[DF] Easy arcane magic for Dungeon Fantasy

[jabarto]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

What psychic guidance perk?

It's a perk in Thaumatology: Magical Styles that basically lets you direct a missile spell with the spell's level instead of using the Innate Attack skill.

EDIT: Curse you, vierasmarius!

[Gnome]

Originally Posted by Langy

The base magic system quite simply sucks, especially if you need to have skill 25-30 before it's in any way useful.

It sucks if all you want to do is direct damage--innate attacks are built specifically for that purpose. But a DF wizard ought to have utility, and it's hard to do that efficiently with powers. And you can still have direct damage in your bag of tricks.

Originally Posted by Langy

And that 6d attack can only be used once or twice an adventure, while the 1d burning attack can be used much, much more frequently.

With that 20 Lightning Stare skill, you can hit someone for 2d for no FP and the various cool "lightning" effects. Or choose to spend more energy and do more damage. That's versatility. And it's built into the system for you. If you want to do magic-as-powers, you have to build it from scratch. For beginners who want to play wizards, I just give them a couple of sample spell-lists to choose from that I know will work well and highlight the most important spells.

[Langy]

Originally Posted by Gnome

It sucks if all you want to do is direct damage--innate attacks are built specifically for that purpose. But a DF wizard ought to have utility, and it's hard to do that efficiently with powers. And you can still have direct damage in your bag of tricks.

You seem to keep missing that I have been assuming that you'd have other spells available (probably from a spells-as-skills system) in addition to the innate attacks; you'd wind up having exactly as much versatility, doing more damage at higher range, with less point investment.

With that 20 Lightning Stare skill, you can hit someone for 2d for no FP and the various cool "lightning" effects. Or choose to spend more energy and do more damage. That's versatility. And it's built into the system for you. If you want to do magic-as-powers, you have to build it from scratch. For beginners who want to play wizards, I just give them a couple of sample spell-lists to choose from that I know will work well and highlight the most important spells.

Sure, you have to build it from scratch, but the normal magic system is boring, annoying, horribly written, and just generally sucks. You have to do a massive amount of rewriting in it just to make it work with 4e, since it wasn't actually updated from its 3e edition iteration.

[Pagan]

Originally Posted by Langy

Sure, you have to build it from scratch, but the normal magic system is boring, annoying, horribly written, and just generally sucks. You have to do a massive amount of rewriting in it just to make it work with 4e, since it wasn't actually updated from its 3e edition iteration.

This is wrong. I don't know how much experience you've had with running the standard magic system for a group of players but you couldn't be more wrong. My group's pcs included a Chosen champion of a god who uses standard spells and a sorcerer who specializes in illusion and magicks that trick perception (also using the standard system). They are currently running around with a battle-mage and after their recent battle with a troll, a group of skeletal dead, mercenaries and a coven of hags, not one of the players (even those playing more conventional warriors) thinks the magic system is boring, annoying or that it sucks.

You might have more experience running the magic system than me (14 years now) but probably not. It's been as exciting since the early days when a pc blew the leg off another pc with a lightning bolt til recently when a pc swam through the earth to get behind enemy lines to attack a foe. The only rewriting I have done are minor tweaks to gate and summoning magic to accommodate my game world and making all of the magical schools into magical styles. I've not needed to rewrite the system, a system that has served my campaign well for those 14 years.

The standard magic system and the powers systems are just mechanics. Neither is better than the other (I actually use both). What makes them not boring or annoying or sucky is how they are presented and represented in your game world. Of course, that means you have to take the time to integrate these mechanics in an interesting way in your game world so YMMV.

*End soapbox*

[Langy]

Originally Posted by Pagan

This is wrong. I don't know how much experience you've had with running the standard magic system for a group of players but you couldn't be more wrong. My group's pcs included a Chosen champion of a god who uses standard spells and a sorcerer who specializes in illusion and magicks that trick perception (also using the standard system). They are currently running around with a battle-mage and after their recent battle with a troll, a group of skeletal dead, mercenaries and a coven of hags, not one of the players (even those playing more conventional warriors) thinks the magic system is boring, annoying or that it sucks.

You might have more experience running the magic system than me (14 years now) but probably not. It's been as exciting since the early days when a pc blew the leg off another pc with a lightning bolt til recently when a pc swam through the earth to get behind enemy lines to attack a foe. The only rewriting I have done are minor tweaks to gate and summoning magic to accommodate my game world and making all of the magical schools into magical styles. I've not needed to rewrite the system, a system that has served my campaign well for those 14 years.

The standard magic system and the powers systems are just mechanics. Neither is better than the other (I actually use both). What makes them not boring or annoying or sucky is how they are presented and represented in your game world. Of course, that means you have to take the time to integrate these mechanics in an interesting way in your game world so YMMV.

*End soapbox*

It isn't wrong; actually look through GURPS Magic 4e some time. It's filled with errors, failures-to-update, hugely economically damaging spells, and rules that completely lack clarity.

[Pagan]

Originally Posted by Langy

It isn't wrong; actually look through GURPS Magic 4e some time. It's filled with errors, failures-to-update, hugely economically damaging spells, and rules that completely lack clarity.

LOL, hmmm, maybe you missed the part where I mentioned that I have been running gurps magic for a few years and magic 4e since it came out. I'm pretty familiar with it. It has errors and failures to updates but it also has erratas. The hugely economically damaging spells is a crock. Anyone making up fictional stories should be able to either work around this or, now here is an idea....don't use those spells. As for lacking clarity, well, so does a lot of literature, the science of philosophy and to me, higher mathematics. That doesn't make books, studying philosophy or learning math useless.

The system is only broken if you want it to be broken. The system will work well for most campaigns.

[Langy]

Originally Posted by Pagan

LOL, hmmm, maybe you missed the part where I mentioned that I have been running gurps magic for a few years and magic 4e since it came out. I'm pretty familiar with it. It has errors and failures to updates but it also has erratas. The hugely economically damaging spells is a crock. Anyone making up fictional stories should be able to either work around this or, now here is an idea....don't use those spells. As for lacking clarity, well, so does a lot of literature, the science of philosophy and to me, higher mathematics. That doesn't make books, studying philosophy or learning math useless.

The system is only broken if you want it to be broken. The system will work well for most campaigns.

I didn't say it was useless - I said that it was sucky, annoying, horribly written, and boring. I don't find the normal magic system all that interesting, hence the 'boring' part, I find it annoying that it has spells that can cause such huge economic issues, hence annoying, and Magic 4e quite simply is horribly written, what with all the errors and failures to update to 4e standards, and finally the combination of the previous three make it sucky.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Pagan

The system is only broken if you want it to be broken. The system will work well for most campaigns.

The system cannot work if you want a medieval world. Realistic behaviour by NPCs interacting with the GURPS Magic spell system will inevitably de-medievelize the world in a few decades.

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by Langy

I didn't say it was useless - I said that it was sucky, annoying, horribly written, and boring. I don't find the normal magic system all that interesting, hence the 'boring' part, I find it annoying that it has spells that can cause such huge economic issues, hence annoying, and Magic 4e quite simply is horribly written, what with all the errors and failures to update to 4e standards, and finally the combination of the previous three make it sucky.

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

The system cannot work if you want a medieval world. Realistic behaviour by NPCs interacting with the GURPS Magic spell system will inevitably de-medievelize the world in a few decades.

I really do not understand people who use most of these arguments.
Some of the spells could break a medieval or many other economic systems. But you just don't use them if that is the kind of thing you want.
Saying some spells can cause problems is like saying some powers can cause a problem is the same as saying some powers can break the economy.
So saying that becasue if you allow all the magic spells to be available means it is broken is the same as saying the same could happen with Powers so it is broken too.
You pick and choose what is appropriate for a specific setting, including other options like which magic system to use and many options on it. Also how common is magery and the mana level.
Is magery common enough that every city will have a circle of enchanters? How about a single mage? Or is it so rare that only a handful exist in all the world.

I played the basic system since inception and yes it is annoying that 4e was not revised as well as it should have been for 4e. Instead it compiled spells from pretty much all the 3e sources and so some were designed for different settings and not all balanced against each other.
I do not find the system boring either, you can do a huge variety of settings and mage types with just the systems in Magic, much less the additions put forth in Thaumatology or other supplements.
There is more variety in Magic then DragonQuest, RuneQuest, D&D, AD&D, T&T, Ysgarth, Shadowrun, Spell Master, Pallidium, etc.
And tweaking the system is not only encouraged but made easy.

Not bad for a system that is over 20 years old.
Could a modern redesign make it better? Maybe but probably not by enough to put in the time and money. And of course you cant have a generic and universal system that will work perfectly well in any setting. No matter what modifications are made it wont be perfect for every setting.
One of the cool things about GURPS is how many different magic systems we have available to us and each comes with a lot of options for change.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Refplace

I played the basic system since inception

You may have "played", but you did not simulate the GURPS Magic system, in the sense of giving it to the NPCs who populate the game world, and having those NPCs interact with the spell magic system in a psychologically realistic fashion.