Re: DF Artillery Mages Noodling
 

Pre-calculate. It's a GURPS tradition.

Re: DF Artillery Mages Noodling
 

Yep.
I like Kromms idea and can see it as a style perk.
I can see the plinking niche too though and also something like Heroic Archer and Zen Archery for spells.
Mix it all together on enough points and you have some versatile and powerful artillery mages.

For plinking how about this.
Aetheric Dart Missile Spell
Cost 1 Acc 3 Damage 1d-2
This spell creates a small missile that does impaling damage.
The energy responds particularly well to Will and the attack roll is based off IQ rather then DX. It can be held and charged up like other missile spells but instead of increasing the power the accuracy is increased by 3 per turn to a max of ACC = Magery *3. Cost increases 1 per turn charged just like other missile spells.
The spell can be cast as a Blocking spell for 1 extra energy cost.

The Blocking part may be overpowered but we already have spells that can be an attack set up as Blocking spells so the precedent is there.
This gives a mage a good 0 cost plink spell at skill 15 and a nice Fast Draw type when needed but you need skill 20 to use it that way for free.
And give it some time and you have a very accurate long range attack.

Re: DF Artillery Mages Noodling
 

If you want to spend points on a "pew pew" mage...

Compartmentalized Mind (Magic PM, -10%; No Mental Separation, -20%; Missile Spells only, -30%) [20]

You can then throw a 1(M) point missile every turn, or a 3(M) point missile every other turn.

Re: DF Artillery Mages Noodling
 

Remember what an old-school artillery mage actually does. If he does his job right, he chucks his big area spell, mostly kills the enemy, and goes off to have a healing potion while his pals mop up. The goal he's designed to meet isn't "do something each turn in combat" but "contribute meaningfully to combat." If he has enough of the advantage I described, he can unload something with Area Effect 3 and do full damage to every bad guy in an area wider than the warriors' Move.

That said, thinking about this last night, I believe the fairest cost might be 2 points per +5% allowed. So being able to add Explosion 1 to everything is 20 points, and the Area Effect 3 I mentioned would show up at 60 points.

Re: DF Artillery Mages Noodling
 

Maybe it would be better to do this as techniques? That would cut down on the massively multiple choice mage.

Re: DF Artillery Mages Noodling
 

Experience has shown me that the added complication of techniques and techniques lists in DF causes far more hesitancy and headache than open-ended traits. Players tend to respond more negatively to busy character sheets than to one "do stuff" ability that requires them to think about what they do. Most players are pretty good at that, actually . . . "I want to blow everything up!" "Fine, add Explosion."

Re: DF Artillery Mages Noodling
 

And it's good to remember that a DF Wizard can contribute to a fight by non-magical means. A non-casting wizard is about the weakest PC you can get but they can still put up a respectable melee fight against lesser enemies, or throw or sling projectiles. Regrettably Thrown Weapon (dart) is set as an alternative to Innate Attack, which the artillery wizard needs more.

Re: DF Artillery Mages Noodling
 

What about some sort of fast casting power that would allow a wizard to cast spells rapidly at the cost of using a lot of magical energy? Combat in DF is so quick that waiting to cast a spell puts the wizard at a disadvantage.

Re: DF Artillery Mages Noodling
 

They already get reduction becasue of high skill.
ATR is another way to build that too.
But fast casting removes a major imitation on thier power so should be limited to specific spells or very expesive IMHO

Re: DF Artillery Mages Noodling
 

Ultimately, the GM must solve the problem that his group actually has.

For instance, I've been GMing GURPS since 1986, and in those 27 years, I've run mostly fantasy (three long-running fantasy campaigns account for 17 years of that time). I've had the player of a wizard PC complain just once that magic was too slow, she felt left out, she had nothing to do on her turn, etc. Over the same time period, I've had all but one player of a wizard complain about being unable to blast the entire enemy force with a big, old-school spell like AD&D's Meteor Swarm. This is probably a direct result of gaming with people born in the late 1960s who started gaming in the 1970s . . . they expect wizards to do one big thing, not the constant bolt-chucking of computer-game magic-users. For my players, then, my proposed advantage would be ideal.

However, a group of people who want constant bolt-chucking wouldn't like that. For them, I'd recommend the other solution offered here, or just using Magical Bolt from Dungeon Fantasy 11. If Magical Bolt seems too weak, change damage from nd(∞) to 2.5nd; it'll cost the same. If the GM doesn't mind a steady stream of zero-FP-cost 4d bolts that can't miss the target, then that's a fair use of 40 points.