GURPS Thaumatology: Sorcery

[Bruno]

Typing on my phone, bear with me.

Primary ability is sorcery, say at 50 points. I don't have the book yet but this will do for examples. He has the healing spell, and let's say two others costing 10 each.

Sorcery. 50
Healing. 32
Foo. 10÷5=2
Bar. 10÷5=2
Total is 86 points.

New list:
Sorcery. 50
Illusion. 42
Healing. 32÷5=7
Foo. 10÷5=2
Bar. 10÷5=2
Total is 103 points.

You have to pay the difference to buy the power; otherwise you haven't finished paying for it and you need a limitation or something.

[Bruno]

Got myself a keyboard and a monitor, so I don't have to squint or type with one finger, bleh.

Originally Posted by Bruno

Typing on my phone, bear with me.

Primary ability is sorcery, say at 50 points. I don't have the book yet but this will do for examples. He has the healing spell, and let's say two others costing 10 each.

Sorcery. 50
Healing. 32
Foo. 10÷5=2
Bar. 10÷5=2
Total is 86 points.

New list:
Sorcery. 50
Illusion. 42
Healing. 32÷5=7
Foo. 10÷5=2
Bar. 10÷5=2
Total is 103 points.

You have to pay the difference to buy the power; otherwise you haven't finished paying for it and you need a limitation or something.

The points difference to buy your new spell is 17 points. If you payed 42, you over payed. If you payed 10, you underpayed.

Contrast a standard sorcerer with only one slot:

Sorcery. 50
Healing. 32÷5=7
Foo. 10÷5=2
Bar. 10÷5=2
Total is 61 points.

New list:
Sorcery. 50
Illusion. 42÷5=9
Healing. 32÷5=7
Foo. 10÷5=2
Bar. 10÷5=2
Total is 70 points. Difference is 9 points for the new spell, which matches with the expected cost. Yay, math works!

Having two primary slots is a little complicated because you have to do this little song-and-dance when you get a "more better" top spell.

[weby]

Originally Posted by Rigil_Kent

Scenario question: The Simultaneous Rules on page 8 clearly spell out that you have to pay the full cost for your most expensive spell in order to focus multiple spells ... but how do you adjudicate a situation where a caster picks up a newer, more expensive spell after the fact?

So, our caster has a handful of spells, the most expensive of which happens to be Minor Healing (p17), which is 32 points for full price. He pays this amount in points cause he wants to be able to do 2 simultaneous spells. Later, in the course of adventuring, he picks up Complex Illusion (p18) which has a full cost of 42 pts for level 1 + 12.5 pts/additional level. So 10 points difference. What happens to his simultaneous casting? I'm guessing that our caster just pays the full cost difference between previous older spell and newer one if he just wants to be able to focus on a pair of spells instead of three, but what happens in the interim should he not have the points to do so?

My house rule would be "Your simultaneous casting works exactly like it did, but neither spell can be the newer, more expensive spell until you pay the point difference" but I wanted to see what the community thought.

By the rules for multiple active abilities in alternative abilities (Power ups 8:limitations page 8), you must pay for the highest ability. That is they would not be able to use the second slot until it was high enough and only have one ability active at time.

In my house rules they are limited to the maximum of the second spell in point value in in the second slot.

Thus say they have 50 points sorcery(highest) and 50+45 point+40 point+35 point spells: And have paid the full 45 points for the highest spell so they could have 2 spells at the same time.

Then when they get a new 50 point spell:
-By RAW they could only use one spell at maximum 50 points.
-By your house rule they could not use the 50 point spell at all but have 2 of the lower.
-By my house rules they could use the 50 point spell only in the primary slot and the maximally 45 point spell in the secondary slot.

In fact in my games power users often have deliberate lower level slots like that.

[Dragondog]

Bruno's got it right. You pay the difference between the new ability and the old ability. As well as the new, lower, cost of the old ability.

[Rigil_Kent]

Originally Posted by weby

By your house rule they could not use the 50 point spell at all but have 2 of the lower.

No, you misunderstand my statement - my fault. Should have phrased it differently. My house rule in this case would have been "You can use the more expensive spell by itself, but cannot use it alongside other spells using the Simultaneous rules. All of the other spells that you have been using before this, you can use with the Simultaneous rules. Pay the difference between previous most expensive spell and new one, and you can use Simultaneous rules with all spells."

Does that make more sense?

[weby]

Originally Posted by Rigil_Kent

No, you misunderstand my statement - my fault. Should have phrased it differently. My house rule in this case would have been "You can use the more expensive spell by itself, but cannot use it alongside other spells using the Simultaneous rules. All of the other spells that you have been using before this, you can use with the Simultaneous rules. Pay the difference between previous most expensive spell and new one, and you can use Simultaneous rules with all spells."

Does that make more sense?

So in that case my examples above:
-By your house rule they could use the 50 point spell but that blocks the other slots when in use.

If I understood correctly?

[Rigil_Kent]

Originally Posted by weby

So in that case my examples above:
-By your house rule they could use the 50 point spell but that blocks the other slots when in use.

If I understood correctly?

Yeah. Until they pay the difference, in which case everything goes back to normal in terms of Simultaneous.

[Dragondog]

Originally Posted by Rigil_Kent

Scenario question: The Simultaneous Rules on page 8 clearly spell out that you have to pay the full cost for your most expensive spell in order to focus multiple spells ... but how do you adjudicate a situation where a caster picks up a newer, more expensive spell after the fact?

So, our caster has a handful of spells, the most expensive of which happens to be Minor Healing (p17), which is 32 points for full price. He pays this amount in points cause he wants to be able to do 2 simultaneous spells. Later, in the course of adventuring, he picks up Complex Illusion (p18) which has a full cost of 42 pts for level 1 + 12.5 pts/additional level. So 10 points difference. What happens to his simultaneous casting? I'm guessing that our caster just pays the full cost difference between previous older spell and newer one if he just wants to be able to focus on a pair of spells instead of three, but what happens in the interim should he not have the points to do so?

My house rule would be "Your simultaneous casting works exactly like it did, but neither spell can be the newer, more expensive spell until you pay the point difference" but I wanted to see what the community thought.

Let me see if I got this right. Your house rule allows a player to pick up a new ability for free, but he cannot use other spells at the same time as he uses it, until he has paid for it?

As Bruno showed, the point cost difference between the new and old ability is not all you have to pay. You also have to pay the 1/5 cost of the old ability, otherwise you've only paid for the new ability and gotten the old one for free.

[Rigil_Kent]

Originally Posted by Dragondog

Let me see if I got this right. Your house rule allows a player to pick up a new ability for free, but he cannot use other spells at the same time as he uses it, until he has paid for it?

No. I was presuming the player in question paid the 1/5 cost but I had forgotten about how just paying the point difference between new and old would result in a freebie. Essentially, the scenario would be:

• Caster has handful of spells, including Minor Healing
• Character pays entire cost for Minor Healing (32) as it is the most expensive spell and he wants to do Simultaneous focus.
• Character later picks up Complex Illusion (8.4 becomes ... 9? pts)
• There is a difference of 10 points between the two spells full price.
• My House Rule would say that character must pay 10 pts (difference between Minor Healing & SPELL) plus 1/5 cost of Minor Healing (7? 6?) to use Simultaneous focus with all spells. Until then, the caster could use Complex Illusion by itself, or continuing using the other spells with Simultaneous focus. Providing they aren't new as well.

I just wasn't sure if there was an official ruling or anything.

[dataweaver]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

Sorcery is a worked example of one possible framework for implementing magic-as-powers. Mechanically, it's based on Modular Ability for improvising spells, and Alternate Abilities to that MA for some few spells that you want to know really well. Like Psi Powers, it shows you one way to make the existing rules work for you. It differs from Psi Powers in that it has more focus on the magic system -- the net result of the infrastructure that was built -- and less on cataloging individual abilities (spells).

That said: what Known Spells we have been given have universally been patterned after spells from GURPS Magic; and the expectation is that this will continue for as long as there's enough interest to justify writing more of them. And the Known Spells are easily decoupled from Sorcery, if you want to use some other framework for implementing magic-as-powers.

I would love to get a series akin to GURPS Spaceships out of this — say, a series of pdfs that catalog related sets of Known Spells that are modeled after spells from GURPS Magic, with each volume covering a handful of related Colleges (so you can do it in under ten supplements).