Revising GURPS Magic

[Jürgen Hubert]

Originally Posted by scc

I think the Reprogrammable trait on the Zombie Templates actually covers both of these, particularly the first

I don't see how - "Reprogrammable" means that their loyalties can be forcibly switched to new masters, not that they can learn new skills.

[cbower]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Essential Earth as a truly permanent thing ought to cost a lot more than it does.

I agree. I think the character point cost for the Create advantage would be a good starting point.

[Jürgen Hubert]

Plant

Heal Plant: Somewhat predictably, my players hit on the idea of first casting Plant Form Other on someone, then casting Heal Plant, and then returning them to their original form - by the rules as written, this completely heals all damage the target has suffered (and their diseases, too), and for much less energy than a Great Healing! Only the reluctance of the player characters to get transformed into a tree even temporarily has prevented more widespread use.

I think that trick is not quite in the spirit of the rules, and I would specify that for plants that are either sentient or animate actual Healing College spells are needed.


Protection & Warning

Missile Shield: Confession time - I really hate that spell as written. It’s so absurdly powerful - complete immunity to all missiles - and only has a single prerequisite (Apportation) so that a mage expecting combat would be an utter fool not to learn it. And when combining it with Levitation, a mage can soar through the air and rain down death on the mortal fools below him without any fear of reprisal if his targets don’t have a mage of their own with them.

Still, the basic concept of the spell - some sort of protection against ranged attacks - is sound, including that the mage does not have to be consciously aware of the incoming missile to be defended by it. Therefore, I propose the following change:

Each energy point invested when casting the spell (up to 5) gives -1 to all ranged attack rolls against the mage. The duration remains 1 minute, and the cost to maintain is half the casting cost.

This will still keep the spell very useful, but the mage might reconsider taunting a whole squad of archers, or a truly legendary marksman.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Jürgen Hubert

Plant

Heal Plant: Somewhat predictably, my players hit on the idea of first casting Plant Form Other on someone, then casting Heal Plant, and then returning them to their original form - by the rules as written, this completely heals all damage the target has suffered (and their diseases, too), and for much less energy than a Great Healing! Only the reluctance of the player characters to get transformed into a tree even temporarily has prevented more widespread use.

I think that trick is not quite in the spirit of the rules, and I would specify that for plants that are either sentient or animate actual Healing College spells are needed.
.

Honestly I like the idea of turning people into trees in order to heal them. That's cool. However, I did add something to it. You have stay a tree overnight to get the benefit of the spell.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Jürgen Hubert

Plant


Protection & Warning

Missile Shield: Confession time - I really hate that spell as written. It’s so absurdly powerful - complete immunity to all missiles - and only has a single prerequisite (Apportation) so that a mage expecting combat would be an utter fool not to learn it. And when combining it with Levitation, a mage can soar through the air and rain down death on the mortal fools below him without any fear of reprisal if his targets don’t have a mage of their own with them.

.

Where are your mages getting the _energy_ to do al these things? Missile shield is 5pts (4 with Skill-15 discount) and Levitation will be at least 2(1) even if your Mages are all skinny and lightly encumbered. Then most of the Mage's Regular Spells will severely reduced in effectiveness by the range penalties needed to take them out of Melee weapon reach.

If your Mages are doing too many amazing things with spells you're probably giving them too much energy. Or character pts. Of course, fighters built with the quantity of cp you're implying are probably running amuck too.

Incidentally, for your Missile Shield issues just get rid of the spell and Leave the Deflect Missile Blocking spell. That does require the mage to be aware of the missile and will cause him to run out of energy before he can block a volley from a whole company of archers. He'd fail his spell roll some of the time too.

[Jürgen Hubert]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Where are your mages getting the _energy_ to do al these things? Missile shield is 5pts (4 with Skill-15 discount) and Levitation will be at least 2(1) even if your Mages are all skinny and lightly encumbered. Then most of the Mage's Regular Spells will severely reduced in effectiveness by the range penalties needed to take them out of Melee weapon reach.

The character who did this the most was a gnome, so he could easily levitate himself infinitely without cost.

And I allowed up to six levels of Magery after character creation (three at character creation), so over the course of a lengthy campaign the character eventually reached Magery 6 and IQ 16 - allowing them to reduce the casting and maintenance costs for all spells by two, which meant that Missile Shield could be maintained infinitely.


And in the campaign before that, by the time I joined as a player most mages had Magery 20 (the campaign limit) - they had about 470 character points at that stage.


So... you could say I have a special interest in making sure the GURPS Magic system works smoothly even at higher power levels.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Jürgen Hubert

The character who did this the most was a gnome, so he could easily levitate himself infinitely without cost.

And I allowed up to six levels of Magery after character creation (three at character creation), so over the course of a lengthy campaign the character eventually reached Magery 6 and IQ 16 - allowing them to reduce the casting and maintenance costs for all spells by two, which meant that Missile Shield could be maintained infinitely.


And in the campaign before that, by the time I joined as a player most mages had Magery 20 (the campaign limit) - they had about 470 character points at that stage.


So... you could say I have a special interest in making sure the GURPS Magic system works smoothly even at higher power levels.

I fail to see how letting Magery 6 and/or c.500 pts characters do lots of stuff is a fault in the Magic system. If you don't like what results from these quantities of cp it's not the Magic system you need to tweak.

It's certainly not what these sorts of characters can do to opponents fit for characters with 1/2 or 1/3rd their cp that's the problem.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Jürgen Hubert

The character who did this the most was a gnome, so he could easily levitate himself infinitely without cost.

And I allowed up to six levels of Magery after character creation (three at character creation), so over the course of a lengthy campaign the character eventually reached Magery 6 and IQ 16 - allowing them to reduce the casting and maintenance costs for all spells by two, which meant that Missile Shield could be maintained infinitely.


And in the campaign before that, by the time I joined as a player most mages had Magery 20 (the campaign limit) - they had about 470 character points at that stage.


So... you could say I have a special interest in making sure the GURPS Magic system works smoothly even at higher power levels.

So...did warrior opponents have superhuman leaping and magic items of flight by that point?

[Jürgen Hubert]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

I fail to see how letting Magery 6 and/or c.500 pts characters do lots of stuff is a fault in the Magic system. If you don't like what results from these quantities of cp it's not the Magic system you need to tweak.

It's certainly not what these sorts of characters can do to opponents fit for characters with 1/2 or 1/3rd their cp that's the problem.

But I like high-CP play. What I don't like is high-CP mages totally outclassing high-CP non-mages.

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

So...did warrior opponents have superhuman leaping and magic items of flight by that point?

Some, but even that didn't make enough of a difference - only other mages were powerful to counter them. Also, giving NPC foes powerful magic items means that these magic items will likely end up in the possession of the player characters.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Jürgen Hubert

But I like high-CP play. What I don't like is high-CP mages totally outclassing high-CP non-mages.



Some, but even that didn't make enough of a difference - only other mages were powerful to counter them. Also, giving NPC foes powerful magic items means that these magic items will likely end up in the possession of the player characters.

I see no problem with that when the problem is "magic users outclassing non-magic users". Powerful magic items that can be used by thieves and warriors are the equalizer for that.