Path Magic and Influence Skills

[Anders]

I'm thinking of using an Energy Accumulation system for Path Magic. In this world, energy represents favors from various nature and ancestor spirits. So I'm thinking about making Influence skills the relevant ones for collecting energy and make Religious Ritual (not Ritual Magic) strictly foractually casting the spell. Spirit Empathy would of course be necessary for shamans in this setting...

Diplomacy would be the most common skill used, but I could also imagine Intimidation as well. Even Sex Appeal if the spirit can possess the shaman and the shaman has a willing partner nearby. Good roleplaying would of course give bonuses.

Any thoughts?

[fschiff]

"This spell helps you makes friends with people?"

"Yup"

"By making your breath taste sweet?"

"People don't live near each other. Its very important to make good first impressions and to be friends with strangers. You never know when you'll need some help."

"They don't have tooth paste?"

"Not in the 12th century. No."

-- Inspired by a real spell in the Abramelin.

[whswhs]

Potentially any influence skill might work, including Savoir-Faire (High Society) for courtly gods with protocol, or Streetwise for lowlife urban spirits. You probably would not want to use Fast-Talk with a spirit you expected to encounter again, or one with the resources to track you (though there's a story there, I think, the mage being relentlessly pursued by some petty but vengeful spirit).

But really, I think the most likely Influence skill for this purpose would be Religious Ritual. That's pretty much what Religious Ritual is meant for, if you think about it. You might even waive Spirit Empathy for this method.

Bill Stoddard

[Refplace]

For that I actually prefer the Effect Shaping model.
To me the Energy Accumulation method is bout gathering a little bit of energy at a time and repeating yourself till you have enough. It could work for some situations, lie drawing energy off a crowd or ambient emotional energy but that is just my flavor.
For Energy Shaping I would consider the following changes.
The Social skills and modifiers to them are much easier to get high values with then a M/H skill and a high talent.
So I would strongly encourage a cap on skill.
Charisma however is cheaper then a typical talent, would influence the casting roll, can be bought higher then a talent and has incredible utility outside casting spells. So I would not use it to add to the cap or as a bonus to Ritual rolls, only allowing it to add to the Influence skill for energy gathering.
Instead I would probably go for another 10 pt power and use that as a cap.

[starslayer]

I don't know I could definitely see energy accumulating for a spirit world akin to the celestial bureaucracy. Greater energy requires you to curry favor further up the chain. Getting a glass of water in the desert might only require you to appeal to your immediate ancestor (10 energy)- flooding the enemy's encampment would require petitioning the great water dragon of the sky (300 energy). Each social roll would represent petitioning the next layer of the bureaucracy, each successful roll would represent that entity providing its share of support for the spell.

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by starslayer

I don't know I could definitely see energy accumulating for a spirit world akin to the celestial bureaucracy.

Each social roll would represent petitioning the next layer of the bureaucracy, each successful roll would represent that entity providing its share of support for the spell.

Not bad at all.

[Anders]

Or how about this - we make Spiritual Chess an IQ/VH skill. The magician sets up the board and sits at the white side. He makes the first move... and the black side answers seemingly by itself. The progress of the game measures how much energy the magician has collected. A critical failure means he is check mate... which is very, very bad.

The character can get bonuses for an ornate board, etc. Playing blind (no chessboard) is done at -3 to skill.

The energy is aspected, with each of the six pieces (pawn, rook, knight, bishop, queen, king) representing a given type of energy. Suggestions what the pawns might represent?

[starslayer]

Originally Posted by Asta Kask

Or how about this - we make Spiritual Chess an IQ/VH skill. The magician sets up the board and sits at the white side. He makes the first move... and the black side answers seemingly by itself. The progress of the game measures how much energy the magician has collected. A critical failure means he is check mate... which is very, very bad.

The character can get bonuses for an ornate board, etc. Playing blind (no chessboard) is done at -3 to skill.

The energy is aspected, with each of the six pieces (pawn, rook, knight, bishop, queen, king) representing a given type of energy. Suggestions what the pawns might represent?

This is why RPM, energy accumulation, and effect shaping, are such awesome concepts. This sort of extension of the system is perfectly within the spirit of RPM/energy accumulation/effect shaping, but could model so many different ways to get magic done with quite a bit of dramatic flare to the casting.

I hope that SJgames really runs with this concept and that by the time GURPS 4th edition v2 or GURPS 5th edition comes out that some path/book variation will be the 'standard' magic system (likely a book based system in order to prevent the 'godlike power with godlike levels of skill' problem) rather then the current rather difficult to quantify system of spell magic (Difficult to quantify as in: how do you figure out how much making a variation of a given spell should cost, what should its energy value be, etc)