Steampunk Magic Alternate

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by tshiggins

In third edition, GURPS: Technomancer added some spells to the basic magic system to allow magical enhancement of or interaction with technological devices. Most of those spells now appear in G: Magic and G:Biotech for 4e, so I would take a look at those to see what you can use.

The basic GURPS skill-based magic system draws some criticism on these boards, and some of it is deserved. However, if you want a magic system "out of the box" that works reasonably well, and actually has spells that does much of what you want, then you might to review it, first.

It can also be altered in many ways. If you don't want people throwing fireballs you can add ceremonial Only and you can't cast a spell in less than 10 seconds.

You can also just kick out any spells you don't want.

Gurps Magic also has many things useful to Steampunk such as a metal that gleams like brass but is 3x stronger (Orichalcum) or magically treated coal that burns 10 x as long (Essential Fuel).

Self-activating clockwork could be as simple as the Dancing Object spell/enchntment and Thaumatology has rules for spirit-assisted magic and "spiritual distortion" resulting from using magic.

Gurps Magic is so big and has been around fro so long that there are pretty good chances that it already has a selection of spells and a variant that does what you want.