Hi,

Sure this has probably been answered elsewhere but I can not find the answer to this particular situation.

If I have a spell that requires no hands and I attempt to cast it and fail do I exhaust it or can I try again immediately?

The way I read it you only exhaust if the attempt was successful. So if you are willing to pay the sanity costs can you try again?

Thanks.

Michmor said:

Which spell are you talking about? Usually spells say exhaust. I can't think of any off the top of my head that don't. Off the top of my head I can't think of any spells you get a second shot at casting (unless you have a reroll a check item, skill, or spell).

There are a few CotDP (shocker ) Spells (Plague of Locusts comes to mind) that don't have the word "exhaust" in them. Scratch those under typo. There are also the "cast and discard" Spells (Blessing, Greater Banishment, etc.) which from what I understand are meant to be "cast and exhaust, if successfully cast, discard".

Ah, That may be the problem.

I've read the spell as only being cast if you successfully pass the spell check and therefore only exhaust the spell if cast (successfully).

I always pay the sanity cost.

I think my misunderstanding is caused by my confusion with spells with hands required to cast them. My understanding is if you attempt to cast the spell and it only requires one hand and you fail, then you can use your other hand to attempt to cast it again. If you follow the "attempt" to cast and exhaust philosophy then the spell shouldn't be available to cast until next turn (after upkeep) and therefore the second hand can't cast it.

Maybe I'm just all mixed up.

Help!

Michmor said:

No. If you try to cast a spell and fail, it's unavailable until it exhausts (usually during upkeep). If you try to cast a spell and fail, the one or two hands it requires are unusable until the next round of combat.

So if you attempt to cast a spell it exhausts regardless of success and is unavailable again until the upkeep phase.

Thank you.

Part of my confusion came from Pg 16 of the rule book; "To cast a spell, an investigator must pay it's Sanity cost and then pass a Spell check."

As I said previously I took that to mean a failed spell check meant the spell was NOT cast and therefore did not need to be exhausted (as per the "cast and exhaust" statement on most spell cards). And furthermore any spells not requiring a hand to use could be cast until successful or you character runs out of sanity (this falls in a heap when casting spells with no sanity cost or hands).

Doesn't make much sense gameplaywise but there you go.

Michmor said:

Loads of things about this game's rules don't make sense ;') we have non-euclidean rules here.