How has Ceremonial Magic not destroyed your game world?

[Anthony]

Ceremonial magic isn't very usable on a battlefield, just because of the presence of hostile observers; it only takes ten of them to totally negate your bonus from helpful onlookers. It does tend to have extensive logistical effects, though for the most part GURPS Magic, used RAW without restrictions, is quite capable of destroying your game world without need for ceremonial magic.

[Lamech]

On the battlefield its useless. At least the direct blast type spells won't get used. Summoning a huge air elemental 10 miles away and letting it go to town is possible though. Now the real damage of ceremonial magic? It can really wreck some of the pseudo-medieval feel of a setting. Here is a list of spells
Bless Plants: Takes multiple casting, but it with 100 yard radius it shouldn't be too hard to cover a whole field. Oh look now half the farmers can do something else!
Essential Earth: Exact same thing as bless plants, indeed it even has the same radius (104 Energy is SM+10=100 yard blob). Hey 2/3rds of the farmers can do something else!
Bless: What? Dying in accidents? Who does that?
Youth: What? Dying of old age? Who does that?
Create Essential Food: A person can make enough food for a day with 3 hours of energy.
Earth to Stone: Oh look no need to mine again. Ever. Also since you have all that essential earth from before...
Rebuild: 100 energy = 35500 pounds. You can take something and remake it from a fragment. Wanna know how many fragments something 35500 pounds of something can make?
The gate college: Actually you don't need ceremonial magic to wreck setting with these guys.

The really fun things need a race with magery. If you have say... a group of a few hundred elves you can make the whole planet essential earth and raise the dead on a whim. Or do any other inane thing you want.

[Polydamas]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Ceremonial magic isn't very usable on a battlefield, just because of the presence of hostile observers; it only takes ten of them to totally negate your bonus from helpful onlookers. It does tend to have extensive logistical effects, though for the most part GURPS Magic, used RAW without restrictions, is quite capable of destroying your game world without need for ceremonial magic.

The short range and short durations are also a problem. If you are in range to cast Mass Zombie or Create Fire during combat, you are in range to be hit by thrown weapons let alone arrows and slingstones (and even if nobody is hit, I would give a big penalty to most rituals if the participants are in the middle of a battle!) Some metaspells let you slightly expand the range, but that gives more chances for failure, and requires a more skilled wizard.

Kromm likes to point out that there is plenty of fudge room in the definition of willing cooperation. Its up to the GM whether pay is enough.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Lamech

Essential Earth: Exact same thing as bless plants, indeed it even has the same radius (104 Energy is SM+10=100 yard blob).

Actually, Essential Earth does not specify the quantity of earth created, so it's entirely speculative how much of it you can create with a single casting. Not that the SM scaling of regular spells in 4e isn't totally broken and inconsistent with the way area spells work, but since the Earth is SM +37, you can cast any regular spell that doesn't have further limits preventing this sort of trick on the entire planet for 38x its base cost (usually, this means a spell that's intended for use on creatures but has some sensible effect on objects). Most examples are either resisted (and thus unlikely to work) or have effects that are more odd than useful (for example, casting Hide or Lighten Burden on a planet).

[ULFGARD]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Actually, Essential Earth does not specify the quantity of earth created, so it's entirely speculative how much of it you can create with a single casting. Not that the SM scaling of regular spells in 4e isn't totally broken and inconsistent with the way area spells work, but since the Earth is SM +37, you can cast any regular spell that doesn't have further limits preventing this sort of trick on the entire planet for 38x its base cost (usually, this means a spell that's intended for use on creatures but has some sensible effect on objects). Most examples are either resisted (and thus unlikely to work) or have effects that are more odd than useful (for example, casting Hide or Lighten Burden on a planet).

I think that Avoid cast on the Earth might be quite interesting...

[Refplace]

I allow for ceremonial magic in many of my games.
It changes things and maybe in ways unanticipated. However I am not trying for a pure historical recreation, if I did then I wouldn't have magic in the first place.
It has a big effect on rural activities, more so then urban but significant changes there. I just factor it in as another aspect of magic.
Most villages would love to have a mage and they can take the role of village shaman or such but have an actual effect. However while it has an effect on armies it is more a support role then a direct offensive one due in part to the reasons cited above. I consider getting troops to aid a spell easy in a regular magic game (where magic is not treated as a scary or evil and mysterious force) but it is also easy to disrupt or counter ceremonies.

[martinl]

Originally Posted by Snaps

So I was reading Ceremonial Magic again today and a few things clicked together.

Very few interesting magical systems produce standard fantasy worlds without aggressive GM intervention. Unintended side effects are very common, and RPG magic systems by their very nature warp reality. Unmodified GURPS Magic is a particularly warping example, unfortunately.

Most GMs just don't have the NPCs realize the implications and steer the PCs away from setting breaking stuff. Others let the PCs break the setting - it's not hurting wrong fun to do so. Others make weird settings where they've tried to predict all the potential consequences. Others don't allow fantastic stuff in the first place. I'm sure there are other approaches.

My recommendation is to determine what do you, as GM, want the magic system to do. Make it do that, by rule or by ruling, but try to minimize squelching of fun or player creativity in the process.

[starslayer]

Likewise on the 'ceremonial magic has not effected my games'.

The extra 100 energy from somehow getting together 100 willing participants to hold candles and chant for an hour is basically a no go for combat- doubly so since everyone not completely dedicated to it subtracts more then there own energy from the ritual. Even without the extra hundred energy I picture a fantasy battlefield being a hectic place of myth and might occasionally dotted by some arcane explosions

If trolls exist and are friendly/smart enough to be set to war then you only train humans once you run out of trolls, you only train horses when you run out of griffons/drakes/wyverns; why transport supplies when you can send ghoul warriors- either they kill there enemies and then eat, or they die, and then don't need to eat ever again- the necromancers will make sure they stay in the fight even after that though. Basically if you are a bog standard human/elf/dwarf without some sort of magical ability or heroic skill levels and find yourself in a battlefield, you are there because there are no 'specialty' units left, your under-trained, underpaid, and expected to be killed quickly but hopefully you'll absorb an arrow/axe/spear/spell meant for one of those much more valuable troll-necromancer-wyvern riders. Then the ghouls can eat the flesh off your corpse, and the troll-necromancer-wyvern rider that you took the arrow from can raise you up in the evening so that you can take another one tomorrow. A given race might have some 'honour guard' of there own race, to wear pretty uniforms, and parade; they may even be well trained, but they are tactically useless compared to mixed 'specialty' units that have racial advantages that make them superior for combat situations.

The kingdom that outlaws necromancy, does not use trolls as hybrid knight/siege engines and sends normal folk out on normal horses is either not long for the world, or has some even more impressive arcane abilities to back that up.

<Note I'm blowing it slightly out of proportion- one kingdom in my games might use lots of troll siege infantry with limited air calvary and back that up with lots of normal archers to protect from air assault, while another uses lots of mounted air calvary to protect there normal folk mounted on horses- but again it's an issue of 'ran out of resources/individuals willing to go to war' for those roles rather then 'we think our normal folk on horses is superior to the other kingdom's siege trolls for the same roles'.>

Basically: If your allowing the standard GURPS magic, your probably already playing in a fantastical fantasy world with trolls, wyverns, wizards, orcs, ghouls and necromancers. The occasional summoned elemental and 300hex sparkstorm is NOT going to be the one standing out oddity on how kingdom vs kingdom combat works and while those factors will have impact on the flow of combat, they will not be the sole dictators of what is happening.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Lamech

Bless Plants: Takes multiple casting, but it with 100 yard radius it shouldn't be too hard to cover a whole field. Oh look now half the farmers can do something else!

I see no problem with that. People in fantasy fiction are better fed than they were historically.

Essential Earth: Exact same thing as bless plants, indeed it even has the same radius (104 Energy is SM+10=100 yard blob). Hey 2/3rds of the farmers can do something else!

104 energy gives you 13 cubic yards of Essential Earth.

Bless: What? Dying in accidents? Who does that?

People who can't afford the services of a master magician.

Youth: What? Dying of old age? Who does that?

I rewrote the Youth spell to give a one hour casting time. Not that it really mattered since I classed Youth as a secret spell. Any wizard who knew it kept that knowledge from everyone except members of his household because the consequences of others knowing that you had the power to give them eternal youth were so dire. Armies would march over it.

Create Essential Food: A person can make enough food for a day with 3 hours of energy.

Well yeah. So? That's a seven prerequisite spell. Unless people with spell casting powers are common it's not going to make a big difference. (Although it is my explanation for how elves go "tra-la-la" all day through the forests, never farming and still remain well fed even in relatively large numbers.)

[Snaps]

So it sounds like most people just sweep ceremonial magic under the rug.

I mean, it doesnt take much to use it. A single mage with 2 or 3 points in spells and some supporters can wreck havoc with create fire.

So if it works in your game then logically some of these problems should come up sometimes.

Hell, with Delay the mages don't even need to be anywhere near the battlefield.
A mage could create a monster elmental arrow/bomb/crystal then another mage teleports it to the battlefield, etc.