GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 19: Incantation Magic

[Pseudonym]

Originally Posted by Celjabba

Bought, skimmed ... nice. very nice.

Congratulations to the authors on their first book !

One detail I wonder about :the casting time table.
did anyone in the playtests managed to get a (playable) ritual that need more than 6 effect ? let alone 13+ ?

Adept does seem very cheap for its effect, but the need for field caster to fully use it probably mitigate that ... and raising incantation gift and energy reserve are probably bigger priorities... choices, choices !

On that subject, could an incantation be used to replenish energy reserve ?

Reducing casting time has huge benefits. If your default casting time is 5 minutes, and adept takes that to five seconds, even if you never have to cast something in five seconds, you can now take a bunch of time penalty to get back to five minutes as a huge bonus to skill.

And magic is almost never able to help magic, so the same way you can't sacrifice hp magically bestowed for spells, you can't for energy reserve.

[Dolarre]

Bought and am slowly going through it. I like what I see, and am trying a trial run by creating a few spells. Unfortunately, I have a question and can't seem to find the answer.

If your spell requires elements from more than one path, which path skill to you roll for casting? The lowest? All of them, each in turn?

If someone could point me to the answer, I would greatly appreciate it.

To help see what I'm trying to do in full context, here is the spell I'm trying to create


Idiosyncratic Key

At the completion of the ritual you touch a lock with one hand and a steel key, perfectly fitted to that lock appears in the keyhole. A successful casting always results in a key, but an addition roll against IQ is required to see if the key will turn. Effective or not, the key can be removed and lasts for 5 minutes.

Sense protection 2SP
Create elementalism 6SP
Create Mesmerism 6SP
Duration: 5 minutes 5SP
Altered Trait: background knowledge (professional skill: locksmith) 1SP
Bestows bonus (single) +6: professional skill: locksmith - only to create key 16SP

Total 36SP -3 to cast Casting time: 30 minutes

(A caster with the skill could drop that to 19SP, -1 to cast, and 10 minutes to cast by eliminating the altered trait, bestow bonus and create mesmerism)


I just can't figure out what Path to roll against . . .

[Celjabba]

Originally Posted by Dolarre

Bought and am slowly going through it. I like what I see, and am trying a trial run by creating a few spells. Unfortunately, I have a question and can't seem to find the answer.

If your spell requires elements from more than one path, which path skill to you roll for casting? The lowest? All of them, each in turn?

If someone could point me to the answer, I would greatly appreciate it.

To help see what I'm trying to do in full context, here is the spell I'm trying to create


Idiosyncratic Key

At the completion of the ritual you touch a lock with one hand and a steel key, perfectly fitted to that lock appears in the keyhole. A successful casting always results in a key, but an addition roll against IQ is required to see if the key will turn. Effective or not, the key can be removed and lasts for 5 minutes.

Sense protection 2SP
Create elementalism 6SP
Create Mesmerism 6SP
Duration: 5 minutes 5SP
Altered Trait: background knowledge (professional skill: locksmith) 1SP
Bestows bonus (single) +6: professional skill: locksmith - only to create key 16SP

Total 36SP -3 to cast Casting time: 30 minutes

(A caster with the skill could drop that to 19SP, -1 to cast, and 10 minutes to cast by eliminating the altered trait, bestow bonus and create mesmerism)


I just can't figure out what Path to roll against . . .

Answer is on pg 21 below the box

[Dolarre]

Originally Posted by Celjabba

Answer is on pg 21 below the box

Thank you so much! I was looking under the casting section. I should have taken the time to read the pdf in its entirety.

[Diomedes]

Something I've been wondering: why does the Invoker have an Unusual Background? As far as I recall, only the psionic templates have UB's, and psi is harder to directly counter. Invocation Magic is explicitly vulnerable to standard Counterspell and Ward spells, and seems no more esoteric than, say, Sorcery.

[Pseudonym]

I just reviewed the book here in detail.

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by Ternas

Y'all are like vampires sucking my wallet dry. Already pledged for the DF set and all, and now you've got this.

But heckfire, after a quick skim through the book it's VERY nice to see an official Non-Pyramid alternative to the basic magic system in Dungeon Fantasy.

Unfortunately not having a lot of experience with RPM and all that, I'm going to have weeks worth of reading and experimentation to figure out what all everything means and how it all actually works (not that that's a bad thing). I will be completely honest and say that I was hoping for more of a DF Sorcery supplement though.

It's been streamlined pretty heavily. Shouldn't be *too* hard.

Originally Posted by The_Ryujin

While I am not a huge fan of Dungeon Fantasy... I am in the market for variant magic systems for a campaign I've been working on for a while (I want there to be several "classes" of magic users, each one that uses their own variant)... and, well, someone has to help my man support his writing habit :D

Guess I know where eight of my dollars are going after I get paid tomorrow

Thanks, man! I appreciate that. I know Toni does too. :-)

Originally Posted by philosophyguy

How does the tone of this system fit in a streamlined version of other genres (like Action)? Do some of the systemwide assumptions only make sense in a Dungeon Fantasy context, or is the system itself relatively genre-neutral?

Actually, you could totally use it in other systems. The system assumptions are obvious to anyone that's played either DF or used RPM before. This was inteniton all: we wanted the changes to be transparent to old hands at RPM and that the system was obviously just like the rest of DF magic to those familiar with DF only.

Originally Posted by kmunoz

I'm in the same boat. I'm building a fantasy campaign world (world, not land) and need as many magic systems as I can grab, to spread out flavor across an entire planet. I can never get enough variant magic, as long as it's sufficiently detailed to be low-fiat.

:-) Thank you!

Originally Posted by (E)

I am another fan of multiple magic systems, 14 major and 12 minor in my current world.

Holy crap.

Originally Posted by Celjabba

Bought, skimmed ... nice. very nice.

Congratulations to the authors on their first book !

Thanks, Celjabba! We worked out butts off. I hope it shows.

Originally Posted by Celjabba

One detail I wonder about :the casting time table.
did anyone in the playtests managed to get a (playable) ritual that need more than 6 effect ? let alone 13+ ?

My girlfriend managed seven in the early playtest. But I don't remember anything other than that. It's there as a "just in case" measure.

Originally Posted by Celjabba

On that subject, could an incantation be used to replenish energy reserve ?

No. This is "magic making you better at magic" and thus against the rules.

Originally Posted by Diomedes

Something I've been wondering: why does the Invoker have an Unusual Background? As far as I recall, only the psionic templates have UB's, and psi is harder to directly counter. Invocation Magic is explicitly vulnerable to standard Counterspell and Ward spells, and seems no more esoteric than, say, Sorcery.

Originally Posted by Celjabba

Adept does seem very cheap for its effect, but the need for field caster to fully use it probably mitigate that ... and raising incantation gift and energy reserve are probably bigger priorities... choices, choices !

So Adept is Ritual Adept (Time) and Field Caster is Ritual Adept (Space). Ritual Adept (Connection) is baked into the 15 point Unusual Background along with Magery 0. There was some talk about dropping it to 10 points...but considering what you're getting, 15 points is fair

Originally Posted by Pseudonym

I just reviewed the book here in detail.

Holy crap, dude. Thank you so much. But I'm confused by the following:

It also explains some of the fundamental assumptions of caster power-ups depend on having energy from which to cast, which exists for Incanters, but is much less useful, so it says not to worry about Energy Reserve. The book doesn't recommend any replacements though, I'd probably substitute more levels of talent.

The Incanter most specifically has Energy Reserve (Magical) on it's power-ups list. Like, it's the first thing....

[Pseudonym]

Originally Posted by Ghostdancer

The Incanter most specifically has Energy Reserve (Magical) on it's power-ups list. Like, it's the first thing....

I must have read it wrong then, or came up with a crazy interpretation, or maybe I was just inserting my own feelings that energy reserve seems like a total waste of character points. I'll revise in a bit.

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by Pseudonym

I must have read it wrong then, or came up with a crazy interpretation, or maybe I was just inserting my own feelings that energy reserve seems like a total waste of character points. I'll revise in a bit.

Thanks! It's not as great as for standard casters - but it IS useful. Especially if casting in the field.

[dbm]

I want this badly, but I think the KS needs the credit so I have to wait :-(

Serving the common good is hard!