How to price/buy abilities within Powers?

[DarthDude]

Great advice, thanks! So if I would want to use multiple abilities at the same time would I have to make multiple ability/skill rolls on my turn or still have to successively activate them on multiplefollowing turns?

[DarthDude]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

Take a look at GURPS Powers and the GURPS Sorcery books for worked examples of magic-based powers. The GURPS Psionics and some of the Dungeon Fantasy and Power-Up books also have "spell like" Powers which easily be adapted.

If you want lots of different powers which you can only use one at a time and where it takes a bit of time to switch between them, it might be cheaper to use Modular Abilities or Morph and work up a selection of different powers you can use with that advantage. Just remember to apply the Power limitation to Modular Abilities/Morph and not to the specific powers.

So sorcery is like powers but specially "skinned" for magic? I will have a look at that, thanks!

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by DarthDude

Great advice, thanks! So if I would want to use multiple abilities at the same time would I have to make multiple ability/skill rolls on my turn or still have to successively activate them on multiplefollowing turns?

Depends on what your doing.
You can only make one attack but can activate many abilities at the same time, as long as they do not require a Ready or Concentrate.
However if something is an alternate ability of another you can only use one of that set (the primary and its alternates) per turn.

What the prior poster was suggesting is that you can buy two abilities at full cost. That lets you use two abilities at the same time and it can be done so as to have two out of a larger set or group of abilities available but you can select what two you want.

Originally Posted by DarthDude

So sorcery is like powers but specially "skinned" for magic? I will have a look at that, thanks!

Sorcery and Divine Favor are both worked examples of Powers as Magic.
They are based on rules in GURPS Powers but like GURPS Psionics are good examples of worked powers that make understanding the rules a bit easier.

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by DarthDude

So if I would want to use multiple abilities at the same time would I have to make multiple ability/skill rolls on my turn or still have to successively activate them on multiple following turns?

There's a line from the second Amber series from Merlin that says something like "a good sorceror should always have one attack, one defense, and one escape spell hung at all times". Following Merlin's wisdom matching your own insight, it's probably better not to have your spells in one giant AA group, as then you could only have one spell ready at a time.

One answer is that you can have any number of groups of Alternative Abilities. Which ability goes in which group is up to you. Each AA has one currently-selected ability, which is the only one from that group you can use. But since you have several groups, you'd have one spell from each group available. You switch the active spell in a group using an action (Maneuver) on your turn.

There's also a later rule that lets you have N abilities active from a single AA group. You pay the full price for the N most expensive abilities, and 1/5 price for all the others. That gets you the ability to have N abilities in that group active at the same time. You swap out the active abilities as usual. This is probably preferable to having multiple AA groups as you don't run into the problem of which ability is in which group. It's simpler to keep track of and you don't run into problems stemming from which ability you put into which group.

See GURPS Thaumatology: Sorcery ("Sorcery"), page 8, in the "Simultaneous Spells" box to see this rule in action. (I think this book might even have been the first time the rule made it into print to become official.)

Note that if an ability has an ongoing effect, like a buff instead of an attack, then you need to keep it active in an AA group slot for it to keep going. If you want to maintain the same single-target buff on four party members, you'll need four slots to slot that buff four times, and cast it four times. (So better yet, learn a multiple target version with Affects Others or Area Effect.)

Actually activating any ability generally takes an action on your turn, after the action it took to swap that ability to active in the AA group. If you build an ability with Reduced Time (B108), you can activate it more quickly. Add enough levels of Reduced Time to reduce the activation time below one second (that is, one level if the ability normally takes one second to activate), and that ability becomes a free action.

Most characters can't take more than one action (Maneuver) on a single turn. The Advantage "Altered Time Rate" (ATR) gives you an extra action on each turn. (This is a classic speedster ability. It would also be the Advantage that you could Afflict on your friends for the classic "Haste" buff.) There's also a mental-only version called "Compartmentalized Mind" (CM). (Note that spells that need gestures or words to cast aren't mental-only.) Those Advantages would let you activate multiple abilities on a single turn, as well as do many other things at double speed. (Or faster, if you have multiple levels of those Advantages. There's a reason they're so expensive.)

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by DarthDude

Great advice, thanks! So if I would want to use multiple abilities at the same time would I have to make multiple ability/skill rolls on my turn or still have to successively activate them on multiplefollowing turns?

This would depend on the ability. Most abilities, unless modified specifically to do so, don't require any sort of activation roll, although depending on what you're using them for they might call for a "use" roll. Of the five abilities I mentioned, Flight and DR typically don't involve rolls. The two Innate Attacks (the Force Push and the blade) will typically call for attack rolls to actually hit a target. TK will depend on how you're using it on if there's a roll. If you're just grabbing something unattended or turn a key in a lock, it doesn't call for a roll any more than a Ready to pick the object up or turn the key by hand would. If you're trying to grapple someone with it, or steal their holstered weapon, or pick a lock, then a relevant roll would be called for, just as it would be if you were doing the action by hand. Some abilities that call for rolls may be free actions to activate/use, but much of the time such abilities will require you to take some Maneuver, which will mean you can only do one per turn (but there can be ways around this, like using Rapid Strike to attack more than once in the same Maneuver, or at the extreme end things like Compartmentalized Mind and Altered Time Rate to be able to take multiple Maneuvers in a single turn). The description of the Advantage will typically tell you if it requires some sort of activation and if doing so is a specific Maneuver or a free action, although sometimes they'll rely on you, the GM, to infer that.

But even abilities that don't normally call for rolls can benefit from a Power Talent! First off, there may be some uses of the ability that do require a roll - Flight normally doesn't require a roll, but things like turning quickly, slowing down by more than your base Air Move in a single second (say, because you're falling faster than your Air Move and realize the ground is a lot closer than you'd like), etc do call for a roll against DX or Aerobatics (see "Pushing the Envelope," B395, although you'll probably want to read all of "High Speed Movement," starting on B394, to make sense of it if you're not already familiar with those rules) - and as GM, if your Flight has the Telekinesis Power Modifier on it, I'd absolutely let your Telekinesis Talent apply to such rolls. Additionally, all Advantages are eligible for Extra Effort (P160), and some are also eligible for a Power Defense (starting on P167) of some flavor. For example, the force field (DR) in my example is something you could use Extra Effort to boost how much DR it provides if you think something is about to hit you (maybe there's a sniper watching your location, so you boost your shield and walk out into the open in hopes of the sniper revealing themselves by shooting at you). You can also use the force field for a Power Block, automatically doubling the DR if successful (say there's a gunman closer to you, such that you get a defense against their attack; you could try to Dodge their aimpoint, but then someone behind you could get hit, so instead you use Power Block to briefly focus your force field down to a smaller area - or whatever fluff you prefer - to intercept the bullet). In both cases, the bonus from your Power Talent applies, making it easier to pull off such stunts.

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

Note that if an ability has an ongoing effect, like a buff instead of an attack, then you need to keep it active in an AA group slot for it to keep going. If you want to maintain the same single-target buff on four party members, you'll need four slots to slot that buff four times, and cast it four times. (So better yet, learn a multiple target version with Affects Others or Area Effect.)

That depends on how the ability works, although needing multiple instances shouldn't be necessary. For an Affliction (which is how Sorcery builds most of its buffs - and debuffs), you can hit someone with it (or several someones), then switch to some other ability in the AA set, and the Affliction will continue for its full duration - it's "fire and forget," and sorcerors would be a lot less capable if this weren't the case (see the second paragraph under "Maintaining Spells," Sorcery page 8). If you instead built the power as you having the ability and being able to share it complements of Affects Others, then you would indeed need to keep it active for it to stay in effect... but to affect more than one person, you wouldn't buy multiple instances of the whole power, rather you'd increase you level of Affects Others... and possibly toss on Area Effect so you don't have to be physically touching everyone thus affected.

[DarthDude]

I got Sorcery and am very enthused how the building of magic as powers is explained there. This is exactly what I was looking for. Variable, Area (+5%) and other options to model spells are of great help.
Are there other supplements like Thaumatology: Sorcery I might look at?

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by DarthDude

I got Sorcery and am very enthused how the building of magic as powers is explained there. This is exactly what I was looking for. Variable, Area (+5%) and other options to model spells are of great help.
Are there other supplements like Thaumatology: Sorcery I might look at?

GURPS Thaumatology: Chinese Elemental Powers does this specifically for "magical" abilities based on the Chinese concept of the five elements of fire, wood, earth, metal, and water (plus their associations with bodily organs and the like).

GURPS Powers: Divine Favor explores the use of powers to represent specifically granted supernatural abilities and also one-off miracles.

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by DarthDude

Are there other supplements like Thaumatology: Sorcery I might look at?

In addition to those mentioned so far, there's GURPS Psionic Powers. Same author as Sorcery, though in this book he was going for a slightly different feel, with the pre-built powers coming in levels. Still, that in itself is instructive, as you can see how to level up an ability bit by bit, as well as see how the same rules can be used to get two different feels out of the system.

Originally Posted by Varyon

{Needing to keep an ability in a AA group slotted} depends on how the ability works, although needing multiple instances shouldn't be necessary.

That's certainly true if you've got an ability with a duration that's long comparable to the timescale you're playing in. A one-minute duration is nearly eternal in combat time. But it would be fairly annoying to track when the party going down the corridors in a dungeon crawl, much less day-by-day play in town, especially when the mage wants to claim that all ten 1-minute buffs he has in his spellbook are all up all the time on everyone in the party because he just cycles through them, recasting each and every minute all day long. But an hour- or day-long buff is more worth the handwave on those longer timescales. Disadvantages that don't come up in play aren't Disadvantages; much the same is true for Limitations on abilities. Want a long-term buff? Build a long-term buff.

Multiple slots would only be needed if the character didn't happen to have any buffs built to do AE (in whatever form). I'd expect that if they're built to be a support/buffing type by an experienced player, they wouldn't make that mistake. (Hence my "better yet" comment on building a party buff instead of an individual one.) But you never know; sometimes characters have to press some ability into a use they didn't really foresee (and so hadn't paid the extra points for something they envisioned as mostly being used only on themselves). And of course that point might not jump out at someone first acquainting themselves with the rules and community "best practices". Just trying to highlight a limitation of an AA group. But I didn't intend to suggest that "one slot per effect up" is always a rule; it's certainly not inherent to AAs the way "one ability slotted" is. (Yes, until you apply the rule to have N slots available... :))

[Refplace]

IN addition to the first book there are a couple of other Sorcery supplements.
This search "GURPS Sorcery" brings them up plus a few otheritems that just happened to use the same key word.
https://warehouse23.com/search?q=GUR...prefix%5D=last
"GURPS Spells" also brings them up but that is a less effective search, grabbing more extra items.