It seems to me that the easiest way to get around Will + Skill (Spell Weaving) for Abstractions and Distillations would be to use Fields of Related Knowledge in the form of Abstraction Wises.
If a wizard had Origin Wise, Area Effect Wise, Element Wise, Impetus Wise, and Duration Wise that’s a plus 5D from FoRKs to aid in Abstractions.
So my standard Noble Abstraction Mage (Born Noble, Arcane Devotee, City Sorcerer, City Sorcerer) could open up all five Abstraction Wises with his Genaeral Skill Points, still have a B3 in Read, Write, Calligraphy, Research, Symbology, and a B5 in Enchanting and Sorcery.
This would allow him to roll 10 Dice for any Abstraction work, making Abstractions viable once again.
I would not allow Element or Impetus wishes, instead having separate skills by element and by impetus (almost like Ars Magicka).
I’d probably only allow wishes to FoRK if that spell facet had added to the obstacle, or some other way to stop the other skills from being automatic takes for any Mage.
Alternatively, you could just roll Will+Skill for Abstraction. This has the advantage of not requireing Wises that don’t really fit the flavor of the game and are pretty much useless for anything else.
The Will + Skill was taken out in Gold (hence, the problem with Abstractions in the first place), the idea of using Abstraction Wises is to simulate the rather extensive, and occasionally, specific knowledge the Abstractionist Mage would have that the run of the mill sorcerer may not.
It would be similar to the difference between a scientist or chef who invents their own formulas or recipes as opposed to the individuals who are following the formulas or recipes of others.
I agree that the Abstraction Wises would only be useful when using Abstractions and Distillations, and only for the Facets that have not yet been formulated.
If my wizard knows the (formulated) spell Falcon Skin he does not get to benefit from any of his Astraction Wises. If he wanted to Abstract the Elemental Facet of Earth into the Falcon Skin spell (to transform all he wears and carries with him) he could benefit from FoRKing in his Elemental Abstraction Wise into his Sorcery skill as this element is being Abstracted into the formulalized spell.
Just to ask, is your goal to make Abstraction on par with Revised? If that’s it, why not just use the Revised rules?
Wises are super easy to train or practice (aptitudes of 7-9 are super easy) so you can get a lot of these fast. Will is already something a wizard trains and burns off quickly.
Alternate skills can run into the same problem.
It makes sense to build the Wizard up, since those spells are damn hard. But at the same time, I know my wizards use 3-4 FoRKs on each spell, and so have some damn high exponents, since they are using it a lot.
I guess the question is: how powerful are you ok with wizards being, and what’s the goal?
Goal is to get past the common reason of why the Abstraction/Distillation chapter of MaBu does not play well with Gold (the lack of “Spell Weaving” or “Will+Skill”)
As the Will+Skill typically added four to six dice for Abstraction purposes, we either need to wait to use abstractions until the wizards Sorcery Skill is sufficiently high enough, or find other ways to replace the lost dice.
Checking the threads, there have been numerous suggestions on how to do so, including enchanted rods of Abstraction, but they did not really answer the need to me.
As an Abstractionist Mage would have to not only know how to cast a spell from memory, but create one from the facets that he knows, it seems reasonable that he would have specific knowledge about the various spell facets used in Abstractions (Wises).
As these Abstraction Wises would only be of use in Spell Abstractions, they would not over power standard spell casting (nothing to abstract), but could be used to alter an existing spell through abstraction (by adding on an extra facet). However, only the applicable facet wise could be used.
So I know the Will+Skill was taken out in Gold, but that’s because it geve Sorcerers mountains of dice to use on relatively easy tests. It stifled advancement and failure. But since we’re trying to port rules from Revised anyways, there’s no reason not to just use Will+Skill combination specifically for abstraction
So the goal is to replace Spellweaving without just readding spellweaving.
What don’t you like about enchanted items to do this? “If I had my blasting rod I’d sinply conjour fite, as it was I have to keep it simple” is a cool moment, but I get that wises are inherit.
The problem is that Wises that only do one thing are basically just the player using some practice time to directly get points, and far more quickly than if they practiced sorcery.
Sorry, this is one of many threads you’ve started on Abstraction and I just want to figure out where you’re coming from on that topic - and what the play experience you’re trying to create is.
This is my current attempt to correct the main objection to using abstractions in gold without breaking any rules in gold or making special exceptions (like abstraction rods or alters).
FoRKs and Wises are already a part of Gold, and while pondering ways to make Abstractions playable in game as a magic system without resorting to spellweaver and without requiring a massive amount of Sorcery skill dice I thought about using a wise for each Abstraction Facet.
I could even see such specialized knowledge being a part of learning each facet, thus making each wise grow in relationship to individual usage (so fire wise and water wise instead of element wise).
Abstractions And Distillations work fine for spell creation, and I have made a few of them.
But the initial spells would be next to impossible for a starting mage to do in the field on the fly (as an Abstractionist Mage should be able to do), and the field is the only way to really test spells (not locked away in your tower catching the sofa on fire).