[Thaumatology/Magic] Modular Ability For Spells

[Bazial]

Sort-of extension of other post, but different enough topic that I felt it warranted its own thread.

So I'm looking to use grimoires and spell slots (Thaumatology p. 38 and 56), since it's a concept of magic both me and my player group quite like. Pseudo-Vancian, I suppose.

The suggested way of doing the "spell slots" on Thaumatology p. 56 is to take Modular Abilities, apply Spells Only (-20%), Preparation Required and Limited Use. If we go with Preparation Required (1 Hour) (-50%) and Limited Use (1/day) (-40%), that puts us very comfortable within the -80% limit.

This seems to make the Modular Ability skill points outrageously cheap - 0.6 CP for a reassignable point. I am thinking of creating a modded version of Modular Abilities for this to specifically keep the point cost in rein, but are there any nuggets of wisdom to be said of this? In mechanical terms, the ability does exactly what it needs to, but the point cost just seems... Off.

[ericthered]

you can look at it for a rate of .6 CP per switchable point. I wouldn't, because of the role of the slot, and because of just how crippling 1/day is. You pay for a full point per slot, so each "spell" costs at minimum [1.6]. Sure, you can boost the skill when you pay more points, but the level at which a spell is known isn't something that benefits from being pushed sky high.

Having paid around [2] per spell, you can then cast that spell exactly once per day. Compare this to having paid for a spell outright and being able to cast it dozens of times in a day. I don't think one is that much better than the other. 1/day is crippling.

That said, if you really want modular abilities to behave properly, there is a section on powers that you may find helpful on page 63.

[Bazial]

If the Limited Use is applied to the spells, it's certainly a huge hindrance. My interpretation, however, was that it applied to Modular Abilities, i.e. once per day, after preparation, the mage could rearrange their points. I believe that is the official interpretation as well, but I can't find the exact passage right now.

EDIT: Disregard that; Basic Set lays out clearly that this is wrong. Strange, I seem to recall having read that this is a valid build as well. Huh.

[AlexanderHowl]

Modular Abilities are flexible, but they are rarely efficient. An ideal Super Mage would have Cosmic Modular Abilities [10/level] and very high IQ and Magery, allowing him or her to pay only 80 points to have access to a floating 8 points of spells. Of course, the same mage could have spent 80 points on spells, which would have made more sense for most builds. When magic is based on Ritual Magic or Thaumatology though, Modular Abilities become almost completely worthless.

[Anaraxes]

You might be interested in GURPS Thaumatology: Sorcery. It's a magic system that uses MA for spells. Actually, it uses an MA for the "improvised magic" part of the magic system, while learned spells are separate abilities. They stack with each other using the Alternative Abilities rule, so the learned spells come in at 1/5th cost, while the MA is around for minor spells that fill in for all the little things or on-the-spot tasks that you often just neglect in Powers-based systems because it's too hard to make up detailed new abiltiies for every little thing :) At any rate, you might like to peek under the hood and see how PK designed that system.

Keep in mind that the 1/day limitation will take out the entire spell slot for the whole day. (Otherwise, you'd just rotate a hundred identical abilities through the slot, and it wouldn't be a limitation.) That's classic D&D replication (at least for AD&D 1e), but try it out with some sample abilities and imagining some typical game sessions in your head, tracking the spell usage. If your 150-point mage can afford to throw 100 points at the MA pool, and that's effectively 0.5 points per point of used ability, then he's got 200 "slot points". That's 10 casts of a 20-point ability each day, or six 30s, or 5 40s. And 40 points is not really a lot for a major ability. (See the old thread titled "50 point Abilities" to get some idea of what 50 points will buy you.)

Also perhaps worth nothing that for anything other than the Cosmic pool (10 CP / point), the number and size of each slot is fixed, not reconfigurable after character design time. If the mage chooses 5x 40-point slots to hold their big guns, then they can't cast 10 20-point spells -- just 5, with the other "100 points worth" just going to waste that day. That may, of course, be exactly the effect you're looking for in the spell system. But it makes the overall point allocation less efficient than it may look just from doing the math on the pool CP / ability CP ratio.

[Bazial]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

You might be interested in GURPS Thaumatology: Sorcery. It's a magic system that uses MA for spells. Actually, it uses an MA for the "improvised magic" part of the magic system, while learned spells are separate abilities. They stack with each other using the Alternative Abilities rule, so the learned spells come in at 1/5th cost, while the MA is around for minor spells that fill in for all the little things or on-the-spot tasks that you often just neglect in Powers-based systems because it's too hard to make up detailed new abiltiies for every little thing :) At any rate, you might like to peek under the hood and see how PK designed that system.

Keep in mind that the 1/day limitation will take out the entire spell slot for the whole day. (Otherwise, you'd just rotate a hundred identical abilities through the slot, and it wouldn't be a limitation.) That's classic D&D replication (at least for AD&D 1e), but try it out with some sample abilities and imagining some typical game sessions in your head, tracking the spell usage. If your 150-point mage can afford to throw 100 points at the MA pool, and that's effectively 0.5 points per point of used ability, then he's got 200 "slot points". That's 10 casts of a 20-point ability each day, or six 30s, or 5 40s. And 40 points is not really a lot for a major ability. (See the old thread titled "50 point Abilities" to get some idea of what 50 points will buy you.)

Also perhaps worth nothing that for anything other than the Cosmic pool (10 CP / point), the number and size of each slot is fixed, not reconfigurable after character design time. If the mage chooses 5x 40-point slots to hold their big guns, then they can't cast 10 20-point spells -- just 5, with the other "100 points worth" just going to waste that day. That may, of course, be exactly the effect you're looking for in the spell system. But it makes the overall point allocation less efficient than it may look just from doing the math on the pool CP / ability CP ratio.

Thanks! Sorcery is most certainly an amazing book, and I hope to use it in practice one day. It is not quite what I'm looking for regarding this campaign. Basically, my players are very keen on something that treats magic management as a cunning game of resources that rewards clever application and smart planning. Despite how maligned D&D-pseudo-Vancian magic is, I think there's a huge appeal to this kind of magic.

That being said, I realized I had totally misinterpreted the rules for Modular Abilities. I managed to complete forget about (and overlooking when re-reading) the part about slots.

Is there any published variant for Modular Abilities that allows bypassing the slots idea? The metaphysics of the world, as me and players discussed, basically revolves around that mages "attune" themselves to their spells to various degrees. Essentially, I'm looking to see if something allows a mage to have a pool of points that they can distribute as they like between the spells in their spellbook. If they really want a specific spell to succeed, they could sink a lot of points into it.

If such a thing becomes too convoluted to model with the rules, there are other (and probably simpler) options as well, but I'm curious.

[Anaraxes]

Essentially, I'm looking to see if something allows a mage to have a pool of points that they can distribute as they like between the spells in their spellbook. If they really want a specific spell to succeed, they could sink a lot of points into it.

Modular Ability is mostly about flexibility, with a cap on power. The number of CP an ability costs is generally a measure of its power (or game utility, if you'd rather think of it that way), but the success rate doesn't really affect that strongly.

There is the "Reliable" Enhancement. Use the "Skills For Everyone" rule (that is, Requires Attribute Roll, possibly substituting a skill like "Thaumatology" or "Ritual Magic" or per college like "Fire Magic" to force more skills and more specialization, or at the extreme, every spell gets its own specific skill to cast). Then, to make it more likely your spell succeeds, you'd spend more CP on Reliable or the underlying skill.

But CP aren't really something you rearrange every day. My first thought on reading that description was that you really want something more like an Energy Reserve to power the spells, along with a rule that allows mages to select the number of levels of Reliable, which (for this setting), is tied to a number of levels of Costs FP. In other words, you can spend points from the ER to buy a +1 (or more) to your spell skill, thus choosing which spells become likely at cast time, and changing your mind on a whim. In practice, you might have a rule like "you have spell skill 10, and can buy a +1s for 1 FP each". (And you might just state the rule that way, and give levels of it a net cost. Sometimes that's nice flavor and convenience, even when you build things out fully in detail to design them. See Sorcery, or Psi Powers :)

The number of spells per day is then not a fixed number, but really the ER recharge rate. So charging CP for buying up the recharge rate is close to the mechanical effect of buying more spell slots. If the size of the ER is limited to the same as the daily recharge rate, then you don't have a "burst" capability, but can cast at most N spells per day, perhaps fewer if you spend extra power on the skill bonus.

Does that sound more like what you're looking for, mechanically?

[munin]

Originally Posted by Bazial

… my players are very keen on something that treats magic management as a cunning game of resources that rewards clever application and smart planning. Despite how maligned D&D-pseudo-Vancian magic is, I think there's a huge appeal to this kind of magic. …

The charms mechanism of Ritual Path Magic is very similar to Vancian magic (you "prepare spells for the day"), while still allowing improvisation as well.