[MH] RPM-Starting Charms

[Edges]

Are there guidelines for charms for starting casters?

Someone playing a Witch or Sage probably doesn't want to spent their first session just making a bunch of charms. But GURPS doesn't usually have you rolling for stuff in character-generation (like how much energy can you gather for the charms your character has had for years).

Have I missed it somewhere? What's the thing to do here?

[Bruno]

I wrote a little macro for MapTools that does all the rolling for charms, and for regular ritual casting. Because yeah, lots of dice rolling.

So I guess my answer is "they roll for charms", but I cheat so it doesn't take as long ;)


Regarding starting with crafted items in general in GURPS - if it can be bought off-shelf and you don't roll your crafting skills, you pay list price for it. Or you buy materials and roll to craft them to try and get a discount.

DF 2 suggests just giving people a 10% discount off list price if they have appropriate crafting skills. Only at character creation!

But you can't buy charms off-the-shelf, so can't pay full price and you can't do the DF2 shortcut of knocking 10% off. Your only option is to roll for them.

[PK]

MH4 will include Quick-and-Dirty rules that reduce charm creation to two rolls. It does this via a (carefully researched and calculated) table that shows the "safe threshold" limit (for how much energy you can accumulate) for each level of effective skill; if you need to gather less than your safe threshold, you get a bonus on the roll, while if you need to gather more, you get a penalty.

If you don't want to roll, you could instead use the MH4 table to establish a reasonable energy limit for the caster, and say that he can start play with charms up to that energy limit total. I'd use the "safe threshold" from the table, plus mana reserve, plus the caster's (FP-1)/3 (round down), plus as much energy from FP sacrifice as it seems reasonable for the caster's teammates to contribute. (For example, someone who trusts him might be willing to spend half his FP, while someone who trusts him utterly might be willing to go down to FP 1.) Since only the "safe threshold" will change (as it's based on effective skill), you could calculate all of the other factors ahead of time and use them as a constant.

Example: Thomas has Magery 5 and FP 13, which gives him 15+4 energy he can summon from his personal reserves without injuring himself or risking unconsciousness. He has two teammates: a Very Fit commando (FP 13) who trusts him enough to spend 12 FP (for +4 energy) and an inhuman (FP 14) with trust issues who will only spend 6 FP (+2 energy). For each charm done before character creation, or during downtime, Thomas knows he can thus count on 25 energy, plus whatever he can accumulate.

If he wants to make a charm using Path of Body + Path of Mind, he looks at the lowest of his skills of Path of Body, Path of Magic (for the Lesser Control effect to make it a charm!), and Path of Mind, with an extra -1 for using three Paths. In this case, it's his Path of Mind-15, which gives him an effective skill of 14. MH4 says that skill-14 has a "safe threshold" of 9 accumulated energy, which means the GM will let Thomas start with a charm based on these Paths worth up to 34 energy (25+9).

[Edges]

Originally Posted by Rev. Pee Kitty

MH4 will include Quick-and-Dirty rules that reduce charm creation to two rolls. It does this via a (carefully researched and calculated) table that shows the "safe threshold" limit (for how much energy you can accumulate) for each level of effective skill; if you need to gather less than your safe threshold, you get a bonus on the roll, while if you need to gather more, you get a penalty.

If you don't want to roll, you could instead use the MH4 table to establish a reasonable energy limit for the caster, and say that he can start play with charms up to that energy limit total. I'd use the "safe threshold" from the table, plus mana reserve, plus the caster's (FP-1)/3 (round down), plus as much energy from FP sacrifice as it seems reasonable for the caster's teammates to contribute. (For example, someone who trusts him might be willing to spend half his FP, while someone who trusts him utterly might be willing to go down to FP 1.) Since only the "safe threshold" will change (as it's based on effective skill), you could calculate all of the other factors ahead of time and use them as a constant.

Example: Thomas has Magery 5 and FP 13, which gives him 15+4 energy he can summon from his personal reserves without injuring himself or risking unconsciousness. He has two teammates: a Very Fit commando (FP 13) who trusts him enough to spend 12 FP (for +4 energy) and an inhuman (FP 14) with trust issues who will only spend 6 FP (+2 energy). For each charm done before character creation, or during downtime, Thomas knows he can thus count on 25 energy, plus whatever he can accumulate.

If he wants to make a charm using Path of Body + Path of Mind, he looks at the lowest of his skills of Path of Body, Path of Magic (for the Lesser Control effect to make it a charm!), and Path of Mind, with an extra -1 for using three Paths. In this case, it's his Path of Mind-15, which gives him an effective skill of 14. MH4 says that skill-14 has a "safe threshold" of 9 accumulated energy, which means the GM will let Thomas start with a charm based on these Paths worth up to 34 energy (25+9).

Cool. So in other words, wait for it. :)

[PK]

Originally Posted by Edges

Cool. So in other words, wait for it. :)

Yes, but hopefully not for much longer...