02-19-2023, 07:35 PM | #11 | |
Join Date: Jun 2022
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Re: Confused about spells with high energy cost
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02-19-2023, 07:47 PM | #12 |
Join Date: Jun 2013
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Re: Confused about spells with high energy cost
Thaumatology suggests not allowing creatures created by spells to provide energy as sacrifices, I'd apply that to ceremonial casting as well. That doesn't mean all undead created through magic would be so restricted - if that mage's legion of zombies (or whatever) were built as an Ally Group, so long as they have FP to contribute I don't see an issue with them being able to do so. That implies undead with a lot more investment by the caster than "I cast Zombie on its corpse," of course.
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02-19-2023, 08:17 PM | #13 | |
Join Date: Aug 2007
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Re: Confused about spells with high energy cost
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So you do the Wish before hand and use it when needed. Pentagram is similar though less mobile. Prepare your Pentagram before you need it. Summon Demon requires a minimum of 5 minutes but can be managed by a single Mage with a 10 pt Powerstone (and some serious mental Disadvantages, summoning Demons is almost always a bad idea). Making the demon do your bidding is covered in the Summon Spell. Solidify is normally meant for use _by_ insubstantial beings like Ghosts rather than demons and in the supplement where the spell first appeared ghosts with large energy reserves were possible. Humans using it normally need helpers and/or powerstones or other means and they're probably trying to get rid of the insubstantial being. If you're trying to get a demon to do something for you while it's substantial summon a substantial demon to begin with. I think there are rules about sacrifices in Thamatology.
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Fred Brackin |
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02-19-2023, 08:47 PM | #14 | |
Join Date: Sep 2019
Location: UK
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Re: Confused about spells with high energy cost
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In addition to those spells possibly being useful for NPCs, there are more kinds of gameplay in GURPS than dungeon delving. Sometimes you're playing a combat scene and spend half an hour playing out a combat that takes less than a minute in game time, sometimes you're exploring a dungeon in somewhere near real time, sometimes you're outlining in a few minutes what your characters do in a week of downtime. Some of those spells seem to be more "downtime" and/or "getting together what's needed for this spell is a mini-quest in itself" spells. Take the example of a PC wizard in a typical Dungeon Fantasy game. If for some reason he really did have a particular reason for Summoning a demon and imprisoning it in a Pentagram, and he didn't have a Powerstone big enough to do that, then the thing to do might be to wait until the party gets back to town and try and convince a lot of people to help him do a Ceremonial Casting, or lend him a big enough Powerstone. (I mean, he has a good reason for doing this, right? ...right? :-D ) If he is trying to cast it on the spot during a dungeon delve (and doesn't have a big enough Powerstone), on the other hand, then unless you're using house rules he may be out of luck - that particular spell just seems to be one of the ones in GURPS that are written with a high enough energy cost to require a lot of preparation to pull off. They're supposed to be too big to cast ad hoc with two minutes' notice. Mind you, in Dungeon Fantasy, which seems to have fewer inhibitions than some GURPS settings, it seems like it's often taken for granted that a big chunky Powerstone is standard gear for wizards, to overcome some of the usual limitations on throwing magic around like it's going out of fashion. I'm not sure whether quite as big as 50 FP is usual or not, though.
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02-19-2023, 09:16 PM | #15 | |
Join Date: Aug 2007
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Re: Confused about spells with high energy cost
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It looks like a racket to me but all DF casters are assumed to be doing it.
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Fred Brackin |
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02-19-2023, 11:28 PM | #16 | |
Join Date: Aug 2018
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Re: Confused about spells with high energy cost
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I'm picturing groups of otherwise useless allies amassed solely for the 1fp/ally reason, but they're probably bait for mass death at the hands of enemies. I think some have also posited before that someone should need sapient IQ so that a cat lady can't use her dozen housecats for a free 12 FP. Basically to lend your free will to a spell you probably need some basic understanding of what magic is, like maybe a default roll on the Thaumatology skill? |
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02-20-2023, 12:21 AM | #17 | |
Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: The Athens of America
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Re: Confused about spells with high energy cost
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02-20-2023, 10:29 AM | #18 | |
Join Date: Jun 2006
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Re: Confused about spells with high energy cost
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These spells were mostly written before there were ways for PCs to access more than a dozen or so energy at a time (and indeed their existence was probably the main motivating factor in people coming up with ways of having more energy available, no matter how much that broke the balance of the magic system..). So no, they were never priced on an assumption you were going to have one of those ways available - those didn't [exist] in the rules when the spells were priced. In hindsight it was a bad decision to try to do this with "impossibly high" energy costs and not say an expensive material component or a required character point expenditure, but neither the costs nor the host of workarounds to raise excessive energy are going to change officially, probably not even if there were a major rework of the magic system that we lost the chance on thanks to the lack of a decent Magic playtest.
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02-20-2023, 11:11 AM | #19 | |
Join Date: Jul 2008
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Re: Confused about spells with high energy cost
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That isn't to say there's no way to change that, of course.
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02-20-2023, 02:11 PM | #20 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Austin, TX
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Re: Confused about spells with high energy cost
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In modern DFRPG, casting large spells is surprisingly easy. A 50 point Power Item costs less than $75,000 - well past the budget of a starting PC but well within budget for any moderately large organization like a town or city. And that's before dealing with ceremonial magic or wizards with stupidly large Energy reserves, which can canonically go up to 20, on top of the 21 FP that a wizard can have at character creation.
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