03-01-2021, 01:55 AM | #31 | |
Join Date: Sep 2019
Location: UK
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Re: Replacing FP costs to cast spells
Fairly trivial spells, such as Ignite Fire, ones that are mainly just a convenience but could be done without magic, will be rarely used - they're borderline worth it with the usual FP cost system, not worth it at all with this. Things like curing an otherwise-incurable disease or locating a treasure that you have no other clue to, on the other hand, would be used. Magic becomes extremely serious with this system, and casting a spell would probably be rarer and regarded with rather more awe than in a standard fantasy setting.
Steal Vitality is a game-changer. "Willing subjects or helpless subjects" is still quite a wide range, if you can plan ahead. If you used willing subjects, well, it's surprising what people will do if you pay them well enough. If the process was dramatic enough, I could imagine some young men, and young women for that matter, being quite keen to volunteer just for the excitement and bragging rights. An adventuring party in a tight place and needing to resort to magic could share the cost if the mage was already in worse shape than the others and couldn't take the hit. Helpless subjects raises nastier possibilities. The nations with the most magic would be the ones willing to resort to full-scale human sacrifices. A king might have a captured spy bound hand and foot and her own life force used to cast the truth spell to question her with. Waste not, want not. A particularly ruthless general might take prisoners only to tie them up for his mages to use as fuel. Quote:
The same would presumably go for any other monster with HP-stealing abilities or just stupid amounts of HP. They'd be the top magician races of this setting. Of course, a lot of those are traditionally not very bright monsters, like trolls. In that case you might see a magician, either a human or a monster of a different species, working in cahoots with a troll he's enslaved or befriended. Troll provides the energy, wizard provides the know-how to turn it into fireballs. It'd be a very big familiar, not what you'd call discreet, but them's the breaks.
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03-01-2021, 11:21 AM | #32 |
Join Date: Jan 2006
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Re: Replacing FP costs to cast spells
Self harm and mortification in and out of religion is something that pops up repeatedly in the real world - peeps be weird yo. This is an interesting flavor choice to be sure, and you can spin a lot of fun setting quirks out of it, but it is RW practice.
My ideas for quirks:
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03-01-2021, 12:21 PM | #33 | |
Join Date: Aug 2018
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Re: Replacing FP costs to cast spells
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Minor Healing would be pointless for self-care, but could bridge you to learning Major Healing which is useful (spend 1 HP to cure 2 HP). I think a lot of mages who start out useless would be motivated by seeing how the arch-mages eventually have it work out as a net-benefit to practice magic. I do wonder how this would affect the idea of Slow-and-Sure Enchantment though... I think that seems to assume you're regularly restoring some FP and putting it into spellcasting, but if someone can't restore the enchantment energy source as fast (like with HP) then perhaps it would cause problems. Quick-and-Dirty has always been the easier-to-understand form of Enchantment since it's almost like standard spellcasting where you just pay the entire price at the end. slow-and-steady seems to only put in 1 FP per day (possibly more if using assistants, or Thaumatology's optional rule of Magery FP per day) yet M18's "Interruptions" box makes it seem more extreme, saying you'll be down 1d FP I could see maybe something like (if we wanted minute-by-minute, or at least hour-by-hour) that we might consider S&S enchanting to cost something like 1d FP per hour, but you recover FP as if resting so even if you roll 6s each time, you have 6x10m standard intervals to get it back. This probably can't be avoided by "Recover Energy" spell though since that requires too much focus: some amount of concentration compared to just "relaxation" as with enchantment. Enchantment does seem to allow breaks though: you can sleep at night, after all. AFAIK the standard 8-hour day in gurps doesn't take into account the paid 30m lunch and 2 paid 15m breaks which are seen in a lot of jobs, so if you're actually taking those you'd need to be putting in 9 hours per day? Given that you will always be missing at least 1 FP but never more than 6 FP, it could be something like giving the "Enchant" spell a 10m duration with 1 fp/minute maintenance, and then standard rest cancels this out? The actual daily FP wouldn't come from you directly but instead via the "meditative magic" type formula. |
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03-01-2021, 01:07 PM | #34 | |
Join Date: Jul 2005
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Re: Replacing FP costs to cast spells
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03-01-2021, 09:27 PM | #35 |
Join Date: Jul 2005
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Re: Replacing FP costs to cast spells
I tend to view that as simply the non-magical fatigue accrued from engaging in an activity that requires extremely intense concentration and some degree of physical effort for many hours.
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03-02-2021, 04:56 AM | #36 |
Join Date: Mar 2013
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Re: Replacing FP costs to cast spells
If I were to power spells by HP rather than other points, I'm thinking that I would use the following rules for it.
Even with that, I could picture some people using magic.
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03-02-2021, 06:28 AM | #37 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Wellington, NZ
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Re: Replacing FP costs to cast spells
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If this is the case, S&S enchanting is out for HP burning mages unless they can find (many) other sources of hit points as they'll probably need a human-sized sacrifice per day.
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03-02-2021, 06:36 AM | #38 | |
Join Date: Jun 2013
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Re: Replacing FP costs to cast spells
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If using the above interpretation, S&S enchantment is pretty much impossible unless your mage has Fast Regeneration or better (or Regular Regeneration and 60+ HP, but that's not very likely), at which point the character could invest around 480 HP into the item over the course of 8 hours, which works out to around 20 energy per day; a character with Very Fast Regeneration could invest up to 28,800 HP (1,200 energy), while a character with Extreme Regeneration could invest up to 1,728,000 HP (72,000 energy). The first risks breaking the game; the latter two are more-or-less guaranteed to, so this interpretation is probably a bad idea (and note the same could apply with Regeneration (FP) under the normal system). I'd say stick with the 1d FP down if interrupted, to represent effort. For the damage, I'd be inclined to have the enchanters suffer something like Moderate Pain in any scene where they've been interrupted, and have the process inflict 1d HP injury on them spread evenly over the course of a week (which you could instead do as a 50% chance of 1 HP every day; note a character with HT 10 would therefore be able to typically maintain this indefinitely). Optionally, you might allow characters to invest more each day, in exchange for greater damage and/or a greater chance of taking damage (multiply average damage per day by 2 to find energy invested).
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GURPS Overhaul Last edited by Varyon; 03-02-2021 at 06:42 AM. |
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03-03-2021, 03:39 PM | #39 | |||
Join Date: Aug 2018
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Re: Replacing FP costs to cast spells
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If 60on/60off is required then <6 FP mages are going to be suffering HP on an hourly basis. |
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03-03-2021, 05:59 PM | #40 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Wellington, NZ
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Re: Replacing FP costs to cast spells
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As for why you stop at 6FP - for the average person with 10FP, -6FP is just above the 'less than 1/3rd FP' point where you are at 1/2 move and dodge. Thus it's just before the point where your average enchanter starts feeling completely wiped out. That's a good place to stop and recover. Thus for most people 6FP per session is the sweet spot between keeping start and stop losses to a minimum and not completely exhausting yourself meet.
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