RPM without spell improvisation?

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by Bruno

I was thinking (very fuzzily I confess) that since a higher skill RPM caster can gather more energy before having everything blow up in their face, it sort of comes out in the wash.

But that requires more cycles of energy gathering, which in turn takes more time, and then we're back at the "Takes 5 seconds per gathering energy cycle".

Skyrim doesn't hand out Perks when specific skill levels are reached (unlike in Oblivion) - instead, you buy Perks (which you earn by levelling up) and they just have skill level and perk prerequisites. There's a chain of Perks for each college that halves the cost of each tier of spells: Novice, Apprentice, Adept, Expert, Master. Which would roughly be GURPS advantages, but big wopping ones in my opinion. What "tier" of spells is what in RPM would probably be decided by final energy cost and/or the magnitude of the features you put on it.

This is a gross adjustment and ignores the fine tweaks of skill. It's simpler, and probably easier to balance than skill penalties... but it's crude.

I've not played Skyrim but I wonder if you could build these advantages as levels of Compartmentalized Mind? That way you can gather energy quicker. CM 1 would let you make 2 gather attempts in one round, CM 2 would let you make 3, and so on.