[Basic] Advantage of the Week: Magery

[kirbwarrior]

Originally Posted by RogerBW

A concept which I think John introduced me to which is still important in 4e is the "Mage Number": IQ + Magery - 2, or "the skill level I will get by spending one point in a normal spell". Given that anyone with more than trivial core-rules magic will have lots of spells, it's important to keep that number in mind when designing the character.

I do something very similar but IQM-3 because some spells seem to randomly decide to be VH. If IQM-3 is 15, that also means hard spells get to be 16 and thus very likely to succeed.

Originally Posted by ericthered

IQ 14 is rather high, and I think as time has gone on it has become more acceptable to change the magery limit. DF changes the limit from 3 to 6, and I think a fair number of games follow suit. A mage with a bunch of spells often feels less problematic to a game than a mage who can learn any IQ-based skill on a whim.

I've largely dropped talent caps and that applies to Magery, too. There's a soft limit of 10, but more accurately I just generally don't want players to take attribute + talent above 20. So far it hasn't had any meaningful impact on how good mages are.

[Anaraxes]

Uncapped Magery is particularly useful for concepts that don't call for the mage to be a old, learned loremaster (along the lines of Gandalf and D&D wizards). Magery's cheaper than IQ, so if the concept is just "magically powerful", but not "brainiac", then Magery's a cheaper way to get to high skill, so the builds aren't quite so compelled to toe the IQ 14 + Magery 3 - 2 line.

[kirbwarrior]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

Uncapped Magery is particularly useful for concepts that don't call for the mage to be a old, learned loremaster (along the lines of Gandalf and D&D wizards). Magery's cheaper than IQ, so if the concept is just "magically powerful", but not "brainiac", then Magery's a cheaper way to get to high skill, so the builds aren't quite so compelled to toe the IQ 14 + Magery 3 - 2 line.

It's also why I like allowing for DX-based wizards. And HT-based ones with a UB (I think I use 30? HT-based wizards don't take magery and things that care about magery are dealt with differently).

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by kirbwarrior

I. If IQM-3 is 15, that also means hard spells get to be 16 and thus very likely to succeed.

.

It's not so much a raw success thing as a crit thing. Going from 15 to 16 doubles your number of critical successes and reduces your crit fails by 4x.

[kirbwarrior]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

It's not so much a raw success thing as a crit thing. Going from 15 to 16 doubles your number of critical successes and reduces your crit fails by 4x.

Woops, I meant to talk about criticals. Yes, absolutely this. And considering that TDMs don't apply to Magic, getting there with base skill is super important.

[Ichaft]

Originally Posted by johndallman

[*] These levels add to IQ for the Sense rolls above, and for learning spells. If you have, say, IQ 13 and Magery 3, then your effective IQ for learning spells is 16.[*] For the avoidance of doubt, and because this point confuses some people new to GURPS, that means that Magery adds to your skill levels with spells. For example, if you learn a spell that is an IQ/H skill, as many are, putting one character point into it would give you it at a level of IQ+Magery-2. For our example character with IQ 13 and Magery 3, that spell would be at skill 14.

...

How has Magery been strange in your games?

I've been though an argument with my GM (he is someone who likes this kind of discussion btw) about this magery regarding the FP cost reduction rule when casting spells. Would levels in magery help reaching the milestones of 15, 20, etc, and then reduce FP costs?

He claims it doesn't based on the following:

The rule about FP discounts (basic p. 236) says: If your base skill with a spell ... is 15 or higher, reduce the cost to cast the spell by 1. If you have skill 20 or higher, reduce the cost by 2.

He claims base skill only takes IQ into account and that magery only affects effective skill.

I've seen people around the forum saying it does give you the cost reduction, and we've gone through the rules back and forth already. Would appreciate an answer from someone more experienced than us though.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Ichaft

Would levels in magery help reaching the milestones of 15, 20, etc, and then reduce FP costs?

Yes, they do. The line editor has pronounced on this:

Originally Posted by Kromm

For those who need an official statement: You base magic spells on IQ + Magery as if that sum were your IQ. When any rule says to add an advantage level to an attribute for the purpose of learning a skill of any kind, the meaning is that you use attribute + advantage level in place of the raw attribute for all purposes.

Originally Posted by Ichaft

He claims base skill only takes IQ into account and that magery only affects effective skill.

As GM, he can run it that way if he wants to, but it is not the intention of the rules authors.

[Ichaft]

Originally Posted by johndallman

Yes, they do. The line editor has pronounced on this:




As GM, he can run it that way if he wants to, but it is not the intention of the rules authors.

Of course, I'll always defer to my GM's ruling, and our discussions have been quite healthy.

Thank you so much for the quick reply.

[Eric Funk]

Originally Posted by awesomenessofme1

I'm a lot more inclined to simply uncap Magery rather than introducing something like Quintessence. I'm not too big on Magery caps anyway.

RAW talents controlling powers are capped at L4 (B89) but you can have multiple Gadgets which provide boosts to that Talent (with Gadget limitations) Powers p.107 ...

(e.g., 4 built into the wizard but the Staff of Convenience they have ranked to be able to access 4 more... take away the staff and they only act at 4)


(With that I acknowledge the total cap for a setting can be above 4 (I allow it in the above constriaint) such as the GURPS Dungeon Fantasy setting allows up to Magery 6 total (book 1 p. 20)...

I also allow Special Exercises (Magery) from the limited stlye-granted Perk pool from Magical Styles p.30 to exceed Magery limits (balanced against the other cool things that pool /could/ be used for...) )

[gunday]

Originally Posted by johndallman

Yes, they do. The line editor has pronounced on this:




As GM, he can run it that way if he wants to, but it is not the intention of the rules authors.

So, if my mage has a specialization in a spell school, it means the specialization bonus is added to the base skill to reduce the fatigue cost.

Is that?