High Magic and Quicken Meditation Interactions

I recently had an interesting conversation about the interaction between unspent High Magic and the Quicken Meditation ritual. High Magic states: "To spend High Magic, a character may spend points at Logistics however they choose. Alternatively, a character may spend points later in the day by successfully Meditating, after which they may purchase a single High Magic ability as many times as they like providing they have sufficient unspent High Magic points to do so. They must then have the changes to their battleboard signed off by a Crafting Marshal, and must deposit any expended resources (like Reagents when Spellcrafting) at a Crafting Station."

And the Quicken Meditate ritual says:
"This Ritual allows the owner to (once per Logistics period per charge) reduce the time necessary to perform the Meditate skill to three seconds. All other prerequisites of the Meditate skill must still be met – for example, for a spell, the user must have a thrown but unresolved spell and their spell book open for study per the rules of the skill. After three seconds the user will recover the unresolved skill or spell per the Meditate skill as if they had completed the required amount of roleplay."

To me, it reads that as long as you can meet the requirements of taking the High Magic then you could reallocate unspent High Magic points into a single High Magic effect on a three count. Is that interaction intentional?

For example; on the battlefield, someone needs a life spell but I have no more in memory. I do however have a level 9 earth spell store, three unspent levels of Earth High Magic, my earth spellbook which contains the Life spell, and a Quicken Meditation ritual. Can I pull out my spellbook to study, activate my quicken meditate, allocate my three High Magic into the Magical Conduit effect, fill the spell store with a Life, and then Life my friend?
 
Sure can!

The rules are pretty distinct and use the word "Meditate" when they mean it. There are periods of Focus (such as activating a spell swap) that distinctly don't use the word meditate, thus Quicken Meditation rituals and the Enhanced Meditate skill won't work in conjunction.
 
I don't see why not; Quicken Meditation just reduces the amount of time the Meditation takes, and nothing about that implies you can't do anything with that shortened Meditation you couldn't do with a longer one. I actually can't think of any ability off the top of my head that requires a specific minimum amount of time spent Meditating, so long as you spend the appropriate amount of time in general (Enhanced Meditate ranks reduce the time to 1 minute, for example, but that 1 minute is enough, I'm fairly sure, to satisfy the time requirement for anything in the game; Quicken Meditation should work the same).
 
They must then have the changes to their battleboard signed off by a Crafting Marshal, and must deposit any expended resources (like Reagents when Spellcrafting) at a Crafting Station."
Except for this part. Try finding a Crafting Marshall in the middle of combat and leave with them to go to the crafting station. Good luck with that.
 
The High Magic Magical Conduit doesn't require any resources other than having a Spell Book with the Spell on you, so a Crafting Marshal can just sign off on the High Magic allocation and use, no trip to a Crafting Station necessary. Might take half a minute or more, but that's more than enough time to get a Life into someone who just died.
 
The High Magic Magical Conduit doesn't require any resources other than having a Spell Book with the Spell on you, so a Crafting Marshal can just sign off on the High Magic allocation and use, no trip to a Crafting Station necessary. Might take half a minute or more, but that's more than enough time to get a Life into someone who just died.

You should absolutely not count on this being an available option in the middle of combat.
 
You shouldn't count on it, but it's still totally A Thing You Can Do, and it wouldn't necessarily take that long, either.

Theoretically, every Marshal (including Player Marshals) should be a Crafting Marshal, so assigning High Magic in the middle of a mod should always be possible if you have the time to Meditate.
 
I suspect the viability is going to differ chapter to chapter. I also suspect that chapters with more production characters than others will likely have more Crafting Marshals, too. >.>

I kinda expect to be able to use it mid-combat, but...we’ll see!
 
The reason I think that every Marshal should also be a Crafting Marshal is specifically because they're the people you're counting on to enforce the rules and run the mods as intended; if they don't know how the Crafting Station works or understand the production system in general, then that requires you send an additional Crafting Marshal out on every mod that has any element of mid-mod production (repairing a bridge, fixing a broken mechanism, brewing a mod-specific potion or elixir, etc.), further taxing NPC resources or requiring that you tell the PCs ahead of time that that will be required and diminishing the mystery of the mod.

Even if you have 2 crafters in a 300-player chapter, I think all of your official Marshals should know how to do this stuff, because it's part of the rules and making sure things are done properly is part of that role.
 
If it shouldnt be relied on during combat, it might be worth adding a note that it cannot be done when combat is present. Creating subjective exceptions will change the way the game plays chapter to chapter, the opposite of the goal of a unified rule set.

I would absolutely love to be in a scenario where I can see the writing on the wall and instant meditate into a rebirth, but only being able to do it if a specific person is available is such a crazy drag in my mind to such a neat concept.

Any thought of treating flexible high magic like Flexible casting? Does HM specifically need a crafting martial? Spell swap doesnt need it, recharge prowess doesn't need it, even meditation in general doesn't need it. Unless I'm missing something, what is the inherent value of making this specifically a crafting problem?

(I understand tracking potential cheating and keeping people honest, etc. But that being said, how is it different than throwing too many spells, or activating magic items that change how other effects work is the basis for my question)
 
Any thought of treating flexible high magic like Flexible casting? Does HM specifically need a crafting martial? Spell swap doesnt need it, recharge prowess doesn't need it, even meditation in general doesn't need it. Unless I'm missing something, what is the inherent value of making this specifically a crafting problem?

As a crafting marshal, if we can limit the need to see a crafting marshal for HM to things like Spellcrafting that require something be turned in and/or a tag be produced that'd be great. Everything else seems like it can be handled with normal battleboarding honor system.
 
As a crafting marshal, if we can limit the need to see a crafting marshal for HM to things like Spellcrafting that require something be turned in and/or a tag be produced that'd be great. Everything else seems like it can be handled with normal battleboarding honor system.

most of every player I have talked to, in there mind, when looking at High Magic and meditate was thinking about Meditating in combat. The few conversations I've had with owners, is that it will not be available in combat.

I have the feeling that the spirt of the intent was to have your HM locked before combat, and just meditate new high magic in down time.

But Ken, I'm with you, I would much prefer a way to HM in combat. I'm willing to ride it out, and see how it works for a couple events. Before harsh on it too much.
 
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There's nothing about Meditate or the Focus mechanic it relies on that inherently prohibits you from doing it in combat, so if High Magic can't be changed or assigned in combat, then a) it needs to say that in the High Magic section, and b) it needs to define what "in combat" actually means (even if that's just "a Marshal will have to make the call").
 
Its worth remember that "Quicken Meditation" items reduce the meditation time to 3 seconds per charge. So it seems like that is intended to make meditation usable in combat time.
 
Right, I'd like it to be consistent and objective. Please ping your owners on this for either clarification, or to remove the crafting marshal requests for non tag creation mechanics
 
Brooks is specifically talking about what I told him and it's lacking all the context of our discussion.

I don't really have a problem with non crafting high magic not needing a marshal but thems the rules right now.

I have a few beliefs about Marshals related to this.

PC marshals shouldn't marshal stuff that directly affects them. Regardless of the simplicity. Even if crafting marshaling is the simplest, you should find someone who's unrelated to what you're doing so there's never any questions about conflict of interest. Marshals are human and make mistakes. It's important you keep that insulation.

Folks trying to do something like this shouldn't expect to hold up the game. Rituals get pushed back a lot when ritual marshals can't be found, or when a plot team is prepping something and can't come in to do that vision, lore, etc.

If you're in the middle of combat and you need to suddenly generate a life spell, it's going to be hard to find a marshal who's not involved or currently running the mod.

If you're in the back of the line and there's a marshal around, and you have your battle board all ready and all they have to do is sign it or glance at it or whatever more power to you. That's great. But, that interaction is going to take a lot more than 3 seconds. High magics have different costs. Some of that is hard to remember off hand.

If you've stepped back and are trying to quick meditate cloak curses in the middle of combat and all the marshals are currently occupied playing monsters or explaining a scene or whatever, then that's not great for you, but getting a marshal to navigate through a clumped up group of people to sign your battle board, while fighting is going on can be tough.

So when I said to Brooks you couldn't do it in combat, it wasn't that I said you couldn't, I said I wouldn't count on it. Given the chaotic nature of combat.
 
We have an honor system, but I’m really uncomfortable with the idea of using it to track HM abilities.

The honor system is used for the expenditure of power, not for the addition of it to a card. Any time you add an ability to your card, it has to be signed off on. There are tags added to weapons when they’re coated; memorizing a different spell requires a sign-off

I don’t think it necessarily needs to be a Marshal, it could be any player. But I don’t really want a pure honor system with zero accountability.
 
I think it's fine getting any level of Marshal to sign off on your battleboard that you allocated High Magic, or Meditated something back, or whatever; Player Marshal, Full Marshal, or Crafting Marshal. Like I said before, in theory Crafting Marshal should be the lowest level of Marshal, and anyone who is a Player Marshal or a Full Marshal should be able to do Crafting Marshal duties.

I think a large part of the reason we run on an honor system is so that a Marshal doesn't have to pay attention to every Spell, Skill, Defense, Arrow, Resist, Whatever that gets used, they just have to make sure things are being used properly and adjudicate if there's confusion or blatant cheating. I can't think of a reason besides "I'm in the middle of adjudicating something else, I'll be with you when I'm done" that a Marshal shouldn't be able to take 5-10 seconds to confirm your changes and sign off on them; you should have a pencil or pen with you already, and it can be fixed post-mod if one of you made a mistake (because, well, you're only human, it's bound to happen a few times).

If you really want to trust the honor system, and I do, then you have to accept that as long as the Marshal isn't currently in the middle of something vital to the mod (and I don't consider watching combat to be vital to the mod, unless the combat is particularly complicated or is using unusual calls), they are available to do this task and should do it without complaint.
 
We have an honor system, but I’m really uncomfortable with the idea of using it to track HM abilities.

The honor system is used for the expenditure of power, not for the addition of it to a card. Any time you add an ability to your card, it has to be signed off on. There are tags added to weapons when they’re coated; memorizing a different spell requires a sign-off

I don’t think it necessarily needs to be a Marshal, it could be any player. But I don’t really want a pure honor system with zero accountability.

We don't require sign-off for these:
* Meditate back of missed skills
* Recharge Prowess
* Spell Swap
 
sorry, Alkalin3 was right. I didn't give enough context to my statement. Sorry about that. I was writing, at work, and then had to go. but he summed it up.
 
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