DF Artillery Mages Noodling

[Kromm]

Ultimately, the GM must solve the problem that his group actually has.

For instance, I've been GMing GURPS since 1986, and in those 27 years, I've run mostly fantasy (three long-running fantasy campaigns account for 17 years of that time). I've had the player of a wizard PC complain just once that magic was too slow, she felt left out, she had nothing to do on her turn, etc. Over the same time period, I've had all but one player of a wizard complain about being unable to blast the entire enemy force with a big, old-school spell like AD&D's Meteor Swarm. This is probably a direct result of gaming with people born in the late 1960s who started gaming in the 1970s . . . they expect wizards to do one big thing, not the constant bolt-chucking of computer-game magic-users. For my players, then, my proposed advantage would be ideal.

However, a group of people who want constant bolt-chucking wouldn't like that. For them, I'd recommend the other solution offered here, or just using Magical Bolt from Dungeon Fantasy 11. If Magical Bolt seems too weak, change damage from nd(∞) to 2.5nd; it'll cost the same. If the GM doesn't mind a steady stream of zero-FP-cost 4d bolts that can't miss the target, then that's a fair use of 40 points.