Elven Everyday Magic (widespread Magery)

[Railstar]

Hail and well-met once more.

I thought the archaic greeting might be appropriate.

Short version: In a society where everyone has Magery, what kind of spells would you see everyday? (assuming a conventional fantasy TL 3 or 4 setting)

For example, most elves have Magery. Any elf without Magery is seen as disabled. Specialists almost certainly use spells in their day-jobs. Homes are probably built using Shape spells, and so on. Plant growth is used to support a lot of forest gardens or other low-intensity farming. Improved materials like Mithril may be possible through spells like Essential Earth & Earth to Stone to create an Essential Metal. These are really neat, although those seem more like the work of specialists to me, especially since many of those spells have prerequisite counts.

My thought is more about the common person. What kind of spells would be widespread or commonplace to a wide variety of professions?

Thanks in advance.

[SCAR]

Assuming the standard GURPS Magic, you'd start with what spells have no prerequisites (and which were useful in daily life).

Purify Air, Ignite Fire, Seek Fire, Test Food, Seek Food, Light, Seek Plant (certainly among Elves), and Seek Water all seem likely choices.

With Magery 1, Detect Magic and Apportation would be useful, and Block, Counterspell, Magelock, Ward and Scryguard may be more common depending upon the laws and customs about the use of magic on others within the community.

After that spells with only 1 or 2 prerequisites which are commonly useful or Short Chains (see Thaumatology: Magical Styles) for spells useful to a particular profession.

You also have to consider whether the investment in time for a point in a spell is worth it compared to a point in a general skill, it might well depend upon how wide the skill and spells uses are.

[Andreas]

Magic is probably to dangerous to use for trival tasks. Especially for those with unexeptional IQ+Magery and only a few points in spells since that makes the risk of critical failure higher than for a skilled specialist.

Magic should probably be mostly used by specialist in fields where magic makes a large difference. For other people it may be appropriate to learn some spells for emergencies. For examples a healing spell for first aid and Great Haste for in case they are attacked.

[panton41]

When I make an Elf who's supposed to have domestic ability I always give them Cook, Season, Mature and Distill. They can make simple foods like stews that are seasoned well, raise bread in seconds (and I'd argue "Cook" could bake bread from prepared dough) and create beer, wine and hard liquors (add Season to that and you can make some pretty interesting drinks).

None of that is getting into Create Food, Create Water, Water into Wine, Essential Food and Essential Water. I'm mostly thinking routine domestic spells for use in times of plenty. I'd imagine Create Food would only be used during famine and emergencies and with liberal use of Bless Plant and various weather working spells famine is unlikely.

[panton41]

Originally Posted by Andreas

Magic is probably to dangerous to use for trival tasks. Especially for those with unexeptional IQ+Magery and only a few points in spells since that makes the risk of critical failure higher than for a skilled specialist.

Magic should probably be mostly used by specialist in fields where magic makes a large difference. For other people it may be appropriate to learn some spells for emergencies. For examples a healing spell for first aid and Great Haste for in case they are attacked.

Magic says nothing about taking extra time, but doesn't say you can't either so I don't see why you couldn't take the maximum amount of time allowed and take a substantial bonus. Not to mention there's no real pressure for routine domestic spellcasting so that's another bonus. Household spellcasting is probably little more risk than driving a car to work and most people (DX and IQ 10) do that at Default (Effective Skill 6) everyday.

A skill of 12 is considered Professional level because most people use it with no pressure and take tons of extra time.

[mhd]

Reminds me a lot of the old 3E Hedge Magic, where instead of asking what spells would help for certain professions/skills, it was deemed simpler to just "enhance" the skills themselves. Very free-form, though.

[Andreas]

Originally Posted by ciaran_skye

Magic says nothing about taking extra time, but doesn't say you can't either so I don't see why you couldn't take the maximum amount of time allowed and take a substantial bonus. Not to mention there's no real pressure for routine domestic spellcasting so that's another bonus. Household spellcasting is probably little more risk than driving a car to work and most people (DX and IQ 10) do that at Default (Effective Skill 6) everyday.

A skill of 12 is considered Professional level because most people use it with no pressure and take tons of extra time.

Magic might not say anything about it, but the Basic Set rules for taking extra time does. From page 346

Note that if a skill specifies time modifiers, these override the generic modifiers above. For instance, magic spells have their own rules for extra time (see Ceremonial Magic, p. 238) and cannot be rushed save by those with high skill (see Magic Rituals, p. 237).

There is pressure for domestic spellcasting. Not only does it take significant effort (unless you have high enough skill to cast without losing FP) which is wasted on failure, probablly more importantly there is always a significant risk of critical failure. A critical failure while driving does not necessarily have significant consequences (I would argue that it does not for the wast majority of cases).

[johndallman]

The Path/Book magic system has an example of this, “The Path of the People”. See box on p154 of Thaumatology.

[starslayer]

When I looked at 'what would a long lived magic using society' look like when to comes to elves, I ultimately arrived at enchanting.

An elf might only put together 2-5 enchanted items during there very long lives (and even then only as an assistant to a real enchanter), but those items are going to be passed down for gnerations.

Many enchanted items require magery to use them, but that's not an issue for elves.

A magically disabled elf might therefore find it impossible to actually work in elven society- ALL there water is magically created, or at least moved from the well, via a 'faucet' that is actually a rod of create/shape water. ALL there food is magically prepared and seasoned, ALL there washing is done via the clean spell. To an outside observer they live in some strange TL3/TL11 hybrid because the magical 'devices' are so common to there everyday existence that everyone has them. (magical items notably only 'work' or 'fail to work' so there is no constant stream of critical failures taking place).

Low value powerstones abound, who needs more then 5 points in a stone if your just going to use it for 1 spell and then go find another, and elves live in large houses so that they can make sure they are all spaced out to charge at full speed.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Andreas

Magic might not say anything about it, but the Basic Set rules for taking extra time does. From page 346


There is pressure for domestic spellcasting. Not only does it take significant effort (unless you have high enough skill to cast without losing FP) which is wasted on failure, probablly more importantly there is always a significant risk of critical failure. A critical failure while driving does not necessarily have significant consequences (I would argue that it does not for the wast majority of cases).

That is one of the very non generic setting specific features enshrined in Gurps magic. Magic shouldn't always be impossible for non-idiot commoners to perform.