[Thaumatology] Powers as (Path/Book) Magic

[dataweaver]

Originally Posted by oneofmanynameless

I can certainly get behind that. I do plenty of those myself.

It seems like the types of powers that will be the most difficult to handle with this type of system would be something like Super Strength, or the abilities of the Biomorph template from GURPS Supers. E.G. Abilities that are always on, as opposed to abilities like those of the Blaster Template from GURPS Supers which all require activation. This will also extend to powers that are deeply interconnected with racial templates, like the abilities of a werewolf, vampire, or fire elemental. Anything truly innate and supposedly second nature will feel awkward in a system that is entirely about using skills to activate effects. You certainly can train innate abilities (hiking and running and lifting are all skills for improving innate capacities humans have) but those skills tend to work very differently from a Path or Book.

Agreed. A hybrid system where something skill-like is used for active abilities while something advantage-like is used for passive abilities might be reasonable.

Although you might be surprised at how blurry that line can be. I just mentioned Wonder Woman as an ideal candidate for this treatment; in particular, her feats is super-strength are essentially skill-based. In fact, there are Cinematic Combat Skills that let you magnify your strength for one feat. Likewise, the Superboy introduced in the 1990s had “tactile telekinesis”, which he used to simulate, among other things, Superman's bulletproofing; there was one scene early on, before he realized the n nature of his powers, when he woke up in a hospital as a nurse was about to jab a needle into him. When it broke instead of breaking his skin, he smirked at the nurse's confusion — until the nurse pointed out that she was confused because they hadn't had any difficulty hooking him up to an IV earlier while he was unconscious, and Superboy freaked out when he saw a needle already sticking into his arm.

So even super-strength and invulnerability can technically be skill-based.

I'm not sure that Path/Book would necessarily be the best way to go for this sort of thing, as the defining feature of Path/Book Magic are the Effect-Shaping or Energy-Accumulating rules that are designed to make casting take a long time and require a lot of prep. Regular Magic spells might be a better fit; possibly with Ritual Magic if you prefer to learn Colleges of spells as skills and individual spells as techniques, instead of learning individual spells as skills.