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Old 07-10-2018, 09:00 PM   #11
kirbwarrior
 
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Default Re: Decreased Mana Costs as an advantage

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Originally Posted by ericbsmith View Post
Yes, it would. My math skills failed me there.
Oh, okay, I thought I might have been wrong.

I think it's still fair, and gives a really good reason to focus on a college that doesn't come up enough in default magic.
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Old 07-10-2018, 09:12 PM   #12
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Default Re: Decreased Mana Costs as an advantage

I'm reluctant to allow it but the -40% seems ok. The FP cost reduction is the primary reason I or anyone I know improves skill and becomes more the only reason after 16 for most spells.
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Old 07-10-2018, 10:53 PM   #13
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Default Re: Decreased Mana Costs as an advantage

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I'm reluctant to allow it but the -40% seems ok. The FP cost reduction is the primary reason I or anyone I know improves skill and becomes more the only reason after 16 for most spells.
Going to guess you don't play a lot of DF Refplace.

More skill == more spells maintained while still maintaining and effective skill of 16.
More skill == greater ability to deploy area spells in unusual situations (target 'the siege beast' location 'somewhere out there' situational 'on the other side of this wall'; done at -15, got 25 skill; its still worth rolling)
More skill == greater effect (ST 60 DX 30 phantom that needs to take 20 points of damage in a single hit to be killed and no rule of 16 on the disbelief; yes please)

Extra- more magery == greater potential effect (ball spells allow you to charge your magery per second for three seconds, beam spells your magery damage, etc).

Energy/maintenance cost is for the most part 'cheap' compared to the above factors (power items play into that, but powerstones are a thing in a non-DF game and carrying /swapping out a large stack of 6 point powerstones is not unreasonable and will cover most spellcasting situations).

I'm not sure I'm going to be walking away from this telling my players 'sure you can take 'all spells cost less' for 10/level; but at least it seems a pretty reasonable value given the normal application of additional skill,

Last edited by starslayer; 07-10-2018 at 11:01 PM.
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Old 07-10-2018, 10:57 PM   #14
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Default Re: Decreased Mana Costs as an advantage

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Originally Posted by kirbwarrior View Post
I thought penalties would come up enough for more skill to matter, and contests always want more skill. Plus, as you pointed out, reducing cost and time is still useful as skill goes up (similar to how a skill can take less time for mundane skills).
Magic spells don't face many penalties. There's the -5 for Low Mana, and Regular spells face a -1/yard range penalty. Healing spells face repeated casting penalties. A few spells use Long Distance modifiers, but a -10 to skill will let you scry an entire planet. Resisted spells are capped by the Rule of 16, so extra skill doesn't help much with them. Higher levels of Magery also help with casting effects of leveled spells (bigger fireballs and healing spells), which you would lose with the limited version presented here.

A skill of 20-21 is usually sufficient to mitigate most of these penalties. The primary advantage of having Spell skill over 21 is the time and cost reductions.
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Last edited by ericbsmith; 07-10-2018 at 11:03 PM.
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Old 07-10-2018, 11:22 PM   #15
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Default Re: Decreased Mana Costs as an advantage

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Originally Posted by starslayer View Post

More skill == more spells maintained while still maintaining and effective skill of 16.
More skill == greater ability to deploy area spells in unusual situations (target 'the siege beast' location 'somewhere out there' situational 'on the other side of this wall'; done at -15, got 25 skill; its still worth rolling)
More skill == greater effect (ST 60 DX 30 phantom that needs to take 20 points of damage in a single hit to be killed and no rule of 16 on the disbelief; yes please)

Extra- more magery == greater potential effect (ball spells allow you to charge your magery per second for three seconds, beam spells your magery damage, etc).

Energy/maintenance cost is for the most part 'cheap' compared to the above factors (power items play into that, but powerstones are a thing in a non-DF game and carrying /swapping out a large stack of 6 point powerstones is not unreasonable and will cover most spellcasting situations).
Im not saying reduced FP cost is the only benefit, just the most popular one after a certain skill threshold.
That is 15 in a regular game, 20 in a high powered game.
When pricing the limitation value I wont to cover as much of the circumstances as may come up.
In my experience most mages will have a signature spell or maybe a combo they buy up and the rest they are happy with a 15 skill.
Buffers may work on a few they like to keep up, but thats not that common.
Thats worth 20 points (5 *4) per spell so this limited magery should be around 20 to 40 points. Your trading multiple spells at less energy vs. a better signature spell. To low and its too cheap and effective, too high and you look for other options. 30 pints seems good to me, 10 points way too low.
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Old 07-11-2018, 04:48 AM   #16
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Default Re: Decreased Mana Costs as an advantage

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Originally Posted by Kallatari View Post
So, my final cost:

Option 1: Magery Spell Energy Cost Reduction (103/116/ +8 per additional level)
I’m pretty certain 103 points is too much, considering less than that buys +5 IQ outright.

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Originally Posted by ericbsmith View Post
Magic spells don't face many penalties. There's the -5 for Low Mana, and Regular spells face a -1/yard range penalty. Healing spells face repeated casting penalties. A few spells use Long Distance modifiers, but a -10 to skill will let you scry an entire planet. Resisted spells are capped by the Rule of 16, so extra skill doesn't help much with them. Higher levels of Magery also help with casting effects of leveled spells (bigger fireballs and healing spells), which you would lose with the limited version presented here.

A skill of 20-21 is usually sufficient to mitigate most of these penalties. The primary advantage of having Spell skill over 21 is the time and cost reductions.
If I’m going to take Reduced FP Cost -4 instead of ER 20, and I want to make the best of it, I’ll want to have a metric ton of spells on. Full party Invisibility, Dark Vision, Flight, Shield, Lighten Burden... Spells On penalties are going to be a major limitation there.

Just the same, successfully casting resisted spells at 10 yards is a lot more useful in my GURPS tactical combat experience than yours seems to indicate.
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Old 07-11-2018, 08:25 AM   #17
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Default Re: Decreased Mana Costs as an advantage

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Originally Posted by ArchonShiva View Post
Just the same, successfully casting resisted spells at 10 yards is a lot more useful in my GURPS tactical combat experience than yours seems to indicate.
Certainly from the GM's side of the screen, NPC spell casters very much want to start casting at 10+ yards because PCs tend to close the distance terrifyingly fast and then murder happens. But if it's a resisted spell, that imposes really high penalties, and tends to result in a wasted effort. Entomb can be completely free but if you're casting at an effective skill of 9 you're not going anywhere fast.
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Old 07-11-2018, 10:42 AM   #18
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Default Re: Decreased Mana Costs as an advantage

I've been leaning towards making the "skill based" energy discounts for spells depend on CPs spent rather than actual skill level (so with 2 CP in a spell, you get a 1 FP discount, at 4 CP you get a 2 FP discount, etc.), and with that system the college "bang" skills provide explicit broad based cost discounts for colleges, and then I can extrapolate backwards from 1 college magery and swag it to ... something like this:

Reduced Mana Cost (10/30/+40 CP)
Spells cost 1 mana point less than usual for 10 CP, 2 mana less for 30 CP, and 3 less for 70 CP (40 more for each additional level).
This is not cumulative with the skill based discount - use the higher value.
Half cost to apply this to a single college, two thirds to apply it to 2 or 3 colleges.


One thing I like about this implementation is that it makes a small discount cheap, but steeper discounts hurt. It seems like that sort of trait. (High levels look to be dangerous to game balance, whatever that is.)
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Old 07-11-2018, 12:43 PM   #19
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Default Re: Decreased Mana Costs as an advantage

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Reduced Mana Cost (10/30/+40 CP)
Interesting. Subscribing so I don't lose this post ... so I can come back in the future and reread this for usage.
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Old 07-11-2018, 07:06 PM   #20
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Default Re: Decreased Mana Costs as an advantage

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Originally Posted by martinl View Post
Reduced Mana Cost (10/30/+40 CP)
Spells cost 1 mana point less than usual for 10 CP, 2 mana less for 30 CP, and 3 less for 70 CP (40 more for each additional level).
This is not cumulative with the skill based discount - use the higher value.
Half cost to apply this to a single college, two thirds to apply it to 2 or 3 colleges.
This is actually a pretty cool way to give a spread of usefulness across focus. Only buying one or two spells and it's great to increase skill a lot with them, but for more generalists you buy Reduced Mana Cost to affect tons of spells, without the need to have incredible skill (I could even see a wizard getting an IQM of 15, or 12 skill, for all spells and focusing on making them cheaper).

Should it stay at 40/lvl indefinitely? I wonder where a good cutoff would be, or when each level stops being that much better than the last.
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While I do not think that GURPS is perfect I do think that it is more balanced than what I am likely to create by GM fiat.
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