Revising GURPS Magic

[Phantasm]

For Might/Grace/Vigor and its IQ counterpart in the Mind Control college, Wisdom, would it break anything to have the boost be measured in hours rather than minutes? I have a player coming in from That Other Game who is used to the hours-long durations for the six stat-buffing spells over there.

I personally don't care one whit, and I can see the reasoning for the minute duration (cast it at the start of combat, and combats generally finish well before the minute is over, but this guy wants to cast-and-forget on the buffs.

[Emerald Cat]

Originally Posted by Phantasm

For Might/Grace/Vigor and its IQ counterpart in the Mind Control college, Wisdom, would it break anything to have the boost be measured in hours rather than minutes? I have a player coming in from That Other Game who is used to the hours-long durations for the six stat-buffing spells over there.

I personally don't care one whit, and I can see the reasoning for the minute duration (cast it at the start of combat, and combats generally finish well before the minute is over, but this guy wants to cast-and-forget on the buffs.

I would keep the duration at the as written minutes per casting duration.

In That Other Game, spells are an extremely limited resource. Sorcerers can cast 6 spells of a given level per day at 20th level, whereas Wizards only get 4 spells per level per day. Or 54 and 36 spells per day, respectively - ignoring bonus spells for high stats.

This may seem like a lot of spells. However, spell "slots" are divided into 9 power levels. While you can load a low level spell into a higher level spell slot, high level spells can't be placed in low level spell slots. Unfortunately, low level spells become obsolete as players gain levels. Thus, most players will reserve their high level spell slots for high level spells. For buff spells to be cost effective under this system, they need hour long durations.

In contrast, there isn't a hard numeric limit to the number of spells you can cast in a day under the GURPS standard magic system. While casting spells does cost FP, mages can use Recover Energy spell to get that FP back. So casting spells repeatedly throughout the day isn't a problem. Buff spells don't need durations of hours per casting in order to be desirable.

I would expect being able to keep the party constantly buffed for hours with no ongoing cost to raise the power level of the campaign. Whether this is a problem will depend on the campaign frame.

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by Phantasm

...but this guy wants to cast-and-forget on the buffs.

And that's why it shouldn't be allowed.*

As has been mentioned, Stats in GURPS are more important than stats in D&D.



* Though he can pick up the Perk: Reduced Footprint, which allows one casting of the spell it is taken for to not count as a 'spell on' for skill rolls. He'd still need to cover the maintenance, but at skill 20 that's a +2 to a stat basically 'forever'.

Most GMs only allow an equal number of Reduced Footprint Perks to be used at one time as the caster has levels of Magery to keep this cheese in check.

[DocRailgun]

Stats are pretty darn important in 5th edition D&D - most everything runs off them now, but admittedly there 6 of them instead of 4 (so a stat buff in GURPS is that much better).
On the upside, 5th edition D&D took away most of the frantic search for more stat bonuses - the 3.5 attempt to cast Enlarge/Bull's Strength/etc. no longer works as the usual stat bonus spells ( Bull's Strength, and so on) just give you advantage (roll 2 d20 on your roll, take the highest) on that stat's rolls rather than increasing the stat itself.

Originally Posted by evileeyore

As has been mentioned, Stats in GURPS are more important than stats in D&D.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by DocRailgun

Stats are pretty darn important in 5th edition D&D

Yeah, but the difference between a 10 and an 11 in GURPS is comparable to the difference between a 10 and a 14 in D&D.

[Jürgen Hubert]

Originally Posted by DocRailgun

Stats are pretty darn important in 5th edition D&D - most everything runs off them now, but admittedly there 6 of them instead of 4 (so a stat buff in GURPS is that much better).
On the upside, 5th edition D&D took away most of the frantic search for more stat bonuses - the 3.5 attempt to cast Enlarge/Bull's Strength/etc. no longer works as the usual stat bonus spells ( Bull's Strength, and so on) just give you advantage (roll 2 d20 on your roll, take the highest) on that stat's rolls rather than increasing the stat itself.

With D&D 3.5, the "boost" spells gave you a flat +4 enchantment bonus on the relevant attribute, which probably translates into a +2 bonus for GURPS. Magic items could give you up to a +6 enchantment bonus (which would be +3 in GURPS), although the cost of the magic item increased geometrically with the bonus: 4,000 gp (+2), 16,000 gp (+4), 36,000 gp (+6).

This is explicitly not the case in GURPS - instead, "always on" items that grant some kind of bonus have an energy cost that's generally proportional to the character point cost of the bonus. Which is problematic - once you have reached a wealth level that you could afford a +1 attribute bonus item, it's not that much of a jump until you reach a wealth level that is enough for the +5 bonus.

Another thing: D&D 3E introduced "typed bonuses" - bonuses from the same source do not stack, which was intended to prevent some of the more blatant abuses. For instance, attribute boni from the "boost" spells do not stack with boni from magic items - only the higher bonus counts.

I can't remember if there is an equivalent rule in GURPS, but it is probably a good idea to introduce it. Thus, any stat boni from standard GURPS magic do not stack with each other - therefore, casting Might on someone under the effects of Enlarge would be redundant.

[Jürgen Hubert]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Yeah, but the difference between a 10 and an 11 in GURPS is comparable to the difference between a 10 and a 14 in D&D.

Based on pure dice probabilities with a 3d6 bell curve versus a 1d20 distribution, yes. However, I would not base conversions on these values alone, since the two systems are too different.

My d20 Conversion Notes are here, but to sum it up here is how I generally do it:

DX/IQ/HT: 10 + (relevant D&D attribute modifier)

ST: D&D Strength, with special modifiers for larger creatures.

So a Dexterity of 14 would translate into a GURPS DX of 12.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Jürgen Hubert

Body Control

Might/Grace/Vigor: I have less of a problem with the spells themselves than with their “always on” magic items. While attribute-boosting magic items are very much in the tradition of D&D, attributes are also less important in D&D than they are in GURPS, and if one character gets hold of an item that grants him +5 to DX then that is going to break the system. Therefore, I would limit the “always on” variant to +1. On the other hand, I would allow a “jewelry or article of clothing” variant that would allow the wearer to activate the spell on themselves for the usual energy cost.
s...

That +5 DX item is 10,000 energy to Enchant If you don't hand out one as loot with a probable Divine origin you'll never see one. A PC commissioning one will wait for 27 years and about 4 months. Even a +1 DX for 4000 was about the limit for the World of D'y'r't and the enchanters there knew _all_ the tricks.

For items above around 2000 there isn't any good alternative to S&S and the wait for one of those is excessive.

The Spell equivalent is 10 FP to cast. and you won't see that very often unless you've given your mages a lot of cp to buy extra juice of one sort of the other. It's not going to show up in every combat unless worse things are happening anyway..

You don't need rules changes. You just need to control the game world with the rules we have.. Limit how big an item the PCs can get from NPC Enchanters and don't give out too many cp, especially at the start..

[Jürgen Hubert]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

That +5 DX item is 10,000 energy to Enchant If you don't hand out one as loot with a probable Divine origin you'll never see one. A PC commissioning one will wait for 27 years and about 4 months. Even a +1 DX for 4000 was about the limit for the World of D'y'r't and the enchanters there knew _all_ the tricks.

For items above around 2000 there isn't any good alternative to S&S and the wait for one of those is excessive.

I have written my objection to the current enchantment system here - in particular, the effect that all but the cheapest enchantments are limited to NPCs only.

I want enchanters to be a viable player character option, but that meant that time could not be the primary balance mechanism - instead, I introduced the cost of enchantment materials.

However, that very change pretty much requires that potentially unbalancing enchantments need a closer look, and likely some revisions.

You don't need rules changes. You just need to control the game world with the rules we have.. Limit how big an item the PCs can get from NPC Enchanters and don't give out too many cp, especially at the start..

The rules we have right now provide a game world experience I am somewhat unsatisfied with - hence this thread.

Also, GURPS 4E has the stated goal that it should work better at higher character point totals than GURPS 3E did. This should apply to the standard system of GURPS magic as much as to any other facet of the system. In some games, I want player characters to have or gain lots of CPs. If I can't do that with the standard GURPS Magic system because that will break the game, then that is a flaw with the rules.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Jürgen Hubert

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I want enchanters to be a viable player character option, but that meant that time could not be the primary balance mechanism - instead, I introduced the cost of enchantment materials.
.

Seems to me that enchanters are a viable player character option just using Quick and Dirty enchantment. All you have to do is tap into enough fatigue. I keep going back to Ars Magica because I have a lot of the books and thinking about it, I could easily work out an exchange rate where pawns of vis were worth maybe a hundred points of fatigue each. In general it's all about how generous you plan to be with power sources.