Steve Jackson Games Forums - View Single Post - can you spend excess energy to cast spells making them harder to counterspell?

Plane · 02-21-2022, 02:39 PM

I know for example there is a perk which allows you to take longer-than-necessary to cast a spell: "Continuous Ritual" in Magical Styles allows this, so that you can time the completion of a spell.

Say for example you have a spell which normally costs 2 energy, meaning it would only cost 1 energy to attempt a counterspell against.

Could you just intentionally spend 4 energy on it, with the only benefit being that counterspell attempts would cost 2 energy?

Another tactical use here might be to "hide" the normally-cheap spell from Analyze Magic if you have lower-cost spells active since it prioritizes detecting the cheaper spells first.

I know this is possible where spells have scaling costs depending on effect (like area spells) and in that case you're not obligated to use that entire effect (you can choose to omit hexes in an AE) so it made me wonder if you could do this for non-area spells.

Like for example, let's say I only wanted a low-danger 2d fireball (I don't want to kill someone, I want minimal danger if I drop the fireball or miss and hit an ally) but instead of spending 2 energy I want to spend 4 energy and not get the 4d damage: but what I do enjoy is it costing 2 energy to counterspell my fireball instead of costing a mere 1 energy.

What got me thinking about this is there's a tactic like this made available to mages to counter Nega-Psychics from 'Beyond the Supernatural' (spend excess PPE so that the spell doesn't fail when some of the PPE is subtracted) so it would be cool to be able to do this in GURPS too.

If it's not a standard rule then would allowing it as a perk (like with Continuous Ritual) seem reasonable?

02-21-2022, 02:39 PM	#1
Plane Join Date: Aug 2018	can you spend excess energy to cast spells making them harder to counterspell? I know for example there is a perk which allows you to take longer-than-necessary to cast a spell: "Continuous Ritual" in Magical Styles allows this, so that you can time the completion of a spell. Say for example you have a spell which normally costs 2 energy, meaning it would only cost 1 energy to attempt a counterspell against. Could you just intentionally spend 4 energy on it, with the only benefit being that counterspell attempts would cost 2 energy? Another tactical use here might be to "hide" the normally-cheap spell from Analyze Magic if you have lower-cost spells active since it prioritizes detecting the cheaper spells first. I know this is possible where spells have scaling costs depending on effect (like area spells) and in that case you're not obligated to use that entire effect (you can choose to omit hexes in an AE) so it made me wonder if you could do this for non-area spells. Like for example, let's say I only wanted a low-danger 2d fireball (I don't want to kill someone, I want minimal danger if I drop the fireball or miss and hit an ally) but instead of spending 2 energy I want to spend 4 energy and not get the 4d damage: but what I do enjoy is it costing 2 energy to counterspell my fireball instead of costing a mere 1 energy. What got me thinking about this is there's a tactic like this made available to mages to counter Nega-Psychics from 'Beyond the Supernatural' (spend excess PPE so that the spell doesn't fail when some of the PPE is subtracted) so it would be cool to be able to do this in GURPS too. If it's not a standard rule then would allowing it as a perk (like with Continuous Ritual) seem reasonable?