Lesser and Greater Magic

[Silverblade]

I've always wanted to have a Magic System that included "lesser" and "greater" magic. At the low end, there's "crude" magic - tiring, limited, can only affect small parts of the world, and so on. At the high end, there'd be the spells that can affect the population of a planet, where the mage coud make everyone on it forget one secret (except maybe Aunt May... oh, and... and Mary Jane!), put a super buff on the entire team, and so on.

Starting Mages would use the GURPS Standard (Ritual) Magic - no large effects possible, but fast and easily understandable from a (new) player's perspective: You roll against skill, pay energy, and the spell geos off (or not).

As the campaign (and maybe the players?) mature(s) wizards could increasingly cast more powerful spells (especially ones from other published GURPS Magic systems). And ideally, I'd want it to be tied to one advantage: Magery. This would preferably be a campaign that would ideally take years.

Here are may ideas so far:

Starting Magery would be based on GURPS Ritual Magic (Core skill - College skill - Technique as in GURPS Magic p. 200 and GURPS Thaumatology p. 72)

Magery levels cost would be altered though: Each level of magery would cost 10 CP more than the last one, Meaning 10 Points for level 1, 20 points for level 2 (Total: 30), 30 points for level 3 (Total: 60) up to Magery 10 for 100 points (Total cost: 550 points)

Magery would still add to the Core and College skill as usual. I'd alter the Colleges to something akin to Super Colleges - which gets important later -> "Dividing up the Universe" for Realm/Word-Noun Magic.

Starting at Magery 2-3, mages could get access to "Threshold limited magic" (Thaumatology p. 76) with "Variable Energy Access" - but with slight changes: If a mage wants to cast a standard spell he can pay for it using his threshold instead of fatigue/Energy Reserve, but this is ineffective - every time he pays for standard spells, he adds and additional1d6 (2d6? 3d6?) to the full spell cost to his tally, making this a bit of a gamble. He just doesn't understand the greater magical secrets yet.

Also, mages could use (some of?) the points they paid above the standard cost for something akin to GURPS Thaumatology: Sorcery, where the basic magery talent replaces Sorcery Talent. Especially for "Hardcore improvisations". (So a Mage with Magery 5 [150] could use 100 poits to improvise Sorcery "spells")

Then, reaching the higher levels (Maybe starting at 5, maybe even at Magery 1 for the weakest "verbs") Magery would stand in for Realm levels (Thaumatology p. 188). The cost for a Realm suggested there is 60, x5 if it's only a single realm, which would cost 300. In a 9 Realm setting (without weaknesses) it would be 9 times 1 for nine realms (without weaknesses) times the amount of levels (somewhere from 3 to 6 is suggested). Let's assume a 5 level realm (which IMO fits nicely with the 10 verbs of Syntactic Magic (although that's Verb-Noun)): (60/5 levels) = 12 points per level. So full power in all realms would be ~540 points. Total cost (above) for magery 10 would be 550 points. That'd fit nicely with the 9 colleges above, which would be treated as "Realms" at the higher levels.

Now, maybe with each level of magery, the mage also learns a verb - starting with "Sense" at Magery 1 (or starting with 2 verbs per level at Magery 5? Like "Sense" and "Communicate") and at Magery 9 and 10 they'd learn things like "Transform" and "Transcend" or so. So he'd use Syntactic Magic: somewhat based off Realms. Realm "Verbs" come from the Magery advantage, the "nouns" come from the colleges above.

When casting such "epic" syntactic spells though, Magery would not add to College skills, but cap them at 12+Magery, because additionally, at the higher levels (say 7+ or even 9+) "Extended Workings" (Thaumatology p. 184) become available with cumulative Margin of Success. The first casting roll would be "free", but every additional roll would add the working's full cost to the wizard's tally - he could not pay those spells from personal reserves, only with the running tally. So "working miracles" would be chancy, but potentially very (extremely!) powerful.

These "Epic Spells" often make the wizards in fiction somewhat "lesser" or "weaker" (they give something of themselves) - so maybe, depending on the duration the wizard rolled with his MoS (or even disregarding duration altogether) he adds these costs to his tally - but the amount he spent from his tally does not recover as long as he maintains it. He'd not pay additional energy, the spell just doesn't give back what he took from the mage, as long as he keeps it "on".

That way, he could create a "Champion" (which gives someone the Strength of Heracles, the Wisdom of Salomon, The Speed of Hermes...) or create a huge floating fortress with a perpetually burning wall of fire around it, that could be in the world for thousands of years, turn a prince into a monster and his entire household into furniture and kitchenware, but he'd only recover the tally points spent if he (somehow?) ends the spell, or a condition is fulfilled. Maybe this even endures after the mage dies - he paid for this "dent" into reality. Of course, a wizard of equal power could use similar magic to end the effect....

Thoughts?