Ways of using spellbooks

[Langy]

I like the idea of spell books allowing a Mage to cast a spell he doesn't know at a default. You can't cast a spell that you don't have any points in at a default unless you have a spell book - I'd say a -5 or -6 default, and allow Taking Extra Time to decrease that penalty. Something along those lines, anyways - I've only ever used GURPS magic in one game, and that one didn't last very long, so I'm not sure how good/bad that'd be.

[Ts_]

Just two munchkinny thoughts:

Any kind of preparation required in the morning begs for Less Sleep 3 [6] or however long the preparation takes. Seems like a good deal to me, but it might break the entire concept unless during extremely stressful journey.

Besides, if you want people to wield spellbooks in battle and look menacingly through reading glasses, you probably have to decide how hard it is to copy spells (and create scrolls). It would be quite foolish to have only one copy of a spell and wave that around in front of a fire-breathing dragon if copying a spell is trivial as copying any other recipe. I admit that the "1 use" limitation of scrolls is rubbish, though. It is one way to stop the proliferation of magic, though, should that be a desired goal.

Reading from a spellbook could always be good for the full IQ+Magery skill level. It might take extra time, or not, considering that I believe most people can read as quickly as they can speak.

Regards,
Ts

[MKMcArtor]

Originally Posted by RogerBacon

Ars Magica uses spellbooks the same way a chef today would use a cookbook. A mage using a spellbook could cast any spell in it without knowing the spell. It doesn't disappear or any such nonsense like that because it is nothing more than a formula or series of steps, just like a cookbook. The time required to cast the spell is longer, just like using a cookbook rather than working from memory. Also the chance of making a mistake, called a botch, in Ars Magica, increases. For GURPS, consider any failure to bea critical failure.

*remembers for the future*

That's a pretty cool way of using them. :)

[tantric]

You guys are really making a mountain out of a molehill in regards to losing CP's. This was the original rule I used in a campaign many years past:

Lorecraft spells are simply too complex to be remembered perfectly for long. The written form of the spell (which includes Glyphs to be visualized, phonetics for the Words to be spoken and encoded movement patterns for the Gestures, plus a list of Ingredients all written in a Secret Language), must be studied periodically or the Mage will begin to lose skill in that spell. The decline is rather steep, especially for Immortals. Without a Spellbook, a Mage can expect to completely forget a spell within a year, an Immortal in half that time. Penalties are somewhat liek radioactive decay: 0xSkill Level at 1yr, 1/2skill level in 6months, 3/4 skill level in 3 months, 7/8skill level in 1.5months. This loss is temporary - upon regaining access to a written spell, one point is regained for every five hours of study. Frequent casting helps retention, or a Spell can be written down from memory (though the chance of error is high), assuming a Book is unavailable. Permanently memorizing a spell is an advantage: one or two points, depending on the complexity. This is most common for Enchanters, and Lorecraft users in non-literary societies.

Thus, if a mage lost his book, after 3 weeks his 12 skill would go down to 11. When he got his book back, he could be back to normal within a week of hard studying per 14 spells. I never even had to actually use this - mages simply did NOT lose their books. This system has one major advantage - very little bookkeeping (haha).

However, Ts's idea is pretty sweet, but I have a few questions.

I would base "Lorecraft" spell level on 10+Magery instead of IQ+Magery, modified as usual by invested skill points. If the player does his morning studies, he can raise the base from 10+Magery up to IQ+Magery at a rate of 1 point per hour or whatever it takes.

So everyday studying gives you the part of the skill that comes from your IQ. The more intelligent you are, the more you can benefit from "cramming". On the other hand, invested skill points are "work", not intelligence, so you've already done the studying for them. I think one plus side would be that there is more reason to put lots of skill points directly into spells (assuming magery levels are limited). The standard magic system sometimes lacks this ...

What exactly do you mean by the bolded part? Thaumatology says nothing about this in the Magery Based on Other Attributes section. Also - doesn't this mean that skill level functions only as a cap - assuming your net skill max is your skill level or IQ + Magery which ever is lower? Also, your skill level in EVERY spell will change daily. This is a bookkeeping nightmare.

Ars Magica uses spellbooks the same way a chef today would use a cookbook. A mage using a spellbook could cast any spell in it without knowing the spell. It doesn't disappear or any such nonsense like that because it is nothing more than a formula or series of steps, just like a cookbook. The time required to cast the spell is longer, just like using a cookbook rather than working from memory. Also the chance of making a mistake, called a botch, in Ars Magica, increases. For GURPS, consider any failure to bea critical failure.

This is also interesting BUT (there's always a 'but') this is not the only magic system I use. Letting Lorecraft users cast spells they don't have skill points in isn't fair to those who use Spellsong (syntactic magic).

Just BTW, I've been playing GURPS for 20 yrs, so can we drop the 'evil childish DM' bit? I have campaigns older than some people on this board!

[Captain-Captain]

Originally Posted by tantric

You guys are really making a mountain out of a molehill in regards to losing CP's. This was the original rule I used in a campaign many years past:



Thus, if a mage lost his book, after 3 weeks his 12 skill would go down to 11. When he got his book back, he could be back to normal within a week of hard studying per 14 spells. I never even had to actually use this - mages simply did NOT lose their books. This system has one major advantage - very little bookkeeping (haha).

Just for the record, you did not state anything about 'temporary' effects. Conditional modifiers (penalties in this case) is not the same as "losing points".

Just BTW, I've been playing GURPS for 20 yrs, so can we drop the 'evil childish DM' bit? I have campaigns older than some people on this board!

Not a problem, but I did note "The phrase "lose points in spells" is a particularly bad one. It conjures the image of the utterly immature GM" your words did conjure up that image when I read them.

[Ts_]

Originally Posted by tantric

What exactly do you mean by the bolded part?

Sorry if that was confusing. I just mean that skill points function as usual and are not affected by this forgetting process. So, SomeSpell [1] in the standard GURPS system has skill level IQ+Magery-2, but with Lorecraft it would only guarantee 10+Magery-2. SomeOtherSpell [8] usually gives IQ+Magery+1, but with Lorecraft it would drop to 10+Magery+1.

However, that is before daily studies. Assuming the player has IQ 13, he can study effectively up to 3 hours each morning.
Studying 1 hour means he raises the base for all spells from 10 to 11, plus Magery. so SomeSpell [1] has skill level 11 + Magery - 2, SomeOtherSpell [8] has 11 + Magery + 1.
Studying 2 hours gives 12 + Magery +/- relative skill level.
Studying 3 hours gives 13 + Magery +/- RSL.
Studying 4 hours still gives only 13 + Magery +/- RSL, because an IQ 13 guy can only study effectively for 3 hours in the morning. After that his head hurts too much ...

Originally Posted by tantric

Also - doesn't this mean that skill level functions only as a cap - assuming your net skill max is your skill level or IQ + Magery which ever is lower? Also, your skill level in EVERY spell will change daily. This is a bookkeeping nightmare.

Now, I'm not sure what you are saying. ;) The net skill max in Lorecraft would be the same as in standard GURPS magic: IQ+Magery+RSL. So this kind of Lorecraft isn't really a "nerf" for people that have lots of time or their spell books out (assuming that gives the full IQ bonus). But for adventuring magicians, that cannot sit down for 3 hours every morning in a quiet corner, it would have consequences.

The bookkeeping requirements in this version are rather modest, actually. Each morning you study for X hours and write down X somewhere (with 10+X <= IQ). For the rest of the day, you get a bonus of X to your spell levels if you have noted 10 + Magery + relative skill level on your character sheet. (Or do it the other way round, or just write down the relative skill level.)

The bookkeeping does indeed become a nightmare when you treat spells separately. Simply for that reason I would only care about the levels of single spells if the magician somehow lost his notes for just that spell, which should be rare. But one example where it might come up is that a magician learns a new spell and spends a skill point to learn it, but for some reason he cannot copy the spell into his book. This spell would never benefit from the morning routine and would always be cast at 10 + Magery + RSL, until he can obtain the textbook version of the spell somewhere else.

However, making this system "realistic" and balanced is kind of hard. I'm assuming that all effort of "cramming" is lost after one day, so you start out with 10+Magery on the next morning. That leads to problems as soon as a magician needs his spell after already having gone to bed ... And if time is short, players would certainly want to study "only combat spells this morning", which requires bookkeeping for each spell. And then the total number of spells known comes into play and it becomes even more messy ... I would just say "No". ;)

You could of course change the decay function somehow. Losing half the current IQ bonus each 24 hours, for example, and still requiring 1 hour for regaining each point. I wouldn't want a linear progression like "You lose 2 points each 24 hours", because that would just mean that you simply lose 2 hours of time each day, independent of the level at which you keep the IQ bonus. (Alternatively, the learning rate could be non-linear with IQ.) But one could also make an argument, that high IQ has increased and not decreased marginal profit. So high IQ increases your max net skill level and decreases the effort required to keep it there.

Umm, did that make everything clearer? Or just worse and completely different from what you thought sounded sweet? ;)

Regards
Ts

[Sarcose]

Allow me to mediate a bit of understanding here, an aesthetic observation if you will. The detriment behind the idea of "losing cp" is that it gives the mage the appearance of a built-in handicap. Of course, depending on how you balance the game, this is not true. It could be that the campaign expects mages that sometimes are weaker - there's no way for the player to tell how handicapping is this mechanic, only that it may look like it is.

But the same mechanical effect will be achieved by, rather than handicapping them for not keeping a spellbook, giving them a bonus for keeping a spellbook, and balancing the campaign toward mages that have spellbooks. Whereas, the psychological effect will be quite different: the mage will appear to have the appearance of a built-in bonus mechanic and thus be quite attractive to play. Do a little bit of tweaking with the fluff to give the subtle indication that most mages carry around spellbooks, and then the stubborn ones who don't want to, who you are trying to get to carry around spellbooks, will find themselves struggling a slight bit.

That is, mechanics vs. aesthetics. Through balancing, you can make any two mechanics the same. But, not knowing anything about your campaign going in, the aesthetics of said mechanics are all your players have to go on.

[tantric]

First, let me apologize about not being clear about the original system. I would never permanent take CP's - that's a total **** move, y'all are right. I didn't give the specifics because I'm looking for something new, so it didn't seem important.

Ts's system makes more sense to me, though he's right about it's limitations (just waking up and players wanting to study specific spells). I had understood him as saying that each spell must be studied separately, which would indeed be a nightmare.

So, all things given, how does my original system with the *temporary* losses compare with Ts's system? For the last campaign I ran, I used my system, but it was science fantasy where players had access to networks and backup data and such, so in reality they never lost their spellbooks. Now I'm dropping the technology, so it will come into play more.

Also, given that this is only one system of magic out of many (syntatic and path/ritual magic also exists), how should these systems change the cost of Magery? Just a regular Gadget limitation?

Thanks for all the help, y'all. I used to be very handwavey about detailed rules, but with this campaign I'm writing everything down, taking notes and playtesting it. Hopefully with the LittlePeople and Eyrwhone (see sig) I can come up with something fairly rare in GURPS.

[Ts_]

Regarding taking away and giving points: Taking away points but making sure that they can realistically get back to the original skill level makes balancing a bit easier, because you can simply look at what these spell levels would be like in the standard GURPS system. If people buy their spells up to standard level and can get a bonus ... That would be powerful, or if you adjust things accordingly, unintuitive, I think. Though it might feel "fairer".

Anyway, regarding the relative level of systems:

Assume the player has IQ 14 + Magery 3 and 1 point in every spell (or 2 for the very hard ones) for the magic skill level 15.

In your old system, 1 skill level would decay after 36 days (assuming the stated half-life of 6 months). To get it back you need 5 hours of study for that skill. 5 hours in 36 days is 1 hour per week for each spell.

First, clearly 1 hour of studying per IQ over 10, translates into that many hours per day. I'm assuming the half-time of 24 hours for the IQ bonus now, because it seems less drastic and can be justified more easily.

So, assuming that the IQ bonus vanishes with a half-time of 24 hours, the first of the 4 points from IQ 14 vanishes after 10 hours, and two points have vanished after 24 hours.

Thus, studying roughly 2 or 2.5 hours per day keeps all spells at 15 in my system, and not doing it comes with a hefty penalty. In your system, the same amount of studying could support 14 spells (since that takes 14 hours per week). You didn't specify exactly how using spells helps to remember them, but I guess that at about 20 spells or more, my system nets you less studying time for keeping all spells at 15. On the other hand, your system decreases slow enough so that keeping 14 spells at max and many more to refresh only between adventurers, might also not be much of a limitation. Especially since you won't notice any change before 1 month of adventuring.

Less Magery and more IQ, say IQ 16 + Magery 1, means a lot more studying time in my system. The first point vanishes after 6 hours, and 3 points after 24 hours. Keeping all spells at max all the time thus requires 4 1-hour breaks per day, compared to the roughly 2 hours with IQ 14 + Magery 3.

This obviously comes down to a "Talent/Magery is better than IQ" thing, which I don't object to given the many other benefits of pure IQ!, that Magery at a similar price does not have. But assuming normal skill levels, 2 or 3 hours per day isn't exactly crippling and can be mostly bought off with a few levels of Less Sleep. So the cost break should be maybe like -10 points compared to standard GURPS magic.

Compared to Path Magic: (That's the spells at default thing, right? IDHMBW, so this is all out of my head, and in particular I'm unsure how College Skills relate to the core magic skill ... I believe they have a -6 default or so.)
The prerequisite counts in Path Magic are somewhat weird, and buying the relevant main skill to obscene levels is often the most effective way to go ... Ritual Magic 30, roughly 64 cp with IQ 14 + Magery 3 [35] gives you almost *all* spells at level 15+, and many basic combat spells at 20+ for around 100 CP, I guess. Not too mention that it's much cheaper to buy up a single spell, if needed, because it's just a technique. If you limit the main skill (which you probably should) to roughly 20, it's basically a limit on the number of colleges one can sustain for the same amount of CP (1 College is always possible). Picking two or three good colleges and pumping them up to 20 as well still makes you quite powerful, while maintaing many utility spells (all the basic create/shape stuff, for example). On the other hand, if the core skill is very restricted (say 15), Path Magic doesn't seem cost effective compared to the standard magic system, because then you suddenly need to spend a handful of points on every spell that you want to have at 15 in addition to ritual magic and the college skill, compared to the 1 point with IQ 14 + Magery 3 in the standard system. (I'm sure there's tons of information on balancing path/ritual magic on these forums.)

In summary, a full time powerful (standard) magician buys Magery 3 [35] and maybe 50 spells for a total 85 points. With 100 points spend on Ritual Magic 30, he would gain access to all spells, and have a lot of spells at a higher level as well.

So ... I think Path Magic either wins or loses big time for true mages, depending on how limited is is. Finding a balance works only with very specific values in mind.

However, I could imagining making el-cheapo Path magic attractive to "dabblers" who can live with spells around level 10 in a few colleges. Path Magic is not particular cost effective at this point level, but that's up to the GM, isn't it? For example, IQ 13, Magery 2 [25], Ritual Magic 15 [~8] and another 12 points to get three colleges at 15 [4] each. It's broad but unreliable magic, but you're spending just ~45 points on magic in total, assuming you want IQ 13 anyway. Since you could also buy about 20 spells at level 13 with this, I would make Ritual Magic limited like this a bit cheaper as well. Maybe -10 points as well? 35 points for a few tricks and being able to detect and use all magic items seems acceptable.

I can't say much about syntactic magic, since I have no clue how it functions.

Regards,
Ts

[korbeau]

I like to include in my campaign a lots of tomes and spellbooks and what I do for ruling this is the Scholar rules in Dungeons Fantasy. That way, my mage player can cast regular spell (Gurps Magic rules) and having some extra with tomes and spellbooks :)