To what extent does RPM encourage/facilitate/prevent generalist casters?

[Peter Knutsen]

GURPS Magic's magic system is built around the paradigm of the generalist caster as the norm, with One-College Magery and similar as an afterthought.

RPM at least isn't as bad as that. That much is clear to me.

But exactly how much less bad it is, or isn't, isn't.

Paths default off a single skill, Thaumatology, but you need to put 1 CP into each Path to get serious benefit from it. So it is fair to say that it still facilitates the easy creation of generalist casters? Medium fair? A bit harsh? Essentially true?

Assuming a situation in which players are free to spend their points as they wish, using the word "free" in the strongest and broadest possible sense, what's the likelihood of any randomly chosen player making a very specialized caster with a single Path, a fairly specialized one, a broadly skilled one, one who's almost a generalist, or one who is a complete generalist with all 9 Paths at a usable skill level relative to the power level of the campaign, meaning that what constitutes a useable level in a 400 CP MH campaign is different from what constitues a useable level in a 150 CP fantasy campaign?

Apart from the likelihood speculation, what have actual players in actual campaigns done, if they were allowed to create their own characters (and didn't have them created for them, by the GM, which I know that at least one RPM GM is very fond of doing)?

And equally interestingly, what are those player characters like after ten sessions of advancement? Both the likelihood-speculated characters, and the ones from actual play?

It looks like it's fairly easy, just 1 CP, to "branch out" (pun intended) to cover another Path, so even if you start out as a single-Path ritualist, you're a mere 8 CP away from being able to utilize all the Paths.

Of course there are rewards for higher Path skills. Those 8 CP could buy +2 skill to your favourite Path. But how valuable is that actually, if the alternative is to spend them on buying the reamining 8 Paths that you hven't yet learned, thereby massively increasing your versatility?

And what about the effect of the Magery cap? It seems to me that at some point, it'll start to act as a "force" upon player decisions and/or character decisions, and push deelopment towards generalism.

Keep in mind, I'm only interested in cases in which the choices are made by players or characters, not in cases wher the GM makes the decisions.



For bonus point, what about the Ritual Magic system from GURPS Magic? The one that's vaguely RPM-like but not quite, with a skill for each College, and spells defaulting off College skill at -X where X is the spell's prerequisite count, and uing the standard spells from GURPS Magic.

That seems to me to very strongly encourage casters to remain specialists. It seems like as if it can not be said in any way to facilitate - make easy - the creation of generalists.

Am I correct in this assumption?

[Mathulhu]

I have found RPM encourages a generalist approach to magic. It does this by letting you do so much using just a single Path. An extra point in a Path skill can net you a lot of extra energy.

I have played an RPM caster once and GMed for an RPM caster once.

The caster I played was exceptionally weak. I had the big advantage that lets you cast quickly but I couldn't take any of the Path skills without finding a tome containing information on them. This meant I couldn't make charms, I never found a tome on the Path of Magic, but I could cast in combat.
I found I could use the Path of Energy for an amazing amount of things out of combat even with a moderately good skill just by thinking in a roundabout way. The solution might be sub-optimal but it would work.

The caster I GMed for was a full power Witch from Monster Hunters. He had all of the Paths at the same level. This allowed him to have lots of effects active at one time and he didn't need to think as creatively. If something seemed like it could be easier with one Path rather than another he could use the easier Path.

[Refplace]

I have not played it but I seriously think it encourages generalists.
Using the same thought process that I have seen in many regular Magic casters where you tried for 1 point in a spell at a 'magic number' such as 15 or 20 casters would tend to buy IQ and Magery as high as they could with only a few spells getting more then 1 point. Notably M/VH ones.

That process is similar with RPM. Buy your IQ up as high as you can, Magery to match so you get a good skill cap and at least 1 point in each Path.
I can see many favoring a single Path, especially if there is no Magery cap but there is a IQ cap. However with no IQ cap you will see more generalists.
Higher Purpose helps a little for specialists but the key is that 1 point in a path gives you so much utility that few wont take them all unless prohibited.

My experiance with Ritual Magic from Basic was the opposite of your thoughts by the way. It worked like Martial Arts where you spent points on one or two techniques but most of your points went towards the core skill, magery or IQ.
Every level you bought up the core skill raised ALL your spells after all.

EDIT: Some of this depends on your defination of a Speiclist or a Generalist too. To me a generalist is able to do a lot of things competently.
A specialist is not as versatile and better at a specific category in a significant way. Only with buying up Magery will you see more specialists then generalists and even then most will be competent at all Paths for just 1 point so count as generalists in my book.

[Terwin]

Don't forget that you must raise Thaumatology to raise a path skill, and your default path skills will be at 12 (or Thaumatology -6 if you are not raising any path over 17)

A skill of 12 is 'professional' level, so that is reasonably competent I would think.

So unless you take special limitations, you will be a generalist to some extent...

[Anaraxes]

The value judgement seems a bit over the top here. Generalist casters aren't "bad", specialists "good", and a system isn't flawed if it allows or encourages generalists. At worst, it means that system isn't what one particular GM wants for one particular setting. There's a difference between a preference of one individual -- perhaps just some of the time -- and Universal Moral Truth.

There are just as many generalist casters in fiction as specialists, if not more. Magic is often supposed to be a fundamental and universal force, which would make it strange that it could be used for only one thing.

And where specialties exist, they're usually more a matter of preference, talent, or emphasis than a complete prohibition. The latter also exists, of course. But the pure fire mage that can't touch water and the like always strike me as more cartoonish, less Gandalf or Dr. Strange and more Johnny Storm or Cyclops. "Johnny One-Spell" got that disparaging name not because the build is broken, but because the concept is limited and rapidly boring.

Systems with only a few specialist categories potentially winds up with strained and artificial forcing of certain effects into certain specialities. (Consider a system with nothing but the four Aristotelian elements. Flying is Air... ok. Create Cloudy Weather is Air, too. No, clouds are water! But the lightning is Fire. Telepathy is... water!) Or you wind up with magic simply not being able to a lot of things, which is pretty un-magical in the usual sense. (Might make for an interesting change of pace, though. Mages _aren't_ impressive and _can't_ do much, just an oddball talent, the way TK starts out being presented in "Looper".)

But to the point, an RPM witch is going to reach the point where just pumping up one Path skill doesn't really provide a lot more marginal ability compared to spending those points in other Path skills. (The effect would be even stronger if further levels had an every-increasing cost; the flat price of skills avoids pushing toward generality.) Also, any number of rituals naturally suggest effects from more than one Path. A "One Path Only" limitation that completely prevented use of any other path would be significant in RPM. So, if the choices are Force One Specialty Good and Allow Possible Generality Bad, RPM is a Bad system.

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

The value judgement seems a bit over the top here. Generalist casters aren't "bad", specialists "good", and a system isn't flawed if it allows or encourages generalists. At worst, it means that system isn't what one particular GM wants for one particular setting. There's a difference between a preference of one individual -- perhaps just some of the time -- and Universal Moral Truth.

I tend to prefer generalists as a player and do not think there bad vs. specialists as a game concept or strategic choice. It depends on the campaign.
However in a game specilits do help make the charecters look different which is IMHO a good thing and not just for niche protection.

[starslayer]

Well I generally do like generalists. But with that said you could build one hell of ap warmage by taking the points you would invest into IQ magery and all paths and instead investing in

Magery (one path only)
Path of body
Thaumaturge
Luck (much required when you get above skill 21)

You could likely routinely throw around 400+ energy effects while the generalist would have trouble doing a 200. The huge areas of effect virtual impossibility of resistance and extreme durations making up for the lack of conditional rituals.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

For bonus point, what about the Ritual Magic system from GURPS Magic? The one that's vaguely RPM-like but not quite, with a skill for each College, and spells defaulting off College skill at -X where X is the spell's prerequisite count, and using the standard spells from GURPS Magic.

That seems to me to very strongly encourage casters to remain specialists. It seems like as if it can not be said in any way to facilitate - make easy - the creation of generalists.

Something you need to consider, and which is considered by players and PCs in games I've played in, is the effect of other magicians among the characters who normally operate together. If you're the only magician, there is natural survival value in being a generalist, or developing in that direction. If there are several of you, then you can benefit from specialising without being at unusual risk of getting killed because nobody can do some commonly-useful effect that isn't within your specialisation.

For example, in Ars Magica, it's normal for a whole group of magicians to operate together, and in Gloranthan games everyone is usually a magician of some kind. In other genres, having only one or two magicians is much commoner. I emphasise again, I am not talking about GM pressure here, but about the decisions I've seen PCs make in the interests of their own survival.

I have run a campaign that used the GURPS Magic ritual magic system. It was set in the Laundry universe, where using magic is quite hazardous to your health, and powerful firearms and explosives are available and don't take all that many points to use effectively. Only one of my four players wanted to be a magician: I told him that there was no training available for the Food and Healing colleges, because using either in this environment is basically suicidal, and that since it was an investigation campaign, the Knowledge college would naturally be useful. That player is intelligent, but definitely forms his own ideas about how to do things.

I do not have a detailed history of how his character's college skills developed, because I prefer not to tailor adventures tightly to the characters' abilities: it feels rather artificial to me. I have ideas about how the world works, and I'm happy to tell the players things their characters know or can find out. After that it's up to them: I suspect this may fit your own ideas about how to GM?

In any case, the character did develop her Knowledge college skill, and the colleges that immediately supported it: notably Meta-spells. Once she had got reasonably good at those, she did gradually learn all the available colleges, although most of them not to high levels: she viewed this more as building depth in her understanding of magic (which is applied mathematics, in the setting) than for maximum effectiveness. An SAS trooper with a grenade launcher is frankly more effective than a Fireball spell. She did not buy up many spells as individual techniques: the main one I remember was Dispel Magic, since that's always resisted, and very high skill is well worthwhile.

[Peter Knutsen]

Thanks for the replies, guys, please keep them coming.

As for the non-Path Ritual Magic system from GURPS Magic, I had completely forgotten that it has a core skill. I had assumed it was based on College skills. so that changes everything in that department.

[dataweaver]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

As for the non-Path Ritual Magic system from GURPS Magic, I had completely forgotten that it has a core skill. I had assumed it was based on College skills. so that changes everything in that department.

Yeah; Ritual Magic, Path Magic, and Ritual Path Magic all have the same learning scheme: a core skill, a selection of College/Path/Book skills limited by the core skill, and some mechanism for specializing in individual rituals (either Techniques or Ritual Mastery).

If you want RPM to be more specialized, consider setting up a "Book Magic"-like variant of it: instead of broad Paths that default to the core skill as well as being capped by it, use comparatively narrow Books that don't default to the core skill but are atill capped by it. If you do this, I'd strongly recommend using the core skill directly when gathering energy to replenish your energy reserve; if that task is the purview of a specific Book, then you've got a de facto mandate that every magician must put at least one point into that Book.

Refplace's approach is another one I'd recommend, with each set of Paths having its own core skill, even if only a different Required Specialization of the same skill. If you want to differentiate them further, consider giving each set some special strength and weakness that further differentiates it from the others: a set of Paths based off of Ritual Magic might benefit you further if the gods or spirits you're beseeching are favorably disposed toward you, while requiring you to act in ways those beings approve; a set of Paths based off of Alchemy might exempt you from the need to incorporate a Lesser Magic Effect when creating an elixir while restricting its Paths to the sole purpose of making elixirs; Thaumatology (Hermetic) might require all castings to be group magic while providing access tobthe Decanic factors; and so on.