Single Round Spells in Ritual Path Magic Systems

[N.H.Alicia]

As the title says - To clarify, I want a magic system that allows useful spells during combat as well as long rituals for other purposes.

Not Charms - I want the spell to be cast and put into effect at the same time.

Essentially, I want to build something similar to Call of Cthulhu's magic system (Long summoning rituals, quick combat spells), and seeing as how good this forum has been for me, naturally I came here for advice.

[Anaraxes]

What is it then about RPM that you find appealing and want to keep? I mean, it's a good system, and I like it for many purposes. But it also has certain design decisions embedded into it -- and one of those is that it's meant for an urban fantasy / secret magic campaign where research and preparation are important, in contrast to one where wizards are artillery or gunslingers, and where magical rituals themselves can be important dramatic elements (and thus take up "screen time").

Charms exist to provide exactly that sort of quick casting in combat, while still rewarding the characters (and players) that do the research before kicking in the door to the big boss's room and charging in, wands a-blazing. So that's the way the system works.

The obvious hack is to change the rate at which you can accumulate energy. Ritual Adept, or at least the RA (Time) variant, sounds like it would be a de facto requirement, so you might make that cheaper, or bundle it with Magery. Even with RA, you might want to rule that the basic accumulation cycle is 1 second rather than 5 -- or to allow even more powerful spells off-the-cuff, even give the amount accumulated a multiplier. You can also make casting effectively faster by waiving the penalty for speeding it up (compressing the 5 seconds into 1 is normally at -4 to skill), so you might require casters to buy the skill to do so, or make that a feature of a Talent (like Magery). The only thing that makes rituals take time in RPM is the need to gather energy, so any way to make energy accumulation faster or eliminating the penalties for rushing it gets you to one-second spells.

CP-wise, you might either just give the adepts these bonuses -- changing the rules for this setting, that is -- or you might just give them the points to buy those abilities. (That's no less unfair than changing the system to make them more powerful, after all, and gives you some measure of how much you're buffing the casters, at least if you believe the CP costs are something like balanced to start with.)

[N.H.Alicia]

I think lowering the casting time of some spells should work.

The hook is that spellcasters can cast certain small spells instantly, but large spells require time. You can cast a fireball in short order, but you can't rush a summon/bind without risks.

[N.H.Alicia]

A variant of conditional spells is one option, although that allows conditional summonings, which I'm not keen on, although I'm filing the idea of summons that wait until a certain time to make themselves known away.

Option two: Seperate spells into two categories: Instant, and ritual. This has the advantage of allowing me to control which spells can be cast without long rituals, although unless I dispense with paths it might be hard to design...

[Kalzazz]

RPM Mages can by use of Charms excel at dealing damage and slinging fireballs, at least until said fire balls run out

Here is a guest blog post I wrote on fireballs and RPM

https://gamingballistic.com/2017/09/...s-of-fireball/


You could always stat up an advantage that speeds up casting

You can make energy gathering or effect shaping rolls at -10 to cast quickly also

[Pragmatic]

I think Ritual Adept reduces cast time from minutes to seconds.

And isn't there a rule that says you can sacrifice "effective skill" to get a quicker cast time?

[Kalzazz]

Yes, for both effect shaping and energy gathering

You need very good skill to pull off spells quickly with it though still

[PlumedSerpent88]

Couldn't you take the Sorcery approach and build some spells as advantages and take them as alternative abilities to Magery? To make them work more like other rituals you might add Requires Skill Roll and Costs Energy (at low enough levels that PCs could plausibly gather it in one round with the -4 for quick casting). The cost of Energy Reserve suggests that a Costs Energy limitation should be priced the same as Costs FP.

[Zarmonic]

GURPS rules try to be balanced so even in a standard magic campaign more powerful spells take a long time to cast. 3 seconds is an eternity in combat time! The time it takes in RPM for a high powered adept to accumulate energy just seems to mirror this.

Do you have Pyramid 3/66? It has lots of extra options and ideas to tweak the system. I like a lot of the ideas in the chapter on creating specialists. With this, you can design characters with a certain focus and who would be able to cast spells within their focus fairly fast.

[Refplace]

The skill penalty to generate energy faster is one way as noted.
I personally prefer Effect Shaping variant for faster casting though.
Use Techniques to learn a specific ritual for a higher skill and you can choose what spells are allowed to take such techniques.Also Tailsmans may give a bonus to effective skill.
A Wand of Fire could be +3 skill for example.