Ways of using spellbooks

[tantric]

Sweet analysis! I love math people!

I only allow ritual magic for certain very specific spells and colleges - it really can't compete with Lorecraft. Still, how should Magery for Lorecraft in the tantric or Ts system be priced?

This is my system for syntactic musical magic. There are verbs, which are called Keys. These are skills. The Keys are Communication, Control, Transformation, Healing, Sensing, Moving, Protection, Weakening, Summoning, Strengthening and Shaping. Nouns in this system are called Melodies. Unlike normal syntactic magic, Melodies are advantages. There are an infinite number of Melodies, but the major ones are: Air, Fire, Water, Earth, Beasts, Monsters, People, the Body, Food, Light, Darkness, the Mind, Sound, Death, Plants, Illusions and Magic. I'm still working on the point costs. Obviously the Melody of Birds costs less than the Melody of Beasts. Since all Spellsong is improvisational, having a more specific Melody helps.

Even the simplest Melodies take 4 seconds to play. The effect begins on the next round, meaning Spellsong isn't *completely* useless in combat.

Example: Damsel the Sprite bard wants to know something about events in the local area. He plays the Melody of Birds in the Key of Summoning. Since he has Mimicry (Birdsong), he gets a situational +2 modifier. He wants to call mockingbirds in particular, normally a -2 for specificity, but this is canceled by knowing the mockingbird calls. I decide that for every FP he puts in, he calls 1d birds + his margin of success. When they arrive, he switches to the Key of Communication. After a few minutes of twiddling and chirping, he has his info. [In my world, Mockingbird Morningsong invented Spellsong and is the patron of bards, so no reaction roll is required]

The following Spellsongs are specific skills, like spells, that have various Keys are prerequisites: Sleep, Daze, Bravery, Loyalty, Emotion Control, Lesser Geas, Challenge and Narrative.

Challenge is for the dueling banjos, Narrative is the mode for telling stories - it provides minor sensory enhancement.

This is basically what Lorecraft competes with. It's so fundamentally different it's hard to compare the two. I'm probably going to drop the Melodies as Advantages and make them into skills with techniques. Further thoughts?

[martinl]

I've always like the idea of "professional handbook spellbooks." The spellbook is not so much a teaching aid as a cookbook combined with charts and tables for dealing with a plethora of environmental and equipment issues. In this concept, magic is strongly influenced by many varying phenomena, which are difficult or impossible to memorize, but which can be read off of charts if you know the date and location. (Beneficial side effect - makes wizards obsessed with astronomy, navigation, and accurate timekeeping.)

So without a spellbook you might be able to cast the spell, but using the spellbook to account for the astrological configuration, the regional modifiers for South Burrowville, and the proper use of locally available fresh ash twigs might allow for a relatively easier TDM. A good spellbook might be able to eke out a few more, a poor one might not have complete info.

If you want to extend the concept, other equipment like an astrolabe or thaumometer might also help, and add fun atmosphere. Additionally, mages might very carefully characterize their home bases, giving both crazy mage lairs full of delicate and sensitive equipment, and crazy dangerous mages on their home ground.

PCs might also memorize the charts for their favorite spells. Probably a perk or few. (If date, location, and astrological configuration all matter, for example, then you might require a perk for each.) A discount of some sort for eidetic memory seems fair.

Keep in mind that PC-level GURPS mages in normal mana can probably swing 1CP spells at 15 or 16 skill, so this will not affect PCs as strongly as less gifted NPCs unless you make the default TDM fairly steep. (Changing to low mana, for example.)

[Ts_]

Originally Posted by tantric

Still, how should Magery for Lorecraft in the tantric or Ts system be priced?

Well, does your magic system really effect the game that often? You can go on an adventure for a month and not care about it, as long as you can study twice as much the next month. Unless adventures last longer (or you track time usage in between), this is a very minor limitation, not worth anything.

My system *can* be a pain in the vein for adventuring mages. However, Magery and how it works is totally unaffected by it. It would feel wrong to put a limitation on Magery out of all things, and making Magery cheaper would even subvert the studying process. The limitation is really on the effect of IQ on spells, but then again, IQ is always a good deal, and shouldn't be cheaper for mages ...

So if the standard GURPS magic system doesn't exist at all, I would not change the price of "my" Lorecraft Magery. If you really want to be nice, let your players buy "IQ (no per/will, only for spells)" at 10 points a piece. It's a lot worse than Magery (which doesn't need study time and increases the power of spells, and is therefore often limited), but it could be better than IQ! because it doesn't use up the disadvantage limit in compensation for not adding to non-spell IQ skills. You could also rename it "Memory Talent 1 [10]" or make Photographic Memory [10] a levelled advantage, since people would probably wonder how it affects the learning process anyway. Something along those lines ... Of course, there should be a cap on this, but since it only applies to magicians with lots of study time every day, it doesn't have to be so severe. Why Memory Talent adds to casting with the book in front of you is questionable, of course. It's easier to explain why IQ (only for spells) adds to the skill level in such a situation.

Regards,
Ts

[tantric]

Lovely. My mage player is new to GURPS but a total guru with HERO and very crunchy (the first time I tried to make a character for his campaign I chipped a tooth). I plan on getting his input on the systems. Please check the following to see if I'm missing anything:

GURPS default system:

Spells are skills, which are based on IQ. Spells are either Hard or Very Hard skills. Skills are rated at Attribute +/- modifier. For instance, learning a Hard spell at IQ - 1 costs 2 points. Learning it at IQ + 1 costs 8 points. Very Hard spells are always one skill level below a hard skill with the same amount of invested points.

Magery is the advantage that lets you cast spells. Magery 0 costs 5pts and lets you sense magic items and has certain other advantages. Each additional level of Magery costs 10 pts. Magery adds to your IQ for learning spells - if you have IQ 12 and Magery 2, you effectively have IQ 14 for spells.

Spells have prerequisites. Learning Fireball requires that you know Create Fire and Shape Fire and have Magery 1.

System 1, Lose and Lose:

Spells are very hard to remember correctly for long, so mages have to lug around spellbooks. If you don't have a spellbook you will completely forget a spell after one year.

1 year=100%
6 months=50%
3 months=25%
1.5 months=12.5%
3 weeks = 6.25% loss

Thus if you have skill 12 in a spell and you lose your spellbook, after 3 weeks you have 12 - (.0625 x 12 =) ~1 = 11. This applies to all your spells equally.

These losses are temporary. When you regain your spellbook, restores 1 skill point in the spell of your choice.

The Eidetic Memory advantage (5pts) doubles your retention time, Photographic Memory (10pts) quadruples it.

If you lose your spellbook, you can try to write down the spells from memory, but this is difficult - Skill in each spell - 6.

You can also choose to permanently memorize spells. This costs 1 pt for Hard spells, 2 pts for Very Hard spells. This is mostly for characters that know only one spell.


System 2, Study Hard:

Instead of spells being based on IQ, they are based on 10+Magery. Thus if you have Magery 2 and you buy a spell at Attribute + 2, your effective skill is 14.

In this system, studying every morning improves your skill in your spells for that day. You may study (IQ-10) hours. For each hour you study, your skill in every spell increases by 1. Thus if you have IQ 13 and Magery 3 and a bunch of spells you know at level 14 (that is, at Attribute=10+Magery + 1) you can study for up to three hours, raising all those skills to 17 for that day.

System 3, Spell Slots:

In this system, you have a spellbook full of spells that you don't actually know. Instead you buy spell slots and you fill those slots with spells from your book whenever you care to study. Slots cost 5pts + 3pts per skill point. Example: you buy one slot for 5pts and take 4 potential skill points for another 12 pts. You may have 50 spells in your spellbook, but you can only cast one at a time. If you have IQ 12 and Magery 2 your skill with that spell will be 14 for a Hard spell or 13 for a Very Hard spell.

Special Advantages:

In all systems, if you have your spellbook open in front of you while casting, you get a +1 to skill. If you have a complete spellbook (3x the number of pages per spell as a traveling spellbook), it is assumed that you have all the info you need to make minor changes in the spells, like turning your Fireball green or whatever, which would normally be at a penalty.

BTW, how the heck do you deal with prereqs in supermemorization?

[Ts_]

Minor nitpicks:

Originally Posted by tantric

GURPS default system:
Very Hard spells cost twice as much.

Actually, they are always one skill level below a hard skill with the same amount of invested points.

Originally Posted by tantric

System 2, Study Hard:
... and a bunch of spells you know at level 14 (that is, at Attribute=IQ+Magery + 1) ...

The numbers are correct, but it should read Attribute=10+Magery+1.

I don't see why anyone would choose anything but the default system, if it is available ... So don't even tell them about it. ;) A point break would have to be big to convince me to go to any other system. Maybe yours if I get enough to pay for photographic memory and then some. Never mine. Maybe
Super-Memorization if I can get the spells in my spellbook without having to pay CP for them. Then I could probably live through the day with maybe just 5 different spell slots, but even that is a lot of points.

I haven't looked at your syntactical magic yet, but (damn you e23!) I'm now more than ready to do so with Magic+Thaumatology. Finally I can obsess even more about magic systems. :)

Regards
Ts

[tantric]

As you point out, regular GURPS magic is far better than either of our systems, which makes me VERY uneasy about not giving a discount for Magery, even if Lorecraft is the only GURPS Magic style system out there. After all, the point cost is still relative to other things you could buy with points.

I would really like a bit of semi-official input here....

I'm fixing the text in my original post, for those who come after.

[tantric]

If the system uses spellbooks, it only follows that there is a written Language of Magic. For the sake of argument, let's call this Thaumatergic. In my world, Thaumatergic is too complex be a regular language, it's an IQ/VH skill. It includes the glyphs that must be visualized, a language that encodes hand gestures (like written ASL) and a secret language that for the components and ingredients - and a fullblown regular language for discussing varieties of the spell and how to work them.


If your spellbook is lost and you want to record a spell form memory, you first make the spell skill check, then a Thaumatergic check minus the level of Magery required by the spell. If you find a spellbook and you want to know what the spells do, you make a Thaumatergic check minus the required levels of Magery for the spell. Thaumatergic is also required for writing scroll

Any one else use anything like this?

[arnej]

In my campaign, I wanted to encourage carrying spellbooks, particularly so that PCs could learn new spells by capturing enemy mage's books.

To encourage this, all I did was create the rule that any critical spell failure "burned out" the mage's memory of that spell, and they couldn't recover it without a night's study from their spellbook of the spell.

arnej

[cmdicely]

Originally Posted by tantric

I'm curious about different ways y'all have tried for modeling magic systems that require spellbooks. I'm familiar with Vancian/supermemorization, of course, but that's not exactly what I'm looking for. I'm considering a system in which mages lose points in spells if they don't study everyday. Thoughts? Thanks.

I don't like the idea of "lose points in spells". OTOH, if you want a system in which casters lose effective proficiency with spells they haven't studied in a while, a simple approach is this: if the caster hasn't studied the spell from a spellbook within the last 24 hours, look up the duration since the last time they studied the spell on the Duration Effects Modifier on p. 243 of GURPS Thaumatology, subtract 4 from the listed modifier, and apply the modifier as a penalty to effective skill with the spell.

If this is the normal rule for magic in the world, it shouldn't change the cost of abilities (unless the required study time per spell is enough that the study requirement is going to force wizards that do have access to their spellbooks to pick and choose which spells to study each night because they aren't going to have time to be broadly prepared), but you might consider allowing a perk "Internalized Spell" (must specialize by spell, can take multiple times for different spells) that allows a caster to use a spell without any penalty for not studying recently.