Learning spells

You learn a spell from its grimoire, and deepen it by reading the grimoire again. Your class’s own spells come at their levels instead (see What your class gives).

Learning a spell

You learn a spell from its grimoire, a book written for teaching it. Every spell with a scroll has a grimoire too: the grimoire of fireball teaches Fireball, the grimoire of identify Identify, the grimoire of lightning Lightning bolt. A scroll teaches nothing: reading one casts its spell once.

Grimoires are rare. Wherever a scroll of a spell turns up by chance (in loot, a chest, a shop, a creature’s pack, or your starting kit), it is its grimoire instead one time in ten. A scroll placed by hand stays a scroll. A grimoire weighs 800 g and is worth five times its scroll.

A grimoire is written in plain words, so you know which spell it teaches as soon as you see it.

Reading a grimoire (r, then the grimoire) is how you learn from it. The read list shows your chance beside each grimoire you could learn from, and asks before you begin. You keep the grimoire whatever comes of it: read it again after a failure, or keep it to deepen the spell (see Spell ranks), or sell it. Reading the grimoire of a spell you know at rank 10 only tells you so, and takes no time.

To learn at all you need some mana, and training in Decipher script. Without the training, reading a grimoire is refused and takes no time (“You have no training in Decipher script; you cannot make sense of how to learn a spell from a grimoire.”).

Reading a grimoire takes time, by the spell’s level: 10 minutes plus 2 more per level, at a normal pace. For Fireball, level 11, that is 32 minutes:

The world goes on around you while you read. A creature coming into view, a blow, or anything else that would stop a rest stops the reading. The time is lost. Once you begin, you cannot stop of your own accord.

A spell whose level is at most your learning is learned for certain. Above that, every level too high (the overreach) makes it harder:

• You roll 2d12 plus your bonus, and must reach the difficulty.
• The difficulty is 12, plus 1 per level of overreach (Overreach counts a third fewer levels, rounded down), plus a point for every 20 levels of the spells you already know, added together.
• Your bonus is your Intelligence modifier, a tenth of your Decipher script (at most +20), your class’s affinity with the spell’s school, and Quick study’s +2.
• A natural 24 always succeeds, and a natural 2 always fails.

A few spells are harder to learn than their level says. Their own difficulty is added to the check, and such a spell is never learned for certain, however high your learning (its overreach then counts as 0). The spell list says which, and by how much.

The game tells you the chance in words: certain, easy, a struggle, or far beyond you.

Every 20 levels of the spells you know, added up, make it a point harder. A failure’s mishap is slight below 6 levels of overreach, bad from 6, and terrible from 15.

Every other class, and every school not named, is 0.

If you fail, a mishap befalls you. The farther the spell was beyond you, the worse it is: slight below 6 levels of overreach, bad from 6, and terrible from 15. A few lucky mishaps can come with any of them. A failure costs only the time and the mishap: you keep the grimoire, and may read it again.

A lucky mishap’s chance is given in a slight, a bad, and a terrible failure’s draw.

All reading trains Decipher script. Reading a grimoire to its end trains it and your Intelligence, whatever comes of it. Reading a scroll trains it one time in two, and making out a scroll always does.

Casting trains Spellcraft: spending mana on a spell trains it one time in four. Spellcraft does nothing else for now.

Your learning

Your learning is how far your study of magic reaches. A grimoire of a spell at or below your learning teaches you for certain. Above it, reading it is a check (see Learning a spell).

Learning never changes what a spell does or costs. Your stats make a spell grow (see How a spell grows), and your mana is what holds you back.

Learning comes from the Decipher script skill and nothing else. Take the skill’s value, add what magic items (of the Scholar) and talents add to it, and read it on this curve; it is at least 1. The first fifty points buy the cantrips and the first spells. The soft cap of 100 reaches level 30, and 150 reaches the last spell level:

A character not trained in Decipher script cannot learn a spell from a grimoire at all, not even a cantrip. Reading one is refused and takes no time. “Trained” means the skill is among your skills; an item’s or a talent’s bonus to a skill you do not have does not train you.

Without the skill you can still read a scroll to cast it, which needs a check (with learning, you read a scroll at or below it with no check). Your class’s own spells still come at their levels.

Every class that casts starts trained in Decipher script, with the dice given in the class table:

• wizards, witches, priests, and druids: 2d6+10;
• bards, paladins, and rangers: 2d4+4;
• an aristocrat one time in three (35 %, 2d4+4);
• an ascetic one time in five (20 %, 2d4);
• a merchant one time in four (25 %, 2d4).

Other classes do not start with it. Some background stories add to it, and level-up rolls raise it like any other skill. So does reading: see Learning a spell.

Spell ranks

Every spell you know has a rank, from 1 to 10. You know a spell at rank 1 when you learn it, or when your class gives it to you. The Magic page shows each spell’s rank, and so does the grimoire’s description.

Reading a spell’s grimoire again raises its rank. Nothing else does: casting a spell a thousand times leaves it where it was. Reading for rank 2 takes twice the learning time, rank 3 three times, and so on to rank 10, and the check is always made, however high your learning: the same 2d12 check as learning the spell, 2 harder for every rank you already hold (the overreach counts as 0 when the spell is within your learning). The read list shows the rank a grimoire would bring you to and your chance (“rank 3 of 10: a struggle”), and asks before you begin.

If you fail, you lose only the time. There is no mishap, and you may read the book again at once, as often as you like. If you succeed, the spell is yours at the next rank: “The words settle deeper: you know Frost at rank 3 of 10.” A rank brings no experience. A miscast can cost you ranks, never below rank 1; you win them back the same way.

What a rank gives is the spell’s own. Each spell has a table of what each rank from 2 adds, and the additions stack: at rank 5 you have everything ranks 2 to 5 added. A rank may add to the roll (a bonus, a die more, bigger dice, dice rolled again), to the reach, to how long a blessing or hex lasts, take a share off the mana or the casting time, or, for a spell that must hit, sharpen the aim or widen the critical range. A spell with no table casts the same at every rank. Only your own casts gain: a scroll you read or a wand you use casts at rank 1, and so do creatures.

See also: Magic, Mana, and Skills.