How much (ER) Energy Reserve for Mage?

[Ze'Manel Cunha]

Originally Posted by oma

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On the opposite side, in your games how do people cast really expensive spells usually? Regeneration, Resurrection, etc. My 13 FP, say 5HP, My mana/powerstone of 10-15pts.

It seems that these spells are only cast as rituals, and then only by groups of mages or by a mage supported by 100 faithful townsfolk who wish to see the spell work.

With things like Ley Lines you can allow the mage can tap them for whatever power you want in the setting, see Thaumatology p.53.

I also often allow PC mages to cast Threshold spells, Thaumatology p.76, though in most settings I don't allow any threshold or recovery, so there's always an automatic calamity roll with usage.

[Witchking]

Originally Posted by oma

I'm sorry for not being more specific. Yes, it IS a Rifts game, the flavor anyway. Some of the templates have been toned down.


A Rogue Scientist, A Rogue Scholar, a Burster (pyrokinetic), a Line Walker (mage), and a Robot pilot.

The pilot and the burster do the heavy hitting. The scientist has the tech skills and the scholar is probably the face guy with contacts and such. Maybe some subterfuge skills.

In my limited experience, GURPS mages tend to have a lot of spells and the only thing that keeps them from dominating is the fact that they have severely limited resources.

I also have to be careful, because ley lines and nexuses decrease costs to use magic so that can add substantially more power at times.

IME I would not worry so much about the amount of energy available...out of combat there are a hatful of ways to work around ones personal power reserves...(FREX Ceremonial Casting, the Draw Power Spell and a Fusion Generator, and so on...)

I would be more concerned with what spells are going to be made available to the mage...If it is basically "Here is the Magic Book...buy the spells you want..." a good player can make that abusive fairly quickly...nevermind w/300 pts to play with...

Information Spells to nerf the Detectives and perhaps the Scientists...

Darkness, Communication, and Mind Control Spells can nerf the Thief/Face Types...

Defense Spells can reshape combat spells and make a homestead really secure...

Movement and Temporal spells can undermine a pilot...

Basically I would STRONGLY recommend a mechanic to Limit the Mage to a couple of speciality areas to keep them from putting 1 pt into 100 spells...

I discussed some of that in the following thread...

http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread...ght=mage+power

I'll quote my last post here...it sums up my experience with magic...

Originally Posted by me

Dgrm4...my biggest suggestion as to house rulings is to remove the assumption that "all mages can learn all spells."

For the last 20ish years I have run and played in an enviroment where magic was taught by Orders of Magic...most of which belong to the Umbrella organization...The College of Magic. A starting PC will pick one Order to belong to.

What that does is give a number of themes. Each order concentrates on 3-5 Colleges of Spells (they are required to take 50%+ of their spells from there) and have 1-3 Colleges that are in opposition to their teachings (ie no spells from there, mostly)...all the other Colleges are things they Can learn but their order does not specifically teach them. Also the top end spells in each college tend to be known to only the Orders that Specialize in that College...and they usually only teach them to members of their Orders. This balance of Order/NonOrder spells they must maintain throughout their career.

It needed some fiddling with prerequisites but it helps keep "all mages from looking the same." Mages from an order MAY look similiar but IIRC we have about 20ish Orders written up at this point.

It helps keep things interesting and it also clearly deliniates that the PC's are NOT the end all and be all of magic...they can go down to the College Chapter House to seek advice from those who actually are that.

So ideas like this can be worked out with Tham: Magical Styles and I would highly recommend it as it will keep PC mages from having a "Spell for Every Situation." The mage will still get plenty of milage from his points but there will be plenty of things outside his speciality that he will need other PC's or his own non magical skills for...

Good Luck

So again Good Luck