[Magic-as-Powers] Power Stunts as Spells

[Prince Charon]

Originally Posted by Prince Charon

4. Several core advantages, but one skill. This is kind of an odd one, but I do have an example: You have several gods or divine servitor-spirits as Contacts, each of whom is helpful in a different area (they mostly give information, but you can by RAW get small favors from your Contacts - 'small' being from the Contact's viewpoint - and you can bribe them to be more helpful), and the core skill for all your effects is Religious Ritual. This kind of fits with how the Romans seem to have done their religion, and could be described as a lower-power (or more subtle) version of Powers: Divine Favor.

It occurs to me that the Decanic Natures of Hermetic Astrology (GURPS Thaumatology pp248-252) work quite well for this. The book gives a list of magical properties for each decan (and thus what sorts of information or small favors are available), times (sort of) and places of power, and items that might be used as bribes (or just could help getting a spirit's attention), as well as describing the chief spirit (aethyr) of the decan, which could help in describing lesser spirits of the same decan. Depending on the GM, the core skill could be Fortune-Telling (Hermetic Astrology) or Ritual Magic (Hermetic Astrology), though given the complexity involved, I suggest the latter. For individual Decanic Contacts, I suggest using the following template to start with:

'<decan> Contact (<decanic spirit>; Skill 12; 9 or less; Somewhat Reliable; Special Abilities (Magic), +50%; Highly Accessible, +50%; Magic, -10%) [2]'

I thought about using Spirit as the power modifier, but decided that Magic was more in keeping with the description in the book. Higher effective skills would of course represent more powerful spirits, though whether Skill 21 means that you have the Aethyr directly as a Contact, or just a very high-ranking servitor thereof, depends on what sort of assumptions the GM is making. Higher Reliability and Frequency of Appearance probably means that you have a better relationship with the spirit, much like any other Contact. Depending on the GM, you might be able to have 'decanic spirits' in general as a Contact group, or you might only have a subset of them, such as the spirits of an astrological planet or a zodiac sign (Thaumatology p247 has a couple of useful tables for those), or a Sephiroth (pp253-254).


Thoughts?

[Prince Charon]

Another 'Mystical Contact' idea, but a more powerful one:
Divine Contact (Loki; Trickster-god; Skill 19; 15 or less; Unreliable (trickster); Special Abilities (Norse god), +50%; Highly Accessible, +50%; Divine, -10%) [11]

For some reason, Loki makes himself available to answer your questions and help you in other small-to-him ways very frequently. However, he's still Loki Liesmith, Norse Trickster-god (or a powerful spirit pretending to be Loki, depending on the GM), so his answers aren't always as truthful as you'd like, and his favors can have unexpected side-effects (though either way, you do often learn things that you needed to know, even if they weren't quite what you wanted to know). For the skill to base power techniques off of, I suggest some version of either Religious Ritual (Nordic), Ritual Magic (Seidr), or Symbol Drawing (Futhark).

Changing a couple of names could fairly easily adjust the existing stats for other trickster-gods, like Coyote or Anansi (though clearly the core skill would also need to be different). Non-divine (or not officially divine) tricksters like kitsune or faeries would require only a little more change, though the skill levels would usually be lower.


On another note, I've been thinking about how alternate abilities and power stunts would work (fluffwise, not mechanically) when you failed the availability roll for your Contact, or for all your paranormal Contacts. I mean, the GM could say that failing the availability roll means that nothing based on that advantage works, full stop; that's remarkably inconvenient, but if you know it at character creation, you can design your character to compensate (maybe you have some other powers or Gadgets, or are also the party Face, or have a really high Crossbow skill, or something). There are other options, though; perhaps there's some energy that you use to contact your Contact, and it can be repurposed. Perhaps the alternate abilities are 'pre-approved favors' like the Learned Prayers from Powers: Divine Favor. Perhaps other spirits have heard of you from your Contact, and will offer a quick favor in return for the FP you spend on the power stunt. Also, there's probably a few options that I haven't thought of.

[dataweaver]

This sort of thing seems to be less about Power Stunts as Spells and more about good choices for core Abilities when designing a Magic as Powers system that's heavy on Alternate Abilities (such as Divine Favor and Sorcery) — though given that there's a close tie between Using Abilities At Default and Alternate Abilities, that's not as big of a difference as you might think.

Incidentally: one variation of the “Contact as core” idea would be that that style of magic could be made available on a one-time basis by buying the Contact as a Favor. Alternate Abilities for a Favor wouldn't make sense; but Using Abilities At Default could: basically, you'd end up adding a point cost to each use of the Favor-based magic, in addition to the energy cost and skill penalty for Stunts that don't quite align with the rules for Contacts. If it's allowed, the improvised Stunt should be based on the full cost of the Contact, not the reduced cost of the Favor.

This is unlikely to be costeffective, given how scarce character points are and how expensive it is to acquire a ready supply of impulse points; but it is a possibility.

That said, it could be made more palatable by allowing the supplicant to “pay for” the Favor on the spot by taking a similarly one-use Duty: “I will do this favor for you; but in exchange, you must do something for me.” Social Engineering: Keeping in Contact suggests that Contacts and Duties can be bundled together into a single Meta-Trait, with both the Contact and the Duty taking the −50% Reciprocal limitation. Buy that Meta-Trait at ⅕ cost as a Favor, and I'd say that the bundled Duty sticks around for only one use, too.

Using Abilities At Default would still be based on the full cost of the Contact, not the bundled cost of the Meta-Trait or the reduced cost of taking it as a Favor. Note that an appropriate Duty can offset as much as 25 points of the Contact's cost before applying Reciprocal, meaning that you could manage a 35-point Contact as a 5-point bundle, or a 1 impulse point Deal. If you're willing to live with an Involuntary and Extremely Hazardous Duty that the GM can call in at will. If you go with a standard Duty (hazardous, but not extremely so, and not one that you can be compelled to perform), this drops to a 25-point Contact.

---

Also: where Using Abilities At Default is concerned, you might consider a house rule where the penalty is −1 per ⅛ of the Ability's point cost, instead of the current −2 per 25%. If you do that, and you implement another house rule that lets you apply the cost of the Technique toward the cost of the equivalent Alternate Ability (not applicable in the Favors-based model that I just described), there's a “break even point” where the cost of buying off the Technique penalty equals the cost of buying the equivalent Alternate Ability:

−1: ⅛×10 point core=1¼ point Alternate Ability [2 points]
−2: ¼×15 point core=3¾ point Alternate Ability [3 points]
−3: ⅜×20 point core=7½ point Alternate Ability [4 points]
−4: ½×25 point core=12½ point Alternate Ability [5 points]
−5: ⅝×30 point core=18¾ point Alternate Ability [6 points]
−6: ¾×35 point core=26¼ point Alternate Ability [7 points]
−7: ⅞×40 point core=35 point Alternate Ability [8 points]
−8: 1×45 point core=45 point Alternate Ability [9 points]

[Prince Charon]

Originally Posted by dataweaver

<SNIP>

I feel like I should say something more detailed than 'this is interesting and helpful, thank you,' but anything more that I can think of would just be saying that with more words.


On another note, something else that I've been thinking about (too many ideas):
Necromancer's Staff (Elemental Contact: Purple Elemental; Skill 12; Constantly available; Completely Reliable; Special Abilities, +50%; Highly Accessible, +50%; Magic, -10%; Breakable: DR 10, -10%; SM 0, -25%; Can be stolen by ST (Will not immediately work for thief), -15%) [10]

In appearance, this tool is an ebony staff shod in bronze and topped by a silver knob shaped like a human skull, with eyes of an unknown purple stone that gleams eerily in moonlight or firelight. In combat, unless the user makes a specific request, the spirit will default to making the user luckier and opponents unlucky (roll the elemental's skill of 12, and either add MoS to the user's Staff/Polearm skill or subtract it from the opponent's defense rolls as the GM thinks that the spirit feels is appropriate) - though even without magic, you can still give someone a good thwacking (sw+3) with six feet of metal-shod hardwood. The core skill for dealing with Chromatic Elementals (at least in this case) is Ritual Magic (Chromaturgy).

The current owner of this staff goes by 'Jozef the Necromancer.' I haven't does a full write-up on him, but he's a fairly intelligent and curious man who is in better health and fitness than his loose robes and eccentric behavior would have you believe. Skillwise, he has a high skills in Ritual Magic (Chromaturgy), Traps, and various other mental skills; he has only a few good physical skills: Escape, Running, Staff, and Stealth.

He also has a few spirit-Contacts that are not directly connected to the staff (though he did meet them as a result of knowledge the spirit gave him):
Elemental Contact (Red Elemental; Skill 15; 9 or less; Completely Reliable; Special Abilities, +50%; Highly Accessible, +50%; Magic, -10%) [11]
Elemental Contact (Yellow Elemental; Skill 19; 6 or less; Unreliable (speaks in riddles); Special Abilities, +50%; Highly Accessible, +50%; Magic, -10%) [2]
Elemental Contact (Indigo Elemental; Skill 15; 12 or less; Somewhat Reliable; Special Abilities, +50%; Highly Accessible, +50%; Magic, -10%) [8]
Elemental Contact (Purple Elemental; Skill 18; 15 or less; Usually Reliable; Special Abilities, +50%; Highly Accessible, +50%; Magic, -10%) [34]

As you might guess, 'Unreliable (speaks in riddles)' means that this spirit of Yellow Magic is not treacherous like most Unreliable Contacts, but requires more effort to understand, usually involving various IQ-based skills.

I'm probably going to post it to the Colours of Magic thread later, but thought it best to post it here first, both because it's relevant, and in case I've forgotten or not thought of something significant to it.

[Prince Charon]

Another possible core power for some styles:
Magical Awareness (Scanning Sense: Extra-Sensory Awareness; Analyzing, +100%; Passive sense is Always On, +0%; Penetrating, +50%; Targeting, +20%; Magic, -10%) [52]
The fluff here is that you modulate your energy emissions to create various magical effects, and when you are 'near' a spell being cast or taking effect, you can analyze it and with some effort work out how to do it yourself. 'Passive sense is Always On' means that even when you aren't actively 'pinging,' or even are asleep/unconscious, you can still 'listen.' It is fairly common for magic-users of this sort to detect spells being cast at range, though the greater the range, the greater the penalty to both narrow down the location, and to analyze the spell (see the Size and Speed/Range Table on GURPS Basic Set p550).

These magic Scanners also learn to recognize each other by their magical signatures (which might run in families to some degree), but also by individual casting styles, which might convey information about who taught them, or what they specialize in, if anything. One of the settings that I've thought this could work for is Tolkien's Legendarium, since one of the reasons Gandalf tries to avoid using much magic (or much significant/obvious magic) is that other Powers would detect and recognize him (I haven't been able to find the exact quote, but it was something like 'every Power in a hundred leagues now knows I am here' after lighting a fire that no-one else could, on a freezing & windy mountainside).

Switching this to a different power source shouldn't be difficult, apart from a few of the other power modifiers requiring you to recalculate the cost. I vaguely think it could be consistent with Chi-use in some Martial Arts settings, though I'm blanking on specific examples beyond 'probably anime/manga.'


Thoughts?

[dataweaver]

For the propose of Using Abilities At Default, note that there's an additional −1 penalty if the improvised ability is of a different type than the one that it's being improvised off of. So this Core Ability would work best for improvising other sensory powers, but not quite as well for other purposes. On the other hand, that is only a −1 penalty. And I could definitely see a Scanning Sense being used to improvise such things as Telecommunications, Innate Attack, or Illusion. And if you go with something like the “Glamour Magic” that GURPS Fantasy describes (where, e.g., faeries are sapient, self-sustaining illusions), I could see a rather extensive set of Abilities that could be improvised off of a magical Scanning Sense.

But it's for this reason that I prefer core Abilities that are already quite versatile in their applications, like Control or Modular Abilities. I've even used the Realms from Realm Magic as a basis for Alternate Abilities, on the basis that when using an Alternate Ability, you don't have to deal with the casting time, energy cost, or other hoops that Realm Magic imposes. Using Abilities At Default could also be used in this regard, in theory at least; but in practice, you would end up with a comparable energy cost and a mandatory activation roll. So there's not much to gain there.

[Prince Charon]

Originally Posted by Prince Charon

2. One core advantage (or again, two or more connected advantages not divided by aspect) with several skills. This is rather like a simplified version of Path/Book Magic, or Ritual Magic. Perhaps you have Serendipity (Wishing, +100%; Magic, -10%) as the core advantage (possibly assisted by Intuition or Detect Magic), and then have the usual set of Paths from GURPS Thaumatology. Alternatively, maybe the core advantage is a form of Insubstantiality, and you have various College skills for the different ways that you 'impose the nature of the Ethereal upon the Physical.'


3. Separate advantages and skills for each category. I've been thinking of a couple of these for the Colours of Magic idea, one being different Afflictions or Innate Attacks for each Colour (Burning Attack makes sense for Orange Magic, while an Affliction like Cursed or Unluckiness works well with Purple Magic). Another would be having separate Control <colour> Mana advantages for each one (Control Red Mana, Control Green Mana, et cetra),

A possible system that could fit various core powers (using either of the above): You have a range of Very Hard 'College' skills, in this case modified from the list in GURPS Magic, and with a different base philosophy (e.g. the standard system has one 'stereotypical evil' college with undead, demons, and a few 'miscellaneous evil' spells, while this system doesn't). The more complicated the spell, the worse the skill penalty; the more powerful the spell, the greater the energy cost, though you may take a greater skill penalty to reduce the energy cost. If there is some question as to which College applies best, it is mostly acceptable to choose the one that the caster has the highest skill in (or the strongest power in, if using one advantage per College).

The list (with some optional specializations in parentheses; note that GMs may allow more specializations than those listed, if they wish):
College of Air (Lightning is an optional specialization)
College of Animals (may specialize by Type)
College of Body Control
College of Communication and Empathy
College of Earth (Metal and Lava are optional specializations)
College of Enchantment (specializations include Armour Enchantments, Weapon Enchantments, Limiting Enchantments, and Wizardly Tools)
College of Fire
College of Food
College of Gates and Demons (may specialize by dimension)
College of Healing and Necromancy (might specialize in Healing or Necromancy, or by Type of creature)
College of Illusion and Creation (might specialize in Illusion or Creation)
College of Knowledge (Divination is an optional specialization)
College of Light and Darkness (might specialize in Light or Darkness)
College of Making and Breaking (might specialize in Making or Breaking)
College of Meta-Spells
College of Mind Control
College of Movement
College of Plants
College of Protection and Warning
College of Sound
College of Technology (specializations include Energy, Machines, Plastic, and Radiation)
College of Water (specializations include Acid and Ice)
College of Weather (Lightning is an optional specialization)

I don't have GURPS Thaumotology: Sorcery, but I suspect that most of the spells designed for it would not be too difficult to adapt for this or other Power Stunts as Spells ideas (with a little recalculating due to changing power modifiers), probably including the rather extensive list on the Generic Universal Eggplant blog. I have some ideas for Enchantment in this sort of system (not sure whether the writer of Sorcery came to the same conclusion, but it makes sense to me):

Enchantment works by adding Permanent enhancements (+150% or +300%) to Gadgets. The College of Enchantment has a reduced skill penalty for Extended Duration enhancements and Gadget limitations (regardless of whether you're using a single core power or one-ability-per-College); the other college or colleges involved in the creation of a magic item are complementary skills. Applying something like the Gestalt rules from GURPS Psionic Powers (pp9-11) seems acceptable as an adaptation of Ceremonial Magic. (If using one-advantage-per-College, I think the best core advantage for the College of Enchantment is probably Affliction of a Gadget advantage with Permanent. With one core power, the various power stunts/Abilities Used at Default for Enchantment would probably tend to follow this format.)


Thoughts?

[dataweaver]

Sorcery already incorporates Power Stunts as Spells, under “Hardcore Improvisation” (p.7). It doesn't have College Skills; but that wouldn't be hard to add.

[Prince Charon]

Originally Posted by dataweaver

Sorcery already incorporates Power Stunts as Spells, under “Hardcore Improvisation” (p.7). It doesn't have College Skills; but that wouldn't be hard to add.

I thought it might have. I'm mainly familiar with Sorcery from the Pyramid article, and I'm pretty sure it mentions Hardcore Improvisation somewhere (or I'm remembering due to online conversations).

I was looking at the list above and thinking about it in reference to one-advantage-per-College (most or all probably being 'Control <element/aspect> Mana'), and it occurred to me that it could be rearranged a bit for that. For example, Healing and Body Control being the same College, based on something like Control Body Mana; Necromancy could instead be a specialization of Enchantment, or perhaps Meta-Spells or Movement. Likewise, Communication and Empathy and Mind Control could both fit with a Control Mental Mana advantage. Not so sure about the College of Knowledge - it could fit, but it could also be based on something else.

[dataweaver]

Originally Posted by Prince Charon

I thought it might have. I'm mainly familiar with Sorcery from the Pyramid article, and I'm pretty sure it mentions Hardcore Improvisation somewhere (or I'm remembering due to online conversations).

I was looking at the list above and thinking about it in reference to one-advantage-per-College (most or all probably being 'Control <element/aspect> Mana'), and it occurred to me that it could be rearranged a bit for that. For example, Healing and Body Control being the same College, based on something like Control Body Mana; Necromancy could instead be a specialization of Enchantment, or perhaps Meta-Spells or Movement. Likewise, Communication and Empathy and Mind Control could both fit with a Control Mental Mana advantage. Not so sure about the College of Knowledge - it could fit, but it could also be based on something else.

In that regard, you could just select one Spell from a given College and use that as the “core Ability”; and as you start learning more powerful Spells (read: higher point cost), swap out which Spell is the core ability and which ones are Alternate Abilities. You lose the “simple improvisation” that comes from using Sorcerous Empowerment/Modular Abilities as your core ability; but frankly, that's not much of a loss: you'd need Sorcerous Empowerment 6 [70] to be able to improvise one level of Air Jet. Improvising No-Smell would require 63 levels of Sorcerous Empowerment, costing 640 points. If you limit your Sorcerous Empowerment to just the College of Air (for example), you could reduce that cost by 40%; but you'd still be spending 384 points to be able to improvise No-Smell. More generally, you can “basically improvise” any spell from between a tenth and a sixth of the points you spent on Sorcerous Empowerment (roughly), depending on how focused the Sorcerous Empowerment is.

Instead, I prefer to replace Sorcerous Empowerment with Control Mana, from the “Supernatural Energy” article in Pyramid #4/1: at 20 points per level, it lets the sorcerer boost or hinder nearby casting rolls, to provide a Power Block against magic, or (through a pair of Techniques) to bind a power or counter a spell.

Combine that with Super-Simultaneity from the “Super-Sorcery!” article in Pyramid #3/105 (in brief, allow Alternate Abilities to replace some but not all levels of a leveled core Advantage), and you can recast the Alternative Ability rules as “investing” levels of Control Mana into individual spells: each level invested into spellcasting lets you cast up to 20 points worth of a Learned Spell, or to “Hardcore Improvise” a Spell up to 20 points. Say that improvising a spell always requires a Will-based College skill roll at a -10 penalty and 3 FP, but that there are three options available to reduce that penalty:

1. Invest more levels of Control Mana into it. If you have 33% more points invested into an improvised spell than you need, reduce the penalty to -8; if you have double the points needed, reduce the penalty to -6; and if you have quadruple the points needed, reduce the penalty to -4.
2. Brute-force it by spending more energy: every additional FP spent reduces the penalty by 1, to a minimum of -0.
3. Study it as a Hard Technique, buying off the penalty with character points.

Note that the “over-investing” option can be used with just the one level of investment, if the Spell is cheap enough: a 15-point spell automatically qualifies for the “33% more” benefit from a single level of invested Control Mana; a 10-point spell qualifies for the “double” benefit; and a 5-point spell automatically qualifies for the “quadruple” benefit. Likewise, investing two levels of Control Mana sets those thresholds at 30 points, 20 points, and 10 points; three levels invested gives you 45 points, 30 points, and 15 points; and so on.

With this “Investment” approach, I might be inclined to remove maintenance requirements from ongoing Learned Spells, and instead say that the spell remains ongoing for as long as you have Control Mana invested in it. This would require rebuilding the Spells, of course, and would make them more expensive (since they're no longer receiving a cost break for having to be maintained); but I rather like the feel that you'd end up with.

Note that Control (Mana) costs 20/level because Mana is considered to be Common; narrowing that to a College-specific type of Mana would make it Occasional, and would reduce the cost to 15/level; and narrowing it further to a sub-College (such as “lightning mana” instead of “air mana”) would reduce the cost to 10/level. These reduced costs would also reduce their effectiveness for the purpose of “investing” in Spells: each level of Control (Air Mana) would only be good for 15 points worth of Spells, and each level of Control (Lightning Mana) would only be good for 10 points worth of Spells.

———

If you're going with “Skills for Colleges, and Techniques for Spells”, you're already ⅔ of the way toward implementing the Ritual Magic approach. The only thing missing is the “core skill” (Thaumatology) that your College Skills are capped by and possibly default to. Note that by a strict reading of “Skills for Everything”, each Spell ought to have its own skill, the way Psionic Powers work; so if you're wanting College-wide skills, you're basically embracing the Ritual Magic approach anyway.

I would advise this, actually, since Learned Spells rarely have rolls associated with them; specifically, they don't have activation rolls, and you'd have to dig through Powers to find ways that Power Talent can benefit Advantages to find ways that a skill roll could be used to benefit a given Spell: and such benefits come in rarely enough that is hard to justify buying one skill per Spell. As such, the primary benefit of skills would be for improvising Spells; and that works best with College-wide Spells — thus, the Ritual Magic framework. Frankly, improv-friendly magic is what the Ritual Magic framework was made for.