[Sorcery] Those Other Spells...

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by Ghostdancer

Sure. :-) I've got "deconstruct and reconstruct" post for Leech coming up.

I'm interested to see this :)

[Rindis]

The third selection of spells is up!
Dungeon Sorcery Spells 3

The latest 'problem spell' is Forget. Basically, the subject forgets what happened in the last three minutes. Though anything that happened, like charms and suggestions are still in force.... I'm not seeing anything that does a good job at that. On the other hand, considering the fun of dealing with a PC that has had this cast on him, maybe it's not worth worrying over....

[Bruno]

Afflict: Partial Amnesia [-5] points would be a bit overkill. It might even be a quirk (Powerups 6 says "one specific memory" or a time limited memory like "the summer of '69").

[Rindis]

PU: Quirks. Another title I need to get someday.... (There's so many.)

Hmm. Afflicting a quirk of three missing minutes. Of course, if it's a really important three minutes....

Quirk, +1%, Permanent, +150%, Somatic, -10%, Verbal, -10%, Sorcery, -10%, 2 second cast, -10%....

The permanent puts out of the truly silly-cheap territory, thankfully.

[zoncxs]

GURPS Psionic powers page 62, Mindwipe.

You can start there and tweak.

[Phantasm]

Originally Posted by Bruno

Afflict: Partial Amnesia [-5] points would be a bit overkill. It might even be a quirk (Powerups 6 says "one specific memory" or a time limited memory like "the summer of '69").

Agreed. Afflict (Selective Amnesia) would probably be better. :)

[mhd]

Originally Posted by Bruno

[...]or a time limited memory like "the summer of '69").

That reminds me of an effect I was looking for: The Earworm Prevention spell, which is a bit like "chronic" amnesia: You can't hold on to a specific memory, i.e. it never settles in long-term memory. So you could sing along (starting with the second chorus, most likely), but you'll never wake up in the night going "Streetlights! People!"...

"Can't hold on to a particular memory" would probably get rounded down to a quirk, too, but I guess one would need to attach some kind of Cosmic modifier to let it recurr.

(The more serious application in-game would be some powerful being whose name you can't ever remember after meeting them)

[Rindis]

Thanks for the help everyone. Forget made it into the latest collection:
Dungeon Sorcery Spells 4

And here's my current write-up of the ever-challenging mirror image. I'd like to see what people think:

Mirror Image (C)
Illusion, Somatic, Verbal
88 points
Casting Time: 2 seconds
Casting Roll: None
Range: None
Duration: 1 minute

Casting this spell generates three illusionary duplicates of the caster. During the final turn of casting, the magic-user must take a Step as part of his action, and the three illusions will split off from him, Stepping in different directions. From that point on, the mirror images will duplicate everything the caster does, appearing to attack the same target he does (so that it is impossible to tell which one actually did the damage), and generally moving as he does. They will generally keep ‘in formation’ with the caster, staying one to two hexes away from each other and him, but will also pass through each other on occasion, effectively trading places as to make it even harder to be sure which one is the real caster (this, of course, only happens if the caster himself is moving).

These illusions are capable of fooling nearly any sense: vision, sound, hearing, smell, or more exotic ones will all report each illusion as identical to the caster. Only physical contact is excluded; any form of physical contact (other than passing through the caster as part of trading places) will cause a mirror image to vanish; note that this includes any attack that strikes a mirror image (which will only Dodge if the caster does) like swords and arrows, or even ‘energy’ based ones like magic missile. To determine whether a particular image is actually the caster or not, a person has to win a Quick Contest of Per vs the caster’s IQ + Talent; otherwise physical contact, or the spell expiring are the only way to tell.

Illusion (Cosmic: Extended, +300%; Independence, +40%; Limited Scope: Duplicates of the Caster, -80%; Multiple, 3, +50%; Preprogrammed, -10%; Requires Gestures, -10%; Requires Magic Words, -10%; Sorcery, -15%; Takes Extra Time, x2, -10%) [3.5x25] Note: “Multiple” is an enhancement based off the cost of Rapid Fire to account for the fact that there are multiple illusions to eliminate.

[Emerald Cat]

Originally Posted by Rindis

And here's my current write-up of the ever-challenging mirror image. I'd like to see what people think.

I think this is a good representation of the effect.

Enhanced Dodge with Limited Use or Unreliable was my first thought for building this spell. But that doesn't work well with GURPS's 3 yd hexes. Mirror Image works a lot better using d20 5 ft squares because each player has 25 sq ft to cram the illusory copies into.

Using Obscure to give your opponent a vision penalty to their attack rolls is another option. But that affects opponents differently based on their weapon skill levels. One would expect all opponents to have the same probability of randomly striking the original caster. Granted, skilled opponents would be able to plow through the copies faster using rapid strikes.

An Ally Group with the Summonable and Minion enhancements could be used to build the spell. Reduce their HP to 1 to represent the fact that they're supposed to die in one hit. To mimic the caster effectively, they would need to have his physical traits. I think I'd model their illusory nature by giving them Insubstantial(Always On -50%, Can be hit by melee damage -30%) [16].

Assuming that the illusion's point total comes out to 50% of the sorcerer's point total, the base cost would be 2 points. We could get 5 copies as an Ally Group for a base cost of 10 points. With a Frequency of Appearance of constantly, the Ally Group would cost 40 points. The final write up of the spell would be Ally Group(50% of character's total [2]; 5 allies x5, Frequency of Appearance: Constantly x4; Minion +50%; Summonable 100%; Requires Gestures -10%; Requires Magic Words -10%; Sorcery -15%; Takes Extra Time x2 -10%) [82].

I like the Illusion version better, since it doesn't involve modified character sheets.

[Rindis]

That sounds like my general train of thought. There's a number of not-bad ways of doing the spell, but many of them have hard to work out parts. (Like Enhanced Dodge: A limited number of successful uses is not something that makes a lot of sense with current modifiers.) I also try to stay away from Allies to explain special effects. Sometimes, its great to explain something fairly flexible, but an Ally that only exists to disappear when hit says there are better solutions to me.