Thaumaturgy, or How to Break the Rules: Magic in

DFRPG, Part Three

Posted by Rick Neal in Dresden Files RPG, What's he playing?, tags: Dresden Files RPG, magic

This may be my longest post – it’s closing in on 7000 words, which is a

respectable length for a short story. Thaumaturgy is a big subject to cover,
because it’s a big system in the game. Just wanted to warn you before you start
reading.

Quick recap. First, I talked about general magic theory in DFRPG. Then, I went
into detail on evocation. Now, I’m tackling thaumaturgy.

What is thaumaturgy?

This is kind of a tough question to answer. The basic answer is, “You know what
evocation is? Well, thaumaturgy is everything else.”

Thaumaturgy is the careful crafting of a complex, sophisticated spell construct

that can reach beyond the immediate presence of the spellcaster to have an
effect. It is the scientific and artful application of mystic knowledge and training to
produce an arcane solution to a problem. It is a ritual designed to produce
change in the world.

On the one hand, because of the careful preparation and ability to work slowly
gathering power, thaumaturgy can produce effects of such staggering power that
they dwarf the most potent evocations. On the other hand, because of the fine
control that the caster can exert over the energies gathered, thaumaturgy can
create effects of immense subtlety. You are limited only by your imagination and
creativity when it comes to deciding what you can and can’t do with thaumaturgy
– once you come up with the idea and structure of the spell, your ability to cast it
is governed primarily by the cool stuff you can think of to make it work.

With care and precision, thaumaturgy can be the safest kind of magic to cast,
sacrificing speed for safety. However, when it goes wrong, it goes wrong big
time.

What can you do with it?

The key with thaumaturgy is that you’re using magic to, in essence, break a rule
that the rest of the world has to follow. Little things like conservation of mass, the
Laws of Thermodynamics, basic physics, stuff like that. Tracking someone down
when you have no leads. Curing a disease without using medicine. Traveling 200
miles on foot in 20 minutes.

The biggest stumbling block in using thaumaturgy in the game is paralysis

brought on by too much choice, at least in the beginning. You can do anything,
really anything, that you can conceive of*. The rules break things down into a
few broad categories, but really you can work out a ritual for any magical effect
you can conceive of or have read in a book or seen in a movie.

The broad categories are meant primarily to provide some guidelines for
determining complexity. As you read through the descriptions, you’re going to
see a lot of overlap, and you’ll be able to think of how to accomplish the
examples using one of the other categories. This, I contend, is a good thing: it
provides room and system support for Here are the categories:

Solve improbable or impossible problems.

This is almost a meta-category that all the other categories could be said to be
part of. More specifically, in the way it’s defined in the book, it’s doing something
that could be done with a skill, given enough time and skill and favourable
conditions. Thaumaturgy doesn’t care about that* – it lets you get what you want
in situations when the skill wouldn’t work.

So, need to climb a modern skyscraper? Athletics lets you climb stuff, but the
difficulty of climbing the sheer glass sides, plus the extreme height, makes the
success of an Athletics check somewhat problematic. Thaumaturgy to the
rescue! Whip up a little spell to let you walk up the side of the building, or even
just fly you to the top.

Trying to find a tiny key hidden in a scrap metal dump? Alertness lets you spot
things, but one little key among the piles of metal has a pretty high difficulty, and
searching will take a long time. Again, thaumaturgy to the rescue! A little spell
can pick the one key you need* from the vast, steely junkpile.

The key question here is, “How would I do this without magic?” If the answer is a
skill, then this is the category you’re looking at.
Create lasting changes in people and things.

Turning lead into gold, or people into frogs, or live people into dead people. The
key thing with this concept is that you’re essentially engaging in a contest with
the target, and you use your magic to (hopefully) overwhelm their defenses and
make change happen. The change can be as simple as adding or removing an
Aspect from the target, or as complex as ripping the soul from someone and
binding it to yours service.

These sorts of changes, while lasting, are not necessarily long lasting, which is
why Wizards aren’t all rich from all that aluminum they’ve transformed into gold.
Generally, the longer you want something to last, the more difficult it is to do, and
the more power it’s going to require, unless the change is something that cannot
be reversed – like killing someone.

So, if you want to turn yourself into a gerbil, this is how you do it. If you want to
put someone into a dreamless sleep, this is how you do it. If you want to
reinforce the door of your lab, this is how you do it. If you want to cause
someone’s heart to burst out of their chest, this is how you do it. If you want to
cause a thunderstorm, this is how you do it. If you want to reinflate a collapsed
lung, this is how you do it.

Now, it’s worth noting that these types of changes often run afoul of the Laws of
Magic, so practitioners looking to try something need to think carefully about how
they’re going to do it. But these sorts of things also deal with personal
shapeshifting and healing, so there are safe applications.

Provide inaccessible knowledge.

Here, we’re talking about things like scrying, precognition, mind reading, and
things like that. You can spy on remote people and places, or you can make
assessments on targets. Basically anything that lets you know something you
otherwise couldn’t. This is a pretty broad range of things, and has a great deal of
overlap with the other categories, depending on how you choose to go about it.

Let’s say you’re going up against a nasty monster, and you need to know what its
weaknesses are. You’ve got a number of possibilities to find that out, as long as
you’ve got some sort of link:
  Use scrying to spy on the creature and see how it behaves.
 Summon up a spirit of intellect and interrogate it.
 Mystically analyze some of its hair or its true name to see what the arcane
correspondences tell you.
 Call up the ghost of its last victim to help you by whispering its secrets in
your ear.
 Use automatic writing to channel the lore of the Akashic Library into your
pen and onto your page.
 Ritually tune your eyes and mind so that when you next encounter the
creature, you will just be able to tell.

Each of these options touches on at least one of the other categories, but they’re
grouped here because they all do the same kind of thing. They help you to know
something.

You can also use magic to make declarations. Assessments and declarations
are, after all, two different ways of knowing something about something. With
assessments, the GM tells you what he or she has decided the target is like. With
declarations, you tell the GM what you’ve decided the target is like. As with
mundane declarations, though, if you get greedy, you’re gonna get slapped
down*.

Allow interaction with the supernatural.

Summoning demons, trapping faeries, communing with nature spirits, and

channeling ghosts all fall into this category. So do exorcisms and mystical
assaults against these creatures*. There are lots of beings that mortals just can’t
see or interact with, and this category is all about breaking that restriction.

The most basic kinds of interaction we’re talking about here are things like
summoning something, binding it to your service, and then dismissing it. So, if
you wanted to put a genie into a bottle, this is what we’re talking about. Or if you
want to call up an assassin demon and send it after your enemies. Or tempt
some of the wee folk into a magic circle using pizza as bait, and then bargain
with them for service.

Beyond that, though, there are other applications. The right kind of spell with the
right kind of links can damage a demon itself, rather than the ectoplasmic body
it’s built for itself to walk around in. It can allow you to touch a ghost physically or
hear the complaints and secrets of the spirit of a house. You can use it to ghost-
proof a room, or make all the invisible spirits in an area visible. And, in extremis,
you can use it to drive the possessing demon out of the little girl before she eats
her daddy.

As you can see, there’s a lot of overlap (as usual) with the other categories.

Shape magical energies into physical forms.

Now we get into things like brewing potions*, crafting wards, and conjuring
swords*. It’s creating something from magic that has a lasting presence in the
world and an impact on physicality. Yeah, it’s kinda fuzzy, but so are all the other
categories. Really, what we’re looking at here is producing something from
nothing, as far as game system is concerned. So, setting up an invisible wall of
force that will seal a doorway for the night falls into this category, as does forming
a suit of ectoplasmic armour to wear into battle. So, too, does making a magical
booby trap, or creating a temporary body for a spirit to inhabit, or conjuring a
feast out of the air.

This is potent stuff, and it has the same big catch that creating lasting change
does: duration. Making something permanent from nothing is impossible; the
magic maintaining the thing will naturally* decay as time passes, and dawn and
dusk are important thresholds in the day that sap the strength of ongoing magical
effects. Eventually, unless the caster spends time, effort, and energy to refresh
the magic frequently, the spell will wear off and the conjured thing will go away.
So, the armour vanishes, the sated guest becomes suddenly hungry again, the
pile of gold melts away, and so on.

But if you really need a rope for a few minutes, or a plank across a chasm for
thirty seconds, or an impressive mansion for the evening, this can do it for you.

How does it work?

The basic structure for thaumaturgy is the same as for evocation, but the
emphasis on what’s going on – the interesting bits where the story gets played
out – are different. With evocation, it’s all about the risk of walking that fine line
between power and control, when your ass is on the line and you need to think
hard about what you’re willing to risk to achieve your goals. With thaumaturgy,
it’s all about the set-up and the story of the spell.
So, while the basic metaprocess of spellcasting is the same – form the spell
construct, empower the spell construct, release the spell construct – the system
for thaumaturgy focuses very heavily on the preparation for the spell.

Spell Construct Phase

The first step in using a thaumaturgic ritual is the same as in using an evocation:
figure out what you want to do and how you want to do it. While the choices for
evocation are somewhat limited, the wide variety of things that you can apply
thaumaturgy to can be overwhelming. Don’t let it paralyze you; you don’t need to
solve every problem with magic. When a good idea comes to you, go for it. When
one doesn’t, let it go. If you really need to use magic and you don’t have an idea
about how, talk to the other players and the GM. They may have suggestions.

Start with practicalities: what’s the goal? What are the obstacles? What would get
you past the obstacles to the goal? Let those simple ideas guide your magic. If
the goal is to get into the building and the obstacles are security guards and a
security system, what gets you past them and into the building? Maybe
invisibility. Maybe intangibility. Maybe a disguise. Maybe a quick shortcut through
the Nevernever. Maybe a distraction like a demon materializing to slaughter the
hapless mortals*.

The option you choose is another great chance to showcase who your character
is and what sort of person he or she is. Your strengths are, of course, going to
play a role in the choice – if you’re good at veils, invisibility is a solid choice, after
all – but that’s just another way of revealing things about your character. The kind
of person who is good at veils is different from the kind that’s good at demon
summonings, for example.

Once you’ve got the effect and the method chosen, you have to figure out how
tough the spell is to cast.

Determining Complexity

This is the most complex part of thaumaturgy, mechanically speaking. It’s the
calculation of how difficult the spell is to cast and how much power it will require,
which are the same number but mean different things. The complexity of the
spell determines the power requirements, so let’s just talk about figuring out the
complexity.
This is where you start looking back at the categories of thaumaturgic effect
described above to determine what the mechanical effect of what you’re
attempting with the ritual is going to be. Here’s how you work out the complexity:

 If the spell is going to reproduce something that could be accomplished

with skill use, the complexity is equal to the roll result that would be
required with that skill. So, if you could climb up the side of a building with
an Legendary (+8) Athletics roll, the complexity of a spell to get you
quickly to the top of the building is 8.
 If the spell is going to essentially perform a maneuver to add or remove an
Aspect from a target, the complexity is equal to the defending skill of the
target, with a minimum of 3. So, if you’re trying to open a Great (+4) lock
with magic, then the complexity is 4. However, if the target is another
character (or anything capable of an active defense), it gets a defense roll,
so to make sure you land the maneuver, you have to increase the
complexity to match the highest possible defense result. That means that,
if you’re using a glue spell to make someone Stuck to the Floor, and they
have Great (+4) Athletics, the complexity becomes 8 (4 for the Athletics,
plus 4 for the maximum possible roll).
 If you want to stick someone with a lingering Aspect – essentially, a
consequence – the complexity has to exceed the defense skill plus the
maximum roll, plus a number of extra shifts equal to the appropriate
Stress Track, plus a number of extra shifts equal to the kind of
consequence you want to inflict. So, if you wanted to cast an amnesia
spell on someone with Good (+3) Conviction, the complexity becomes 17
(3 for the Conviction, plus 4 for the maximum roll, plus 4 more for the
Stress Track, plus 6 for a severe consequence). Killing someone means
you have to match the defense skill, plus the maximum roll, plus the
Stress Track, plus every consequence, plus one to take the target out –
complexity 29 for someone with Average (+1) Endurance.
 If you’re creating something, the complexity is going to be equal to the
quality of the item, plus any modifiers. So, throwing up a Superb (+5) ward
for an hour* is complexity 5, or 7 if it covers an entire zone, or 10 if you
want it to cover an entire zone for a full day.
 If you’re doing any of the above but adding or removing some aspect of
the effect, the complexity goes up or down, depending on the case you
can make to the GM.
Now, if you’re trying to do something cool, you’re quickly going to see the
complexity of the spell start to climb into double-digits. Don’t sweat it. You don’t
need to roll to meet the complexity at any point; with enough preparation, any
spellcaster can cast a spell of any complexity*.

Preparation Phase

Now that you have the complexity of the spell determined (and thereby the power
requirement of the spell), you have to prepare the spell. In game-world terms,
this is when you build the external, independent spell construct – the ritual, with
all its paraphernalia and weird little requirements.

There is one thing you need to have to cast a thaumaturgic ritual, and that’s a
symbolic link to your target. If you’re casting the power on yourself, then hey,
easy. Otherwise, you need some sort of arcanely significant representation of the
target – blood, hair, a picture, a map of the location, the true name, whatever.
You must have a minimum of one symbolic link, or the spell cannot find the
target. You can use more links if you want, and each of these is effectively a
declaration, giving you an Aspect that you can tag for making up the Lore deficit,
as described below.

The amount of preparation you need is based on the complexity in comparison to

your Lore. If the complexity of the spell is equal to or lower than your Lore skill,
you know all the tricks you need to know in order to pull the ritual off with the stuff
you have in your pockets – you can move directly to the next phase. Of course,
complexity scores for thaumaturgic rituals can quickly range up into double-digits,
so that’s not always going to be an option.

When you have a deficit between your Lore skill and the complexity of the spell,
you need to make it up before you can cast the spell. To do that, you need to go
through the kinds of things that Harry goes through in the books in order to gain
bonuses to your Lore. When Harry needs to cast a big spell, he spends time,
talks to people who might be able to help, looks things up in books, ritually
purifies himself, and buys strange and expensive ingredients, and that’s what you
need to do, as well. Here’s how it works with the game mechanics:

 Spend Fate Points. You can spend as many Fate Points as you like to
invoke your Aspects to give you a +2 to your Lore. If you haven’t got any
applicable Aspects*, you can spend a Fate Point to get a flat +1, as usual.
 Take extra time. Having your character sit out a scene gives you a +1 to
your Lore, as he or she is getting ready to cast the spell. There’s an
interesting discussion about this on p262 of Your Story about the
ramifications of this to player groups that you need to read before really
considering this option.
 Take consequences. Taking consequences gives you +1 to your Lore for
every box of Stress the consequence would offset: +2 for a minor, +4 for a
moderate, +6 for a severe, +8 for an extreme. This is some sort of self-
sacrifice that you’re working into the casting of the spell. For physical
consequences, the images are fairly obvious – blood sacrifice, flagellation,
scarification, starvation, etc. Mental consequences can show how you
short out your mind by trying to hold too much of the spell in your head, or
maybe just indicate the extra effort you’re putting into the casting or the
lack of sleep as you’ve been preparing. Social consequences get a little
trickier, but I think that, if you’ve been putting together a spell that requires
some unwholesome ingredients or acts, Arrested for Graverobbing could
work, or maybe a Wild-Eyed Crazy Demeanor after spending all that time
looking into forbidden books. The rules also suggest Oaths to other beings
as a good way to boost your Lore – something like I Owe a Favour to
Mab*.
 Inflict consequences. You can get the same boost to your Lore skill by
inflicting consequences on another being, whether they are willing or not.
Note that this is a pretty dark route to go, even if the sacrifice is willing,
and will probably have repercussions, but consider that killing another
sentient being nets you +20 to your Lore skill for purposes of casting the
spell – it can be a real temptation for the right kind of Wizard*.
 Make declarations. This is really the meat of the thaumaturgy system – it
lets you cast more powerful, cooler spells by coming up with cool stuff for
the preparations. What you’re doing with this option is looking at your
skills, and coming up with some interesting way that they can contribute to
the spell. Then you roll on that skill, making a declaration to place a
temporary Aspect on the spell that you can tag for a free Lore bonus. So,
maybe you want to make a Lore skill roll to Research Sumerian Rituals,
and then make a Resources skill roll to buy a Cuneiform Tablet to use in
the ritual, and a Contacts skill roll to borrow some Shedu Blood from a
friend, and top it all off with a Discipline roll to undergo a Purifying
Meditation. Bang. You’ve just added +8 to your Lore skill for this ritual, as
well as adding a bunch of cool details to it.
Once you’ve made up the deficit between your Lore skill and the complexity of
the spell, you’re ready to move on to the next phase.

Drawing and Controlling Power Phase

Now that you’ve got the spell construct… er, constructed, it’s time to fill it with
power. You need to draw in a number of shifts of power equal to the complexity
of the spell, but you don’t need to draw it in all at once. Generally, you want to
call in power equal to or less than your Conviction each turn of casting – calling
in more does that pesky old Mental Stress, one point for every shift of power
above your Conviction skill. Unlike evocation, though, you don’t take any Mental
Stress if you keep the amount of power you channel each turn equal to or less
than your Conviction skill.

The mechanic here is pretty simple: decide how many shifts of power you’re
going to draw in a given turn, roll your Discipline score to try and control those
shifts and, if successful, add them to the running tally of how much power is
invested in the spell. When you’ve called and successfully controlled a number of
shifts of power equal to the complexity rating of the spell, it goes off. Normally,
there’s no targeting roll needed – you made sure it would hit the target when you
set the complexity.

Of course, sometimes you don’t make that Discipline roll, and that can be bad.

When you fail a Discipline roll trying to control the shifts of power you’ve
summoned on a given turn, all the power you’ve currently got gathered for the
spell becomes uncontrolled. That can mean massive amounts of loose energy
that you’ve got to figure out what to do with. If you let any of it go as fallout, the
entire spell fails, period. So, in addition to maybe having the building collapse on
you and your friends catching fire, the super-special escape spell didn’t get you
out of there. The alternative is backlash, but considering you may be dealing with
double-digit shifts of power, this is a good way to redecorate the walls with your
brains. The upshot? BE CAREFUL.

Now, it’s not always that grim. If there’s no time pressure, there’s no need to roll.
The GM just tells you how long it takes to cast the spell, and the spell goes off.
This is probably going to be a longer time than if you had rolled, but no need to
get impatient, right? Better slow and living than quick and dead.
The Story of the Spell

Thaumaturgic rituals can either be the most interesting, engaging part of the
game, or it can be a quick bit of mechanical business that gets the characters
from one bit of the story to the next. Which it’s going to be is going to depend on
the needs of the game at the moment. If the spell itself isn’t really important, you
can gloss over it pretty quickly and move on. Otherwise, you want to devote a
little attention to it. That means telling the story of the spell.

Lenny Balsera posted this on the DFRPG site a couple of months ago, and it tells
how he came to the idea of the story of the spells, and the impact it has on play. I
can’t improve on what he says there, so just go read it.

The core of the idea is that what’s important in a thaumaturgic ritual is not the
mechanical hoops you have to jump through or the dice you roll or even the way
you work out the effect. What’s important for thaumaturgy is the impact casting
the spell has on the story in the game. And not just whether the spell works or
not; the entire process of attempting to cast the spell is important to the story –
the things that the caster is willing and able to do to prepare, the way the effect is
accomplished, the choices of how to build the ritual, the way he or she goes
about casting it – all of it.

That’s where you should put your attention when someone starts talking
thaumaturgy.

So, when you look at performing a thaumaturgic ritual, you need to think about a
way to make the preparation you do fit into the story and say the things you want
it to say. Look at the skills you’re using in the preparation phase, and string them
together in a way that makes sense and adds cool to your character. If your
Wizard bases his or her magic on the Enochian rituals of John Dee, then the
preparations are going to be different from a Wizard following the ecstatic
traditions of the Sufis, or a Wiccan practitioner – use this opportunity to set him or
her apart and make the spell more interesting.

You want a great example of a story of preparation for a thaumaturgic ritual? Go

see Iron Man 2. Watch Tony Stark put things into place to create the new
element for his chest reactor*. He alienates his friends by keeping his secrets
(takes a social consequence – Drove Friends Away), gets the box of his father’s
stuff from SHIELD (Contacts, Messages From Dad), tries to get Pepper’s help
(Rapport, Pepper’s Got My Back – failed!), finds the model of the expo
(Alertness, The Secret of the Expo), guts his house to access the power and
room he needs (Might, Remodeled To Death), buys or salvages the parts he
needs from his expensive cars and other toys (Resources, Got Everything I
Need), figures out the necessary element (Scholarship, New Element Template),
puts together a particle accelerator (Scholarship, Kit-Bashed Particle
Accelerator), and finally flips the power switch and lets it go.

That’s the kind of thing you’re striving for with a good thaumaturgic ritual
preparation.

The Art of the Montage

Here’s the downside. It takes time, and focuses things strongly on the spellcaster
for as long as it takes for the preparation and casting to play out. Sure, you can
cut back and forth from the spellcaster to other characters, but it still effectively
focuses the spotlight on one character for a significant amount of time. Especially
because, if the characters have decided to eat a huge amount of time doing a
ritual like this, everyone else is probably waiting for the outcome.

So as not to unbalance the spotlight time too much, it’s best to not run through
every little bit of the preparation every time the spellcaster decides to trot
thaumaturgy out. Take a tip from 80s action movies*, and use a montage. Just
describe something you’re doing for preparation in a simple (but colourful)
sentence, make your roll, and move on to the next item. Imagine a power ballad
playing over the short cuts of your character going from task to task.

Of course, there are some situations where you want to focus the game on the
preparation and casting of a ritual spell. In those cases, go for it. Roleplay all the
preparation scenes, delve into the difficulties encountered along the way, and
revel in it. Make it a set of scenes that everyone in the game is going to
remember and talk about.

Conversely, there will be some situations where you don’t even want to spend
the time it takes to do the montage approach. Maybe it’s a simple spell that the
caster has done many times before, with no really dramatic outcome, and no
time pressure. How do you handle the preparation then? Well, just say it all
works and the spell goes off. Forget even rolling. Just take it as read that the
spell works as described, and move on with the game.
The key here is to give the spell as much story as is good for the overall story,
and no more. Deal only with the things that are going to matter, and drive on. But
when it’s interesting and makes a good addition to the story, throw yourself into
it.

Using Thaumaturgy Effectively

Those are the pieces that make up the thaumaturgy system, along with some
comments on how they fit together and how to use them in play. Now for some
thoughts about how to get the most out of thaumaturgy for your character. I want
to be clear, here; I’m coming at this from the viewpoint of the GM – I’ve never
actually been a player in a DFRPG session. These are just the things I’ve picked
up from my reading of the system and running it from the other side of the
screen. But they’re things that I think will hold true for most campaigns, subject to
the whims of the GM.

Prepare as a player.

Because of the wide range of things you can do with thaumaturgy, it can get
overwhelming to use it in play. And if you don’t use it in play, then you’ve wasted
3 Refresh and surrendered a huge amount of flexibility and functionality for your
character. The best way to make sure you’re not paralyzed by choice is to do a
little homework as a player to build in some options for your character. Here are
some tips:

 Work out a selection of rituals that your character might want to use
beforehand. Can’t come up with anything? Look at the story bits you wrote
for your character during character creation – especially the novels – and
pull some ideas from there. Figure everything out at leisure, including
working out all the math you need, what you’re going to do for preparation,
and so on. Write it down and build a spell book. Add to the spell book,
putting in the new spells you work out during play.
 Take a look at your list of skills, and figure out a way each one can help
you prepare for a ritual. Write it down and put it with your spell book. Add
to it as you come up with new ideas, and keep updating it. In addition to
this giving you a range of options for the preparation phase, it lets you look
for ways to express themes in your magic and the way you practice it.
  Work out your bonuses for different types of thaumaturgy, based on your
focus items and refinements, in advance. Keep it up-to-date as your
character advances.
 Look at your specialties in thaumaturgy and make a quick list of some
neat things you think you’d like to do with that ability. Keep expanding the
list, and every now and then convert one of the ideas into a fully-worked
up ritual for your spell book.

These things will accomplish two different goals: first, it will give you a bunch of
pre-built stuff that you can use in play when you’re out of ideas or you don’t want
to spend a whole bunch of time agonizing over what to do; and second, it will
build your confidence and skill in using the system on the fly.

Think outside the box.

You can accomplish pretty much anything with thaumaturgy if you’re creative
enough. So get creative. Look to your specialties for the obvious starting points in
coming up with ideas, but look for ways that you can apply them to effects that
may, at first, appear to be out-of-bounds.

Let’s say you want to curse someone, sticking them with the Real Bad Luck
Aspect. You can do that by messing with the laws of probability if that’s your
specialty, or you can do it by summoning a demon to interfere with the target at
inopportune moments if that’s something you’re better at. You can conjure and
interrogate a ghost for information if you’ve got a specialty in ectomancy, or you
can enter a trance and access the Akashic Record if you’ve got a specialty in
psychic magic.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again*: the measure of a Wizard is not how
powerful they are, but how creative they get with what they’ve got*.

Take your time.

If you have no time pressure when casting, then you’re being foolish or cocky if
you summon enough power in a given turn that you can fail the control roll. If
your Discipline is Good (+3) or lower, of course, then you always have to make
the Discipline roll, but if you’re Discipline is Great (+4) or higher, then you can
summon a number of shifts completely safely each turn.
Do that.

Aside from its broad range of effects, the big advantage to thaumaturgy is that it
hurts less to cast properly than evocation – if you do it right, you take no Mental
Stress. However, it can be far, far worse if you fail, because suddenly you have
to deal with all the power you’ve summoned into the spell up to that time. That
can mean dealing with double-digits of uncontrolled power sloshing around
messing the place up..

Now, if you’ve got to rush, then take the biggest risks earliest, when a failure will
have the least amount of power to ruin your day. As you go on, drop the number
of shifts each round to minimize your risk.

Let’s look at the odds* of things going badly. Assume you need 10 shifts of power
and you’ve got a Discipline of Great (+4).

 If you’ve got the time to go 1 shift per round, then you’ve got no chance of
failing. Yay!
 If you’ve only got 3 rounds to pull the spell off, and you summon power in
blocks of 3 – 3 – 4, then you have an 18.5% chance of sucking up 3 shifts
of power on a failure, an 18.5% chance of sucking up 6 shifts of power on
a failure, and a 38.3% chance of sucking up 10 shifts of power on a
failure.
 If, under the same circumstances, you summon power in blocks of 4 – 3 –
3, then you have a 38.3% chance of taking 4 shifts, an 18.5% chance of
taking 7 shifts, and an 18.5% chance of taking 10 shifts.

Those odds speak for themselves.

Sometimes, magic isn’t the right answer.

Thaumaturgy is wide-ranging, powerful tool kit, but sometimes it’s not the best
solution. Don’t ignore the other facets of your character in favour of relying on
spellcasting. Harry carries a revolver and keeps his contacts happy with him. He
knows when to use divinatory magic and when to ask Karrin Murphy to look
someone up for him. Keep in mind that, though magic is probably central to your
character, it is not the solution to every problem.

Combat Thaumaturgy
One of the main distinctions between thaumaturgy and evocation is that
evocation is combat magic. But thaumaturgy can be combat magic, too, as long
as you can perform it all within the confines of a conflict scene. There is, in fact,
something deeply cool about the idea of a Wizard scrambling to pull together a
ritual amid a nasty firefight, with his or her companions fighting desperately to
provide the needed time.

If you’re looking at doing this, there are a few things you need to keep in mind.
First, the casting time of a thaumaturgic ritual is going to be dependent on how
fast you can summon the necessary power, which means how big a risk you’re
taking trying to control the power. Budget wisely.

Second, if you’re coming up with the ritual in the middle of a conflict scene,
you’ve really got to keep an eye on the complexity. If you need to do any
preparation, it’s going to take time, as you get ready to cast the spell, and some
options may just not be available because of the circumstances. Of course, you
can by-pass this by doing some preparation beforehand that can give you
Aspects suitable for magic that you can attach to whatever ritual you start to put
together. This is subject to GM approval, but it can work pretty much the same
way as the preparation tips I gave for evocation.

And there you have my thoughts on thaumaturgy. Hope it was useful.

What’s Next

So, I’m not sure what people would like to see here next. I’ve got some ideas for
a few different posts:

 Math and Miscellany, where I talk about how to calculate your various
bonuses to power, complexity, and control, and deal with some of the
corner-cases of magic rules, like The Sight, crafting, and hexing.
 The Grimoire, where I walk through building a few evocations and
thaumaturgic rituals.
 Preparation Cheat Sheet, where I look at ways to use each of the skills
to help make up the deficit between Lore and the complexity of a
thaumaturgic ritual.
 Something Else, where you’re tired of me wonking on about the
spellcasting system and would rather read me wonking on about
something else having to do with the game. And just what might that be?
If you’ve got a preference for one or another of the above topics, please feel free
to post it in the comments section.

*If the GM lets you, of course. Back

*Well, it cares about the time thing, sort of. Back

*As long as you’ve got a sympathetic link to it. Back

*And, being a GM myself, I will laugh. Back

*Pretty much the same thing. Back

*Though this is really handled by a sort of subsystem in crafting that I’m going to
talk about another time. Back

*Although there’s a good paragraph on p275 of My Story as to why this last idea
is not always a good plan. Back

*Or supernaturally. It is magic, after all. Back

*Probably not this one, unless it’s that kind of [Link]

*Durations are a little slippery. It’s ripe ground for negotiation between the
spellcaster and the GM as to how long a ward would last as a default duration.
Back

*In theory, anyway. The higher the complexity climbs, the more power you’re
going to need to gather, and the more rolls that’s going to take, which increases
the odds of rolling that disastrous failure on the control roll that lets 30 shifts of
power loose in your immediate vicinity. But no guts, no glory, right? Back

*And really, why wouldn’t you? Didn’t you read this post? Back

*But really, who’d go THAT crazy? Right, Harry? Back

*This is, of course, a violation of the First Law of magic. Inflicting Mental or Social
consequences may be violations of the Third or Fourth Laws. Back
*Okay, some may be arguing that this is science and not ritual magic, but he still
has to assemble all the items and information he needs before he can perform
the ritu… I mean, experiment… that lets him do something impossible. I stand by
my assessment. Whether you call it magic or science, this is a near-textbook
example of the idea of the story of the spell. Back

*Is there anything we can’t learn from 80s action movies? No, there isn’t. Back

*Harry’s said it, too. Back

*And doing the unexpected is the most fun in play, I find. Back

*Odds are pulled from this site. Back