What is a scene.. 1st draft

A note on spells with “Scene” duration

With the notable exceptions of Binding Spells and Spells with time based duration (ex. hours), heroes never start a Scene with active Scene duration Spells.

These spells are meant to be cast in the midst of the Scene and often carry a speed/strain cost in
relation of their utility.

There are times where the heroes (or villains) have a chance to cast spells before an event begins, in such cases heroes should be limited to a single casting

attempt with failure still resulting in a successful cast as if they had rolled their passive Arcanum value +5 (to simulate being Focused on the Task at Hand)

you had me untill the last line

why?
It’s to simulate someone casting over and over and over and settling at the most common result.

in other words you have one shot to get what you want, fail, and you get your passive +a bonus (instead of saying, calculate the bonus from all your talents and special abilities and items and so on)

Now it can be argued that the bonus is too good….

or they can try and fail, and be forced to suffer the actions of their choices, where they could have just cast it with their passive if they wanted a sure thing?

then you end up with “we have time? I cast and cast and cast again until I get the result I want”

I’m willing to say just flat passive mind you… the +5 was me being (maybe a little too) nice

How about the choice is:

1) Take your Passive +2 (Representing “Focus”)
2) Make your roll with “Focus” (Roll 3d10 and take highest 2)

If you’re hard limited to 1 spell all together, makes sense you’re focused on it.

John

i thought we were trying to head off an arms race.

how bout in this one case letting bonuses to active rolls (like prodigy) adding to the passive roll

Though I’m not sure how allowing “Focused Casting” of 1 spell / scene is contributing to the arms race, the bonuses to passive works too.

John

you had me untill the last line

why? …snip….

Agreed.

Why? For me the last line lacks elegance and fails to simplify the question of “what can be cast ahead of time?” This is what I call a wonky rule. Most of the time you auto cast at your passive value. But in trying to put a guideline out for casting “between scenes” we’ll add a unique conditional modifier for this exception/condition. And at this point we’re tossing out numbers. Why +2? Or +5? If I somehow have as 2 in my casting stat should it be +1? Or at 12 should it jump to +6? These numbers ultimately feel arbitrary to me. And when I vaguely remember it at some future point, where will I have to look to find it again? I won’t find this change under either the section on scenes or on spell casting … but it’ll be in the errata that not everyone will read.

Please simplify. The chance to have a spell up when the action hits is already generous.

A note on spells with
“Scene” duration
With the notable exceptions of Binding Spells and Spells with time based duration (ex. hours), heroes never start a Scene with active Scene duration Spells.
These spells are meant to be cast in the midst of the Scene and often carry a speed/strain cost in
relation of their utility.
There are times where the heroes (or villains) have a chance to cast spells before an event begins, in such cases heroes should be limited to a single casting attempt or be allowed to autocast one spell using their passive Arcanum value.