Spell categories by Magery

[AlexanderHowl]

Originally Posted by Gnome

This is part of the reason I abandoned RPM: having one RPM mage in the party meant that basically every PC had +3 to everything all the time. Tons of bookkeeping for all those buffs, and the overall effect was to make everyone blandly more powerful. I just didn’t see the gain. There’s an irony here where you’d think a “flexible” system would lead to more creativity, but it’s the restriction of having to choose from the spell list that seems to breed more creativity in our group.

A +3 ST, DX, HT requires a minimum of a 130 energy Lesser Strengthen Body ritual for anything with any decent duration (+3 IQ is much easier because it is a 70 energy Lesser Strengthen Mind). With an effective skill of 20, 130 energy is possible with 20 gathering rolls, though it would result in an average of one quirk. That is either the result of very might level characters (since a character needs Magery 6 plus Thaumatology-18 to get Path of Body-18 plus Ritual Magery) or the availability of grimoires for the specific ritual, so it is likely only an issue in high powered campaigns like MH.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

A +3 ST, DX, HT requires a minimum of a 130 energy Lesser Strengthen Body ritual for anything with any decent duration (+3 IQ is much easier because it is a 70 energy Lesser Strengthen Mind). With an effective skill of 20, 130 energy is possible with 20 gathering rolls, though it would result in an average of one quirk. That is either the result of very might level characters (since a character needs Magery 6 plus Thaumatology-18 to get Path of Body-18 plus Ritual Magery) or the availability of grimoires for the specific ritual, so it is likely only an issue in high powered campaigns like MH.

So settle for +3 DX for all the physical types and +3 IQ for the intellectuals. Obviously the Mages start with their own IQ. This gives everyone in the party the equivalent of +60 Character Points. Sure, they're temporary (but not really in most adventures) and can be removed because they're magical, which might matter sometimes, but that's still a ton of capability that's gained by use of something (RPM and the points put into it) that is also very useful in other ways.

Magic has spells that boost attributes. Boosts to IQ don't affect spell casting. Funny, that.

[Anders]

Originally Posted by Rupert

So settle for +3 DX for all the physical types and +3 IQ for the intellectuals. Obviously the Mages start with their own IQ. This gives everyone in the party the equivalent of +60 Character Points. Sure, they're temporary (but not really in most adventures) and can be removed because they're magical, which might matter sometimes, but that's still a ton of capability that's gained by use of something (RPM and the points put into it) that is also very useful in other ways.

Magic has spells that boost attributes. Boosts to IQ don't affect spell casting. Funny, that.

IQ boosted by RPM won't benefit RPM. You can't use magic to get better with magic.

But this is off topic. There's another category of spells - those that require high IQ, Per or other stats. What about those?

[Stormcrow]

Originally Posted by Anders

But this is off topic. There's another category of spells - those that require high IQ, Per or other stats. What about those?

If there are any themes or patterns behind those, I'd be interested in hearing about them.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by hal

If Magery is "knowledge" based - then it would be a skill. If it is an innate capability, one you have to be born with, then that implies something else. If it is a mystical set of muscles that can be made stronger and more capable by exercising the use of magical spell casting - then that is something else entirely. But if that were the case, you would expect that those who don't have magery at all, casting spells in a High Mana region, would acquire such an ability just by casting spells.

GURPS has always had what would logically be skills as advantages.

Combat Reflexes comes to mind.

Other examples are Cultural Familiarity, Innate Attack (which is both a skill and an advantages), Less Sleep (via learn meditation techniques), Eidetic Memory, and Language.

In fact, Language went from being a skill in Classic to an advantage in 4e

[Anders]

You could make a case for craft skills as advantages, too. "You can reliably produce work of 'x' quality", where x goes from novice to masterwork or even legendary.

[Plane]

Originally Posted by Rupert

one or more points of energy in the spell, to a maximum of

On possibility here, if one opts to read "maximum" as describing "more points" rather than the collective statement "one or more points", then that could at least be ground to allow 1+Magery on the 1st turn, if sadly not the extra ones.

This would at least give one small damage benefit to that first 0>1 improvement for Concussion.

I don't even know why we need the 'minimum 1 per turn at magery 0' policy now that Magical Styles introduced Power Casting. We don't need the rule to allow missile damage w/o magery 1+ if we just require them to get the Power Casting perk.

Another option is to just borrow Thaumatology's magery-free suggestions for penalties for Ritual Magic: be -1 to your roll per 10 points advantages you are missing. This lets magery 0 guys cast 1/turn missile spells at -1 to skill or 10/turn missile spells at -10 to skill.