Modular Powers: a flexible powers/magic system

[Raekai]

Hey, all!

I've been working on a flexible powers/magic system that suits my needs, and I hope that someone out there might find it useful or at least interesting.

Modular Powers is 20 points for Modular Powers 1, + 10 points/level. This advantage holds points of Alternative Abilities for a main ability bought at its full cost. For example, if you have Flight [40] as your main ability, an Alternative Ability would cost up to 8 points. So, Modular Powers 8 [90] would cover the cost of any Alternative Ability to Flight.

Modular Power Talent is 10 points/level. This is the power Talent for Modular Powers. Modular Power Talent adds to every roll made to use the main ability or any of its Alternative Abilities or to use any of those abilities well.

Modular Powers and Modular Power Talent can both be modified for Limited Scope and the Cosmic Power Modifier, but only Modular Powers can be modified for Power Modifiers other than Cosmic. For Limited Scope, you could use the version of the limitation on Sorcery or I would personally recommend using the version from Ritual Path Specialists from Pyramid #3/66: The Laws of Magic as a basis as it is much more nuanced (though, I would only allow it down to a certain level or you’re just better off buying a non-flexible set of powers). The unmodified scope is enough to cover anything the GM agrees could be used as a power in the setting. For example, an Alternative Ability to Flight in the above example would not be limited to abilities related to Flight. Instead, Flight could be thought of as a defining ability for that character out of a pool of any possible power. (In fact, now that I think about it as I’m typing this, I’d probably allow a +1 to that one ability for free or at least have that as an option for a perk—call it Signature Power.) If the abilities should only relate to Flight, then something like Limited Scope, Only for abilities directly related to flying (-50%) should be applied to Modular Powers and Modular Power Talent.

Furthermore, the main ability can change as part of advancement. As long as you enough levels of Modular Powers to cover the cost of your old main ability as an Alternative Ability, you can put those points toward the cost of the new main ability. For example, if you have Modular Powers 8 [90] and Flight [40], you can reallocate all 40 points for Flight to your new main ability because you are able to cover its cost as an Alternative Ability. If you do not have enough levels of Modular Powers, you may only reallocate the points that can be covered by your level of Modular Powers, but you may still use the old main ability as an Alternative Ability. For example, if you only had Modular Powers 4 [50], you would only be able to reallocate 20 points of Flight as you can only cover 20 points as an Alternative Ability, but you may continue to use Flight.

Optionally, for simplicity, you could drop the idea of a main ability altogether and add Modular Power Pool at 5 points/level and require characters to have the same level of Modular Powers and Modular Power Pool at the same level. The only reason I didn’t bake the cost of Modular Power Pool into the cost of Modular Powers for this option is because Modular Power Pool shouldn’t take any modifiers as it’s really just a nameless main ability.

I would use this system as flexibly as one would use Wildcard Powers from GURPS Supers. For the above example using Flight, I would be willing, as the GM, to guesstimate what feels like a 40-point ability rather than calculate new abilities during the game. This kind of flexibility is the very reason I sought to create a powers/magic system like this one.

And that’s it. It seems simple, but it took me a lot of tinkering to get all the way back around to what amounts to an alternate version of the system from GURPS Thaumatology: Sorcery.

I'm also happy to receive critique or feedback. If you want to read my design notes about how I came up with the system and played with the numbers, let me shamelessly plug my blog post.

Thanks!

EDIT: I made a few changes to the system, and I turned Modular Powers into Wildcard Power Pool.