Alternate GURPS: converting Sorcery Spells into Magic Spells

[dataweaver]

How much is "Requires an IQ+1 Roll" worth? Because if you're going to let someone pay for a more expensive Advantage by requiring him to buy the skill above its base attribute, you should be taking into account that the activation roll will be easier.

(Actually though, that is doable: pair "Requires [Attribute] Roll with one or more levels of "Reliable".)

[dataweaver]

Originally Posted by weby

That is a common view in general. A lot of/most GMs who think about modifier costs use larger than -5%. Even P.K:s house rules give it -10%/level.

What say you folks? Shall we follow PK's lead and double the value of "Costs FP"?

[simply Nathan]

-10% is still way too small, especially for the first level wherein it makes most of the difference. -25% for the first level and -5% for each thereafter maybe. Or -30% for the first level and -10% for each thereafter. Or just -20% per level.

And for something like this, I'd be more inclined to have it be closer to -25% for a cost of 1 FP, -100% for a cost of 4 FP, -250% for a cost of 10 FP (major spell used maybe once per encounter, and even then reluctantly), -500% for a cost of 20 FP ("break out the powerstone" level, wherein you can reasonably cast one per week/adventure), and -2500% for 100 FP ("Hopeless outside of ceremonial casting", this thing is meant as a plot device rather than a character ability). Perhaps not that extreme, but something more like that in principle.

[Peaches]

Originally Posted by dataweaver

How much is "Requires an IQ+1 Roll" worth? Because if you're going to let someone pay for a more expensive Advantage by requiring him to buy the skill above its base attribute, you should be taking into account that the activation roll will be easier.

(Actually though, that is doable: pair "Requires [Attribute] Roll with one or more levels of "Reliable".)

I would like to think that once you've converted a spell into skill at IQ, you would simply decouple it from being an advantage and is then just a skill and nothing more. I see this system of conversion of advantage to skill as a good way to build balanced "spells as skills" in a way GURPS Magic failed at doing.

[dataweaver]

Originally Posted by simply Nathan

-10% is still way too small, especially for the first level wherein it makes most of the difference. -25% for the first level and -5% for each thereafter maybe. Or -30% for the first level and -10% for each thereafter. Or just -20% per level.

And for something like this, I'd be more inclined to have it be closer to -25% for a cost of 1 FP, -100% for a cost of 4 FP, -250% for a cost of 10 FP (major spell used maybe once per encounter, and even then reluctantly), -500% for a cost of 20 FP ("break out the powerstone" level, wherein you can reasonably cast one per week/adventure), and -2500% for 100 FP ("Hopeless outside of ceremonial casting", this thing is meant as a plot device rather than a character ability). Perhaps not that extreme, but something more like that in principle.

Note that if we mess with the value of Costs FP, we'll be messing with the costs of Sorcerous Spells, since all of those have a level built in. That's not a show-stopper to my mind; but it is something to remember.

Originally Posted by Peaches

I would like to think that once you've converted a spell into skill at IQ, you would simply decouple it from being an advantage and is then just a skill and nothing more. I see this system of conversion of advantage to skill as a good way to build balanced "spells as skills" in a way GURPS Magic failed at doing.

The process ò decoupling it from being an Advantage is to run the "From Skills to Advantages" process backward. Starting the process at a skill level of IQ+1 is a dubious tactic; but if we're going to go down that road, we must note that the resulting Advantage will be activated by an IQ+1 roll — thus requiring a level of Reliable before starting the "reverse engineering" process.

[Peaches]

Originally Posted by dataweaver

The process ò decoupling it from being an Advantage is to run the "From Skills to Advantages" process backward. Starting the process at a skill level of IQ+1 is a dubious tactic; but if we're going to go down that road, we must note that the resulting Advantage will be activated by an IQ+1 roll — thus requiring a level of Reliable before starting the "reverse engineering" process.

That may be all well and good, but why not K.I.S.S.? If it's already for all intents and purposes a skill bought at attribute level, why not just treat it as such? I don't see the hang up.

Posted from my phone; my tablets micro usb port used for charging has ceased to function. >.>

[wellspring]

Originally Posted by dataweaver

I wouldn't worry too much about the defaults situation for now; we've got much more significant issues to address first. I think Lia may have a point, and that some rethinking of the ground rules may be in order — not just due to the extraordinarily high energy costs we're coming up with, but because this system doesn't do well when leveled advantages are involved.

I see what you mean. Though it might be a way to reduce points costs without forcing up the casting time and energy cost too much.

Originally Posted by dataweaver

What say you folks? Shall we follow PK's lead and double the value of "Costs FP"?

No.

I agree with pk's point, actually even more with Simply Nathan's point that the first level of costs FP should cost more. The jump in game efficacy you get from making an Advantage not cost PC resources at all is way higher than you get from reducing it but still having it cost something.

However, I think a system compatible with RAW is far, far better than one that monkeys with advantage costs and therefore puts us way out in HouseRulesville. One attraction of the approach we're using, for all its flaws, is that it's pretty much an application of rules as written rather than a new set of rules.

Originally Posted by simply Nathan

-10% is still way too small, especially for the first level wherein it makes most of the difference. -25% for the first level and -5% for each thereafter maybe. Or -30% for the first level and -10% for each thereafter. Or just -20% per level.

I agree with this in principles, but re-writing the Basic Set shouldn't be in our charter for this.

[Rindis]

Originally Posted by dataweaver

I wouldn't worry too much about the defaults situation for now; we've got much more significant issues to address first. I think Lia may have a point, and that some rethinking of the ground rules may be in order — not just due to the extraordinarily high energy costs we're coming up with, but because this system doesn't do well when leveled advantages are involved. Consider my “Air Jet” example: what I presented was a 1d Air Jet. A 2d Air Jet would add four points to the cost;....

So... just say that you can add more dice to the Air Jet for an appropriate penalty to skill? -1 per extra 1d? (That seems too low to me, but four points is a point of skill...) [With a campaign-set cap on possible damage.]

[dataweaver]

Originally Posted by Peaches

That may be all well and good, but why not K.I.S.S.? If it's already for all intents and purposes a skill bought at attribute level, why not just treat it as such? I don't see the hang up.

That's what I've been doing. But the most recent proposal is to cover more expensive Ability builds by treating them as skills bought at attribute+1 level. Setting aside some concerns I have with the potenal for abuse of such an approach: if it's going to be treated as involving an attribute+1 roll on one side of the Skill⇔Attribute translator, it should be treated as involving an attribute+1 roll on both sides. Thus, you need a level of Reliable applied to whatever portion of the Ability is being “paid for” by the extra level of skill.

I do like the idea of leveled Abilities, such as Air Jet, working this way: if you can arrange for the per-level cost of the Ability after level 1 to be 4 points per level, then you can say that you get access to the first level when you buy the skill, and each level by which you raise the skill above the base attribute unocks another level worth of the translated ability build: so, for instance, Air Jet skill at or below IQ would give you a 1d Air Jet; Air Jet skill at IQ+1 would give you a 2d Air Jet; at IQ+2 it would become a 3d Air Jet; and so on, with every +1 to the Air Jet skill giving you another 1d worth of Air Jet damage. Not quite the same way that existing jet skills work in GURPS Magic; but frankly, it looks a lot less messy than trying to precisely replicate what Magic does, and has a certain elegance to it. Trying it out (still treating Costs FP as -5%*):

1. [i]Sorcerous Spell:[/b] Air Jet: Innate Crushing Attack [5/level], Air Jet modifiers (+20%)
2. Preparation for Translation: Add Unusual Training Condition (-20%) and Requires IQ Roll (-10%) to all levels. The first level costs 4.5 points, which rounds up to 5 points.
2a. the per-level cost is (5 points -10%), or 4.5 points. Add a level of Takes Extra Time to bring that down to 4 points per level. Now add one level of Reliable to the second level, two levels of Reliable to the third level, three levels of Reliable to the fourth level, and so on. Offset that with an equal number of levels of Costs FP: so the second level costs one more FP, the third costs two more on top of that, the fourth costs another three, and so on.
3. Translation: The Ability becomes an Unusual Training Perk and a Skill that's bought at IQ, IQ+1, IQ+2, etc.
4. Unpack the Skill: replace the Unusual Training perk with an enabling Advantage (Magery); allow the player the freedom to buy the Skill at any level, and note what gets unlocked at which skill levels.

End result:

Air Jet (IQ/H)
Casting Time: 1 second for 1d, 2 seconds if there are multiple dice.
Energy Cost: 1 energy for 1d, +1 for 2d, +2 for 3d, +3 for 4d, +4 for 5d, etc.
The Air Jet is capped a 1d, +1d for every level you raise it above IQ.

Theoretically, you could raise the Air Jet's damage indefinitely; in practice, you're unlikely to go beyond 4–5 dice, both because of the skill level requirement and because of the prohibative energy costs. The skill level requirement is unavoidable, by design; the escalating energy costs are the result of the already-noted low value of Costs FP.

I would only use this for leveled Abilities; and the first level should still come in at 5 or 9 points.


Applying the “Major Arcana” concept to this (henceforth simply called “Wizardry”), you end up with a lot more power to work with: the first level of a leveled Major Arcana spell should cost 25 or 45 points, and additional levels should cost 20 points each. Of course, the Major Arcana option requires a Wizardry Advantage in addition to Magery which serves as an additional cap on what you can do, and you're restricted to one Wizardry spell at a time.

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* We really do need to decide how much Costs FP should be worth. PK's House Rules suggests -10% per level; simply Nathan has suggested -30%/-5% per level, -25%/-10% per level, or just -20% per level. I've privately entertained the possibility of making it work a bit like Corrupting (e.g., don't treat it as a percent modifier at all; instead, after applying all other modifiers, reduce the cost of the Ability by 1 point for every FP its usage costs). Wellspring makes a case for keeping it as it is. I'm leaning toward wellspring's argument right now, but I'm still open to persuasion.

[dataweaver]

Originally Posted by Rindis

So... just say that you can add more dice to the Air Jet for an appropriate penalty to skill? -1 per extra 1d? (That seems too low to me, but four points is a point of skill...) [With a campaign-set cap on possible damage.]

That's also an interesting approach. To make it work, I'd add a Technique to the Skill side of the translator to represent the additional abilities unlocked by taking a penalty, and I'd add a suitable Limitation to their counterpart on the Ability side to represent the imposed penalty to the required attribute roll. I don't think such a Limitation exists, though; we'd have to make it up. It's the inverse of Reliable, so my gut says -5% per -1 penalty.

More generally, I wouldn't use that for additional effect levels so much as I'd use it for "add-ons". I'm a fan of collapsing the Magic Spell list by converting “variants of X” spells from being separate skills with X as a prerequisite to being Techniques based off of X; this might give us a way to do that, by pairing a Technique on the Skill side with a Lens on the Ability side.