[Thaumatology] Symbol Crafting Magic

[Prince Charon]

GURPS Thaumatology: Urban Magics introduced two interesting variants of Symbol Drawing Magic: Lapidism (p18) and Sacred Architecture (pp21-23). Rather than the symbols or symbols-sets being letters, they are items of craftwork, cut gems in the case of Lapidism, and whole buildings in the case of Sacred Architecture. While you might (if you knew what to look for) find the letters of a related style in the building's structure, you also might not. (Depending on the setting, some form of Syntactic Craft Magic might predate the invention of writing, and be the magic that is later developed into Symbol-drawing.) Craft-based Symbol Drawing styles revolve around particular craft skills, like Carpentry or Sewing, or artistic skills, like Cooking or the various forms of Artist. Each object created with the style (if a physical item is produced) is either equivalent to a symbol parchment, a mundane symbol item (see the later post about magic items), or an enchanted object; relatively few of these styles involve symbol tokens, at all. If no physical item is made, the act could be equivalent to Finger-Tracing (GURPS Thaumatology p174).

The lexicon and philosophy of a craft-based style may be quite similar to that of a regular Symbol Drawing style. If the craft skill is based on an attribute other than IQ, the Symbol Drawing skill and individual symbols' skills will generally be based on that attribute, as well (e. g. a Dancing- or Sewing-based style would use DX, while one based on Carousing or Singing, if allowed, would use HT). The skill the style is based on sometimes acts as a level cap for Symbol Drawing, and thus for the symbols, themselves, but this is not usually a great burden, as the difficulty of a given art or craft tends to be lower.

(If you're running a more explicit sort of game, you could have a form of Symbol Crafting Magic based on Sex Appeal and Erotic Art, but unfortunately we probably can't go into much detail about that on this forum.)

In a more technologically advanced setting, Symbolcrafting might be based on engine design, Mathematics (which might have started much earlier, with some forms of geometry and numerology), electronics (Thaumatronics), Computer Programming, or similar things, or on art styles that don't exist at lower TLs.

A particular Symbol Crafting style might be associated with a skillset, such as a martial arts style, rather than a single skill. Kalaripayit (GURPS Martial Arts pp168-169) is specifically mentioned in the book as having magical practitioners in games that have magic (the colleges of Body Control and Healing, and shapeshifting spells from Animal). Death Fist (pp207-208) is an art specifically designed for wizards (specializing in the College of Body Control). In a setting that uses DX- or HT-based Symbol Drawing, there could be many martial arts styles that incorporate it, whether as a substitute for chi abilities, or in combination with them. Depending on the GM, Civil Arts styles, or even Talents, might be appropriate for this.

How powerful or versatile this magic is probably depends a lot on the style and setting: Perhaps some are basically Symbolic Hedge Magic that mostly grant magical bonuses or penalties to mundane skills, with the available Symbols/Words being focused on rural concerns (which doesn't mean that they aren't useful on an adventure - a cloak that gives +10 to Stealth might not make you invisible, but the difference is pretty small for most purposes). Perhaps most are. Alternatively, some might be quite powerful, but hard to learn - Symbol Drawing (The Music of the Ainur) could do practically anything, but finding a teacher could be a bit tricky. Symbol Drawing (Musical Influence) might be easier to find a teacher for, but be mostly limited to mental and social effects.

In some games, the symbols might be learnable as part of a Dabbler perk, as long as you have the appropriate Symbol Drawing skill. See also Whole-Language Symbol Magic (Thaumatology p177); Easy symbols default to Symbol Drawing at -4, Average at -6, Hard at -8, and Very Hard at -10.

It is not unusual for an experienced wizard to have a Rules Exemption Perk for the rule that limits the number of 'parchments' or equivalent they can have ready for use (Thaumatology pp173-174), if they practice a style that has something like them.

Thematically, it might make sense for some Symbol Crafting styles to be powered by something other than Fatigue, an Energy Reserve, with the recharge based on or conceptually related to the base skill, or the caster's beliefs and practices (Special Recharge -70%) - e.g. a blacksmith's ER might be recharged by the heat of the forge, or by the action of using his tools. A caster with a strong emotional attachment to an environment or location might have trouble recharging elsewhere (like a sailor who needs to be at sea to regain his mystical strength, or a druid who recharges slowly in the woods, fast in his Sacred Grove, and not at all elsewhere). Someone with very strong faith could recharge through prayer or other religious practices; this might matter for some paladin-esque variant styles of Knightly Mounted Combat, not just for directly Religious Ritual-based Symbol Drawing. How inconvenient it is would determine how big a limitation is put on ER, or on related advantages like Regeneration (ER Only, -0%).

The Energy Accumulating rules from Thaumatology pp134-137 could likewise be adapted to a conceptually-related recharge (you need to do whatever-it-is in order to accumulate energy; if it's a setting switch, this is just 'how you do things,' but if it's something that varies in difficulty, it should probably be a limitation or disadvantage).


(Welcome to yet another thing I started because I was working on something else and got distracted by an important tangent.)

[Prince Charon]

Magic Items

Being based on craftwork and the arts, it's no surprise that many Symbol Crafting styles revolve around magic items to various degrees.

Mundane Symbol Items
Not exactly magical on their own, these may be durable items with a set of symbols permanently marked on them, or are made in some fashion that the items are the symbols, functioning game-mechanically like a reusable Symbol Parchment. The quality of the item is important: cheap items will break on any failure, good quality items will only break on a critical failure, fine items have a 2/3 chance of breaking on a critical failure, very fine items have a 1/3 chance of breaking on a critical failure, and superfine items (if any) will only break on a verified critical failure.

Tattoos may be mundane symbol items. If the tattoo 'breaks,' the wearer takes 1d-4 damage per Easy symbol, 1d-2 per Average symbol, 1d per Hard symbol, and 1d+2 damage per Very Hard symbol. Damage type should be set by the GM based on the effect which the tattoo was designed to create. If the campaign is using the hit location rules, the damage is of course done to the location of the tattoo. Either way, it cannot be dodged, blocked, or parried, nor does armor or force-field magic protect the wearer (in theory, that should go without saying, but in practice, there will be a few players who'd ask). Despite these risks, such tattoos could become fairly common, especially among those who can afford a really good tattoo artist.

A lot of adventuring wizards will likely carry a few mundane symbol items for healing effects and other magics that they may need to cast several times over the course of an adventure. In many cases, these are in the form of rings or other jewelry, or knives or other tools.


One-Off Enchantments (Thaumatology p175) would be more common among some Symbol Crafting styles than others, largely depending on whether the style makes a lot of disposable items or not. In earlier times, this would tend to be food, ink or paint, a very small number of probably-pottery cups or flagons for the wealthy (in societies where a lord or king shows off his wealth by smashing the container after finishing his drink), and not much else. In a more modern setting, disposable items are far more common, and e.g. Symbol Crafting gunsmiths might make a fair portion of their income from magic bullets of various types, or a graffiti artist might delay pursuers by painting 'I prepared Explosive Runes today' on a wall.


Enchanted Symbol Items

Art or craft skills that produce items that are intended to last a long time are good candidates for making permanent magic items, but they wouldn't necessarily take as long as the Slow and Sure method from the book. How much faster would likely vary with the items being created (e.g. Sacred Architecture with pre-TL5 construction technology would make sense with the multi-year timespans Slow and Sure enchantment suggests, while medieval blacksmithing taking so long would be quite odd). One possible setting switch or variant is changing the enchanting time from one point per mage-day to eight points per mage-day (or some other range), or allowing Symbol Crafters to use some form of Quick and Dirty enchantment, possibly with magic perks like Quick and Focused.

Modifiers work much as they do with advantage costs, where applicable. For example, a go-limb arm (magical prosthetics, based on the items introduced in GURPS Classic Magic Items 2 pp69-70; possibly inspired by the silver arm of Nuada) from an Ogham-based Symbol Crafting style might use the Symbols/Words Ailm (in the reading of Enchant), Duir (as Earth), Ngetal (as Movement), and Uath (as Body), which would usually have a total cost of 1,500 energy (there are other arrangements of Ogham-letters that could be used, but this one works well enough for illustration purposes; also, note that this isn't necessarily a craftwork where the Symbols are visible). However, this is a single arm, not a complete golem, and so a modifier is applied: 'Arm only, -60%,' for a total creation cost of 600 energy. GMs may prefer to alter how much this modifier is worth, of course.

Another example, this one based on the Futhark: A magic mirror marked with the runes Ansuz (read as Communicate) and Sowilo (Spirit), which normally has a cost of 900 points. It allows the user to speak with spirits, but only ghosts (Specialized: Ghosts, -50%), only at night (Accessibility limitation, -20%), and the runes must be blooded to activated it (Trigger: blood, -10%), for a final cost of 180 points.


What do you think? Have you ever used Lapidism or Sacred Architecture, or something similar, in your games?

[Donny Brook]

Not the same, but one of my magic systems requires Magery, a high basic level in a Thaumatologically active skill, and a Talent that includes said skill.

Characters with those prerequisites can then spend points on highly aspected and otherwise Limited Modular Abilities (cost comes out in most cases [1] or [2] per level.