Re: What are the best magical systems in GURPS?
 

Sorcery is built by RAW, and a cosmic MA is expensive. The designers feared that sort of universal toolbox, and for a reason. (See the complaints upthread about this or that magic system upstaging niche templates.) But that factor of 10x may be a bit much. I've never had anyone take an MA in a game, nor wanted to, myself, because they're just so expensive. 10x means you could stack 46 abilities in an AA group before it caught up to that price. Flexibility has value, but it also has diminishing returns.

Which is entirely an intentional design feature. RPM was made for Monster Hunters. And as much as people fell in love with it and threw it into the dungeon crawls or supers games, it was meant for a setting where magic is not well known, and where the monsters themselves are also not well known. Investigation and research are meant to be an important part of the game, not just kicking down the door and cutting loose. And all the classes are supposed to benefit from prep time, learning about strengths and weaknesses of their enemy and equipping themselves to cope with them, whether that's silver and holy water or the villain's old favorite Raggedy Ann doll, or knowing that the creepers sleep for four hours before dawn, so the infiltrator can sneak in at 4am rather than midnight, when they're fully alert. Of the MH templates, the RPM mage suffers the most from _lacking_ preparation, especially if they're not Adept.

Re: What are the best magical systems in GURPS?
 

Modular Abilities are best when limited. For example, I can take Modular Abilities 6/6 (Slotted Cosmic Powers; Magical, -10%; Trait-Limited, Languages Only, -50%) [30] and have perfect comprehension in any two languages with just a couple of seconds of concentration. Where MA become painfully expensive is if they are physical and/or universal.

Re: What are the best magical systems in GURPS?
 

I gotta be honest, one of my favorite interpretations of magic as powers is from supers. I like their "mystic" supermage template and I really like the grimoire base improvisor.

Lower the number of slots for the grimoire improvisor to 1 and add a few more limitations that state any ability purchased with that advantage must have a level of Immediate Preparation Required to represent needing to perform a magic ritual and you've got someone who can hit the books to find that trick they need for this story and it's reasonably cheap for that much flexibility.

then give them a useful amount of TK and a couple of signature spells as abilities and you've got Dresden, Willow, any witch from Supernatural or Vampire Diaries Ever, etc. Give them more stuff off the supermage mystic template and power up the cp available in their grimoire and you've got any comic book mage.

It's more expensive than what you can do with technology via mundane only point expenditures but it's balanced against other powers and powers are always more expensive then mundane competency, which is why I always recommend making the cp pools for superpowers a separate from the cp pools for mundane traits.

But I guess there is a question of how you define "best." For it's CP cost I've seen RPM outperform every single other system in gurps by a huge margin. I've also seen it break multiple games, including monster hunter games for which it was designed, with it's overwhelming versatility and exponential power curve. To me this doesn't make it the best system because I define "best" as the system that most consistently delivers the best play experience. And whether it's on the character creation front, the character growth through CP expenditure feeling fair front, or the in game use front, I find Powers to be by far the most robust, well balanced, versatile and flexible, system for supernatural abilities of any color in gurps.

Re: What are the best magical systems in GURPS?
 

if only it was x10, it'd be better. Truly cosmic modular abilities is x20, because having access to both physical and mental traits is +100%. I see modular abilities used most often to buy skills, and occasionally languages.

I'm reading those rules more carefully (I usually use the equivalent of "the stuff of raw magic" with realm magic). Realm magic without FP is just turning on all of the skill-based costs for magic, not letting them cast giant spells for free. That lessens how powerful I thought it was.

And I'm looking at the ultimate cost of the realms, and it may be a touch high. Actually, its less of the cost of the realms being too high and more of that for advantages that cost that much I'd have expected better discounts on casting times, energy costs, and skill penalties.

Whether nor not Magic Resistance is appropriate with a given magic system is an interesting question. Magic resistance is more common on Monster Hunter templates than DF ones, with the DF wizard lacking it as an option in his advantage list, and the witch having it. I do think that magic resistance is more suited for spell-based magic than advantage based.

Re: What are the best magical systems in GURPS?
 

This is one of my favorite tweaks to RPM. I've seen it in a number of places, and I've never run a solid game with it, but it looks really solid.




A lot of mages in fiction really don't have the flexibility we've come to expect out of an RPG magic system, and that's often where magic as powers shines

Re: What are the best magical systems in GURPS?
 

The amount of magic in TV that really boils down to "TK and sometimes they will do a plot relevant ritual" which could literally be like... TK and Wild Talent (Ability Use, abilities only, immediate preparation required [for the ritual], requires reference materials for appropriate ritual) is extremely high. Also, having played with that in game it feels way better in play than it looks on paper. Throw on one or two more tricks and some ESP and you really feel like a witch or magician. Especially if you also use Power Stunts and give them some ER for stunting.

Re: What are the best magical systems in GURPS?
 

The Magical Powers Talent from Fantasy (p. 159) pretty much covers most TV mages. For example, you could have TK 20 (Magical, -10%) [90] as the base ability and have any number of Afflictions as Alternative Abilities (all Afflictions are legal abilities) and, if you have a campaign with the Temporary Enhancements and Using Abilities at a Default optional rules, you could improvise any Affliction. A healing spell might be Affliction (Advantage, Regeneration, Fast, +500%; Malediction 1, +100%; Magical, -10%) [69], which would 14 CP as an alternative ability. An agony spell might be Affliction (Agony, +100%; Cone, 25 yards, +290%; Malediction 2, +150%; Magical, -10%; Selective Area, +20%) [65], which would be 13 CP as an alternative ability. It would be a bit like Sorcery, though it would require some flexibility of thought.

Re: What are the best magical systems in GURPS?
 

Yeah. I've done that in a one shot and it worked beautifully. We had each mage pick a theme for their magic and add appropriate modifiers to their TK, for example one of them was a plant mage and his TK had animation and plants only on it. Then any abilities they wanted to do off of them had to fit the theme somehow.

Re: What are the best magical systems in GURPS?
 

I'd allow many painkillers to still work - their mechanism of pain reduction is separate from their toxicity, so in non-toxic doses they'd pass.

The thing is, if any potentially toxic substance in any quantity is defeated in all ways, the character dies because oxygen is toxic, water is toxic, etc.

Re: What are the best magical systems in GURPS?
 

You might want to make the cap of 10 a function of Magery? That lets mighty magicians do more with improvisation than apprentices.