Has SJGames been working on GURPS 5th edition for 2 years, or is Steve just trolling?

[sjmdw45]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Again you seem to be totally ignoring that Harry has to prepare all of this in advance. These are charms and conditionals.

I didn't address the claim that Harry has to prepare Fuego in advance because he doesn't. You're wrong. Dresdenverse magic doesn't work like that and that's not what a blasting rod does.

I didn’t have my blasting rod with me, and I was not sure that my raw power, no matter how furious, would be enough to hurt Tessa through the defenses the Fallen gave her. I had never been able to attain the kind of precision I would need without artificial aid.

As of right now, I officially did not care about that, either. I focused my rage, focused my anger, focused my hate and my denial and my pain. I blocked away everything in the entire universe but the thought of my friend’s bloody body hanging from that rope, and a spot two inches across in the center of Tessa’s chest.

Then I drew in a breath, whirling a hand over my head and bellowed through my ragged throat, so loudly that it felt like something tore, “Fuego, pyrofuego!”

I stabbed the first two fingers of my right hand forward as I did, unleashing my fury and my will. “Burn!”

A bar of blue-white fire so dense that it was nearly a solid object lashed across the distance from me to Tessa and slammed into her like an enormous spear.

The mantislike Denarian threw back her pretty face and screamed in agony as the shaft of fire bored cleanly through her, melting a wide hole that burned wider still before searing itself shut. She went down, howling and thrashing, burned by fire far deadlier and more destructive than any I had ever called before, with a blasting rod or without one.

It's a focus for aiding his imperfect precision, not a pre-hung Fuego spell. Hence why he never runs out of pre-hung Fuegos, unlike (say) Merlin of Chaos and Amber with his pre-hung Logrus spells.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

RPM charms are destroyed to cast the spell hanging on the charm. They're consumable. Like Harry's potions, yes, but not like his combat spells. He doesn't carry a quiver of blasting rods to throw Fuego multiple times in one fight.

I'm completely unfamiliar with the referenced setting, but I will note that while charms typically break in some way when used (break them to activate them, they break to signal the spell has ended, reactive charms break to tell you they've been used, etc), I don't think this is a requirement. Additionally, there's a Pyramid article ("Alternative Ritual Path Magic," Pyramid #3/66) that gives the option to make what I like to refer to as Wands - individual Charms that each have multiple instances of a specific ritual stored in them, so they can be used multiple times before running out (IIRC, the number of instances you can store in a single Wand is equal to the total number of Charms you can have at a time - so someone with Magery 8 and Thaumatology 20 could potentially have 28 Wands that each have 28 instances of their designated spell stored in them, for a whopping total of 784 "hung" rituals), which indicates they'd need to be activated some other way than breaking them. I think DF's Incantation Magic (I believe based on the Effect-Shaping variant of RPM from the same article) had further rules for this, including options to recharge a partially-expended Wand.

[sjmdw45]

Originally Posted by Varyon

I'm completely unfamiliar with the referenced setting, but I will note that while charms typically break in some way when used (break them to activate them, they break to signal the spell has ended, reactive charms break to tell you they've been used, etc), I don't think this is a requirement. Additionally, there's a Pyramid article ("Alternative Ritual Path Magic," Pyramid #3/66) that gives the option to make what I like to refer to as Wands - individual Charms that each have multiple instances of a specific ritual stored in them, so they can be used multiple times before running out (IIRC, the number of instances you can store in a single Wand is equal to the total number of Charms you can have at a time - so someone with Magery 8 and Thaumatology 20 could potentially have 28 Wands that each have 28 instances of their designated spell stored in them, for a whopping total of 784 "hung" rituals), which indicates they'd need to be activated some other way than breaking them. I think DF's Incantation Magic (I believe based on the Effect-Shaping variant of RPM from the same article) had further rules for this, including options to recharge a partially-expended Wand.

The fact that charms are consumable makes them inappropriate for modeling Dresdenverse evocations. Consumable potions and charms (bear belt buckle charm) exist but are comparatively rare in the narrative.

Honestly, GURPS Magic might be a decent starting point for Dresdenverse magic if you just multiply all of the ranges, AoE radii, and damage numbers by a factor of 5 or so. You could charge 50 points per level of Magery as compensation.

[sjard]

<Moderator>
Since this thread has long since drifted off into off topic territory.

Closed.
</Moderator>