What are the best magical systems in GURPS?

[Sorenant]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Did you know that there's a Meta-Spell College spell called "Penetrating spell" (Magic p.123) that will let you throw your Fireball right through that powered armor?

Sometimes you don't need to modify things you just need to do a little more work with what's already there.

You'd likely need the "Ignore DR" effect, which costs 10 FP on top of the FP cost of the damaging spell you're going to cast. Then you'd also have to spend several seconds casting them one after the other in order to cast. Unless you have a lot of FP to burn and high enough skill level to reduce the spell casting time*, you're not going to get another chance if you miss.
With Sorcery the IA would cost more, but it takes only a second to cast and 1 FP (or less if using alternative rituals).
You could modify the Penetrating Spell spell by reducing FP cost and/or time to cast, or perhaps using Adjustable Spells to apply AD/Malediction directly on the damaging spell, but either way you'd already breaking the premise of 'not modifying anything'.

*You could say there's some sort of UT mana battery that can provide the mage with hundreds of FP and/or magic amplifiers that grants many levels of Magery, but it would open another can of worms by breaking the "economics" of Magic. Again, you could prohibit some spells and adjust others, but that would be an even larger project.

Edit: By the way, my disinterest for Basic Magic stems from other reasons, not it's effectiveness. Technically you could easily compete with UT soldiers by casting Reverse Missile.