GURPS Thaumatology: Ritual Path Magic

[Pragmatic]

The "sacrifice landscaping" thing sounds tailor-made for the defiler/preserver divide among Dark Sun wizards. Completely by choice, you can get more energy. (So no "always defilers" going on there.)

It'd have to be MUCH smaller pieces of landscape to fit into the Dark Sun paradigm, though.

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by Pragmatic

The "sacrifice landscaping" thing sounds tailor-made for the defiler/preserver divide among Dark Sun wizards. Completely by choice, you can get more energy. (So no "always defilers" going on there.)

It'd have to be MUCH smaller pieces of landscape to fit into the Dark Sun paradigm, though.

For Dark Sun I'd use the Area Effect chart to determine how much energy you get. So something like:

1-yard: 2 energy
2-yards: 4 energy
4-yards: 8 energy
8-yards: 16 energy
16-yards: 32 energy
32-yards: 64 energy
... and so on.

I'd decrease the time to 10 minutes per increment to draw on the energy as well. It's a great deal! That's why Athas got so screwed. I'd also make it harder to reconsecrate the land, maybe ten times harder to fix what was desecrated. Maybe allow only Druids to actually fix the desecrated zones.

[vierasmarius]

Originally Posted by Ghostdancer

I'd also make it harder to reconsecrate the land, maybe ten times harder to fix what was desecrated. Maybe allow only Druids to actually fix the desecrated zones.

Where does it discuss reconsecrating land? I was under the impression that draining the life energy from land blighted it permanently. The text mentions using Thaumatology or Occultism to recognize blight, but I see nothing about fixing it. (That was actually part of my initial concern with the option, that it seemed to let any caster permanently destroy fertile land with no effort.)

EDIT: If it's intended to damage land in an equivalent fashion to Desecration, it should probably be at least as difficult to do: an hour of work per 100 square yards. That normally requires an Occultism roll or simply having the Thaumatology skill, but if you're "capturing" the life energy in the process it should require at least an extra roll.

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by vierasmarius

Where does it discuss reconsecrating land? I was under the impression that draining the life energy from land blighted it permanently. The text mentions using Thaumatology or Occultism to recognize blight, but I see nothing about fixing it. (That was actually part of my initial concern with the option, that it seemed to let any caster permanently destroy fertile land with no effort.)

It's in the same paragraph. Basically, for every 100 sq acres spend 3 hours and make a Thaumatology roll to reconsecrate it.

[vierasmarius]

Originally Posted by Ghostdancer

It's in the same paragraph. Basically, for every 100 sq acres spend 3 hours and make a Thaumatology roll to reconsecrate it.

See my edit above. Nothing in the text of Natural Energy mentions that you need to desecrate the land to drain its life energy, only that you can't drain land that's been previously drained or desecrated. That said, I think it should require something like that...

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by vierasmarius

See my edit above. Nothing in the text of Natural Energy mentions that you need to desecrate the land to drain its life energy, only that you can't drain land that's been previously drained or desecrated. That said, I think it should require something like that...

Look on the same page, the first paragraph on the left.

[Greg 1]

I bought it as soon as I heard it was out.

Can't wait to read it! :) It looks awesome.

[vierasmarius]

Originally Posted by Ghostdancer

Look on the same page, the first paragraph on the left.

Yes, I know about that. What I'm saying is that you seem to be equating land Desecrated by that ritual, and land blighted by being drained for Natural Energy. The Natural Energy paragraph seems to say that this blighting just happens, without additional effort on the part of the mage. It also doesn't indicate that the drained land can be restored the way desecrated land can be.

EDIT: If I understand you right, I think we're agreed on how it should work, I just think we may have a different understanding of what the rules say. You're definitely the more knowledgeable one in that respect, so I'd love if you could clarify how you interpret the spirit of the rules.

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by vierasmarius

Yes, I know about that. What I'm saying is that you seem to be equating land Desecrated by that ritual, and land blighted by being drained for Natural Energy. The Natural Energy paragraph seems to say that this blighting just happens, without additional effort on the part of the mage. It also doesn't indicate that the drained land can be restored the way desecrated land can be.

EDIT: If I understand you right, I think we're agreed on how it should work, I just think we may have a different understanding of what the rules say. You're definitely the more knowledgeable one in that respect, so I'd love if you could clarify how you interpret the spirit of the rules.

I've interpreted blighted land as becoming desecrated, but you are correct - the rules seem to leave it blank. I may have misremembered a earlier version or even something I used in one of my games (something I occasionally do).

Blighted land - created by a caster who wants to drain the land for energy. The thing is it doesn't say you can't continue draining energy from the land, so as written you could keep draining from the blighted area. It also doesn't give a way to actually fix the land that I can see.

Desecrated Areas - can be created by the caster, makes it impossible to gather ambient energy. Can be fixed by a caster.

That smacks of some inequality to me. I'll poke PK about it and see what he thinks.

[Humabout]

Originally Posted by vierasmarius

Oh, that reminds me of another think I thought. How should we tweak Corruption or Black Magic to work with RPM? At present, both of those offer a 1:1 exchange rate between spell energy and Corruption / Black Magic points. Since RPM uses higher energy costs than standard Magic spells, should that exchange rate be raised, maybe to 5 energy per point? I'd probably keep Corruption's cap of 6 energy per Magery level, considering RPM Magery tends to be higher than standard Magery, and I like how it's double the "free" Mana Pool that comes with the advantage.

I could see a few possible approaches to this. One is that merely casting a spell incurs Corruption Points at a set rate, probably increased for critical failure. Another would be that you can get free energy instantly for rituals, but also get some Corruption to go with it (I'd think somewhere between 2 and 5 energy per Corruption Point seems right, depending on the setting - probably more toward 2 points, I'm thinking). Yet another would be to have some combination of Magery, Energy Reserve (Magical) andor Ritual Adept, each with the Corrupting limitation (have fun tapping that!).

Actually, thinking about it, if you apply Corrupting to a 1-point Energy Reserve, it'd reduce the cost of that ER by 0.6 CP, thus inflicting 0.6 Corruption Points per use of that 1 energy. Doubling this gets you 2 energy for 1.2 Corruption Points. Round it to 1 Corruption / 2 energy so it's shiny, and you've got your exchange rate!

One last option, I could see would be making Path skills easier levels (E/IQ) or (A/IQ) and having their usage give Corruption Points. Another idea that just struck me would be to be able to get a bonus to your Energy Accumulation rolls at the expense of gaining Corruption at some rate.