Electric stunner spell?

[Kelly Pedersen]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

I completely agree with you, but for some reason, the rules in basic were never specifically applied to electrical spells in GURPS Magic!

I don't think Magic needs to specifically call them out for them to apply. The only reference to drowning in the Water College, for example, is in Destroy Water, where it references preventing it. But I would assume that someone held under magically created water would still need to hold their breath. In general, I think that stuff created by magic is nonetheless real stuff, and has its usual properties. Certainly, the treatment of missile spells, where they can go through no-mana areas, would seem to support that - they're creating real examples of the substance, and just using magic to direct them.

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

Given that all the Missile spells, regardless of college, work like this, if you start adding realistic damage effects to generic "magical" crushing damage it messes with the balance.

Nobody will buy say, Stone Missile, which inflicts a generic 1d HP/1 point of energy crushing damage when for the same casting cost they can get Lightning Bolt which inflicts 1d HP lethal electrical damage, or Fireball which inflicts 1d HP burning damage, per 1 FP.

GURPS Magic 4e doesn't support this hypothetical "magical crushing damage" anywhere, though. The various missile spells have damage types called out, and they're certainly not all crushing. Fireball, for example, is explicitly
burning damage.

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

To keep things balanced, you either need to nerf the spells which produce more impressive damage effects, or boost spells which suffer by comparison.

I'd note that Lightning is 1d-1 per FP spent, compared to 1d for Fireball, and 1d+1 for Stone Missile - in other words, Stone Missile is actually 2 HP of damage per FP better than Lightning. While ignoring metal armor is nice, I don't think it's such a big advantage that it justifies that, and the shocking effect is also a necessary element to the balance.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by Kelly Pedersen

I don't see why that's necessary at all - the Lethal Electrical Damage section, again, suggests that attacks that do it can range from 1d-3 for household sources, up to 6d for "lightning, transmission lines, etc.". Sure, a very pumped-up Lighting spell can go above that (up to 9d, or more with high Magery), but I think that falls into standard "magic can exceed the limits of the real stuff it's imitating". Fireballs can do more damage than touching molten lava, after all.

Real lightning merely starts at 6d, which is appropriate for an indirect strike, such as a modest strike on wet ground 10 feet away. It goes up as far as I think 6d x 6, for a direct hit by the really bad ones.

I sat down and did the math on that once, on the forum here, based on statistics from Florida (where they have lots of documented lightning strikes on humans). It's frightening stuff. Don't go golfing in a lightning storm people.

[Kelly Pedersen]

Originally Posted by Bruno

Real lightning merely starts at 6d,

Yeah, now that I read the description a little more closely, it says that lightning does 6d "on up", not "up to", which is what I originally read it as. So, a Lightning spell only approaches "real" lightning in damage after a fair bit of energy investment, and doesn't exceed it at all (barring extremely high Magery, I guess).