Dresden Files magic

[Mr_Sandman]

Originally Posted by ericthered

I highly suggest doing evocations as powers. Most wizards seem to have a basic repertoire. The remainder is done with power stunts. Forcing the wizard to roll against the appropriate path as the skill roll is appropriate.

A lot of this is just forbidding certain traits and requiring certain limitations on magery.

Connection Adept should be forbidden. Time and space Adept might be alternate abilities to magery -- your total skill is higher when you don't use them.

Some kinds of magic in dresden files should be declared to be a nasty form of corrupting -- mostly that involving the laws of magic. This should probably be a smaller than expected limitation on magery as a whole.

A couple of things should just be considered features: Detection magic really doesn't work. Magic circles are dead simple. Teleporation doesn't work (path of cross-roads might be fair as a hard or average skill). And so on and so forth.

Alternate great/lesser effects for each wizard is appropriate. Of course, I will once again point you to magic as powers for anywhere it really counts. You can also take specialties on paths, talents, traditions, and a host of options from pyramid 66. If you want to differentiate wizards, that issue is your friend.

Thanks for the input. Especially for reminding me about the corrupting and addicting effect of magic that breaks the Laws. I'll have to put something in about that.

I had already decided that a connection would always be required for magic, but explicitly outlawing Ritual Adept (connection) is worth doing. Having Ritual Adept time or space being Alternate Abilities to Magery is an interesting idea, but since Magery involves things like mana reserve and maximum conditional spells, I'll have to think about it carefully, it could be complicated to implement. Having it be an Alternate Ability to Natural Caster Talent, would be simpler. I'm leaning towards not allowing Ritual Adept time or space to be inherent in human spell casters anyway. However, having a magical tool that could either give Ritual Adept time or space for evocation, OR skill bonuses for slower, more careful thaumaturgy might be cool.

As far as I remember, the only portals that human wizards can open are between the material world and the Never-Never. Only Vadderung opens a gateway that connects two real world locations. Path of Crossroads is going to be somewhat limited from the GURPS default. Lowering its cost in comparison to other Paths might be fair. I've also been thinking about using different paths than the standard, which would solve that problem by folding crossroads into one or more other paths.

Thanks for reminding me about Pyramid #66. I have that issue, but didn't remember it. It looks like it has a good amount of material to delve into.

I'm curious, what did you mean by detection magic not working?

In general, I'm not really looking at powers as magic for this. Just a personal preference.

[ericthered]

Been reading dresden files. I was reading turncoat when I answered, where shagnasty's veils give him a lot of trouble and harry spends a lot of time not being able to find things that he wants to. Read a bit more (dead beat), where he uses his magical senses a ton. A few conclusions:

The need for a connection seriously hampers attempts to find things. If harry wants to track something down, he needs a good solid connection to do so.
We don't see a whole lot of analysis of things other than magic and minds (including emotions).
Fright checks are much more common when using detect magic.

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Natural Caster is the alternate? good thinking.

You want to avoid magic as powers? I can work with that. The main issue you'll face is that evocation is quick: even quicker than time adept casting. RPM Energy reserves are a fantastically bad deal -- a magery 5 individual eats up 40% of his energy with a basic 3d bolt of fire you manage to convince the GM is a lesser effect -- that's 20 points of investment. You'll need a way to get combat speed casting. Dresden tends to use gadgets you could use as charms. Either one charm is stacked many times, or he has a long term effect hooked to them that he can activate (multiple use damage is bestow a bonus). But that feels wrong for how Harry uses the items, and many of the other wizards we see don't use the props at all.

Thinking about this problem has my creative juices going for adding yet more to ritual adept -- perhaps a third level of time that allows a single one second or instant energy gathering attempt (just one). Lots of options there, though I'm not sure how they'd play out in RAW.

Other things I noticed:

magical healing is odd in dresden files. It actually seems to be part of the whole necromantic route. Its part of the basic power suite of vampires. All three kinds can heal super quickly. And yet the healing specialist of the white council, listens-to-wind, doesn't seem to be able to use it. He is a good healer, yes, a uses magic in doing it, but it feels much more like working with a really good doctor than instant healing. The one mortal we see pull off a healing is kumori (or something like that), Cowl's assistant in dead beat. And what she does feels more like artificially preserving his life for an hour.

In fact, wizards don't seem good at restoring things at all. They tend to make a copy of what they want to replace. Harry can't fix his car, restore knocked down walls, or anything like that.

[Rigil_Kent]

Originally Posted by ericthered

The one mortal we see pull off a healing is kumori (or something like that), Cowl's assistant in dead beat.

Incorrect. Elaine healed Harry in ... "White Knight," I think. After he took the swim. He had a concussion and she did some mojo to make it go away. But based on their conversation, it seemed very difficult and time-consuming as I recall.

[Mr_Sandman]

Originally Posted by ericthered

Been reading dresden files. I was reading turncoat when I answered, where shagnasty's veils give him a lot of trouble and harry spends a lot of time not being able to find things that he wants to. Read a bit more (dead beat), where he uses his magical senses a ton. A few conclusions:

The need for a connection seriously hampers attempts to find things. If harry wants to track something down, he needs a good solid connection to do so.
We don't see a whole lot of analysis of things other than magic and minds (including emotions).
Fright checks are much more common when using detect magic.

-----------------------------------
Natural Caster is the alternate? good thinking.

You want to avoid magic as powers? I can work with that. The main issue you'll face is that evocation is quick: even quicker than time adept casting. RPM Energy reserves are a fantastically bad deal -- a magery 5 individual eats up 40% of his energy with a basic 3d bolt of fire you manage to convince the GM is a lesser effect -- that's 20 points of investment. You'll need a way to get combat speed casting. Dresden tends to use gadgets you could use as charms. Either one charm is stacked many times, or he has a long term effect hooked to them that he can activate (multiple use damage is bestow a bonus). But that feels wrong for how Harry uses the items, and many of the other wizards we see don't use the props at all.

Thinking about this problem has my creative juices going for adding yet more to ritual adept -- perhaps a third level of time that allows a single one second or instant energy gathering attempt (just one). Lots of options there, though I'm not sure how they'd play out in RAW.

Other things I noticed:

magical healing is odd in dresden files. It actually seems to be part of the whole necromantic route. Its part of the basic power suite of vampires. All three kinds can heal super quickly. And yet the healing specialist of the white council, listens-to-wind, doesn't seem to be able to use it. He is a good healer, yes, a uses magic in doing it, but it feels much more like working with a really good doctor than instant healing. The one mortal we see pull off a healing is kumori (or something like that), Cowl's assistant in dead beat. And what she does feels more like artificially preserving his life for an hour.

In fact, wizards don't seem good at restoring things at all. They tend to make a copy of what they want to replace. Harry can't fix his car, restore knocked down walls, or anything like that.

True, Jim Butcher makes it clear that wrecking things is a lot easier than creating or repairing them. That includes people. Magical healing by humans in the Dresdenverse seems to be just about as capable as state of the art medical treatment. Powerful non-human entities can often heal themselves quickly, and some of the powerful Sidhe seem to have potent healing magic.

Combat time doesn't have to mean casting every second. The books refer to Harry or other wizards drawing in power in the seconds before a fight so they can cast as soon as things start, or getting caught off guard and not having time to gather their will and energy as the foe reacts faster. RPM does allow energy gathering faster than 5 seconds, at -1 to skill per second taken off the attempt. A caster can put together a fairly powerful spell in a few seconds, if they have high skill, Ritual Mastery and maybe has invested in a technique to reduce the penalty for casting fast for the spells they use in combat. It becomes much dicier, if not impossible, if the caster hasn't put a lot of points into being good at evocation, unless they have a a focus that gives them Ritual Adept (time and space). I see this as more or less the situation Harry is in in the earlier books.

A wizard with skill of 15 in the path of energy, with Ritual Mastery of a fireball spell (+2 to skill), and a focus to allow them to operate on Adept time and without a ritual space, could gather energy every second at an effective skill of 13, so they will average 2.5 points of energy per second of gathering. If they max out the technique to offset fast casting penalties, their effective skill would be 17, and they would average 6.5 energy per second of gathering. In that case, if their Personal Greater and Lesser Effects allowed for fire magic to always be a lesser effect, they could throw a 3d fireball in a second.

Harry's most used magic toy that lets him have quick effects in battle is the force rings. I see those as bound spell enchanted items. The things Harry uses that I would make as charms are almost all from the earlier books, mostly potions but also the handkerchief with sunlight trapped in it, for example.

One thing I am considering changing is allowing more movement than a step during concentrate maneuvers for energy gathering and spell casting. Harry seems to do things on the run quite a bit.

Originally Posted by Rigil_Kent

Incorrect. Elaine healed Harry in ... "White Knight," I think. After he took the swim. He had a concussion and she did some mojo to make it go away. But based on their conversation, it seemed very difficult and time-consuming as I recall.

My impression was that she helped take the pain away and got Harry back up on his feet and able to function, but didn't actually heal much if any of the damage. Basically it was a really good painkiller spell.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Rigil_Kent

Incorrect. Elaine healed Harry in ... "White Knight," I think. After he took the swim. He had a concussion and she did some mojo to make it go away. But based on their conversation, it seemed very difficult and time-consuming as I recall.

I do admit that's probably the book I know worst (along with storm front). Any ideas on why harry isn't able to try and find someone in the council to fix his hand? Or why wizard casualties in the vampire war seem to be fairly long term?

[Rigil_Kent]

Originally Posted by Mr_Sandman

My impression was that she helped take the pain away and got Harry back up on his feet and able to function, but didn't actually heal much if any of the damage. Basically it was a really good painkiller spell.

Elaine said of "Reiki" in White Knight (which Harry ID'ed as laying on of hands" that she combined the basic principles of Reiki with those of moving energy. She could not handle "critical trauma" or manage infections, but it was great for "handling bruises, sprains, and bumps on the head." (Thank you my lovely Kindle. :P)

Which almost strikes me as "healing of FPs only" or (in basic Magic) maybe "Minor Healing."

I'd personally (and probably will in my game when it restarts) lean toward the notion that Healing isn't messed with by Council members because it bumps up too closely to Necromancy and they're all too terrified to even touch on that out of fear that the Wardens will come a knocking? So out of fear of violating a Law of Magic, healing magics have been mostly retarded in terms of research.

[Mr_Sandman]

Originally Posted by Rigil_Kent

Elaine said of "Reiki" in White Knight (which Harry ID'ed as laying on of hands" that she combined the basic principles of Reiki with those of moving energy. She could not handle "critical trauma" or manage infections, but it was great for "handling bruises, sprains, and bumps on the head." (Thank you my lovely Kindle. :P)

Which almost strikes me as "healing of FPs only" or (in basic Magic) maybe "Minor Healing."

I'd personally (and probably will in my game when it restarts) lean toward the notion that Healing isn't messed with by Council members because it bumps up too closely to Necromancy and they're all too terrified to even touch on that out of fear that the Wardens will come a knocking? So out of fear of violating a Law of Magic, healing magics have been mostly retarded in terms of research.

That sounds about right to me. Magical healing doesn't do all that much more than a good first aid roll in the short term, or physician skill for long term treatment, or surgery skill for stabilizing a major wound.

[ericthered]

actually, the 'toys' I was referring to are the shield charm, staff, and blasting rod. Harry is much less capable without those (or was until cold days)-- attacks get clumsy, and he can barely pull together a shield.

Harry does take longer for his biggest hits, but he's completely capable of 1 second spells that don't drain his reserves when he's working with familiar magic. And 5 seconds is forever in a fight. That's one reason why demon magery in MH 3 has such large energy reserves.

You can take a penalty to cast faster? I'd missed that. Thanks for pointing it out. Here I was debating third and fourth levels ritual adept (time) or sticking 'reduced time' on them. I suspect it works best when you're effective skill is past 20.

[Pragmatic]

Just an FYI, when mentioning the books:

This had to be pointed out to me, because I'm kind of not good at catching things like this. But if you look at the titles of the books, each title has the same number of letters for each word. So "Storm Front" (5 per word), "Fool Moon" (4 per word), "Dead Heat" (4 per word), and so on.

I bring this up because I've seen several people mention "White Knight." There's no book in the series named "White Knight" (5 letters and 6 letters). There's "White Night" (5 per word) and "Summer Knight" (6 per word), but no "White Knight."

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by Rigil_Kent

Elaine said of "Reiki" in White Knight (which Harry ID'ed as laying on of hands" that she combined the basic principles of Reiki with those of moving energy. She could not handle "critical trauma" or manage infections, but it was great for "handling bruises, sprains, and bumps on the head." (Thank you my lovely Kindle. :P)

Which almost strikes me as "healing of FPs only" or (in basic Magic) maybe "Minor Healing."

I'd personally (and probably will in my game when it restarts) lean toward the notion that Healing isn't messed with by Council members because it bumps up too closely to Necromancy and they're all too terrified to even touch on that out of fear that the Wardens will come a knocking? So out of fear of violating a Law of Magic, healing magics have been mostly retarded in terms of research.

There are magical healers in the Council. Listens-To-Winds is a specialist in it. He's also got degrees in medicine from major medical schools, too.

That's the thing. Magical healing is definitely legal (under Council rules) and even respected by the Council, in the Dresdenverse. But it's freaking hard. Magic is just like anything else in the DF, destruction is easy, creation is hard, repair is hard. You have to understand what you're doing to use magic to heal. If you want to use magic to, say, fix a smashed hand, you need to know something about how hands are made and how they work. It's good to know some biochemistry and have some understanding about cells and tissues and so on. The more you know, the better you can use magic to heal...but knowledge isn't easy or cheap.

(There might be beings willing to load you up just fine with knowledge, quick and easy...but it won't be cheap, though you may not find out until later how much it actually costs.)

Which also means that the more conventional medical science you know, the better you can be at magical healing, which is why Injun Joe is a highly trained physician as well as a wizard. (The Council respects knowledge in general, a wizard who is also a physicist or a chemist gets extra respect in the Council, as well as being able to use magic more effectively.)

There's no Laws issue with magical healing. It's just hard to do well, and the really good magical healers are also usually conventional physicians too.