Ritual Magic issue

[maximara]

GURPS Fantasy uses a variant of the Ritual Magic system for Hedge Magic but has this comment: "In a high- or very-high-mana setting, any professional can cast any spell based on his profession, if only at default."

The way this is worded it implies that even spells that require Magery 1+ can be cast via the Ritual Magic system even if the professional doesn't have magery (or Power Investiture) at all.

Is this just poor wording or is this a wrinkle in the Ritual Magic system that makes is slightly more powerful?

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by maximara

GURPS Fantasy uses a variant of the Ritual Magic system for Hedge Magic but has this comment: "In a high- or very-high-mana setting, any professional can cast any spell based on his profession, if only at default."

The way this is worded it implies that even spells that require Magery 1+ can be cast via the Ritual Magic system even if the professional doesn't have magery (or Power Investiture) at all.

Is this just poor wording or is this a wrinkle in the Ritual Magic system that makes is slightly more powerful?

I'd say it was a typo, probably should be errata.
High Mana lets anyone cast a spell they know and Ritual Magic means spells have a default instead of requiring at least 1 point to know a spell.
So spells can be cast if you have the prerequisites but not otherwise.

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by maximara

Is this just poor wording or is this a wrinkle in the Ritual Magic system that makes is slightly more powerful?

Did you read Basic pg 242 at all? It makes it very clear how prerequisites work in Ritual Magic.

In which, they only matter for setting the penalty to cast the rituals, because that is how Ritual Magic works.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by evileeyore

Did you read Basic pg 242 at all? It makes it very clear how prerequisites work in Ritual Magic.

In which, they only matter for setting the penalty to cast the rituals, because that is how Ritual Magic works.

You do know that later books can do revisions, clarifications, and-or have conflicts to the Basic Set rules, right?

Example:

Talent: "A bonus of +1 per level with all affected skills, even for default use." (B89) At the time this applied to wildcard skills as well.

GURPS Thaumatology: "Wizards must purchase magical colleges as wildcard skills (see Wildcard Skills, p. B175). (...)
"Magery adds to college skills, and hence to spells – but this must be Magery of the correct type, if multiple varieties exist in the campaign. Example: Thaumaticus- Z6G has IQ 15, Wildcard Magery 2, and 12 points in the Air College! skill. He therefore has Air College!-16, and can cast Purify Air at skill 16, Shape Air at 15, and Lightning at 14" (pg 75)
Note this only makes sense if a talent (Wildcard Magery in this case) adds to a wildcard skill (Air College! in this case) which per the Basic Set is correct.

Power-ups 7 changed things:

"These two mechanics are intended as alternatives. If a wildcard and a Talent exist to cover the same skills, and the
GM permits a character to have both, the Talent doesn’t improve skills covered by or defaulted to the wildcard." (Power-ups 7 pg 10)

If like you we go back to the Basic Set then a Talent would improve skills covered by or defaulted to a wildcard skill and this is confirmed by the example in GURPS Thaumatology pg 75. But the even later Power-ups 7 revised this (or you can consider Wildcard Magery a special excepted talent as the GURPS wiki does)

So going back to the Basic Set doesn't always give you the correct current rule answer hence my issue in the first place ie Fantasy possibly did a revision to a Basic Set rule just like Power-ups 7 did.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by maximara

GURPS Fantasy uses a variant of the Ritual Magic system for Hedge Magic but has this comment: "In a high- or very-high-mana setting, any professional can cast any spell based on his profession, if only at default."

The way this is worded it implies that even spells that require Magery 1+ can be cast via the Ritual Magic system even if the professional doesn't have magery (or Power Investiture) at all.

Is this just poor wording or is this a wrinkle in the Ritual Magic system that makes is slightly more powerful?

I think that's a special case of a more general question about magic as such. If you lack Magery, but you're in a High Mana area, can you learn and cast a spell that has Magery 1 as a prerequisite?

* On one hand, you don't have Magery 1, and having Magery 1 is stated as a prerequisite for learning the spell. So you can't learn it, though you could cast it if you did learn it. Magery 1+ is essentially different from Magery 0, which is usually required to cast any spell but is never a prerequisite.

* On the other hand, Magery 1+ is just a specialized Talent, and you never NEED a Talent to learn one of the skills it covers.

[Stormcrow]

Originally Posted by maximara

So going back to the Basic Set doesn't always give you the correct current rule answer hence my issue in the first place ie Fantasy possibly did a revision to a Basic Set rule just like Power-ups 7 did.

There's no such thing as the "correct current rule" in GURPS. Supplements are optional. If GURPS Fantasy alters the rules for ritual magic, that alteration is optional. Someone who is using ritual magic out of the Basic Set and isn't using Fantasy isn't using the "wrong" rule. GURPS isn't Pokemon; you don't have to collect them all.

The prerequisites of spells in standard magic only count each as a cumulative -1 to the skill roll. They don't apply as actual prerequisites. The description of mana on page B235 holds for ritual magic: you need Ritual Magery to cast ritual magic spells in normal- or low-mana areas; and anyone can cast ritual magic spells in high- or very-high-mana areas.

And since ritual magic doesn't use the listed spell prerequisites for anything except generating a penalty to the skill roll, then what it says in Fantasy lines up exactly with the Basic Set.

[Varyon]

No access to my books but... what normally would prevent a character from using ritual magic at a default? The quote obviously is making an exception for professionals in high mana. Without required prerequisites - and going off of memory of a system I’ve only occasionally glanced at - it seems insufficient Magery would be the only barrier, and as the rule is making an exception, it sounds like Magery prerequisites can be ignored in these cases. The only other interpretation I can think of is not needing training in Thaumatology, but with a default of IQ-7 IIRC (IQ/VH skill) plus -1 per prerequisite spell this strikes me as a horrible idea, and is more “in high/very high mana, professionals without magical training have the option of blowing themselves up.”

[maximara]

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

There's no such thing as the "correct current rule" in GURPS. Supplements are optional. If GURPS Fantasy alters the rules for ritual magic, that alteration is optional. Someone who is using ritual magic out of the Basic Set and isn't using Fantasy isn't using the "wrong" rule. GURPS isn't Pokemon; you don't have to collect them all.

The prerequisites of spells in standard magic only count each as a cumulative -1 to the skill roll. They don't apply as actual prerequisites. The description of mana on page B235 holds for ritual magic: you need Ritual Magery to cast ritual magic spells in normal- or low-mana areas; and anyone can cast ritual magic spells in high- or very-high-mana areas.

And since ritual magic doesn't use the listed spell prerequisites for anything except generating a penalty to the skill roll, then what it says in Fantasy lines up exactly with the Basic Set.

No it doesn't.

"For each prerequisite the spell or its prerequisites would have in the standard system, the default is at a cumulative -1 (e.g., a spell with one prerequisite that itself has one prerequisite defaults to college skill-2). (...)

Magery adds to core skill, college skills, and spells. If standard and ritual magic coexist, normal Magery and Ritual Magery are separate advantages.
All other rules are the same" (B242)

GURPS Magic shows that advantages (like Magery) are not in the Prerequisite Count. Lend Energy requires M1 or Empathy advantage but its Prerequisite Count is 0 not 1 as implied in the Basic Set. This is what I mean about revisions, clarifications, and-or have conflicts.

Yes GURPS isn't Pokemon but one of the things that caused 3.x to become such a FUBARed mess with regard to the Universal part was inconstancy between books with Supers being the main offender.

I should mention that a few supplements specifically state that a rule in the Basic Set has been changed but if you look at either the errata or FAQ there is nothing about that change. In fact the FAQ and errata for 4e are in serious need of updating.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by whswhs

I think that's a special case of a more general question about magic as such. If you lack Magery, but you're in a High Mana area, can you learn and cast a spell that has Magery 1 as a prerequisite?

* On one hand, you don't have Magery 1, and having Magery 1 is stated as a prerequisite for learning the spell. So you can't learn it, though you could cast it if you did learn it. Magery 1+ is essentially different from Magery 0, which is usually required to cast any spell but is never a prerequisite.

* On the other hand, Magery 1+ is just a specialized Talent, and you never NEED a Talent to learn one of the skills it covers.

It's not just talents. GURPS Magic's Prerequisite Count doesn't include advantages like Empathy and Animal Empathy either Logically then disadvantages like Bad Sight wouldn't be an issue either (Blindness obviously would unless the person has another way to "see").

Now just what would a ritual mage with Bad Sight (Near sighted) see with Hawk Sight especially given that many birds are themselves Near sighted? Or would it only be limited to a mage with Bad Sight (Far sighted) because the Hawk itself is farsighted? ;-)

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

There's no such thing as the "correct current rule" in GURPS.

This is true but somewhat misses the point. As does the original question really.

Sure the "correct current rule" is whatever the GM decides it is, no matter what is printed anywhere. But there is a related question that is legitimate that often fails to get addressed in these discussions, that of *why* a particular version of the rule might be one thing or another, since that reason may be something to take into account when deciding which wording to use at your table.

In this case I don't know, but think it's pretty likely that if anybody thought about it at all, they quite reasonably assumed that anybody lacking an appropriate level of Magery couldn't be considered a "professional" in the first place. That's clearly false for Hedge Magic, but is an easy thing to overlook.