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Old 05-25-2016, 07:47 AM   #5
Varyon
 
Join Date: Jun 2013
Default Re: Magic Revamp: Fast Recharge with Limited Pool

While I don't think everyone in The Elder Scrolls can use magic, it's certainly the case that every player character can. Extending this a bit, it should be appropriate to give every PC the free ER and Regeneration (ER Only), with mage characters spending extra points to boost their ER and/or Regeneration rate. All characters will be capable of at least some magic, at least at default level. Alternatively, if you don't want everyone to be capable of using magic, you can come up with alternative uses for their ER. I did something like this with my Soul Energy system - in that, everyone could use SP to reduce the price of Extra Effort, act without burning AP (from "The Last Gasp"), gain a temporary boost to Move, Damage, and BL, or heal more rapidly, while mages and specialists could get more utility out of it.

Back to The Elder Scrolls, from what I recall of the series you had a separate skill for each magic school, which dictated both what you could learn and how effective such spells were. Spells themselves you simply purchased (or found in the form of spellbooks) like gear, but once you had done so you knew the spell permanently, without need of carrying the books around with you or anything like that.

To mimic this in GURPS, Ritual Magic seems the closest match. You have a core "I know magic" skill (not present in TES), then subskills branching off of that to match each of the colleges/schools/whatever. Individual spells are Techniques on the main skill. However, a lot of GURPS spells aren't available (and perhaps shouldn't be available) in TES, and Basic Magic is infamous for its various issues, so it might be worthwhile to simply redesign all the spells. I'd suggest using Ritual Path Magic, but use the rules for the Effects Shaping variant (Pyramid #3/66). As an added bonus, that same Pyramid issue also has rules for making it so that only spells for which the character has Ritual Mastery can actually be cast - studying a spellbook thus allows you to purchase this trait*. I don't think there's an option to actually replace casting times with spending FP/ER, however, so you may need to figure some of that out. This assumes, of course, that you're trying to match TES magic, and not just the fast-regeneration of Magicka.

On that topic, I should note that GURPS isn't as fine grained as TES in this regard - TES characters start with something like 100 Magicka, while I'd expect your characters to start with ER 10 or so. You could have spells with fractional ER costs if you want, but that's probably more hassle than it's really worth. With that in mind, simple Fast Regeneration may be sufficient, with dedicated mages picking up Very Fast Regeneration if needed.

*I personally would replace Ritual Mastery with an equivalent of Dabbler - a single Perk allows you to cast 4 spells, but at no bonus. In fact, instead of just having a spellbook let you purchase the ability to use the spell, you can use the rules for Intensive Training (say the methods by which you learn a spell actually destroy the book - this would fit with the way it works in TES; in this case, the cost of the book replaces the need to hire a teacher). 25 hours of study (Intensive Training gives 1 character point per 100 hours, IIRC) grants you the ability to cast the spell.
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