Steve Jackson Games - Site Navigation
Home General Info Follow Us Search Illuminator Store Forums What's New Other Games Ogre GURPS Munchkin Our Games: Home

Go Back   Steve Jackson Games Forums > Roleplaying > GURPS

Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
Old 06-08-2013, 10:35 AM   #11
Mr_Sandman
 
Mr_Sandman's Avatar
 
Join Date: Aug 2006
Location: L.I., NY
Default Re: Updating/recreating GURPS Mage the Ascension to 4ed

Quote:
Originally Posted by starslayer View Post
If your ultimate goal is to convert vampires and werewolves getting mages more solidly into the GURPS 4th way of doing things may be beneficial to avoid imbalances between them (the orriginal books did have horrible imbalances so you do have some work ahead of you).

The paradox system presented in the MtA book is still really good, I would just take that and call it the 'standard' threshold response, allowing mages to then make it more or less dangerous to accumulate paradox. I also always did have a fondness for the marauder paradox immunity as well- as while the marauder was immune, none of its allies were so they still had to watch there casting 90% of the time, but they were crazy and well and did not know to watch casting.

More powerful is an interesting term. Ideally they should be 'balanced', in that 'for the massive point budget required to be a mage I could ...' and you'd end up with some interesting builds. Realm/sphere based magic is EXPENSIVE, but it does grant fantastical variability.

The reason why I would convert Arete to a bang skill instead of having each sphere be its own skill is actually a 'be more faithful to the original source material' concession. In the WoD mage your Arete represented your dice pool with all magical actions, a mage had the same 'throw weight' with all magic, spheres only representing the complexity of the effect they would be throwing. By having a single bang skill to cover all magical workings you achieve a similar effect.
I know it would be a big deal to convert vampires and werewolves and have them balanced with mages (or anything else). I'm not taking that on just yet. Just an errant thought about possible future projects.

I think paradox works fine, no need to bring threshold in. In fact, the syntactic magic chapter in Thaumatology has Distortion Points, which are just paradox with the serial numbers filed off.

Certainly you could do a lot with the points it takes to buy Avatar, Arete and Spheres. It might be interesting to see how a PC that is not a mage works out in the campaign. I still think that the flexibility and potential scale of Sphere magic effects lets it stand up favorably to most other potential uses of the points.

When it comes to Arete as the generic magick skill, having individual sphere skills is one of the things I like about G:MtA. It allows for more character variety, and distinction between raw potential and control.
Mr_Sandman is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 06-08-2013, 01:21 PM   #12
johndallman
Night Watchman
 
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Cambridge, UK
Default Re: Updating/recreating GURPS Mage the Ascension to 4ed

Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr_Sandman View Post
When it comes to Arete as the generic magick skill, having individual sphere skills is one of the things I like about G:MtA. It allows for more character variety, and distinction between raw potential and control.
In the two G:MtA campaigns I've played, it was normal to have your Sphere skills at the limit of (10+Arete level). It's quite cheap compared to the cost of Sphere levels if you have decent IQ. EDIT: And having the skills as high as possible was important, given importance of MoS in determining effects. So having a wildcard skill for all spheres would be a useful point saving, but wouldn't have much effect otherwise.
johndallman is online now   Reply With Quote
Old 06-08-2013, 09:30 PM   #13
Mr_Sandman
 
Mr_Sandman's Avatar
 
Join Date: Aug 2006
Location: L.I., NY
Default Re: Updating/recreating GURPS Mage the Ascension to 4ed

Quote:
Originally Posted by johndallman View Post
In the two G:MtA campaigns I've played, it was normal to have your Sphere skills at the limit of (10+Arete level). It's quite cheap compared to the cost of Sphere levels if you have decent IQ. EDIT: And having the skills as high as possible was important, given importance of MoS in determining effects. So having a wildcard skill for all spheres would be a useful point saving, but wouldn't have much effect otherwise.
That was the one issue about individual sphere skills that concerned me a bit -- that the relatively low cost in comparison to buying levels in spheres would give PCs an incentive to always raise the skills to the cap. In which case having individual skills would be just pointless bookkeeping.

On the other hand having one skill for all magic effects gives more of a point break to PCs with many spheres in comparison to those with fewer.

I did notice that Realm magic from Thaumatology assumes individual skills for each realm. However, it doesn't suggest any kind of cap to those skills, so they are less likely to all end up the same.

I think I'll start by keeping individual skills. I'll let players put together characters. Then if they all push their sphere skills up to the cap, I'll replace them with a single Arete skill, and let them redistribute the points.
Mr_Sandman is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 06-09-2013, 01:59 AM   #14
johndallman
Night Watchman
 
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Cambridge, UK
Default Re: Updating/recreating GURPS Mage the Ascension to 4ed

Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr_Sandman View Post
I think I'll start by keeping individual skills. I'll let players put together characters. Then if they all push their sphere skills up to the cap, I'll replace them with a single Arete skill, and let them redistribute the points.
The GURPS advantage level + skill roll mechanism is fundamentally different from the White Wolf dice pool, and translation between them is always a question of preferred style.

The G:MtA translation used margin of success as a substitute for number of successes in the WW mechanics, and hence made high skills levels very worthwhile. But your players may not realise that straight away. I'd either stay with the G:MtA scheme, or re-think the translation completely.
johndallman is online now   Reply With Quote
Old 06-09-2013, 10:07 AM   #15
Mr_Sandman
 
Mr_Sandman's Avatar
 
Join Date: Aug 2006
Location: L.I., NY
Default Re: Updating/recreating GURPS Mage the Ascension to 4ed

Quote:
Originally Posted by johndallman View Post
The GURPS advantage level + skill roll mechanism is fundamentally different from the White Wolf dice pool, and translation between them is always a question of preferred style.

The G:MtA translation used margin of success as a substitute for number of successes in the WW mechanics, and hence made high skills levels very worthwhile. But your players may not realise that straight away. I'd either stay with the G:MtA scheme, or re-think the translation completely.
My goal is more of an update of G:MtA to 4ed, than a conversion of the original White Wolf Mage to GURPS 4ed. I never played using the WoD rules.

G:MtA had individual sphere skills, and I can think of at least 2 outcomes of doing it that way that I like. 1) Specialists get a slight point advantage over generalists. 2) It allows more diverse characters to be designed, even if they are suboptimal. But if none of my players are interested in designing characters like that, I might as well scrap it and go with a single Arete skill, just to clean up character sheets.

Coming back to starslayer's point about the costs of spheres and balance:
Quote:
Originally Posted by starslayer View Post
If your ultimate goal is to convert vampires and werewolves getting mages more solidly into the GURPS 4th way of doing things may be beneficial to avoid imbalances between them (the orriginal books did have horrible imbalances so you do have some work ahead of you).

...

More powerful is an interesting term. Ideally they should be 'balanced', in that 'for the massive point budget required to be a mage I could ...' and you'd end up with some interesting builds. Realm/sphere based magic is EXPENSIVE, but it does grant fantastical variability.
I decided to take a closer look at how to cost spheres as if I were building them with Thaumatology. 9 spheres, with 6 levels, 5 available to PCs (level 6 reserved for Oracles), no major weaknesses. (60/6)*1=10/level. The required use of foci shouldn't count as an exceptionally onerous practice, so no need for point breaks there. In contrast, G:MtA had spheres cost 15/lvl for levels 1-3, 20 for level 4, and 25 for level 5. The "second edition" document recommends 12 for level one, 20/lvl for 2-4, and 25 for level 5. Using Thaumatology gives a significant cost break. If I were to use that cost, I might lower the starting points for the campaign from 400 to 350.

It's interesting that the section on Reactive Reality doesn't mention any point cost effects from using the Distortion Points system. It seems like a significant limitation on the use of magic. Does anyone have insight on the balance issues there?
Mr_Sandman is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 06-25-2013, 06:18 AM   #16
Mr_Sandman
 
Mr_Sandman's Avatar
 
Join Date: Aug 2006
Location: L.I., NY
Default Re: Updating/recreating GURPS Mage the Ascension to 4ed

Back to thoughts and questions about Distortion Points/Paradox and how it should affect the CP costs. G:MtA has the advantage Immune to Paradox costing 50 points. It is only available to Marauders (and maybe some Technomancers).

I'm thinking about building Mage familiars as Allies. They provide information, can grant skill bonuses, can act as teachers for Spheres, must be fed Quintessence at a rate of 1-5 points per week, and can remove Paradox at a rate between 1 point per day and 1 point per month.

Skill bonuses are easy to figure out as "granted by familiar". I'm not sure how to price the effects of Quintessence and Paradox eating on the cost of a Familiar. Using Dependency or Restricted Diet for the weekly Quintessence cost would reduce the point cost to build the Familiar. That might not make a change big enough to make a difference between being 25% or 50% of the PC point total and make a difference in cost to the PC. That seems wrong, because supplying 5 points of Quintessence a week vs 1 point is a major difference to the PC.

As for removing Paradox, I'm not sure how to go about pricing a "Remove Paradox" advantage to then put a "granted by familiar" limitation on.
Mr_Sandman is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 06-25-2013, 06:30 AM   #17
Refplace
 
Refplace's Avatar
 
Join Date: Nov 2008
Location: Yukon, OK
Default Re: Updating/recreating GURPS Mage the Ascension to 4ed

Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr_Sandman View Post
As for removing Paradox, I'm not sure how to go about pricing a "Remove Paradox" advantage to then put a "granted by familiar" limitation on.
I would look at the Increased recovery and Threshold modiefers in GURP S Thaumatology for a starting point.
__________________
My GURPS publications GURPS Powers: Totem and Nature Spirits; GURPS Template Toolkit 4: Spirits; Pyramid articles. Buying them lets us know you want more!
My GURPS fan contribution and blog:
REFPLace GURPS Landing Page
My List of GURPS You Tube videos (plus a few other useful items)
My GURPS Wiki entries
Refplace is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 06-25-2013, 03:21 PM   #18
Mr_Sandman
 
Mr_Sandman's Avatar
 
Join Date: Aug 2006
Location: L.I., NY
Default Re: Updating/recreating GURPS Mage the Ascension to 4ed

Quote:
Originally Posted by Refplace View Post
I would look at the Increased recovery and Threshold modiefers in GURP S Thaumatology for a starting point.
That's probably the closest place to start. I'm a little surprised that Thaumatology didn't have any discussions of point cost implications for Derangement Points.

The trick is trying to come up with some equivalence between Threshold and Paradox. In many ways Paradox is less forgiving. There's not much of a margin that PC can let it build up, a backlash can happen when the Paradox total is as low as 4 (rolling a 3 on the backlash roll), whereas even after a threshold is passed, each 5 tally points only adds 1 to the calamity table, and nothing happens on the calamity table if the modified roll is 10 or less. Also there is no automatic reduction of Paradox, Mages have to take paradox flaws to bleed off their total. No Recovery is a 40% limitation to Threshold Magery.
Mr_Sandman is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 06-27-2013, 10:05 PM   #19
Refplace
 
Refplace's Avatar
 
Join Date: Nov 2008
Location: Yukon, OK
Default Re: Updating/recreating GURPS Mage the Ascension to 4ed

Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr_Sandman View Post
The trick is trying to come up with some equivalence between Threshold and Paradox. In many ways Paradox is less forgiving. There's not much of a margin that PC can let it build up, a backlash can happen when the Paradox total is as low as 4 (rolling a 3 on the backlash roll), whereas even after a threshold is passed, each 5 tally points only adds 1 to the calamity table, and nothing happens on the calamity table if the modified roll is 10 or less. Also there is no automatic reduction of Paradox, Mages have to take paradox flaws to bleed off their total. No Recovery is a 40% limitation to Threshold Magery.
Yeah serious tinkering has to be done but I thin its a good starting point.
O recovery is probably the base line.
And you can always rework the Calamity table, its the idea that is useful not the chart. I have redone it for Demonic magic and Divine magic in the past.
__________________
My GURPS publications GURPS Powers: Totem and Nature Spirits; GURPS Template Toolkit 4: Spirits; Pyramid articles. Buying them lets us know you want more!
My GURPS fan contribution and blog:
REFPLace GURPS Landing Page
My List of GURPS You Tube videos (plus a few other useful items)
My GURPS Wiki entries
Refplace is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-11-2013, 12:28 PM   #20
Mr_Sandman
 
Mr_Sandman's Avatar
 
Join Date: Aug 2006
Location: L.I., NY
Default Re: Updating/recreating GURPS Mage the Ascension to 4ed

I've done a bit more tinkering.

I looked back at some of the new advantages introduced in G:MtA and one converted from WW Mage that wasn't in G:MtA, and have come up with some builds based on GURPS 4ed.

Awareness:
The first level is more or less just Detect Magic [10].
The second level could be done by adapting the model of Detect Aura from Psionic Powers - Detect (Auras, Analyzing +100%, Analysis Only -50%, Short Range 1 -10%, Vision Based -20%) [36]
Combined cost of both levels [46]

Destiny: should be replaced with any or a combination of Luck (Aspected), Higher Purpose, or Destiny from 4ed Basic Set.

Immunity to Delirium: Unfazeable (Cosmic, +50%; Only on Werewolves' Delirium effect, -50%) [15]

Familiar (not from G:MtA, converted from WW Mage.):
Build a familiar as an Ally with the Limitation: Pact (Vow - provide 1 Quintessence per week, -10%, 1 daily, 15%)
The familiar's ability to eat Paradox would be represented by the advantage from Thaumatology - Rapid Magical Recovery (Granted by Ally -40%), 1 paradox removed per 4 weeks [3], 1 per fortnight [6], 1 per week [12], 2 per week [24].

I'm not sure about the Familiar build. It seems to me that having to supply 1 Quintessence per day should be worth more as a limitation than 15% of the cost of the Ally, but the Pact limitation gives 15% discount for a 15 point Great Vow. I'll see if any of my players go for it, and maybe adjust the cost based on how it works out.
Mr_Sandman is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply

Tags
mage the ascension

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Fnords are Off
[IMG] code is Off
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -6. The time now is 08:08 AM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.9
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.