Home Brew Rule: New Inventions Draft Rule 16-03-21
All rights reserved 2016
By Edmund Scholz
The 1st edition rules, when they treat invention at all treat it much the same as copying existing magic. The basic principle when inventing a new technique (be it technology like medicine or spells) a character can spend one luck point to have a chance of new discovery. This represent some happy accident - perhaps a spider from the abyss happens by and falls into the potion container, or a fluke lightning blast hits the magic user as he finishes a magic item, or some chemical gets mixed in the fire wood to allow a forge to super heat allowing the invention of cast iron.
In all cases this only gives a chance of success. What ever the base chance (sometimes a low as 1%, or even 0% if something impossible is trying to be invented - ie. make a first level wish spell) more luck spend can mulpuly the chance by that much luck. So if 11 luck where spend total - 1 for any chance at all, the other then would multiple the chances for success by 10%. Usually both luck wold only apply to one event, in the case of spell creation, the weekly roll for succss.
Generally, the success is not duplicatable. The character was lucky, they do not know how their invention works, only it does work. They may have some ablilty to exploit or copy the invention by maybe not. A spell invented for example may only work for the caster, the formula written for it being complete. The caster, if they tried to teach it, lacking knowledge of the lucky event would fail. They could however make scroll fragments which would allow casting of the spell, and perhaps further research by others on reproducing it.
Magic users who spend their life working on these problems and have extra skill points and class skills will effectively have a few lucky discovers every few years, and some of those will be (Spelling) duplicatable. Generally, this is outside of the players preview, and even outside the majority of NPCs. Luck and other factors like it (genius points for example.) provide a factor to allow for rare discoveries.
However, once discovered, a major link has been known and further lucky discoveries may make the spell reproducible, as in the case of "key" spell from the unearthed and similar sources which are "easy" to discover. In this case, a second batch (potential as many levels of the spell extra batch, ie up to 10 times total) of research with the formula will prodide the full spell, usable by all.
Thus mage B takes Mage's A spell, can not use it but can use the formula to re-invent (reverse enginer) the spell and has now his formula is one step closer to a universal formula (and if the spell was first level, this magic user "cracks" the code) that magic user of the right level can understand. If he spell was 9th level this step would have to be done 8 more times; assuming the new modified formula is used. If using the first draft the spell wold have to re-engineered 9 times from scratch. However, a mage willing to spend double the spell slots can reverse enginener it once for their own use (though they must either have 18 or great intelligence or 3 points of intelligence more than nomrally need to use the spell, so a minimum of 12 intelligence for 1st level spells.)
All rights reserved 2016
By Edmund Scholz
The 1st edition rules, when they treat invention at all treat it much the same as copying existing magic. The basic principle when inventing a new technique (be it technology like medicine or spells) a character can spend one luck point to have a chance of new discovery. This represent some happy accident - perhaps a spider from the abyss happens by and falls into the potion container, or a fluke lightning blast hits the magic user as he finishes a magic item, or some chemical gets mixed in the fire wood to allow a forge to super heat allowing the invention of cast iron.
In all cases this only gives a chance of success. What ever the base chance (sometimes a low as 1%, or even 0% if something impossible is trying to be invented - ie. make a first level wish spell) more luck spend can mulpuly the chance by that much luck. So if 11 luck where spend total - 1 for any chance at all, the other then would multiple the chances for success by 10%. Usually both luck wold only apply to one event, in the case of spell creation, the weekly roll for succss.
Generally, the success is not duplicatable. The character was lucky, they do not know how their invention works, only it does work. They may have some ablilty to exploit or copy the invention by maybe not. A spell invented for example may only work for the caster, the formula written for it being complete. The caster, if they tried to teach it, lacking knowledge of the lucky event would fail. They could however make scroll fragments which would allow casting of the spell, and perhaps further research by others on reproducing it.
Magic users who spend their life working on these problems and have extra skill points and class skills will effectively have a few lucky discovers every few years, and some of those will be (Spelling) duplicatable. Generally, this is outside of the players preview, and even outside the majority of NPCs. Luck and other factors like it (genius points for example.) provide a factor to allow for rare discoveries.
However, once discovered, a major link has been known and further lucky discoveries may make the spell reproducible, as in the case of "key" spell from the unearthed and similar sources which are "easy" to discover. In this case, a second batch (potential as many levels of the spell extra batch, ie up to 10 times total) of research with the formula will prodide the full spell, usable by all.
Thus mage B takes Mage's A spell, can not use it but can use the formula to re-invent (reverse enginer) the spell and has now his formula is one step closer to a universal formula (and if the spell was first level, this magic user "cracks" the code) that magic user of the right level can understand. If he spell was 9th level this step would have to be done 8 more times; assuming the new modified formula is used. If using the first draft the spell wold have to re-engineered 9 times from scratch. However, a mage willing to spend double the spell slots can reverse enginener it once for their own use (though they must either have 18 or great intelligence or 3 points of intelligence more than nomrally need to use the spell, so a minimum of 12 intelligence for 1st level spells.)
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