Learning new spells

[thirdkingdom]

Can members of different OCCs teach other classes spells? Could a ley line Walker, for instance, teach a technowizard spells?

[Mack]

In general, yes.

Exceptions:
-- The learner must be able to learn spells. Mystics can not be taught; neither can Warlocks.
-- The spell needs to be a common Invocation. A Warlock could not teach an Elemental spell to a Ley Line Walker.

But in your example, there's no problem with a LLW teaching a TW. They both use Invocations, and both can be taught.

[thirdkingdom]

Thanks! How long does it take to learn a spell?

[Mack]

If memory serves, it’s 2 days per spell level. I believe the rule is in the magic section of RUE.

[Shark_Force]

If memory serves, it’s 2 days per spell level. I believe the rule is in the magic section of RUE.

pretty sure we didn't have a rule on that anywhere until mysteries of magic.

[Mack]

My memory was close, but not perfect.

RUE p190 has the price per spell level.
BoM p22 has the number of days per spell level.

[The Beast]

Personally I like the rules in TtGD better.

[Nekira Sudacne]

-- The spell needs to be a common Invocation. A Warlock could not teach an Elemental spell to a Ley Line Walker.

Through the glass Darkly does have rules for an Invocational Caster to try to reverse-engineer an Elemental spell by observing a Warlock in action. The odds are staggeringly in favor of the LLW blowing themselves up instead however. And in Palladium Fantasy there's one cannonical example of a mage soceity who tried to reverse-eingeer warlock spells on a wider scale who wound up getting mysteriously annilated in massive natural disasters

[Dr. Doom III]

Yes but be careful if the players try to teach other class specific magic. For example Temporal magic is a closely guarded secret. Any player who taught another class a temporal spell or any character who learned such spells would be marked for death if it becomes known.

[Shark_Force]

there is no indication of that being true for temporal magic.

what is mentioned is that you need to be a 10th level shifter or ley line walker (maybe rifter, can't recall) to learn any temporal magic spells at all, and you can bet the person who sold themselves into slavery for 10 years isn't going to give away even the smallest secret of temporal magic for cheap. so sure, you can learn some... but i'd expect even the weakest spells to run a million credits, minimum, and are you really willing to fork over a million or more credits for D-phase when mystic portal gets yourself and your friends/slaves/minions/etc past obstacles, is more widely available, and costs half as much?

oh, and figure that the really awesome stuff is going to cost way more. i mean, if you're charging a million for D-phase (a temporal magic spell that is handy, but ultimately doesn't allow you to do anything you couldn't potentially do with more conventional invocation magic), you can expect the unique effects, especially the ones where casting the spell has high value, to be very pricey; attune object to owner, dimensional pockets, retro-viewing, and of course, especially as you go to higher levels... well, i'd say not so much that anyone is going to hunt you down and kill you (there is no mention of that happening), so much as most people have better things to do with that much money, and that even presumes you have access to a teacher in the first place.

[eliakon]

I would say that the more important thing to remember here is that the secrets of specialty schools are just that.
Secrets.
It would be horribly out of character, like metagamingly badly out of character, for a member of a secret society to just hand out the inner secrets to random people.

And there is a really good reason for this concern.
Note how the Invocation list is replete with spells that are pretty obviously originally from one specialty school or another? Shadow Meld, Swim as a Fish, Animate Dead, Flame Blast, Dimensional Pockets...
That is because it only takes one loose lipped apprentice and your "inner mystery" becomes just another invocation spell.
Yeah sure, it may cost them more PPE, or be higher level for them... but it is now in wide circulation and you have just undercut not just yourself but every fellow member of your art. Forever.

So yeah, there is a reason why teaching class specific spells should be discouraged if not outright forbidden by the GM.

[Shark_Force]

on top of the fact that their masters have probably treated them like crap and given the average temporal wizard reasons to *want* to screw over the rest of their society, temporal wizards are generally also trained to be a bunch of selfish jerks (it isn't a requirement, but it is certainly encouraged).

they are then turned loose into the world, with no form of society whatsoever to keep them in check.

granted, that may be caused by the fact that temporal raiders seem to be the only things capable of training temporal wizards, as i recall, combined with the fact that being a temporal wizard is the only way to learn temporal magic before reaching level 10. with that said, the trend doesn't seem that uncommon... the average necromancer is a loner, with no particular reason to care about other necromancers. the average ocean mage is a loner, not part of a society. a few specialty mages that are at least similar enough to invocation magic to be learned do seem to form societies to some extent (nazca line magic, for example, incorporates the magicians into their culture), but they actually do teach nazca line magic pretty openly.

frankly, the whole thing where spellcasters are super secretive doesn't make a lot of sense. greedy and unwilling to give away the thing they've spent years working on without some pretty major compensation, sure. unwilling to let some punk walk in and take away business from them, absolutely. but simply put, the average ley line walker doesn't have any compelling reason to care if some wandering ley line walker or shifter learns one of their spells, and neither does the average temporal wizard... so long as they feel adequately compensated, bearing in mind that adequate compensation may not always mean money (and may in fact only come in a form which a given person is unable to provide).

now, if you show up in the city of lazlo one day and start selling your services, expect to hear from the local guild as they come to protect their monopoly. they aren't going to be happy if you're undercutting them, or offering services they can't or won't provide, or if you provide services to people they have blacklisted, especially. truthfully, they won't even be happy even if you're not doing any of those things if you stick around for any period of time offering your services without first becoming a member of the guild (with a possible exception if they've actually got more work than they can handle, but even then they're more likely to view that as an excuse to raise their prices and your presence is probably not welcome for most guilds). depending on the guild in question, that could indeed mean you get assassinated, or driven out of town, or otherwise suffer extreme negative consequences.

but as far as it goes, they're never realistically going to sell their service of casting fly as the eagle to you when you're in the middle of the wilderness and want to get to the top of a cliff anyways, and you are not competition if you plan on going out into the middle of said wilderness where the cliff you want to get to the top of is. if you have something to offer that is sufficiently valuable, there isn't much of a reason for them to refuse to share their 'secret' with you... provided that they have reason to believe you're going to be quite far away when you use it, that is (especially if the knowledge in question is of some destructive magic).

those societies can be every bit as greedy as individual people, after all. why should they let someone else benefit from teaching you? sooner or later, there's a fair chance you'll find someone willing to give you the knowledge you're looking for eventually, after all; it's a great big megaverse (and we're all really puny ). they can't realistically keep you from finding that knowledge if you really want it badly enough; they can only decide whether they'd like to be the ones that get paid or not. there are plenty of places where magic is more widely available in the megaverse as a whole; if they won't take your money, well, there's probably someone who will somewhere.

so no, i'm really not seeing these organizations of wizards seeking out and destroying random wizards for knowing secrets. at least, not as long as those random wizards aren't fool enough to start doing it in their territory. it doesn't matter if you control the knowledge if nobody else can sell the benefits of that knowledge in your territory. they have no reason to care that you've been taking business from some other mage's guild, so long as you haven't been doing it to them.

[Nekira Sudacne]

granted, that may be caused by the fact that temporal raiders seem to be the only things capable of training temporal wizards, as i recall, combined with the fact that being a temporal wizard is the only way to learn temporal magic before reaching level 10.

Not quite true. the Vanguard Translocator OCC can learn 1d4 Temporal magic or a limited list of travel/dimensional Invocational spells per level starting at level 2.

[eliakon]

on top of the fact that their masters have probably treated them like crap and given the average temporal wizard reasons to *want* to screw over the rest of their society, temporal wizards are generally also trained to be a bunch of selfish jerks (it isn't a requirement, but it is certainly encouraged).

they are then turned loose into the world, with no form of society whatsoever to keep them in check.

granted, that may be caused by the fact that temporal raiders seem to be the only things capable of training temporal wizards, as i recall, combined with the fact that being a temporal wizard is the only way to learn temporal magic before reaching level 10. with that said, the trend doesn't seem that uncommon... the average necromancer is a loner, with no particular reason to care about other necromancers. the average ocean mage is a loner, not part of a society. a few specialty mages that are at least similar enough to invocation magic to be learned do seem to form societies to some extent (nazca line magic, for example, incorporates the magicians into their culture), but they actually do teach nazca line magic pretty openly.

frankly, the whole thing where spellcasters are super secretive doesn't make a lot of sense. greedy and unwilling to give away the thing they've spent years working on without some pretty major compensation, sure. unwilling to let some punk walk in and take away business from them, absolutely. but simply put, the average ley line walker doesn't have any compelling reason to care if some wandering ley line walker or shifter learns one of their spells, and neither does the average temporal wizard... so long as they feel adequately compensated, bearing in mind that adequate compensation may not always mean money (and may in fact only come in a form which a given person is unable to provide).

now, if you show up in the city of lazlo one day and start selling your services, expect to hear from the local guild as they come to protect their monopoly. they aren't going to be happy if you're undercutting them, or offering services they can't or won't provide, or if you provide services to people they have blacklisted, especially. truthfully, they won't even be happy even if you're not doing any of those things if you stick around for any period of time offering your services without first becoming a member of the guild (with a possible exception if they've actually got more work than they can handle, but even then they're more likely to view that as an excuse to raise their prices and your presence is probably not welcome for most guilds). depending on the guild in question, that could indeed mean you get assassinated, or driven out of town, or otherwise suffer extreme negative consequences.

but as far as it goes, they're never realistically going to sell their service of casting fly as the eagle to you when you're in the middle of the wilderness and want to get to the top of a cliff anyways, and you are not competition if you plan on going out into the middle of said wilderness where the cliff you want to get to the top of is. if you have something to offer that is sufficiently valuable, there isn't much of a reason for them to refuse to share their 'secret' with you... provided that they have reason to believe you're going to be quite far away when you use it, that is (especially if the knowledge in question is of some destructive magic).

those societies can be every bit as greedy as individual people, after all. why should they let someone else benefit from teaching you? sooner or later, there's a fair chance you'll find someone willing to give you the knowledge you're looking for eventually, after all; it's a great big megaverse (and we're all really puny ). they can't realistically keep you from finding that knowledge if you really want it badly enough; they can only decide whether they'd like to be the ones that get paid or not. there are plenty of places where magic is more widely available in the megaverse as a whole; if they won't take your money, well, there's probably someone who will somewhere.

so no, i'm really not seeing these organizations of wizards seeking out and destroying random wizards for knowing secrets. at least, not as long as those random wizards aren't fool enough to start doing it in their territory. it doesn't matter if you control the knowledge if nobody else can sell the benefits of that knowledge in your territory. they have no reason to care that you've been taking business from some other mage's guild, so long as you haven't been doing it to them.

I don't think anyone is saying that there is some super union out there to keep the secrets.
What I am saying is that there is a mentality that goes with the magic, at least in Palladium.
We may not like that, and we can house rule it away if we don't like it... but that is how it seems to work in this universe.
And that Mentality seems to be that they have a respect for their particular art and that they see it as being superior. There really isn't much incentive to a Necromancer to go out and teach all the necromatic spells widely so that they all become common invocation spells.
I mean they could do it... but why? What is the profit?
Similarly I find it pretty questionable that a group of people with little common cause are going to trade deep magical secrets.
Maybe after years and years of being close friends? Maybe sure.
But I would put it another way too.
What are you offering that Temporal Wizard or Necromancer that is equal in value to their closely held secret?
When the price of a give spell on the open market is in the hundreds of thousands if not millions... well that sort of tells us that there isn't a ready supply of teachers who feel that their tutor was a jerk and that they are just going to go teach all the spells for cash.
Seriously. If it was that easy to find all these cool spells... they wouldn't be hard to find and expensive. There would be a ready supply of them and price competition would bring down the costs.

[Shark_Force]

the profit is literally in that they get profit. as in, you will pay them money for it. i mean, if we're talking about something like, oh what's the spell... i think it's steel rain that is basically the equivalent of a nuclear warhead? yeah, that one a lot of people are going to be hesitant to sell (assuming they know it, the one i'm thinking of is a spell of legend iirc), because you could very easily be talking about mass slaughter of small cities (of course, some people may not care if you destroy cities, but this is one spell where i legitimately think a guild might send someone to kill anyone that got their hands on it).

but i mean, curse of wasting? i don't see why a necromancer would stubbornly refuse to sell you the secret to that one. maybe if they suspect you're specifically going to use it on them, and they don't know a spell to remove it, but generally speaking, what does the necromancer care if you curse someone? and once you know it, why should any other necromancer care that you have it? is it particularly more awful than the prospect that you know a more generic non-necromantic curse, or that you'll just destroy them with a completely non-necromantic fire ball? is death bolt substantially more threatening than the prospect that someone could use a mental blast to the point where you need to hunt down anyone that has it?

i'm not talking about handing stuff out for free (i mean, there's probably someone somewhere in the megaverse who is, but that i agree would be quite uncommon). i'm saying, if you offer a necromancer a reasonable amount of money for a spell, they probably aren't going to care that the spell is a special super-duper-secret technique for necromancers' use only. they might feel like they're being offered enough, they might personally hate you and refuse to help you on principle, they might have all the money they need, they might be concerned that you'll use the spell in a way that inconveniences or even harms them, they might be planning on killing you and stealing all your stuff anyways, they might just be busy with other things, but i find it highly suspect to assume that "keep this random person from knowing necro-magic at all costs" is a huge priority for the average necromancer.

[Curbludgeon]

Insofar as this thread was began by a presumably new player, I wonder if getting into the minutiae of potential for invocation casters to learn speciality spells is better suited to a thread in the Psionics and Magic Forum. I intend to start a comprehensive list but am only willing to post here when near a black-out, thus understand if someone jumps the gun, so to speak.

I would note that a Tao Shih working with an Obsidian Spell Thief(whom can apparently teach any spell in less than 72 hours) could theoretically provide a written copy of most non-granted spells. I am unsure if it is easier for literate casters to learn spells from a text than from a scroll, and would very much like to see quotes from Fantasy or elsewhere that support such.

[eliakon]

Insofar as this thread was began by a presumably new player, I wonder if getting into the minutiae of potential for invocation casters to learn speciality spells is better suited to a thread in the Psionics and Magic Forum. I intend to start a comprehensive list but am only willing to post here when near a black-out, thus understand if someone jumps the gun, so to speak.

I would note that a Tao Shih working with an Obsidian Spell Thief(whom can apparently teach any spell in less than 72 hours) could theoretically provide a written copy of most non-granted spells. I am unsure if it is easier for literate casters to learn spells from a text than from a scroll, and would very much like to see quotes from Fantasy or elsewhere that support such.

It would require the GM to rule that
1) the Spell Thief can teach all the spells that they learn and not just stuff that is normally teachable.
2) that a Tao Shih can learn spells that are not Invocation/Chi magic
3) that they can make Celestial Calligraphy of non Chi-Spells

But sure... assuming that the GM rules that all three things are possible? Sure in the rare event that you have a super rare NPC and an obscure class from N&SS working together under a specific set of house rules you can make all sorts of super powerful magic.

[Dr. Doom III]

Personally if my Temporal Warrior character ever saw someone using a Temporal magic spell who was not a Temporal class he'd make it his business to hunt that person down and kill him/her but not before finding out how they learned it. Then so on down the line.

[Colonel_Tetsuya]

Personally if my Temporal Warrior character ever saw someone using a Temporal magic spell who was not a Temporal class he'd make it his business to hunt that person down and kill him/her but not before finding out how they learned it. Then so on down the line.

Problem is, people don't wear signs saying what their OCC is. If you see another person cast a Temporal spell, you have no idea what "class" he is. And, given that other classes can learn Temporal spells without needing a Temporal teacher (the aforementioned Vanguard class, for instance, and Phase classes from the Three Galaxies.), You'd quickly find yourself dead as other casters who think youve gone mad set out to put you down like a rabid dog.

[eliakon]

Personally if my Temporal Warrior character ever saw someone using a Temporal magic spell who was not a Temporal class he'd make it his business to hunt that person down and kill him/her but not before finding out how they learned it. Then so on down the line.

Problem is, people don't wear signs saying what their OCC is. If you see another person cast a Temporal spell, you have no idea what "class" he is. And, given that other classes can learn Temporal spells without needing a Temporal teacher (the aforementioned Vanguard class, for instance, and Phase classes from the Three Galaxies.), You'd quickly find yourself dead as other casters who think youve gone mad set out to put you down like a rabid dog.

Even with out the messy results of picking fights with random mages.
This sort of behavior is probably the reason that Temporal Raiders/Wizards/Warriors have such a horrid reputation through out the Megaverse

They come across as one of those "just can't share their toys" kind of kid and nobody on the playground likes that.

[eliakon]

I would say honestly the biggest deterrent is the diffusion issue.
Looking at the spell lists in the books it is pretty easy to guess that some of the spells that are now "Invocation" such as Time Slip and Immobilize started out as Temporal spells. But they drifted "into the public realm" over the years. Which, besides making the Temporal classes feel that much less unique puts them at a larger personal risk... after all now someone else is out there using time magic and that means that it could be used against you!

Necromancers probably lost Aura of Death, Death Word, Animate Dead, Spirit Attack and Death Curse the same way. And probably feel the same way about it.

Dragon Fire and Fire Globe? The invocation versions are pretty obvious knock offs of the Living Flame orginals.

Call Lightning, Fireball, Wall of Iron, Summon Storm... Elemental Magic.

Greater Familiar is probably Demon/Blood magic

The list goes on and on.

Sure you can teach your spells to anyone... but you run the very real risk of training your replacement as you make yourself obsolete. Now I don't know about you but that doesn't sound to me like something that is going to be very popular with most people.

[Shark_Force]

I would say honestly the biggest deterrent is the diffusion issue.
Looking at the spell lists in the books it is pretty easy to guess that some of the spells that are now "Invocation" such as Time Slip and Immobilize started out as Temporal spells. But they drifted "into the public realm" over the years. Which, besides making the Temporal classes feel that much less unique puts them at a larger personal risk... after all now someone else is out there using time magic and that means that it could be used against you!

Necromancers probably lost Aura of Death, Death Word, Animate Dead, Spirit Attack and Death Curse the same way. And probably feel the same way about it.

Dragon Fire and Fire Globe? The invocation versions are pretty obvious knock offs of the Living Flame orginals.

Call Lightning, Fireball, Wall of Iron, Summon Storm... Elemental Magic.

Greater Familiar is probably Demon/Blood magic

The list goes on and on.

Sure you can teach your spells to anyone... but you run the very real risk of training your replacement as you make yourself obsolete. Now I don't know about you but that doesn't sound to me like something that is going to be very popular with most people.

you can't learn temporal magic unless you're level 10, or a member of certain very specific OCCs. you can learn those spells without meeting either of those requirements. therefore, they aren't temporal magic. just because something is related to time, doesn't mean it's time magic, just like not everything that relates to living things is biomancy (or bio-wizardry).

in the meanwhile, look at what temporal wizards and necromancers have GAINED from sharing spells. they *may* have lost a few spells (it's hard to say for sure, but the fact that ley line walkers don't pay double PPE for those standard invocations would once again suggest that they weren't, they're just standard invocations that happen to also be necromantic invocations, and i've already covered the temporal magic stuff).

in the meanwhile, they gain access to the entire list of standard magic invocations. given that temporal magic only has a handful of spells, that's a pretty good deal. considering how limited necro-magic is in scope, it's a pretty amazing deal for the necromancer too.

warlocks still have frankly superior versions of the spells they 'lost' (not that it actually cost them anything at all).

not sure about the living flame things, but... aren't those exclusive to russia? or maybe south america... don't think they made it to north america randomly. more likely it's just convergent evolution. a magic flamethrower is a useful thing. fire globe i think is actually a warlock spell.

also, most of those aren't exactly the highly profitable spells to cast. maybe you could realistically expect to sell a casting of fire globe, i guess.

[Dr. Doom III]

Personally if my Temporal Warrior character ever saw someone using a Temporal magic spell who was not a Temporal class he'd make it his business to hunt that person down and kill him/her but not before finding out how they learned it. Then so on down the line.

Problem is, people don't wear signs saying what their OCC is. If you see another person cast a Temporal spell, you have no idea what "class" he is. And, given that other classes can learn Temporal spells without needing a Temporal teacher (the aforementioned Vanguard class, for instance, and Phase classes from the Three Galaxies.), You'd quickly find yourself dead as other casters who think youve gone mad set out to put you down like a rabid dog.

No you'd know. Even just from fashion sense.
A. Gotta know it's me
B. Gotta catch me first.

[The Beast]

You make it sound like that last one is hard, yet the Fantastic Four do it all the time.

[eliakon]

I would say honestly the biggest deterrent is the diffusion issue.
Looking at the spell lists in the books it is pretty easy to guess that some of the spells that are now "Invocation" such as Time Slip and Immobilize started out as Temporal spells. But they drifted "into the public realm" over the years. Which, besides making the Temporal classes feel that much less unique puts them at a larger personal risk... after all now someone else is out there using time magic and that means that it could be used against you!

Necromancers probably lost Aura of Death, Death Word, Animate Dead, Spirit Attack and Death Curse the same way. And probably feel the same way about it.

Dragon Fire and Fire Globe? The invocation versions are pretty obvious knock offs of the Living Flame orginals.

Call Lightning, Fireball, Wall of Iron, Summon Storm... Elemental Magic.

Greater Familiar is probably Demon/Blood magic

The list goes on and on.

Sure you can teach your spells to anyone... but you run the very real risk of training your replacement as you make yourself obsolete. Now I don't know about you but that doesn't sound to me like something that is going to be very popular with most people.

you can't learn temporal magic unless you're level 10, or a member of certain very specific OCCs. you can learn those spells without meeting either of those requirements. therefore, they aren't temporal magic. just because something is related to time, doesn't mean it's time magic, just like not everything that relates to living things is biomancy (or bio-wizardry).

Well, considering that we have, canonically, at least one Temporal Spell that is now a common Invocation (Dimensional Pockets)
And that we have a canon statement in Library of Bletherad that the origins of several elemental spells such as fireball and call lightning ARE that they were converted Elemental spells...then it follows that it is possible to convert specialty spells into Invocations. And in the process strip the spell of all the "thou shalt" requirements that make it a specialty spell in the first place. Since otherwise it isn't an invocation and is just people trading the specialty spell around!

So I mean sure... it is possible that the specific school of magic dedicated to time magic is not the origin point of two of the most widely known time manipulations spells in the Megaverse... but the likelihood seems that it is the other way.

in the meanwhile, look at what temporal wizards and necromancers have GAINED from sharing spells. they *may* have lost a few spells (it's hard to say for sure, but the fact that ley line walkers don't pay double PPE for those standard invocations would once again suggest that they weren't, they're just standard invocations that happen to also be necromantic invocations, and i've already covered the temporal magic stuff).

Or that they are converted spells... you know like Call Lightning canonically is?
And I am not seeing any gains here.
No really I'm not.
You lose some of what you have to get...access to what you already have?
How is that a plus?

in the meanwhile, they gain access to the entire list of standard magic invocations. given that temporal magic only has a handful of spells, that's a pretty good deal. considering how limited necro-magic is in scope, it's a pretty amazing deal for the necromancer too.

Ummmm.
No, just No.
Invocation spells are not the exclusive province of "normal" mages.
Temporal Wizards have full access to Invocations spells AND Temporal spells. With out having to trade anything.
Ditto for the Necromancer, Ocean Wizard and any other class that has a class list + access to invocations.
Or to be blunt.
The Necromancer already has access to the entire list of standard magic invocations. With out having to trade anything for it.

warlocks still have frankly superior versions of the spells they 'lost' (not that it actually cost them anything at all).

And yet it annoyed them enough to systematically wipe out an entire order of mages that was doing it...

not sure about the living flame things, but... aren't those exclusive to russia? or maybe south america... don't think they made it to north america randomly. more likely it's just convergent evolution. a magic flamethrower is a useful thing. fire globe i think is actually a warlock spell.

Living Flame spells were once exclusive yes. But just like Biomancy and Techno-Wizardry and Cloud Magic and Nature Magic and Ocean Magic they have been added to all sorts of other class lists.

also, most of those aren't exactly the highly profitable spells to cast. maybe you could realistically expect to sell a casting of fire globe, i guess.

Some how the argument that "this is not the most profitable path possible" holds less than no weight.
No seriously it doesn't. Because of the known mages in the megaverse? Only a couple individuals, who are seen as odd by the rest of the magical community, are profit centered.
So I am going to go out on a limb here and say that "making the most money possible the easiest way possible" is not usually the driving force for becoming a mage.
Especially not most of the specialty schools.
Now I get that there will be exceptions.
I get that.
What I don't buy is that coincidentally that every PC group happens to be full of those ultra-rare nigh unto unique exceptions. For every mage played in that group.

Not to mention that those were just random examples of a few spells that we have examples of.
The pattern is pretty solid that 'Invocation Mages' can, and will convert any spells they can get their hands on into Invocations which adds them to the Invocation list and removes them from being the exclusive province of what ever kind(s) of mages it was that used to have it as their pet trick.
Which is why I am leery of PCs that say "well I know how literally every other specialist in our field in the Megaverse feels on this, and honestly in character my character has little to no reason to do this (and often little or no reason to trust the other person)... but its just Bob's character so I'm not really spreading the secrets, and this makes us both more effective in game so I'm doing it anyway"


Now I am not the game police and people can do what they want at their tables.

Spoiler:

But I know that at my table if players started doing this, I would be asking some pretty detailed questions about it as the GM because it smacks of metagaming.
Which, point of fact, is what I have done when this has come up in games.
I want to know a solid, in game and in character rational for the mage to be trading away their specialty spells. And unless their character has previously been described as, and played as greedy... then mere money will cost them both all their XP for the session for playing out of character, as well as earn both a strike against them for Metagaming/Cheating.
Reasons that I have accepted include "they saved my life"; "they have a potent magic that is of great value to my specialty and I feel that the value is worth it"; "They are my in-game spouse"; and "Yes I know this is a secret spell of Necromancy, but it is the best spell in the world for fighting vampires and I have decided that it should be released into general circulation so as to aid in the eradication of that pestilence"
Reasons that I have not accepted include "well I don't have a lot of invocation spells so this lets me round out my spell book"; "They are paying me" (aformentioned character who was not greedy before); "Well we are both members of the same mercenary force so it's cool, their trustworthy" and of course my all time favorites "But we all picked our spells with the plan of trading! If we can't trade then none of us will have ballanced spell books" and "They are my real life girlfriend" (said character was having an Elven Necromancer from Tolkeen freely teach a feral dog-boy Ley-Line Walker necromancy spells!)

[Shark_Force]

where is that common invocation dimensional pockets located? so far as i can tell, it's not in the book of magic (except as temporal magic). is this some recent change?

i do note that a number of warlock spells have been converted (or, more likely, common invocation users are creating new spells with the exact same effects, since it's not like warlocks can make scrolls for them to study, nor is it like warlocks actually know the spells to teach them). with that said, again: you can clearly see that the warlock versions are vastly superior, with far lower PPE costs and levels (which also means you can cast them more quickly).

so... where's that shown in temporal magic? where are the temporal magic versions of those two spells with substantially lower PPE costs and level? if they were originally temporal magic, and converting spells to standard invocations makes them far worse, where are the original (and far superior) temporal magic versions?

and frankly, if you're only getting access to common invocation magic because someone else figured it all out first, and without those people you wouldn't have it, you bloody well ARE gaining from the fact that your magic shares the same traits as standard invocation magic. again, converted spells get substantial drawbacks. a ley line walker converting "animate dead" from necromancy would be *starting* from a spell that costs double PPE, and then (as other 'converted' spells are) should only be able to create higher level, more expensive versions of the invocation. but there is no such spell. necromancers don't have a level 2 animate dead that costs 4 PPE or something like that. they have the exact same invocation, which they pay the exact same amount to use.

why do you think invocation magic is not the exclusive province of normal mages, but somehow these other users of invocation magic should be entitled to have their very own private reserve of special invocations that nobody else is allowed? we already know that mage guilds are reluctant to share spells with others. if the necromancers know common invocations, it very probably came from a spellcaster that is not a necromancer. it is likewise extremely probable that most of the standard invocation magic known to temporal wizards came from other non-temporal wizards. they HAVE had magic shared with them. that's how they got all those spells that are *not* in their specialty school. they didn't just randomly wake up one day sleeping on a giant pile of scrolls gifted by their powers of temporal magic that they could try to learn the spells through, someone else taught them. lord knows if i'm a temporal wizard, there's not a chance in hell i'm giving up a chance to learn talisman so that i can pick up blinding flash. if it can be said that "The Necromancer already has access to the entire list of standard magic invocations. With out having to trade anything for it." then it can be equally said that the standard invocation users already have access to the necromantic spells.

last i heard, there was no evidence that warlocks wiped out an entire order of mages for trying to convert warlock spells. the place where that was happening was destroyed, yes... but no warlocks claimed responsibility. if i had to guess, remember how i pointed out earlier that warlocks don't know the spells and can't make scrolls of them? well, you know who *would* know those spells? the elementals that grant them. i'd say in all likelihood that group was enslaving elementals, and if warlocks killed them at all, that was probably why (alternately, once one of those elementals breaks free it's easy enough to start a chain reaction of killing mages which frees other elementals, which would not be particularly easy to distinguish from warlocks attacking - though again, there is no clear statement that it *was* warlocks, making that merely speculation).

living flame spells are from russia. are you *seriously* suggesting that someone got over to russia, and the first thing they thought of was that they needed to set up a group dedicated to converting two (and only two) spells from fire magic, and then went back to north america, and made them so widespread that any random spellcaster in north america could learn them? that sounds a little farfetched to me. again, more likely it was convergent evolution. different people had the same idea for a great spell. unsurprisingly, their spells that do the same thing came out looking pretty similar to each other.

why shouldn't the argument that those aren't spells you can reasonably expect to sell have any weight? who cares if someone else knows them; knowledge of those spells isn't doing you any good. why should you care if someone else gets those spells that aren't very useful? i mean, yeah, if they're taking away your bread and butter, maybe you're gonna go on the warpath. or, to put it another way: you have a collection of chairs sitting in your backyard. some are really nice. most are alright. some are really quite uncomfortable, you've used them once in the last 15 years, but they still work and maybe some day you'll need them when more guests than expected show up so you don't throw them out. one day, you notice a chair that looks a lot like one of those crappy ones in the back of the truck. the truck drives off, and when you go into your backyard, you notice that sure enough that chair is missing. are you *really* going to go ballistic because of that? grab your shotgun and drive around town looking for the person that stole your crappy chair that you never use, search every backyard that has a truck parked out in front that vaguely matches the description of the truck you saw with the chair, put out missing chair posters, etc? probably not. you probably don't even care enough to call the police. now, if you noticed the same thing with a dozen of your nicest chairs, yeah, you might do something about it. but you've got better things to do with your time than hunt down whoever took the chair that was useless in the first place. so why should i believe mages are going to go ballistic over someone "stealing" the most useless secrets that they never care enough to use. particularly when they actually even still have all the use of that spell that they had before (which is a microscopically tiny fraction above zero, just like it was before they may have found out someone else has access to it).

[Daniel Stoker]

You make it sound like that last one is hard, yet the Fantastic Four do it all the time.

But even when he's caught it only furthers Doom's real plan!


Daniel Stoker

[The Beast]

You make it sound like that last one is hard, yet the Fantastic Four do it all the time.

But even when he's caught it only furthers Doom's real plan!


Daniel Stoker

He does that to? I thought that was just Loki's and Joker's thing.

[eliakon]

where is that common invocation dimensional pockets located? so far as i can tell, it's not in the book of magic (except as temporal magic). is this some recent change?

Both Palladium Fantasy and Heroes Unlimited have the spell as an Invocation.

i do note that a number of warlock spells have been converted (or, more likely, common invocation users are creating new spells with the exact same effects, since it's not like warlocks can make scrolls for them to study, nor is it like warlocks actually know the spells to teach them). with that said, again: you can clearly see that the warlock versions are vastly superior, with far lower PPE costs and levels (which also means you can cast them more quickly).

You are half correct. Some of the spells are still superior.
Not all of them, but some of them.

so... where's that shown in temporal magic? where are the temporal magic versions of those two spells with substantially lower PPE costs and level? if they were originally temporal magic, and converting spells to standard invocations makes them far worse, where are the original (and far superior) temporal magic versions?

So far?
It looks like Temporal Magic converts over 1:1 like the warlock spells that convert over with no changes.
Since the one example we have is basically identical in every way to the Temporal Spell other than it is an Invocation.

and frankly, if you're only getting access to common invocation magic because someone else figured it all out first, and without those people you wouldn't have it, you bloody well ARE gaining from the fact that your magic shares the same traits as standard invocation magic.

Be that as it may. That does not mean that you are gaining any benefit from giving your magic out.
Your claim was that the Specialists gained from the exchange. My point is that the benefits are entirely one way.

again, converted spells get substantial drawbacks. a ley line walker converting "animate dead" from necromancy would be *starting* from a spell that costs double PPE, and then (as other 'converted' spells are) should only be able to create higher level, more expensive versions of the invocation. but there is no such spell. necromancers don't have a level 2 animate dead that costs 4 PPE or something like that. they have the exact same invocation, which they pay the exact same amount to use.

And I would point out again that not ALL converted spells get substantial drawbacks.
Some do yes, but some do not.
And since Temporal Spells are one of the forms of magic that appear to have no drawbacks when converted...

why do you think invocation magic is not the exclusive province of normal mages, but somehow these other users of invocation magic should be entitled to have their very own private reserve of special invocations that nobody else is allowed?

Um because that is how the game is written?
No seriously that is how the game is written. The rules have three kinds of magic
Invocation which almost all magic users get access to
Restricted spells which are the secrets of certain OCCs, but can be learned by other classes if they can find a way
Exclusive spells that are restricted to certain OCCs and no others can learn them at all.
I don't have to defend the way the system is written. That is how K.S. chose to make magic work in his game and thus that is now magic works in his game.

we already know that mage guilds are reluctant to share spells with others. if the necromancers know common invocations, it very probably came from a spellcaster that is not a necromancer.

That does not follow in the slightest.
Seriously it does not.
Necromancers can research normal invocations, they can cast normal invocations, they can convert normal invocation scrolls, they can figure them out on level up...
There is no reason to presume that all invocations spells come from regular mages and that they were all traded for secret spells.

it is likewise extremely probable that most of the standard invocation magic known to temporal wizards came from other non-temporal wizards.

Not it the slightest
It is not "probable" at all.
They are mages, they get to know magic. Claiming that they had to go to an outside source to learn magic is simply absurd.

they HAVE had magic shared with them. that's how they got all those spells that are *not* in their specialty school.

Please provide proof of your claim
Seriously I would like to see your evidence that specialists never did any research on their own, that they can not figure out spells and that all invocation spells are really the secret preserve of "regular" wizards that just get shared out.

they didn't just randomly wake up one day sleeping on a giant pile of scrolls gifted by their powers of temporal magic that they could try to learn the spells through, someone else taught them.

Yes, a Temporal Raider or high level Temporal Wizard taught them.
That is how "taught your OCC" works.

lord knows if i'm a temporal wizard, there's not a chance in hell i'm giving up a chance to learn talisman so that i can pick up blinding flash.

That is your prerogative.
But if you are not able to learn new spells you may be restricted on what you can put IN that talisman...

if it can be said that "The Necromancer already has access to the entire list of standard magic invocations. With out having to trade anything for it." then it can be equally said that the standard invocation users already have access to the necromantic spells.

Please provide your citation
The necromancer OCC states that they can select invocation spells
The Ley Line Walker OCC does NOT state that they can select Necromancy spells.

last i heard, there was no evidence that warlocks wiped out an entire order of mages for trying to convert warlock spells. the place where that was happening was destroyed, yes... but no warlocks claimed responsibility.

Library of Bletherad makes it pretty clear what happened.

if i had to guess, remember how i pointed out earlier that warlocks don't know the spells and can't make scrolls of them? well, you know who *would* know those spells? the elementals that grant them. i'd say in all likelihood that group was enslaving elementals, and if warlocks killed them at all, that was probably why (alternately, once one of those elementals breaks free it's easy enough to start a chain reaction of killing mages which frees other elementals, which would not be particularly easy to distinguish from warlocks attacking - though again, there is no clear statement that it *was* warlocks, making that merely speculation).

Why would they need scrolls?
Seriously why would they need scrolls?
You don't need a scroll to convert a spell. In fact a scroll is useless for converting a spell
To research an invocation spell you need to... wait for it... do research
You can't just pick up a scroll, roll your percentage and say "well, this is now an invocation spell"

living flame spells are from russia. are you *seriously* suggesting that someone got over to russia, and the first thing they thought of was that they needed to set up a group dedicated to converting two (and only two) spells from fire magic, and then went back to north america, and made them so widespread that any random spellcaster in north america could learn them? that sounds a little farfetched to me. again, more likely it was convergent evolution. different people had the same idea for a great spell. unsurprisingly, their spells that do the same thing came out looking pretty similar to each other.

No, I am saying that Living Flame spells are found in the Russia Book.
They are NOT only found in Russia.
Some of those Living Flame spells seem to have been converted to invocations ages ago. Long before the coming of the rifts or any of the modern Living Flame brotherhoods.

why shouldn't the argument that those aren't spells you can reasonably expect to sell have any weight?

Because it predicates a motivation that is described as being totally alien to the mindset of literally every mage in the megaverse outside of a handful of oddballs.
So yeah, I would say that it is not exactly the normal mindset of mages?

who cares if someone else knows them; knowledge of those spells isn't doing you any good. why should you care if someone else gets those spells that aren't very useful? i mean, yeah, if they're taking away your bread and butter, maybe you're gonna go on the warpath. or, to put it another way: you have a collection of chairs sitting in your backyard. some are really nice. most are alright. some are really quite uncomfortable, you've used them once in the last 15 years, but they still work and maybe some day you'll need them when more guests than expected show up so you don't throw them out. one day, you notice a chair that looks a lot like one of those crappy ones in the back of the truck. the truck drives off, and when you go into your backyard, you notice that sure enough that chair is missing. are you *really* going to go ballistic because of that? grab your shotgun and drive around town looking for the person that stole your crappy chair that you never use, search every backyard that has a truck parked out in front that vaguely matches the description of the truck you saw with the chair, put out missing chair posters, etc? probably not. you probably don't even care enough to call the police. now, if you noticed the same thing with a dozen of your nicest chairs, yeah, you might do something about it. but you've got better things to do with your time than hunt down whoever took the chair that was useless in the first place. so why should i believe mages are going to go ballistic over someone "stealing" the most useless secrets that they never care enough to use. particularly when they actually even still have all the use of that spell that they had before (which is a microscopically tiny fraction above zero, just like it was before they may have found out someone else has access to it).

Your comparisons are both absurd and irelivant.
These are not something that is "just a random tool that someone might never use" this is LITTERALLY what they have dedicated their life to.
Full Stop.
Now, we take what they consider to be LITTERALLY THE MOST IMPORTANT AND DEFINING TRAIT IN THEIR LIFE. And we are to assume that they have no attachment to it at all?
That they will just say "meh, who cares"
I find that to be an absurd stance and frankly... a metagame one that requires that we ignore the in character and in world perspectives and only look at this from the perspective of the player and the tool box you have to play the game.
And as for why they care?
Just off hand?

First and Foremost
-Because it means that other people can now do what ever it is that they do, meaning that it puts them at risk of, as you say "losing their bread and butter" by being replaced by some other mages .
For example if either Blue Flame or Koralyte spells get out into "general population" the classes that are built around them will both go from "valued specialists" to "oddball weirdos who have dedicated themselves to the narrow use of a tiny slice of a tiny portion of magic"
If the remaining Temporal Spells get out into "general population"... Temporal Wizards and Temporal Warriors are going to suddenly find themselves being not all that impressive. Yeah, sure they start with some high level spells? But that doesn't make up for the distinct lack of other class features, and considering the issue about spell learning they may or may not be able to even learn more spells depending on how a particular GM decides how handle the lack of text on the subject (not going to start that thread up here, it can be debated in it's own thread. But the point is that in at least some games they will find themselves totally outclassed and go from "high and mighty valued specialists" to "oddball weirdos")

Running a close second
-Because it means that other mages will now be able to analyze their magics and develop specific countermagics (we see this with specialized spells that are designed to deal with Ward Magic, and Circle Magic and the like)

Distant third
-Because it means that other mages will be able to impersonate members of their group? And that they may feel that taking the flack for what the real members of your group do is bad enough, you don't need all the other two bit mages in the world out there sullying your reputations. The perfect example here is the number of self proclaimed "necromancers" who are really some other class.

I am pretty sure that it would be difficult to come up with other reasons.

[Shark_Force]

so, two settings that don't actually have a temporal wizard in them have an invocation, and that's supposed to prove that those settings had that spell from the temporal wizards that are not, in fact, in those settings. because the idea of having something large on the inside than the outside is apparently unique to temporal wizards, and nobody else could have ever just decided to try and create a spell that does the same thing.

which warlock spells are not superior? last i checked, they're lower level (which makes them easier to cast in terms of time and being disrupted and cost fewer PPE in all cases that i looked at.

you haven't shown that temporal magic converts over 1:1. you've simply insisted that this is the case, and are now attempting to use it as proof of itself. you cannot use the thing you are proving as proof of itself.

who said they're giving magic away? i've talked about selling their knowledge (for which they would gain). i've talked about not dedicating their lives to hunting down random people who cast a spell (in which case they gain the benefit of having all the time they would otherwise spending hunting people down, and a great deal of safety), particularly given they don't even have any way of knowing that person is not an appropriate type of spellcaster. never once said there were necromancers or temporal wizards walking around shouting "free secret knowledge for anyone that wants it" at the top of their lungs.

again, this is using your conclusion as evidence of your conclusion. if you wish to prove a claim that temporal magic converts 1:1, you cannot use that claim as proof of itself.

that is how the mechanics of the game are written. i don't believe we have any statements that ley line walkers are ok with necromancers or temporal wizards knowing the magic that more conventional spellcasters have spent *their* lives studying and improving, and freely give it up to any specialist wizard that cares to have it. you need to come up with something like that if you're going to insist that specialist magic users do not gain access to a large body of common invocation magic as a result of sharing their specialist knowledge.

necromancers *can* research normal invocations. but they don't, for the most part. that's what makes them necromancers. and i never said all. i said that if they know one, it probably came from someone else. because, you know, that guy who is super focused on studying necromancy? well, he doesn't have infinite time. not even temporal wizards do. if they're devoting all that time to specialist magic, they're going to need some other method of gaining knowledge of the non-specialist magic... most likely by purchasing or trading for knowledge from non-specialist wizards for most of it.

they don't need to go to an outside source to know magic. but if they want more than a super tiny handful of common invocation spells (1/level, for which they are forfeiting the opportunity to know more of the type of magic they made a tremendous sacrifice to obtain), they are probably going to need to go to someone who has spent all of *their* time studying those spells. i mean, sure, they could reinvent the wheel every time. forfeit months or years of time to attempting to figure out a spell rather than a few days and some money (or traded spell knowledge) for it. seems unlikely that the temporal wizard is going to spend all of their post-training time trying to figure out normal spells, though.

i'll provide proof of my claim as soon as you provide proof that temporal wizards originated any magic other than temporal magic. (actually, for that matter, they didn't even originate that... temporal raiders did. but that's neither here nor there). if standard invocation casters are "stealing" spells from temporal wizards (a claim you still have not proven) by researching similar versions, then it is just as much "stealing" when the temporal wizards research spells that are the purview of the standard invocation caster. your claim contradicts itself; you have a double standard.

a temporal raider or high level temporal wizard teaches them a bunch of temporal magic. the vast wealth of knowledge that exists of common invocations, not so much.

who says i'm not able to learn new spells? i've pointed out repeatedly that temporal wizards should reasonably be trading for and purchasing spell knowledge, potentially including trading some of their specialist magic. you're the one saying they should spend every day of their life after they get out of their apprenticeship trying to figure out the formulas for simple spells like blinding flash. i advocate that they should learn powerful spells, and trade that knowledge to expand their repertoire, as i do for other types of magic users.

the ley line walker OCC doesn't have to state that they can select necromancy spells. according to you, they can research it themselves, therefore it must have always been theirs to begin with. in fact, according to you, they already HAVE done that, given you're claiming that they've already stolen some of that knowledge and made it into standard invocations. but simply put, the ley line walker can learn any necro-magic spell. it is repugnant to most of them. but they can. it's right in the description of necro-magic.

does the library of bletherad make it clear what happened? the only citation i've seen anyone give is that a group that was studying elemental magic was destroyed. no *clear* statements regarding who destroyed them, how they were destroyed, why they were destroyed, etc. there is an assumption that they were destroyed by warlocks for studying elemental magic. but you need to prove that assumption; again, you cannot use that assumption as proof that the assumption is true.

if you don't need a scroll or knowledge of a spell to convert it, then you can't really argue that anyone has stolen the spells. after all, if they researched a spell that is *not* based on the knowledge of the specialty caster, then nothing has been stolen, and there was never even the tiniest shred of a chance that sharing their spell knowledge was ever going to lead to that spell being turned into a common invocation in the first place.

again, you are using your conclusion as evidence of yourself. for all we know, living fire magic is based on the fact that someone came across a few common invocation spells and was like "oh hey, this is cool, i should study this specific subset of spells in greater depth". or, as i've said already, it is entirely possible that multiple people simply had similar ideas for what would make a cool spell, and came up with spells that are practically speaking identical. neither fire breathing nor portable fire are particularly unique concepts.

you are, again, using your conclusion as evidence of itself. every mage in the megaverse cares about every single spell, and not just specific ones, is not something you have proven. in fact, we can clearly see in the rules for the pursuit of magic in RUE that this is NOT the case. you can find low level spells for sale in many places. higher level spells generally are much harder, and much much more expensive. the really high level spells are unlikely to even be for sale at all, but are more commonly given as gifts for exceptional service such as saving a mage's life. spells of legend are explicitly *never* available for cash sale. certain types of spells are considered to be worth more to sell as well; for example, offensive spells carry a surcharge, and metamorphosis and summoning spells carry an even larger surcharge. quite evidently, there are, in fact, spells that they care very little about preserving the secrecy of, and spells that they care a great deal about preserving the secrecy of.

i have dedicated a great deal of my life to various games. i have in all likelihood spent more of my life pursuing various games than i have at anything else. i have a job, true, but i don't do my job because i love it, i do it because it keeps me financially afloat; if i could make the same money (or better) with gaming, i'd drop that job in a heartbeat and spend my time doing that instead. but you know what? i'm not in the *least* bit worried that my copy of TOON disappeared many years ago, even though it was my very first RPG. i'm not sure if i even still have access to the copy of 13th age that i bought, nor do i care. i have a pile of material for warhammer that i freely offered to someone who expressed a mild interest without feeling the slightest twinge of loss. in contrast, when WotC changed a policy in a way that prevented me from accessing new PDFs (or potential replacements of PDFs that i had already downloaded) of their old 2nd edition material for an extended period of time, it led to extreme reluctance to let them see so much as a single penny of my money in the future. i might spend months thinking about whether i'd rather own something of theirs that would be really useful, just so that i can avoid giving them money, and more often than not i conclude that no, i'd rather keep looking for second hand copies than let them enjoy the licensing fee they'd get from me buying a 5 dollar PDF.

gaming has defined my life far more than anything else. it is, arguably, the most important and defining trait in my life. interfering with it in a significant way is a quick path to get on my bad side. that doesn't mean that every single game i have ever owned is of the utmost value and importance to me. some are significant, to the point that i spend almost as much time on them on a weekly basis as i do on anything else. but certainly not all of the games i've come across are like that. some of them i simply don't care about at all, because i never use them, never talk about them, don't refer to them, and at most they've just sat on my shelves for years. if someone stole certain parts of my collection, i would be extremely angry. other parts, i'd just shrug my shoulders and it might make a conversation point at some time in the distant future.

just because their life has been defined by a study of magic does not mean that all magic is equally important to them, or for that matter that any given bit of magical knowledge is important to them at all.

now then, as to the further specific reasons you've given:
- many spells are not their bread and butter. in fact, for many spells the only way it is ever likely to earn them anything or see any use at all is by selling knowledge of that spell. and i'm pretty sure koralyte and blue flame mages are only not considered to be oddball weirdos is that they come from societies that don't *have* conventional mages. as to temporal mages not having enough other class features, i would point out that they aren't exactly a huge amount behind a standard ley line walker. i would also point out that getting access to a few high level spells can very easily be worth a lack elsewhere; a spell like talisman or create scroll is likely worth over a million credits. as far as trading value goes, that can get you a heck of a lot of lower level magic, far more than any other class could ever hope to have early in their career.
- you've already claimed you don't need anything to research a spell. if that is true it doesn't matter whether you share it or not; someone else can just research a spell to counter it. with that said, i'm pretty sure standard invocation users can't use circle magic *or* ward magic, which means if they learned those spells it was *as* specialist mages (probably along the path to becoming an alchemist, which i believe requires those types of magic). of course, that would be an odd thing to study, given that general purpose spells can already deal with specialist magic anyways...

- other mages can already impersonate members of your group to the uninitiated regardless. the average peasant isn't going to spend hours agonizing over whether that guy who cast firebolt a lot was actually a living fire spellcaster or a fire warlock or a shifter or a ley line walker. they just know some guy kept on casting fire spells at everything. they aren't going to know whether someone was made really fast as opposed to traveling through time at a faster rate. they won't know whether a person who summoned a water elemental is a warlock or a shifter. they don't have a doctorate in knowing all the details of every spell list of every specialist caster in existence. if a fire warlock dresses up in a bunch of bones, hangs out in the graveyard, and strangles a few people to death while taking advantage of their ability to create smoke and see through it, people are unlikely to say "hey wait a moment, necromancers don't have a spell to see through smoke and fire warlocks do, that's obviously a fire warlock", they'll probably just assume it's a necromancer.

[dreicunan]

You make it sound like that last one is hard, yet the Fantastic Four do it all the time.

But even when he's caught it only furthers Doom's real plan!


Daniel Stoker

He does that to? I thought that was just Loki's and Joker's thing.

Tzeentch laughs at these amateurs.

[eliakon]

so, two settings that don't actually have a temporal wizard in them have an invocation, and that's supposed to prove that those settings had that spell from the temporal wizards that are not, in fact, in those settings. because the idea of having something large on the inside than the outside is apparently unique to temporal wizards, and nobody else could have ever just decided to try and create a spell that does the same thing.

The fact remains that they have that spell.
And it is an Invocation spell.
And, I will note, that even via the conversion books it still remains.
They did not have to add the spell, they chose to.
Ergo, the spell exists, and it is invocation.
You can argue all you want that it doesn't demonstrate anything...
...but the simple fact is that at the end of the day there is a Dimensional Pockets spell, that is canon, and is not an Invocation.
And considering that ALL the material in the game on the process of converting spells, all of it is from PF and NB I don't find looking to those lines to be that far out of bounds

which warlock spells are not superior? last i checked, they're lower level (which makes them easier to cast in terms of time and being disrupted and cost fewer PPE in all cases that i looked at.

I will get back with you on that.
I have notes on the spells but they are not handy at the moment.
Off the top of my head Cloud of Slumber in Mysteries of Magic is the one that first comes to mind.

you haven't shown that temporal magic converts over 1:1. you've simply insisted that this is the case, and are now attempting to use it as proof of itself. you cannot use the thing you are proving as proof of itself.

Simply claiming that the spell is not proof is not proof either.
The only game that we have any discussion on converting spells for, and actual canon statements that spells HAVE been (or even can be) converted is PF after all...

who said they're giving magic away? i've talked about selling their knowledge (for which they would gain). i've talked about not dedicating their lives to hunting down random people who cast a spell (in which case they gain the benefit of having all the time they would otherwise spending hunting people down, and a great deal of safety), particularly given they don't even have any way of knowing that person is not an appropriate type of spellcaster. never once said there were necromancers or temporal wizards walking around shouting "free secret knowledge for anyone that wants it" at the top of their lungs.

Your making up a strawman there.
You don't gain time not spent hunting people down if you don't start handing out the spells in the first place
And once again, you have not really demonstrated any reason for them to hand out these spells. There is nothing for them to gain.
They already have access to invocation spells (and thus can gain them the normal ways).

again, this is using your conclusion as evidence of your conclusion. if you wish to prove a claim that temporal magic converts 1:1, you cannot use that claim as proof of itself.

Errr my evidence is that the one spell we have a canon invocation version of converts 1:1.
That is my evidence.
And it is in two separate game lines
And for more fun HU even allows for Temporal Wizards as an option...

that is how the mechanics of the game are written. i don't believe we have any statements that ley line walkers are ok with necromancers or temporal wizards knowing the magic that more conventional spellcasters have spent *their* lives studying and improving, and freely give it up to any specialist wizard that cares to have it. you need to come up with something like that if you're going to insist that specialist magic users do not gain access to a large body of common invocation magic as a result of sharing their specialist knowledge.

That requires that you make up a house rule that invocations are the secret spells of conventional spellcasters.
Now sure... if you totally rewrite the entire game system then sure your argument works...
But as written there is no way for anyone to be "okay or not" with people knowing Invocation magic because that is not an option, it is the default way that magic works.

necromancers *can* research normal invocations. but they don't, for the most part. that's what makes them necromancers.

Citation please?

and i never said all. i said that if they know one, it probably came from someone else. because, you know, that guy who is super focused on studying necromancy? well, he doesn't have infinite time. not even temporal wizards do. if they're devoting all that time to specialist magic, they're going to need some other method of gaining knowledge of the non-specialist magic... most likely by purchasing or trading for knowledge from non-specialist wizards for most of it.

Citation please?
Seriously you are making up some serious headcanon here about how magic works.
This isn't AD&D with specialists only doing their own schools.
It is totally possible for a Necromancer to get all their spells from other necromancers, who got them from other necromancers all the way back as far as they know.

they don't need to go to an outside source to know magic. but if they want more than a super tiny handful of common invocation spells (1/level, for which they are forfeiting the opportunity to know more of the type of magic they made a tremendous sacrifice to obtain), they are probably going to need to go to someone who has spent all of *their* time studying those spells. i mean, sure, they could reinvent the wheel every time. forfeit months or years of time to attempting to figure out a spell rather than a few days and some money (or traded spell knowledge) for it. seems unlikely that the temporal wizard is going to spend all of their post-training time trying to figure out normal spells, though.

Again so?
No really so?
Just because they may want to buy spells does not mean they have to trade their secrets for them.
I have a news flash for you. Conventional mages buy spells and guess what! They don't have to trade secret class specific spells to do so!.
Hmmmmm

i'll provide proof of my claim as soon as you provide proof that temporal wizards originated any magic other than temporal magic. (actually, for that matter, they didn't even originate that... temporal raiders did. but that's neither here nor there). if standard invocation casters are "stealing" spells from temporal wizards (a claim you still have not proven) by researching similar versions, then it is just as much "stealing" when the temporal wizards research spells that are the purview of the standard invocation caster. your claim contradicts itself; you have a double standard.

a number of things here
1) I have asked for evidence your claim... saying "no I don't feel like that" isn't how it works. The fact that you will not provide proof is prime facie evidence that your claim is false. Especially when the claim is as absurd as these which require literally rewriting the entire game!

2) I already DID provide proof that conventional mages are 'stealing' specialist spells. We have flat out canon statements to that very fact in multiple books! BOTH Library of Bletherad and Through the Glass Darkly discuss this and it is even mentioned in Mysteries of Magic and I beleive Three Galaxies. It really is not up for debate.

3) My claim on temporal spells is that the Temporal Classes seem the most likely classes to develop time spells. Ergo the likelihood seems that time magics probably originate there rather than the absurd idea that they really aren't Temporal spells...

4) It is not "Stealing spells" to know invocation spells. You have this bizarre idea that invocation spells are not universal. EVERYONE HAS THEM THEY ARE NOT ANYONES SECRET YOU CAN NOT STEAL AN OPEN SOURCE PUBLIC ITEM.
Now, if you can provide a citation that this is not true? By all means.
But otherwise your house rule that invocation spells are the preserve of 'common mages' and that other mages 'stole them' is just that... a house rule and has no relevance here.

a temporal raider or high level temporal wizard teaches them a bunch of temporal magic. the vast wealth of knowledge that exists of common invocations, not so much.

To be fair they can pick a selection of spells, at the start so they can pick invocations if they choose.

who says i'm not able to learn new spells? i've pointed out repeatedly that temporal wizards should reasonably be trading for and purchasing spell knowledge, potentially including trading some of their specialist magic. you're the one saying they should spend every day of their life after they get out of their apprenticeship trying to figure out the formulas for simple spells like blinding flash. i advocate that they should learn powerful spells, and trade that knowledge to expand their repertoire, as i do for other types of magic users.

Please do not put words in my mouth. I detest it when people lie on my behalf, aspecially to try and set up strawmen
I have said that they should not be trading away their secrets.
Period.
I have said NOTHING about not buying other spells. Nor have I said anything about trading away their invocation spells.
They are free to do both and frankly... more power to them.

the ley line walker OCC doesn't have to state that they can select necromancy spells. according to you, they can research it themselves

They can do specialist conversion research yes.

therefore it must have always been theirs to begin with. in fact, according to you, they already HAVE done that, given you're claiming that they've already stolen some of that knowledge and made it into standard invocations. but simply put, the ley line walker can learn any necro-magic spell. it is repugnant to most of them. but they can. it's right in the description of necro-magic.

They can learn to cast them yes.
That does not mean that they can simply pick them.
Any more than they can simply pick
Demon Magic
Blood Magic
Line Drawings
Blue Flame
Koralyite
Zodiac Magic
Nature Magic
Living Flame Magic
Shadow Magic
Chaos Magic
Would you like me to continue listing forms of magic that we are explicitly told that 'conventional mages' are able to learn to cast but do not get to pick out of hand...
which is why they are their own schools.
Otherwise they would simply be "Invocations"

does the library of bletherad make it clear what happened? the only citation i've seen anyone give is that a group that was studying elemental magic was destroyed. no *clear* statements regarding who destroyed them, how they were destroyed, why they were destroyed, etc. there is an assumption that they were destroyed by warlocks for studying elemental magic. but you need to prove that assumption; again, you cannot use that assumption as proof that the assumption is true.

if you don't need a scroll or knowledge of a spell to convert it, then you can't really argue that anyone has stolen the spells. after all, if they researched a spell that is *not* based on the knowledge of the specialty caster, then nothing has been stolen, and there was never even the tiniest shred of a chance that sharing their spell knowledge was ever going to lead to that spell being turned into a common invocation in the first place.

The rules on how to do this beg to differ
So does the canon in game reaction of actual groups seeing their spells used
Researching an invocation version of a specialist spell is pretty much the definition of 'stealing a spell'. It would be like claiming that just because I studied someone else's computer program, dissected it analyzed it and made a duplicate that runs on my own system that I didn't steal it...

again, you are using your conclusion as evidence of yourself. for all we know, living fire magic is based on the fact that someone came across a few common invocation spells and was like "oh hey, this is cool, i should study this specific subset of spells in greater depth". or, as i've said already, it is entirely possible that multiple people simply had similar ideas for what would make a cool spell, and came up with spells that are practically speaking identical. neither fire breathing nor portable fire are particularly unique concepts.

Considering that Living Fire spells are, canonically, their own school with actual elemental links? Yeah... no.

you are, again, using your conclusion as evidence of itself. every mage in the megaverse cares about every single spell, and not just specific ones, is not something you have proven. in fact, we can clearly see in the rules for the pursuit of magic in RUE that this is NOT the case. you can find low level spells for sale in many places. higher level spells generally are much harder, and much much more expensive. the really high level spells are unlikely to even be for sale at all, but are more commonly given as gifts for exceptional service such as saving a mage's life. spells of legend are explicitly *never* available for cash sale. certain types of spells are considered to be worth more to sell as well; for example, offensive spells carry a surcharge, and metamorphosis and summoning spells carry an even larger surcharge. quite evidently, there are, in fact, spells that they care very little about preserving the secrecy of, and spells that they care a great deal about preserving the secrecy of.

And yet your claiming that even though the rules state that for simple, common universal invocation spells. Which are, by the rules, pretty hard to get your hands on and only the lowest level ones openly sold...
...that it follows that secret, often high level, spells of secretive groups should be openly for sale?

And you keep saying "using your conclusion as evidence" every time I cite the books....

i have dedicated a great deal of my life to various games. i have in all likelihood spent more of my life pursuing various games than i have at anything else. i have a job, true, but i don't do my job because i love it, i do it because it keeps me financially afloat; if i could make the same money (or better) with gaming, i'd drop that job in a heartbeat and spend my time doing that instead. but you know what? i'm not in the *least* bit worried that my copy of TOON disappeared many years ago, even though it was my very first RPG. i'm not sure if i even still have access to the copy of 13th age that i bought, nor do i care. i have a pile of material for warhammer that i freely offered to someone who expressed a mild interest without feeling the slightest twinge of loss. in contrast, when WotC changed a policy in a way that prevented me from accessing new PDFs (or potential replacements of PDFs that i had already downloaded) of their old 2nd edition material for an extended period of time, it led to extreme reluctance to let them see so much as a single penny of my money in the future. i might spend months thinking about whether i'd rather own something of theirs that would be really useful, just so that i can avoid giving them money, and more often than not i conclude that no, i'd rather keep looking for second hand copies than let them enjoy the licensing fee they'd get from me buying a 5 dollar PDF.gaming has defined my life far more than anything else. it is, arguably, the most important and defining trait in my life. interfering with it in a significant way is a quick path to get on my bad side. that doesn't mean that every single game i have ever owned is of the utmost value and importance to me. some are significant, to the point that i spend almost as much time on them on a weekly basis as i do on anything else. but certainly not all of the games i've come across are like that. some of them i simply don't care about at all, because i never use them, never talk about them, don't refer to them, and at most they've just sat on my shelves for years. if someone stole certain parts of my collection, i would be extremely angry. other parts, i'd just shrug my shoulders and it might make a conversation point at some time in the distant future.

just because their life has been defined by a study of magic does not mean that all magic is equally important to them, or for that matter that any given bit of magical knowledge is important to them at all.

And again you are trying to compare two totally different things and pretend that they are identical.
When you can make an actual apples to apples comparison? I will talk to you about examples. But your absurd examples of trying to compare trivial issues in peoples lives with the central part of it?
No
Lets be blunt here. First off... gaming is obviously not central to your life. Otherwise you WOULD have found a way to make it your profession. No really, the claim that "this is the center of my life and what I have dedicated my entire life to so I can use it as an example" requires that YOU HAVE THE SAME THING GOING.
So yeah... come back when you have an example of someone in the same situations that is just as placid.
In the meantime I would say that you take a look at OUR world and IP laws. Companies are pretty big on dealing with piracy of their property... even of people that would never buy it and that they would never get money from anyway.
Almost as if say... if you dedicate your life to music that it IS a big deal if people steal your songs.
Almost as if.

now then, as to the further specific reasons you've given:
- many spells are not their bread and butter. in fact, for many spells the only way it is ever likely to earn them anything or see any use at all is by selling knowledge of that spell. and i'm pretty sure koralyte and blue flame mages are only not considered to be oddball weirdos is that they come from societies that don't *have* conventional mages. as to temporal mages not having enough other class features, i would point out that they aren't exactly a huge amount behind a standard ley line walker. i would also point out that getting access to a few high level spells can very easily be worth a lack elsewhere; a spell like talisman or create scroll is likely worth over a million credits. as far as trading value goes, that can get you a heck of a lot of lower level magic, far more than any other class could ever hope to have early in their career.

Ley Line Walkers HAVE Class features.
What do Temporal Wizards get?
And just because YOU can't find a use for a spell doesn't mean that it is useless to mages in general. because otherwise
1) why does it exist
and
2) why the heck did you pick it in the first place?
And if your answer to 2 is "so I can sell it" then that is pretty metagame.

- you've already claimed you don't need anything to research a spell.

Again please don't put words in my mouth.
I detest it, and frankly it is a reportable offense.
You DO require things to research a spell. You just don't need scrolls.
But hey, news flash. There are more than just scrolls out there.
Now if you want to know what is actually required? Feel free to ask.

Now if you want to know what I actually think on a subject? Feel free to ask.
But I am going to have to insist that you stop putting words in my mouth, and that you stop simply assuming what I mean or what I intend. It is not just rude but a violation of the TOS.
May I suggest that you use quotes? It helps to ensure that you are actually quoting what is said and avoids 'paraphrasing' from turning into 'putting a spin on things' from turning into 'spun out of moonbeams and pixie dust'

if that is true it doesn't matter whether you share it or not; someone else can just research a spell to counter it. with that said, i'm pretty sure standard invocation users can't use circle magic *or* ward magic, which means if they learned those spells it was *as* specialist mages (probably along the path to becoming an alchemist, which i believe requires those types of magic). of course, that would be an odd thing to study, given that general purpose spells can already deal with specialist magic anyways...

Or that they... you know... stole some circle magic and converted into spell form?

- other mages can already impersonate members of your group to the uninitiated regardless. the average peasant isn't going to spend hours agonizing over whether that guy who cast firebolt a lot was actually a living fire spellcaster or a fire warlock or a shifter or a ley line walker. they just know some guy kept on casting fire spells at everything. they aren't going to know whether someone was made really fast as opposed to traveling through time at a faster rate. they won't know whether a person who summoned a water elemental is a warlock or a shifter. they don't have a doctorate in knowing all the details of every spell list of every specialist caster in existence. if a fire warlock dresses up in a bunch of bones, hangs out in the graveyard, and strangles a few people to death while taking advantage of their ability to create smoke and see through it, people are unlikely to say "hey wait a moment, necromancers don't have a spell to see through smoke and fire warlocks do, that's obviously a fire warlock", they'll probably just assume it's a necromancer.

The issue isn't about the average peasent is it though.
But hey, points for yet another strawman.

[Curbludgeon]

Gross.

Since this and the temporal wizard thread got entangled, I'm just putting comments for both here.

Quick question: what forms of magic from the Rifter are considered "'official'?" I wanna say it's just Zodiac, Frost, and Pyromancy. [edit: add Mortificant Arts from 50]

Using the price list in RUE, dividing level 10-15 spells into 100K increments, and acknowledging gentlepeople can disagree as to if a given spell should get a markup for being offensive, learning every Invocation in BoM costs a little under 80 million. Admittedly the higher level spells are listed as being available only a fraction of the time, and costs for checking out multiple places can range from the time it takes to teleport to it being the focus of a campaign, but it's worth noting that before narrative concerns like secrecy come into play general value can be expressed as 1 higher end giant robot. What is the value, one imagines, of Nature Magic when expressed in hovertrucks?

Like most speciality forms of magic, there are examples given of casters that can be taught spells who know Nature Magic spells. I would like to see an example of such a caster being taught a spell by a mystic. The words select and learn don't have a specific meaning in this context, but I would argue teach does. I think it's a mistake to conflate the act of being taught spells with that of training or learning to take an O.C.C.. Requiring taught casters to adapt spells from solely mystical traditions rather than be taught them would only affect theoretical specialty list access to Biomancy/Shamanic/Hunting/Dolphin, at a glance, and the latter three are tenuous as is.

If any class can be argued to have had the mention of being able to learn spells at any time skipped, it would be the Line Maker. Other classes are able to learn line magic (at diminished effect), but it isn't made explicitly clear than Line Makers can learn more line rituals than those gained from leveling. In effect it primarily makes more animals available in-game. Also, the Lord Magus and Crystal Mage are a little ambiguous about being able to be taught spells.

Tao Shih: A Palladium creation challenge I like to play is "Optimize one roll". One ability, ISP total, whatever, is maximized, and everything else is minimum-to-average. I'm tickled by the notion of a 'Gotta catch 'em all' game, which is natural in a kitchen sink game system. (If someone distastefully finds that to be metagaming, I'd argue discussing how one would deal with such is metagaming at one remove, and speculate if the distaste necessarily compounds.) Tao Shih and Wu Shih can both decipher spells from written sources at much higher percentages than found elsewhere. Once deciphered, the Tao Shih can "always transcribe it into another form", while a Wu Shih can learn to cast it. A 5th level Tao Shih has a 98% chance to Read & Acquire Magic, and can have a P.P.E. score as low as 8. With one of the better rolls for initial spells, if the Tao Shih changes O.C.C. to Wu Shih (which is using rules first published in another setting), they're able to bootstrap themselves into hundreds of P.P.E. within days/weeks, and can scarcely fail to learn and convert spells from scrolls. If the first two Invocation spells learned are Create Magic Scroll and Id Alter Ego scrolls of other spells can be created. If there's an errata somewhere about Magic Scrolls of Create Magic Scroll please share. Please note the value of those two spells is somewhere in the 1.2 million range. A pleasant coincidence is a Tao Shih-5/Wu Shih-1(Snake Style) gets all the Zenjorike expected of the former Taoist Immortal aspirant. While I previously thought about adding an Obsidian Spell Thief, that's really only useful for examining spells inside enchanted objects, and I thought the Curse would be a fun sandbag for a demigod character tasked with scribing spells they can neither cast nor normally read.