[RPM] High Energy Cost spells (Example Body of Shadow)

[Langy]

Originally Posted by ronalmb

I'm going to have to disagree with that assessment. I am pretty positive I've read in several places that a skill of 13 is considered a professional level. I'm also pretty positive that i've read somewhere that skills of around 25 are pretty grandmasterish.

Did I imagine reading this under skills somewhere?

Edit: 13 is off by 1 depending on interpretation of what "expert" means vs. "professional", but B172 has a panel that discusses what skill levels can be comparable to. Notably a 14 is an expert. Masterful levels is 20 to 25. I don't believe im far off when i consider a high end professional being around 15 -- i suppose he should be closer to 18... but 26 effective skill level is pretty high for me, especially right out of the gate for character creation. I'm gonna have to just write that off as differences in our power levels for starting games.

Even a Path Skill-18 character is going to have a hard time not harming himself on the Body of Shadow spell. Your character with his effective skill of 26 is going to be around a safe threshold of 125, so granted he's less likely to blow himself up.. (Still can tho!). I'm really positive I don't want all my mages running around with Effective Skill 26 just to be able to do that kind of magic for 10 minutes.

Base skill of 15 is basic professional-level for some particular, specialized occupations - high-end RPM magery happens to be one of them; this is similar to regular Magic, as you need skill 15 to be considered a professional caster in the basic GURPS Magic system as well since so many things depend upon hitting that breakpoint. Note that this isn't effective skill - that's base skill level. A character with a base skill of 15 can still cast as if they have skill 25 relatively easily in RPM - get a +2 charm creation kit, +6 grimoire, and +2 from ritual mastery or a power source and they're already hitting 25.

Note that a 350-energy spell is probably the most difficult spell any caster in your campaign is likely to attempt aside from 'Ending the World' type spells. Thus, you don't need all your casters to be able to cast it - only the grandmasters should.

EDIT: Ah, you're running a DF/other low-TL game? Then yeah, you may have issues with the grimoire being out of your price range. I'm playing in a TL8 Monster Hunters game, and my character has Comfortable wealth, so he has $40,000 to spend - $3500 for a +6 Grimoire is very doable. If you are starting with characters at 250 CP, then you'll probably have lower skill, too (MH starts at 400 points) - but that just means you need that +2 charm kit (which you'll want to buy no matter how much it costs), +2 from Ritual Mastery, a further +1 from Symbol Drawing or Ritual Magic (or +2 from both), and a final +4 from a place of power.