High mana and recover energy

[Michael Thayne]

I was flipping through my DFRPG books, particularly the sections dealing with mana, sanctity, etc., looking to see if they had any added guidelines for where high/low mana zones should appear. I found something that surprised me: high mana AFAICT doesn't let people with Magery 0 cast spells in DFRPG. Instead, it makes Recover Energy more effective. I rather like this change—is it a rules switch that's been published before? I'm also curious as to whether there's any other noteworthy rules changes of this general nature I should keep an eye out for.

[Michael Thayne]

As I've thought about this more, I wonder why high mana/sanctity doesn't just give a bonus to spell-casting. That's how nature's strength works, that's how aspected mana works, so why doesn't high mana work that way?

[Plane]

Found what you mean on page 7 of Spells. Sounds good, I'd like to use both this and the classic rule so that both muggles/mages get some benefit from High Mana instead of just one or the other.

Do you think this benefit would still apply when in a Very High mana place? Seems like it ought to...

Pg 8's "Wizardly Recover Energy does nothing" is especially brutal, I don't recall classic GURPS working that way, just that the -5 to skill might reduce it below the necessary 15 needed.

If High Mana gave a bonus you might expect Very High to give a bigger bonus, but that could decrease failures and the subsequent outcome of normal failures becoming critical ones.

If you were going to give access to higher skill, rather than it just being a free bonus, it should probably be a bit of a gamble. GURPS Powers had a couple options for doing that. Pg 160 you could use "Trading Fatigue for Effect" to get a chance to boost magery on a successful will roll (tough penalties though) for 1 full minute. Crit failure means losing your magery for a while (you crippled the ability) so it's not risk-free.

pg 161 "Trading Fatigue for Skill" which gives a guaranteed +1 per FP (max +4 for 4 FP) with no chance of crippling your magery, but only on a single roll. It seems fair for boosting low-cost skills but this would be broken for stuff like Enchantment, luckily Dungeon Fantasy doesn't use that.