in a video on youtube, someone said their houserule was to put a limit on the size of the spell’s momentum spend to 5, the max difficulty of a spell (or any test). Their reason was for forcing players to strategize a bit more about what they spend their Momentum on during the spell casting.
Thoughts?
Bad idea. - Sorcery is already risky, and such a limit works both ways, that means, NPC sorcerers will be handicapped by this, too.
A Sorcerer PC is usually physically weak, easy to challenge in this regard, as high Willpower (and Personality) is a must. This ruling does limit the Sorcerer PC in their single field of competency.
Why?
To what end?
And would you limit the maximum Momentum spend for a double-wielding axeman berserker, too?
Or a Hyrkanian mounted archer?
Or Zingaran pirate?
Such a kind of discrimination for certain character types has the effect of making this kind of character much less attractive than other character types.
But why doing that in this indirect way of limiting and discriminating those characters, where you as a GM could simply say “no sorcerer PCs in my campaign”? The effect is the same.
Or not, because the player of a sorcerer PC who gets hindered by this ruling will realize in the ongoing game, that all other players are privileged, have unhindered access to all their abilities, while the sorcerer player gets discriminated and held back.
Again, what is the supposed “gain” in fun for the gaming group?
(Rules mechanical comment:
You can always generate much more than 5 Momentum on a test, not only a Sorcery test. Most spells are D1, rolling 5d20 (the maximum) all under your Focus is 10 successes, so 9 Momentum - not counting sources of Bonus Momentum or additional successes by other characters’ Assist action. Limiting Momentum to the max Difficulty is very weird, as the max Momentum is not a function of the Difficulty at all. See all those Talents that add 1 Bonus Momentum per Rank of the Talent so find situations where you have a D5 skill test, and the player does come out of it still with lots of Momentum to spend.)
i know this query has been beaten to death many times already, but for my understanding…
substituting Doom for Momentum can only be used in part 1 of casting the spell, for the initial Test and Not for the Momentum spends building the spell after the Test?
…i’ve read and reread and reread and reread the FAQ rules above.
Only spends that are listed as Immediate can be paid for with Doom. A cursory glance there’s only Create Opportunity (buying dice), Creating Obstacle and maybe Second Wind (the font is weird so I don’t know it 1IR and my printed book is in another room currently). I don’t see any spell spends that are Immediate.
For PC Sorcerers:
Spending Doom instead of Momentum to get bonus d20s is an Immediate Momentum spend.
All other Momentum spends are NOT Immediate Momentum spends, so they must come out of the amount of Momentum generated by the Sorcery test and whatever is currently available in the Group Momentum pool.
For NPC Sorcerers:
Doom is spent to get bonus d20s for the actual Sorcery skill test. But as the Doom Pool is the Momentum Pool for NPCs, the GM can spend freely Doom for Momentum spends the NPC sorcerer needs to make.