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Old 11-28-2020, 04:44 PM   #21
Donny Brook
 
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Default Re: Using street children in ceremonial magic [Magic/Thaumatology]

The thing is, if a society had ceremonial magic, and all it takes to empower it is the participation of available humans, then those humans would already be employed in that activity. Such a society would not have a fallow pool of street kids (however defined).
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Old 11-28-2020, 05:08 PM   #22
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Default Re: Using street children in ceremonial magic [Magic/Thaumatology]

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Originally Posted by Donny Brook View Post
The thing is, if a society had ceremonial magic, and all it takes to empower it is the participation of available humans, then those humans would already be employed in that activity. Such a society would not have a fallow pool of street kids (however defined).
It's possible to take efficiency assumptions too far both for modeling reality and for game purposes.
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Old 11-28-2020, 05:30 PM   #23
Donny Brook
 
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Default Re: Using street children in ceremonial magic [Magic/Thaumatology]

Luckily that has or hasn't happened here.
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Old 11-28-2020, 05:57 PM   #24
David Johnston2
 
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Default Re: Using street children in ceremonial magic [Magic/Thaumatology]

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Originally Posted by Donny Brook View Post
The thing is, if a society had ceremonial magic, and all it takes to empower it is the participation of available humans, then those humans would already be employed in that activity. Such a society would not have a fallow pool of street kids (however defined).
Only if there were actually enough ceremonial magicians to employ all humans casting such spells on a frequent enough basis to provide steady employment.
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Old 11-28-2020, 07:26 PM   #25
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Default Re: Using street children in ceremonial magic [Magic/Thaumatology]

I’m intrigued by the idea of ritual casting being tied to education. Wizard’s guilds and temples sponsor the schools and get the ceremonial assistance. That’s a neat setup and could justify higher literacy rates than one might otherwise expect. Indeed, if there were a civic component, graduates might remain connected to the guild or temple as part of their civic duty, whether compelled by law or just out of a sense of community spirit or patriotism.
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Old 11-28-2020, 08:05 PM   #26
Plane
 
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Default Re: Using street children in ceremonial magic [Magic/Thaumatology]

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Only if there were actually enough ceremonial magicians to employ all humans casting such spells on a frequent enough basis to provide steady employment.
In such a situation where there was a shortage of street children to aid in your rituals, I wonder if mages would turn to street monkeys or street parrots to aid in the ritual instead.

It begs the question of what are the statistical requirements for aiding in Ceremonial Magic, which is part of why I speculated about using a roll of some sort to determine success, functioning like a 'soft cap' so that I can't just harvest 12 FP from a dozen IQ 4 House Cats that I designate as my ceremonial helpers. This clearly deviates from the intentions implied by "chanting, holding candles" though I don't like the idea of forbidding handless (incapable of wielding candles) mutes (incapable of chanting) from aiding in rituals either, though it being HARDER is fine.

"must be sapient" (IQ6 minimum) sounds like one way to avoid that, but does it go far enough? 5 year olds have 70% of adult IQ (B20) so as long as human is genetically predisposed to 9+ he will be Sapient (IQ 6) at age 5.

That's also why I like the idea of not just the casting mage, but all spectators, requiring Will rolls to maintain concentration in the face of distraction: distracted spectators should probably not be guaranteed as contributing that 1 FP.

One idea that occurs to me is what would happen if we somehow modeled the ability to contribute energy in rituals as a modified use of M89's Share Energy...

Users would inheritly limit the maximum energy they could contribute at 1 energy, so it costs 1 FP to make one's energy available, and 2 FP if you actually do end up powering that spell (in cases of a critical success by the spell that is powered by Share, only 1 FP would be lost, since cost is zero, as if the caster opted not to draw)

"A spell can draw power from only one Share spell" isn't really too hard to overcome in small amounts:

1) caster A casts Share energy, spending 4 FP to give 2 FP to next caster
2) caster B uses the 2 FP shared w/ him plus 4 of his own (total 6) to send 3 FP to next caster
3) caster C ... sends 4 FP to next
4) caster D .. sends 5 FP to next
5) caster E .. casts spells w/ 5 bonus FP beyond his usual limits
end result: five people spent 4 FP apiece to give 1 FP apiece to the caster
That at least allows minor ceremonial explanations. To explain how 100 could be lent would require modifying Share Energy somehow to increase the max beyond 5 FP, which could get pricy if we rely on +400% stuff like Cumulative, so hopefully there's more creative routes.

If we allowed people to cast prereqless spells like Lend Energy at IQ-7 defaults (one Dabbler slot allows IQ-6) then maybe you could let a spell with 1 prereq by cast at an IQ-8 default?

Bloat that with +10 Task Difficulty Modifier, +1 All-Out Concentrate, +1 by doubling casting time from 2 seconds to 4 seconds, and you could let them cast it at IQ+4 instead, a 50/50 chance for someone with IQ 6.

Using a 4:1 contribution ratio means 40 minutes recovery time per ceremony you helped with instead of 10 minutes, which is still fast enough to be pretty exploitable but at least slows down the exploitation a little bit. It's more like 80 minutes if you assume that barely-sentient helpers (B456 the IQ6 gorilla you instructed to help with your ritual) are going to be failing half the time, and you'll need to overspend on your rituals just to guarantee they'll go off (if you need 2 extra energy, get 4 or 5 gorillas)

This also ignores needing magery to cast spells (let's assume it's being done in High Mana). Non-mages casting in normal mana is dealt with in T58, the continuous mana approach (-6 to skill) is a little more feasible than x10 energy costs.

If Mr. Gorilla doesn't like the "only succeeds on a 3 or 4" odds he could be free to pump in some extra FP, like +100% (8 energy) for a +4. He COULD help, but he's just as likely to be the weak link in the chain and waste all prior efforts, so when arranging this ABCDE daisy-chain you would want to start off with the least competent guys most likely to fail at passing on their energy.

The plus is that if you are first and you fail, you can retry, unlike the guys further down.

Big FP costs like this would not only limit who could provide much help (low FP folk would need to compensate w/ HP or taking on Corruption) but also willingness to do so, since low FP comes with bigger risk to oneself.

If we allow casting 1-prereq spells at default for non-mages with normal FP casting then we might also allow it for the Threshold version of the spell too: the standard 1 FP that unskilled spectators pay might just be the "Some Fatigue Cost" option from T80.

that could allow much bigger contributions without massively draining FP, but also limit how often people could do this before they need to let their Tally recover: T77's 8/day averages 1 per 3 hours (180m) instead of per 10m, 18x longer.

Even if you treated muggles like the worst of mages (threshold -100% for -50% to magery) where all contributions involved a Calamity Check, 8 energy is only rolling against 3d+1 so you're at high odds of avoiding permanent problems on a 16+

Even if recovery was similarly worst (-100% for four levels of Slower Magical Recovery) we're told that when using "Variable Recovery" that Rapid is +2 per level instead of 25%, so SMR might similarly be -2 per level... at least for one level's worth, changing 2d+1 to 2d-1. Going beyond that is cheap unless you actually allow negative rolls to add to tally (which would be cool) but otherwise I'd just change the time it took between recovery rolls.
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Old 11-29-2020, 09:45 AM   #27
johndallman
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Default Re: Using street children in ceremonial magic [Magic/Thaumatology]

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Originally Posted by Plane View Post
Like what if for example it requires a successful Thaumatology check to contribute the 1 FP?
This is impractical. Thaumatology is an IQ/VH skill, so IQ 10 adults with a point in the skill have to roll 7 or less to contribute. They'll have needed significant training to get that single point, too.
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Old 11-29-2020, 09:51 AM   #28
AlexanderHowl
 
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Default Re: Using street children in ceremonial magic [Magic/Thaumatology]

I agree. It would seem ridiculous to require that an individual spend 24 CP (getting an IQ 10 person to Thaaumatology-14) so they could contribute 1 FP to a ceremonial working. For that level of effort, they could become doctor or a lawyer, which would give them Wealth (Comfortable) or better.
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Old 11-29-2020, 10:21 AM   #29
Plane
 
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Default Re: Using street children in ceremonial magic [Magic/Thaumatology]

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Originally Posted by johndallman View Post
This is impractical. Thaumatology is an IQ/VH skill, so IQ 10 adults with a point in the skill have to roll 7 or less to contribute. They'll have needed significant training to get that single point, too.
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Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl View Post
I agree. It would seem ridiculous to require that an individual spend 24 CP (getting an IQ 10 person to Thaaumatology-14) so they could contribute 1 FP to a ceremonial working. For that level of effort, they could become doctor or a lawyer, which would give them Wealth (Comfortable) or better.
I'm thinking either you let them roll once per second during the ceremony until they succeed (so they get at least ten attempts) or you give them a TDM bonus like the max +10 because it's supposed to be easy to contribute FP to a ceremony.

Though dwelling upon this, it seems like maybe the FP shouldn't leave their body until the ceremony is completed and the skill roll is made, because if it's a crit success then nobody would have to contribute any energy as it comes from the mana ... or if it's a non-crit fail then only 1 FP is spent.
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Old 12-02-2020, 11:47 AM   #30
Varyon
 
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Default Re: Using street children in ceremonial magic [Magic/Thaumatology]

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Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth View Post
It's possible to take efficiency assumptions too far both for modeling reality and for game purposes.
If there's enough ceremonial casting going on to potentially make a significant impact on the lives of more than a tiny fraction of street children (by employing them), it seems likely such spells have displaced a decent chunk of the workforce, meaning those workers (or, rather, those who would have been such workers, if magic wasn't taking their spot) are probably the ones providing the FP, leaving you with plenty of street children.

Of course, in a setting that is "historical Earth, with magic added on but not integrated" (which is, honestly, pretty common), the idea of preventing most people - children or otherwise - from being streetfolk by employing them as FP sources is a decent one. There's always the risk of streetfolk mythology (which as I understand it is particularly common with street children) claiming those who go for such employment meet unfortunate fates (and probably not without support, it's not like you couldn't run a "ceremonial casting" scam of some sort, and mages certainly aren't immune from being horrible people), which would certainly put a damper on recruitment efforts (or even result in some of those you recruit actively opposing you).
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