[DF] Spellcasting in Heavy Gear

[ericthered]

I'm looking at just how heavily protected with gear a DF Spellcaster can be. I'm noticing that shield is listed on most of their templates as an option. I'm not sure how that works skill levels that require gestures though. You need at least one free, and presumably you want to hold a weapon as well.

• Does the power Item need to be held in order to be used? or is it enough to be touching it, or wearing it (say, as a ring or necklace)?
• Can you use a suit of armor as a power item? armor is one of the more expensive things a delver might want to purchase, and it doesn't take up any hands.
• Can you "Gesture" with a weapon? What if that weapon is a power item? Using it as a sort of "wand" would seem to bypass a lot of these issues, but I'm not sure if its keeping to the rules or not.

I'm really not that good with the standard magic system. Thanks in advance.

[Ulzgoroth]

I wouldn't so firmly presume that that a wizard with a shield will insist on holding another weapon.

Moreover if they don't use a buckler (in GURPS terminology) the shield is strapped to their arm without occupying the hand. I'm not sure whether this is addressed but it plausibly would allow moderate casting gestures.

EDIT: A DF wizard will often have skill 15+ with spells, in which case the ritual requirement (Magic p8) is down to "speak a word or two or make a a small gesture (a couple of fingers are enough)", which means that they don't need hands free and if they want to cast silently any empty hand should definitely be free enough. (A shield hand probably is free enough for a full "gesture" as required for skill 10-14, but there's more room to question there.)

[InexplicableVic]

Originally Posted by ericthered

I'm looking at just how heavily protected with gear a DF Spellcaster can be. I'm noticing that shield is listed on most of their templates as an option. I'm not sure how that works skill levels that require gestures though. You need at least one free, and presumably you want to hold a weapon as well.

• Does the power Item need to be held in order to be used? or is it enough to be touching it, or wearing it (say, as a ring or necklace)?
• Can you use a suit of armor as a power item? armor is one of the more expensive things a delver might want to purchase, and it doesn't take up any hands.
• Can you "Gesture" with a weapon? What if that weapon is a power item? Using it as a sort of "wand" would seem to bypass a lot of these issues, but I'm not sure if its keeping to the rules or not.

I'm really not that good with the standard magic system. Thanks in advance.

Power items can be one personal possession (that you have with you): rings of any sort (ear, nose, eyebrow, nipple), scarves, necklaces, holy symbols when held, staves or rods/wands, etc. Standard DF allows it to be a suit of armor as well. See GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 1: Adventurers (DF1:28): "In dungeon fantasy, any spellcaster may instead designate one thing he owns – holy symbol, staff, etc. – as his “power item.”). Some groups restrict this to anything but weapons or armor (save staffs, rods, and wands), but that is house-ruled.

DFRPG is more explicit: "You may pick any solid, unliving object (no pets!) you own. Though you can’t designate multiple power items, you can specify a suit of armor, pair of boots, or other matching set made by the same craftsman – but if so, you must carry it all to use your item, and will be without its FP if anything goes missing. You’re free to pick a single piece (right gauntlet, one earring, etc.) if this worries you." Adventurers (DFA115). So keep that in mind--if you have a suit of armor as a power item, and one of your gauntlets gets destroyed by an ooze, or slime, or whatever (your hand gets cut off), you're Power Item is no longer available.

I do not think you can gesture with a wand or staff, but as the second post notes, just about every spell caster starts off with Skill 15, which requires either a gesture or a word. It's not going to come up a lot.

This Peter Dell'Orto post on Dungeon Fantastic explains wizards often using shields and a short staff/wand instead of staves. And apparently--although I never knew this, embarrassingly--you can throw a missile spell (or use a jet or ray) so long as you have "as at least one unrestrained hand, which needn’t be empty." Adventurers (DFA:79); see also GURPS Basic Set: Characters (B:201).

[ericthered]

The skill 15 is a great observation... but I'm looking most especially at a 125 point apprentice right now.

Confirmation that the armor can be used as a Power Item is good though.

Weirdly, I'd have thought that a shield hand was more "restrained" than a hand waving a stick around, but I suppose its a good angle to look at.

[Dalin]

Originally Posted by Spartan506

you can throw a missile spell (or use a jet or ray) so long as you have "as at least one unrestrained hand, which needn’t be empty." Adventurers (DFA:79); see also GURPS Basic Set: Characters (B:201).

Geez, I missed that too. I've always assumed the hand needed to be empty. Good catch!

[Kalzazz]

I'd always assumed that wands were great for gesturing with, after all Harry Potter wizards do so. Flick and swish

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by ericthered

Weirdly, I'd have thought that a shield hand was more "restrained" than a hand waving a stick around, but I suppose its a good angle to look at.

A shield hand is empty, and can be used to hold things. The arm is sufficiently occupied that you can't easily wield a weapon in addition to the shield, but if a 'gesture' is a hand movement it should be fine.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Kalzazz

I'd always assumed that wands were great for gesturing with, after all Harry Potter wizards do so. Flick and swish

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

A shield hand is empty, and can be used to hold things. The arm is sufficiently occupied that you can't easily wield a weapon in addition to the shield, but if a 'gesture' is a hand movement it should be fine.

It seems you have one free arm and one free hand, they're just not on the same side of the body.

[Polkageist]

Does the power Item need to be held in order to be used? or is it enough to be touching it, or wearing it (say, as a ring or necklace)?

- Worn or wielded, i.e. "equipped" in a manner appropriate to the item. Earring's in the ear, hat is on the head, etc.

Can you use a suit of armor as a power item? armor is one of the more expensive things a delver might want to purchase, and it doesn't take up any hands.

- Yep, asked and answered. As a personal note, as long as the majority of the armor is present I'd give it to them, it gets a little gotcha-gamey to annoy them with a missing lanyard.

Can you "Gesture" with a weapon? What if that weapon is a power item? Using it as a sort of "wand" would seem to bypass a lot of these issues, but I'm not sure if its keeping to the rules or not.

- If it's a "wizardly tool" i.e. a staff/wand/rod enchanted with the wizard staff spell then it channels magical energy and does the job. Having said staff also be the power item is just fine, but does put all the magical power eggs in one staff-shaped basket. That's really the drawback.
Missile spells I think might get a little finicky, but launching them doesn't call for any particular physical action, all the spell calls for is an "empty hand" to hold the spell. I suspect that you can be in whatever posture you want (unlike a bow, say) and when you launch the magical missile it flies off on its own, as accurately as your attack role dictates.

[Plane]

Originally Posted by ericthered

noticing that shield is listed on most of their templates as an option
not sure how that works skill levels that require gestures though

B237 requires "both hands" for the "elaborate ritual movements" if skill 9 or less

Skill 15-19 defines "couple of fingers" as adequate for "small gesture" so I imagine the basic "gesture" for skill 10-14 requires something a bit more, such as an entire hand, but perhaps not both.

Come to think of it "gesture" doesn't specify hand at all, so a step (kick?) or maybe even nodding could work? Maybe even sticking out your tongue for 15-19's "small gesture" (tongue to head as fingers to hand?) could work in lieu of speaking words? Not for 10-14 though as a tongue-stick would preclude the necessary verbal component.

Breathe Fire (M76) or Radiation (M182) or Steam (M193) Spit Acid (M192) gets worthy mention here as being an example of "lip and tongue" subbing for "hands". As it doesn't preclude the incantation requirements, doing that simulaneously is implied to involve very exaggerated mouth-opening Like This whereas normal spellcasting you could just slightly open your mouth, whereas doing the "-2" subtle version probably borders on ventriloquism.

For the "Breathe" spells, if it's -4 to omit that (like -4 for both hands) I could see maybe "just lip" or "just tongue" versions being merely -2 (-4+2). You could also maybe do -3 (-4+1) for "subtler" versions of lip-only (curl one lip, not two?) or tongue-only (half-mast) or -2 for "subtle plus subtle" versions of both components, or -1 for "full+subtle" or "subtle+full" combos.

Subtle lip/tongue/hand gestures could maybe function something akin to Low Signature giving a -5 penalty for people making perception rolls to notice your spellcasting movements, I imagine something similar for the -2 version of quiet barely-audible spoken words too.

Lightning Stare (M198) is even more interesting: "typical ritual for this spell uses facial motions rather than hand gestures"

For balance (this being crazy good if too subtle) to offset the basic -4 for "no hands" we see in other spells, I could see giving +1 for each of eyes/nose/jaw/neck stuff which you opt to do, to a max of +4.

Maybe I'm wandering too far off from M9's "Certain spells always require a specific ritual. Such requirements override the rules above" though. I guess I figure where there's vagueness and 2pt jumps, partial effects giving -1 or +1 is cool complexity.

"Optional Rule: Alternate Magic Rituals" from pg 9 of GURPS Magic gives some more flexibility, where anyone can cast spells with full ritual or no ritual: you get penalties as you omit components. Could alternately look at that like an inherent -10 penalty to casting which can be offset by +4 in hand stuff, +4 in voice stuff and +2 in feet stuff

I could see breaking that down further, like halfway to +2 for both feet maybe you could get +1 for just one foot?

Or instead of +2 for a hand, maybe just +1 for moving the arm without being able to do subtle hand/finger stuff?

Originally Posted by ericthered

You need at least one free, and presumably you want to hold a weapon as well.

I kind wonder if a hand actually needs to be "free" to do "hand movements".

You do after all move your hands (and even your fingers) when twirling a magic wand around, for example. Were skill 9 casters intended to be unable to make use of Staff (enchantment) on a wand?

Melee Spells charge wands/staffs as if they were hands (and a "Wand of Fireball" shoots the ball out of the wand's tip, NOT the hand), so maybe if "held objects" normally interfered with required hand movements, "wand movements" could substitute exclusively when the staff enchantment is active?

B67 "Musical" limitation for Magery requires an instrument, which often requires either hands or mouth to use. Are musical mages intended to be unable to cast spells below skill 15 unless they're masters of Knee Cymbals, a huge disadvantage for drummers (can't do hand gestures) or mounted-harominicists (can't do spoken words) or flutists (can't do either) ?

I always figured the -50 for musical was sort of like the -40 for Song with an extra -10 for 'requires material components', ala "I need to hold some kind of stick to use my magery but the staff doesn't need the Staff enchantment" which I believe is defined as -10% somewhere.

Song could probably be seen as "I need to make noise to do my casting". A maybe 0% deviation from this with woodwinds is that Cannot Speak would not prevent it (can Mute use woodwind? How do you blow on a clarinet if you can't vocalize at all?) whereas I think Cannot Speak causes problems with normal casting and song casting since they use words.

This is another "partial degrees" thing I think we might optionally take: if it's -4 for "no incantation" and -2 for "softly spoken" then maybe we could meet in the middle at -3 for "non-verbal audio incantation" such as Cannot Speak moaning/grunting, humming a song, hitting a triangle, crashing some cymbals...

It occurs to me that with complex instruments that hitting notes is like a form of language (it even has a written form) so that could meet complexity requirements. Maybe if you get a basic +1 for making noise, to upgrade that to the +2 for softly spoken you should need to pass a "make your sounds into a language" roll as appropriate?

3e had language skills we could've used for that, 4e abandoned that so I guess we might use some kind of unresisted social influence skill like Public Speaking.

Basically when you learn a spell you would define which "language" the "incantation" was in, whether that's English, Old Norse, or Music Notes.

I could even see an option where we could allow non-audio stuff to fill in: like the (~grunty~) Gestures (+1) or (verby) Sign Language (+2) to represent complex languagey-finger movements (as a step beyond merely vague "hand" movements which give a +2)

This wouldn't be an option if you're holding an instrument, but then you could use instrument skills to sub in: +2 for complex skilled finger-dependent noise like piano and +1 for simple stuff like triangle/knee-cymbals

A shield strapped to your arm shouldn't impede basic +1 stuff if you allow some partial benefit from non-hand arm movements. As for the full +2 from arm+hand, holding a strap should probably impede that but maybe not make it impossible. I think you can after all hold a small knife in the hand holding a shield strap, but since there's a -2 for two things at once, if you were using the idea of skill rolls to get the Alternate Magic Rituals bonuses (as perceived from buying off the max -10 penalty in reverse) you could then penalize those rolls.

Gestures seem to be taken for granted as part of your IQ check (there's no DX skill roll to take the requires steps/gestured in standard magic) so if that were done I could see it either being a basic +10 (failure is rare) or treat it like mandatory "complementary skills" (Social Engineering 21) where success gives an extra +1 bonus (+2 crit success) while fails give -1 (-2 if crit) similar to Acrobatic Dodge option.

Kind of like if you made Acrobatic Dodge mandatory instead of an option: dodges would be less of an overused go-to for non-acrobats since you'd generally be failing them.

As there is no "zero" modifier in a mandatory situation (zero normally is just not opting to use Acrobatic Dodge or Complimentary skills) I could see making it 0 mod if MoS/MoF were 1 or less.

Originally Posted by ericthered

Does the power Item need to be held in order to be used? or is it enough to be touching it, or wearing it (say, as a ring or necklace)?

DF1p28 compared Power Items to Powerstone and Manastone so probably whatever the policy is for those?

M69 only says "touching a powerstone" not "holding a powerstone" so I think as long as it is "touching you would be fine.

Of course it doesn't specify if this is "contact agent" type touch (stone on flesh, under shirt) or more of a broad "it's okay if I just touch your clothes" type thing, like if you had Toxic Attack (Melee -35%) you could touch someone's gauntlet and even though the gauntlet is not biological, you hurt the biological wearer.

There's actually three tiers on PU8p17, the first -20% touch works up to "through light-clothing", the -20% reversed doesn't care about target's armor but "cannot wear even light gloves" for user, while the -30% is skin-to-skin.

Originally Posted by ericthered

Can you use a suit of armor as a power item? armor is one of the more expensive things a delver might want to purchase, and it doesn't take up any hands.

I don't see why not, but if you're doing that I'd say the "Damage to Armor" optional rules from Low-Tech are a must: the advantage of an otherwise-very-useful expensive object being the target of your Powerstone would be offset by your powerstone being a target of destruction for purposes other than someone trying to destroy a powerstone.

Originally Posted by ericthered

Can you "Gesture" with a weapon?

The "free" hands requirement seems to rule this out for skill 9 or less.

If it were allowed I wonder if maybe using the -2 to skill for "Armed Grappling" would work? Or "doing two things at once" if you're both trying to keep a penny palmed and twiddle 2 fingers for a "small gestures" 10-15 spell?

Originally Posted by ericthered

What if that weapon is a power item? Using it as a sort of "wand" would seem to bypass a lot of these issues, but I'm not sure if its keeping to the rules or not.

If it's an enchanted item which actually cast a spell using it's Power then per M19's "Using Magic Items":

There is no ritual. The user just wills the item to work.

If it's just an FP repository though, then I think standard requirements would apply.