Re: [Basic] Advantage of the Week: Magery
 

I do something very similar but IQM-3 because some spells seem to randomly decide to be VH. If IQM-3 is 15, that also means hard spells get to be 16 and thus very likely to succeed.

I've largely dropped talent caps and that applies to Magery, too. There's a soft limit of 10, but more accurately I just generally don't want players to take attribute + talent above 20. So far it hasn't had any meaningful impact on how good mages are.

Re: [Basic] Advantage of the Week: Magery
 

Uncapped Magery is particularly useful for concepts that don't call for the mage to be a old, learned loremaster (along the lines of Gandalf and D&D wizards). Magery's cheaper than IQ, so if the concept is just "magically powerful", but not "brainiac", then Magery's a cheaper way to get to high skill, so the builds aren't quite so compelled to toe the IQ 14 + Magery 3 - 2 line.

Re: [Basic] Advantage of the Week: Magery
 

It's also why I like allowing for DX-based wizards. And HT-based ones with a UB (I think I use 30? HT-based wizards don't take magery and things that care about magery are dealt with differently).

Re: [Basic] Advantage of the Week: Magery
 

It's not so much a raw success thing as a crit thing. Going from 15 to 16 doubles your number of critical successes and reduces your crit fails by 4x.

Re: [Basic] Advantage of the Week: Magery
 

Woops, I meant to talk about criticals. Yes, absolutely this. And considering that TDMs don't apply to Magic, getting there with base skill is super important.

Re: [Basic] Advantage of the Week: Magery
 

I've been though an argument with my GM (he is someone who likes this kind of discussion btw) about this magery regarding the FP cost reduction rule when casting spells. Would levels in magery help reaching the milestones of 15, 20, etc, and then reduce FP costs?

He claims it doesn't based on the following:

The rule about FP discounts (basic p. 236) says: If your base skill with a spell ... is 15 or higher, reduce the cost to cast the spell by 1. If you have skill 20 or higher, reduce the cost by 2.

He claims base skill only takes IQ into account and that magery only affects effective skill.

I've seen people around the forum saying it does give you the cost reduction, and we've gone through the rules back and forth already. Would appreciate an answer from someone more experienced than us though.

Re: [Basic] Advantage of the Week: Magery
 

Yes, they do. The line editor has pronounced on this:

As GM, he can run it that way if he wants to, but it is not the intention of the rules authors.

Re: [Basic] Advantage of the Week: Magery
 

Of course, I'll always defer to my GM's ruling, and our discussions have been quite healthy.

Thank you so much for the quick reply.

Re: [Basic] Advantage of the Week: Magery
 

RAW talents controlling powers are capped at L4 (B89) but you can have multiple Gadgets which provide boosts to that Talent (with Gadget limitations) Powers p.107 ...

(e.g., 4 built into the wizard but the Staff of Convenience they have ranked to be able to access 4 more... take away the staff and they only act at 4)


(With that I acknowledge the total cap for a setting can be above 4 (I allow it in the above constriaint) such as the GURPS Dungeon Fantasy setting allows up to Magery 6 total (book 1 p. 20)...

I also allow Special Exercises (Magery) from the limited stlye-granted Perk pool from Magical Styles p.30 to exceed Magery limits (balanced against the other cool things that pool /could/ be used for...) )

Re: [Basic] Advantage of the Week: Magery
 

So, if my mage has a specialization in a spell school, it means the specialization bonus is added to the base skill to reduce the fatigue cost.

Is that?