Alternate gateway advantages for magic

[Fred Brackin]

For some spirit-based systems the gateway Ad might be Spirit Empathy. Bt RAW you can't use Social Skills on spirits without it. Hard to describe the process as "bargaining" when spirits don't even respond to you.

Plant Empathy would work as an alternative for druidic types who are dealing with "Great Spirits of the Forest" or something like that.

We could ahve a system where it was animal Empathy that granted access to the Animal College, regualr Empathy for Commnuications & Empathy, Spirit Empathy for Necromancy, and Plant Empathy for the Plant College.

After that you might start working your way through the Talent list with artificer goign to Making & Breaking and so on.

[Mysterious Dark Lord v3.2]

It all depends on the underlying framework of your magic system.

An animistic shaman could use Animal Empathy to get in touch with his totemic animal.

If magic is derived from quantum mechanics, then Intuitive Mathematician would be the gateway advantage.

On the other hand, if you are inheriting the power of your ancestors, then Racial memory would be the one.

First ask how magic works, then the advantage(s) will be obvious.

[RyanW]

My take on shamans require either Channeling or Medium, and one of Epilepsy, Flashbacks, Phantom Voices, or Neurological Disorder (though they can take the Disadvantage with a mitigator). The Disadvantage represents that those who are truly open to spirits cannot completely close themselves off.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by dataweaver

I would never replace Magery with, say, Medium and then use the rest of the standard magic system exactly as written.

I would – and I have!

My experience is that players don't like learning multiple sets of magic rules. They like the idea of their characters being special snowflakes in theory, but the work of learning another system is frequently a barrier in practice. When I've allowed bog-standard GURPS Magic-style magic to use another advantage, it has always been well received.

Which isn't to say you can't have variations, if they're simple enough; e.g., the classic Power Investiture-for-Magery swap mostly just changes the word "mana" to "sanctity" and shuffles prerequisites, leaving the magic system largely untouched. Magic based on madness-inducing Math Man Was Not Meant To Know could use Mathematical Ability instead; replace "mana" with "dimensional stability"; and replace spell prerequisites with minimum skill levels in various Mathematics and Symbol Drawing specialties.

[dataweaver]

Right; but changing the prerequisites is not “using the system exactly as is”. Granted, it's a minor change; but it's still a change. I was just pointing out that I'd also look at other options found in Thaumatology chapter 2 (“Minor Spell Variants”) to make the resulting magic feel more appropriate to the gateway Advantage.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Kromm

Magic based on madness-inducing Math Man Was Not Meant To Know could use Mathematical Ability instead; replace "mana" with "dimensional stability"; and replace spell prerequisites with minimum skill levels in various Mathematics and Symbol Drawing specialties.

I did this with fair success for a Laundry campaign, using Ritual Magic (Magic p. 200), with Mathematics (Pure) as the core skill and a full set of college skills.

There is a point with such mages where they become definitely more powerful than basic mages on similar point totals, because they have all the college skills they want to use in the low 20s, and can thus cast most spells they want to use at 15-16.

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by dataweaver

Right; but changing the prerequisites is not “using the system exactly as is”. Granted, it's a minor change; but it's still a change. I was just pointing out that I'd also look at other options found in Thaumatology chapter 2 (“Minor Spell Variants”) to make the resulting magic feel more appropriate to the gateway Advantage.

So not "I wouldn't do that thing" so much as "I wouldn't do that thing by itself."

[dataweaver]

Pretty much, yeah. Some additional tweaking is nearly always in order.

[dataweaver]

Originally Posted by johndallman

I did this with fair success for a Laundry campaign, using Ritual Magic (Magic p. 200), with Mathematics (Pure) as the core skill and a full set of college skills.

There is a point with such mages where they become definitely more powerful than basic mages on similar point totals, because they have all the college skills they want to use in the low 20s, and can thus cast most spells they want to use at 15-16.

That's inherent in the Ritual Magic option. But I don't think that's what Dr. Kromm did: I think what he did was more along the lines of “you're still using the spells-as-skills approach; but instead of a given spell having another spell as a prerequisite, you're required to learn appropriate Specializations of Mathematics and Symbol Drawing up to a particular level”.

I'm guessing that he based the required level on the spell's prerequisite count (something like “you must learn the prerequisite skills up to IQ+prereqs”), but I'm not sure how he went about deciding what Mathematics and Symbol-Drawing Specializations would be appropriate for a given spell.

[scc]

It's not an alternative gateway advantage but rather a supplement to Magery. Figuring out why female caster's routinely run around in outfits out of erotic fiction made me realize that they don't get their mana in the same way males do. Nothings set in stone yet but here's the basic idea.

Magery grants the ability to manipulate mana but not gather it. To do that you need at least one of Wizard or Initiate, Witch or Druid, Sorcerer, or Cleric. Each has different fluff but the key point is that then getting your energy back you get one point per 'channel' every so often rather then just a single point. I'm thinking each of these is worth 5 points.