The Sage’s Answers, Part 12
With today’s ten answers, I do believe we’ve hit 100 questions answered!
Just to remind everyone, here we’ll be answering questions players and GMs have asked about The Witcher TRPG with the goal of turning them into an errata and updating the book down the line.
Cody Pondsmith, our line developer, will be answering five to ten questions each time we post. We’re going to shoot for either every weekday or every other weekday, schedules allowing, and when there’s going to be longer breaks, we’ll try our best to let you know in advance. We’ll be posting each The Sage’s Answers on our blog, our Facebook, and on the r/WitcherTRPG subreddit. On our blog, I’ll be tagging each entry with “sagesanswers” to make them easy to find.
Tom Kant asks…
Pg. 108 – The Spell “Fire from the Sky” clearly refers to the spell that was used by Sabrina Glevissig during the events leading up to The Witcher 2, Assassin of Kings. This spell did however have an official name in the game, as in one of the cuts scenes, when Gerald enters the mist to remove the curse, Sabrina calls it “Melgar’s Fire”
Cody answers…
Hey, Tom! Thanks for catching that! We’ll change it in the update.
Tom Kant asks…
Pg. 117 – While the description claims preparing for a ritual spell takes considerable time, the descriptions of the individual spells state times ranging from 5 to 10 rounds. As rounds are around 3 seconds each, preparation times are between 15 and 30 seconds, which seems a little short.
Cody answers…
What’s meant there is that rituals take enough time that casting them in combat isn’t much of a viable option. It can be done but usually you have to have someone protecting you.
Tom Kant asks…
Pg. 130 – Is it intended that the Investment cost of some of the Diagrams are different from the combined cost of the items (Dark Steel for example has an Investment cost of 55, while the combined price of its components, 1 Dark Iron (52 crowns) and 5 Coal (5×1 crown) is 57 crowns)?
Cody answers…
This is a slip up. Unfortunately, when you’re calculating a ton of investment costs, small errors in sums can get over looked. We’ll make sure to triple check them!
Tom Kant asks…
Pg. 140 – While the rules on this page cover repairing a damaged item back to full SP or Rel., it doesn’t cover partially repairing items. What would be the cost of this?
Cody answers…
When you repair an item you repair it to full SP or Rel. This assumes that you are taking apart what needs to be replaced and putting everything back together again. The ability to partially repair items is covered in the Craftsman’s Patch Job ability. If one of your players does find themselves in the position of having to pay for a Patch Job (perhaps because they are having to go right out and fight a monster, there’s no time for a full repair, and the local blacksmith insists on payment up front since dead people can’t pay their tab), consider just charging the standard rate per piece for a craftsman from the table on page 93 (35 crowns).
Tom Kant asks…
Pg. 162 – Is it intended that stabilizing a dying character who dropped just to below 0 (let’s say -3) is really easy, as in this case, the DC would be 3.
Cody answers…
Yes, actually! Witcher is an incredibly deadly system and if you don’t plan well (or you’re quite unlucky) you can be knocked into death state in a matter of seconds. But if you have a doctor, or another player who knows First Aid it is pretty easy to keep yourself from dying.
Tom Kant asks…
Pg. 163 – In the “Prone” blurb to the right of the page it says Move Action, does this mean a Sprint action, using an Action or just an amount of Movement (as the Actions mentions do not include a Move Action)?
Cody answers…
To stand up from prone requires your movement. So, you would spend your movement to stand up and then be able to perform an action. We’ll make that clearer.
Tom Kant asks…
Pg. 166 – A mage can cast any spell with a Stamina cost equal to or below their Vigor Threshold, as per the “Vigor Threshold and Stamina” section. Is a spell’s Stamina cost for this purpose reduced by any Foci the mage has (so could a mage with a Vigor Threshold of 7 cast a Spell with a Stamina Cost of 10 if they have a staff with Focus (3) without overdrawing)? Also, is the mention of Vigor Cost in the “Overexertion and Fumbles” section the same as Stamina Cost?
Cody answers…
Yes, if a mage has a focus item that has a rating of 3 they can effectively boost their Vigor Threshold up to 10 without overdrawing. Also, Vigor Cost is the same as Stamina Cost and that will be corrected in the update.
Tom Kant asks…
Pg. 167 – Is it intended that a mage with a Base Endurance lower than 8 has a reasonable chance of melting (rolling lower than a 10 and taking 1d6 damage each turn) the moment they come in contact with Dimeritium?
Cody answers…
Dimeritium is intended to be a significant threat to magic users and so coming in contact with it will always be dangerous. If a Mage player is likely to come in contact with a lot of dimeritium, they can make their way up the Arch Mage branch of their skill tree and take the “Immutable” ability which allows they to try to partially negate the effects of Dimeritium.
Tom Kant asks…
Pg. 173 – In the “Healing With Magic” Section, it states that non-witchers drinking a Swallow Potion must make a DC 18 Endurance check or be poisoned. Does this also mean that the potion has no effect, or does the damage from Poisoned merely cancel the healing from Swallow?
Cody answers…
If a Non-witcher drinks the Swallow potion and fails to make the DC:18 Endurance check the potion has no effect and on top of that they are poisoned.
Tom Kant asks…
Pg. 174 – In the Healing Spell table, there is a column with “DC”, what does this mean (as there are no references to magical healing requiring a check)?
Cody answers…
We’ll have to make this clearer. If you are using the Healing Spell to heal critical wounds you have to make the number Spell Casting roll indicated and beat that DC each time.
Healing basic HP damage via magic is easier and only requires you don’t fumble, since you are just stimulating the body to heal quicker. If you are healing a critical wound you are expending more energy and effort to heal the body, often beyond what it is capable of healing by itself if left alone. This requires much more in the way of skill.
We do hope this helps!
Keep your swords sharp!
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I have a rather cautious player, who does not want to wait to repair her weapon only if it is short from breaking. But paying one material each for only two points of reliability seems a bit expensive (especially if the weapon in question is a witcher sword). Wouldn’t it make more sense to scale the required materials according to the damage the weapon has taken? If the sword has taken only a couple of points of damage it would most likely mean that the sword has only dulled a bit and has a couple of nicks, so it would not make sense to completely replace the hilt. A bit of sharpening grit and maybe some steel to repair the deeper nicks should suffice in this case. I know this makes repairing more complex, but it makes more sense in my opinion and would be better for people who want to keep their equipment in best shape.
The following is a rough idea and not specifically intended to be an official rule.
You might consider prorating the cost of repairs. To repair an arming sword, for example, you need 1 timber, 1 hardened leather, and 1 steel and 7 hours time. That’s around 112 crowns for a weapon with a reliability of 15. Prorated, that’s roughly 7.5 crowns per point of reliability to repair (the craftsman’s fee might apply as well, depending on the circumstances). If the item’s reliability has been dropped down to half or less, they should probably pay full price for repairs at that point, as its not just a simple case of “sharpening” then.
Another question that just occured to me: if a player ambushes an enemy, the attack value is stated to be raised by +5, but what is the DC to hit the enemy if no defensive action is being made (and thus there is no defensive roll as a DC)? I would assume a DC of 10 as this is the one used for stunned enemies and the situation is similar, but wanted to make sure.
And I thought I have read it before, but cannot find it right now: can spells also have critical effects? If not, do spell criticals count for adrenaline generation?
You can critical on any Spell Casting roll (roll a 10 and then roll it again to add to the casting roll). Spells which have a physical effect (the sort which throw rocks at people or lance them with ice) can also generate a Critical Effect.
We’ll be answering your other question in a future Sage’s Answers.
Bard’s Acclimatize (third Informant skill). How does it affect Social Standing? If it does at all.
For the purposes of that settlement, they are treated as Equal no matter their race.
How is the spell Cadfan’s Grasp supposed to work offensively? I mean is has no defense and you can superheat the enemy’s weapon and he just drops it? No damage is written for when someone holds a superheated item and no increasing dc if he wants to keep holding it, like the spell Seirff Haul for example. Or can you only heat weapons to increase the damage? That does not seem right, you can heat the blade and not the hilt?
So, how does it work in combat? You can simply disarm anyone? and what happens if you target the enemy’s armor?
I’ll put this on our list to answer.
Hey there!
I have a silly question out of curiosity. The Game Master section states “In the Top Ten list of ways to make a game awkward, describing the sex is probably third or fourth”. What could possibly be the top one and two?
I know there are important questions to be answered, but this one’s funny, at least.
1. Insulting the GM’s parentage in front of everyone.
2. Snagging the last slice of pizza when you’ve already had three and some people haven’t even finished their first.
Hahaha, fine. Thanks for taking the time to answer this!
When I firstly red the manual, I was completely mesmerized by the spells section. I found it a little bit “dry”, though: the flavour of the somewhat mysterious functioning of magic was for me less working in this section than in others. I found out why: it seems too equilibrate, too symmetrical. Each element has its own spells, which is more or less quantitatively the same for the other elements according to the progression. Since magic is also a matter of scientific research, at least for mages, I was expecting something more elastic. A domain could have been more developed than others, or spells could be more versatile, consenting more effects to be chosen according to circumstances…well that is stuff of suggestion for other expansions, maybe. What I found completely missing, was actually some spells that were explicitly mentioned both in the books and in the game, for instance: “Alzur’s Shield”, or the very interesting “Triangle Within a Triangle”, developed to enhance the biological tissues of an organism/creature, or even “Alzur’s Double Cross”. These spells could constitute indispensable tools for summoners or researchers, or even serving as implements for ritualistic aims. Other ideas could include some spells to summon or control elementals (like in the novel “The Last Wish”, in which Geoffrey Monck is mentioned). Even Yennefer’s impressive “lightning crow” from the Witcher’s 3 Intro is full of dark flavour that fits perfectly with the Witcher’s universe. Well, those are just suggestions. Hope to see some expansion to the magic section!
One of the downsides of an all in one core book is space limitations. You have to figure out what to include and what to save for the future. In this case, magic was kept straight-forward because otherwise, it would have expanded the page count by quite a bit. We’ve got ideas for how to expand on this in the future.
Lovely, can’t wait!
great job, Talsorian!