What happens if: Energy Accumulating Magic

[onetrikpony]

Happens if; you use the RPM Energy Accumulating framework to cast spells on the regular spell list as rituals?
However; the energy cost of the ritual is equal to the spell's base energy times its prerequisite count i.e.; Control Person, energy 6, prereq. count 5, Ritual Energy cost: 30.


To be more concise; if the energy costs of spells as rituals were calculated by multiplying the spells energy cost by the prerequisite count would there still be internal balance between them?

[Jinumon]

This can already be done semi-"out-of-the-box" with GURPS: Thaumatology. The Magical Modifies in Appendix A say you can read modifiers as skill penalties or as energy requirements; simply read Prerequisite Count as an additional energy requirement. You're effectively converting Ritual Magic (Thaumatology, pp. 72-76) penalties for prerequisite count into additional energy and allow the casting of ordinary spells using Energy Accumulating Book/Path Magic. Apply and extra +1 energy for VH spells, as they're at an additional -1 compared to normal spells.

For example: casting Plane Shift in this fashion would require you to accumulate 32 energy using Energy Accumulating Book/Path Magic: 20 (for the spell) + 11 (for the prerequisite count) + 1 (Plane Shift is Very Hard). Roll against the appropriate Path or Book at +0, applying a -1 cumulative penalty to skill at every third stage. Use Book/Path Adept to eliminate the needs for Time, Space, and Sympathy.

Hope this helps,

Jinumon

[ericthered]

Prerequisite count is a weird metric. Having some sort of structure helps keep the magic system working, it terms of not having mages cherry pick their spells, but the actual prereq count isn't that core to the whole thing. I certainly wouldn't multiply the energy cost by the prereq count.



Jinumon's idea (drawn from Thaumatology) is adding the prereq count, and that's probably not bad. Energy Accumulating is exceptionally powerful, and I can see a case for doubling costs for the whole thing, except maybe for spells without prereqs (that usually IS a good indication of a very basic spell).



If you go ahead and multiply by prereq count, I suspect you get a lot of low-count spells spammed in lots of different situations, but you don't see much of the high-prereq spells.

[onetrikpony]

Originally Posted by ericthered

If you go ahead and multiply by prereq count, I suspect you get a lot of low-count spells spammed in lots of different situations, but you don't see much of the high-prereq spells.

Thanks Eric and Jinjumon.

That's pretty much my main concern. Which spells would be "must have", because they're so inexpensive for the effect that you'll violate a character concept to 'game the system'.

My GURPS-cation ended Sunday and I didn't get to work on this aspect of my setting. I was hoping someone had all ready had experience with something similar.

I really just need to make the time to sit down with a spreadsheet and do some data entry. :\