Sample+Thaumaturgy

This example uses these house rules.

A young girl has suffered an attack by some sort of nightmare monster. The girl has taken mild, moderate, and severe mental consequences.

Something like: __Bad Dreams__, __Really Bad Dreams__, and __Such dreams as would scare your worst nightmare__  [|Jing-Wei] wonders if she can do anything to help, so goes rooting around in the sample thuamaturgy section. She finds the Reiki Healing Spell (YS 300) which can speed up recovery from consequences and asks the GM if she can try a similar version to help get rid of the nightmares.

"Isn't that going to break the Third Law?" the GM asks.

"No more than a light house invades the ocean." is Jing-Wei's reply.

The GM says, "Hmpf, I'll allow it. It's probably one of those gray areas that the wardens would frown about, but I doubt you are going to report yourself, so go right ahead." Since severe consequences are involved, the GM sets the complexity of the spell at 16.

As Jing-Wei only has a base complexity of 5 (her lore), she has a long way to go to get there. Let's see what she can pull out:

She'll take 5 minutes to prepare, which means she can make 1 declaration for every skill she has a 4 or better (Lore, Discipline, Conviction, and Rapport), if she can think of a way to use them. (Base complexity is 16)

-5 Base Lore

-2 Target is right there

-2 Accepted consequence (mild physical) -2 Lore declaration -2 Disciple declaration <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">-2 Conviction declaration <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">-2 Rapport declaration
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">Jing-Wei cuts her hand and lets the blood flow out into a handy cereal bowl.
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">A small vortex of wind sucks the blood out from the bowl and draws a neat ritual circle around Jing-Wei and the girl
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">She takes a deep breath and clears her mind
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">"I'll not let another suffer while I have the power to prevent it."
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">In her best bedside manner, "My name in Jing-Wei and I am here to help you."

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">For a total of -17 on complexity. As long as she passes the declaration rolls, she can move right in to doing the ritual after 5 minutes of prep. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">She rolls for her 4 declarations, and succeeds on every one. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"> If she had failed one or more of them, she'd have to go looking for more ways to reduce the complexity (for example, she could try getting the girl's parents to donate blood too, and get a complexity reduction by inflicting consequences on // them // . I guess it's good that no wardens would be around to report // that // either :D ), or she could move up to "hours or preparation" which would allow her to make more skill declarations. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">But since she now has enough complexity bonuses after only 5 minutes of prep, she can more right into drawing power. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">She'll start by trying to draw 3 power, and rolls discipline (+5) (0, 1, -1, 1); controlled
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">System highlight: jumping off into the deep end. It's much better to open your rituals by drawing a lot of power. Even if you screw up, you can just take the backlash and continue the ritual. It's later in the ritual when very large amounts of power have built up that you have to be very careful.

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">Next power draw, another 3 power, discipline (+5) (1, 1, 1, 0); controlled

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">She's going to play it safe now, and switch to drawing one power per pass, which she can't fail to control.

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">So it takes another 10 passes to complete the ritual.

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">The total ritual takes 12 passes, or about one hour to complete.
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">This is handy, because her endurance is only average which means she would have started suffering a -1 penalty to her discipline rolls in the next round of drawing power. This is part of the reason why drawing a lot of power in the beginning of the ritual can save you trouble later.
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">Had she wanted to make the ritual take less time, she could have drawn 2 power per pass after the second, instead of 1. That would have cut 5 passes (~25 minutes) off the ritual time. However, she would be looking at around a 6% chance (in total) of screwing up one of the 5 discipline rolls she'd need to complete passes 3 to 7. And since that backlash from one of those failed discipline rolls would have been between stress 8 and 16, it's better not to risk that kind of thing if you don't have to.
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">If Jing-Wei had more control for this sort of thing, she could have safely pulled the ritual off much faster, as she could have safely drawn a whole lot more power per pass. Assuming she has enough fate points (and aspects) to fuel the discipline roll she'd need to control that much power at once, she could have raised 16 power in one pass, and completed the whole thing in 5 minutes. Note that as this would be +12 over Jing-Wei's conviction of 4, she'd suffer a stress 12 hit for drawing that much power, which would mean a moderate (-4) and a severe (-6) consequence to soak up the stress.