Thus Spake Zarataylor/IncantationOfEffectiveRestoration
izzylobo - 02/25/2004 22:17:07
> Crowned_Sun > BTW, Scott, if you don't mind me asking
Polite questions are always appreciated...
> Crowned_Sun > why does Lookshy have such a hard time with repairing stuff like first age weapons, dragon-armor, etc if they have Incantation of Effective Restoration?
Okay.
There are a couple of answers to this.
Thematically, because Exalted is a story about folks scrabbling about in the ruins of a Greater Age, and Lookshy sorta is the last reflections of that age - but they are only reflections. Part of that means that the Cool Stuff of Yore has to be really rare, or really hard to keep operational - or both.
Systemwise, Incantation is a pain in the ass. It doesn't have any real hard limits on it, other than "caster could lift it" - and with Strength-enhancing Charms and Artifacts, that isn't much of a limitation. And it doesn't have a failure mode - either the spell works, or it doesn't, and if it does, everything all better.
> Crowned_Sun > It's listed in your little list of spells, and it lets the sorcerer more or less fix anything he can physically pick up for 15 motes.
Oh, I know the spell.
The only reason it is *on* that list is because, well, it would be utterly illogical for it not to be there. If the spell were common, it would have been in one of the tomes in the Deheleshen libraries, most likely (they have all the common stuff, pretty much). If it *weren't*, the Sorcerer-Engineers would be sending Ranger teams all over Creation to scour up a copy, once they heard about it.
> Crowned_Sun> > While that's obviously not going to work on warstriders and skyships, a lot of the things with repair values seemingly would work with it. So why doesn't lookshy just have a couple sorcerer-engineers come by every few years and spend 15 motes??
Well, there are basically two answers to this question. I didn't include one of them in the Lookshy chapter because it's not my job to nerf other people's work unless specifically ordered to.
The first is, that's exactly what they (and the Realm Sorcerer-Engineers as well) do. This drastically changes the thematic rules of the game. The technomagically delicious aspects of the First Age come back to center stage, at least on the personal level - soldiers carry Firelances and wear Ashigaru armor (at least the Realm and Lookshy ones do), Terrestrials mostly use Warstriders and Dragon Armor, and there are plenty of No Moon Lunars wearing protean moonsilver battle armor as well. Exalted becomes a lot more Arion, Lord of Atlantis, crossed with Escaflowne and He-Man (the cool bits, not the sucky stuff). This could be a great game to play in, but it's ranging a bit from the basic thematic premises.
The second is to restrict the Incantation in some fashion. It might be that stuff with a Repair rating, being an assemblage of different magical widgets and enchantments working together, rather than a seamless whole, can't be affected by the spell - they were never truly together, so they can't be successfully re-integrated. Possibly the spell only affects one broken bit at a time - requiring multiple applications of the spell to really repair the device. Possibly it can only repair stuff that is actually broken - so once the armor is fully run down to uselessness, it could be fixed by the spell, but not until then - and nobody wants to wait that long. (I kinda like this last one).
In any case, I would suggest that this ONLY apply to devices with a Repair rating - imperishable artifacts built at the height of the First Age - even Dragon Armor or Elemental Lenses - are fully repaired with a single application, because of their imperishable nature - they *want* to be a single whole, in a way that a broke-down, old-n-busted suit of Shogunate design doesn't.
Scott Taylor
izzylobo - 02/26/2004 06:15:19
> vampire_hunter_d > I don't see any need to restrict tht spell. Dragon armor is probably the largest thing they can fix with it (I say the strenght limitation does not include strength due to charms or other strengthe enhancng stuff). And there are probably too few Sorcerers to come around every time something needs slight fixes to cast teh spell. It's probably easier and more efficient just to perform teh maintenance, and only bring in the sorcerer to use that spell when the item has been wrecked ot a point where repair would be difficult. Or to restore recently uncovered examples of such items.
Although using the Incantation (and Crack-repairing Method - although this is not quite as much of a problem, since it specifically says it can't repair things whose magics have faded - just rule that most Repair items will lose their magics relatively quickly once broken beyond operation) to bypass maintenance, etc. is a problem, the more pressing problem is this -
- none of those devices is going to ever break down completely, because as long as you can get a sorcerer's hands on it, it gets better.
In the First Age, a lot of this stuff was pretty common - not omnipresent, but a lot more common than it is now. Most such devices were destroyed in the Contagion - but even afterwards, both the Realm and Lookshy had pretty serious stores of Shogunate gear (much larger than they did today), and everyone else had reasonable sized supplies (Chiaroscuro held off barbarian hordes using F-A weapons for several centuries).
Those supplies have faded, been broken, eventually succumbed to poor maintenance, been lost, or otherwise been reduced to the state you see the various actors of Creation reduced to. That's a pretty fundamental part of the setting - working in the ruins of the former glory and majesty of the First Age, and the mighty power of the Shogunate.
If all that stands between Oblivion and full repair for a piece of Shogunate hardware is a sorcerer-engineer with a spell and fifteen Motes, then the rate of loss is going to be *seriously* slowed down - you'll lose suits that are disintigrated, suits that are so badly mangled even the Incantation can't fix them, etc. Which leads to there being more of them available in all areas - small kingdoms are more likely to have some reagent-based Implosion Bows around, more Terrestrials will be armed with Elemental Lenses and other armor, and there will be more Ashigaru and Gunzosha suits about.
Now, there are ways around this - you can restrict the Incantation, and rule that Crack-Mending Method is only effective if you get to the device quickly enough, before the magics have fled, you can decide that none of these devices were ever all that common, or you can handwave and say that most of these weapons were corrupted by the Wyld during the Contagion, and rendered useless, and that the weapons that remain are all there have been since then, perpetually kept functional through the work of the Sorcerer-Engineers, and a horribly abused set of copies of the Incantation.
Scott Taylor
Comments
I'll toss up a couple possible fixes for the Incantation:
1) Make it Celestial circle.
2) Require that the device be physically repaired first; the Incancation then only restores the magic.
3) Make the spell's effect only shortcut the time required to apply the caster's skill to repair the item. That way, fixing artifacts requires that you actually understand what you're doing.
- Toram
I always looked at it like this - a car without fuel isn't broken, it's just empty. Same with warstriders, Dragon Armour, et al. The Incantation of Effective Restoration will fix things that are broken, but it won't replace used-up reagents, worn-out enchantments, etc... It makes repair and maintenance easier, but it doesn't replace them. - Moxiane
The spell's description explicitly states that it restores enchantments. --MF
- Umm... it says it'll repair broken magical items, making them as new. *shrug* My argument is that "empty" != "broken". (Could quote text, but can't be arsed). - Moxiane
- I'm inclined just to remove its ability to affect any item containing a signifigant ammount of any of the 5MM. - Malikai
Maybe the Incantation wasn't discovered until fairly recently, and only works on items that have been functional at some point within the last x years. Why didn't the First Agers have it if they were so cool? Maybe they didn't need it, because all their items were self-repairing or something. There were only one or two copies of the Incantation, sitting aroundin the library of some ornery old sorceror, who occupied himself with sitting in his rocking chair and grumbled about how no one remembered the old magic. That library got buried or forgotton about or whatever until some Scavenger found it and sold it to the highest bidder.
The net effect would be that the number of first age artifacts is pretty tiny, but isn't going to shrink much from now on. - MeiRen
Assume that Incantation of Effective Restoration is PART OF the Rapair rating, and that people who lack it will have to compensate for it in some other fashion. Terrestrial spells should not CREATE amounts of a Magical Material (IMO), and so the IoER cannot really fix problems where an item's MM components were physically abraded or something. This ties into the "item must be physically repaired" idea.
This is probably more common than it sounds. "Every time we cross a Dragon Line, my Strider loses a gram of jade from its left actuator, and there's a wash of Essence that hoses the couplings if there's a battle directly to the south of the unit." You can get all kinds of crazy problems that high-tech, high-magic gear encounters, and a lot of it can be simple attrition against components that IoER's effect cannot substitute for. -- BillGarrett
- Thats some pretty good Essencebabble (as opposed to technobabble) you got there. Mind if I borrow it? --BrilliantRain
- Sure, go right ahead. ^_^;; -- BillGarrett
