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Old 10-05-2013, 07:20 PM   #91
PK
 
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Default Re: GURPS Thaumatology: Ritual Path Magic

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Originally Posted by sir_pudding View Post
Doesn't that make it too easy if blighting the land is your goal? You don't have to even succeed at whatever ritual you are doing it for, just draw the energy right?
Arguably, but if the GM is worried about this being abused, just remove the bit about crops and make it almost purely cosmetic. Then if you're the kind of idiot who just goes around "blighting land" for the sake of doing it, it'll be trivially easy for someone to use a modest Lesser Sense Magic spell to tell who you were. You're pretty much begging to be tracked down and lynched by a crew of Magic Resistant townspeople. :)

Also, I want to note that this is not a new rule. I ported it over from MH3 without any changes whatsoever. Over the past two and a half years, I have yet to hear of this rule causing a problem in a campaign. I'm not saying it isn't possible -- just that it's had plenty of time to do so and I have yet to see negative feedback on how it worked in practice.
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Old 10-05-2013, 07:25 PM   #92
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Default Re: GURPS Thaumatology: Ritual Path Magic

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Also, I want to note that this is not a new rule. I ported it over from MH3 without any changes whatsoever. Over the past two and a half years, I have yet to hear of this rule causing a problem in a campaign.
Blighting crops doesn't seem like something a MH Champion would want to do, but RPM as a generic system ought to cover wizards in mil-fantasy settings who would want to do it as a strategic attack on the enemy logistics. I think that's why it's standing out now. At least to me.

I'd want the One-Eye and Goblin pastiches to actually have to succeed at a ritual to blight crops.
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Old 10-05-2013, 07:28 PM   #93
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Default Re: GURPS Thaumatology: Ritual Path Magic

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Originally Posted by PK View Post
Arguably, but if the GM is worried about this being abused, just remove the bit about crops and make it almost purely cosmetic. Then if you're the kind of idiot who just goes around "blighting land" for the sake of doing it, it'll be trivially easy for someone to use a modest Lesser Sense Magic spell to tell who you were. You're pretty much begging to be tracked down and lynched by a crew of Magic Resistant townspeople. :)

Also, I want to note that this is not a new rule. I ported it over from MH3 without any changes whatsoever. Over the past two and a half years, I have yet to hear of this rule causing a problem in a campaign. I'm not saying it isn't possible -- just that it's had plenty of time to do so and I have yet to see negative feedback on how it worked in practice.
yeah but MH is a modern based (And Secret magic to boot)game, now its being thought of in a Fantasy setting.
If I use it in my campaigns I would make a change so it recovers naturally over time and more easily with a restore kind of spell. I like the feel, just see it as too easily dangerous to a setting.
Especially if anyone can cast a spell.
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Old 10-05-2013, 07:32 PM   #94
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Default Re: GURPS Thaumatology: Ritual Path Magic

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Originally Posted by Refplace View Post
yeah but MH is a modern based (And Secret magic to boot)game, now its being thought of in a Fantasy setting.
If I use it in my campaigns I would make a change so it recovers naturally over time and more easily with a restore kind of spell. I like the feel, just see it as too easily dangerous to a setting.
Especially if anyone can cast a spell.
Making it largely cosmetic, and making it so the land recovers slowly (say, in a year and a day) should remove the ability to use it as an agricultural WMD, while still preventing abuse. To allow for huge swathes of blighted land that last for years or centuries, perhaps an acre can only recover if there is "clean" land next to it, so it's only the edges of the blight that heal.
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Old 10-05-2013, 11:38 PM   #95
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Default Re: GURPS Thaumatology: Ritual Path Magic

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Making it largely cosmetic, and making it so the land recovers slowly (say, in a year and a day) should remove the ability to use it as an agricultural WMD, while still preventing abuse. To allow for huge swathes of blighted land that last for years or centuries, perhaps an acre can only recover if there is "clean" land next to it, so it's only the edges of the blight that heal.
In a medieval sort of setting, killing a years crops can kill a kingdom.

Of course, the kingdom probably has mages of its own and they can create food to prevent the famine.

I could picture rich people in the city have small gardens in their inner courtyard filled with magically enhanced crops made more nutritious than normal and stored magically in case of famine.
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Old 10-06-2013, 05:51 AM   #96
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Default Re: GURPS Thaumatology: Ritual Path Magic

[QUOTE=PK;1656421]Blighted != desecrated. The two are unrelated terms.

Yeah, I found my notes where I linked the two in one of my campaigns. So I misremembered. Apologies all around.

[QUOTE=PK;1656421]Right. You've blighted the land in a mundane way, screwing up crops, making it darker and eviler, etc. It's an unabashed way for the GM to add some ominous feels to an encounter with an evil wizard.

It's begging for a rules expansion though. :-)

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You'd have to come up with some sort of ritual to restore the land; anything your GM agrees will work, will.
Yeah, probably a Lesser Restore Magic or Lesser Restore Body effect.
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Old 02-08-2016, 06:48 AM   #97
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Default Re: GURPS Thaumatology: Ritual Path Magic

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If the skill a Path defaults to is either Ritual Magic or Thaumatology, is there any sort of benefit to having both of those skills high?
That is never the case with RPM. It always defaults to a single core skill.

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Like I would think someone with RM 20 and T 20 might be slightly better off than someone with only one of those at 20.
You could always allow one to act as a mandatory complementary skill for every ritual.

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In Hellboy it only defaults to Ritual Magic, the Thaumatology skill was present but didn't work.
I think you may be confused. "Ritual Path magic" did not exist until 2011, long after we released the Hellboy RPG. You seem to be confusing it with Hellboy's "ritual magic," which is now known as "Path/Book Magic."

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Also I think it was in theory possible to buy a Path directly even if you could not cast any other paths because a 1/2 point only let you ID rituals and you only needed ritual magic 12 as a prereq to select a path.
That was how ritual magic worked in Third Edition, yes. But this is a completely unrelated system and also a new edition.
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Old 02-08-2016, 08:54 AM   #98
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Default Re: GURPS Thaumatology: Ritual Path Magic

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Originally Posted by Hellboy View Post
If the skill a Path defaults to is either Ritual Magic or Thaumatology, is there any sort of benefit to having both of those skills high?

Like I would think someone with RM 20 and T 20 might be slightly better off than someone with only one of those at 20.
You could make a variant of RPM where different uses had different Core Skills. Doing a drawn out ritual would probably have reduced chance of a Botch and use Ritual Magic, while casting more rapidly might require Thaumatology, for example. As it stands, however, you only have one Core Skill, which is usually Thaumatology.

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Originally Posted by Hellboy View Post
Also I think it was in theory possible to buy a Path directly even if you could not cast any other paths because a 1/2 point only let you ID rituals and you only needed ritual magic 12 as a prereq to select a path.
Allowing someone to buy a Path Skill above their Thaumatology- or Magery-based cap might be an option, depending on how magic works in your world. They'd still be limited by the cap for purposes of actually casting, of course. As for knowing Paths without being able to cast, in RPM anyone can cast spells, so long as they have at least some knowledge in Thaumatology (RPM6 notes the need for at least 1 point in the skill, but presumably someone with Dabbler that included Thaumatology could pull it off as well).
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