Alternative Realm Magic

[dataweaver]

What follows is an “Alpha version” of a system that I’m working on. The intent is to do for Realm Magic what Pyramid 3/66’s “Alternate Ritual Path Magic” article did for RPM.

Realm Magic and Magery
Realm Magic has a Magery requirement: Magery (Realm). This is not stated explicitly, but it is assumed in several points of the text (see “Capping Syntactic Magic”, p.T184). That said, given how many points you’re spending on Realm Advantages, it’s probably not a big deal if you waive this requirement. Alternately, if the magic system stems from a source other than, well, Magic, you can change or replace Magery to better reflect that source: something like Blessed or True Faith to represent Divine magic; Higher Purpose for Morality-based magic; Trained By a Master or Blessed (Harmony with the Tao) for Chi-based magic; Oracle for Nature-based magic (druids famously watched the natural world around them for omens); Channeling or Medium for Spirit-based magic; Illuminated or Intuitive Mathematician for Savant-based magic (see GURPS Supers); Danger Sense or Empathy for Psionic-based magic; and so on. If need be, you can use an Unusual Background such as UB (Super).

Standardized Energy Costs and Casting Times
Per the rules as written, a Working will tend to cost more energy and take longer to cast if you go with many levels than if you only go with a few. As an alternative, base the energy costs and casting time on Relative Level, which is 6×(level/maximum level). This will bring the energy costs and casting times of Realms that have fewer than six levels in line with those of Realms that have exactly six levels. Alternately, standardize energy costs around 3×(level/maximum level); that produces more reasonable energy costs. But you can do even better by basing energy cost solely on the highest required Realm and basing the casting time solely on the number of Realms (say, one second per Realm). The goal is for the base energy cost for an Effect to be in the 1–4 range, and for the base casting time to be in the 1–3 range. By comparison, Verbs and Nouns (which doesn't require as much of a character point investment) has energy costs ranging from 1–7 and averaging around 3, and casting times ranging from 1–6 and averaging around 3 or 4.

Normally, every Realm in a given Realm system will have the same number of levels; but if your setting has multiple Realm systems, it's still in your interest to standardize the costs and times. And if you want to experiment with different Realms in a single system having different numbers of levels, this facilitates that, too.

Simpler Realm Pricing
Use Power Talent pricing from GURPS Powers, scaled by the number of levels the Realm has:
Base cost per level = 60 / number of levels. Multiply by a factor based on how broad or narrow the Realm is:
Broad Realm (equivalent to a 15-point Power Talent): ×1.5
Normal Realm (equivalent to a 10-point Power Talent): ×1.0
Narrow Realm (equivalent to a 5-point Power Talent): ×0.5

One benefit of this approach is that you can apply all of these options on a Realm-by-Realm basis: for instance, a mage can have a mixture of Narrow, Normal, and Broad Realms.

Conversely, this doesn't work if you're trying to cover everything with one to five Realms: even Broad isn't broad enough. For that, stick to the existing approach, possibly with finer steps:

1 Realm: ×5
2 Realms: ×4
3 Realms: ×3
4 Realms: ×2.5
5 Realms: ×2

Choose Your Own Progress
Instead of a hard-wired progression in the levels, let the player choose how he wishes to progress. One way to do this is to pick a number of Verbs from the Noun/Verb system and let the player choose one Verb per level. If you want, you could treat this as a set of parallel Advantages instead of a single leveled one: if the Realm is Matter and the levels are Sense, Control, Transform, Create, and Destroy, then you can write them as “Matter (Sense)”, “Matter (Control)”, “Matter (Transform)”, “Matter (Create)”, and “Matter (Destroy)”. Doing this changes how you determine the energy cost of a casting: use something like the way Noun/Verb energy costs are calculated instead, with each Verb having a cost associated with it, and a base cost of 2 added to that.

Protocols
A Realm is Noun-like, in that it’s defined in terms of what is subject to it, while the levels determine what sorts of things you can do to it. A Protocol inverts this: it’s an Advantage where the defining feature is what you can do, while the level determines what you can affect. Normally, this would require you to create a hierarchy of things you can affect, from most specific to most general. Sometimes, this is appropriate: an Alchemy system could use the four Alchemical Operations (Nigredo, Albedo, Citrinas, and Rubedo) as Protocols, with the first level of each defined in terms of base matter and gradually expanding to include complex machinery, life, and eventually abstract systems. But for the most part, you’d probably want to pair Protocols with a variation on Choose Your Own Progress.

Protocols and Realms can be used together, each supplying something the other lacks: If you have a Destroy Protocol and a Matter Realm, then you can use them in conjunction to Destroy Matter even if your Destroy Protocol lacks the ability to affect Matter and your Matter Realm lacks the ability to destroy. This is a bit like Noun/Verb Magic, except that you don’t need both if either has enough in it to get the result you want on its own. Using Realms and Protocols together might provide a cost break: a 4-point reduction would be appropriate. (Example: a magic system has a the Realms of Cunning, Dreams, the Elements, Health, Nature, and Spirit, and the Protocols of Knowledge, Luck, and Protection. If his levels in Spirit aren’t enough to offer protection against spirits and his Protocol of Protection doesn’t cover spirits, he can still use his Protocol of Protection together with his Realm of Spirits to protect against spirits.)

Effect-Shaping and Energy-Accumulating Realm Magic
As written, Realm Magic uses a minor variation of the spell casting rules from the Basic Set: spend a number of seconds concentrating, pay an energy cost, and roll the dice. Your skill level might affect both of these factors and may also require you to chant and/or gesture while concentrating, with higher skill requiring fewer of these ritual elements. Practices (pp.T192-193) expand on those requirements. But it’s also possible to replace the entire thing with either of the ritual systems from Chapter 5. Energy Accumulating is the easiest one to implement: just abandon the “time to cast” elements and use the Energy Accumulating rules to gradually gather the necessary energy. Effect-Shaping is slightly harder: take the Time to Cast in seconds and read that as steps on the Duration scale to determine how long the ritual will take; then subtract two from the energy cost and read it as a skill penalty instead of an energy cost.

Note that these magic systems generally assume larger areas, longer ranges, and longer durations than the regular system, to go with their much longer energy costs. This is reflected in the way Parameters work in regular Realm Magic, contrasted with how Ritual Parameters work in the Effect-Shaping and Energy-Accumulating models. [This requires modifying the Duration table for use with spell-casting Realm Magic: insert three levels between Momentary and 10 minutes: 1 minute, 2 minutes, and 5 minutes. “Momentary” effects also include one-second Effects; the distinction matters when spells can be Maintained.]

Realm Magic and Sorcery
You could merge Realm Magic and Sorcery by replacing Sorcerous Empowerment with a set of Realms corresponding to the sorcerous colleges, then have each college’s Spells work as Alternate Abilities to the college’s Realm. In this Sorcery variant, improvised spells can be quite potent, sometimes even more potent than Learned Spells; but they require a lot more time and effort. Having multiple Realms means that you can cast one spell at a time per Realm, rather than just a flat one spell at a time. If you do this, the Sorcery Talent adds to the Realm Skills as well as to Spell casting. Magery should either be limited to Magery 0 or it should act as a cap on Realm skills — which brings up the question of what happens when a Talent and a skill cap collide.

Realm Magic as Alternative to Powers
It’s also possible to modify the Realm Magic system to produce an alternative to the Powers system. With this option, your levels in the Realm don’t determine what you can do; they determine how much you can do: if you succeed, add your Realm levels to your margin of success, and add your margin of success to your primary Parameter. This system has a base cost of 10 points per level in a Realm, modified as normal; the cap on how many levels you can have, if any, is determined by the GM. Instead of being a single Very Hard skill that covers the entire Realm, you buy a separate Hard skill for each Spell (use the guidelines from RPM for Specific Definition, p.19, to determine what a Spell covers). If you wish to maintain the flexibility that Realm Magic normally offers, you can have all Spells in that Realm default to each other at, say, -2. Alternately, you can use a variation of the Choose Your Own Progression option, with each Verb for the Realm being a separate Very Hard Skill and each spell either being a Technique (in which case you’d need to determine a reasonable Default penalty) or an optional Specialization.

(The above was patterned after the power system found in GURPS Classic Supers.)

Thoughts?

[Emerald Cat]

Originally Posted by dataweaver

Simpler Realm Pricing

I like matching the pricing of individual realms to their scope. This makes having a mixture of Realm scopes much more practical. It also makes it easier to use Realm Magic in a low point game without bloating the number of Realms/Limitations on magic to bring down the price.

Originally Posted by dataweaver

Choose Your Own Progress

I personally prefer fixed progressions. Fixed progressions make it feel like the mage is honing their craft and increasing their power over time. And this feels like how you would learn magic if it actually existed. On the other hand, if you are invoking spirits, it would make sense to learn each Verb separately.

I don't think this approach will create any more balance issues than flexible magic does. You could theoretically build a battle mage by taking Fire(Create). But this would be balanced by the point costs for the Realm, Realm Skill, and energy cost of the spell.

Also, a mage would be limited by the Realms they don't have. In my opinion, this is a fair price for being able to buy the verbs piecemeal. However, this will lead to player questions regarding what they can do. For example, does throwing a fireball require Fire(Create) or Fire(Create) + Fire (Control)?

Originally Posted by dataweaver

Protocols

You could do it this way. The trick will be choosing Realm levels that are easily memorized by players or GM. Otherwise, play will grind to a halt every time they need to be looked up.

Originally Posted by dataweaver

Effect-Shaping and Energy-Accumulating Realm Magic

This looks good. I'd probably use Effect-Shaping over Energy Accumulation to speed play and minimize the number of rolls required for a spell.

Originally Posted by dataweaver

Effect-Shaping is slightly harder: take the Time to Cast in seconds and read that as steps on the Duration scale to determine how long the ritual will take; then subtract two from the energy cost and read it as a skill penalty instead of an energy cost.

I'm confused. How is this supposed to work? Could you please provide an example?

Originally Posted by dataweaver

Realm Magic and Sorcery

This is an interesting approach. It would certainly allow Sorcerers to be much more flexible. Buying Sorcerous Empowerment by college is more complicated than just having a single advantage. Buying Sorcerous Empowerment by college also means you will have to spread points around multiple colleges. So I'd expect to see more specialists.

I'd prefer to use Realms and Sorcery separately within the same setting. Realm magic would represent the magic of scholarly wizards, while Sorcery would represent the magic used by intuitive magical savants.

[dataweaver]

Originally Posted by Emerald Cat

I like matching the pricing of individual realms to their scope. This makes having a mixture of Realm scopes much more practical. It also makes it easier to use Realm Magic in a low point game without bloating the number of Realms/Limitations on magic to bring down the price.

On the other hand, you don't use this approach if your goal is to have, say, one to six Realms that cover everything; the pricing is too cheap for that. In particular, don't do this if you intend for there to be only one Realm, where the price multiplier ought to be x5 for the sake of consistency.

Originally Posted by Emerald Cat

I personally prefer fixed progressions. Fixed progressions make it feel like the mage is honing their craft and increasing their power over time. And this feels like how you would learn magic if it actually existed. On the other hand, if you are invoking spirits, it would make sense to learn each Verb separately.

Exactly. This is supposed to be a set of options among which you pick and choose, not a single system where you must implement every change that's presented. There's a time and place for having a fixed progression, and there's a time and place for letting the player decide as he goes how he wants to progress.

This option is one of two in the article that blurs the line between Realm Magic and Verb-Noun Magic. As such, questions like “which Verbs do I use?” are best answered by referring to the Noun-Verb section of Thaumatology.

Originally Posted by Emerald Cat

You could do it this way. The trick will be choosing Realm levels that are easily memorized by players or GM. Otherwise, play will grind to a halt every time they need to be looked up.

I don't see that as any more of a hurdle than defining the levels for regular Realms is. And if it is a problem, there are actually two alternatives available in the article: Choose Your Own Progression, and Realm Magic as Alternative to Powers — which, now that I think about it, is a variation of the Choose Your Own Progression idea, where the choice of “verbs” is handled through the Skills rather than the Advantage. A Protocol might be set up this way, with either a set of Very Hard skills corresponding to potential Nouns as they apply to that Protocol or a larger set of Hard skills corresponding to individual spells.

Originally Posted by Emerald Cat

This looks good. I'd probably use Effect-Shaping over Energy Accumulation to speed play and minimize the number of rolls required for a spell.

Again, right time/right place. I'm not a fan of the Energy Accumulating model myself; but there are cases where it's the right way to go.

Originally Posted by Emerald Cat

I'm confused. How is this supposed to work? Could you please provide an example?

As I mentioned up front, this is an alpha version, which means it still has bugs — and you just ran across a big one. The principle is that the Effect-Shaping ritual's time to cast should be derived from Realm Magic's time to cast, and should map “a few seconds” to “minutes or hours”. Realm Magic normally has a casting time of three to eight seconds; if we subtract three from that to a minimum of zero and consult the Duration chart, reading “Momentary” as “one minute”, then levels one through five get ritual casting times of one minute, ten minutes, one hour, twelve hours, and one day, respectively. If anything, that's a bit harsh: you might want to insert steps between those, making it something like one minute, five minutes, ten minutes, thirty minutes, and an hour. After that, just as one more hour per second.

The energy cost part is easier to deal with, as the Syntactic Magic system already lets you handle Parameters through your choice of a mixture of energy costs, skill penalties, and the margin of success. For Effect-Shaping Realm Magic, simply avoid the energy cost options.

(The “Realm Magic as Alternative to Powers” section effectively adds a “fourth option” to this: using your Realm Level to augment appropriate Parameters, either instead of or in addition to the usual options of energy, skill penalty, and margin of success. In effect, each Realm level lets you take one step in a Parameter without having to spend energy, take a skill penalty, or achieve a higher margin of success.)

Originally Posted by Emerald Cat

This is an interesting approach. It would certainly allow Sorcerers to be much more flexible. Buying Sorcerous Empowerment by college is more complicated than just having a single advantage. Buying Sorcerous Empowerment by college also means you will have to spread points around multiple colleges. So I'd expect to see more specialists.

True enough. The alternative would be to go with a single Realm that covers everything, with the x5 multiplier to its cost. Which can get very expensive.

Originally Posted by Emerald Cat

I'd prefer to use Realms and Sorcery separately within the same setting. Realm magic would represent the magic of scholarly wizards, while Sorcery would represent the magic used by intuitive magical savants.

That's also an option; but you don't need any rules hacks to make that work. And I think you've got that backward: Sorcery would be the scholarly wizards, while Realm Magic would be the intuitive magical savants.

Combining the two does require some hacking, if only “replace Sorcerous Empowerment with one or more Realms”.

[dataweaver]

I just updated the first part to include a section about standardizing energy costs and casting times.

[dataweaver]

Also: one reason why I introduced Protocols was to facilitate the idea of a Realm system that parallels the Paths of Path/Book Magic. Health and Spirits are no problem; but Knowledge and Protection aren't really suitable as Realms, as they're more about what you do (discover secrets and protect things, respectively). So they'd become Protocols.

[dataweaver]

Due to some recent activity on the forums concerning Realm Magic, I've made a slight revision to the original post.

[Devil_Dante]

Originally Posted by dataweaver

Due to some recent activity on the forums concerning Realm Magic, I've made a slight revision to the original post.

I guess it's my fault :D

[Atan]

This is a very interesting thread! Out of curiosity, do you have any suggestions or ideas relative to how one might put Realm Magic and RPM together?

[AlexanderHowl]

I find that RPM tends to outperform Realm Magic because of the existence of conditional spells, the existence of an ER, and the cheapness of purchasing RPM compared to Realm Magic. For example, a default system with six levels and nine Realms (equal to the number of RPM Paths) would cost 540 CP for the Realms alone (not including IQ, Magery, and/or the Realm Skills). Conversely, a RPM mage could spend 540 CP for IQ 20, Magery 8, Ritual Adept, Thaumatology-20, and all nine Paths at 20, and they would still have 135 CP leftover for magical gadgets.

In additional, effects tend to be easier with RPM than Realm Magic by RAW. For example, at TL8, the RPM mage could lay down a 3d burning damage every turn for an average on twelve turns before they start having to slow down (dealing a total of 36d burning damage). By comparison, it costs the Realm Mage 6 FP and takes 5 turns to deal 1d+3 burning damage, meaning that they will likely only end up doing only 2d+6 burning damage before they collapse.

Of course, you can change the systems to balance them, but they are not comparable by RAW, as a RPM Mage built with the same points will massively outperform a Realm Mage. Of course, standard magic can outperform Realm Magic, so it is not a surprise that RPM is capable of outperforming it. Realm Magic is just too ineffective for its cost.

[Atan]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

I find that RPM tends to outperform Realm Magic because of the existence of conditional spells, the existence of an ER, and the cheapness of purchasing RPM compared to Realm Magic. For example, a default system with six levels and nine Realms (equal to the number of RPM Paths) would cost 540 CP for the Realms alone (not including IQ, Magery, and/or the Realm Skills). Conversely, a RPM mage could spend 540 CP for IQ 20, Magery 8, Ritual Adept, Thaumatology-20, and all nine Paths at 20, and they would still have 135 CP leftover for magical gadgets.

In additional, effects tend to be easier with RPM than Realm Magic by RAW. For example, at TL8, the RPM mage could lay down a 3d burning damage every turn for an average on twelve turns before they start having to slow down (dealing a total of 36d burning damage). By comparison, it costs the Realm Mage 6 FP and takes 5 turns to deal 1d+3 burning damage, meaning that they will likely only end up doing only 2d+6 burning damage before they collapse.

Of course, you can change the systems to balance them, but they are not comparable by RAW, as a RPM Mage built with the same points will massively outperform a Realm Mage. Of course, standard magic can outperform Realm Magic, so it is not a surprise that RPM is capable of outperforming it. Realm Magic is just too ineffective for its cost.

Thanks! What about Realms + Threshold? Do you have any experience with that?

Originally Posted by dataweaver

Standardized Energy Costs and Casting Times
Per the rules as written, a Working will tend to cost more energy and take longer to cast if you go with many levels than if you only go with a few. As an alternative, base the energy costs and casting time on Relative Level, which is 6×(level/maximum level). This will bring the energy costs and casting times of Realms that have fewer than six levels in line with those of Realms that have exactly six levels. Alternately, standardize energy costs around 3×(level/maximum level); that produces more reasonable energy costs. But you can do even better by basing energy cost solely on the highest required Realm and basing the casting time solely on the number of Realms (say, one second per Realm). The goal is for the base energy cost for an Effect to be in the 1–4 range, and for the base casting time to be in the 1–3 range. By comparison, Verbs and Nouns (which doesn't require as much of a character point investment) has energy costs reaming from 1–7 and averaging around 3, and casting times ranging from 1–6 and averaging around 3 or 4.

Normally, every Realm in a given Realm system will have the same number of levels; but if your setting has multiple Realm systems, it's still in your interest to standardize the costs and times. And if you want to experiment with different Realms in a single system having different numbers of levels, this facilitates that, too.

Would these formulae still work when used to determine a Threshold tally? If not, is there a general equivalence between FP/Energy Cost and Threshold tally? I'm trying to build a freeform magic system where magic is powerful but still somewhat dangerous to use, but I'm having difficulty finding a balance.