[Skarg]

Originally Posted by Shoug

Earlier in the thread you talked about how you used to use Mana based entirely on your IQ to cast spells. All I did was point out that, by current ITL RAW, that's the equivalent of having a fully charged level 2 manastaff. Which is probably why you "...had staffs that could store mana too, and never found it necessary."

I think you misunderstood what JLV meant by "it" in that quote - he was talking about not finding the 3-die maximum on missile spells to be necessary, even with (whatever source of) extra mana available.

To which I'd add my own experience about missile spells, which was that we too didn't find powerful missile spells to be something we wanted to change. Yes, it means in some cases a wizard can blast the heck out of something. On the other hand, it also means he can blow a lot of mana on one spell, and since we allowed a target who had not acted yet and who saw it coming to declare a Dodge action at that point (so 4/DX to hit), it was generally not a game-dominating kind of thing. Especially in a campaign roleplaying context, where wizards are 1 in 300, powerful wizards less than that, and they tend to have other interests and want to stay alive, not just be fireball munchkins.

I might also note that while GURPS Magic 1e started with a 3-die limit on all missile spells, in has in later editions evolved to 3 dice for every level of magery, which tends to be available up to level 6, or at least 3, so 18 dice... again, possibly partly because GURPS also has some useful Dodge options.

Originally Posted by Shoug

It's been my confusion this whole thread, that nobody who's tried it seems to think that completely replacing ST with IQ as the casting resource is an unbalancing idea.

Well I have tried using IQ for mana, and various other modes of play where there's lots of mana. I've also written in past threads about what I see as the various balance issues with using IQ for mana. I just kind of gave up on repeating myself on that point.

Originally Posted by Shoug

... it might get people to discuss the whole "free mana" thing that apparently everybody did back in the day.

No, not everybody gave out any kind of free mana back in the day. In our non-experimental games, the only sources of extra mana were apprentices casting Aid, Drain ST, and ST Batteries (now called Powerstones). Only the powerful/wealthy wizards had ST batteries, though some of those who did had some evilly powerful ones, which tended to be a focus of attention and adventures and tactics since it enables a lot of stuff to be done.