books to see how they compare to this.

Page 93 of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Other Strangeness has "Ninja Teachers" who are either 4th level HTH Ninjutsu or 5th level HTH Assassin. Shredder himself on page 105 is only 8th level and I imagine he's perfectly capable of teaching people despite not being level 9.

Requiring 4th level to teach would help the situation, but a bunch of 4th level Shifters suddenly able to teach DP is still a significant change. Especially since by then they might have a Greater Demon or a pair of Lesser Demons under their thrall and able to protect them against the proposed DP Cabal.

It could very well be that two first level mages can not trade spells(this would explain why no one has done what axel is proposing keeping magic rare). After all if you could buy a spell from a level 1 why specify buying from a level 9+. (this could be said to be a implied intent of the writers.) If 1st levels can not teach spells then the issue of them spreading rare spells making the book wrong is mute, I see it as a limit of who teaches spells that prevents this whole issue from arising and keeping the book statement true without having to ignore rules.

This could be an explanation, as could the 'Dimensional Portal Cabal' we're also discussing. Or maybe both.

Just as such a cabal is not explicitly defined, inability of level 1-8 characters to teach other characters is also not defined.

I could see spell casters being able to teach spells that are of their level or lower, so that level one LLW could only teach other mages his first level spells, while a 5th level Shifter can teach spells up to 5th level.

It may not be canon, but I like the idea that a mage can only teach spells of the same or lower level. It provides a nice balance and comes with the reasonable in-game explanation that a mage simply doesn’t have the magic mastery to teach anything higher.

“I know this high spell works, but I don’t understand the intricacies enough to really explain it to you.”

This would mean only 15th level Shifters could train new Shifters in their entire compliment of starting spells.

How about this as a house rule.

to learn a spell, you must roll over the spells' level on a D10, with your teacher's experience level as a bonus.

This would mean a 10% chance of learning a 15th level spell from a level 6 teacher, a 100% chance of learning it from a 14th level teacher.

If that seems too hard, substitute a D12. If it seems too easy, substitute a D8.

[Blue_Lion]

You seam to be dancing around the point. (I never claimed that a level 1 did not have access to the spell so I am not even sure why you brought it up.)
(I did make a type-o that you pointed out using common and not rare, as I intended.)


Nothing in the rogue scholar ability 1 says it is the ability to be effective teachers just that they can do it and it comes natural. In fact they can only teach equal to a secondary skill. That does not to me make them effective teachers as an effective teacher should teach professional level skills not dabblers level.

*****As no where in Rifts books does it say that teaching can be done by just any charter by RAW only those mentioned as being able to teach can teach. (That is not a house rule but limiting what can happen to what he rules say can happen or RAW.)****

(The only other place I know of that they talk about teaching skills in rules is in HU allowing skills to be learned from college.)

[Colonel_Tetsuya]

It may not be canon, but I like the idea that a mage can only teach spells of the same or lower level. It provides a nice balance and comes with the reasonable in-game explanation that a mage simply doesn’t have the magic mastery to teach anything higher.

“I know this high spell works, but I don’t understand the intricacies enough to really explain it to you.”

.... but i can use this other high level spell i know and cant explain to create a scroll and you can learn it from that.

=)

[dreicunan]

It may not be canon, but I like the idea that a mage can only teach spells of the same or lower level. It provides a nice balance and comes with the reasonable in-game explanation that a mage simply doesn’t have the magic mastery to teach anything higher.

“I know this high spell works, but I don’t understand the intricacies enough to really explain it to you.”

.... but i can use this other high level spell i know and cant explain to create a scroll and you can learn it from that.

=)

And there is the in-universe work-around to any apparent limit on who can teach what. Good catch!

[Axelmania]

You seam to be dancing around the point.
(I never claimed that a level 1 did not have access to the spell so I am not even sure why you brought it up.)

I'm having trouble following the conversation flow here, could you quote where I bring it up?

(I did make a type-o that you pointed out using common and not rare, as I intended.)

Okay so when you said...

Your theory was that 1st level shifter could be selling high level spells making them common, so the book is no longer correct in saying they are common.

you intended

Your theory was that 1st level shifter could be selling high level spells making them common, so the book is no longer correct in saying they are rare.

Nothing in the rogue scholar ability 1 says it is the ability to be effective teachers just that they can do it and it comes natural. In fact they can only teach equal to a secondary skill. That does not to me make them effective teachers as an effective teacher should teach professional level skills not dabblers level.

A valid objection, but people are clearly learning non-secondary skills like Robot Electronics from people other than Rogue Scholars, so there must be some other means of teaching.

My guess is that the 'effective' aspect of a Rogue Scholar is their ability to teach casually and quickly to just about anybody. Non-scholars who teach may take longer, may only be able to do so in the controlled setting of a school, and may only be able to teach people of certain talent (ie attribute requirements for OCCs which allow a skill) some things.

*****As no where in Rifts books does it say that teaching can be done by just any charter by RAW only those mentioned as being able to teach can teach. (That is not a house rule but limiting what can happen to what he rules say can happen or RAW.)****

This is a silly policy. If we limit what can happen to what the rules say can happen, nobody would be able to urinate and people would die from an inability to evacuate waste products from the bladder, because we don't have urination rules, nor are explicitly told which OCCs have the ability to urinate.

Basic ideas like imparting ideas to other could use rules, certainly (GURPS has the 'teaching' skill for example, and guidelines on time it takes to learn from a teacher) but not having complex rules for a basic idea does not mean that basic idea is absent in Rifts.

[Blue_Lion]

You seam to be dancing around the point.
(I never claimed that a level 1 did not have access to the spell so I am not even sure why you brought it up.)

I'm having trouble following the conversation flow here, could you quote where I bring it up?

(I did make a type-o that you pointed out using common and not rare, as I intended.)

Okay so when you said...

Your theory was that 1st level shifter could be selling high level spells making them common, so the book is no longer correct in saying they are common.

you intended

Your theory was that 1st level shifter could be selling high level spells making them common, so the book is no longer correct in saying they are rare.

Nothing in the rogue scholar ability 1 says it is the ability to be effective teachers just that they can do it and it comes natural. In fact they can only teach equal to a secondary skill. That does not to me make them effective teachers as an effective teacher should teach professional level skills not dabblers level.

A valid objection, but people are clearly learning non-secondary skills like Robot Electronics from people other than Rogue Scholars, so there must be some other means of teaching.

My guess is that the 'effective' aspect of a Rogue Scholar is their ability to teach casually and quickly to just about anybody. Non-scholars who teach may take longer, may only be able to do so in the controlled setting of a school, and may only be able to teach people of certain talent (ie attribute requirements for OCCs which allow a skill) some things.

*****As no where in Rifts books does it say that teaching can be done by just any charter by RAW only those mentioned as being able to teach can teach. (That is not a house rule but limiting what can happen to what he rules say can happen or RAW.)****

This is a silly policy. If we limit what can happen to what the rules say can happen, nobody would be able to urinate and people would die from an inability to evacuate waste products from the bladder, because we don't have urination rules, nor are explicitly told which OCCs have the ability to urinate.

Basic ideas like imparting ideas to other could use rules, certainly (GURPS has the 'teaching' skill for example, and guidelines on time it takes to learn from a teacher) but not having complex rules for a basic idea does not mean that basic idea is absent in Rifts.

I should point out that your last statement augment is logically flawed. If we limit what can happen in game to what the rules cover no one would die from not doing something the rules do not say causes death such as failure to remove waist from the body. Basically you are using a house rule to prove to claim limiting what can happen to RAW would kill every character. I have never RPed character need to take care of regular waist removal as it has never been relevant to the story(after all this is rifts not the Sims).


RAW is whet the rules say as written, by RAW if no rules exist for something you can not do it. When you change the rules to make sense to you then you are house rulling and that is a whole diffrent.

Basically you are claiming RAW is silly and you dislike it so you want it disregarded on principle.

The part about not disagreeing on them having the spell that makes no sense to you is because of it is adressing a statement you made.
"The book support of my statement is that Shifters now know Dimensional Portal, a 15th level spell it costs at least 500,000 to buy, at 1st level, as of Megaversal Builder / RUE."
That was what I was adressing I never said they did not have access to it on that we agree, so bring up when the got the spell serves no purpose in the debate at this point. What we disagree on is they have the ability to share the spell, having access to the spell in not support of the ability to share the spell. (you used a non issue to make it appear you are addressing a point that you never did.)


I should point out that you allso made a statement,
" I'm saying: for the book being right to make sense, we should come up with plausible explanations to restore scarcity to spells which no longer appear to be scarce."

I did provide a plausable reason and you reject it out right because it does not fit your view. As a instructor I know not every one can teach complex tasks, spell casting is a complex task. By the book we only know that masters have to have the skill to teach spells. So I present the idea that a level 1 lacking the abilty to train others in magic is why they have not made it common.

*In short it is plausible that level 1 are not sharing spells making them less expensive because they lack the skill to teach magic. (The book statements only list high level magical experts as sources of magic.)

***As you pointed out it is not plausible that every level 1 to have the ability to teach high level spells for easy cash and not do so. So something has to be stopping them and as no outside source could plausibly stop every level 1 from doing so, we need to look for something they lack. So I looked to the listed sources of magic to find a plausible thing that would prevent them. I found a listing of things that you can buy spells from, then looked at what was the difference from what is on the list and level 1. I found on the list you can buy spells from 9th level mages. What is the difference between getting a spell from a ancient master (lvl 9) and a level 1 shifter? The level was the only differences so drawing from the book to find a plausible reason that level 1 characters do not teach level 15 spells, so I came to the conclusion they lack the level of experience needed to impart the knowledge.



(I often find your logic hard to fallow, it seams to me twisting and biased. You just asked for what I was providing. That makes no sense I can not fallow the logic.)

[Razorwing]

There is a simple way to restore the scarcity of spells... remember that for a spell caster, Knowledge is Power.

Just because a spell caster HAS the spell and can sell that knowledge to others for a given price doesn't mean that he WILL do so... even at 1st level when he likely needs the cash. Even if it didn't cost him much to gain it, such rare spells give such characters a fair amount of power (even if casting it can be a little... difficult due to the amount of PPE involved). Evil characters are likely to horde their knowledge to preserve their power base... selfish ones are also likely to do the same... while good characters will be reluctant to sell their knowledge to protect others from what such spells might do in the wrong hands.

Even universities and guilds that may offer such spells to members for a given price are not actually likely to sell such knowledge for mere cash... but rather trade it for services rendered equivalent to such an amount (while seeing just how loyal such members who desire it are... and what use such individuals are likely to put such power to). They do this for the same reasons a given spell caster is likely to... to preserve their power base and make sure only those who are worthy of such power receive it from them.

Even those spell casters who take on apprentices are not likely to pass on such knowledge trivially... magic is a powerful and dangerous tool for those who do not respect the power they command... and more than one spell caster has likely lost an apprentice or two by teaching them spells they are not ready for. Thus, most teachers who take on apprentices will keep such spells away from young wizards until they are sure they are ready for the power... and may in fact never pass them on (especially if they had to do much to earn the spell in the first place).

Simply put... the higher level the spell is, the less likely a spell caster will part with it for mere cash... as acquiring it often takes a fair amount of effort to gain. Also remember that while PCs may gain spells that the player desires (as in the player choosing the spells)... that doesn't mean that the character is intentionally trying for those specific spells... or that other characters (NPC spell casters of the same OCC) will gain those particular spells as easily.

There really is no need to limit what a spell caster can teach to others, as their particular personalities will likely do so. Even a generous and kind spell caster who seeks to spread the knowledge of magic will be choosy as to whom he will give such knowledge to... all it takes is for one person he teaches to misuse such magic and cause harm to others for the kindly spell caster to realize that his action lead to such a consequence (and if he is truly good, he will do what he can to rectify such a mistake).

[dreicunan]

There is a simple way to restore the scarcity of spells... remember that for a spell caster, Knowledge is Power.

Just because a spell caster HAS the spell and can sell that knowledge to others for a given price doesn't mean that he WILL do so... even at 1st level when he likely needs the cash. Even if it didn't cost him much to gain it, such rare spells give such characters a fair amount of power (even if casting it can be a little... difficult due to the amount of PPE involved). Evil characters are likely to horde their knowledge to preserve their power base... selfish ones are also likely to do the same... while good characters will be reluctant to sell their knowledge to protect others from what such spells might do in the wrong hands.

Even universities and guilds that may offer such spells to members for a given price are not actually likely to sell such knowledge for mere cash... but rather trade it for services rendered equivalent to such an amount (while seeing just how loyal such members who desire it are... and what use such individuals are likely to put such power to). They do this for the same reasons a given spell caster is likely to... to preserve their power base and make sure only those who are worthy of such power receive it from them.

Even those spell casters who take on apprentices are not likely to pass on such knowledge trivially... magic is a powerful and dangerous tool for those who do not respect the power they command... and more than one spell caster has likely lost an apprentice or two by teaching them spells they are not ready for. Thus, most teachers who take on apprentices will keep such spells away from young wizards until they are sure they are ready for the power... and may in fact never pass them on (especially if they had to do much to earn the spell in the first place).

Simply put... the higher level the spell is, the less likely a spell caster will part with it for mere cash... as acquiring it often takes a fair amount of effort to gain. Also remember that while PCs may gain spells that the player desires (as in the player choosing the spells)... that doesn't mean that the character is intentionally trying for those specific spells... or that other characters (NPC spell casters of the same OCC) will gain those particular spells as easily.

There really is no need to limit what a spell caster can teach to others, as their particular personalities will likely do so. Even a generous and kind spell caster who seeks to spread the knowledge of magic will be choosy as to whom he will give such knowledge to... all it takes is for one person he teaches to misuse such magic and cause harm to others for the kindly spell caster to realize that his action lead to such a consequence (and if he is truly good, he will do what he can to rectify such a mistake).

Those are good arguments, but if those forces where in effect then how on earth do level 1 shifters get the spell in the first place? This is the spell that could let a rogue shifter bring in this week's flavor of apocalyptic doom for the planet, and yet shifters now start with it, and ley line rifters can pick it up at 1st level as well if they want.

[dragonfett]

I thought that Shifters get their nitial spells through ley line nexi or something.

[dreicunan]

I thought that Shifters get their nitial spells through ley line nexi or something.

Not that I can find. Ley Line Rifters get their level-up spells that way, and Ley Line walkers can get certain spells that way on level-up as well (one less spell per level, but without the certainty of getting insanities that a Rifter has).

[Killer Cyborg]

Those are good arguments, but if those forces where in effect then how on earth do level 1 shifters get the spell in the first place? This is the spell that could let a rogue shifter bring in this week's flavor of apocalyptic doom for the planet, and yet shifters now start with it, and ley line rifters can pick it up at 1st level as well if they want.

I'd think that a good part of the apprenticeship process would be ensuring that the apprentice was worthy to pass the knowledge on to.
I mean, this isn't McDonalds; you don't just fill out an application to be a mage, scrub some trays for an evening after they show you the fryer, and consider you to be fully trained.
Mages in Rifts spend "years of their life" learning to focus their thoughts and build their will in order to direct mystic energy. Considering the number of skills and spells that even a level 1 mage starts with, I'd guess it's something like 4-8 years, akin to getting a modern degree.
And I'm betting that "Dimensional Portal" and other high-end spells aren't first-day-of-class stuff.

[dragonfett]

Especially considering Dimensional Portal would take a month to learn it.

[dreicunan]

Those are good arguments, but if those forces where in effect then how on earth do level 1 shifters get the spell in the first place? This is the spell that could let a rogue shifter bring in this week's flavor of apocalyptic doom for the planet, and yet shifters now start with it, and ley line rifters can pick it up at 1st level as well if they want.

I'd think that a good part of the apprenticeship process would be ensuring that the apprentice was worthy to pass the knowledge on to.
I mean, this isn't McDonalds; you don't just fill out an application to be a mage, scrub some trays for an evening after they show you the fryer, and consider you to be fully trained.
Mages in Rifts spend "years of their life" learning to focus their thoughts and build their will in order to direct mystic energy. Considering the number of skills and spells that even a level 1 mage starts with, I'd guess it's something like 4-8 years, akin to getting a modern degree.
And I'm betting that "Dimensional Portal" and other high-end spells aren't first-day-of-class stuff.

Fair points. I guess that having worked for so long in education I'm just REALLY leery of giving anyone at the traditional age range for level 1 characters the ability tear a hole through reality! I suppose that living on a planet where it happens periodically anyway probably changes the perspective that people would have.

[Axelmania]

I cannot find rules on how to suffocate to death in RUE, does this mean humans do not need to breathe? I guess the Breathe Without Air spell lacks a purpose.

[dreicunan]

I cannot find rules on how to suffocate to death in RUE, does this mean humans do not need to breathe? I guess the Breathe Without Air spell lacks a purpose.

The Sea Inquisitor entry in World Book 7 lets us know that Sea Inquisitors can hold their breath twice as long underwater, and then says "about four minutes" in parenthesis. The para-trooper "Hold-breath" ability (mercenary adventures) clarifies that the average person can hold their breath for about a minute or two before dizziness occurs, followed by unconsciousness in another two minutes. Also, I believe one of the earlier (teens or twenties) Rifters had rules about it, but it is too late for me to go looking for where and my memory is failing me on the exact location.

[Killer Cyborg]

Those are good arguments, but if those forces where in effect then how on earth do level 1 shifters get the spell in the first place? This is the spell that could let a rogue shifter bring in this week's flavor of apocalyptic doom for the planet, and yet shifters now start with it, and ley line rifters can pick it up at 1st level as well if they want.

I'd think that a good part of the apprenticeship process would be ensuring that the apprentice was worthy to pass the knowledge on to.
I mean, this isn't McDonalds; you don't just fill out an application to be a mage, scrub some trays for an evening after they show you the fryer, and consider you to be fully trained.
Mages in Rifts spend "years of their life" learning to focus their thoughts and build their will in order to direct mystic energy. Considering the number of skills and spells that even a level 1 mage starts with, I'd guess it's something like 4-8 years, akin to getting a modern degree.
And I'm betting that "Dimensional Portal" and other high-end spells aren't first-day-of-class stuff.

Fair points. I guess that having worked for so long in education I'm just REALLY leery of giving anyone at the traditional age range for level 1 characters the ability tear a hole through reality! I suppose that living on a planet where it happens periodically anyway probably changes the perspective that people would have.

lol
Fair point.
I'll point out that one of the key deficiencies of our own education system is lack of one-on-one education and (often) practical experience.
Apprentice mages as typically portrayed in fantasy fiction wouldn't likely have that problem. 4-8 years as a sorcerer's apprentice would probably be some long hours under a lone mentor. Hard to slip through the cracks or goof off too much with a 1:1 or 1:1d4 ratio of teachers to students.
And a LOT more time for the teacher to learn the character and skills of the students.

[Blue_Lion]

Rather than keeping an augment for the sake of augment I think we can all agree that if the spell is not listed as being common then there is a likely reason that the level 1 shifter is not teaching a level 15 spell. (leave it to your game group to find what works for you.)

[eliakon]

There is a simple way to restore the scarcity of spells... remember that for a spell caster, Knowledge is Power.

Just because a spell caster HAS the spell and can sell that knowledge to others for a given price doesn't mean that he WILL do so... even at 1st level when he likely needs the cash. Even if it didn't cost him much to gain it, such rare spells give such characters a fair amount of power (even if casting it can be a little... difficult due to the amount of PPE involved). Evil characters are likely to horde their knowledge to preserve their power base... selfish ones are also likely to do the same... while good characters will be reluctant to sell their knowledge to protect others from what such spells might do in the wrong hands.

Even universities and guilds that may offer such spells to members for a given price are not actually likely to sell such knowledge for mere cash... but rather trade it for services rendered equivalent to such an amount (while seeing just how loyal such members who desire it are... and what use such individuals are likely to put such power to). They do this for the same reasons a given spell caster is likely to... to preserve their power base and make sure only those who are worthy of such power receive it from them.

Even those spell casters who take on apprentices are not likely to pass on such knowledge trivially... magic is a powerful and dangerous tool for those who do not respect the power they command... and more than one spell caster has likely lost an apprentice or two by teaching them spells they are not ready for. Thus, most teachers who take on apprentices will keep such spells away from young wizards until they are sure they are ready for the power... and may in fact never pass them on (especially if they had to do much to earn the spell in the first place).

Simply put... the higher level the spell is, the less likely a spell caster will part with it for mere cash... as acquiring it often takes a fair amount of effort to gain. Also remember that while PCs may gain spells that the player desires (as in the player choosing the spells)... that doesn't mean that the character is intentionally trying for those specific spells... or that other characters (NPC spell casters of the same OCC) will gain those particular spells as easily.

There really is no need to limit what a spell caster can teach to others, as their particular personalities will likely do so. Even a generous and kind spell caster who seeks to spread the knowledge of magic will be choosy as to whom he will give such knowledge to... all it takes is for one person he teaches to misuse such magic and cause harm to others for the kindly spell caster to realize that his action lead to such a consequence (and if he is truly good, he will do what he can to rectify such a mistake).

Those are good arguments, but if those forces where in effect then how on earth do level 1 shifters get the spell in the first place? This is the spell that could let a rogue shifter bring in this week's flavor of apocalyptic doom for the planet, and yet shifters now start with it, and ley line rifters can pick it up at 1st level as well if they want.

They get them when they are trained.
Shifters and other "Scholastic" mages just don't wake up one knowing their craft. They spend a great deal of time as apprentices and/or students studying their profession... under the tutelage of masters of the art who are training them in the craft.
I am HIGLY skeptical of the idea that the teachers who can train new mages are level 1 mages... they are, wait for it... masters of the craft. Which the book describes as being level 9+.
So as their master was level 9+ they learned all their initial spells in their 'school days'. Including a number of partially learned formula that, over time (as they level up) they will finish up their study and research of and be able to add to their list of usable spells.

[dreicunan]

There is a simple way to restore the scarcity of spells... remember that for a spell caster, Knowledge is Power.

Just because a spell caster HAS the spell and can sell that knowledge to others for a given price doesn't mean that he WILL do so... even at 1st level when he likely needs the cash. Even if it didn't cost him much to gain it, such rare spells give such characters a fair amount of power (even if casting it can be a little... difficult due to the amount of PPE involved). Evil characters are likely to horde their knowledge to preserve their power base... selfish ones are also likely to do the same... while good characters will be reluctant to sell their knowledge to protect others from what such spells might do in the wrong hands.

Even universities and guilds that may offer such spells to members for a given price are not actually likely to sell such knowledge for mere cash... but rather trade it for services rendered equivalent to such an amount (while seeing just how loyal such members who desire it are... and what use such individuals are likely to put such power to). They do this for the same reasons a given spell caster is likely to... to preserve their power base and make sure only those who are worthy of such power receive it from them.

Even those spell casters who take on apprentices are not likely to pass on such knowledge trivially... magic is a powerful and dangerous tool for those who do not respect the power they command... and more than one spell caster has likely lost an apprentice or two by teaching them spells they are not ready for. Thus, most teachers who take on apprentices will keep such spells away from young wizards until they are sure they are ready for the power... and may in fact never pass them on (especially if they had to do much to earn the spell in the first place).

Simply put... the higher level the spell is, the less likely a spell caster will part with it for mere cash... as acquiring it often takes a fair amount of effort to gain. Also remember that while PCs may gain spells that the player desires (as in the player choosing the spells)... that doesn't mean that the character is intentionally trying for those specific spells... or that other characters (NPC spell casters of the same OCC) will gain those particular spells as easily.

There really is no need to limit what a spell caster can teach to others, as their particular personalities will likely do so. Even a generous and kind spell caster who seeks to spread the knowledge of magic will be choosy as to whom he will give such knowledge to... all it takes is for one person he teaches to misuse such magic and cause harm to others for the kindly spell caster to realize that his action lead to such a consequence (and if he is truly good, he will do what he can to rectify such a mistake).

Those are good arguments, but if those forces where in effect then how on earth do level 1 shifters get the spell in the first place? This is the spell that could let a rogue shifter bring in this week's flavor of apocalyptic doom for the planet, and yet shifters now start with it, and ley line rifters can pick it up at 1st level as well if they want.

They get them when they are trained.
Shifters and other "Scholastic" mages just don't wake up one knowing their craft. They spend a great deal of time as apprentices and/or students studying their profession... under the tutelage of masters of the art who are training them in the craft.
I am HIGLY skeptical of the idea that the teachers who can train new mages are level 1 mages... they are, wait for it... masters of the craft. Which the book describes as being level 9+.
So as their master was level 9+ they learned all their initial spells in their 'school days'. Including a number of partially learned formula that, over time (as they level up) they will finish up their study and research of and be able to add to their list of usable spells.

My "how on earth" wasn't questioning the process of how they learn spells, but that if the forces mentioned by Razorwing were in play, how were they getting anyone to teach them how to tear a hole through reality that early in their career.

[Razorwing]

Those are good arguments, but if those forces where in effect then how on earth do level 1 shifters get the spell in the first place? This is the spell that could let a rogue shifter bring in this week's flavor of apocalyptic doom for the planet, and yet shifters now start with it, and ley line rifters can pick it up at 1st level as well if they want.

They get them when they are trained.
Shifters and other "Scholastic" mages just don't wake up one knowing their craft. They spend a great deal of time as apprentices and/or students studying their profession... under the tutelage of masters of the art who are training them in the craft.
I am HIGLY skeptical of the idea that the teachers who can train new mages are level 1 mages... they are, wait for it... masters of the craft. Which the book describes as being level 9+.
So as their master was level 9+ they learned all their initial spells in their 'school days'. Including a number of partially learned formula that, over time (as they level up) they will finish up their study and research of and be able to add to their list of usable spells.

My "how on earth" wasn't questioning the process of how they learn spells, but that if the forces mentioned by Razorwing were in play, how were they getting anyone to teach them how to tear a hole through reality that early in their career.

Because the Shifter who took such characters on as an apprentice passes on the knowledge... or something else did. Shifters will have different priorities for spells than a Line Walker or Techno-Wizard does. That doesn't mean they give such spells away easily... the Dimensional Portal spell is likely the last one a young Shifter learns before embarking on their own career (gaining it either after years of service to their mentor in the Shifting Arts or after contacting an extra-dimensional entity that provided the spell [possibly to get the young and inexperienced shifter to do something foolish]).

However, just because different disciplines of magic put a different value on the spells they teach to students, it doesn't mean the students will give that knowledge away easily. These spells are still a source of power for a Shifter as much as they would be for a Line Walker or a Techno-Wizard... and teaching others these spells would make their own knowledge less valued. Think about it... a Shifter can summon a Dimensional Portal at first level... something that a starting Line Walker or Techno-Wizard can't do... which can command a fairly hefty price for their services (creating the portal... not teaching others to do so that is). Which is likely why Shifters will be very particular about who they take on as an apprentice... and how quickly they teach that apprentice such spells.

As for the Line Rifters... while the Player may choose the spell that they learn from meditating on a Ley Line, that doesn't mean that the actual Character knew what spells they were going to learn... or will be taught from a mentor when they are intitially taught. Some learn Dimensional Portal... others do not. Just because a character has the potential to have such spells doesn't mean that EVERY Line Rifter does. Many players will see the cost of casting Dimensional Portal (1000 PPE) and their own small reserves and think "I'll never be able to cast that spell and there are other spells i could cast much easier... so i will take something else instead," rather than "if I take this spell i can make a fortune selling it and never need to adventure ever."

Of course, even if a Shifter or Line Rifter wanted to sell such spells... finding a buyer may prove to be very difficult. Chances are most brotherhoods, guilds or schools of magic that would easily have access to the funds to buy such spells already have access to them. Individual wizards are less likely to have such funds (unless very high level)... and those of more questionable morals may not be interested in actually paying for the spell (they may still want it... just not actually pay for it). Even being able to put it on a scroll may not find many buyers for such a spell... at least not at the price a player may want... and could end up getting a player into some potentially serious trouble (depending on where and who they are trying to sell to). In all likelihood, those who would pay for the spell probably won't be able to afford it... and those who could afford to pay likely either have access to it... or of the moral quality that they would rather force the information from the player.

It is often cheaper to get someone to cast a spell like Dimensional Portal than to actually buy and learn the spell (save if on a scroll... but the chances of learning from that is very small and usually not worth wasting the spell to do).

[eliakon]

I would also like to bring up, again, the point that not everyone inside the game universe is a min-maxer who knows all the mechanics of the system, all the rules and is seeking to make themselves the most powerful and 'rules effective' person AND knows that they are the protagonist of the story and thus that they will always be the center of attention, be the center of fate and fortune, have vast amounts of plot armor, and always be around those who will take actions to advanced their story.
In the words of Fred Gallagher (creator of MegaTokyo) "There are no side characters. Everyone is the protagonist of their own story."
It is just the flawed view of the reader or the gamer that creates the impression that there are protagonists, antagonists supporting cast and side characters.
In the real world no one says "Well shucks I don't matter, its her story after all, not mine." stuffs their hands in their pocket and wanders off to go be a good little faceless minion For The Plot.
Thus, every mage is convinced that they are the center of the story. BOTH the mage selling the spell, and the mage buying it.
ALSO I would like to point out that a LOT of the "Assumptions" that people use in their "How can I break the game" rely on having been raised in OUR world. They require a 20th or 21st century world view, modern education, access to modern levels of information (speed, depth, and ease), modern economic theory, education systems, economic systems, infrastructure systems. They are predicated on the idea that responses will be based on modern western ideas of justice, proportional response, legal theory, civil justice, civil rights, and the like. They also often rely on assuming that the motives of people in Rifts or PF are the same as those in our modern world, and that people in those worlds are all motivated solely by the same motivations as the PCs played by the people that propose the system and that thus what ever that person suggests as a motive, since it motivates their character will be the motivation of everyone universally.
NONE of that is true.
The world of Rifts doesn't work that way AT ALL.
The education system is, by our standards, a joke.
The legal system is most often "what the guys with the power say it is"
Motivations are, like the real world, widely varied and do not always make sense to all parties.

In such a world, there is no reason to presume that the majority of 1st level shifters have training in economic theory and thus understand they ideas of supply and demand and price points market saturation or any of the rest.
In such a world there is no reason to presume that every shifter in the world is obsessed with being rich. HECK I don't see any reason to even presume that most or even a statistically significant number of shifters take up their training for material wealth.
In such a world there is no reason to presume that those who start to undermine the wealth and power of the guilds and brotherhoods and governments and gods and whatnot are NOT going to just face a few C.A.D. letters and maybe a civil suit for damages... they are going to be, if they are lucky get told to stop, join the offended party as a minion and hand over everything they own. More likely they are going to die a hideous painful and public death as a warning to the NEXT apprentice or ten who gets any cute ideas about messing around with the big boys.
Put another way...
Ask Grenada, or Panama, or Afghanistan, or Tibet, or Iraq, or Crimea, or any number of other little tiny countries (like 1st or 2nd or 3rd level characters) what happens when you upset the big boys like the US, or Russia, or China, or Imperial Japan, or Nazi Germany, or the British Empire (or the 9th level characters, or Magic Guilds, or...)
The answer btw is *squish*

Those little guys are the protagonists of their stories. They are NOT going to die like lemmings just to lower the prices of spells for the convenience of the PCs so that the players can stock up on spells cheaper.
They might be willing to buy spells from the PCs cheaper... or they might not depending on what the response is and if it only goes after the seller or if the purchaser is also in trouble.
Far FAR more likely is that they will agree to buy the spell...
...and then tip off the guild, and while the PCs are spending the next 20-30 days teaching the spell to the buyer the guild sends in a strike team to 'deal with the scabs'. The buyer then gets their reward for turning in a rogue, the guild gets the rogue, the strike team gets their bounty and everyone (other than the rogue of course) is happy.

[Axelmania]

The Sea Inquisitor entry in World Book 7 lets us know that Sea Inquisitors can hold their breath twice as long underwater, and then says "about four minutes" in parenthesis.

I dunno how much authority that holds, given how Carrella books get treated in the RUE era.

The para-trooper "Hold-breath" ability (mercenary adventures) clarifies that the average person can hold their breath for about a minute or two before dizziness occurs, followed by unconsciousness in another two minutes.

http://www.palladiumbooks.com/forums/vi ... ?p=2477093 mentions it was on page 31, although that book didn't come out until 2005, and I wouldn't treat Rifts as a setting without breathing for 15 years prior to that.

I believe one of the earlier (teens or twenties) Rifters had rules about it, but it is too late for me to go looking for where and my memory is failing me on the exact location.

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=77496 has a list of which ones have official questions and answers, but I share your frustration, it's hard to remember which questions were in which books.

It'd be interesting if maybe we were allowed to reprint a portion of those with JUST the questions on the forums, but then people would have to get the Rifters to read the answers.

Apprentice mages as typically portrayed in fantasy fiction wouldn't likely have that problem. 4-8 years as a sorcerer's apprentice would probably be some long hours under a lone mentor. Hard to slip through the cracks or goof off too much with a 1:1 or 1:1d4 ratio of teachers to students.
And a LOT more time for the teacher to learn the character and skills of the students.

Of course with this approach, 4th level 12 year old Ley Line Walker Alistair Dunscon would've begun training at 4-8 years old =/

Maybe LLW stuff is easier to begin at a young age compared to Shifting? I kinda like the idea of it being a 'gateway drug' to more corrupt magical learnings. Alistair's dad Nostrous was a LLW/Temporal Wizard, it doesn't say the order of OCCs for him but my pet hunch is LLW was 1st.

Rather than keeping an augment for the sake of augment I think we can all agree that if the spell is not listed as being common then there is a likely reason that the level 1 shifter is not teaching a level 15 spell. (leave it to your game group to find what works for you.)

Yeah, I think we have that consensus, with different ideas on what might be cooler explanations.

I'm just REALLY leery of giving anyone at the traditional age range for level 1 characters the ability tear a hole through reality! I suppose that living on a planet where it happens periodically anyway probably changes the perspective that people would have.

Perhaps some defeatest "this is happening at least once a year at every nexus, the world is already in danger, you might as well profit and survive" type thing. Or good shifters who think "well, I will use the creatuers I summon to battle monsters coming from random nexus rifts".

Dimensional Portal isn't really as dangerous in a Shifter's hands, IMO, compared to their smaller simpler Rifts (OCC abilities) which cost less PPE to use. Although, maybe these aren't as risky? RUE 122 says they are "one-way" so one might interpret that as meaning that it actually doesn't allow Poltergeists to sneak into the world, and that it is only random rifts / dimensional portals which do so because they are not one-way. They are at minimum "two-way" but Poltergeists probably come from somewhere else so that's arguably 3-way in addition to 2-way.

But if I take a "X-way" to mean "at least X-way" that would also leave 1-way open-ended too. The need for DP/ROG to accomplish 2-way could be viewed as "in respect to the shifter and the target/destination" rather than in respect to 3rd party hoppers-on Poltergeists.

the Dimensional Portal spell is likely the last one a young Shifter learns before embarking on their own career (gaining it either after years of service to their mentor in the Shifting Arts or after contacting an extra-dimensional entity that provided the spell [possibly to get the young and inexperienced shifter to do something foolish]).

I'm not aware of the shifter OCC being teachable by extra-dimensional entities. This appears to be more of an option presented AFTER becoming a shifter, for a power-up.

Funny enough, even using RMB 87 "Link to the Supernatural", the spell Dimensional Portal wasn't even an option. Page 88 only allowed selections from levels 6 to 14. The iconic Kevin Long drawing of a Shifter letting some... THING (what IS that?) in through a Rift was probably a career-long accomplishment.

The top of 88 did say:

The process of a link to a supernatural being begins with communicating with it through a rift. A small dimensional portal/rift is
created at a ley line nexus point.

But Long's image is what I would call a large dimensional portal, pretty much implying this was an accomplished shifter who somehow learned Create Dimensional Portal, either by getting to 15th level, buying the teaching, getting a scroll, or somehow learning it from the master outside of the normal 14-maximum guideline.

That or the monster knew the spell itself:

the shifter gives the monster a connection to our own dimension. Without this connection, the creature can not enter into our world, but the physical link to our planet, through the shifter, means that it can now rift into Earth.

RMB 190 "The mage can open a door to a specific world or randomly. This is the only way a greater being can enter into our dimension" in combination, I think means that greater beings (supernatural masters Shifters link to) lack the ability to be "specific" about Earth as a destination without a Shifter's help. Simply being contacted isn't enough, a link is somehow needed to connect with it enough to pinpoint it. Otherwise, they have to somehow target it at random (who knows how likely that is) or use an existing portal, or pay a ferryman.

However, just because different disciplines of magic put a different value on the spells they teach to students, it doesn't mean the students will give that knowledge away easily. These spells are still a source of power for a Shifter as much as they would be for a Line Walker or a Techno-Wizard... and teaching others these spells would make their own knowledge less valued. Think about it... a Shifter can summon a Dimensional Portal at first level... something that a starting Line Walker or Techno-Wizard can't do... which can command a fairly hefty price for their services (creating the portal... not teaching others to do so that is). Which is likely why Shifters will be very particular about who they take on as an apprentice... and how quickly they teach that apprentice such spells.

This is an argument against ALL spell teaching, but when it comes to spells that more people know, the attitude could simply be "if I don't teach it, some other down on his luck Shifter probably will anyway, so I might as well earn the money".

The benefit of the Shifter, something that can't be easily taught (because it requires obtaining the OCC entirely) are the new OCC abilities for making 1-way portals at low PPE cost. Instead of 1000, they can take a person for a ride anywhere on Earth for 125+25 PPE using RUE 122's ability 4.

It doesn't mention any restrictions on gear, so unless you take it very literally (only the shifter and his familiar, plus however many people he pay for, come through) and everyone arrives naked (I like this! DO IT. Much more balanced.) a portal open for 1 minute can probably transmit a decent amount of equipment tossed through.

Although... the randomness does make it less useful. Level 5-9 can only target a continent or country (I kinda wish this was more specific, former is obviously better than latter) while 10+ arrive within 50/miles. The one trying to take Erin Tarn past the vampire kingdoms (before something went wrong and landed her in Wormwood) was presumably one of these higher level ones, either targeting "South America" or maybe somewhere more specific.

As for the Line Rifters... while the Player may choose the spell that they learn from meditating on a Ley Line, that doesn't mean that the actual Character knew what spells they were going to learn... or will be taught from a mentor when they are intitially taught. Some learn Dimensional Portal... others do not. Just because a character has the potential to have such spells doesn't mean that EVERY Line Rifter does. Many players will see the cost of casting Dimensional Portal (1000 PPE) and their own small reserves and think "I'll never be able to cast that spell and there are other spells i could cast much easier... so i will take something else instead," rather than "if I take this spell i can make a fortune selling it and never need to adventure ever."

True that, though it would've been nice if we were told %s as to which spells tended to be selected, or given a random determination table for players who wanted to be surprised, like how HU has for super powers.

Of course, even if a Shifter or Line Rifter wanted to sell such spells... finding a buyer may prove to be very difficult. Chances are most brotherhoods, guilds or schools of magic that would easily have access to the funds to buy such spells already have access to them.

That's why you bring the price down, so you have more potential clients able to afford it.

Even being able to put it on a scroll may not find many buyers for such a spell... at least not at the price a player may want... and could end up getting a player into some potentially serious trouble (depending on where and who they are trying to sell to).

The psionic power of Object Read could be common enough to make the use of scrolls a big concern, as OR-detectives could possibly testify as to who provided the dangerous DP scroll.

It is often cheaper to get someone to cast a spell like Dimensional Portal than to actually buy and learn the spell (save if on a scroll... but the chances of learning from that is very small and usually not worth wasting the spell to do).

Given the dangers not just of opening the DP but also in amassing the PPE to cast it (might attract trouble) I could see a lot of Shifters preferring not to want to be around for the actual casting and might prefer to have that done indirectly.

I would also like to bring up, again, the point that not everyone inside the game universe is a min-maxer who knows all the mechanics of the system, all the rules and is seeking to make themselves the most powerful and 'rules effective' person AND knows that they are the protagonist of the story and thus that they will always be the center of attention, be the center of fate and fortune, have vast amounts of plot armor, and always be around those who will take actions to advanced their story.

I don't think this requires extensive meta-knowledge. Here is what seems plausible to me.

1. player makes Shifter, reads last paragraph of ability 2. "Learning New Spells" (pg 122) on start of pg 123.
2. player asks GM "what does it mean when I can still purchase and learn spells like other magic users?" (ignoring the "they rarely do" because studying dimensions and monsters is scary, and they want to be able to protect themselves)
3. GM says that they can pay some mages to teach them spells
4. Player asks how much.
5. GM says it varies and to RP it.
6. either the player sneaks a peak at RUE 190's "Step 8: The Pursuit of Magic - Learning Spells -Purchasing Magic" or else locates another magic user and asks how much to learn a spell.
7. player then learns of the high high price of magic.
8. player then realizes they have magic, which they could also sell for high prices.
9. player then realizes neither magic user actually needs to be wealthy if they simply exchange spells, although obviously the first to teach could be at a disadvantage since his student might run away without teaching a spell in return. Trust must be built, perhaps "deposits/hostages used as collateral until the teaching fee is paid.

a LOT of the "Assumptions" that people use in their "How can I break the game" rely on having been raised in OUR world. They require a 20th or 21st century world view, modern education, access to modern levels of information (speed, depth, and ease), modern economic theory, education systems, economic systems, infrastructure systems. They are predicated on the idea that responses will be based on modern western ideas of justice, proportional response, legal theory, civil justice, civil rights, and the like. They also often rely on assuming that the motives of people in Rifts or PF are the same as those in our modern world, and that people in those worlds are all motivated solely by the same motivations as the PCs played by the people that propose the system and that thus what ever that person suggests as a motive, since it motivates their character will be the motivation of everyone universally.

NONE of that is true.
The world of Rifts doesn't work that way AT ALL.

I don't understand where you are getting the impression that someone here (do you mean me?) is attributing identical motivations to all people. If you mean a desire for wealth or power, I'm pretty sure that type of thing is commented on somewhere.

In such a world, there is no reason to presume that the majority of 1st level shifters have training in economic theory and thus understand they ideas of supply and demand and price points market saturation or any of the rest.
In such a world there is no reason to presume that every shifter in the world is obsessed with being rich. HECK I don't see any reason to even presume that most or even a statistically significant number of shifters take up their training for material wealth.

Wealth would more often be used as a means to power, as it often is in the real world. There are certainly non-monetary forms of value, such as having people in your debt or fearing you, destroying threats to yourself.

I'm not sure where you get the idea that someone has to understand economic theory to sell a service. You do not require training to know, for example, that in a town of 100 people, a masseur will have more business if he is the only masseur than if there are 50 masseurs. Understanding the difference between services being widespread (thus competing for clients) and scarce (thus clients competing for you) is basic common sense, it doesn't require any training or understanding of complex theory.

If I'm the only man in town with a dairy cow, I can easily crank up prices and many will pay because they MUST have milk. If there is another man in town with a dairy cow, I can't recklessly crank up because people have the option of getting their milk from someone else if he charges a lower price.

This sort of idea is pre-literate, probably even pre-agriculture. It is something humans are smart enough to understand on their own, learned through the experience of bartering for goods.

In such a world there is no reason to presume that those who start to undermine the wealth and power of the guilds and brotherhoods and governments and gods and whatnot are NOT going to just face a few C.A.D. letters and maybe a civil suit for damages... they are going to be, if they are lucky get told to stop, join the offended party as a minion and hand over everything they own. More likely they are going to die a hideous painful and public death as a warning to the NEXT apprentice or ten who gets any cute ideas about messing around with the big boys.

I agree with you here. This is another way in which they don't really need training, if by their nature they upset the balance competing for self-interest, that they will be checked by other powers who want to profit from scarcity, that will be their education.

Far FAR more likely is that they will agree to buy the spell...
...and then tip off the guild, and while the PCs are spending the next 20-30 days teaching the spell to the buyer the guild sends in a strike team to 'deal with the scabs'. The buyer then gets their reward for turning in a rogue, the guild gets the rogue, the strike team gets their bounty and everyone (other than the rogue of course) is happy.

I didn't even think of offering bounties like this, great idea. How long it takes to teach the spell would be a major factor in how long a guild has time to investigate and organize a response.

I'd like to consolidate information about this where we can find it. I don't really know where to look for it in Rifts. Page 247 of Palladium Fantasy 2nd had "Selling Spell Magic" which mentions:

takes two days per level of the spell being taught. Consequently, a first level spell can be learned in two days, a 2nd level spell in four, 3rd level in six and so on.

I think of these as hard minimums (meaning a 15th level is 30 days, like you said) but given that this is mentioned under the Alchemist OCC, for all I know this might be their specialty and it could take much longer for other magic users to teach spells.

When I look in other systems for example, Heroes Unlimited Revised 92 had "no less than 8 months" for self-teaching, and 1D4 months for boons from high level wizards or supernatural beings. Regarding self-teaching in PF via the Wizard's "scroll conversion" I can't remember if it said anywhere about how much time that takes to attempt. At bare minimum I figure the 30 seconds needed to read the scroll to cast it normally but I figure it should be a lot more.

I couldn't find info on it in Nightbane's main book, but TTGD mentions on 37 self-teaching existing spells is 1 month while 38 gives 2 weeks/level for inventing new spells based on existing ones and 39 gives 1 month/level for converting variant spells and 3 weeks/level for making entirely new spells. These seem generally faster than the 8 month minimum that HU uses but it doesn't give guidelines for people teaching each other spells.

I had thought I had seen the 2days/level like for PF alchemists SOMEWHERE in Nightbane's core book but I can't seem to find it so I may have just misremembered.

[Killer Cyborg]

I would also like to bring up, again, the point that not everyone inside the game universe is a min-maxer who knows all the mechanics of the system, all the rules and is seeking to make themselves the most powerful and 'rules effective' person AND knows that they are the protagonist of the story and thus that they will always be the center of attention, be the center of fate and fortune, have vast amounts of plot armor, and always be around those who will take actions to advanced their story.
In the words of Fred Gallagher (creator of MegaTokyo) "There are no side characters. Everyone is the protagonist of their own story."
It is just the flawed view of the reader or the gamer that creates the impression that there are protagonists, antagonists supporting cast and side characters.
In the real world no one says "Well shucks I don't matter, its her story after all, not mine." stuffs their hands in their pocket and wanders off to go be a good little faceless minion For The Plot.
Thus, every mage is convinced that they are the center of the story. BOTH the mage selling the spell, and the mage buying it.
ALSO I would like to point out that a LOT of the "Assumptions" that people use in their "How can I break the game" rely on having been raised in OUR world. They require a 20th or 21st century world view, modern education, access to modern levels of information (speed, depth, and ease), modern economic theory, education systems, economic systems, infrastructure systems. They are predicated on the idea that responses will be based on modern western ideas of justice, proportional response, legal theory, civil justice, civil rights, and the like. They also often rely on assuming that the motives of people in Rifts or PF are the same as those in our modern world, and that people in those worlds are all motivated solely by the same motivations as the PCs played by the people that propose the system and that thus what ever that person suggests as a motive, since it motivates their character will be the motivation of everyone universally.
NONE of that is true.
The world of Rifts doesn't work that way AT ALL.
The education system is, by our standards, a joke.
The legal system is most often "what the guys with the power say it is"
Motivations are, like the real world, widely varied and do not always make sense to all parties.

In such a world, there is no reason to presume that the majority of 1st level shifters have training in economic theory and thus understand they ideas of supply and demand and price points market saturation or any of the rest.
In such a world there is no reason to presume that every shifter in the world is obsessed with being rich. HECK I don't see any reason to even presume that most or even a statistically significant number of shifters take up their training for material wealth.
In such a world there is no reason to presume that those who start to undermine the wealth and power of the guilds and brotherhoods and governments and gods and whatnot are NOT going to just face a few C.A.D. letters and maybe a civil suit for damages... they are going to be, if they are lucky get told to stop, join the offended party as a minion and hand over everything they own. More likely they are going to die a hideous painful and public death as a warning to the NEXT apprentice or ten who gets any cute ideas about messing around with the big boys.
Put another way...
Ask Grenada, or Panama, or Afghanistan, or Tibet, or Iraq, or Crimea, or any number of other little tiny countries (like 1st or 2nd or 3rd level characters) what happens when you upset the big boys like the US, or Russia, or China, or Imperial Japan, or Nazi Germany, or the British Empire (or the 9th level characters, or Magic Guilds, or...)
The answer btw is *squish*

Those little guys are the protagonists of their stories. They are NOT going to die like lemmings just to lower the prices of spells for the convenience of the PCs so that the players can stock up on spells cheaper.
They might be willing to buy spells from the PCs cheaper... or they might not depending on what the response is and if it only goes after the seller or if the purchaser is also in trouble.
Far FAR more likely is that they will agree to buy the spell...
...and then tip off the guild, and while the PCs are spending the next 20-30 days teaching the spell to the buyer the guild sends in a strike team to 'deal with the scabs'. The buyer then gets their reward for turning in a rogue, the guild gets the rogue, the strike team gets their bounty and everyone (other than the rogue of course) is happy.

Very good summary of things.

[Blue_Lion]

(Ignoring that axel seams auguring against RAW based off the fact he just seams to dislike the idea of RAW. )
interesting point was brought up-
When does a mage start their training?

Going off information in New west when it comes to use of TW devices if some one trains with TW devices from the time they are a kid they can use them as an adult even if not a mage or psi. So is it possible that most mages have to start training young children. The mage goes to begin the training as a young child. (This could give the mentor a higher chance to affect the values and actions of the student.)

Think some one mentioned starting the training when they are a teen the issue I see there is you are starting training after the high point off PPE, and after much of how their mind works has developed. Meaning the student may already believe they can not cast magic and thus be unable to be a mage.

[drewkitty ~..~]

Nothing in the rogue scholar ability 1 says it is the ability to be effective teachers just that they can do it and it comes natural. In fact they can only teach equal to a secondary skill. That does not to me make them effective teachers as an effective teacher should teach professional level skills not dabblers level.

Effective teachers teach the subject matter quickly and it is retained. The what the canon text says is that the scholar can teach at the secondary skills level. If you want a professional quality level of skills the only text covering that is the changing class rules that RUE says to use.
To gain professional quality of skill takes USING THE SKILLS OUTSIDE THE CLASSROOM. This is the RW reason Why the games rules only let a scholar teach secondary skills.

*****As no where in Rifts books does it say that teaching can be done by just any charter by RAW only those mentioned as being able to teach can teach. (That is not a house rule but limiting what can happen to what he rules say can happen or RAW.)****

That the changing class text that RUE instructs everyone to use does say that the char needs to find a teacher says that yes just about anyone can teach what they know. Just like in the Real World that anyone can teach what they know.
Note: the being able to teach and having a teaching credential are not the same thing. Just like being able to drive a vehicle is not the same thing as having a driver's license.

(The only other place I know of that they talk about teaching skills in rules is in HU allowing skills to be learned from college.)

[u]In the HU rules do not cover teaching skills...they only cover learning skills.[/u] This is just saying exactly what the canon text said instead of something that is a house rule.

(Ignoring that axel seams auguring against RAW based off the fact he just seams to dislike the idea of RAW. )

Yep.

interesting point was brought up-
When does a mage start their training?

Going off information in New west when it comes to use of TW devices if some one trains with TW devices from the time they are a kid they can use them as an adult even if not a mage or psi. So is it possible that most mages have to start training young children. The mage goes to begin the training as a young child. (This could give the mentor a higher chance to affect the values and actions of the student.)

Think some one mentioned starting the training when they are a teen the issue I see there is you are starting training after the high point off PPE, and after much of how their mind works has developed. Meaning the student may already believe they can not cast magic and thus be unable to be a mage.

The best canon text to read when talking about how mages are trained is in the Myteries of Magic Book One.
Training starts in the char's tweens or very early teens to 1) retain their childhood PPE base & 2) develop it into a PPE bases found in the magic CC's.
There is also a Magic CC that shows what happens when a char decides to become a mage "Later in Life" Their PPE is only a fraction of what a full wizard has and their spell selection is cut off around level 5 or 7.

[Axelmania]

(Ignoring that axel seams auguring against RAW based off the fact he just seams to dislike the idea of RAW. )

Saying in parenthesis that you are ignoring someone is not ignoring them.

I do not see where I have argued against RAW.

Rather I am saying for RAW to make sense, we should figure out why Dimensional Portal remains costly like other 15th level spells despite more people knowing it now.

[Eagle]

(Ignoring that axel seams auguring against RAW based off the fact he just seams to dislike the idea of RAW. )

Saying in parenthesis that you are ignoring someone is not ignoring them.

I do not see where I have argued against RAW.

Rather I am saying for RAW to make sense, we should figure out why Dimensional Portal remains costly like other 15th level spells despite more people knowing it now.

1) Because there's not a functioning economy for that sort of thing. Theoretically there are a lot of people who can sell you Dimensional Portal. That doesn't mean that they're all here right now, competing with each other to sell. Travel and communication difficulties mean that it doesn't matter that a guy in Dinosaur Swamp is willing to sell cheaper, because you have no way of knowing about him. My parents live in the country, near a small town. There's one little gas station/grocery store/diner in that town, and its prices are all way higher than they should be because they're the only guys in town. Now imagine that there's no phone, no internet, no newspapers, no advertising, and there's a tribe of monsters that live between this town and the next one. And you aren't even sure if the next town over is going to have the goods you're looking to buy.

2) Since anybody who wants Dimensional Portal normally can get it (if you are interested in that sort of thing, just become a Shifter), buyers are probably quite rare. That means if somebody comes to you asking to purchase it, they're probably in a jam and they've tried all the other ways to get it and failed. Better screw 'em while you have the chance. Who knows when another buyer will come along.

3) Since buyers are rare, most Shifters probably don't make a living selling high-powered spells that everybody already has. The number of potential sellers is probably reduced greatly. Most Shifters who want to make money are off doing other things (because guys looking to buy Dimensional Portal don't come around much). That means that guys who are interested in selling it need to make enough money to support themselves off the occasional rare sale. It's like a mechanic who works on really rare cars. It's not that they're harder to fix, but they're more expensive because not many people bring in a 1967 Jaguar E-type. If you're going to spend your time repairing cars like that instead of working on Toyota Corollas, you're gonna make it worth your while.

Now, personally, I'm of the opinion that guys in the same adventuring group should share spells as much as possible. When we have two or more players who are playing spellcasters, it's common practice for us to coordinate our selections so we don't overlap. Our GM even encourages it. But when that happens, it just makes buyers even more rare, exacerbating the problem. There's just not a predictable market for people wanting to purchase really high level stuff. Most people who are looking for it find a different way to get it. That means the guys who still can't get it and are reduced to buying it will pay a huge premium.

[eliakon]

(Ignoring that axel seams auguring against RAW based off the fact he just seams to dislike the idea of RAW. )

Saying in parenthesis that you are ignoring someone is not ignoring them.

I do not see where I have argued against RAW.

Rather I am saying for RAW to make sense, we should figure out why Dimensional Portal remains costly like other 15th level spells despite more people knowing it now.

1) Because there's not a functioning economy for that sort of thing. Theoretically there are a lot of people who can sell you Dimensional Portal. That doesn't mean that they're all here right now, competing with each other to sell. Travel and communication difficulties mean that it doesn't matter that a guy in Dinosaur Swamp is willing to sell cheaper, because you have no way of knowing about him. My parents live in the country, near a small town. There's one little gas station/grocery store/diner in that town, and its prices are all way higher than they should be because they're the only guys in town. Now imagine that there's no phone, no internet, no newspapers, no advertising, and there's a tribe of monsters that live between this town and the next one. And you aren't even sure if the next town over is going to have the goods you're looking to buy.

2) Since anybody who wants Dimensional Portal normally can get it (if you are interested in that sort of thing, just become a Shifter), buyers are probably quite rare. That means if somebody comes to you asking to purchase it, they're probably in a jam and they've tried all the other ways to get it and failed. Better screw 'em while you have the chance. Who knows when another buyer will come along.

3) Since buyers are rare, most Shifters probably don't make a living selling high-powered spells that everybody already has. The number of potential sellers is probably reduced greatly. Most Shifters who want to make money are off doing other things (because guys looking to buy Dimensional Portal don't come around much). That means that guys who are interested in selling it need to make enough money to support themselves off the occasional rare sale. It's like a mechanic who works on really rare cars. It's not that they're harder to fix, but they're more expensive because not many people bring in a 1967 Jaguar E-type. If you're going to spend your time repairing cars like that instead of working on Toyota Corollas, you're gonna make it worth your while.

Now, personally, I'm of the opinion that guys in the same adventuring group should share spells as much as possible. When we have two or more players who are playing spellcasters, it's common practice for us to coordinate our selections so we don't overlap. Our GM even encourages it. But when that happens, it just makes buyers even more rare, exacerbating the problem. There's just not a predictable market for people wanting to purchase really high level stuff. Most people who are looking for it find a different way to get it. That means the guys who still can't get it and are reduced to buying it will pay a huge premium.

Those are some really good points.
Especially the first and the last one. When combined with the various other ways you can get spells with out paying for them...
I totally agree with you, that if you are having to pay cash for spells that you will pay a LOT for it. As I see it the prices in the book might be to low since as you point out in most cases the sellers are going to be the only source and selling to a buyer who simply buy trying to buy the spell is demonstrating that they have no other easier method to use.

[Blue_Lion]

(Ignoring that axel seams auguring against RAW based off the fact he just seams to dislike the idea of RAW. )

Saying in parenthesis that you are ignoring someone is not ignoring them.

I do not see where I have argued against RAW.

Rather I am saying for RAW to make sense, we should figure out why Dimensional Portal remains costly like other 15th level spells despite more people knowing it now.

(Originally I quoted your multi rant post, and was trying to draw attention to the part of the post relevant. I since edited allot of what I posted away)
I am trying to keep this topic from derailing by my self or others addressing your line of thought that you brought up to counter my statement about RAW. Your whole does not say they can take a leak so they die, and your does not say they need to breath lines where you arguing against a statement that by RAW you can only do what RAW says you can. So yea you where making statements made it seem to me that you are arguing against RAW because I believe your words is RAW is silly. (You even in the same post make statements basically dismissing setting books that counter your augment.)

This is not a debate but me telling you why I said it "seams" so there is no reason to debate appears you are saying. If you are not arguing against RAW there is no reason to continue to search for ways that it is lacking in rules for X. (Note seams does not mean you are doing it just that is the impression your line of thought leads me to believe is what you are doing.)

Debating the validity of RAW is of no use to this topic.
********************
Now back on topic-The rare student and master and them wanting to make sure that the person was serious about the attempt to learn. And the fact the books says in general mages hoard knowledge and not share it does make sense if you can step away from the modern information age mind set.

**Also giving the perceived power that those with high level magic have would you really want to give one of your greatest assets to some one that might abuse it, mages most likely see high level magic like our government sees Nukes.(after all we know in the wrong hands dimensional travel spells can be quite dangerous, just ask the mechnoids.) Or possibly how the Roman catholic church felt about people starting to print the bible in other languages in the 1400s.

**However often the ones arguing that it should be common because X knows it are not able to step out of the modern mind set and see a society where information is not freely shared. So we need reasons that also make sense from a meta gamer stand point.

[Axelmania]

Theoretically there are a lot of people who can sell you Dimensional Portal. That doesn't mean that they're all here right now, competing with each other to sell.

You're arguing a straw man here, I never said they would all be together at the same time.

Travel and communication difficulties mean that it doesn't matter that a guy in Dinosaur Swamp is willing to sell cheaper, because you have no way of knowing about him.

These difficulties exist for ALL spells. For example the "Transformation" ritual, also 15th level. But presumably fewer people know this than Dimensional Portal now, so it the problems of communication and travel are compounded by greater scarcity than the amount of scarcity Dimensional Portal now has.

My parents live in the country, near a small town. There's one little gas station/grocery store/diner in that town, and its prices are all way higher than they should be because they're the only guys in town. Now imagine that there's no phone, no internet, no newspapers, no advertising, and there's a tribe of monsters that live between this town and the next one. And you aren't even sure if the next town over is going to have the goods you're looking to buy.

Assuming your 1 shifter per town approach here, most would not know any other 15th level spells besides DP at all, so they would be even more scarce than this.

2) Since anybody who wants Dimensional Portal normally can get it (if you are interested in that sort of thing, just become a Shifter), buyers are probably quite rare.

You speak about learning an entire OCC as if it were as easy as learning a spell. Even if you used the minimalist 2 days/lvl from Palladium Fantasy's alchemists, if you total up all the starting spells Shifters know, you'll find that their sum (much less all the other aspects of the OCC) takes longer to learn than simply learning Dimensional Portal alone.

That means if somebody comes to you asking to purchase it, they're probably in a jam and they've tried all the other ways to get it and failed. Better screw 'em while you have the chance. Who knows when another buyer will come along.

I'm not sure what you mean by this.

3) Since buyers are rare, most Shifters probably don't make a living selling high-powered spells that everybody already has.

If this were the case, scarcity would be even less, driving the price down even further. You wouldn't just have all shifters as potential competitors, but increasing amounts of LLW/TW who could also offer it, driving the price further down, allowing more to buy it, and so forth.

Using increased availability to justify decreased demand creates the problem that the price would just drop further and further. This is why I prefer decreased demand due to deterrents. As in people would hypothetically love to pay for the spell, but don't want the 'Shifter Mafia' or whatever controlling guild to hear about them knowing it and bump them off.

Your whole does not say they can take a leak so they die, and your does not say they need to breath lines where you arguing against a statement that by RAW you can only do what RAW says you can. So yea you where making statements made it seem to me that you are arguing against RAW because I believe your words is RAW is silly. (You even in the same post make statements basically dismissing setting books that counter your augment.)

I never said that RAW is silly. I'm saying that limiting what can happen during a game to what we are explicitly told can happen is silly. RAW is simply not violating rules. RAW does not prohibit building a story and building gameplay on top of what we have rules for.

We don't need to told "you can chew this particular vegetable" or "you can read this particular book" for example. Games are full of broad ideas. Teaching is one of them. If we are told that spells can be taught, I don't necessarily need to be told of each individual who can teach for them to have that potentially capability. If there are no RAW restrictions (compared to simple suggestions/guidelines) then this is potentially an all-can-teach situation, naturally open to GM judgment on likelihood of success, time needed and risks incurred.

This is not a debate but me telling you why I said it "seams" so there is no reason to debate appears you are saying. If you are not arguing against RAW there is no reason to continue to search for ways that it is lacking in rules for X. (Note seams does not mean you are doing it just that is the impression your line of thought leads me to believe is what you are doing.)

Pointing out a lack of rules for certain situations and coming up with ideas on rules for those situations is not arguing AGAINST the official rules, so long as new house rules to cover the unexplored gameplay do not actually violate the explored gameplay rules.

If I came up with penalties for 'holding it in' for example, or eyestrain from reading for long periods in dim lighting, this is not 'against RAW' so long as I defer to any later rules introduced for those situations in later books.

Lacking rules for every single minor threat or irritant which comes along doesn't mean these minor threats or irritants don't exist on Rifts Earth or that they would not inhibit people in some way. It does not violate RAW to talk about how to deal with stuff like this if you want statistical representation for logical difficulties.

We are not told how long teaching takes, how likely it is to succeed, where it must be done, what risks it incurs, etc. This does not mean teaching would be instant, an automatic success, able to be done anywhere, and risk-free, if you are assuming this based on a RAW approach.

Debating the validity of RAW is of no use to this topic.

As the creator of this topic, I will be the judge of what is useful to it. What I am doing is not debating validity of RAW (though I would debate that we may have different ideas on the memes this acronym represents) but rather, your proposal that 9+ is RAW, when to me is seems more of a guideline as to likely teachers, implying they are better at it, not that they are the only ones who can do it.

the books says in general mages hoard knowledge and not share it does make sense if you can step away from the modern information age mind set.

This is a great general guideline. We do not require a majority of shifters to share for DP@1st to have an impact though. Shifters as of RUE moreso than other mages are probably good at making money (just summon a lesser earth elemental and have it dig ditches for some farmer) so they may not fall upon hard enough times to make them want to sell their knowledge as easily as other mages might.

It could still happen though, and parting with a spell that EVERY shifter knows is not as huge a sacrifice as parting with one that SOME know. Among Shifters, Dimensional Portal or Re-Open Gateway are less special knowledge than Energy Sphere, Dimensional Teleport or Teleport:Superior for example, because you're talking about a spell which all level 1+ Shifters know (Initial Spell Knowledge from pg 120) versus New Spells (pg 121) which only SOME of the Shifters level 2+ will know, since Shifters only gain 3 new spells per level of experience (1 protection or summoning from list, 1 from anywhere in list, 1 of level or less)

Kinda funny how Shifters went from being the worst (0 per level, LLW got 1/level, Mystics got 2) to the BEST like this. The LLW only pulls even with 2/level and to get the 2nd they have to do a 48 hour meditation and select from a smaller list. Shifters are UBER now.

**Also giving the perceived power that those with high level magic have would you really want to give one of your greatest assets to some one that might abuse it, mages most likely see high level magic like our government sees Nukes.(after all we know in the wrong hands dimensional travel spells can be quite dangerous, just ask the mechnoids.) Or possibly how the Roman catholic church felt about people starting to print the bible in other languages in the 1400s.

The Mechanoids were brought by a Shifter if I recall, so restricting it to that OCC doesn't fix the problem. Given the limited duration of Dimensional Portal it's surprising so many Mechanoids were able to make it through before it closed. I assume he must've been killed instantly, otherwise you'd think he would've closed the portal soon as the attack began.

**However often the ones arguing that it should be common because X knows it are not able to step out of the modern mind set and see a society where information is not freely shared. So we need reasons that also make sense from a meta gamer stand point.

I'm not talking about free sharing, I'm talking about selling. Also, IRL info isn't freely shared either.

[Blue_Lion]

Theoretically there are a lot of people who can sell you Dimensional Portal. That doesn't mean that they're all here right now, competing with each other to sell.

You're arguing a straw man here, I never said they would all be together at the same time.

Travel and communication difficulties mean that it doesn't matter that a guy in Dinosaur Swamp is willing to sell cheaper, because you have no way of knowing about him.

These difficulties exist for ALL spells. For example the "Transformation" ritual, also 15th level. But presumably fewer people know this than Dimensional Portal now, so it the problems of communication and travel are compounded by greater scarcity than the amount of scarcity Dimensional Portal now has.

My parents live in the country, near a small town. There's one little gas station/grocery store/diner in that town, and its prices are all way higher than they should be because they're the only guys in town. Now imagine that there's no phone, no internet, no newspapers, no advertising, and there's a tribe of monsters that live between this town and the next one. And you aren't even sure if the next town over is going to have the goods you're looking to buy.

Assuming your 1 shifter per town approach here, most would not know any other 15th level spells besides DP at all, so they would be even more scarce than this.

2) Since anybody who wants Dimensional Portal normally can get it (if you are interested in that sort of thing, just become a Shifter), buyers are probably quite rare.

You speak about learning an entire OCC as if it were as easy as learning a spell. Even if you used the minimalist 2 days/lvl from Palladium Fantasy's alchemists, if you total up all the starting spells Shifters know, you'll find that their sum (much less all the other aspects of the OCC) takes longer to learn than simply learning Dimensional Portal alone.

That means if somebody comes to you asking to purchase it, they're probably in a jam and they've tried all the other ways to get it and failed. Better screw 'em while you have the chance. Who knows when another buyer will come along.

I'm not sure what you mean by this.

3) Since buyers are rare, most Shifters probably don't make a living selling high-powered spells that everybody already has.

If this were the case, scarcity would be even less, driving the price down even further. You wouldn't just have all shifters as potential competitors, but increasing amounts of LLW/TW who could also offer it, driving the price further down, allowing more to buy it, and so forth.

Using increased availability to justify decreased demand creates the problem that the price would just drop further and further. This is why I prefer decreased demand due to deterrents. As in people would hypothetically love to pay for the spell, but don't want the 'Shifter Mafia' or whatever controlling guild to hear about them knowing it and bump them off.

Your whole does not say they can take a leak so they die, and your does not say they need to breath lines where you arguing against a statement that by RAW you can only do what RAW says you can. So yea you where making statements made it seem to me that you are arguing against RAW because I believe your words is RAW is silly. (You even in the same post make statements basically dismissing setting books that counter your augment.)

I never said that RAW is silly. I'm saying that limiting what can happen during a game to what we are explicitly told can happen is silly. RAW is simply not violating rules. RAW does not prohibit building a story and building gameplay on top of what we have rules for.

We don't need to told "you can chew this particular vegetable" or "you can read this particular book" for example. Games are full of broad ideas. Teaching is one of them. If we are told that spells can be taught, I don't necessarily need to be told of each individual who can teach for them to have that potentially capability. If there are no RAW restrictions (compared to simple suggestions/guidelines) then this is potentially an all-can-teach situation, naturally open to GM judgment on likelihood of success, time needed and risks incurred.

This is not a debate but me telling you why I said it "seams" so there is no reason to debate appears you are saying. If you are not arguing against RAW there is no reason to continue to search for ways that it is lacking in rules for X. (Note seams does not mean you are doing it just that is the impression your line of thought leads me to believe is what you are doing.)

Pointing out a lack of rules for certain situations and coming up with ideas on rules for those situations is not arguing AGAINST the official rules, so long as new house rules to cover the unexplored gameplay do not actually violate the explored gameplay rules.

If I came up with penalties for 'holding it in' for example, or eyestrain from reading for long periods in dim lighting, this is not 'against RAW' so long as I defer to any later rules introduced for those situations in later books.

Lacking rules for every single minor threat or irritant which comes along doesn't mean these minor threats or irritants don't exist on Rifts Earth or that they would not inhibit people in some way. It does not violate RAW to talk about how to deal with stuff like this if you want statistical representation for logical difficulties.

We are not told how long teaching takes, how likely it is to succeed, where it must be done, what risks it incurs, etc. This does not mean teaching would be instant, an automatic success, able to be done anywhere, and risk-free, if you are assuming this based on a RAW approach.

Debating the validity of RAW is of no use to this topic.

As the creator of this topic, I will be the judge of what is useful to it. What I am doing is not debating validity of RAW (though I would debate that we may have different ideas on the memes this acronym represents) but rather, your proposal that 9+ is RAW, when to me is seems more of a guideline as to likely teachers, implying they are better at it, not that they are the only ones who can do it.

the books says in general mages hoard knowledge and not share it does make sense if you can step away from the modern information age mind set.

This is a great general guideline. We do not require a majority of shifters to share for DP@1st to have an impact though. Shifters as of RUE moreso than other mages are probably good at making money (just summon a lesser earth elemental and have it dig ditches for some farmer) so they may not fall upon hard enough times to make them want to sell their knowledge as easily as other mages might.

It could still happen though, and parting with a spell that EVERY shifter knows is not as huge a sacrifice as parting with one that SOME know. Among Shifters, Dimensional Portal or Re-Open Gateway are less special knowledge than Energy Sphere, Dimensional Teleport or Teleport:Superior for example, because you're talking about a spell which all level 1+ Shifters know (Initial Spell Knowledge from pg 120) versus New Spells (pg 121) which only SOME of the Shifters level 2+ will know, since Shifters only gain 3 new spells per level of experience (1 protection or summoning from list, 1 from anywhere in list, 1 of level or less)

Kinda funny how Shifters went from being the worst (0 per level, LLW got 1/level, Mystics got 2) to the BEST like this. The LLW only pulls even with 2/level and to get the 2nd they have to do a 48 hour meditation and select from a smaller list. Shifters are UBER now.

**Also giving the perceived power that those with high level magic have would you really want to give one of your greatest assets to some one that might abuse it, mages most likely see high level magic like our government sees Nukes.(after all we know in the wrong hands dimensional travel spells can be quite dangerous, just ask the mechnoids.) Or possibly how the Roman catholic church felt about people starting to print the bible in other languages in the 1400s.

The Mechanoids were brought by a Shifter if I recall, so restricting it to that OCC doesn't fix the problem. Given the limited duration of Dimensional Portal it's surprising so many Mechanoids were able to make it through before it closed. I assume he must've been killed instantly, otherwise you'd think he would've closed the portal soon as the attack began.

**However often the ones arguing that it should be common because X knows it are not able to step out of the modern mind set and see a society where information is not freely shared. So we need reasons that also make sense from a meta gamer stand point.

I'm not talking about free sharing, I'm talking about selling. Also, IRL info isn't freely shared either.

So you do not think information is freely shared in real life. You do realize that people freely share information on the internet all the time. Entire sites are dedicated to it. Such as Wiki. Most people think in terms of information being readily available because it is so easy to acquire do sharing.

I was using mechniods to demonstration the danger of the spell. It was not my main point in the paragraph you quoted but it was what you addressed. Keeping a risky spell to experts in the field does reduce the risk of its misuse, a shifter a was pointed out has other powers much more dangerous when misused. I was not addressing its possession by shifters in that paragraph but why mages tend to not want to share high level spell with just anyone. A shifters apprentice is not just any one so your point about mechnoids and shifters was an attempt to appear you addressed a point you never did.

There may be acceptations but most mages would fallow that guide line and hoard knowledge would take a significant effort. The mages that do teach it are the acceptation and they can and by the books do charge high fees for access to their hoards of knowledge. We are told they do it so they would take a reason for them not to.


Think of it this way most shifters that want to earn money without the risk of being adventures are like Limousine The spells and power to dimensional travel are their automobile. The book price of spells are the Kellys blue book price, some might sale for less others more. The 15th level spell would be their a Limousine. If you had a Limousine would you sell it for significantly less than blue book price to any one interested in a limousine or would you try to sale them a ride in your Limousine? (Sale a man a fish you feed him for a day teach him to fish and you loose a customer and could gain contemplation.

Now then if you start saling cheep limos to more people than just shifters the loss to non adventuring shifters becomes greater as people do not need to come to them because they have their own limos reduce the number of people you can charge for the service.

You know the spell can be sold for X if you are not in completion because most mages fallow the general rule and not share spells above level, why would you under sale your services?

(I would think that most towns would only have at most 1 shifter unless there was a shifter teaching apprentices in the town. Cities may be different but could also have rules restricting teaching magic. And if word spreads around town you are braking such rules or the guild finds out you could verry well be risking death.)

[Killer Cyborg]

Dimensional Portal is a level 15 spell. The price of casting such a spell likely varies with local markets to some extent, but Maliki's Curio Shop in Ciudad Juarez (VKr 149) sells immediate spell castings for CR 1k/spell level, plus as much as a 50% difficulty fee.
Dimensional Portal isn't listed as one of their spells, in part because the simply might not have access to it, and also because it's not a spell that is cast on a person or object.
It sets a kind of "well, we know you could sell a spell casting of Dimensional Portal for more than this" sort of minimal standard, though.

The Wizard's Hut (VKr 180) sells various spell castings as well, with each spell given a specific price.
The rarer and/or more powerful spells have a casting cost MUCH higher than the 1k/level guideline for Maliki's limited selection of person/object-targeting castings.
Restoration, for example, costs CR 500,000 per casting. As a level 14 spell, Maliki's limited general guideline would have it cost only CR 14,000 per casting.
As per the RUE rules for purchasing magic (RUE 190), IF you could find Restoration for sale, and IF you found the low-end of the bargain, it would cost CR 500k-1 million to learn the spell.
Do note that "prices will change from establishment to establishment, some charging 10% less, others 50%-200% higher," so purchasing Restoration to add to your spell repertoire could cost as much as CR 1 million.
In which case, depending on when you sold a casting of the spell, the cost of purchasing the spell could be paid off in two castings.

As far as I know, the cost of hiring a mage to cast Dimensional Portal is never listed anywhere, but from what I can tell the price would likely be high enough that it's more profitable for mages to simply keep the spell and sell castings of it, than to sell the spell itself and create another competitor for that particular service.
Selling the spell to another mage who sets up in your area (ignoring guild issues for the moment) would mean that depending on how high the demand for casting that spell is, you could be cutting yourself out of tens of millions of credits (or more) worth of future profits.

[Blue_Lion]

So it is more profitable for a low level mage to set up way to sale castings of the spell than to teach it.

Guess that means my limousine driver analogy might have been close to a mark.

[Eagle]

It's pretty simple, Axel.

People who are looking to buy Dimensional Portal are likely to have two traits. First, they probably have a lot of money. Dimensional travel is dangerous and smart people are going to be very well-equipped before they try it (so they're either wealthy or they're stupid). Second, they are in a bind because there are a lot of ways to get that spell without purchasing it, but here they are being forced to spend money like a sucker. When wealthy people are in a bind, you charge high prices.

That's not to say that in some perfect circumstance, you couldn't purchase the spell for cheaper. But that's not the default.