AFAIK, Sorcery in BWG was changed from Skill+Will to Skill. However, I’m curious if the spell obstacles were changed as well, or were they just forgotten. The reason I ask is because a lot of spells have Obs 4, and then give effect for going over the Obs. Assuming the average wizard has Sorcery 3, this creates a strange situation where most wizards fail spellcasting very often.
For example, Mage Light has Obs 5 to make a torch equalent. A torch equialent! Obs 5! This is ridiculous. Difficulties for Breath of Wind range from 5 to 13!
The Mage Light spell obstacle is 4^.
“Making the obstacle (4 successes) will negate the penalty for dim light (which is +1 Ob) and reduces all other darkness penalties by one”
You have to declare the kind of light you are trying to generate before you cast the spell as well as where the light will come from.
The “There are four kinds of darkness” entry is simply stating the different degrees of darkness and the obstacles they cause (+1 to +4) the spell can negate these penalties, but you raise the spells obstacle by +1 per level or kind of darkness you wish to negate, making your spell Ob4^ for dim light conditions to Ob7^ for complete darkness.
Note that you can spend extra successes to reduce the penalties of the deeper darknesses.
This spell may be a bit much for a B3 Sorcery skill (but at least you’ll get a challenging test!) Wyrd Light is an Ob2 spell that provides torchlight equivalentcy.
In B.W.G. you only have to meet the obstacle rather than beat the obstacle. The only exception would be in versus tests where ties go to the defender.
Between FoRKs, Help, the ability to cast carefully and the fact that Sorcery is open-ended by default, hitting those Obs isn’t terribly difficult. It may take longer than the player would like, but that’s a different story.
Also remember that an exponent 3 skill is “nominally trained and practiced” perhaps an entry level apprentice, exponent 4 is competent, 5 is expert and so on.
A nominally trained and practiced sorcerer is goining to have problems with the higher Ob spells.
B.W.G. does have lower Ob spells to work with such as Magic Whistle (Ob1) Shards (Ob2^) and Wyrd Light (Ob2) just to name a few, and there are ways to increase obstacles and give yourself extra dice (see the Sorcery section beginning on page 499) so even a novice sorcerer could have a shot at casting their higher obstacle spells if they take extra time to do it.