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Old 06-19-2017, 01:53 AM   #31
Jaware
 
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Default Re: Need help with some stuff with Ritual/Path magic.

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Originally Posted by evileeyore View Post
You wouldn't... since you can't, since it's capped.

You are conflating the advice "Raise your skills to overcome resistance" with the idea that this advice is "Raise you skill above your cap".

They aren't saying that. They are just saying "Raise your skill to overcome resistance". If you are at cap, then obviously you also have to raise your cap.
See by cap I interpreted as "skill can't exceed X number if above X number"

I wasn't thinking of it as "you cannot raise your skill above X"

But thank you. That's pretty much my question answered.
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Old 06-19-2017, 08:17 AM   #32
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Default Re: Need help with some stuff with Ritual/Path magic.

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Originally Posted by Jaware View Post
But why specilize? If it is the same cost to specialize and to not specilaize. And still be the same.

that path 18 is still a 15 for all intents and purposses. That 18 doesn't help in any way shape and form. Because it's capped at 12+magery.(so a 15 in the example).

If that 18 I'd what helps overcome resistances then ok. That was all that I had questions about. But according to everything everyone has said and that I've read, it's cap skill at most. Nothing else matters.

so why the 18 if it doesn't do anything.thats just 12cp wasted.
No, 18 is actually leaps and bounds better than 15. RPM is not a single roll, and its certainly not an unpenalized roll.

When you cast an RPM ritual most of your rolls are "gathering energy". You make a roll, and see how much you succeeded by. You gather that much energy and roll again, until you have enough. That mechanism alone makes an 18 quite a bit faster than a 15. But its stronger than that. every 3 rolls you get a -1 to all other rolls, and if you fail more than two or three times, you may as well not cast the spell: its quirked into weird shapes. So not only do you get more energy per roll, you keep rolling longer.

effective skills of 15 can gather about 20 energy or so before you start to get nervous. with an 18 you can get to 60 energy without about the same concern. And 60 energy is where RPM starts to explode in versatility. If you've ever played MH with the template Witch, you tend to try and avoid using your 15's for any heavy lifting, relying on your 16 and 17: its really the fat part of the curve for RPM.
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Old 06-19-2017, 04:21 PM   #33
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Default Re: Need help with some stuff with Ritual/Path magic.

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Originally Posted by ericthered View Post
No, 18 is actually leaps and bounds better than 15. RPM is not a single roll, and its certainly not an unpenalized roll.

When you cast an RPM ritual most of your rolls are "gathering energy". You make a roll, and see how much you succeeded by. You gather that much energy and roll again, until you have enough. That mechanism alone makes an 18 quite a bit faster than a 15. But its stronger than that. every 3 rolls you get a -1 to all other rolls, and if you fail more than two or three times, you may as well not cast the spell: its quirked into weird shapes. So not only do you get more energy per roll, you keep rolling longer.

effective skills of 15 can gather about 20 energy or so before you start to get nervous. with an 18 you can get to 60 energy without about the same concern. And 60 energy is where RPM starts to explode in versatility. If you've ever played MH with the template Witch, you tend to try and avoid using your 15's for any heavy lifting, relying on your 16 and 17: its really the fat part of the curve for RPM.

I know that an 18 is better than a 15.

that was an example above of if that 18 was set to a 15 for cap skill, then having an 18 doesn't do anything different.
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Old 06-19-2017, 04:29 PM   #34
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Default Re: Need help with some stuff with Ritual/Path magic.

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Originally Posted by ericthered View Post
There is a LOT you can do to get around climbing up the RPM ladder 18 points at a time.

Higher Purpose (Tradition) is in the RPM main book, and its expanded even further in pyramid 66. This allows you to cut through level caps for a category of spells, up to a maximum of 3. Very nice.

Ritual mastery can give +2 to any ritual.

If you have safe access to a place of power, that's a huge boost to what you can cast.

Pyramid 66 has specialist talents that raise the cap on paths only for that talent.

Finally, Grimoires CAN be a substitute for skill and training. They make you less than flexible, but in some settings its much easier to find a good book than a good caster. I've actually designed a setting where grimoires are considered indispensable tools and every single mage has them.
I was going to offer some advice, but then I saw that Eric had said pretty much exactly what I was going to say. In particular, don't underestimate the specialist Talents; they're powerful enough that I strongly recommend only allowing one per character.

All I'll add to the list above is that using the decanic modifiers (from the full RPM book) can be an easy way to get a 10% reduction in the cost of your rituals, by simply wearing appropriate ("expensive and reusable") jewelry, clothing, etc., for the decans which matter to you.
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Old 06-19-2017, 04:58 PM   #35
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Default Re: Need help with some stuff with Ritual/Path magic.

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Originally Posted by ericthered View Post
If I want an RPM mage throwing fireballs a lot, I generally go to magic as powers and have them buy their favorite attack as an innate attack. The original RPM character, the witch template in monster hunters, did a similar thing with TK.
Though it's definitely possible to create a "fireball-focused" RPM caster with a bit of specialization.

As an example, take the MH4 magician (a 200-point hero). Spend the 20 advantage points on Conduit 4. Take Path of Energy-18*, Path of Magic-17*, and the others at Path-11. Take Innate Attack (Projectile)-15*. Spend 4 quirk points for +1 to Path of Magic and another for Ritual Mastery (Fireball).

* Includes +4 from Conduit.

It's almost trivial to find a +1 Place of Power and to afford a single +4 grimoire. So you create your Fireball charms at home with a Path skill of 18 (base) + 2 (Ritual Mastery) + 1 (Place of Power) + 4 (grimoire) = 25. That's enough to comfortably pull off 115-energy missile spells with ease!

Accurate Fireball: Greater Create Energy (6) + Lesser Control Energy (5) + Damage, External, 12d burning with Guided and Increased 1/2D x10 (25). 108 energy (36x3).

Your Thaumatology skill is 14, but 18 for the purpose of Energy/Magic rituals only, so that gives you a total of 20 charm slots, 4 of which must be Energy and/or Magic rituals. That means you can easily use 10 of them on ready-to-toss Accurate Fireballs (that you throw with Innate Attack skill 15), leaving 10 free for whatever else you want to be able to cast. Admittedly, you aren't going to be amazing at anything that doesn't involve general magic or energy manipulation, but that still leaves a lot of tricks in your toolbox.
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Old 06-20-2017, 03:09 AM   #36
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Default Re: Need help with some stuff with Ritual/Path magic.

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Originally Posted by PK View Post
Though it's definitely possible to create a "fireball-focused" RPM caster with a bit of specialization.

As an example, take the MH4 magician (a 200-point hero). Spend the 20 advantage points on Conduit 4. Take Path of Energy-18*, Path of Magic-17*, and the others at Path-11. Take Innate Attack (Projectile)-15*. Spend 4 quirk points for +1 to Path of Magic and another for Ritual Mastery (Fireball).

* Includes +4 from Conduit.

It's almost trivial to find a +1 Place of Power and to afford a single +4 grimoire. So you create your Fireball charms at home with a Path skill of 18 (base) + 2 (Ritual Mastery) + 1 (Place of Power) + 4 (grimoire) = 25. That's enough to comfortably pull off 115-energy missile spells with ease!

Accurate Fireball: Greater Create Energy (6) + Lesser Control Energy (5) + Damage, External, 12d burning with Guided and Increased 1/2D x10 (25). 108 energy (36x3).

Your Thaumatology skill is 14, but 18 for the purpose of Energy/Magic rituals only, so that gives you a total of 20 charm slots, 4 of which must be Energy and/or Magic rituals. That means you can easily use 10 of them on ready-to-toss Accurate Fireballs (that you throw with Innate Attack skill 15), leaving 10 free for whatever else you want to be able to cast. Admittedly, you aren't going to be amazing at anything that doesn't involve general magic or energy manipulation, but that still leaves a lot of tricks in your toolbox.
Which book is conduit located? I am not familiar with it...

That is quite powerful though.
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Old 06-20-2017, 02:00 PM   #37
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Default Re: Need help with some stuff with Ritual/Path magic.

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Originally Posted by Jaware View Post
Which book is conduit located? I am not familiar with it...
Pyramid #3/66: The Laws of Magic.

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That is quite powerful though.
Yup, which is why the limit is one "Paths specialization" Talent per caster.
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Old 06-20-2017, 03:25 PM   #38
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Default Re: Need help with some stuff with Ritual/Path magic.

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That issue is probably a good idea in general if you plan on customizing RPM at all in your game, for both of yours and Chris's article, IMO.
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Old 06-21-2017, 02:52 AM   #39
Jaware
 
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Default Re: Need help with some stuff with Ritual/Path magic.

Alright. I bought the article. I'm glad that I did. It's pretty much indispensable now.

I do have a couple questions though. PKs example had conduit at lvl 4, I thought talents had a cap of 3?

And in the section of ritual symbols on pg 13, why does it change farm creation time to 2 hours? That seems a bit excessive to me. What am I missing there?

And lastly (for now), the perk, mighty spell, what is its text? It may be because I'm extremely tired, but I can't seem to find how it works.
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Old 06-21-2017, 05:06 AM   #40
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Default Re: Need help with some stuff with Ritual/Path magic.

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Originally Posted by DeathDaisy View Post
IIRC, you can use the Bestow a Penalty modifier to lower their resistance roll.
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Originally Posted by Jaware View Post
I was under the impression that the bestow a bonus/penalty modifier had to be used on a separate spell that pierced the targets defenses so that they would be "under the effects of the -resistance" spells, in order for the other one to actually be used.

Can you use the bestows a penalty in order to make a spell you cast harder to resist if that is part of the spell?
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Originally Posted by DeathDaisy View Post
I can't say where I read it without looking around a bit, but I'm 98% sure that you can add Bestow a Penalty to a ritual to make the spell harder to resist. I'm sure someone will correct me if I misremember. On the offchance that I remember wrong, which has happened, I have played that way in campaigns without issues, so shouldn't pose a problem even if it turns out it's not RAW.

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Originally Posted by Humabout View Post
This, in fact, is not RAW. PK has addressed his concerns over allowing it here:

Full Thread: http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=119351
Since this is the third or fourth thread I have read this morning with this in it let me make it clear: Adding additional energy to a spell via Bestows a Bonus for energy-gathering Ritual Path Magic is probably (as PK has noted) probably a crock. However, effect-shaping Ritual Path Magic probably isn't and I am in fact using it in my current campaign. DF19 makes it explicitly allowable for that particular system.


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Originally Posted by Jaware View Post
As for batteries, I was thinking of using the exempt on Ravens and pennies about the ability to make one time use "batteries" for it since my game is only a 150 pt fantasy game.
Let me know how that goes.


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Originally Posted by DeathDaisy View Post
I checked out the batteries on raven and pennies, and that should work great. Ghostdancer is something of a real life magician when it comes to RPM, so if I happen to say something that goes against what he has written, I'm probably wrong.
Pfft.


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Originally Posted by Jaware View Post
Alright. I bought the article. I'm glad that I did. It's pretty much indispensable now.
Heh.

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Originally Posted by Jaware View Post
I do have a couple questions though. PKs example had conduit at lvl 4, I thought talents had a cap of 3?
Nope. Level four (or higher depending on the campaign).

Quote:
Originally Posted by Jaware View Post
And in the section of ritual symbols on pg 13, why does it change farm creation time to 2 hours? That seems a bit excessive to me. What am I missing there?
Mostly as a tradeoff for the bonuses symbols give (lower difficulty of core skill, reduced energy cost, and reduced penalty per gathering attempt).

Quote:
Originally Posted by Jaware View Post
And lastly (for now), the perk, mighty spell, what is its text? It may be because I'm extremely tired, but I can't seem to find how it works.
GURPS Thaumatology: Magical Styles (p. 27) explains it.
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