[Sorcery] [Divine Favor] Elder Scrolls magic concepts

[JethroKirby]

TLDR Version - Have any of you played or ran any games that used a combination of Sorcery and Divine Favor with a little RPM on the side? How well did they work together and is it possible to have them work seamlessly with each other while maintaining what makes them different?

Now the long version...

I've been working on putting an Elder Scrolls game together in GURPS for awhile now. I haven't really been sure how I wanted to handle the magic system until I read through the Sorcery and Divine Favor books. I really like where these are going but I had a few questions about how to best implement some tweaks. In addition, I have some questions about how these two systems would interact and how they would work beside RPM magic.

In ES lore, spells are divided up between a number of schools that depends on the game. I'm planning to use Alteration, Conjuration, Destruction, Illusion, Mysticism, Necromancy, and Restoration as the seven schools that will be available. Ideally, I would like for each to be a separate skill (requiring Thaumatology as a prereq) that is rolled against when "preparing" spells and doing so takes a Concentrate maneuver. I'd also like for DX-based rolls on these school skills to be used in place of Innate Attack if it is better for the caster. The caster will also have to make a Concentrate maneuver before each use of the spell - even if he uses the same spell over and over.

Here is the concept. Roland the wizard decides that he wants to use a fireball on the large group of goblins. He hasn't conjured up the energy yet so he takes a Concentrate maneuver and rolls against IQ-based School of Destruction skill. He succeeds and his hand/staff/wand is now charged with the spell. On his next action, he throws the fireball using his DX-based School of Destruction skill because he doesn't have the Innate Attack skill. Some of the goblins are still standing and Roland would like to throw another fireball but he must succeed on another IQ-based Destruction roll to conjure up the energy. After throwing the spell and finishing off the goblins, Roland realizes that he was badly wounded during the fight and would like to heal himself. He conjures up his healing spell using an IQ-based School of Restoration roll and on the next turn he uses the spell to heal himself.

I guess my question is what do I need to change to accomplish this? Is there a limitation I can add to Sorcerous Empowerment that would require the caster to make skill rolls to switch between alternate abilities or do I need to apply that to individual spells? I'm assuming that for individual spells I would need to apply the Preparation Required limitation to each spell to get the 1 sec Concentrate maneuver requirement. Is that correct?

My second goal is for Divine Favor's "Learned Prayers" to be pulled from the same grimoire that Sorcery spells come from - complete with spell schools. Priest learn to harness magical energy similar to wizards but rely on their god for the power. Channeling the energy requires the same "School Skills" as a wizard but they have Religious Ritual as the prerequisite skill.

So basically, I would like for priests and mages to be very similar as far as their spells/learned prayers go but they would differ in their core mechanic - ie. the Sorcerous Empowerment vs the Divine Favor advantages. Does that make since? Does anyone see any problems with these ideas?

I also intend on all of these spells\prayers to require an Energy Reserve for casting them. In the ES universe, magic isn't fatiguing but instead draws upon a personal ER called "magicka". I was originally going to give everyone a starting ER equal to their IQ as non-mages will also be able to use it to fuel magic items, cast spells from scrolls, power ritual castings, etc. Unlike standard ER however, I'd like for it to recharge only when sleeping or meditating/praying - requiring a successful roll on the Meditation skill of course. Does this sound doable? Balanced for non-mages? I'm also thinking of changing some spells to use more than 1 ER - particularly for novice spells. How would this effect Sorcery?

I'd also like to discuss ritual magic. I love the Thaumatology: RPM book and would like to use some material from that to plug into the world alongside of these two systems. The goal is for RPM to be used for massive rituals for highly beneficial or disastrous effects. Ritual Adept will not be allowed, just Magery (Ritual Path), and it will use the same seven school skills to perform the rituals. I will not be allowing ritual casters the ability to come up with rituals on the fly - they must be discovered in dungeons, researched in libraries, or created using the invention rules from the Basic Set. In addition, I don't plan to allow ritualists to "prepare" spells - quick magic is for sorcerers and priests. This seems like it would be a natural fit and I feel like the Sorcery spells would have all started out as rituals that were created by a mage before they were perfected into rote spells. Would this work as I expect it to?

And lastly, I have a question about alchemy and enchanting. Magic items play a huge part in the ES world and non-mages can handle both of those crafts just as well as any mage. For this reason, I don't intend on using the enchanting rules from Sorcery or RPM nor the alchemy rules from RPM. I plan to use the alchemy/herb lore rules from GURPS Magic with the cheaper cost due to the high magic setting. For enchanting, I'll be using Symbol Magic to create any of the magic items that can be found in the GURPS magic book. Now my question is, would it be unbalanced if I made all of the nouns/verbs in Symbol Magic to be techniques of Symbol Drawing instead of separate skills if I only allow for Symbol Magic to be used for enchanting purposes only? If so should I require an Unusual Background?

Sorry for the long-winded post. I didn't realize how big it was until I got this far. Thanks in advance for any insight into how well (or not) these systems work with each other.

[sir_pudding]

The magic system you are describing sounds more like Realm magic (or even Path Realm if it uses RPM) than it does like Sorcery. Realm is incidentally how I would do Elder Scrolls magic anyway.

[JethroKirby]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

The magic system you are describing sounds more like Realm magic (or even Path Realm if it uses RPM) than it does like Sorcery. Realm is incidentally how I would do Elder Scrolls magic anyway.

Hello Sir Pudding and thanks for the feedback. That was one system I was looking into. The issue is that I'm not a fan of the flexible magic systems, or rather I should say that I'm not a fan of them for my group. Personally I'd love to play a mage using one of those systems. I have a mix of players who would love that sort of flexibility, some that would abuse the heck out of it, and at least one that would fall asleep while we tried to figure out the specifics of spells cast during play.

I should have also stated that I was going for a high-powered 250 point Dungeon Fantasy style campaign. I'm not sure how the flexible magic systems compare to Weapon Masters and Heroic Archers. Anyone have any experience with that?

The reason I like Sorcery/Divine Favor is that it has the flexibility that a player could create his own spells if he wanted to but it will be on the sheet for me to see ahead of time. That way I can see what they are working with. RPM is probably my favorite magic system but I wouldn't allow my players to come up with rituals on the fly. It takes me awhile to work up a ritual myself, I wouldn't want my players to bog down the game.

Keep in mind that my experience is limited to what I can imagine as I've only ever ran one GURPS campaign and it was a post-apoc no magic setting. My perception of the different magic systems aren't based on much beyond my imagination. The only thing I'm fairly certain of is that I don't want to use the standard Magic system. I played a mage in a campaign that used that and it just didn't feel right to me. It also felt like I had way to much power for the cost of a few perks (1 point in each spell) and a few points in a talent (Magery).

EDIT: I may be a bit hasty on the standard GURPS Magic system though. I'm curious to see what is done with it in the DF box set. Honestly I would love to be able to pick that up and just insert it into the Elder Scrolls world but I'm particularly fond of PK's magic systems.

[mhd]

I don't quite get why you'd need additional Concentrate maneuvers for repetitive spellcasting. Regular Sorcery spell-reading seems to encompass the video game mechanics just fine.

And regarding more energy costs, I once thought the same way before trying Sorcery. The problem is that this works best if you've got a wider range to cover in your energy reserve, e.g. when they're triple digits. In low double digits, spells that shouldn't be *that* much more powerful suddenly cost 3x or 4x as much. Never mind the bookkeeping. After a solid year of playing a campaign with Sorcery as 90% of the magic, I've grown quite fond of both the cost system and the fact that there's no separate statistic.

[Bruno]

Higher costs works in elder scrolls games because your starting spell point pool (Magicka) is e.g. 100 points in Skyrim, not 10-ish (if you default to IQ), and the pool size escalates quickly. The scale in GURPS is 1/10th the size, so be careful.

At least in Skyrim and IIRC also Oblivion, Magicka also regenerates on a scale similar to GURPS FP/ER recovery, not only after sleeping or on a 24 hour cycle.

I'm not quite sure where you're going with a skill roll to reconfigure your Sorcery pool. You don't need to do anything like that in TES games when you want to wield a different spell - although there may be a per-spell-casting roll like in traditional GURPS magic.