The Dresden Files > DFRPG Resource Collection
Setting up a ward how do you get all the shifts?
Watson:
Another way of limiting the extreme complexities possible through Thaumaturgy (without risking to fail if the Wizard have Discipline 5 or more) is by saying that every time you pour power into the spell, it takes one step on the “Time Increment” table (instead of one Exchange).
If you have Discipline 5, you can pour one shift of power into the ritual safely (without risk of failing). This means that one day is equivalent of 11 steps, which is the same as to say that a Wizard with Discipline 5, in case he wants to be 100% sure not to fail the ritual, it takes one day. Complexity 13 thus takes one week, and complexity 15 takes one month. Now were talking! If you want to add more than one shift of power every time, you can aim for higher complexities (or faster results), but you risk of failing the ritual.
If you have Discipline 6, you can pour two shifts of power into the ritual safely (without risk of failing), meaning that this Wizard can pour 22 shifts in to a Ritual in one day (i.e. 11 times, using the “Time Increment” table) without having to roll the dice. If he is aiming for a higher complexity or faster results, he will have to pour more than 2 shifts of power in to the ritual (and thus risk of failing the roll).
What do you think about that?
crusher_bob:
Too low power, I think. The implication in Storm Front is that any Wizard of the white council can pull off a shift ~30 ritual to kill someone if they really wanted to, and do it in a reasonable amount of time.
Here was my take on how to do thaumaturgy.
Sanctaphrax:
Your take looks reasonable, crusher_bob, but it isn't how I'd go about it. I came up with a houserule of my own when this problem first came to my attention. I don't know whether it's reasonable or not, but here it is anyway:
When casting a ritual, divide the difference between the complexity and your base complexity by your base complexity and round down. Add the resulting number to the difficulty of all control rolls.
crusher_bob:
So, for example. If you want to do some relatively 'minor' thaumaturgy (around complexity 15) and have a base complexity of 5, you'd add difficultly 3 to all your control rolls (making them almost impossible?). And if you want to do a death ritual (around complexity 30) you,d have to make your rolls even more impossible (+6?).
Heck, even trying to find someone (around difficult 4) and putting enough oomph into the spell to get past some thresholds (around 4 additional power) would already be extra difficult for someone who doesn't have a lore of 5 or a bunch of specializations.
Finding people is something that the Lore 3, Harry has no trouble doing in Storm Front, and it's implied that he'd be perfectly capable of the death rituals used to kill people in the book (complexity 30 or so).
Sanctaphrax:
It has always been my impression that 15 shifts is a fair bit.
Thaumaturgy is as written very easy. I may have gone too far in making it otherwise, I guess.
By the way, part of the point of this was to make Thaumaturgy specializations more valuable.
It always bugged me that someone with a base complexity of 3 could perform a 30-shift mega-ritual, and I wanted to make it harder.
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