The Dresden Files > DFRPG Resource Collection
Custom Powers Master List (Work In Progress)
Tedronai:
--- Quote from: benign on December 18, 2011, 08:26:30 PM ---Random question: can the bibliomancer cast from something that he wrote down? If so that may be a gamebreaker right there.
--- End quote ---
As written, yes.
They could also carry around a 'book of excerpts' containing an indexed list of every effect they can dream up on their craziest acid trips, every effect they've ever witnessed, heard about, or read about, regardless even of whether they could ever conceive of a need for it.
And even if they were to be limited to casting their spells at precisely the described potency, they could just as easily have several versions of that effect described in their tome at varying potency to circumvent that 'restriction'. And hey, now they don't even have to roll for control!
This might as well be called 'Everything Thaumaturgy with Evocation's Speed and Methods'.
And let's just go ahead and cost it at 1 refresh. Because that sounds even more balanced, right?
benign:
As a GM, I'd stop that by saying that removing a passage from the book that contains it destroys its power by destroying its context. Thus you need to have the whole, original copy to cast bibliomancy. Furthermore, the power of words is also dependent on their being read and understood and internalized by an audience; the reader is an active part of the world of fiction. Thus works that have never been read before, or that have had a tiny audience (i.e. things your bibliomancer just wrote) don't have the metaphysical heft to sponsor a bibliomancer's sorcery.
It makes bibliomancy a little wordy and requires that both the GM and player know what they are getting into, but it sounds like it could be terribly fun for both of them to play.
And maybe instead of making the spells rote, that is not having to roll for control, just have the GM set the power and effect and have the bibliomancer be unable to change its details. In essence the drawback of a rote spell without the advantage.
Tedronai:
--- Quote from: benign on December 18, 2011, 09:24:38 PM ---As a GM, I'd stop that by saying that removing a passage from the book that contains it destroys its power by destroying its context. Thus you need to have the whole, original copy to cast bibliomancy. Furthermore, the power of words is also dependent on their being read and understood and internalized by an audience; the reader is an active part of the world of fiction. Thus works that have never been read before, or that have had a tiny audience (i.e. things your bibliomancer just wrote) don't have the metaphysical heft to sponsor a bibliomancer's sorcery.
It makes bibliomancy a little wordy and requires that both the GM and player know what they are getting into, but it sounds like it could be terribly fun for both of them to play.
And maybe instead of making the spells rote, that is not having to roll for control, just have the GM set the power and effect and have the bibliomancer be unable to change its details. In essence the drawback of a rote spell without the advantage.
--- End quote ---
If something to that effect were in the text, the power might not be quite so absurd, though I still have doubts.
Sanctaphrax:
--- Quote from: Tedronai on December 18, 2011, 09:02:17 PM ---This might as well be called 'Everything Thaumaturgy with Evocation's Speed and Methods'.
And let's just go ahead and cost it at 1 refresh. Because that sounds even more balanced, right?
--- End quote ---
No.
The evocation is still just evocation. It says
--- Quote from: Sanctaphrax ---This can create almost any evocation effect
--- End quote ---
which is meant to mean that Thaumaturgy effects are off-limits.
Does that make it seem more reasonable to you?
If not, I think I have a pretty good idea for a rewrite.
PS: @benign: Those sound like pretty excellent compels/invokes for effect. But incorporating them into the power proper seems like more trouble than it's worth.
Tedronai:
--- Quote from: Sanctaphrax on December 19, 2011, 06:50:06 AM ---The evocation is still just evocation. It says
which is meant to mean that Thaumaturgy effects are off-limits.
--- End quote ---
See YS288, the sidebar "With Evocation's Methods and Speed", paying particular attention to the paragraph after the bullet points.
What this power does is to explicitly lay out what constitutes an acceptable 'creative rationalization' as described in that section, and then to make fulfilling that rationalization gamebreakingly simple. (as evidenced by the above noted 'Indexed Tome of Every-Effect-You-Could-Ever-Possibly Need-and-Then-Some')
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