Combing Spell and Syntactic magic

Terwin · 06-05-2013, 03:33 PM

While logically being able to cast all the prerequisites via syntactic magic should be sufficient, this removes a fairly significant limit on mages by letting them have a hand-full of skills to replace all of their pre-reqs.

Also, by adding syntactic magic on top of 'normal' magic, you are making magic a fair bit more versatile/powerful. (no need to bother with those occasional use spells or spells that are always cast outside of combat, just take your time with Syntactic for that, allowing you to focus your character points on those combat effective spells without sacrificing general utility)

Syntactic magic is also a concern when it comes to niche protection, as there is not much need for a thief when you can just take a little extra time and let your mage power up anyone handy with the perfect spells for the scenario.

Personally, I think it would be a lot of fun, but last time I had a GM try this, he was not at all happy about me whipping out GURPS Magic and saying 'I cast this spell using syntactic magic' whenever we ran into an obstacle(he only had a vague familiarity with the GURPS magic system and had no idea how much more powerful this combination made the Mage I had been planning to play ever since he announced it was a fantasy game. My encyclopedic knowledge of the spells did not help at all. The magic system underwent several revisions in that game, and he has yet to run another game using the base magic system. Of course I *had* warned him that the approach he was taking would make my character very powerful, but he did not realize just how versatile magic would be)

06-05-2013, 03:33 PM	#2
Terwin Join Date: Oct 2009 Location: Plugerville	Re: Combing Spell and Syntactic magic While logically being able to cast all the prerequisites via syntactic magic should be sufficient, this removes a fairly significant limit on mages by letting them have a hand-full of skills to replace all of their pre-reqs. Also, by adding syntactic magic on top of 'normal' magic, you are making magic a fair bit more versatile/powerful. (no need to bother with those occasional use spells or spells that are always cast outside of combat, just take your time with Syntactic for that, allowing you to focus your character points on those combat effective spells without sacrificing general utility) Syntactic magic is also a concern when it comes to niche protection, as there is not much need for a thief when you can just take a little extra time and let your mage power up anyone handy with the perfect spells for the scenario. Personally, I think it would be a lot of fun, but last time I had a GM try this, he was not at all happy about me whipping out GURPS Magic and saying 'I cast this spell using syntactic magic' whenever we ran into an obstacle(he only had a vague familiarity with the GURPS magic system and had no idea how much more powerful this combination made the Mage I had been planning to play ever since he announced it was a fantasy game. My encyclopedic knowledge of the spells did not help at all. The magic system underwent several revisions in that game, and he has yet to run another game using the base magic system. Of course I had warned him that the approach he was taking would make my character very powerful, but he did not realize just how versatile magic would be)