GURPS Magic: The Least of Spells

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

I tend to think it doesn't take much functional magic to play havoc with history. Some of these can probably make the cut.

Ritual of Reaping and Ritual of Sowing are pretty big, reducing the labor needed for the two main labors of (European-style) farming by 20%.

This is unquestionably true if there are people who know the spell at skill-20. At lower skill levels, even skill-15, the gains seem likely to be more modest, especially since time spent recovering energy for the spells it time not spent doing farm work yourself.

Birth Control is a potential world-shaker of course, if people choose to use it.

I have a hard time believing many people would learn this spell for use solely on themselves. The big impact is if a hedge witch with Birth Control-15 can is willing to maintain it on several people per night. But that seems difficult to coordinate outside a brothel. (Brothels having hedge witches on hand to cast Birth Control would be an interesting bit of world-building color, though).

Test is also a pretty big deal.

I'm not quite sure what to make of Test. Since it's necessary to specialize by condition, it's not immediately obvious to me what condition you get the most mileage out of specializing in at low TLs. In the modern world you could use it for things like cancer, but at lower TLs other things usually kill you before cancer does.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by Anders

Yeah, remember that the average professional will have a skill around 12. 15 would be for exceptional people.

Also remember that in settings where ordinary wizards typically have Magery 1 [15] to be able to do more than cast a few simple spells, equally-gifted hedge magicians have Hedge Magician 3 [15], so the average professional will have around 15, and 18 would be for exceptional people. And people with Hedge Magician 7 [35] will be about as common as wizards with Magery 3 [35], and go around casting at 16 with just a point, 19 if they studied as much as someone with a Professional Skill at 12, or 22 if they are exceptional.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

T


I'm not quite sure what to make of Test. Since it's necessary to specialize by condition,

Test requires a valid understanding of the causes of disease in that world. If you develop a Test Spell for "Excess of yellow humours" then yellow humours better be the actual cause of something. An Echo of out timeline that differed only in Mana level could Test for yellow humours all day long and never do any good with it.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

I'm not quite sure what to make of Test. Since it's necessary to specialize by condition, it's not immediately obvious to me what condition you get the most mileage out of specializing in at low TLs. In the modern world you could use it for things like cancer, but at lower TLs other things usually kill you before cancer does.

The big synergy is for proper healers who want to use Cure Disease and Neutralize Poison without the -5 for being clueless. They could learn Diagnosis, an IQ/H skill, to have a crack at that for any disease or poison, but that's only as useful as the TL's understanding of such matters. Whereas Test is IQ/A, benefits from the Magery or Power Investiture the healer already has anyway, and doesn't require symptoms or much understanding. In a place with a few common communicable diseases, a bundle of Test spells would be wonderful.

For general "ordinary Joe" casters, it's less relevant . . . but things like Test for the usual STDs would be appreciated in many corners of society, and of course Test (Alcohol) would serve as a low-tech breathalyzer in societies that are strict about that kind of thing. Plus you don't need germ theory to want to cast, say, Test (The Plague) on each and every person boarding your ship.

The important thing is that Test does not have a /TL notation or require scientific understanding. It just tests for something your society can put a name to.

[Anders]

If I want to introduce these in Dungeon Fantasy, I assume the clerical ones would all be Power Investiture 1?

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by Anders

If I want to introduce these in Dungeon Fantasy, I assume the clerical ones would all be Power Investiture 1?

Nope. "Anybody" means anybody: "minor prayers work for anyone" etc. If you put these spells into Dungeon Fantasy, all characters can learn them regardless of their profession or the spell's provenance. Of course, people with proper spellcasting talents will be better at the trivial spells associated with their sphere of magic.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Tyneras

Ritual of Reaping would be fantastic for orchards and other inconvenient to harvest crops. Less wastage, fewer ladder related injuries.

It removes several entire steps from harvesting grains. As harvest time usually requires more labour than is available to get the crops in in perfect time, it's a pretty huge spell, especially as surpluses were small, so small increase in gross yield made quite large increases in net surplus.

If Sowing reduces the required amount of seed by 20%, that's also quite a leap for early medieval farming, where up to 1/4 of the crop might be needed as seed for the next year's. Going from 75% to 80% of the yield being useful for food is quite a bump up.

Between them they could easily justify a 50% increase in urban populations if most farm workers knew them and could cast them, especially as 2FP per hour for them is no more than they'd be burning sowing or harvesting anyway (and less than the men with the scythe would be expending).

[Tyneras]

While a 20% boost would be a serious boon, it runs into the problem of the spell's FP cost. It costs 2 per hour, and even with enough skill to drop that to 1 per hour, I'm unsure how hard that impacts the farmer. Sowing and harvesting are sun up to sun down jobs, and effectively reducing each hour one can work by 10 minutes is a 16% productivity reduction, and 20 minutes a 33% reduction.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by Tyneras

While a 20% boost would be a serious boon, it runs into the problem of the spell's FP cost. It costs 2 per hour, and even with enough skill to drop that to 1 per hour, I'm unsure how hard that impacts the farmer. Sowing and harvesting are sun up to sun down jobs, and effectively reducing each hour one can work by 10 minutes is a 16% productivity reduction, and 20 minutes a 33% reduction.

But if Granny who's too old to work casts the spell on you and sits on the porch, resting, that's a whole other ball game. A lot of these spells can be cast on others, like most GURPS spells. Assuming the caster is the subject is probably a bad idea in family units.

[Donny Brook]

Originally Posted by Kromm

Please realize that the two aren't logical alternatives. The Least of Spells was a mini-project that was easily shoehorned into a busy editing and writing schedule to produce a release after a long dry spell. Vehicle Design would be a mega-project that would sideline the entire GURPS schedule, meaning no new releases of any length for a year or two . . . because there's just one of me, and after 25 years of doing this job, I know that Vehicle Design (1) would take that long, and (2) isn't the kind of project that can be tackled in small chunks if we want a quality result

This is sort of a general commentary: I've worked on a lot of projects so far this year. I wrote a bunch, edited a bunch, reviewed a bunch. They're all short. So when they show up between now and winter, I want people to understand that they don't represent effort that could have gone toward Vehicle Design in any sensible reality. They represent a more practical use of time that pays freelancers and helps keep SJ Games in business in a difficult time.

Vehicle Design is the kind of project that would require GURPS to be doing so well that we could afford to have two or even three staff members devoted to it. One way to get there would be to support the line in difficult times for freelancers and staff alike. Those who "vote with their dollars" against anything but Vehicle Design are making sure that there's no possible way it will ever be published.

We all have our priorities.