Revising GURPS Magic

[Jürgen Hubert]

Originally Posted by GodBeastX

I think I'm fine with Energy Reduction being based on Effective Skill instead of Base Skill.

That might cause some frequent calculation on the order in which the spells are cast - mages would always start with the more costly spells and then proceed to the cheaper ones. This gets worse with the larger Maintenance Penalty I have established.

And I think buffs just having a bigger impact like Shadowrun or similar would be nice.

What Buffs do you think are underpowered at the moment?

[GodBeastX]

Originally Posted by Jürgen Hubert

That might cause some frequent calculation on the order in which the spells are cast - mages would always start with the more costly spells and then proceed to the cheaper ones. This gets worse with the larger Maintenance Penalty I have established.



What Buffs do you think are underpowered at the moment?

I meant impact on casting. In Shadowrun even having ONE buff going can seriously hamper a mage. GURPS is very kind to buffs in Magic which I think is a mistake.

People aren't "Locked in" for buffs. They can switch which ones are active any time and most are a 1 or 2 second cast. Make people switch. To be honest, I'm not even worried about spells being free, I'm more worried about people glowing like christmas trees constantly. I would go so far as to say you get -5 per "On" spell to casting and have to get a technique or something to buy it off if you want a mage who "Buffs" constantly so at least you can spend a bunch of points to get your favorite buffs.

[The Colonel]

I'd be tempted to re-name Thaumatology as Magic and re-skin the current Magic as the GURPS basic spell list or something.

If you want a book that deals with magic in a game to GURPS standards, it's Thaumatology, not Magic.

[Anthony]

I would generally prefer to work energy and casting modifiers in the same way as damage bonuses from brawling, karate, etc -- e.g. "if you have a skill of at least IQ+Magery, -1 fp cost". That means high IQ and magery don't help at all for costs, they're only relevant for casting probability.

You could also extract them into advantages.

[Polydamas]

My experience is mostly with GURPS (3e) Magic and I don't remember a lot of problems with the mechanics other than the way they encourage building marble palaces one Create Earth and Earth to Stone at a time.

I still think that David Pulver's advise on how to reorganize the spell list in an old post is worth mining (he suggested finding a hundred or so spells which work in most settings with magic, then creating lists of the 'legend' effects, the 'substitute psi' effects, the 'modern genre fantasy' effects, etc. which people can chose one or two of and add to the core list when creating a setting in a hurry).

Thaumatology, Mysteries, and Powers have some useful generic advice about types of spells which break common plots. I am told that DF 1 has more.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Jürgen Hubert

That might cause some frequent calculation on the order in which the spells are cast - mages would always start with the more costly spells and then proceed to the cheaper ones. This gets worse with the larger Maintenance Penalty I have established.

That is not metagaming. Rather, the characters who live in the world understand magic to such an extent that they know that that's the most efficient and safest order in which to cast a series of spells.

[Jürgen Hubert]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

That is not metagaming. Rather, the characters who live in the world understand magic to such an extent that they know that that's the most efficient and safest order in which to cast a series of spells.

While this is true, it also drags the game down - which I want to avoid.

[Anthony]

Honestly, the easiest option is to just toss fatigue cost reduction for skill completely, and if there's spells that you really want people to be able to maintain for long periods (e.g. Night Vision) bump their duration from Minute to Hour.

[brianfb]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Honestly, the easiest option is to just toss fatigue cost reduction for skill completely, and if there's spells that you really want people to be able to maintain for long periods (e.g. Night Vision) bump their duration from Minute to Hour.

That probably makes sense for 500 point characters, but a 100 point mage gets his one main combat spell to 15 so he can do 1 die attacks for free even after he has cast two spells and burned through his fatigue. Without this mechanic 100 point wizards would be using crossbows, at that point what's the fun in being a wizard?

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by brianfb

That probably makes sense for 500 point characters, but a 100 point mage gets his one main combat spell to 15 so he can do 1 die attacks for free even after he has cast two spells and burned through his fatigue. Without this mechanic 100 point wizards would be using crossbows, at that point what's the fun in being a wizard?

Change missile and jet spells to cost 2/minute, and you can use them at will for the duration. Or change the cost from (dice) to (dice-1, minimum 1).