Questionable Questing

You can't spend Investment. Its a investing of the spirits influence into you. You don't have a limited amount you run out of. Hurik also wasn't just off a kingdoms ruining war where his dad commited magical war crimes. I'll note what you said for edge.

That is a fun part of characters I like to play with but it has to be done in a way that feels good to the readers. Do it willy nilly and its bad, doesn't add to the story. Pushing Seamus to the breaking point or having a moment where honor agrees he should crush someone will be a goal now.

He said enough that people know what he meant. But he didn't technically, so he'll probably get a stern talking too from his leige in terms of punishment, but the loss of respect is going to be the real bitch.

So if you can't spend investment, what's the limit of how much spirits will give you?

Investment is spirits like you. Cheer you on. They support your skills and physical talents or your memorable ability. A sport teams cheer does not equal the Deep Magic where spirits alter the world around you

So what's the maximum? Say all the spirits are cheering you on because you're about to kill some evil Lovecraftian existential threat to them and you're their perfect champion? They're giving you everything they got.

Heroes don't get big magic. That do be how it works

Less figuring out big magic and more how it all scales. Just how much of a difference between a high end and low end Investment users is there.

To give a more complex explanation. Investment is limited by the Spirits liking someone can only bless them. Blessings without Costs don't have power behind them. A Invested is a hero of the spirits, given a greater role for their deeds. That doesn't equal the powers High Sorcery gives with greater costs

So with high sorcery what's the max sacrifice or cost you could give for a spell? I'm guessing there's plenty of suicide spells that are probably pretty powerful. But I'm guessing giving your ability to walk, slavery to something, or endless pain for a couple decades all would be pretty powerful too. So I guess I'm asking how all that's ranked and divided?

Investment doesn't have a high or low end. All Investment by its nature is either you got lucky and inherited it from a heroic bloodline or your marked as loved by the spirits for what you did and they want you to be heroic. It is all cheap power. Invested do not blow up city blocks. It makes you awesome, it does not give you great destructive power.

Korbin with his hammer could fuck up a street or monster. He cannot blow up a building. Currently we have and not limited to:
Hamish turning into a giant monster wolf to assault the forces of Isvan. I mean big wolf breaking down a castle gate.
Lyona summoning weaponized blizzards and other wintery magics. Weather manipulation on a grand scale with cold winds targeted at killing enemy soldiers.

Cursed blighted snow from Lyona
Lucan calling down starfire.
The Harrowings by Isvan melting the landscape and creating Unshaped Horrors from the mutated remains
Raising a fort from the very stones of a mountain.

You'll note for Magic the Cost is part of the fuel. Investments are inherent enchantments. That means no cost but by being a aspect of the person instead of a called upon power, the spirits are capped on how much they can give. Blessings aren't mighty sorcery.

Makes sense. I'm only asking because power scaling is very important, if incredibly tedious. You have to be able to show the readers why person X is stronger than person Y, if there both throwing out magic spells and anime bullshit like candy.

The logical need to have everything down to exacts is something I've started to push away from in stories. Its a modern trend that sometimes gets in the way of writing a fantasy tale

I agree. Not everything needs to be a math problem, but using the king of Fantasy himself Tolkien, Gandalf coming back to life didn't feel like an asspull because Tolkien very strongly hinted at him being more mythical than man from the very beginning even before Gandalf's full origins where revealed.

Just make sure to explain why certain powers works they way they do and the readers will be able to fill in the blanks from there.

Got ya.

High Magic is used often but is also rare. Because getting enough Costs and surviving them to learn it is a deadly road