Rote-Casting
From Sagataflwiki
Rote-Casting is a learnable Mystery, that is one way for a character to specialize in a few favorite low-level spells, so that spellcasting Fumbles for these spells will tend to be less severe.
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Learning Rote-Casting
The character must learn the Lore of Rote-Casting once. After he has learned this Lore, he must spend 4 non-consecutive Hours per pick to memorize a more detailed and safer casting procedure for any spell that he knows (at at least the 10% Partial stage), until he has spent all his picks.
The character gets a number of picks equal to his Intelligence (Mnemonic) plus one, at a cost of one Mystery Slot. If more picks are desired, the charcter can spend further Mystery Slots. This is known as taking multiple instances of Rote-Casting, each additional Mystery Slot spent giving another amount of picks equal to I(Me)+1.
Each Spell costs 1 pick per spell level, and each Greater Spell costs 2 picks per spell level. The chosen spells are referred to as Rote-Memorized Spells.
Reference Table
This table simply shows all possible spell levels, along with their cost in picks, their time to memorize, and their period to Un-Learn
Lore of Rote-Casting
the stats for the Lore go here.
Benefits of Rote-Casting
Any time a Rote-Memorized Spell or Greater Spell is Fumbled, 3 is subtracted from the Fumble Severity Roll. The character may still use any other Casting Options with Rote-Memorized Spells.
Drawbacks of Rote-Casting
Casting a Rote-Memorized spell takes twice as long. This time is further modified by Casting Options in the regular way, i.e. moving up or down the TSS because of the Slow-Casting or Fast-Casting Options. A character cannot choose to cast a spell that he has Rote-Memorized in the normal way, except if he Un-Learns all instances of Rote-Casting that he has.
Examples (Ex I)
Un-Learning Rote-Casting
Un-Learning merely requires an act of will, and a period of X Days of not casting each Rote-Memorized spell, where X starts at a value of 1 for 1st level Spells and 2 for 1st level Greater Spells, and doubles for each higher spell level. A character may choose to Un-Learn only one or several instances of Rote-Casting, he does not have to Un-Learn all his instances of Rote-Casting. He simple chooses a number of instances, 1 or higher, up to how many he has, and for each instance, he must immediately choose a number of spell levels equal to his I(Me)+1 to unlearn.
If the character does use one or several of the spells before the period is over, then those spells are still Rote-Memorized, and at least 1 instance of Rote-Casting is not Un-Learned. If the spells that were used during the period "cost" more than 1 instance of Rote-Casting, then however many instances are required fail to be Un-Learned, and the character is free to try again.
More Examples (Ex II)
Noticing Rote-Casting
Advice
Rote-Casting is great for a beginning spellcaster, but is not really needed for a serious caster, who has better things to spend his precious Mystery Slots on. Many spellcasting characters use Rote-Casting early in their lives but then Un-Learn it once they feel that they no longer need it (it also carries a stigma of the caster being of limited skill; it is a Mystery for apprentices, not for master mages!).
It is quite common for a player creating a skilled spellcaster to write in the backstory that the character used Rote-Casting for a period of time (and quite likely that he tried to keep it secret from everyone, but didn't manage to perfectly) and then that he at a later time chose to Un-Learn it, feeling that he had grown beyond the need for it. All the player has to do is to consider whether he wants to pay the SPs for Lore of Rote-Casting or not. If he does not, then the character has forgotten the Lore, and therefore must learn it again before he can make use of it to pick new spells for Rote-Casting, but this is common, and the character really misses out on nothing, as the Lore is quite unattractive to skilled casters, save perhaps ones with very high Mnemonic Intelligence (consider the possibility of Rote-Memorizing a 5th or 6th level Spell, or even a 4th level Greater Spell).
Please Note
Rote-Casting has nothing to do with fire-and-forget-style spell memorization. The character also cannot switch spells easily; he must decide which Rote-Memorized spells to forget and then go through the period of non-use to forget the Rotes, then after that he can memorize different spells at the cost of 4 Hours per pick.
