Pyramid #3/105: Cinematic Magic

[PK]

A fighter? How cute.
<floods arena with lightning>
Next challenger, please!

— Aravore, Gladiator Mage

In many settings, magic is an invisible, mysterious force -- something that underpins reality but never steps to the forefront -- which mages learn to manipulate to achieve subtle changes to reality.

This isn't about that kind of magic.

When you're ready to pull off some over-the-top rituals . . . when you're ready to dive headfirst into the cosmic pool of forbidden knowledge . . . when you're ready to kick butt and take names, you're ready for Pyramid #3/105: Cinematic Magic.

• Comic-book wizards have a style and flair all their own, and while GURPS Thaumatology: Sorcery gives you the power levels that you need to pull that off, only Super-Sorcery! goes a step beyond that to truly emulate the flexibility and unique trappings of four-color wizards.
  
  
• Speaking of Sorcery, have you ever wondered if it could emulate the cinematic skills and abilities of GURPS Martial Arts? Chi Sorcery shows that the answer is "Yes!" by turning Breaking Blow, Pressure Secrets, and all of your other favorite chambara skills into advantage-based abilities.
  
  
• Any necromancer worth their salt can bind the spirit or raise the corpse of a normal mortal, but when a god dies, only Theo-Necromancy will do. This month's Eidetic Memory presents concepts, rules, and a ton of adventure seeds for those who can't let that which is dead lie.
  
  
• With the right cookbook, an enterprising potion-brewer may be able to accomplish Gourmet Alchemy. This Modular-Ability-based framework uses Afflictions and Innate Attacks to produce potions with a wide variety of effects -- perfect for your crew of fantasy heroes.
  
  
• In fiction, fights between the main hero and villain can vary dramatically in difficulty, and Lights! Camera! Action! explains why. This Appendix Z provides rules for meta-magical access to the goodies in GURPS Power-Ups 5: Impulse Buys, affecting where and when main characters are truly "powered up."
  
  
• And we broke the mystic bonds imprisoning this month's Random Thought Table, which offers new ways to make acquiring magical power feel truly cinematic and special.

—

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Preview PDF: http://www.warehouse23.com/media/SJG37-2705_preview.pdf

[PK]

BTW, if anyone spots any errors or inconsistencies, blame me before blaming the authors. I made some last-minute revisions across several articles for better compatibility with the core rules.

[Phil Masters]

Fitting theo-necromancy into a Discworld RPG campaign is left as an exercise. Shouldn't actually be too hard.

[Christopher R. Rice]

Some designer's notes for my article.

[Raekai]

Chi Sorcery is beautiful and the time-limited attribute rolls make me so happy. It also looks like a good basis for emulating something like Incantation Magic from DF as powers. But, for something like that, I have a question. Can you increase the time for the time-limited attribute rolls? If I take Immediate Preparation Required, 10 minutes, -45%, does that make the time-limited attribute roll from -10 for 10 minutes to -0 for 320 minutes? Or do I prepare for a minute and then use the time-limited roll? Because I'd like to make the time-limited roll work with longer prep time.

[philosophyguy]

There's a lot of interesting ideas in this issue, and I'll post some reactions in a bit. On my initial read, there are some things that are not clear:

1) On page 4, I can't figure out the math for the extra effort example. Professor Arcana spends 5 extra FP (which I assume is five extra levels, since it says on top of the normal cost and the +1 FP for extra effort). If there is a penalty of -4 per extra level, shouldn't the final roll be at -20 instead of -12?

2) For Chi Sorcery, I'm curious why there is a time delay for improvisation (page 13, one min per 25 points full cost). That makes most the improvisation useless in a combat context. Considering that most of the abilities are either combat enhancements or would provide substantial bonuses in combat situations, the time delay seems to neuter the value of improvisation.

3) I was thrown for a loop by Lights! Camera! Magic!'s idea that both Magical Hero and Mundane Hero are zero point traits. Mundane Hero makes sense, but Magical Hero seems like a straightforward violation of the "no modifiers can reduce an advantage below -80% cost" rule, and it's not clear why that's worth violating. Essentially, Magical Hero is buying impulse buys with a limitation that they can't be used directly against mundane heroes (an accessibility limitation, which I would put in the -50% range depending on how frequent Magical Heroes are and how generous the GM is in interpreting indirect effects), and an additional magical power modifier of -10% or whatever. Why did it become a 0 point trait?

4) In terms of lore, the mechanics for Lights! Camera! Magic! seem backwards. The suggestion that the climatic fight is a consequence of heroes normally being able to get the effect they want and now having to grit it out without their magical aid makes sense if the archenemy in the climax cannot be affected by impulse buys (and vice versa: the archenemy can't affect the heroes). But, the archenemy is usually a Magical Hero: it would be bizarre for there to be Magical Heroes and then suddenly the final antagonist is a Mundane Hero. So that implies that the impulse buys should work against Mundane Heroes/Villains (everyone in the runup to the final conflict) but they shouldn't work in the final battle (against another Magical Hero/Villain). That's the exact opposite of the mechanics described in the article. Am I missing something?