06-26-2022, 01:57 PM | #41 | |||
Join Date: Nov 2015
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Re: GURPS MAGIC: Day in the life of a spell inventor...
Yes, just suggesting that, when it turns out that spell doesn't work, which btw requires a crit success on the Prototype roll, you instead apply it to Thaumatology.
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Unless you use assistants and accept they can provide a bonus with extra energy (they're useless otherwise) any mage that thinks he can make the Prototype roll will have no trouble with the Concept |
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06-26-2022, 02:23 PM | #42 | ||||
Join Date: Mar 2017
Location: Brazil
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Re: GURPS MAGIC: Day in the life of a spell inventor...
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Now, already having the point on the new spell... Hmm... I havent thought about that. RAW says nothing of the like - but neither says AGAINST it. I guess that, if you have spent a point into "Origami Spell", and is trying to Prototype based on an unworkable Concept, you still have 1 point into "Origami Spell" nevertheless, even if you have to go back to the drawing board, right? Yeah, I guess you might be right, but if G.Magic had that written it would avoid all the confusion. Quote:
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You'd have to be a God with Magery 10 and IQ 30 to have a chance, a super genius alone wouldnt suffice. |
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06-26-2022, 02:52 PM | #43 |
Join Date: Nov 2015
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Re: GURPS MAGIC: Day in the life of a spell inventor...
Disregarding for a sec the CP spent on the spell being researched.
I looked at how you make a spell inventor following the rules from Basic and Magic and ignoring Gadgeteering for now. IQ 20 Seems to be the max for humans Magery 4 Suggested to cap it at 3 or 4 at best Thaumatology IQ+10 Under Maintaining skill this is still below the level where you have to practice daily or lose a point. Versatile for that +1 to invention rolls Luck for those 3 rolls for the Concept Extra Time I think it caps at +5 For a total of 3 rolls at a skill of 40. If you allow the mage to get a Wisdom item (he can't cast the spell on himself, but the constant item version with its hefty energy cost may not have that same limitation) he can even probably get that -36 roll But none of this means anything when he then needs to cast the spell cerimonially. He's at Att -2 or -3 with 1 CP spent but can't use Luck, can't use Wisdom and most likely nor even Versatile, but that -23 or -36 are still there, and he needs skill 15 to cast the spell. Reversing that, if he somehow can cast the spell, that means his IQ has to be about 40-41 for the basic spell and 53-54 for the enchantment research, and at that point the Concept roll is an almost automatic success. Hopefully I've missed some numbers somewhere. |
06-26-2022, 06:26 PM | #44 | |
Join Date: Mar 2017
Location: Brazil
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Re: GURPS MAGIC: Day in the life of a spell inventor...
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Now, there's that part about the Prototype being like Q&D, I dont remember exactly and Im too lazy right now to check, but if that's true then each assistant would give an extra penalty of -1, so they would have to give even more energy to offset that; at some point, that would become prohibitive, given that the bonuses from extra energy are based on multiples of energy expenses, so at some point an extra assistant would require more energy than it could supply (even with Powerstones and "Talisman Paut") just to offset their own penalties. Besides, what would the base cost for said extra energy be? If the Prototype is the Prototype for Enchantment, that could well mean up to 5.000 energy as the "base" or even more, to which even achieving enough energy for a single +1 to the roll would be impossible. A really see no way around this except for an enlightned Leonardo DaVinci showing every 1.000 or so years just to highly and fastly advance the thaumatological tech with their ungodly amounts of Cosmic Modular Abilities |
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06-27-2022, 03:29 AM | #45 |
Join Date: Nov 2015
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Re: GURPS MAGIC: Day in the life of a spell inventor...
So, unless we got something wrong, our genius inventor might have a lot of ideas, but will have a hard time actually implementing them.
With IQ 20, Magery 4 and 1 CP, Hard spells with 7 prerequisites are possible, or V.hard spell with 6. To be able to make the Prototype roll on other spells he'd need to either invest more CP in them or get a bonus from extra energy. |
06-27-2022, 08:14 AM | #46 | |
Join Date: Mar 2017
Location: Brazil
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Re: GURPS MAGIC: Day in the life of a spell inventor...
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And it's pretty impossible to do for the higher count spells and enchants, except for Gods or I dont know Visualization with stupid levels of Reliable AND Super Luck or insane levels of MA |
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06-27-2022, 02:09 PM | #47 | |
Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: Vermont, USA
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Re: GURPS MAGIC: Day in the life of a spell inventor...
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Here's what I've got so far:
Some other bonuses that aren't applicable to the invention of totally new spells, but I'm including for completeness:
The highest published prereq count is 32 for Transmogrification (Thaum267), and I don't think Transmogrification already has Enchant in its prereqs (but Transmogrification already has a few colleges in its prereqs so there's going to be some overlap there). So prototyping a Transmogrification magic item is going to be difficult — you're going to need Gadgeteer or a lot of complementary skills here. Next you have Doppelganger and Move Terrain at prereq count 29, and Wraith at 24, but they already have Enchant in their prereqs. The next highest prereq count without Enchant already possibly in its prereq count (like Draw Power), is Rebuild at 22 but it doesn't have a magic item to be researched. At this point everything easier should be inventable, even without the sketchy unskilled spectator issue. So except possibly for the Transmogrification magic item, everything seems inventable. The rarity of all these attributes, advantages, and skills is a setting decision. Though once you figure out Great Wish (published prereq count 18, but already includes Enchant), inventing — and, well, everything — gets a lot easier. One more question: When inventing spells in the Enchantment college, do you still need to invent the "spell" first before inventing the enchantment? Last edited by munin; 06-27-2022 at 02:14 PM. |
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06-28-2022, 06:53 AM | #48 |
Join Date: Mar 2017
Location: Brazil
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Re: GURPS MAGIC: Day in the life of a spell inventor...
I'll answer in detail soon, but the thing here is about realism rather than player Munchinikism. For instance, how many real world Gadgeteers was there in? Thomas Eddison, DaVinci, Tesla and... That's it?
You see, 3 people throughout the entirety of history to develop ALL the field of "applied thaumatology" seems a bit unrealistic. Gadgeteer is great for comic books and for cool concepts of player characters, but it is a rather unrealistic and super rare trait. It's basically a special case of an Unusual Background. |
06-28-2022, 09:16 AM | #49 | |||
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Buffalo, New York
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Re: GURPS MAGIC: Day in the life of a spell inventor...
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Isn't it odd that each SPELL teaches you not only the spell itself, but contains the information required to create the enchanted item - but ONLY if you know ENCHANTMENT? Put another way, a character who has not learned ENCHANTMENT, despite having the spell PURIFY AIR, doesn't have the ability to craft the enchanted item PURIFY AIR. This is why, as GM, it is my belief that magic items are themselves, purely an ENCHANTMENT college spell. The oddity perhaps is that half the time spent enchanting is good for improving your enchantment spell (on the job training) and half the time spent is good for the spell itself. Quote:
This is not your typical mage by any means. IQ 20 is not supposed to be even a normal human being either, but a LEGENDARY being, the likes ow which the universe shall never see again. Add in Magery 3 (or 4 - which breaks the original fantasy rules of magery never being higher than 3) - coupled with a legendary IQ, would be even more unusual (statistically speaking. This is known as Min/Max character building - nothing wrong with BUILDING such a character, but presuming that character then builds all of the spells with a prerequisite chain that is absurdly high is problemamatical. What we're talking about is what is required for a pre-history of NPCs who pre-existed before the player character. These are in theory, more normal individuals. Quote:
The problem with Assistants is this: They have to have a skill 20+ in the thaumatology skill. If their skill is higher than yours, they will be the ones leading the research, not you. Getting their skills to 20+ means that per descriptions published AFTER the original GURPS MAGIC, GURPS CAMPAIGNS, and GURPS CHARACTERS - pretty much violate the norms of ordinary people. Even before GURPS TEMPLATES came out, the labels affixed to skill levels were: SKill 12 to 13: Professional Skill 14 to 15: Well trained SKill 16 to 19: Expert Skill 20+: Master Now for the issue of Extra Energy for skill: Before you can utilize any other assistant in casting a ceremonial cast spell, you have to have a skill of 15+ to co-ordinate the ceremonial spell casting. That will result in a LOT of mages who will not be able to utilize the ceremonial spell casting. Even if by some miracle, the mage's skill is 15 with the attempt to create the prototype, no other person who knows the spell actually exists - it is after all, in the process of being invented. At BEST, the mage can utilize spectators... Double dipping: creating a well thought out explanation for the spell and having someone who does the same thing for you as a complementary skill, look to be doing the same thing - clarifying things sufficiently to make life easier. A +1 bonus is gained with a normal success on the complementary skill, or a +2 bonus with a crit success. But now we're entering "subjective terrority" requiring a GM intervention. No two GMs are likely to rule the same (then again, does this even matter?). Double Dipping: +5 bonus for adapting something from what you already know. If you don't know any spells in a college, you're penalized by a -5 After you know at least one spell in the college, that disappears. Why? Do all subsequent spells gain what amounts to a +5 bonus for similiarity? Now for the really FUN part... Create a single non-player character on points equal to say, 75 (half that of a standard fantasy player character). Now build your researcher and see what if anything, they can research per the actual existing spells. What? That's not fair? Ok, let's really have some fun... Build a 70 point character and denote said character as being aged 15, giving said individual ZERO spells. Use the Time/USE worksheet to age the character year by year by year - gaining spells from a teacher. Few teachers teach things for free, so keep a running cost of money owed to the teacher over time. Keep tabs on how the character pays for cost of living per month (and how said character gained it). Age your NPC until he is ready to actively become a spell researcher. now have him research a relatively simple spell whose prerequisite count is 13. List ONLY those things used from GURPS CAMPAIGNS, GURPS CHARACTERS, and GURPS MAGIC. Follow the rules as given - and track all expenses incurred during research. for purposes of the "thought experiment" - we'll igore the rule about having to have a character point to learn the spell - we'll just assume that these character points are building up over time and not used just so that this NPC can spend them strictly only for spells being researched. Oh, don't forget to charge the market price for potions used, or the magic items used as expenses. Wait, you didn't include the patron advantage so that this guy has access to what ever he needs in the way of money for the goods being purchased? Did you include the cost of an Ally group who can reliably grant 1 energy point per spectator in the ally group for ceremonial casting? We're no longer talking about a character worth 70 points, or 150 points or at a guess, even 200 points. We're starting to reach straospheric level character points now. The day in the life of the spell inventor was intended to get people thinking about the rules as they were originally written (RAW) and see if the rules made sense in 2004 (or was it 2005?). If the conclusion is no - then so be it. That it wasn't caught in playtest is vexing. That it has taken as long as 17 to 18 years to be caught? That just tells me NO one has been involved in using said rules for their campaign.
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06-28-2022, 11:40 AM | #50 | |
Join Date: Mar 2017
Location: Brazil
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Re: GURPS MAGIC: Day in the life of a spell inventor...
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