Magery and Necromancy

[AllenOwen]

Is there a way to make the Necromantic college spells Corrupting?

I was thinking of doing this:
You buy Magery X for all other spells, but if you want spells from the Necromantic college, you have to buy Magery with a Limitation of One College Only and Corrupting separately, so that a mage who wants to delve into such dark arts has to buy two levels of Magery. But is there a better way?

[Plane]

Originally Posted by AllenOwen

Is there a way to make the Necromantic college spells Corrupting?

I was thinking of doing this:
You buy Magery X for all other spells, but if you want spells from the Necromantic college, you have to buy Magery with a Limitation of One College Only and Corrupting separately, so that a mage who wants to delve into such dark arts has to buy two levels of Magery. But is there a better way?

I guess you could define Magery as "all but one college" but I don't know if it'd be worth any discount points: Thaumatology 25 gives -10% if magery works on just 4 colleges, so you might be able to swing -5% for 5 colleges, but 6+ is probably -0% unless you want to deal with the murky world of non-5 modifiers, keeping in mind that it needs to be a 20% increment to save a point on magery 0 (10 or 5 on magery 1 or 2)

T42 fluctuates "One College" discount if you fluctuate total college number so "Multiple Colleges" would fluctuate with that too but doesn't say how to scale those.

Corrupting (H22) is a weird limitation which provides a fixed discount but with effects depending on the ability it applies to: corruption you gain per use is points you saved on the purchase.

-20% on Magery 0 saves 1 point, meaning you could be at 1 corruption per minute of use.

Another approach is to take the Corrupting ENHANCEMENT (on a disadvantage) where you suffer corruption for failing a control roll: and then limit your Necromantic Magery w/ Required Disadvantage so that failing the control role is the only way to use necromancy.

I just wish there was some kind of advantage related to USING corruption. If you want to use Black Magic then you need to take the "pact with a demon" perk (T94 also does that for spirit-assisted magic) but it seems like there isn't this for using corruption in place of energy.

As it's pretty powerful (you can use it to make your first powerstone, for example) to be a "Corrupt magus" (H147: up to 6x Magery free points... sorry Magery 0, maybe +3 for you?) as for an enchanter (who needs magery 3 anyway) you're talking about +18 energy meaning you could do a powerstone or a non-valuable manastone without needing assistants contributing energy.

Taking on a point of corruption might be better than paying with a point of HP too when FP runs low: there's no skill penalty for doing that, and penance clears FOUR points of corruption per day, as opposed to making an HT 10 roll every 2 days to get an HP back.

[AllenOwen]

I guess what I am asking is if there is a way to make Necromancy (and Daemonology) come with a terrible price without making all magic dangerous?

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by AllenOwen

I guess what I am asking is if there is a way to make Necromancy (and Daemonology) come with a terrible price without making all magic dangerous?

Inflict a Divine Curse on Necromancers?

[Rolando]

As spells availability is something that depends on the campaign (and GM) the Necromantic college can be a secret college.

So, they are not necessarily corrupting but to learn them you have to make some pact or learn them from corrupted and corrupting sources, like corrupting books, demons, dark spirits, corrupt mages that will teach you with the corrupting techniques they learned, etc.

Other option is that Necromantic college is secret and corrupting, so, you get corruption based in the amount of points you invest in necromantic college spells. Something like 1pt of disadvantages per spell or per 3 points in necromantic spells of fraction.

But the most important part is that spells are not available for everyone all the time, the availability depends on the campaign, setting, world and GM. So, some of them may have limits or conditions to learn or may not exist. Regeneration, Halt Aging and Youth for example are commonly restricted or don't exist in my campaigns; anything that deals with time and the technology spells (specially radiation) are also restricted in my average fantasy campaign.

[edk926]

The Magic book has a note on Black Magic in the Necromancy section. It might work for what you want to do.

[AlexanderHowl]

Is there any particular reason that you would to have the following useful Necromancy spells cause corruption: Final Rest, Sense Spirit, Summom Spirir, Materialize, Solidify, Affects Spirit, Turn Spirit, Turn Zombie, Command Spirit, Astral Vision, Strike Barren, Soul Jar, Banish, Resurrection, Entrap Spirit, Repel Spirit, and Astral Block? There are a lot of Necromancy spells that can deal with the undead/spirits and having them automatically cause corruption could cause issues.

Now, an interesting feature would be to automatically allow any Necromancy spell to optionally tap into corruption. For example, if someone was willing to accept -12 CP worth of disadvantages, they could easily cast Resurrection. It would make necromancer very dangerous when they are desperate enough though, which would give necromancers a bad reputation.

[RedMattis]

@AlexanderHowl
Agreed, it might be better to add a disadvantage (maybe a Divine Curse as Fred Brackin suggested) for people who invest in particular Necromancy spells, such as Zombie, Steal Youth, or Lich.

What GURPS classifies as Necromancy is really anything related to Death, including stuff like "Final Rest", which is a very holy cleric/paladin-esque kind of spell.

[David Johnston2]

Personally, I like styles. Corruption could be an element of an evil style.

[finn]

Originally Posted by AllenOwen

I guess what I am asking is if there is a way to make Necromancy (and Daemonology) come with a terrible price without making all magic dangerous?

A GM could just declare that Necromancy causes Corruption in that particular world. I see no reason to adjust the point value of traits such as Magery.