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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Cheiromancer" data-source="post: 3070008" data-attributes="member: 141">Ok.  That makes things a lot clearer.  This is a very exciting mechanic, but I'm going to have to think how it meshes up with the straight [seed] + factor business.  (aside: I'm trying out this bracket notation for seeds instead of italics, which are for finished spells.)I was trying to use exponential and ad hoc factors to extend spells way beyond their limit, but the problem is that you can easily end up with a spell a few orders of magnitude too powerful. And the result is indefensible if the ad hoc factors are the bulk of the spell; justifying these factors is purely intuitive, and who can argue with intuition?But if two or more seeds could both be extrapolated (via exponentials and ad hoc modifiers) to the same effect, you could sort of take their meeting point to be the value of the spell.  There would still be cries of arbitrariness, but there should still be an increase in objectivity; you've got different sets of factors to be weighed and compared, and discrepancies are easier to notice.The aggregate system seems to be understandable in this way.  Each of the major component can be considered in turn as a base spell in its own right, and the other components as ad hoc and exponential factors.  The aggregate is kind of a consensus of these individual ways of constructing a spell.For instance, an investigation into [delude] and the shadow conjuration suite of spells might give a USP estimate for making an illusionary castle real.  A similar investigation into [conjure] might say how you could make a castle appear out of thin air.  Hopefully the two estimates will converge, and this will be the basis for defining Reified Vision; individually the estimates are too tentative to be reliable, but in conjunction they are a lot more solid.  The description of the aggregate will indicate which seeds were used as the basis for the extrapolation; if more SP was needed than could be provided by those seeds, they would be included either as flavor appropriate descriptive seeds, or in the form of factors.As several aggregates are developed using this method, patterns should start to emerge, and things that don't fit (like underpowered or overpowered effects) can be tweaked.I'm going to try to see if this approach is promising.  It would provide a conceptual link from the [seed] + factor approach of the system we've been considering to this point.  [seed] + [seed] + factor, where the base seeds have this dual role.  Higher numbers of factors would be possible, but I'll start with two.  Magical Weather and Reified Vision should both be good candidates for analysis.I'm glad you like it; and yeah, that last bit is kinda awkward.  Many seeds seem like a Frankenstein's Monster with the base spells kinda stitched together.  With work the individual pieces become more homogenous, the seams less obvious.  Necessarily this makes the connection with the original base spells more complex.I think you're on the right track with the aggregates.  I have a feeling that aggregates will work to expand the [seed]+factor model to a whole new level.</blockquote>

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