What is wrong with GURPS Magic?

[Centisteed]

It seems just about every thread I read, GURPS Magic
is not being used, but instead it's Thaumatology, Monster
Hunters, Supers, alternative homebrew...basically
anything other than GURPS Magic. So what's wrong
with it?

[nanoboy]

It's a rehash of GURPS Magic and GURPS Grimoire from 3rd Edition. Indeed, many spells are not adjusted to the 4th Edition rules. (One example that comes to mind is the light spell that creates a laser. That spell does Imp Burn damage, like you see lasers doing in 3rd Edition, whereas it should do tight beam Burn damage, as lasers do in 4th Edition.)

Also, it is not especially flexible as written. It sort of fulfills the role of magic for traditional fantasy RPGs. A lot of people find that using magic-as-powers, realms-based magic, or path/book magic is simply more appropriate for their settings.

[Polydamas]

The main problems are that some rules were not updated to GURPS 4e, and that the spell list requires a lot of trimming in order to make it work for any one setting. Exactly which spells ruin a typical dungeon fantasy setting is a topic for heated debate! David Pulver's comments are polite and well balanced.

It also feels neither generic nor flavourful to me, and the enchantment system is particularly bland.

[ULFGARD]

there are manhy that don't like it... I am not among them, but it is a grab bag. It works well for me since the publication of Magical Styles. Stles provide logical groupings of spells, alternat prerequisite chains, etc. Tweaking the background system, too, is a bit of a hobby in and of itself. But there's nothing wrong with the system.

[ErhnamDJ]

I think almost all of the problems with Magic, as for how it functions in play, aren't a result of the system itself, but of three different things that compound much smaller issues that would be easier to deal with. Those problems are:

1) The pricing and casting times of individual spells. Something like Create Animal or Youth need not destroy any setting they're placed in. They do so only because of their prices and how long they take to cast. Change those things and they're fine, unless they're combined with...

2) Ceremonial Casting, which removes any kind of limit to casting the spells based on their fatigue costs.

3) The price reductions for high skill. These allow people to cast spells over and over and over. Someone being able to cast a spell twenty times a day might not ruin a setting, but them casting it five hundred times might. This also incentivizes people to get their skill levels as high as possible and to rely almost entirely on spells that they can cast for free. It divorces the system from the fatigue mechanism, which is supposed to limit it.


I think you could fix most of those by increasing the fatigue cost of most of the spells, removing ceremonial casting, and getting rid of the high skill fatigue reductions.

Then there is the issue of how it alters the metagame character creation process, which is more than I feel like getting into.

[ericthered]

I would say that the issue is Magic is not a completed system: its a starting point, and to use it involves a decent amount of work pruning which spells are appropriate and if they have the right price.

Magic as written does have the issue that you want to have most spells at 15, which encourages small and specialized spell lists. The effects are relatively rigid, and emulate other RPG's quite well.

except it seems that GURPS players are here looking for "something different". GURPS is about simulation, and quite frankly, what magic simulates is magic spells from other RPGS (actually, its a compromise position between those and fiction, but the element is quite strongly there). The other systems are focused on simulating fiction, which is what grabs attention around here.

[combatmedic]

I think it's just fine as is. I liked it in 3E too.

But some guys need or want something else for their campaigns.

[Flyndaran]

It's overly rigid with many many intrinsic assumptions that are nearly impossible to adjust. It's the least generic or universal of all Gurps.
It is better than the vast majority of spell systems out there. But Gurps is of such high quality that that becomes damning with faint praise.

[Kalzazz]

I just flat out dislike the idea of 'I buy each spell seperately! With CP!'

I am quite happy using the spells in Magic with Modular Abilities, Ritual Magic, or wildcard Magic!, just not in the 'I put 1 CP in each spell I want'

Also it means as a DM I cant very well give out spells as loot. I mean, I _can_ but 'you find a book of X' isnt to cool when you need to burn CP to learn X from the book

The spells themselves overall work great

[B9anders]

The standard system ok. Although you'll probably need thaumatology to tweak it into what you want.

But compare it to something like ritual path magic from Thaumatology and Monster Hunters (and the much anticipated supplement: Ritual Path Magic), and it simply blows it out of the water in terms of flavour, style and stuff you can tweak to get the feeling you want for your setting.

I think, and hope, that ritual path magic will evolve into the de facto magic system when and if there is ever a 5th edition. Time has not been especially kind to the standard magic system and the fact it barely even received a polish for 4th edition doesn't help.