Grypph/SorcerousApprentice

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Sorcerous Apprentice

Circle: Celestial
Cost: 20m+ (see below)
Duration: One Month (see below)

This spell allows the sorcerer to attune himself to an Essence wielding being for a base cost of 20m plus 2m per individual at the time of casting. Note that the motes per individual are considered committed and decommitting them loses all inherent bonuses.

An attuned Essence wielder is now a battery for the purposes of sorcery the character utilizes. Regardless of distance between sorcerer and subjects(apprentices) the sorcerer in question can use [Sorcerer's Essence * 2] motes per day of the apprentice's, but only for sorcery (no artifact attunement, charms, or other effects that require motes of essence). All motes used this way are considered peripheral for purposes of the sorcerer's anima flare and return to the apprentice at whatever their normal rate may be.

A sorcerer can have no more apprentices than his Essence, and can not apprentice anyone with an Essence score higher than the sorcerer's Essence-3.

As a side effect of being used as a battery for the Exalted, the Apprentices gain a toughness equal to the power of the Exalt using them. An apprentice gains the sorcerer's permanent Essence score to their bashing and lethal soaks, and gains a hardness equal to half the sorcerer's Essence, rounded down.

Celestial Countermagic when aimed at an Apprentice will only decommit the motes used on that one individual. Celestial Countermagic when applied to the Sorcerer will decommit ALL the Apprentices and this spell may not be applied to them again for 24 hours.

Comments

Sorcerous Apprentice is potentially... very very powerful. When combined with Imbue Amalgam it has a potentially exponential effect. Even when not abused, a circle of sorcerers who cast it on each other have just become *much* more powerful. I'm not sure if it is possible to use this spell in a non-abusive way. -Madwand

How about with the same limitations as Imbue, no more than Essence -1 in power, and i forgot to add only Essence x1 in Apprentices. and the thing with Imbue as exponential, yeah i know. but the spell IA limits itself anyways, and the ways to counter it are fully documented under Discussions. -grypph

The new restrictions help, but I believe the spell is still too powerful. Each casting of Imbue Amalgam with this spell can potentially raise the sorcerer's essence pool by 225% Soon, your sorcerer will have an effectively unlimited essence pool, with Amalgams with dice pools of 25+ dice for all abilities, and every charm of Essence 3 or less, plus huge soak and an unbeatable grafted weapon. Another way to do this: take the Followers background. Give each of your followers the "awakened Essence" merit or mutation. Use this spell on them. Presto! Essence pool in the thousands, and your Followers are that much tougher. No, that's too much for even a Solar level spell. This spell *might* be OK if only one apprentice was ever allowed at a time *and* the extra essence could not be used for spellcasting *and* there was some other limitations... for example the apprentice has the option of reflexively cancelling the spell, and the spell should probably have a duration of no more than 1 dayGrypph/SorcerousApprentice/Essence of the spellcaster. Stuff like that.-Madwand

Check it out now, changed a bit. Your restrictions seemed a little over-harsh, after all this is the game breaking device known as sorcery, but it has been toned down some. -grypph

Interestingly, I think your changes tone the spell down even more than what I was suggesting! At Essence 4, the sorcerer is (at most) giving up 8 motes of commited all-purpose essence in order to gain 32 motes of spellcasting-only essence that regenerates 4 times as fast as normal. That's quite useful, but not broken. It also takes quite a bit of effort to get this spell working properly: you need many apprentices to keep the spell going full-time. I think you could even lighten up on some of the restrictions and be OK. In particular, I think the restriction that Imbued Amalgams can't be made apprentices is probably unneccesary. The spell can be used to make Amalgams more powerful than normal, expanding the sorcerer's available mote pool, there isn't any reasonable way of preventing that without preventing the extra motes from being used on sorcery. That's OK though. The problem only comes in when the previous version of the spell and Imbue Amalgam feed off each other in a loop of ever-increasing available motes and more powerful Amalgams. This isn't happening in the current version. -Madwand

well, i won't say that the last effect was unintended, but yeah. took out the amalgam incompatability and am enjoying your seal of approval. -grypph