Actually... you want in-combat thaumaturgy?  May I suggest potion slots?

They can have thaumaturgical effects, at complexity up to a maximum of your lore +2 for a single slot potion (if you're willing to accept an appropriate compel).  And they're just a single action to activate.  And, since you don't need to declare what potions you've got ahead of time...

No disagreement here, I personally think this is a better way of dealing with the issue of wanting to do thaumaturgy in combat, and I think the player will be relying upon her enchanted items and potions (plus a little evocation).

Having said that, I'm also with InFerrumVeritas, wherein I prefer not to say "no", but rather to say "yes", and here is how it will work.

Given that, having guidelines in place for when someone does want to do thaumaturgy in combat, whether it be because they're trying to do a ritual to save the world while the group is under attack, or because they want to use it as an attack, is incredibly useful. Thanks all.

Its ultimately your game and you're free to muck about.  For my $0.02 though, the player who chose to specialize in Thaum made their choice.  They have "lots of decent enchanted weapons" which should be their combat bread and butter. 

In my game, I use two different time lengths for exchanges in the case of magic.  Evocation uses the standard combat exchange (probably a few seconds).  Thaumaturgy uses exchanges of 5-10 minutes.  In theory you can cast a ritual in combat this way, but its going to require your buddies to hold off the monster for a few minutes, not merely a few seconds to buy you time.

This is the response I expected however, to be honest, I don't think the "minutes" is necessarily supported by the source material where Harry does cast low complexity thaumaturgy spells in a matter of seconds rather than minutes (i.e. it took a few combat exchanges).

I think the important thing to remember is that this is only for those spells less than the character's Lore; i.e. this is not large rituals.

Hi all,

I've been playing a Dresden Game with two wizards. To help differentiate themselves, one has specialised as an evoker and the other as a thaumaturgist. Now, the thaumaturgist has a lot of decent enchanted items, but has been enquiring about casting other thaumaturgy spells in a combat situation.

I know this has come up before, and that the general consensus is that thaumaturgy in combat shouldn't be allowed (unless it's sponsored), but I don't want to just say no, particulaly given that "quick and dirty" thaumaturgy does appear to happen in the books. Given that, we've been discussing how we might allow this, without making thaumaturgy too good relative to evocation and sponsored magic.

We've come up with the following:

Thaumaturgy is generally described in the rulebooks as taking minutes to cast and the general rule of thumb is not to let players cast it in combat situations, that being the province of evocation and/or enchanted items instead.

On one hand I agree with this approach, however on the other hand it is, in my opinion, somewhat inconsistent with the source material.

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For example Harry manages to cast very simple thaumaturgy spell in a few moments behind some cover in order to provide magical protection to Murphy in a combat scene.

It is also inconsistent with the actual game mechanics which state that if the caster’s Lore is greater than the spells complexity then they can cast it with what is on hand. Given that, if the caster can channel sufficient power in one exchange and control it, then they can cast thaumaturgy at the speed of evocation.

This is potentially a problem as it down plays the importance of evocation and sponsored magic (which allows thaumaturgy at the speed of evocation).

On the other hand, typically thaumaturgy spells will be less powerful than those of an evoker as they are limited by three skills (being Lore (= complexity), Conviction (= amount of power able to be channelled) and Discipline (=control)), rather than two for evocation (Conviction and Discipline). On the other hand they can be cast for one less stress (i.e. so long as the power to be channelled doesn’t exceed Conviction + Refinement/Focus bonuses) and, in general, last longer.

Given this, I think it is necessary to slow thaumaturgy in combat down, without removing it entirely. I also think the ritualised nature needs to be played up. Given the above, an in discussion with the primary thaumaturgist in our group we came up with the following time frame for casting thaumaturgy spells in combat:

Requirement for casting thaumaturgy in combat: Complexity of spell must be less than caster’s Lore.
Exchange 1: Form and Empower Circle to contain spell;
Exchange 2: Gather Ingredients for Spell (which must be on hand, see requirement for casting);
Exchange 3: Channels Power;
(Exchange 4+: Channels more Power if necessary).

This process can be sped up by “rushing” the process, e.g.:
Exchange 1: Form and Empower Circle to contain spell;
Exchange 2: Gather Ingredients for Spell as a supplementary action and Channel Power at -1 to Discipline;
(Exchange 3+: Channels more Power if necessary).

Or by having assistance with the creation of the Circle, i.e.:
Exchange 1: The caster empowers a pre-formed circle (e.g. drawn by another character) and gather’s ingredients as a supplementary action;
Exchange 2: Channels Power;
(Exchange 3+: Channels more Power if necessary).

Thus it takes a minimum of two actions and either a Discipline roll at -1 by the caster, or a second character’s action (to draw the circle) to cast the spell. Furthermore, we ruled that if a character chooses to defend themselves, they must start the ritual again, or if they choose not to defend themselves they must make a Discipline roll with a difficulty equal to the shifts of damage inflicted to not lose the spell.

This still means that Sponsored Magic is useful re Thaumaturgy at the Speed of Evocation as it enables you to use Thaumaturgy in a single exchange thereby forgoing the risk of having your spell disrupted or making yourself a target.

Before implementing this formally in our game, however, I would like some comments, particularly whether the timeframes outlined are reasonable, of whether they should be increased.

So I also ran Night Fears twice at our local con over the weekend. Unfortunately the con organisers decided to try three hour instead of four hour slots which ended up affecting how the games played out.

First game had all seven characters and was a little rough, partly because we ended up running out of time. The Question - Answer session went reasonably well, and we developed the relationships between the characters and why they were there. Once in the house, however, the "popular" kids decided to pretty much stay in the main room and drink Dani's dad's scotch  and party after they'd done a quick tour of the house. All the other kids split up to search different parts of the house in more depth and (some of them) pull pranks on one another. The splitting up meant that I ended up spending a lot of time trying to deal with all the separate parties and their attempts to scare each other before they finally ended up all together. Even after the ghosts upped their activity, the PCs took a long time to start trying to resolve the mystery/defeat the ghosts possibly because I tried to treat all the ghosts as separate entities which ended up confusing the issue and how the PCs were meant to try and resolve it.

The second session was much better, four characters (Andy, Mike, Chris and Jamie) went into the house and they pretty much stuck together. I also brought in the ghosts earlier and had given the players the "published" version of the story before they went in. I pretty much concentrated on the wife's ghost as the malevolent force, with the husband's ghosts as a death echo, that allowed Chris to follow him around and uncover the horror of what he'd done while the others were finding the sketchbook (thanks Glendower for making that resource available, it was really good!) and trying to determine how to lay each of the ghosts to rest. In the end, they managed to solve the mystery within the three hour slot.

If I was to run this again, I think I'd limit the number of characters to 5 but let the PCs choose from all seven. Trying to run all seven just used up a lot of time before we got to the "meat" of the story, and I ended up rushing it to fit it into the time allowed. A four hour slot might have made it more manageable and allow me to ratchet the tension up more slowly.

All in all, however, I think it's a really good introductory scenario, I've now got an idea to "age" the characters and have them have a college reunion where something else happens for next years Con...

Imo it should be something new and not considered something like sponsored magic.  Am also thinking it could be REALLY bad if it was overused and those black "veins" made it to the heart or brain.   Maybe treat it something like a hunger track where every law you break you have to make a check on not to be taken over or something.  That would put a time limit on it’s use and make where you wouldn’t want to use it all the time, well besides the fact it seems a bit on the evil side.  It’s completely unknown at this stage so it’s probably best just to make something up that sounds cool and works in your story.

That's cool... I like the idea of a hunger track for the Staff.

Nice writeup. I had thought of a Sponsered Magic sort of deal, but I never really got that sort of vibe for the Black Staff.

I always got the impression from Dresden that it is an inherent corruption of what the White Council "stands for". The White Council specifically created a way around the Laws that they are meant to enforce. Making it a deal with a demonic entity seems to... I don't know, cheapen?... the wrongness of what they've done. Making it a sponsored magic seems to take some of the responsibility off the Council because they're borrowing the power, rather then using their own.

Also, -1 for the Black Staff seems incrediably cheap!

Still, food for thought, thanks.

Actually Sorcerers only need Thaumaturgy and Evocation. The entry on Sorcerers says most have the Sight as well, but it isn't a pre-requisite for being a Sorcerer.

Okay this is really cool, thanks! One thing, however, is that the custom stunt-custom power buttons are greyed out? Is this to come later?