Question Regarding Sympathy Bonuses on Spellcasting

[Bazial]

Tinkering with the magic system for an upcoming game, and while looking at the rules for Sympathy and Contagion in Thaumatology, I realized something a bit odd. According to the bonuses listed on Thaum p. 244, a casting receives a staggering +4 if the subject is physically present. Now I'm trying to do something that is definitely focused on more mystical magic and preparation of rituals and ingredients, and I love the idea of Sympathy and Contagion, but this particular one kinda bugs me. For instance, it makes Healing spells trivially easy to cast, and mages become quite dangerous in combat if they're throwing about harmful Body Control spells.

Would it be reasonable to limit Sympathy and Contagion modifiers to only be used to overcome the penalties for Long-Distance and not being able to see/touch the subject? Otherwise, it seems that spellcasters gain a huge boon on many regular spells.

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by Bazial

Would it be reasonable to limit Sympathy and Contagion modifiers to only be used to overcome the penalties for Long-Distance and not being able to see/touch the subject?

Sure, if that's what you want. See the box "Ceremonial-Only" casting on p82, in the introduction to the major section that covers sympathy and contagion. It mainly suggests that the modifiers for this section only apply to ceremonial magic (as you might expect from the title of the box), but also suggests a comprise where fast casting can be allowed to negate penalties (much as you suggest, if less specific) but not gain net bonuses.

The "Using the Concept" section also points out that the modifiers are really intended to be used mostly for low-mana settings or those in which all magic is Ritual Magic. Those systems are already starting off at a substantial penalty compared to the dungeon-crawl magic in Basic or GURPS Magic, and so soak more penalties by their nature.

[Bazial]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

Sure, if that's what you want. See the box "Ceremonial-Only" casting on p82, in the introduction to the major section that covers sympathy and contagion. It mainly suggests that the modifiers for this section only apply to ceremonial magic (as you might expect from the title of the box), but also suggests a comprise where fast casting can be allowed to negate penalties (much as you suggest, if less specific) but not gain net bonuses.

The "Using the Concept" section also points out that the modifiers are really intended to be used mostly for low-mana settings or those in which all magic is Ritual Magic. Those systems are already starting off at a substantial penalty compared to the dungeon-crawl magic in Basic or GURPS Magic, and so soak more penalties by their nature.

Thanks! I've been looking at those sections and they certain make sense. I do have some questions/observations.

The world I'm trying to simulate is not really low-mana; in fact, mana returning to the region is a big issue. The conceit if more along the lines that magic is very hard to learn to a degree where one can just cast spells - modelled using the Magery Based Limitsvariant on page 41 of Thaum. Specifically, a mage can only learn a spell at level 10 + Magery level, and most mages never go above 2, leaving most casters at max level 12 for most of their spells. It also does allow for a few legendary individuals to have high enough magery that they can cast more willy-nilly. Combined with this, wizards can essentially cast spells by default, at prerequisite penalties, provided they have the spell transcribed to their grimoire. Spells are fairly rare, so mages may very end up with several where they lack significant prerequisites.

All that works well enough, I think, but the issue then comes in with the modifiers and ceremonial-only casting. To cast ceremonially, one must know a spell at 15+, and as soon as spell skill caps like the one I mentioned is in place and prerequisite penalties become an issue, most casters simply do not reach this level. This paradoxically leaves the tools for overcoming the limits in magic in the hands of those who already have overcome it (i.e. mages with Magery 5 or higher).

I made a similar post regarding this before, and I suppose I'm kinda ending up asking the same question here. A house rule that allows for Solitary Ceremonial castings on any spell, regardless of level, in order to invoke modifiers; would this be cool? My gut says yes, but my reading of RAW says no.

[Celjabba]

If I understand correctly :
World-building : most mages base skill are caped at 12.
World-building : most casting should be ceremonial (for setting taste, and by necessity to overcame prereq penalties).
Problem : ceremonial casting require base skill 15.

I don't have much experience with ceremonial casting rukes but I think that in such a case, dropping the skill-15 requirement make sense. To avoid abuse, I would probably rule that any bonus coming from ceremonial (sympathy, assistants, trappings, ...) can only negate penalties. Going over base skill will require others bonuses. (higher purposes, place/ items of power, components, ... ).
Would that matches what you seek ?

[Bazial]

Originally Posted by Celjabba

If I understand correctly :
World-building : most mages base skill are caped at 12.
World-building : most casting should be ceremonial (for setting taste, and by necessity to overcame prereq penalties).
Problem : ceremonial casting require base skill 15.

I don't have much experience with ceremonial casting rukes but I think that in such a case, dropping the skill-15 requirement make sense. To avoid abuse, I would probably rule that any bonus coming from ceremonial (sympathy, assistants, trappings, ...) can only negate penalties. Going over base skill will require others bonuses. (higher purposes, place/ items of power, components, ... ).
Would that matches what you seek ?

Good points. Another option I've been playing with simply keeping ceremonial solitary. It becomes less Ceremonial Magic as described in the Basic Set and more of a "cast spells more slowly and ritually to invoke bonuses". That could certainly work, especially with a few notes about which modifiers can be invoked in ceremonial castings and which can be also be invoked in normal castings.

[Anaraxes]

"Ceremonial" actually has in effect two meanings. One is what I'll call "group casting" -- letting a bunch of mages pool their FP for a single spell. The other is what I'll call "ritual casting", which means the elaborate procedure that's also usually viewed as slow. The two aren't of course necessarily the same thing. Some settings might want fast group casting (for psi gestalts, for instance), while others might want all magic to be slow. This setting sounds like the second case.

"cast spells more slowly and ritually to invoke bonuses"

For this setting, you might be interested in the Ritual Magic system for your solitary casters, along with some of the later variants. It starts on Thaumatology p72. Like most of Thaum, it's got a lot of variations and options. The core idea is to base spell skills from some base skill, usually "Thaumatology" or "Ritual Magic" for all of magic, or sometimes more granular skills for "colleges" or "paths" -- some subdivision of magic. That core skill takes a penalty of the number of prereqs of a spell, to make the later, more complicated spells harder. Since that means a fairly sizable penalty for a lot of spells, those decanic modifers, or sympathy/contagion, come in to offset the penalties.

The Ritual Magic section also talks about ceremonial casting (p74), but here it really means that first sense of group casting.

Up to this point, all that's really different is how you calculate the spell skill. But most people using Ritual Magic are looking for the slow kind with an elaborate, well, ritual, with lots of symbolic paraphenalia and "material components" to build up those modifers. To represent the increased time, see the "Effect Shaping" (Thaum 122) or "Energy Accumulating" (p134) options in the Path/Book section. (Lots of people tend to mean something like Path/Book when they say "Ritual Magic", including me... not just the bit about having one magic skill with techniques, rather than a bunch of separate skills.) Effect Shaping has rituals taking some defined time to create their effect; Energy Accumulating spends some (perhaps large) amount of time to accumulate enough energy to cast the spell, at which point the actual effect is created. (The difference is small, just in those fluff descriptions. The real differences lie in the details.) You can define the ritual times or adjust the rate of energy accumulation to make the spell-casting take as long as you like.

Slow magical rituals eliminate the possibility of effectively casting spells in second-by-second combat time. You might be happy with that. might want short rituals (not where it sounds like you want to go). Or you might want to include a way to pre-cast spells, and "hang" them (as with that Meta-spell spell, for instance).

The Ritual Path Magic system (yet another magic system for GURPS, which is a mashup of Ritual Magic and Path Magic, Energy Accumulating, and with some original bits and a spell design system)... RPM has a mechanic called a "charm" that's basically a stored spell. It might take minutes or hours to create that charm, but it can be smashed to release the spell with a single turn action. So, a mage can prepare for combat ahead of time, but winds up with an "ammo limit", as well as putting a premium on research to know exactly what enemies you're going to face, so you can prep your loadout accordingly.

[Bazial]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

"Ceremonial" actually has in effect two meanings. One is what I'll call "group casting" -- letting a bunch of mages pool their FP for a single spell. The other is what I'll call "ritual casting", which means the elaborate procedure that's also usually viewed as slow. The two aren't of course necessarily the same thing. Some settings might want fast group casting (for psi gestalts, for instance), while others might want all magic to be slow. This setting sounds like the second case.

For this setting, you might be interested in the Ritual Magic system for your solitary casters, along with some of the later variants. It starts on Thaumatology p72. Like most of Thaum, it's got a lot of variations and options. The core idea is to base spell skills from some base skill, usually "Thaumatology" or "Ritual Magic" for all of magic, or sometimes more granular skills for "colleges" or "paths" -- some subdivision of magic. That core skill takes a penalty of the number of prereqs of a spell, to make the later, more complicated spells harder. Since that means a fairly sizable penalty for a lot of spells, those decanic modifers, or sympathy/contagion, come in to offset the penalties.

The Ritual Magic section also talks about ceremonial casting (p74), but here it really means that first sense of group casting.

Up to this point, all that's really different is how you calculate the spell skill. But most people using Ritual Magic are looking for the slow kind with an elaborate, well, ritual, with lots of symbolic paraphenalia and "material components" to build up those modifers. To represent the increased time, see the "Effect Shaping" (Thaum 122) or "Energy Accumulating" (p134) options in the Path/Book section. (Lots of people tend to mean something like Path/Book when they say "Ritual Magic", including me... not just the bit about having one magic skill with techniques, rather than a bunch of separate skills.) Effect Shaping has rituals taking some defined time to create their effect; Energy Accumulating spends some (perhaps large) amount of time to accumulate enough energy to cast the spell, at which point the actual effect is created. (The difference is small, just in those fluff descriptions. The real differences lie in the details.) You can define the ritual times or adjust the rate of energy accumulation to make the spell-casting take as long as you like.

Slow magical rituals eliminate the possibility of effectively casting spells in second-by-second combat time. You might be happy with that. might want short rituals (not where it sounds like you want to go). Or you might want to include a way to pre-cast spells, and "hang" them (as with that Meta-spell spell, for instance).

The Ritual Path Magic system (yet another magic system for GURPS, which is a mashup of Ritual Magic and Path Magic, Energy Accumulating, and with some original bits and a spell design system)... RPM has a mechanic called a "charm" that's basically a stored spell. It might take minutes or hours to create that charm, but it can be smashed to release the spell with a single turn action. So, a mage can prepare for combat ahead of time, but winds up with an "ammo limit", as well as putting a premium on research to know exactly what enemies you're going to face, so you can prep your loadout accordingly.

Fantastically comprehensive answer! Thank you so much! I was actually very much looking into Ritual Magic, since I really do love the basic concept of it. The primary thing keeping me from completely embracing it is the following: First off, my players have expressed a huge interest in making the acquisition of spells and keeping them in their grimoire a big thing. I quite like the concept as well (likely an artifact from playing a lot of The Other RPG in my younger days), and Fantasy p. 162 has an interesting middle ground: A spell in a grimoire takes a -1 per lacking prerequisite. But it could perhaps be an option to enforce this rule on all spells, regardless of how many prerequisites a mage has in their grimoire. Essentially just like Ritual Magic functions as written, but the player must have a spell in their book. Thoughts?

Personally, I love Ritual Path magic, but my players are not particularly fond of it, and it does take a certain familiarity with GURPS before one can run it comfortably, I think. I have thus far persuaded them that if if they're interested, we can switch later on.

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by Bazial

my players have expressed a huge interest in making the acquisition of spells and keeping them in their grimoire a big thing.

Ok, then, "Book" magic instead of "Path" magic :) The spells you can cast must be in one of your grimoires. That's what makes them available to be cast in the first place.

A spell in a grimoire takes a -1 per lacking prerequisite. But it could perhaps be an option to enforce this rule on all spells, regardless of how many prerequisites a mage has in their grimoire. Essentially just like Ritual Magic functions as written, but the player must have a spell in their book. Thoughts?

Ritual Magic uses the prereq count as a proxy for spell difficulty. Mages don't learn individual spells. This suggestion sounds one step more strict -- if you don't have a prereq in your library, you simply cannot cast the spell at all; if you do, it's the usual prereq count penalty?

Possibly you're suggesting that there's a -1 penalty per prereq not in the library, while prereqs in the library don't add to the penalty. That would make Ritual Magic much easier, and also wind up costing mages very few CP (as there's no reason to buy up that core skill).

Unless you're also thinking that mages continue to buy each spell individually, as with standard magic. So the preqreq count only matters for spells that you haven't learned, and also aren't in your grimoire. That will make for easy casting rolls, but burn more character points on the spell list, instead of Ritual Magic's core skill(s). Standard magic usually has pretty high skill levels (the cliche mage template is IQ 14 Magery 3, so 1 CP gets you skill-15 in every spell), so they'll be able to soak a few missing prereqs. It will be a little harder than standard magic, though, and the OP suggests that low skill levels are already a problem.

[Bazial]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

Ok, then, "Book" magic instead of "Path" magic :) The spells you can cast must be in one of your grimoires. That's what makes them available to be cast in the first place.

Ritual Magic uses the prereq count as a proxy for spell difficulty. Mages don't learn individual spells. This suggestion sounds one step more strict -- if you don't have a prereq in your library, you simply cannot cast the spell at all; if you do, it's the usual prereq count penalty?

Possibly you're suggesting that there's a -1 penalty per prereq not in the library, while prereqs in the library don't add to the penalty. That would make Ritual Magic much easier, and also wind up costing mages very few CP (as there's no reason to buy up that core skill).

Unless you're also thinking that mages continue to buy each spell individually, as with standard magic. So the preqreq count only matters for spells that you haven't learned, and also aren't in your grimoire. That will make for easy casting rolls, but burn more character points on the spell list, instead of Ritual Magic's core skill(s). Standard magic usually has pretty high skill levels (the cliche mage template is IQ 14 Magery 3, so 1 CP gets you skill-15 in every spell), so they'll be able to soak a few missing prereqs. It will be a little harder than standard magic, though, and the OP suggests that low skill levels are already a problem.

Good points, and definitely something to think about. After having pondered the issue bit, this is basically what I have so far:

Mages use the core skill Ritual Magic (Grimoire), which is limited to 10 + Magery (using the variant of Magery that caps skill from Thaumatology p. 41.

A wizard can cast any spell they add to their grimoire at default, where the penalty is the spell's prerequisite modifier.

Spells can be bought up as Average techniques individually, to a max of Ritual Magic (Grimoire) skill.

I feel like this basically hits what I'm looking for; mages, with access to the right spells, are extremely versatile, but still require planning and preparation for their most powerful spells, while still being to cast some choice spells in a pinch quite easily.

Thoughts?