GURPS Magery & Base Skill

[ronalmb]

Hello,

I apologize in advance for this silly question:

I have been operating under the assumption that Magery adds to your skill when casting spells, although I have been treating it as a modifier to your effective skill and not to your base skill.

After my group took an unexpected turn into showing a lot of interest in Magic and spells, I've had to revisit this.

While revisiting this, I cannot for the life of me find anything under Magery (or the casting Magic from the Magic book) that says you add Magery to your skill (Or IQ) when casting spells. I am very doubtful of this interpretation and feel I must be wrong in this new conclusion.

p66. (Which I see quoted often when I google search this topic) states:
"Higher levels of Megery makes it much easier to learn and use magic. Add your Magery to IQ when you learn (emphasis mine). For instance, if you have IQ 14, Magery 3 lets you learn spells as if you had IQ 17.

It goes on to talk about adding it to your Perception to check magic, and adding to IQ when you learn Thaumatology skill -- but I cannot find anywhere where it adds to the skill for casting.

I know I assumed that it did. I assumed it because Magery has one sentence where it says it makes it "much easier to learn and use (emphasis mine again) spells" but where is that worked out further than that one sentence?

I've found some previous posts on the topic but all of them refer to that p66 quote above.

I was unable to find this in GURPS Magic -- but I could have missed it.

What is the actual rule for this? Where is it at?

Thank you, learned scholars, for any help you can provide!

[Turhan's Bey Company]

You've sort of got it right there, actually: "Add your Magery to IQ when you learn. For instance, if you have IQ 14, Magery 3 lets you learn spells as if you had IQ 17." So if you've got IQ 14, Magery 3, and you put 1 point into it, you get it at your effective IQ (that is, 17) - 2, which is to say you know the spell at 15. What this means is that Magery isn't a bonus when you cast the spell, it's a bonus to the underlying trait, which gives you the same ultimate effect in most cases, but since it boosts IQ rather than acting as just one more modifier, it makes it easier to build magicians with skills high enough to reduce the FP cost to cast.

[ronalmb]

I guess this is where I am getting myself turned around.

I read that (now) and came to the conclusion that Magery made the process of learning new spells (and Thaumatology) easier. That is, the time that it takes to learn the spell/skill or the IQ check to acquire it (under pressure, if i recall). In other words, you added it to checks to acquire the skill, not what you learned it "at".

While I am happy that this second doubts is cleared up, it does create some new questions for me.. just fuzzy gray areas (where i prefer nice and crisp). If you learned a spell at 17 for instance, why would it drop lower if your IQ was drained? I know the reasons, it just becomes more muddled than I would prefer.

[ErhnamDJ]

We had a thread on this same topic recently. You might want to check that one out. This seems to be a frequently-occurring issue.

Originally Posted by ronalmb

If you learned a spell at 17 for instance, why would it drop lower if your IQ was drained? I know the reasons, it just becomes more muddled than I would prefer.

The answer is: Because that's the way skills work in GURPS. They improved from an attribute. The way this is usually explained is that the attribute is something akin to the foundation of a building and that the skills are the structure built on top of it.

This isn't the way humans learn things in real life, but these rules do provide a sense of verisimilitude to most people, since that's how people assume humans learn (similar to how people intuitively assume physics works as Aristotle described, and I've seen them protest when they're presented with rules in games which function using Newtonian physics instead of Aristotelian ones).

[Whitewings]

Originally Posted by ronalmb

I guess this is where I am getting myself turned around.

I read that (now) and came to the conclusion that Magery made the process of learning new spells (and Thaumatology) easier. That is, the time that it takes to learn the spell/skill or the IQ check to acquire it (under pressure, if i recall). In other words, you added it to checks to acquire the skill, not what you learned it "at".

While I am happy that this second doubts is cleared up, it does create some new questions for me.. just fuzzy gray areas (where i prefer nice and crisp). If you learned a spell at 17 for instance, why would it drop lower if your IQ was drained? I know the reasons, it just becomes more muddled than I would prefer.

Spells are skills. Skills are calculated as Attribute +/- a certain amount. If the attribute changes, the total changes. What's grey about that? If a swordsman is poisoned so he can't control his actions properly (in game terms, his DX is reduced), all his DX-based skills drop while the poison's in effect. If a mage is hit with something like a hallucinogen, reducing his INT, then his INT-based skills drop for the duration.

[ronalmb]

We had a thread on this same topic recently. You might want to check that one out. This seems to be a frequently-occurring issue.

Although I did not see the topic you linked when I did my own google search for an answer to the question, I did find that it seemed to be a question that popped up a lot. It does pop up a lot! Thanks for the link.

As I have stated, I've been doing it basically the correct way, and this was just an issue of doubt that cropped up after re-reading the Magery section and getting caught up on the wording. I understand the reasoning and will continue to run the game in the correct manner.

Spells are skills. Skills are calculated as Attribute +/- a certain amount. If the attribute changes, the total changes. What's grey about that?

Whitewings, I came to the GURPS forums because generally folks here are quick to be helpful. Turhan's answer reconfirmed what I felt and I offered an explanation to why I misunderstood and I thought that was that. I wasn't attempting to debate over how the rules should be run. The "grey" area isn't whether the rule is a good one or a bad one (Personally, i think its just fine the way folks have answered it to be for me) -- the "Fuzzy Grey" for me is that the wording for Magery was not as clear and precise for me as I would have liked.

As ErhnamDJ points out, it seems to pop up frequently... so I would argue that it could have been made even clearer in the book. Maybe I (and maybe a few of the frequent others that get tripped up on it) am just not as smart and educated as you and it would have been nice to have had it spelled out as simply as possible so I would not have to come here and waste your time.

Have a great day.

[roguebfl]

Base Skill is your Relative skill plus your Attribute.
your Effective Skill is your Base skill plus task modifiers.

Magery like talents add to your attribute for the skill so is part of Base Skill and Effective Skill, but not your Relative skill.

Relative skill effects the price of the skill, and when you "float" the skill. as it is
(Attribute) + N form of the skill.

Aka 1 point in a hard spell seek water will give you a Relative skill of Seek Water(IQ + Magery) - 2 [1]

If you IQ was 14 and you Magery was 3, you Base Skill with Seek Water would be Seek Water - 15 [1]

Effective Skill is what you roll against after thing like Range Modifiers and low mana are taking into account.

[Laughing Man]

Originally Posted by ronalmb

the "Fuzzy Grey" for me is that the wording for Magery was not as clear and precise for me as I would have liked.

This exactly was my problem as well and personally I am still on the fence about the whole thing. Here is why:

Magery helps with the Learning of a spell. So I look up the rules for learning a spell on page 235 under "Learning Magic". Ok, there it is explained in detail how exactly Magery helps me with learning spells. Among other things, it adds to IQ, so I can learn as if I had a higher IQ. That would help me, if a spell has a prerequisite of IQ 15 and I only have IQ 13, as far as I understand. I can see that.

People here say that if you learn the spell with a higher IQ (due to Magery), you also can cast it at that higher level, because Magery is a bonus to the underlying trait. Why is that? I never read of that. Is there any reference in the books to this statement? Please give me a page number for that. If not, I have to assume it is just a personal interpretation and not really a fact.
When I look at the "Skill" chapter, I read the following: You learn a skill (or a spell in this case) at a relative level. Once a skill is learned, you use it with that relative level. Thus the absolute value of the skill depends on the attribute it is based on at the time you are using the skill, not at the time you learned the skill. So it doesn't matter how high your IQ was when you learned the skill. Am I wrong? Where is it stated otherwise? Please give me a page number for that.

So let's look at the "Casting Spells" chapter on page 235, WHY is there not even a single reference to Magery under "Casting Spells"? If Magery would be added to IQ when casting a spell, why don't they even mention it once in the chapter which specifically targets that topic? Like in the "Ritual Magic" chapter of the Thaumatology book, where they say "Magery adds to core skill, path skills and spells". There is no such statement under "Casting Spells" in the Basic Set, nowhere. Why is that? Without such a statement it feels like most people here are just interpreting it in their own way, to get the advantage of additional skill points when casting their spells.

Last but not least, isn't it possible for some GURPS writer to show mercy and to clarify that problem? That would be the easiest and most efficient way of solving this whole situation.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by ronalmb

While I am happy that this second doubts is cleared up, it does create some new questions for me.. just fuzzy gray areas (where i prefer nice and crisp). If you learned a spell at 17 for instance, why would it drop lower if your IQ was drained?[/I]

If you think about it, it's pretty reasonable that you wouldn't be as good at remembering and concentrating on your magic if someone impaired your brain, temporarily or permanently. Don't cast spells while drunk people!

[Turhan's Bey Company]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Don't cast spells while drunk people!

DON'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO!