[Sorcery] Which standard magic spells would cost the most CP, ported over to Sorcery?

[Michael Thayne]

AFAICT, the single most expensive canonical spell in the Sorcery system is Force Guillotine, from GURPS Sorcery: Protection and Warning Spells, which costs 315 points. My question is simple: using the same general "conversion philosophy" as canonical Sorcery spells, which spells from standard magic end up being more expensive than that?

The "death spell" category has surprisingly few candidates. Force Guillotine is so expensive because it's built as a 20d Innate Attack, where as most death spells seem more appropriately modeled as Afflictions, or a modest Innate Attack with Symptoms (Fragile)—the latter is explicitly suggested by the GURPS Magic: Death Spells book. Dimensional Dissection is one spell that's similar to Force Guillotine, but its limitations seem slightly more restrictive, so it should probably be slightly cheaper.

Another candidate is Time Out. PK has said that this is basically an affliction that affects the entire universe, which makes it insanely expensive.

Creation effects are also candidates. These are a known case of GURPS Magic being kind of broken, because of the way permanent creation spells screw with economics. The Create advantage avoids this with a character point cost, but if you want the "screw economics" version, you're canonically allowed to do this with Snatcher (Creation, +100%; Truly Permanent, +300%), which is 400 points (give or take some lesser modifiers). Though I'm not sure I'd expect those spells to actually be converted the "screw economics" way, if they got a canonical conversion.

Great Wish, if you ported it over at all, surprisingly might come in for under 300 points. Porting over the "replicate any spell" doesn't make a lot of sense, since you can already do that with permanent enhancement. The rest can be handled as a permanent Affliction with Variable Enhancements. If you want to be able to grant advantages worth up to 20 points, this will "only" cost 200-odd points, less than Force Guillotine. And conceivably, you could take a leveled approach, where level 1 is a mid-price spell that can add or subtract a single character point.

Any others? I could believe it if the answer were "no". 315 points is a lot, and allows for all kinds of crazy stuff like Affliction 1 (Various Enhancements, +300%). But I'd be interested if anyone thinks I'm overlooking something.

[Anthony]

All the effects that have effectively infinite DR?

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by Anthony

All the effects that have effectively infinite DR?

We have canonical conversions for these, and the canonical approach is to substitute some finite amount of DR. Using the same "conversion philosophy" as canonical conversions is a pretty important part of the question—otherwise yes, those spells would have an infinite cost on Sorcery terms.

[Mr Frost]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

We have canonical conversions for these, and the canonical approach is to substitute some finite amount of DR. Using the same "conversion philosophy" as canonical conversions is a pretty important part of the question—otherwise yes, those spells would have an infinite cost on Sorcery terms.

You could also use Insubstantial [magic -10% , damage intercepted by effect -10%] [64 points] . Modify it for duration and time to cast etc and You have an Utterdome .
Use responsibly .

[Anthony]

Well, great shapeshifting was intended (in 3rd edition) to work as Mythic Shapeshifting -- Morph, No Memorization, Unlimited, Reduced Time 4 -- and lets you spend extra fatigue to increase your pool size with no cap. That's obviously capable of being arbitrarily expensive.

The Enlarge spell is notoriously broken, and thus of course any sorcery version will be equally broken. Spending 20 fatigue on enlarge multiplies ST by 50; even with the cost discount for SM+10 that's 980 points for a ST 10 target, and another 100 points of Growth.

Broadly speaking, spells that are horrifically broken in vanilla GURPS Magic are also horrifically expensive in Sorcery. This is... not really a problem.

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Well, great shapeshifting was intended (in 3rd edition) to work as Mythic Shapeshifting -- Morph, No Memorization, Unlimited, Reduced Time 4 -- and lets you spend extra fatigue to increase your pool size with no cap. That's obviously capable of being arbitrarily expensive.

The Enlarge spell is notoriously broken, and thus of course any sorcery version will be equally broken. Spending 20 fatigue on enlarge multiplies ST by 50; even with the cost discount for SM+10 that's 980 points for a ST 10 target, and another 100 points of Growth.

Broadly speaking, spells that are horrifically broken in vanilla GURPS Magic are also horrifically expensive in Sorcery. This is... not really a problem.

I suspect the best way to port Growth to Sorcery is to assume an SM+0, ST 10 target, so level 1 gives +5 ST, level 2 gives +10 ST, level 3 gives +20 ST, and so on. Level 1 isn't that expensive under that approach, though obviously a high level of any spell can be arbitrarily expensive.

Great Shapeshift looks like it costs just shy of 300 points for the version that lets you take any 0-point template. Again, obviously a "higher level" version will be more expensive.

In general, I'd contest the claim that broken standard magic spells will be insanely expensive in Sorcery. Part of the problem with standard magic is that FP cost is a core balancing mechanism, and it's fairly easy for a spell to be balanced when you're paying the minimum FP cost, but break when you pump a ton of FP into it. In this case, the Sorcery approach is to make it a leveled spell. Often, level 1 will be fairly cheap.

[Kelly Pedersen]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

Another candidate is Time Out. PK has said that this is basically an affliction that affects the entire universe, which makes it insanely expensive.

Actually, about 570 points, by my calculation. Which is expensive, but not insanely so, in my opinion (the exponential nature of the Area Effect modifier helps here - it only costs about +4300% to affect the observable universe).

PK is the final, or at least penultimate arbiter on Sorcery builds, of course, but personally, I wouldn't use the Temporal Stasis build anyway - I don't think it actually gives ~600 points worth of utility. Instead, I'd suggest a build that Afflicts Enhanced Time Sense, a perk to allow using the Bullet Time option, and enough Impulse Points to pay the character point cost of that. That will give everyone in the area you set one second worth of Bullet Time - higher levels of the spell would add more duration by adding more impulse points and a Cosmic enhancement to Enhanced Time Sense to allow more than one turn spent in bullet time.

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by Kelly Pedersen

Actually, about 570 points, by my calculation. Which is expensive, but not insanely so, in my opinion (the exponential nature of the Area Effect modifier helps here - it only costs about +4300% to affect the observable universe).

PK is the final, or at least penultimate arbiter on Sorcery builds, of course, but personally, I wouldn't use the Temporal Stasis build anyway - I don't think it actually gives ~600 points worth of utility. Instead, I'd suggest a build that Afflicts Enhanced Time Sense, a perk to allow using the Bullet Time option, and enough Impulse Points to pay the character point cost of that. That will give everyone in the area you set one second worth of Bullet Time - higher levels of the spell would add more duration by adding more impulse points and a Cosmic enhancement to Enhanced Time Sense to allow more than one turn spent in bullet time.

Afflicting impulse buy points seems pretty broken. Are there canonical builds that do that?

[Kelly Pedersen]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

Afflicting impulse buy points seems pretty broken. Are there canonical builds that do that?

Not as far as I know, no. It's a kludge, admittedly. You might be able to avoid it by putting a Cosmic enhancement on Enhanced Time Sense, "Bullet Time Doesn't Cost Character Points". I'd rate that at +100%, thus increasing the cost of the Affliction by +450%. It should still cost less than the "universal Temporal Stasis" build, though, and I think still come closer to the true utility of Time Stop.

[Anthony]

I wouldn't implement it as an affliction that affects the entire universe. I'd implement it as Jumper -- you are jumping your immediate area outside of time, and then back in at the point you came from.