[Thaumatology] Powers as (Path/Book) Magic
 

Basically a reversal of Magic as Powers, looking specifically at the Path/Book system, as versions thereof can be worked out to fit a fairly wide range of settings and abilities (not that other systems couldn't be, it's just that they're all broad enough that each would need a different thread, and possibly more than one; likewise, some specific characters or groups are likely to be better fits for some systems than for others). The discussion in an older thread on GURPS Thaumatology: Age of Gold has a much more setting-specific version of this idea; also, Monsters as Magicians... or vice versa is likewise a narrower version, though in a different way. Of course, as noted in the latter, some fit this system better than others, and some only fit as having Gadgets or abilities that are the results of magic, rather than being ritual magicians themselves. (So if the clarification is needed, I'm not saying that certain characters or groups must be Path/Book magicians, I'm speculating on how they could be for games that use it.) While the examples below are from comic books, later posts may wander further afield.

Many heroes and villains in the Golden Age of comics (and some more recently) made use of strange drugs or similar, and so (for purposes of this thread) could be adapted as Ritual Alchemists - using Path or Book styles with Alchemy or Herb Lore as the core skill. Some Gadgeteer characters might use a form of ritual technomagic (aka 'technurgy' - a portmanteau of 'technological thaumaturgy,' as well as a form of the Greek words for 'skill-working'), having Path or Book styles with core skills like 'Engineer (Orgone),' 'Fortune-Telling (Technomancy),' or technology-themed forms of Ritual Magic or Symbol Drawing. Most Ritual Alchemists and Ritual Technurges wouldn't even need Path/Book Adept, or would only need one level (either Time or Space, as dropping the Material requirement usually contradicts the paradigm). For less technical characters, limited Path/Book Adept could work, as does just having a single-Book style that fits the character, as long as the Book can be justified in-story. Various perks and such could be used to round things out; a lot ought to have a Rules Exemption perk to allow more than one charm or other Conditional Effect per ritual.

Some characters, like Doctor Strange or John Constantine, are a bit too easy: they're magic-users in their own canon, and even shown to use rituals on occasion, so it's just a question of specifics, like what style or styles (it's plausible that both of them might know more than one, or at least have several Magical Style Familiarity perks), whether one is an Adept or not (Constantine maybe, Strange definitely), and whether they use Effect Shaping or Energy Accumulating; if applying the latter to Dr. Strange, he'd not only need Adept 4 (Time 2), he'd also need a pretty high Energy Reserve if you're taking what's on the page at all close to literally.

The Golden Age Aquaman and Black Condor actually make more sense as magic-users than their canon origins: Aquaman (which was literally the name his father gave him) was taught to breathe water and such by his mad scientist father, who found what may have been the lost city of Atlantis (apparently abandoned, since he was able to set up a home in one of the palaces) and learned the secrets thereof, while Black Condor was raised by wild birds, and learned to fly (without actual wings, though he occasionally wore a wing-like cape for show) from studying them. Yeah. (DC did a much later retcon of Black Condor's power being due to exposure to a meteorite, but the original didn't have that.) This Black Condor also has a fairly versatile 'black ray' gun with no explanation given for how he got it, which I don't see listed for later versions. Clearly, both of them are Path/Book Adepts, to limited degrees. Aquaman's version is probably something like One Book Only: Book of Atlantean Secrets. How limited Black Condor's Adept advantage is depends on what exactly the 'black ray gun' is, since it could be anything from a just prop he uses (but doesn't need to produce the effects), to actually being a technofetish Gadget.

A trickier adaptation is Rex 'Tick-Tock' Tyler, the Golden Age Hourman. While theoretically a scientist, he is also an example of 'comic book science is basically magic.' Rex is one of the many 'one weird trick' supers in the Golden Age, being a seemingly normal (if highly- and widely-skilled) biochemist, who invented a 'miraculous vitamin' that he calls 'Miraclo.' In terms of Path/Book Magic, he's either a capable but fairly limited Ritual Alchemist (he is occasionally depicted working on other stuff that may or may not be fantastical), or a biochemist with something like a Charm/Craft Secret perk for Miraclo, but who cannot otherwise use alchemy. (In post-Crisis retcons, the Miraclo seems to build up in the body, able to be 'reactivated' by other means such as black light or Autohypnosis; Doylistly, this is because by then, people were worried enough about drug addiction in children that they didn't want to show a hero popping pills to power up, but Watsonianly, magic can have strange long-term effects, and a magician learning to change how he performs a ritual that he's used a lot is an interesting possibility.)

On the other hand, Dr. Hormone, a mad scientist and war criminal 'hero' from Dell Publishing, is a really blatant alchemist, with a nearly paper-thin claim to being a scientist. In brief, he gives people various 'hormones' that have sudden, bizarre effects like making both old people and children become physically age 25, adding animal features to humans, enhancing strength, and so on. A lot of these appear to be permanent. The style of Ritual Alchemy he uses would need to be designed, and I don't want to try to read enough of his exploits to do so even if I could find them, but someone else might.

While the Golden Age Sandman is mostly known for one invention, his sleep-gas gun, he made a number of other devices, many of which are supersciencey enough to justify calling him a technomage. He regularly carried a wire-harpoon ('wirepoon') gun, invented a 'truth-gas' for use in his gas gun, and upgraded his gas masks and car fairly often; later on, he invented a Silicoid Gun that let him apparently Create and Control silicoids like sand, concrete, and glass, as well as once exploding and having a horrific effect on Sandy the Golden Boy (a really bad critical spell failure). So, while the inventions he's more known for suggest Ritual Alchemy, looking at his work in detail suggests that he's a Ritual Engineer who also knows some alchemy. He doesn't show any hints that I noticed of being an Adept, working all his inventions in prepared laboratories over periods of minutes to hours or days. His precognitive nightmares are more likely to be a power than a ritual he does (though they could be a permanent result of a critical failure, or a curse that happens to be useful as a side effect).


Thoughts?

EDIT: a couple of links that might be needed - Doctor Strange and John Constantine

Re: [Thaumatology] Powers as (Path/Book) Magic
 

I guess it partly comes down to whether you believe you can learn to Aquaman.

Re: [Thaumatology] Powers as (Path/Book) Magic
 

To a degree, yes. Alternatively, it depends on how you think you can learn to Aquaman. Turning water-breathing into a Cinematic skill based on some sort of Atlantean martial art is one possibility, though not one that fits this thread well.

On another note, something related to this thread that I forgot about earlier: Expanding on the Magic of Stories, because there are a range of comics that the concept from that Pyramid article could fit, or be expended into. It would probably require creating new Archetypes or modifying existing ones, but GURPS Supers has a range of templates to use for inspiration.

Re: [Thaumatology] Powers as (Path/Book) Magic
 

I'm not sure about any of the following.

I did, as it happens, have a crack at statting Henry Kuttner's Hogben Family a while ago, they're kind of superheroes and certainly from the right era (it's a waste of time really, because they can do largely whatever the plot requires them to be able to do, but you can get somewhere in the general area of something that fits what they do a lot of the time), and I did in fact resort to just representing most of their powers as RPM with Ritual Adept and Magery 5, crossing out the Paths of Magic, Spirit and Undead, writing a few notes on the others and writing 'is actually psionics' on it. I can post it if anyone likes.

Phantasm's 'Marvel' thread has write-ups for Dr Strange and some of his hangers-on using what looks like Realm Magic, I don't know whether you've looked at those.

A lot of those Golden Age superhero comics and pulp stories seem to have some kind of 'mind over matter' thing (sometimes martial-arts and/or mysterious-Eastern-magic-inspired) going on at the back of their minds, some unspoken and some in so many words, so in some cases it is magic, albeit not in so many words, which might be one reason it fits well.

None of this makes any sense :-D 'He's a magician' might make a lot of it easier.

Re: [Thaumatology] Powers as (Path/Book) Magic
 

With regards to this thread, unfortunately only one...
John Constantine sounds so familiar, yet I'm drawing a total blank on who that is - can you enlighten me?

Re: [Thaumatology] Powers as (Path/Book) Magic
 

DC Comics character, mainly Alan Moore creation IIRC.
Blonde Scouser in a trenchcoat - wizard and supernatural con-artist, like a wretched version of Harry Dresden in some ways.

Main character of the Hellblazer series.

Re: [Thaumatology] Powers as (Path/Book) Magic
 

The 2005 movie Constantine starring Keanu Reeves was (maybe)based on that. I mostly note it as one of those adapted movies where the lead actor was too lazy to dye his hair. <shrug> Maybe Keanu wouldn't have looked good all bleached out(think Billy Idol). They may finally be making a sequel.

More recently (2014 maybe) Constantine had a single season TV series with an actor known as "Matt Ryan". He dyed his hair and came from the correct side of the Atlantic. Ryan and his version of Constantine were rescued from cancellation limbo by the Legends of Tomorrow TV series where he was seen for most of the last 5(?) seasons. Bizarrely they wrote Constantine out for the last season and kept the actor for another character.

Re: [Thaumatology] Powers as (Path/Book) Magic
 

One of the many film adaptions I like to imagine never happened.

Never saw the TV show, but I'm guessing it can't be anything like as bad as the crimes they committed against The Dresden Files.

Re: [Thaumatology] Powers as (Path/Book) Magic
 

<shrug> The hockey stick had some charm. Of course, even that was totally unrelated to anything Butcher wrote except that Harry blasted Things with implements made out of wood. I'm not sure we ever saw anything get blasted with the hockey stick. They were operating on a pretty much zero special effects budget.

I can't say how close the Constantine show was to the comics in terms of plot arc but the character was pretty close.

Re: [Thaumatology] Powers as (Path/Book) Magic
 

The Constantine movie was weird, because they moved the whole thing from London to LA and added in some voodoo/hoodoo elements. But I feel like they did a good job of capturing the spirit of the character.

Re: [Thaumatology] Powers as (Path/Book) Magic
 

The show was very close in spirit, it embodied what a young Constantine might have been doing or he might have done, had those events occurred in comic.

Re: [Thaumatology] Powers as (Path/Book) Magic
 

The voodoo specialist Constantine visits in the movie also appeared in the comic. He has worldwide connections with practioners of all sorts.

Re: [Thaumatology] Powers as (Path/Book) Magic
 

I don't normally think of Keanu as being lazy. The man has a famous work ethic. Remember that film producers consider audiences to be morons. They probably thought nobody would recognize a blond Keanu, and fail to throw enough money at the screen.

Re: [Thaumatology] Powers as (Path/Book) Magic
 

Added a couple of links to the opening post. To try to get the thread back on track, one of the ideas that prompted me to start the thread:

Prof. Phineas Horton was the mad scientist who made the Golden Age Human Torch; Torch was described as an android or a synthezoid, not a robot: he had internal organs like those of a human, made of Horton cells - he was basically a homunculous, just not miniaturized. So, Horton being a Ritual Alchemist makes sense. The Torch could be the result of Embodying a powerful fire elemental in the artificial body, though that's not the only option - in his introductory story he's confused by the world around him, and by his powers, learning to use them over the course of the story. While that could be the fire elemental needing to regain his memories after a partially-botched summoning, it's also possible that the new man had a massive talent for fire magic, and needed to practice to control it. Having spirits use a form of Path/Book Magic themselves (possibly closer to the version in The Magic of Stories, each spirit having an Archetype or Archetypes) is somewhat fitting in this context, and for those who care, does mean the point cost of their abilities are consistent with the point costs of mortals' abilities. The fluff just needs to be adjusted to fit.

Toro and Captain Kerosene both have abilities quite similar to the Human Torch, but not identical. Perhaps they emphasized different rituals in practice, or perhaps they use different styles. Kerosene's powers were unstable at first (either a disadvantage, or a limitation on Magery or Path/Book Adept), and he seems to have a phoenix-like ability to resurrect from his own ashes, which Toro hasn't demonstrated, needing to be revived by outside forces.

I've been thinking about a single-Book style, perhaps called Book of Flames, that one or both might use variants of: the rituals from GURPS Thaumatology that fit best (all from Path of the Elements) are Endure Elements, Firecalm, and Conjure Flame. Firecalm and Endure Elements basically work as-is (albeit they'd need to use the latter at a rather high level - or it could be a side-effect of Burning Man, below), while Conjure Flame probably needs replacing or reworking, as they tend to get areas of flame by setting things on fire, or extending existing flames in a manner that more resembles a ritual based on the Shape Fire spell from GURPS Magic. I'd say that the ritual (possibly called 'Fireshaping') could have the same skill penalty and casting time for Effect Shaping, and the same energy cost under Energy Accumulating, as Conjure Flames does. The fireballs that the Human Torch and Toro tend to use might be from a separate ritual, or just specific instances of Fireshaping.

The signature power of the Human Torch and imitations thereof, beyond fire creation and control in general, is flying around while covered in flames, and usually quite resistant to bullets. This isn't the same as Body of Fire, as the solid body remains beneath the flames. I'm honestly not sure if this should be one ritual, or two or three. Right now, I'm calling the 'covered in flames that don't burn you' aspect 'Burning Man,' and the flight ritual 'Shooting Star.' If the bullet resistance is part of one of these, it should probably be Burning Man. If not, I'm not sure what to call it. I considered making it a version of Ghost Shirt, but it's too consistent and working at too short a range for that.


Thoughts?

Re: [Thaumatology] Powers as (Path/Book) Magic
 

I guess I wonder at why you'd try to powers as magic instead of magic as powers, when the advantage system has a far more robust system for designing your own powers and abilities (or spells) to suit whatever concept the character has and Path/Book magic has a fairly limited collection of spells with no real rules for expanding on it.

Re: [Thaumatology] Powers as (Path/Book) Magic
 

A couple of reasons: First, it's an intellectual exercise that I won't know whether it's useful unless someone tests it; I do a lot of those. Second, it can give a different feel to the setting and game, and enable different playstyles, much the way spell-based magic can give a different feel from Magic as Powers, or Symbol Drawing Magic.

Yes, creating new rituals for Path/Book magic without using the Ritual Path Magic system is largely a matter of fudging (and I mostly don't use RPM, because I find it annoying and counterintuitive most of the time), but this isn't a huge problem, since GMs may each want to adjust the costs and limitations differently for their setting - e.g. in one setting, Fireball may be a casual low-effort attack that lots of mages use, and in another, it's quite hard to get working, and mainly the sign of a powerful specialized Fire Magus.

Re: [Thaumatology] Powers as (Path/Book) Magic
 

I can certainly get behind that. I do plenty of those myself.

It seems like the types of powers that will be the most difficult to handle with this type of system would be something like Super Strength, or the abilities of the Biomorph template from GURPS Supers. E.G. Abilities that are always on, as opposed to abilities like those of the Blaster Template from GURPS Supers which all require activation. This will also extend to powers that are deeply interconnected with racial templates, like the abilities of a werewolf, vampire, or fire elemental. Anything truly innate and supposedly second nature will feel awkward in a system that is entirely about using skills to activate effects. You certainly can train innate abilities (hiking and running and lifting are all skills for improving innate capacities humans have) but those skills tend to work very differently from a Path or Book.

Re: [Thaumatology] Powers as (Path/Book) Magic
 

Wonder Woman in particular — though she went with “Greek martial arts” in her early days: her superhuman feats were largely explained as Amazonian Training that let her channel “mental energy” through her body.

Re: [Thaumatology] Powers as (Path/Book) Magic
 

Agreed. A hybrid system where something skill-like is used for active abilities while something advantage-like is used for passive abilities might be reasonable.

Although you might be surprised at how blurry that line can be. I just mentioned Wonder Woman as an ideal candidate for this treatment; in particular, her feats is super-strength are essentially skill-based. In fact, there are Cinematic Combat Skills that let you magnify your strength for one feat. Likewise, the Superboy introduced in the 1990s had “tactile telekinesis”, which he used to simulate, among other things, Superman's bulletproofing; there was one scene early on, before he realized the n nature of his powers, when he woke up in a hospital as a nurse was about to jab a needle into him. When it broke instead of breaking his skin, he smirked at the nurse's confusion — until the nurse pointed out that she was confused because they hadn't had any difficulty hooking him up to an IV earlier while he was unconscious, and Superboy freaked out when he saw a needle already sticking into his arm.

So even super-strength and invulnerability can technically be skill-based.

I'm not sure that Path/Book would necessarily be the best way to go for this sort of thing, as the defining feature of Path/Book Magic are the Effect-Shaping or Energy-Accumulating rules that are designed to make casting take a long time and require a lot of prep. Regular Magic spells might be a better fit; possibly with Ritual Magic if you prefer to learn Colleges of spells as skills and individual spells as techniques, instead of learning individual spells as skills.

Re: [Thaumatology] Powers as (Path/Book) Magic
 

That's largely what I'm going for, though I don't think I articulated it well enough. A spirit might have the Invisibility and Insubstantiality advantages because of what their 'bodies' are, but have a lot of other abilities expressed mechanically by rituals (though in-setting, not necessarily in the sense that we associate with the word 'ritual' - the Magic of Stories article described that interestingly, I think, but I'm blanking on the exact quote or quotes, and it would be inconvenient for me to look it up right now).

Good examples.

I'm not looking for 'is this the best fit in general,' because that's very debatable and circumstantial, I'm looking for 'can this be made playable enough as Path/Book Magic that people could have fun with it, without wandering too far from the depictions in the source material?'

EDIT: Also, meant to point this out due to the mention of werewolves et al earlier: The opening post of Monsters as Magicians... or vice versa includes a brief worked example of 'Werewolves as Book-style Magicians,' because the common Horror trope of the werewolf as a person cursed to transform of the full moon is one of many variations.

Re: [Thaumatology] Powers as (Path/Book) Magic
 

Again though, the main problem with all of these ideas is that both versions of Path/Book Magic are slow, with Effect-Shaping rituals taking a minute for the fastest ones, and more often ten minutes or an hour. Wonder Woman doesn't have a minute or an hour to channel mental energy into her muscles before slamming into a tank and knocking it on its side. In order for this sort of thing to work, you'd pretty much need a level of Ritual Adept for the Time element. I'd also recommend going with Effect Shaping, as even with Ritual Adept (Time) Energy-Accumulation takes too long.

And Ritual Space might also need Adept levels to remove their associated penalties from consideration; because it's very rare for powers to only work properly in specific locations.

Material Components have some limited applications, such as Diana needing her bracelets to deflect bullets or her lasso to compel someone to speak truthfully; but quite often, nothing of the sort is needed. Heck, even when it _is_ needed, the mechanics for Material Components are wrong: they apply a penalty for not having the right component; for Wonder Woman's gear, she doesn't even get to try without the gear. They're less “Material Components” and more “required parts of the ability”.

In short, getting this to work with Path/Book Magic is almost certainly going to require multiple levels of Ritual Adept, bypassing a large chunk of what makes Path/Book Magic what it is.

Re: [Thaumatology] Powers as (Path/Book) Magic
 

A variety of modifiers can be applied to Path/Book Adept, so having a very limited form of it is not a problem, as long as the form fits (not just things like One Book Only, as you can make it part of a Mystic Symbol gadget - Wonder Woman's bracelets could be both Material Components and magic circles replacing the Ritual Space and Casting Time, for example). Likewise, as noted, some of them don't even need that, though Sandman is admittedly an unusual case. Any character that appears to have (or can believably be claimed to have) a time limit on an ability or a limited number of uses for an ability could be designed as using Charms or other Conditional Rituals.

I do agree that Energy Accumulating is usually too slow for this, unless you have a high-enough level of Energy Reserve - but doing that makes it rather closer to the spell-based system, or the Ritual variant thereof. That's one of the reasons I don't like RPM for this.

Re: [Thaumatology] Powers as (Path/Book) Magic
 

I'll probably want to go back to elementals later on, but for now there's another character type that could be made to work with this concept (largely without a need for Path/Book Adept): The expert archer with a bunch of trick arrows, as exemplified by Green Arrow in DC and Hawkeye in Marvel. In both cases, they have a mix of pretty plausible arrows (not only the usual pointy ones, tear gas or flashbang arrows aren't that far-fetched, and homing beacon arrows are at least possible), and those that are bizarre or ridiculous (the boxing glove arrow is infamous, but IIRC the original had a small enough 'glove' to be not that far off from actual blunt arrowheads that were used historically; handcuff arrows are really stretching it, though, much less sleeping gas arrows or other wild ones).

Contextually, the Trick Archer is an archery build like the Scout in DF, and has some method of getting trick arrows. They might be a Gadgeteer who is really dedicated to their theme, but the idea of a magical style or styles being both the reason they use trick arrows for all their weird effects, even when not mounting things to arrows with be more convenient (e.g. Green Arrow and Speedy having blowtorch arrows that they use to break out of the bad guys' hideout back in the 1950s, AFAICT using them as handheld tools), and the source of the weirder options (like why the handcuff arrows are consistently able to get both wrists) seems interesting to me. Depending on the era, this might be a Magical Engineering style, but a Low-Tech setting might well have a society of magical archers who perform rituals to empower their arrows for various purposes.

Re: [Thaumatology] Powers as (Path/Book) Magic
 

Continuing this thought because I was too tired yesterday (and it's been long enough that just editing the post would feel weird): The Golden Age Green Arrow spent a significant part of his youth living with a Native American tribe on a reservation, and learned archery there. Golden Age Speedy, likewise, had a Native American manservant who seems to have taught him archery (and was murdered in their origin story). In a setting where Path/Book Magic is common enough, it would not be a stretch for folk in the Americas to develop archery-based magical styles, though they wouldn't be the only ones (teaching the style to Oliver would be a bit odd, but fits the comics - or perhaps only Roy started out with magic, and taught it to Oliver, which would be an interesting reversal). Queen and Harper could perhaps combine the style or styles with contemporary technology, or with another tech-based style, or both. I don't currently have the details of the style in mind, beyond the thought that mounting charms to arrows is philosophically important.


Thoughts?

Re: [Thaumatology] Powers as (Path/Book) Magic
 

Sorry, it's another tangent, but one that I should have had in the first couple of posts: Rituals that would be very common among Supers that last more than a few issues (as opposed to just being useful occasionally, which basically all of them could). This list is just from GURPS Thaumatology, and a lot of them could need setting-specific or style-specific adaptations or replacements.

Ghost Shirt - In any setting where firearms are common and likely to be used against you, especially repeating firearms, it helps to have reasons why the characters are still unperforated after the adventure. Ghost Shirt is not enough for this, as we must assume that there will be people aiming at you deliberately, but it's a place to start. There are also a number of rules from the GURPS Action series that would help, or rituals could be adapted to imitate them in settings where they would not otherwise apply. An alternative to this would be rituals allowing high DR, such as Dr. Fate's force field, or perhaps one for Insubstantiality (which IIRC Fate also used sometimes), or enchanted items (charms or fetishes) used to parry bullets, as discussed for Wonder Woman.

Succor - If you do still get injured, healing much faster than normal can be very important, and is consistent with a lot of characters in the source material, even those who are alleged to be normal humans.

Endure Elements - Fairly minor, but a lot of those costumes would be unpleasant to quite unhealthy in all but ideal conditions; I mean, Hawkman doesn't even wear a shirt, and he's not the only one!

Warrior's Blessing - Kind of obvious; 'both versions of Warrior's Blessing plus whatever replaces Ghost Shirt' fits well with a fairly low-end estimate of Miraclo, for example.

Weapon Blessing - While not all Supers or other powered characters use weapons, enough do to include this on the list. A variant for machines in general would benefit a fair range of Supers.

Journeyman's Blessing - While some Supers and such are wealthy dilettantes (Ted Knight, Bruce Wayne, Don Diego de la Vega), most have fairly mundane jobs that they want to keep. Sure, Clark's words-per-minute is very high, but he still has to do some of his work in the open-plan offices of the Daily Planet (or Daily Star on Earth Two), surrounded by people who are trained observers. Most others don't have quite the same issue, but they do have others, which also lacking Clark's advantages.

Guise - Secret identities are hard, and this provides an excuse for the ones who seem to have a secret identity with no mask, or an inadequate disguise (though it's less needed than you might think, as that famous scene in the first Christopher Reeve Superman film showed).

Obscurity - Not just for explicitly stealthy types: anyone with a secret identity would benefit from being able to change without being noticed. Likewise, it serves as a good excuse for a lot of villain escapes where they never found the body.


Any suggestions for things I missed, or expansion of the above? Other thoughts on this?

Re: [Thaumatology] Powers as (Path/Book) Magic
 

For Succor I just want to note the clause that all Crippling Injuries are Temporary. Getting that chance up to 98% is well worth the 5 pts for Rapid Healing but Succor is 100%. Very useful.

As to Clark Kent and the Daily Star, by the time Crisis was coming around in 1985 ISTR that Clark had inherited Perry White's job and had a private office.

This was definitely the case when the Berlanti DC TV shows got to their verison of Crisis and they went to recruit the Superman of Earth-90. This was especially interesting as Brandon Routh played not only that version of Superman (as he had done in the Superman Returns movie) but also the already established version of Ray Palmer. (the Atom). They were even movie magicked into a scene together in the same room and I didn't even think they looked that similar.

Re: [Thaumatology] Powers as (Path/Book) Magic
 

Oh, yes.

Some more thoughts on Superman and his abilities: When comic book readers were introduced to him in 1938, his powers are simpler and less awesome (but still very impressive) than they would later become: "When maturity was reached, he discovered he could easily: Leap 1/8th of a mile [201 meters]; hurdle a twenty-story building...raise tremendous weights...run faster than a express train... and that nothing less than a bursting shell could penetrate his skin!" So, quite strong, exceptionally fast, and very hard to injure... but not invulnerable yet, and unable to fly (his Super-Jumping is clearly meant to be an artifact of his strength). His enhanced senses show up fairly quickly, showing both X-Ray vision and super-hearing in 1939, but he doesn't start out appearing to have them; he demonstrates his super breath or super lungs around 1940. Heat vision and freezing breath show up in the Silver Age, with the former being at first 'the concentrated heat of his Telescopic X-Ray vision,' and the latter being a new application of his established super-breathing. The Silver Age is also where New Powers as the Plot Demands became a stereotype of Superman stories, though even in the Golden Age, he had the occasional weird one, like changing his face (with super-muscular control, a pulp staple taken to extremes) to resemble a ceremonial mask twice the height of his head! (The Silver Age was also when we got the Superboy who was 'Superman, when he was a boy' having the same powers at roughly the same level as Superman in the same years-of-publication, but I'd really prefer to ignore that for this thread, and am only mentioning it because someone might bring it up.)

When the clone Superboy was introduced in 1993, his only power was 'Tactile Telekinesis!' (the exclamation point was important, at least to him, since he seemed to use it every time he talked about his power), which allowed him flight, a force field, and a good imitation of super-strength (probably Telekinetic Control with 'Melee Attack, C,' and a variant of PK Shield). Again, he started gaining various other abilities later on, as his experience grew. More recent versions of young Clark, such as the one from the Smallville TV series, likewise seem to come into their powers gradually, without retconning them to have always been available.

My suggestion for this thread is that the abilities he started out with are Kal-El's actual powers, and the newer ones are the rituals. So, he has a high level of Extra ST with Super-Effort (or one of the other versions of super-strength that have been suggested), a lot of DR and some level of Injury Tolerance (probably Damage Reduction), and some abilities that exist as side-effects of his strength, like Super-Jumping and Enhanced Move. Whether he has Enhanced Time Sense or Altered Time Rate, or those are rituals, is another question; possibly he just has extra Speed as a power. The rituals he uses are probably based on some form of Autohypnosis or Meditation, perhaps using Torquasm Vo (if you want to use more of the Post-Crisis version, the rituals would be a variety of Path/Book Psi).

EDIT: Depending on what assumptions you're making about his powers, he may also be a Solar Battery, having a high ER that recharges during the day, and has some level of Regeneration (either ER Only or Includes ER) in direct sunlight. If his rituals are Energy Accumulating, the ER will be very, very useful, but it can still be helpful without that.

Re: [Thaumatology] Powers as (Path/Book) Magic
 

Instinctive Rituals

Thinking about Marvel's mutants, and similar characters, such as the supers in the GURPS I.S.T. setting, I considered the Charm perk, and then Meta-Traits, which lead to this: Humans and other beings in such a worldline might be born with a Latent Magic perk. At puberty, or after some other form of trauma occurs (e.g. mainlining a connection to the Spider Totem after being bitten by a magical spider), their inner power is awakened, which is where the Meta-Trait comes in. You have Limited Path/Book Adept and possibly Limited Magery (generally One Path or Book Only, or One Ritual Only, but possibly other modifiers), and if your instinctive style is Energy Accumulating then most likely you've got an Energy Reserve. You may or may not have some perks, disadvantages, or quirks in the Meta-Trait, but certainly have skills and techniques, hence the name - you have one ritual (or perhaps a few) that you are instinctively good at, probably based on a Path or Book with a separate core skill (or your instinctive style only has one Book, so the Book skill is the core skill); you instinctively know these, as well, but might have a disadvantage or quirk that limits your understanding of them (so perhaps you're Incompetent with any use that isn't covered by your ritual). Alternatively, perhaps you have a perk that causes your Instinctive Ritual to default off of IQ, Will, or another characteristic. Depending on your abilities, personality, and setting, you may buy down or buy off some limitations or disadvantages, and expand your range of rituals, or you might not.


Examples

Imagine, if you will, a boy named Charlie, about age twelve, has learned that he can read the minds of those around him:
Instinctive Ritual (Magery 0 (Path of the Mind Only, -40%) [3]; Magery (Path of the Mind Only, -40%) 3 [18]; Path/Book Adept (Path of the Mind Only, -40%) 3 [18]; Path of the Mind [8] IQ+3; Read Thoughts (H) Path of the Mind-6 [7] Path of the Mind-0) [54]

As Charlie grows older (and starts preferring to be called Charles), he learns other rituals in the Path of the Mind (or perhaps the Book of Xavier, or something like that), and seeks to teach other mutants, but also tragically loses the use of his legs.

Similar ideas work for Bobby Drake ('Path of Ice,' perhaps) and Jean Grey (Path of Motion), with the caveat that early Jean had telepathic abilities that were locked away for her sanity, so her Path of Motion-limited advantages later became Two-Path advantages.

When Warren Worthington III was introduced, his wings were depicted as so compressible that a set of belts were enough to completely conceal them beneath his longjohns and tailored suit. In a setting like this, it makes more sense for his winged form to be the result of a ritual, at least at first:
Instinctive Ritual (Magery 0 (One Ritual Only: Skinchange (Winged Human), -80%) [1]; Magery (One Ritual Only: Skinchange (Winged Human), -80%) 2 [4]; Path/Book Adept (One Ritual Only: Skinchange (Winged Human), -80%) 3 [6]; Perk: Skinchange (Winged Human) defaults from HT [1]; Skinchange (Winged Human) (H) HT-6 [7] HT+2) [19]

Possibly, a critical failure later leaves him permanently changed; it makes sense for that to be a possible, or even likely, result of a crit-fail on a Skinchange ritual. This may be common among mutants, and could explain Hank McCoy's issues - every time he tries to fix it, though, something goes wrong, perhaps due to subconsciously sabotaging himself. Another plausible effect of a Skinchange crit-fail is that you get the Alternate Form advantage, but it's cyclic (e.g. changing at the full moon, or sunset), or otherwise not under the caster's control ('Now, whenever Dr. Banner grows angry or outraged, a startling metamorphosis occurs...'), at least at first ('That's my secret, Captain: I'm always angry.').

Scott Summers is an interesting case, as is Anne-Marie (Rogue). One way to deal with their abilities is to just give them the advantages with the Always On, -50% limitation, but since I'm already fudging things to fit, I prefer to go with the idea that Scott, at least, has the Uncontrollable limitation on his One Ritual Magery, and add his glasses or visor as a Mitigator on the limitation (this won't change the price at all, unless I can find an appropriate enhancement or two for Magery - something that not every GM agrees is acceptable); his optic blasts going off whenever he's under stress would be dangerous enough that he'd wear a Mitigator all the time anyway. Rogue would likewise have Uncontrollable, but without the Mitigator, and might also have Unconscious Only when she started out. The big problem with Rogue is really designing her ritual, more than the advantages in her meta-trait.


Thoughts?