The Food College Bothers Me

[Prince Charon]

Originally Posted by transmetahuman

Why in the world would someone who regularly gets into fights specialize exclusively in the food college? Well, someone with the bad luck to be born with One College Magery: Food College and a frankly insane stubborn refusal to just focus on weapon skills instead, I guess. I'm sure there was someone like that born somewhere in the infinite multiverse - but I doubt he found adventuring companions.

OK, now you're tempting me to write up a specialist mage like that, possibly focusing mainly on Thirst, or inventing a new Starvation spell that has Hunger as a prerequisite and does more damage. I'm not sure that I'm going to, I have other things to work on, but the idea is in my head, now.

Originally Posted by Anders

Too bad Create Food has 30 seconds casting time or you could use it on your foe's weapons and armor.

IIRC, GURPS Technomancer had a spell called Guns To Butter that might have been faster. *goes looking* Yeah, page 22, it takes two seconds to cast; prerequisites are Create Food and Reshape, so it's got a prereq count of, um... 16 (Ouch!). Good justification for it being so much faster than Create Food, which has a prereq count of 5. Another thing to do with Create Food is to develop a version that can transform part of an object, either as a new spell, or a perk-plus-technique of the old one. For anyone able to use the Earth college, though, it would probably be much easier to just learn a few Earth spells if you think you might need to tunnel out of a dungeon one day.

[David Johansen]

Does the existence of the Cheese collage imply the existence of a Meat collage? Fruits and Vegetables? Grain and Fibre? Can the lost food guide truly bring balance and regularity to an irregular world?

[Balor Patch]

GURPS Magic: Death Spells did not forget the Food college, although neither Butcher nor Death’s Banquet impresses as a combat spell.

[scc]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

It has one effective attack spell, Thirst. I would kind of prefer it if it had a better Hunger spell. Doing one point of Fatigue per second just doesn't do it for me. Maybe a leveled Hunger spell? Hunger can be really debilitating.

One point of FP per second is MASSIVE, it means that after 10 seconds the target will fall unconscious! In general being able to do FP damage is better then HP damage, after all people have less FP and it can't go negative.

To the topic in general, Food as a College suffers from a problem that all of the Colleges seem to suffer from to a lesser or grater extent: the idea that they are a thing created by people. While Kromm's stance is that the College's can be either natural or a human creation, that simply doesn't work in many cases due to spells having rather weird assignments.

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by Prince Charon

OK, now you're tempting me to write up a specialist mage like that, possibly focusing mainly on Thirst, or inventing a new Starvation spell that has Hunger as a prerequisite and does more damage.

How about something like...
Ravenous - The subject suffers debilitating hunger pangs and can do nothing but bend over doubled.
Ravenous Frenzy - As above, but it also compels the subject to try to feverishly eat any food available within range.
Cannibal Frenzy - As above, but the subject is compelled to try to eat the flesh of their companions.

[tbone]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

That might have been the Cheese College. It had (at least) a Jet Spell that sprayed molten cheese at your enemies.

Interesting spell there. I hope the writer had the sense to name it Gouda Hell.

[Anders]

Originally Posted by David Johansen

Does the existence of the Cheese collage imply the existence of a Meat collage? Fruits and Vegetables? Grain and Fibre? Can the lost food guide truly bring balance and regularity to an irregular world?

Essential Wine to go with the cheese?

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Anders

Essential Wine to go with the cheese?

Esential Wine is in Urban Magics.

[Donny Brook]

Baguetton

Turns a loaf of bread into a functional one-handed, balanced light club (use short sword skill) for the duration of the spell. The wielder gets +1 Damage OR +1 Parry (caster's choice) for each two pips in success margin on the casting roll. The weapon counts as magical for the purpose of affecting supernatural targets.

Duration: 1 minute
Cost: 2, 1 to maintain
Time to cast: 1 second
Prerequisites: Create Food


Enrich

Cast on food to improve the nutritive value supernaturally. Anyone who eats a meal treated by the spell gains +1ST and +3FP for the following three hours in addition to satisfying normal food needs. Also extends the expiration date for the subject food by the duration of the spell.

Duration: 1 week, unless eaten.
Cost: 3 per meal, cannot be maintained.
Time to cast: 1 minute
Prerequisites: Essential Food


Butchery
Resisted by HT

The subject of the spell takes 1d-2 damage and an additional 1d-2 damage per point of margin of success by the caster, and experiences Agony for 1 minute following a successful attack. Armor does not protect. If the target is killed by the spell, his or her remains are automatically dressed out in the manner of the Prepare Game spell, preventing (or at least seriously complicating) any efforts at resurrection.

Cost: 6
Prerequisites: Magery 1, Prepare Game

[Jareth Valar]

Originally Posted by Gold & Appel Inc

Well, there's always Body of Food. You think that's just an ordinary blueberry muffin hiding in plain sight on the table, but it's really a magical ninja!

He he, Pizza the Hut.