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Old 05-04-2021, 09:06 AM   #27
hal
 
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Buffalo, New York
Default Re: Discussing Yrth History & Evolution of GURPS MAGIC

Quote:
Originally Posted by StevenH View Post
I've put a bit of thought into this. Not as much as I need to, but sometime I am going to sit down with some friends who have been in the military and go over all the spells and try to see how useful they would be.

<snipped stuff for sake of brevity>
Hi Steven. :)

If you would, just for the sake of interest - flesh out the bare bones of a GURPS MAGE for purposes of the discussion - assuming you like the challenge. ;)

By bare bones, All of the Attributes in GURPS 3e values (ie 100 point characters) along with pre-magery 0 and post magery 0 (assuming you even want to go that route), plus a simple "X points in spells".

The reason for this is to simply compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges as to "mage capabilities".

For instance - per the rules in Spell backfires, in a circle casting, all who participate are subject to critical failures. Having a Demon show up is of course, the worst nightmare, but too, having the spell produce the reverse of the intended effect can also prove to be nightmarish. Having a spell that cripples the right arm of all who participate for a week can also prove to be "interesting". Taking damage equal to a sword stroke (ie 1 die of damage) may very well make participants in a spell casting circle cringe about being asked to join in a ritual casting. The following phrase was present in both GURPS FANTASY 1st edition and GURPS MAGIC 2nd edition, yet somewhat lacking in GURPS MAGIC for 4e:

"Sincere belief and desire to help is requred; you cannot collect a crowd off the street , pay them a fee, and use them for spectators."

4e changed it to:

"A spectator must support the ceremony of his own free will. A mind-controlled subject cannot focus sufficient will to contribute energy."

As a consequence of this - Prior to GURPS MAGIC for 4e, getting Ceremonial help with spectators was somewhat problematical. I developed a spreadsheet that allowed the user to randomly determine reaction rolls of all participating spectators - with the ability to modify the reaction roll by a given value (positve or negative) to reflect how much people wanted or believed in the ritual ceremonial spell being cast. For instance, two farmers who hate each other, watching the mage cast Bless Plants for their hated rival could very well choose to oppose the spell simply on an emotional level, not necessarily a conscious decision to oppose the spell.

None the less - Ceremonial spell casting is slightly harder in the earlier editions of Magic vs the Newest edition.

So - what spells did you have in in mind for Illusions etc, and presume that such mages only have access to maybe a total of 20 energy for spell casting at any given time. If you want to get "creative" - if you have three mages who know Illusion College spells at skill 15+ for their bulk of spells and each have 1 ten point power stone, what could they do then?

Please note: Earlier versions of GURPS did not have Energy reserve for spell casting only, and it wasn't until just before GURPS COMPENDIUM I that we had the ability to purchase Extra fatigue for spell casting only at 2 fatigue per level.

When comparing mages builit using GURPS 2nd edition rules or early GURPS 3rd edition (ie pre-revised edition version), extra fatigue was not generally available.

Just interested in seeing what you can do with the concepts you just put forth in your post. :)

(this is an attempt to draw people into both a world building mindset and/or a challenge to build mage characters for others to enjoy.)
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