Magery Prerequisites and Magery 0 spells

[hal]

Hi All,
As I continue to contribute to the Mageborn are like coins thread in roleplaying in General, I decided to undertake the task of trying to create a database of spells in excel, listing not only the spells themselves, but also their magery requsiite.

As many may know, I largely ignore the GURPS MAGIC for GURPS 4e due to the inclusion of GURPS GRIMOIRE spells into the entire mix (something I generally don't allow unfettered in my fantasy campaigns). So, imagine to my surprise, the interesting scenarios involved with cross checking the magery required aspect of spells vs their requisites.

For example (and note, I'm not using the actual requisites listed in GURPS MAGIC for this example) suppose you have the spell Create Fire and it doesn't list a requisite magery - implying that it is a Magery 0 spell. Further suppose that the requisite spell Ignite Fire, has Magery 1 as its requisite. In that example, Create Fire can't be studied unless the mage has magery 1 in order to learn the requsiite spell itself. That implies then, that the sought after spell - despite not having magery 1 as a requsiite in its spell description, in reality, has to be a Magery 1 due to its prerequisite being magery 1.

I'm currently up to L's in my database of spells, and came across this example:

LIGHTNING ARMOR "Prerequisites: At least six Lightning spells including Resist Lightning."

Now the odd thing is - this is listed as a Magery 0 spell in the GURPS MAGIC SPELL CHART PDF. However, per GURPS CHARACTER ASSISTANT, lighting spells are defined as:

0 Ball of Lightning
2 Body of Lightning
1 Explosive Lightning
1 Lightning
0 Lightning Armor
2 Lightning Missiles
1 Lightning Stare
2 Lightning Weapon
1 Lightning Whip
0 Resist Lightning
1 Wall of Lightning
1 Shocking Touch
1 Spark Storm
1 Spark Cloud

The number preceding the spell name is the magery requisite. As you can see, there are only three magery 0 lighting spells, and Lightning Armor requires FIVE lightning spells as its requsite to be met. That means that by definition, it can't be studied by a magery 0 mageborn.


Thoughts?

[WingedKagouti]

Originally Posted by hal

doesn't list a requisite magery - implying that it is a Magery 0 spell.

If a spell doesn't list Magery as a requirement, anyone can learn it whether they have Magery 0 or not. The ability to cast such a spell would depend on local mana or having Magery 0.

As far as your Lightning Armor example goes, it would be possible to learn it without Magery if someone invented additional Lightning spells without a Magery requirement. A non-Mage could theoretically invent those spells on their own.

[coronatiger]

Check out the Spells tab in my Excel Character Sheet (link in signature). There may be something there you can use.

[hal]

Originally Posted by coronatiger

Check out the Spells tab in my Excel Character Sheet (link in signature). There may be something there you can use.

Thank you for your offer - I JUST now finished my database entries for magery required for spells.

My intentions will be to create a new tab on my database, copy the spells and all other data onto it, then sort by Magery+College+Name to organize an alphabetical listing of all spells by College and Magery.

I'll send that information to two others on my ongoing thread in Roleplaying in General titled:

Mageborn are like Coins - Worldbuilding TL 3

This way, those who want to look at the world building aspects of the impacts of certain spells on a game world, can do so.

Again, thank you for the offer. :)

[hal]

Originally Posted by WingedKagouti

If a spell doesn't list Magery as a requirement, anyone can learn it whether they have Magery 0 or not. The ability to cast such a spell would depend on local mana or having Magery 0.

As far as your Lightning Armor example goes, it would be possible to learn it without Magery if someone invented additional Lightning spells without a Magery requirement. A non-Mage could theoretically invent those spells on their own.

As it turns out, your comment sparked a thought in me (no pun intended). The spell description had to have come from one of three sources.

1) GURPS MAGIC 2nd edition
2) GURPS GRIMOIRE
3) Was a new spell in GURPS 4e such as Essential Wood was a new spell.

I tracked down the spell itself and found it was originally named Electric Armor instead of Lightning Armor, and in GURPS GRIMOIRE, it does require Magery 1 as its prerequisite.

As for the scenario you propose? The real problem is, with the rules as written, such a scenario can not exist in the sense that the spell could even be researched by a character who didn't have the requisite magery 0 spell to begin with.

As ever, the simplest answer is generally the correct one - the author who wrote GURPS MAGIC for 4e did an oopsie. I'm not going to throw a rock at him and yell any depreciating names, as the saying goes...

Let he who is without sin, cast the first stone.

Lord knows, I've made sufficient numbers of oopsies myself. ;)

[Plane]

Originally Posted by WingedKagouti

If a spell doesn't list Magery as a requirement, anyone can learn it whether they have Magery 0 or not. The ability to cast such a spell would depend on local mana or having Magery 0.

As far as your Lightning Armor example goes, it would be possible to learn it without Magery if someone invented additional Lightning spells without a Magery requirement. A non-Mage could theoretically invent those spells on their own.

Or if you're using Ritual Magic, I think all that matters is the PRC ?

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by hal

The number preceding the spell name is the magery requisite. As you can see, there are only three magery 0 lighting spells, and Lightning Armor requires FIVE lightning spells as its requsite to be met. That means that by definition, it can't be studied by a magery 0 mageborn.


Thoughts?

That assumes that the spells in the book are the only spells that exist which isn't necessarily true. Also that the Charm perk doesn't exist.

That being said, yes, if the only prerequisites for the spell you want all have at least Magery 1, then yes by extension you probably need at least Magery 1 to learn the spell. The book does not mention that for the more advanced spell because that would be a waste of wordage (as long you ignore the Charm Perk which didn't exist when the book was written.)

[hal]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

That assumes that the spells in the book are the only spells that exist which isn't necessarily true. Also that the Charm perk doesn't exist.

That being said, yes, if the only prerequisites for the spell you want all have at least Magery 1, then yes by extension you probably need at least Magery 1 to learn the spell. The book does not mention that for the more advanced spell because that would be a waste of wordage (as long you ignore the Charm Perk which didn't exist when the book was written.)

So that everyone is aware, i was working of the GURPS MAGIC SPELL CHARTS PDF. Each spell that has a magery requsite to it, has one dot, two dots, 3 dots or NO dots, denoting magery 1, magery 2, magery 3 or no magery respectively.

They also used the idea of setting it up where if there were two requisite paths to reach a given spell, that on the one path - the corner the line is drawn to represents what is required, and on the other side of the box where a line is drawn, its requisites would take precedence. Thus, if a spell could be attained strictly by means of a Magery 0 set up on one path - then the spell itself was determined to be magery 0 as well - despite there being a magery 1 path requisite that could get there as well.

In those cases, the spell is clearly a magery 0 spell. But in an instance where there is only one path to the spell, and that one path has a spell with magery 1 as a requisite, by extention, the spell that depends on the Magery 1 is also a magery 1 spell even if its description doesn't say it. Why? If you can't learn the requisite spell, you can't learn the desired spell. If the Requisite requires magery 1 and you don't have it, you can't learn the requsite and thus, the desired spell.

I didn't see too many instances of "oddities" during the time I worked on this. I did spot ONE instance in which I thought "The required number of spells from the list being 5, every single one of these thus far are magery 1+...

Until I got to the spells later in that list, which were magery 0. When I counted the number of magery 0 spells in that list, I realized "yeah, it can be done, but you have to be very specific in what you take." So that was a false alarm.