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I was wondering how many words would a player be able to say during a melee round? I know a melee round is roughly 15 seconds. I have a player playing a magic user who would like to speak an incantation during casting a spell. For example the spell Exodus from the bastard anime "Boo Ray, Boo Ray Dead. Obey your blood oath and come forth from the land of Abaddon. Fires of Gehenna become a fiery blast and burn everything around. Exodus". I realize this spell would already have a long casting time since I would assume if this was in Palladium it would be a high level spell. My player would like to this for all of his spells. I know a level 1 spell according to RUE would only take 1 action to cast so I'm curious how long of an incantation he would be able to get off since an entire round is roughly 15 seconds.
Similarly this would also apply if my players were to have a conversation during combat.

Thanks

Hello!

Firstly, talking during combat: I usually allow only a few short words during another action, such as "Sharon - look out!", "Where is the boy?", or "Take that, fiend!". If you want to say anything more elaborate, then you'll have to use your action to talk, but you'll still only get a few seconds of words out. You could time it to see how long it takes to say what you want to say, but in game I try to be a little more generous with speech; if they are giving up their action to talk then I try to let them say something worthwhile - but cutting the player off in mid sentence if I think too much time has passed.

Regarding spells: umm.. you have to speak an incantation when you cast spells anyway - that's how spells work. You can't say anything else at the same time as casting a spell because your speech is what is doing the casting. I'm not sure what you are asking. If you are saying that your player wants to add some spooky sounding speech as a lead up to casting their spell just for effect then I would say, yeah, that sounds fine. As for how long it takes, simply read out the words and time yourself. I reckon that little phrase below would take about ten seconds to say (giving the words the proper gravitas!), but as a GM I would be generous with the amount of words they can say as it is only for effect. The amount of time required to cast a spell depends on the spell and the game line you are playing in, but using Palladium Fantasy as an example: two level 1-8 spells can be cast in one melee round, so in this case I would rule that it would be fine to spend the first half of the melee round (7.5 seconds) making your pretend speech, and the second half actually casting the spell - meaning that your showman wizard could only cast one spell per melee round in this way. In RUE they could probably cast more. It is up to them how many of their actions they choose to use on their preamble - sacrificing effectiveness for effect (and gaining playing in character XP I guess!). If they had six attacks per melee and wanted to cast level one spells (that take a single attack), it might make sense for them to maybe spend two attacks on a slightly shorter speech (five seconds), and their third attack casting the spell. This would leave them with enough actions to do the same thing again. But it is really up to them - and how dedicated they are to this character trait! Obviously, if the wizard was interrupted during their preamble, it would not affect the spell as they were not actually saying a real incantation at that time.

Does that help or have I misinterpreted your question?

Thanks that helps

Thank Soldier for placing, was useful

Glad to help