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Originally Posted by Varyon
I don't have GURPS Magic, and don't know how a Spell Stone functions. But I'm going to assume it's basically an object that lets the user either cast a spell he/she doesn't know or - based on a little digging online - casts the spell itself, using FP invested into it when it was made (one of the online mentions was using it as an energy store, with it casting Lend Energy on the user). In either case, it makes sense that a preprogrammed spell (akin in some ways to an RPM Charm) couldn't be adjusted on the fly, while a freshly-cast spell could be.
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The thing about on-the-fly adjustments is either we assume the caster knows which spell they are adjusting to (meaning that have some way of knowing what it was, making Identify Spell less important) or the spell itself adjusts to suit what it's countering.
Like if it's the latter case - after a successful counterspell do you even know which spell you just countered, or just that "I countered some unknown spell that cost 1 or 2 energy by spending 1 energy" ?
If it worked like that it seems strange your skill level in it would even matter (as you don't even know where you're applying your knowledge) or that you'd need to preprogram into spellstones.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Varyon
Sure, you can do that, so long as the GM doesn't step in and say "No, that's clearly not how this is supposed to work, stop it or karma will stop it for you."
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Did some digging looks like Kromm addressed this in 2005
http://forums.sjgames.com/showpost.p...8&postcount=12
"When you burn HP to cast a spell, you always lose the HP. It's only FP costs that are reduced to 1 FP on a failure."
We could probably assume that this also applies to cases like reducing to 0 FP on a critical success.
This seems to conflict with the idea that a failed HT roll to survive HP loss results in not burning the HP though... or at least there's a complicated order of operations involved.
Maybe we could view this as a separate ability that Magery gives?
Something like...
1) as a free action that can be done at any time, you may ATTEMPT to sacrifice any amount of HP that would not automatically kill you (-5x HP for most, -10xHP for immortals)
2) if this would reduce you to a negative multiple of HP (a HT roll to avoid dying) make that HT roll
3) if that HT roll fails, your attempt to burn the HP fails, try again next turn! If it succeeds, you burn the HP and continue to step (4)
4) the sacrificed HP will temporarily give you Energy Reserve (Magic) equal to the amount of HP burned
5) that ER only lasts 1 second, and can only be spent on one spell
6) that one spell suffers a casting penalty equal to the HP you burned
This seems like it'd let you know if you got the temporary ER for spellcasting and whether or not you'd be able to complete the spell though, meaning if you failed to swap the HP for the ER (because the HT roll to survive failed) then you could abandon casting the spell and not waste any of the FP you were contributing to it, assuming you were doing a combo of FP+HP to cast it.
That's a pretty big advantage and I'm unsure if the rules are meant to operate that way. I think if you abandon casting a spell midway then it costs 0 energy, so maybe it does work that way?
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I've never actually seen this defined as an ability. T25 has the "Injurious Magic" limitations where it becomes mandatory to use this, but I can't recall anywhere talking about mages who can't use this option for spellcasting.
Even T24's "External Energy Only" just says "can never use your personal FP for magic" and doesn't address stuff like HP or ER
Quote:
Originally Posted by Varyon
Of course, all those crit-fishing rolls also have a chance of catching the wrong kind of crit and having the spell explode in your face (in a situation like that, I'd absolutely rule that a Critical Failure kills you outright, overriding whatever safety mechanism typically results in you merely falling unconscious, in lieu of - or perhaps in addition to - a roll on the Critical Spell Failure Table).
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That's the weird thing though - if you don't actually have enough energy to successfully cast a spell, then you can't succeed/fail (crit or otherwise) at casting it.
So if something prevents you from getting the required energy to complete the spell (like failing the HT roll to survive per B237 or M8) then it can't even fail.
It'd probably be similar to getting "spoiled" like the "Distraction and Injury" rules but I'm not aware of that counting as a fail or crit fail.
Having spoiled spells roll on the crit fail table does sound pretty cool though, but it opens a weird window where you can unleash full-power magical effects without spending the energy you normally would.
If it were just interrupted spells I'd say a cool house rule would be to roll skill anyway, except it would be like:
1) crit success = no energy wasted, just no effect
2) normal success = 1 energy wasted, like a normal failure
3) normal failure = full energy wasted, but no crit table
4) crit fail = full energy wasted, crit fail table too
But if the reason it fails is there's actually no energy (the HP does not burn, there's no FP or ER to waste) then having your spell create anyway (even if it does the wrong thing like attack an ally or buff an enemy) is pretty odd.