Post-battle analysis (Afina, Surraruthru)

[Anastasia]

"Our final matter is a question for our elites: Reserves. Afina, I believe you were one who was heavily taxed by excessive spellcasting." Gisfal says, "We won't have the luxury of always fighting fresh when we attack Lifasa. Plans for an acceptable level of combat ability even when your magic is exhausted is critical."

[Ebiris]

"Nothing can be done about it," Afina shakes her head. "The battle for Lifasa won't be decided in a single day, we'll have to rotate people around to allow for resting between engagements. That's part of where our manpower deficiency hurts us, every hand is needed just for us to have a fighting chance. When exhaustion and attrition takes its toll we don't have reserves to fill in the gap. I will say however that my combat ability remains quite acceptable, I could have fought dozens of pit fiends even after the point where I judged I was incapable of fighting one offs like Taelfagn or that dogai."

[Iron Dragoon]

"There are a few options, actually. The first is scrolls and the like. There are infinite scroll cases, for non-critical, non-immediate casting we can begin relying on scrolls or wands and the like. Alternately we can try to use the principles of a spell like Time Stop and try to build a room that can, in a way, accelerate time. If we can make it work, it would be an emergency option to reduce the time needed to prepare new spells. I personally haven't tinkered with time magic enough to say how viable it is. But it's an idea."

[Anastasia]

"I've looked into magic like that. It's forbidden," Tepen says, "Anything that approaches true temporal manipulation is, and the difficulty and price of breaking it makes it absolutely prohibitive."

[Ebiris]

"And scrolls are worthless for actual combat applications," Afina adds. "They're far too weak and easily resisted, even attempting to use a fireball scroll on a devil is a waste of time compared to anything else I could be doing."

[Iron Dragoon]

Surraruthru snorts in distaste at that. "Bah. What about something similar to a spellpool. Something where we can deposit an amount of arcane power we have left over to be called on later?"

[Anastasia]

"I'm not familiar with that," Gisfal says, "What is that?"

[Iron Dragoon]

Do you want me to roll K:A for the amount of details Surraruthru knows, or just list stuff out?

[Anastasia]

If you're familiar with the spell, just list it out.

[Iron Dragoon]

"I don't know exactly how they work, but from what I recall a spellpool is a reserve of pure magical power. It functions sort of like a community garden. Everyone pumps magic and spells into it, and everyone can pull magic and spells from it. Normally you leave a spell unprepared, and then through focusing and the use of a spellpool, you can pull any spell that's been cast into it in place of the uprepared spell you have.

What I'm proposing is trying to find a way to use it more like a reservoir than sharing spells. It'll take some research, and maybe a specialist, but if we can modify a spellpool to instead simply store a spell so that once we've expended the same spell, we can just call the magical power from the spellpool to replace what we've cast, then our recovery time between battles might be significantly reduced."

So mechanically, what I'm suggesting is a combination between a Spellpool and psicrystals. Basically treat it like psicrystal PP storing, but for magic. You can pump X number of spell levels into it for retrieval later. I know there's a few things that let you do similar things; Heward's Fortifying Bedroll lets you shortcut the prepare/ready spells, Spellstoring and Greater Spellstoring, then resting to regain spells is a thing (though shifty as hell), Retrieve Spell lets you swap turns for spells (for Divine), and I think there's a spell or feat that lets Arcane casters trade two spells of a lower level for one of a higher level. Those all sort of do the same thing, but what I'm proposing is having a single pool for everyone to store their stuff into instead of maintaining it separately. I'd also say that, like the normal Spellpool, it should be communal, but if you pull more than you put in, you rack up a debt that needs to be paid at some point.

[Anastasia]

"It's technical and complex," Tepen agrees, "I would suggest that we look into it and decide how viable it is."

Gisfal nods, "In that case, I think we're done, unless there's any thing anyone else wants to bring up?"

[Ebiris]

"I think we've covered the essentials," Afina agrees, getting up.

[Iron Dragoon]

"I agree. Anything else major?"

[Anastasia]

"That's it for now," Gisfal says.

Ready to move on, you two? If so, to what?

[Ebiris]

I'll let Gulba know I'm free to attend a soiree for her so we can schedule around that, and if she has nothing immediately ahead I'll be free to go fight a 'loth with Jaela.