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#1 |
Join Date: Jul 2005
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The concept is simple: high IQ, high Magery, lousy at casting. Her magic either blows up in her face (harmlessly), works, but not as intended, or, very rarely actually works as intended. I’m assuming effect shaping ritual magic, but I’m not sure how best to represent the “not as intended”’part. The “blows up in her face” part is easy, just use the comedy critical failure table.
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#2 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Ronkonkoma, NY
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I don't know about effect ritual shaping magic, but general the way to do this is to add Unreliable to your Magery, including the activation and malfunction numbers that you want. Then use the Critical Spell Failure Table whenever a malfunction occurs.
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#3 |
Join Date: May 2007
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The Radically Unstable Magery limitation, on p.26 of Thaumatology, causes every failed spellcasting roll to be treated as a critical failure, and caps effective skill at 15 to keep these failures from being too rare. It nicely ensures that, succeed your rolls or fail them, spellcasting will never be boring!
EDIT: I just noticed you specified harmlessly blows up in her face. Critical failures with magic are anything but harmless, so the above may not be your best bet. I like Stormcrow's suggestion of using Unreliable to ensure a significant chance of failure irrespective of skill; I might halve the value of Unreliable if a failed roll for that limitation, rather than stopping the ability cold, creates an effect that isn't what was desired but could still potentially be useful.
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I predicted GURPS:Dungeon Fantasy several hours before it came out and all I got was this lousy sig. Last edited by ravenfish; 12-08-2024 at 03:19 PM. |
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#4 |
Join Date: Jul 2005
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#5 |
Join Date: Apr 2012
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As a safety, give her Luck with the Aspected limitation. The Aspect relates to her critical failure rolls with magic. Roll two more times, pick the least harmful(or most entertaining(GM's choice)) failure. GM's choice on 'most entertaining' as the player may not know which choice will lead to the most entertaining result.
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#6 |
Join Date: Jun 2013
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A potential option would be to give the character high IQ and low wildtype Magery, then give her additional Magery with a Limitation of "Spells don't quite work right." Depending on the details, that Nuisance Effect could be worth anywhere from -5% to probably -20%. Both types of Magery could be modified with Radically Unstable if you want all Failures to be Critical.
Basically, if the character rolls well enough to manage the spell with only her base Magery, it works as intended. If the character doesn't roll well enough for that, but does roll well enough that the additional levels of Not-Quite-Right Magery make it a Success, then the spell works, but not quite as intended. If the character fails, you roll on the Comedy Critical Failure Table and watch as the spell explodes in her face.
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Tags |
character building, comedy, magic |
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