[Magic] Resurrection

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Kenneth Latrans

The spell costs 300 energy to cast. I have a hard time seeing how it's supposed to be done.

So what am I missing here? ?

A few advanced options from Thaumatology. The ones not mentioned yet (I believe) are Paut and Raise Cone of Power.

Paut is probably the big one. A Mage can drink enough Paut in a day to temporarily (5 minutes) raise his FP by 6xST. Think of it as like chugging a 2 liter at 1 ounce per pt.

That gets you up to 70 FP per mage and a few modest Powerstones wil put you over the top with 4 mages or 3 Mages and a crowd or some combination thereof.

It's not a particularly cheap option at $25 a pt but it's starting to look competitive with the insurance prices I've been seeing lately. :)

[simply Nathan]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

Personally, I think Resurrection should cost 600 energy, bringing it closer to the 25-point cost of Extra Life.

And I think Extra Life should cost closer to 5-10 points than 25.

Originally Posted by roguebfl

Power Investiture counts as Margery for this Purpose too. and is very likely if you casting in a Temple. Especially a High Temple rather than some rural temple.

The assumptions in Magic are that this is being done by wizards, not by clerics. Getting together a bunch of people with Power Investiture is harder than getting together a bunch of people with Magery, especially in settings where the former does not exist. And people with both traits, who could help meaningfully with either casting, are vanishingly rare.

Originally Posted by roguebfl

And that limit of 3 is only if they don't know the spell a less than 15. If they know the spell at 15+ they like the main caster they are not limited.

This is a spell with a long prerequisite chain including the highest level of Magery for wizards, and -usually- requires a high level of Power Investiture for clerics (though GMs can be as arbitrary as they want about this as part of the latter trait's design). So you're going to have a lot more people with Magery or Power Investiture and don't know the spell who can contribute 3 energy rather than those that know the spell at 15+ and can give it their all.

Originally Posted by roguebfl

20 Acolytes provided 3 each plus 80 lay member of the congratulation is 140, nearly half way there.
5 Priest priests provided 20 each brings us to 240
1 High priest provided 40 and leading the circle gives use 280

What kind of city is going to have that many clergymen? Probably a lot bigger than any fantasy settlement I've run into. I'm used to a "big city" having about 1,000 people and most villages having <200 including adventurers at the inn, each settlement divided from the next by several days of travel through untamed monster-infested wilderness.



And as an aside, spell-casting clerics are one of the D&Disms I wanted to break away from which helped me get into GURPS (more so than class-and-level characters). Your demonstrations work as well for "Archmage" and "Wizard" as they do for "High Priest" and "Priest".

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Paut is probably the big one. A Mage can drink enough Paut in a day to temporarily (5 minutes) raise his FP by 6xST. Think of it as like chugging a 2 liter at 1 ounce per pt.

I thought Paut was a potion for restoring FP after it has been spent on magic...

[Blind Mapmaker]

Originally Posted by Kenneth Latrans

What kind of city is going to have that many clergymen? Probably a lot bigger than any fantasy settlement I've run into. I'm used to a "big city" having about 1,000 people and most villages having <200 including adventurers at the inn, each settlement divided from the next by several days of travel through untamed monster-infested wilderness.

Well, if you go by medieval standards 1,000 people would make a town, not a city and that's without magic and fantasy things. Sure you could go for a dark and gritty, monster-beset feel in your campaign, but often that would mean good-sized cities protecting their hinterland instead of little hamlets that get razed by every half-decent goblin horde. People who go for a typical "High Middle Ages with magic" feel are well justified to have cities with tens of thousands inhabitants. Cologne had 40,000, Paris 100,000 and there were many more that could support 5-digit numbers. Magic would make things even easier, just have a look at GURPS Thaumatology: Urban Magics. Many fantasy settings definitely use similar numbers.

Now, keep in mind that there were a lot more clergy in medieval times. Most city churches had at least two or three fully ordained priests, cathedrals had many, many more. Sometimes it's kind of hard to say how many, because there are a lot of lesser clergymen too. In a magical campaign you could say that not all of them have Power Investiture, but getting 20 or so together with a decently-sized congregation should not be an insurmountable problem for someone with money and influence.

Incidentally I just checked an old essay of mine for a society of minor nobles that regularly got about 100 priests together for their annual funeral masses. Those were held in cities like Nuremberg, Bamberg and Heidelberg, with 20,000, 10,000 and 5,000 inhabitants respectively. Now think what they would do to resurrect one of their number instead of just praying for his soul!

Having said all that, it really depends on your worldbuilding. I'm sure there are plenty of setting where getting more than half a dozen high-ranking priests together is a rare thing and of course polytheism tends to complicate things even more. I'm just saying GURPS Magic probably assumes a setting similar to what I outlined above.

[spacemonkey]

Originally Posted by Kenneth Latrans

I thought Paut was a potion for restoring FP after it has been spent on magic...

DF paut is restricted to replacing spent fp, normal GURPS paut can be used to store up extra fp.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Kenneth Latrans

A
What kind of city is going to have that many clergymen? Probably a lot bigger than any fantasy settlement I've run into. I'm used to a "big city" having about 1,000 people and most villages having <200 including adventurers at the inn, each settlement divided from the next by several days of travel through untamed monster-infested wilderness.

Well there's part of your problem. In a place with an economy like that, all kinds of things that require large markets or significant infrastructure are unavailable. That you can't buy a Resurrection is no more surprising an outcome of such a small scale fragmented economy than that you can't find a caravan of more than three wagons, a suit of plate armor, a shipyard that can build anything bigger than a rowboat, or a decent wine. And if you ignore the economics for those, well....

[Kromm]

Resurrection is a big, expensive fantasy spell for big, expansive fantasy settings. It isn't a good fit to folksy, low-population-density backgrounds. It's meant for worlds with London-sized magical metropolises, interventionist deities, and vast cash economies reminiscent of something from the Diablo series ("Here's your 10 million gold." "Here's your Archon Armor of the Nine Hells."). The people talking about assembling dozens or hundreds of priests for a ceremony, chugging paut, and treating a $250,000,000 gilded pyramid temple as a 300-point power item (recharged with $1,500 in sacrifices offered by the Grand High Hierophant) are on the right track.

If the GM wants to let PCs cast it rather than say "The Temple of Om can cast this for $X," then presumably she's running a high-powered game where coming back from the dead and casting 300-energy spells fit. In that case, any PC worth the title will have Magery 6+ or Power Investiture 6+, an Energy Reserve of 20 points, personal FP in the 10- to 20-point range, a power item or a Powerstone in the 40-point zone, paut as needed, and the willing support of a party of adventurers and henchmen. Four casters could pull this off in a day, recharge the next day, and be on their way the day after that.

If none of the above feels right, then a spell that "retcons" Extra Life onto a dead subject, costing him 25 points (possibly paid out of existing abilities), would be a reasonable compromise. Such a "Raise Dead" spell might have a far lower casting cost. For instance, the GM might go with the 25:1 stepdown factor implicit in Alter Visage, which costs 1,000 energy to enchant generically but just 40 energy to make permanent on a person who's paying points for Appearance. Call it 300/25 = 12 energy.