A few questions on magic...

[vierasmarius]

Originally Posted by kirbwarrior

And that can be covered by a perk and buying off the Technique for adding Wall onto the spell.

The Adjustable Spells option, as presented in Thaumatology, gives disproportionately large skill penalties and energy costs for pretty minor enhancements. The Wall enhancement, which lets you make a 1-hex wide straight line that's 50% longer than normal, but covers far fewer hexes, hits the caster with -6 skill (or [6] cp per spell) and +6 energy cost. Unless you're already throwing around Area spells costing 12+ energy, it's never worth it to do that instead of simply making the spell bigger. Considering the inherent limitations of a straight-line Wall, I don't think it's unbalancing to allow it as a single per-spell Perk.

[roguebfl]

You could instead make a metamagic college spell that turns area spells into walls like Throw Spell turns Regular spells into Missile spells

[SCAR]

From a 'Power' perspective, Walls are created with the Walls Enhancement on an Innate Attack which has both Area Effect and Persistent.
Since these Spells are already 'Walls', the only real issue is the Size of the Wall.

The Wall Enhancement gives you a Wall 3 yards long x 1 yard wide per yard of radius (of the area effect).

It would therefore seem fair to allow a Wall Spell to create a straight Wall using the above sizes, perhaps with a special Perk.

[SynnerSaint]

Thanks for all the helpful answers - much appreciated!

[hal]

Just as a word of caution regarding the transmutation of Spherical area spells into wall spells...

As was mentioned earlier - you could take the number of hexes affected within an area, and translate that directly into a line of one hex wide walls, but I'd suggest you NOT do it for the following reasons...

A) you can affect a person from further away with the spell by anchoring one end of the wall next to you, and affect someone 30 some hexes away, without any spell casting penalty - something that using area spells and missile spells, you can NOT achieve without some hefty skill penalties.

B) it turns area spells into something murderous when used by competent tacticians. Don't believe me? Try this on for size...

Take 10 mages, each with the ability to cast an area spell that will be turned into a wall. Let us use fire for this example. Have them each spaced 2 yards apart from each other. They spend time casting their walls of fire, such that the nearest edge of effect is a mere 3 yards from their hexes. Then, after casting one such "wall", they step one yard to their right. They then cast a second "wall of fire" spell adjacent to the first one they did. For the mere cost of two walls of fire (of what ever radius of effect you decide to experiment with), they can create a solid region of fire that measures 20 yards wide by how ever long that spell was cast as. Utilizing power stones in addition to the native abilities of those mages will make certain forms of spell casting all the more deadly.

My suggestion is that you take a good HARD look at that and ask yourself "Is this what I want to do with the spells?"

For those of you who might remember (or not), there used to be a few "Alalconius Lectures" floating about on the net from the days of GURPSNET. As the author of those lectures - feel free to buzz me from time to time saying "hey, what do you think of..." and I'll see if I can find a way to make a GM's life miserable with said spell or spell variant - sort of as a way of saying "hey, if I can do this, so can your players."

Also? I would strongly urge that you pick up GURPS CLASSIC MAGIC and use those spells with reasonable expectation that they won't be campaign destructive. I'd use very few of the spells from GURPS GRIMOIRE without a good long hard look. As for the spells in GURPS MAGIC for 4e - I would NEVER use all of the spells as written simply because some of those spells are campaign breakers in a BIG way. That however, is up to you. ;)

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by hal

Also? I would strongly urge that you pick up GURPS CLASSIC MAGIC and use those spells with reasonable expectation that they won't be campaign destructive.

*Cough*. There are plenty of overpowered spells in Classic Magic and a few campaign breakers. The main campaign breakers are Permanent Possession/Exchange Bodies, the Earth spells, certain Information spells (Seeker is an offender), Bless, and Enslave.

[hal]

Originally Posted by Anthony

*Cough*. There are plenty of overpowered spells in Classic Magic and a few campaign breakers. The main campaign breakers are Permanent Possession/Exchange Bodies, the Earth spells, certain Information spells (Seeker is an offender), Bless, and Enslave.

Oh I hear you there! But the thing is, the number of campaign breaking spells are relatively smaller in number, and with the exception of SEEK EARTH, most of the nasty spells have relatively high up requisites (magery or energy costs).

Yes, there are some bad apples in that mix - but which would you rather try to tone down...

GURPS CLASSIC MAGIC

or


GURPS MAGIC for 4e?

I think you know my druthers in that matter!

[Pomphis]

Originally Posted by hal

and with the exception of SEEK EARTH, most of the nasty spells have relatively high up requisites (magery or energy costs).

Enslave costs 30 FPs. A 100 CP mage I played was designed with it. It took some time to get a powerstone. It didn´t take much time to convince the other PCs and some NPCs belonging to the group to participate in ceremonial castings on POWs.

(We treated them as valuable hirelings, just in case. The big benefit was the free telepathic link. TL3 war with safe and reliable realtime communications was different. And later they became an important part of a trade network.)

[hal]

Originally Posted by Pomphis

Enslave costs 30 FPs. A 100 CP mage I played was designed with it. It took some time to get a powerstone. It didn´t take much time to convince the other PCs and some NPCs belonging to the group to participate in ceremonial castings on POWs.

(We treated them as valuable hirelings, just in case. The big benefit was the free telepathic link. TL3 war with safe and reliable realtime communications was different. And later they became an important part of a trade network.)

That works out reasonably well, but as you noted, it is not easily achieved early on in the campaign. In addition, the spell is resisted, which means that not every spell casting results in a successful slave.

For what it is worth, when I've run any campaign setting in which magic is an integral part, I've reminded players that certain spells are "forbidden" culturally, and that the learning of such spells requires a secret. For instance? Enslave itself, removes free will from its target - something that has a religious and fundamental aspect within society whether it is monotheistic or polytheistic. In addition, even if someone were to be willing to participate in a ceremonial casting of a spell, if it violates their inherent core beliefs, they very well may oppose it emontionally even if they accept it on a mental level. I ended up using the "reaction table" as a means of determining how well a "GROUP" participates in a ceremonial casting - by use of an Excel spreadsheet and the use of random number generation. In addition, I added the ability to add a GM imposed modifier to the participants (ranging from -5 to +5) and counting how many were opposed to the spell casting, how many were neutral, and how many were active participants. It worked well enough :)

In any event, keep in mind that such behavior as mages might invite other mages to band against the player characters in order to undo the "evil" they find in such behavior. In other words, challenges that GM's put in the way of player characters to keep life interesting.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by hal

That works out reasonably well, but as you noted, it is not easily achieved early on in the campaign.

In 4e, a set of 100 minions (1/4 PC total) who show up on a 9- costs you 12 points, showing up on 12- costs you 24.