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Old 10-03-2016, 03:12 PM   #1
Apollonian
 
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Shoreline, WA (north of Seattle)
Default Ritual Path Magic & Rolling For Decans

I'm trying to hash out a GURPS Cabal campaign document using W.A. Frick's excellent Hunting the Cabal article in Pyramid 58 as well as Thaumatology: Ritual Path Magic, and I've run into a snag regarding the decanic modifiers. Specifically, I want to use the Rolling For Decans shortcut for those times when the players (or I) don't want to spend the time scraping together the proper correspondences for a ritual. As written, the caster just makes a Thaumaturgy roll and applies the margin of success as a modifier to his actual spellcasting... but that looks like it was based on the original write up of Sephiroth/decanic modifiers in Monster Hunters 1 and Thaumatology. T:RPM does it a little differently; namely, the decanic modifiers are calculated up to provide an energy discount on the cost of the spell, but don't add to the actual spellcasting roll. (At least, near as I can make out.)

So here's my problem: I want to be able to replace the decanic modifiers with a simple Thaumaturgy roll, but I need a reasonable formula, table, or other method for turning Margin of Success into a discount ranging from -1 to -45%. This method shouldn't be better than actually going out and doing the math, but it shouldn't punish players who don't want to take the time to do so.

My initial thought is something like "Roll Thaumaturgy. Multiply your margin of success by -5; this gives you the % discount on the cost of the ritual, to a maximum of -35%. On a critical failure, you are at -1 to casting the spell, as you've inadvertently included correspondences that oppose the ritual's intent." Are there any pitfalls to this ruling that I might be overlooking, or can someone offer a more elegant solution?
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Old 10-03-2016, 04:02 PM   #2
Christopher R. Rice
 
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Default Re: Ritual Path Magic & Rolling For Decans

That seems workable...but a 35% discount is huge - and you're already invested in Thaumatology because of the system itself. I'd give maybe 1% to 2.5% per point of margin, at most.
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Old 10-03-2016, 04:15 PM   #3
Kalzazz
 
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Default Re: Ritual Path Magic & Rolling For Decans

Hmm, there is only 10 possible values you can roll other than fail, crit fail, and crit success
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Old 10-03-2016, 05:52 PM   #4
Emerald Cat
 
Join Date: Oct 2015
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Default Re: Ritual Path Magic & Rolling For Decans

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ghostdancer View Post
That seems workable...but a 35% discount is huge - and you're already invested in Thaumatology because of the system itself. I'd give maybe 1% to 2.5% per point of margin, at most.
An expert in Thaumatology (i.e. skill-15) would on average have a discount of 5% to 12.5% under these rules. Considering that this scales well with the energy requirement of the spells, most experts would find this worthwhile. Otherwise, this would be a needless complication.

However, I'd rather use a less awkward percentage discount. To achieve this, I would give a discount of 5% per 2 full points in the mage's margin of success. For an expert mage, this would give a 10% discount, on average.
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Old 10-03-2016, 05:59 PM   #5
Christopher R. Rice
 
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Default Re: Ritual Path Magic & Rolling For Decans

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Originally Posted by Emerald Cat View Post
An expert in Thaumatology (i.e. skill-15) would on average have a discount of 5% to 12.5% under these rules. Considering that this scales well with the energy requirement of the spells, most experts would find this worthwhile. Otherwise, this would be a needless complication.

However, I'd rather use a less awkward percentage discount. To achieve this, I would give a discount of 5% per 2 full points in the mage's margin of success. For an expert mage, this would give a 10% discount, on average.
That seems like it could work as well.
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