Create Magic Scroll dilemmas

[Tor]

As far as I can tell, this can be used to store any spell, as long as it isn't a ritual.

So: since Create Magic Scroll itself can be cast as a spell (presumably, there's some ritualistic elements in having to write it out, but it doesn't SAY ritual)... does that mean someone with this can make a "Scroll of Create Magic Scroll"?

This obviously isn't THAT useful in terms of storing your own magic (but it could help lower the max PPE you have to expend at once if storing high PPE spells, since you would only have to pay the cost of the spell you're casting/storing into the scroll at once, and not the added cost of the Create Scroll, since you already have it stored in a scroll).

The more useful thing though, is this should allow spellcasters who do not know how to create scrolls to create them, since by reading your scroll, they would be temporarily imbued with the knowledge (as you were) to create one.

I could see some alchemists/wizards giving these out and in turn, buying the charged scrolls from people who know spells they don't know. For people with strong abilities at deciphering scrolls, this could be a safer way of learning spells if the person you want to learn it from might not be someone you want to spend weeks in the same house with.

Another issue: what happens if you put a spell with variables in it on a scroll? For example, there's the spell in FoM (Life Source? something like that, emulates the Spirit West Shaman ability) which allows a caster to expend HP or SDC to get PPE. If that was on a scroll, would the person reading it get to decide how much they wanted? Or would that be decided by the person who created the scroll? How would a non-spellcaster laymen know how to make that decision about the spell when they lack magic experience?

Speaking of that FoM spell: any idea how long the penalties last? It doesn't say. Barring that knowledge, I figure since it mentions the SW shaman ability to just use the durations listed there?

I'm also wondering how it works. The PPE generated from that: does it have to be used immediately in a spell, or can it just be used to restore one's PPE if one had depleted it, or could the PPE be given to another spellcaster?

There are some differences between the SW OCC ability and the FoM spell. Namely: shamans need to be out of PPE to use it, FoM spell doesn't have that limitation noted. Both have 1:1 ratios for HP/PPE but FoM has a 2:1 ratio for SDC:PPE whereas Shamans can convert SDC at a 1:1 ratio. Shamans also don't have a PPE cost to use the ability (obviously since it's limited to when they've run out) but the FoM spell does.

One thing I wondered about shamans though is, do they really have to be at 0 to use it? Like what if they had 1 PPE left and wanted to cast a 2PPE spell? Couldn't they use it then?

Getting back to scrolls, it mentions that spell strength bonuses don't apply, but the high base ritual strength (which never gets bonuses and is overshadowed later with high level mages) does. Presumably this means that if you spend a longer time creating a scroll (ritual-style) that you get ritual-style strength but in the time it takes to cast a spell normally (via scroll-reading). I think ritual-only magic is still not possible to make a scroll out of though.

My question in regards to this spell strength issue: if I make a 'Scroll of Create Scroll' or a 'Scroll of Create Talisman' and use a ritual to make either scroll: would the talisman/scroll that whoever read my scroll made, would it have my ritual spell strength, or would it have normal spell strength?

I'm not really clear on that, because you're obviously not storing ritual versions of either spell into the scroll (rituals can't be stored), but you are using a ritual to make the scroll, which normally imbues non-rituals spells with ritual-level strength.

Also something interesting about spells vs rituals. I remember there being a note in one of the main books for a game saying something like "just because you know the spell version of a magic doesn't mean you know the ritual version, or vice versa".

I don't think that note is present in every main book though. Some seem to imply that if you chose something, it was the player's option whether or not to cast it as a spell or a ritual (except for ones that say ritual in parenthesis, which would be ritual-only).

If you indeed had to learn 2 distinct versions of a spell to cast as both spell and ritual, that opens up a lot more choices for spells, and a lot more things players can buy. It also creates a huge benefit to the Sorcer Proficiency in TTGD of 'can cast spells as rituals' since that basically gives them a free ritual (and a boosted one at that) for every spell the player has.

This also indicates a more specific interpretation of NPCs or OCCs. For example if a god knows "all spells 1-15" then you could interpret that as: they only know all the spells, they don't know all the rituals.

But then it begs the question: if an OCC says 'select a spell' then they couldn't learn a ritual that way, so could the only way to learn a ritual be to purchase it?

The terminology in magic is kinda iffy and confusing regarding this. In one area, spell magic and ritual magic will be described as distinct things. But in other areas, rituals will be included under the 'spell' label. It's as if 'spell' and 'spell magic' mean different things.