Revising GURPS Magic

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Jürgen Hubert

That might cause some frequent calculation on the order in which the spells are cast - mages would always start with the more costly spells and then proceed to the cheaper ones. This gets worse with the larger Maintenance Penalty I have established.

That is not metagaming. Rather, the characters who live in the world understand magic to such an extent that they know that that's the most efficient and safest order in which to cast a series of spells.

[Jürgen Hubert]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

That is not metagaming. Rather, the characters who live in the world understand magic to such an extent that they know that that's the most efficient and safest order in which to cast a series of spells.

While this is true, it also drags the game down - which I want to avoid.

[Anthony]

Honestly, the easiest option is to just toss fatigue cost reduction for skill completely, and if there's spells that you really want people to be able to maintain for long periods (e.g. Night Vision) bump their duration from Minute to Hour.

[brianfb]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Honestly, the easiest option is to just toss fatigue cost reduction for skill completely, and if there's spells that you really want people to be able to maintain for long periods (e.g. Night Vision) bump their duration from Minute to Hour.

That probably makes sense for 500 point characters, but a 100 point mage gets his one main combat spell to 15 so he can do 1 die attacks for free even after he has cast two spells and burned through his fatigue. Without this mechanic 100 point wizards would be using crossbows, at that point what's the fun in being a wizard?

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by brianfb

That probably makes sense for 500 point characters, but a 100 point mage gets his one main combat spell to 15 so he can do 1 die attacks for free even after he has cast two spells and burned through his fatigue. Without this mechanic 100 point wizards would be using crossbows, at that point what's the fun in being a wizard?

Change missile and jet spells to cost 2/minute, and you can use them at will for the duration. Or change the cost from (dice) to (dice-1, minimum 1).

[L.J.Steele]

GURPS Mysteries has some comments on 4th Ed. Magic. There are implications of concepts like magic having signatures, and traces that you can track, but no real guidelines on how it works. This has a number of implications for how mystery solving works in the setting. Would be nice to see some of those resolved.

[benz72]

Originally Posted by L.J.Steele

GURPS Mysteries has some comments on 4th Ed. Magic. There are implications of concepts like magic having signatures, and traces that you can track, but no real guidelines on how it works. This has a number of implications for how mystery solving works in the setting. Would be nice to see some of those resolved.

That provides a good opportunity to enhance the functionality of things like Aura and Conceal Magic

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by simply Nathan

I don't like this idea because it makes high-energy spells (already dubious when energy cost is higher than 10) too risky. Energy reduction works better as an optional skill penalty to opt into than as an unreliable result of rolling.

That'd be my preference too. I like character-choice based casting.

[Gnomasz]

Originally Posted by Anthony

I would generally prefer to work energy and casting modifiers in the same way as damage bonuses from brawling, karate, etc -- e.g. "if you have a skill of at least IQ+Magery, -1 fp cost". That means high IQ and magery don't help at all for costs, they're only relevant for casting probability.

I've just started testing cost reduction based on relative skill: -1 at 4 points invested and -2 at 12 points (there's no need to think about higher breakpoints for now), but it's been only one session, so I can't really judge the effects.

Originally Posted by Jürgen Hubert

While this is true, it also drags the game down - which I want to avoid.

How about mages who would risk many rolls at 6 or less in the morning just to lower the maintenance cost?

To be honest, the "revising Magic" theme makes me weary. We all tweak the whole system in many ways, but spells seem to be the only thing that gets mostly "fixes" and not "our takes". And frankly, all those fixes are based on personal preference. Magic could use some errata with it's frivolous use of the word "permanent", but "this breaks the game if coupled with Magery 20" isn't really a system issue, just like a huge corrosive aura on 200 points wouldn't indicate a problem with Innate Attack advantage, but with what's allowed in the campaign. So maybe we should stop fixing Magic and start just using it like we use Powers?
Phew. With that rant out of the system, back to topic.

Originally Posted by Jürgen Hubert

-3 for each halving of the casting time

Has anyone tried using the Time spent rules from Campaigns for magic? Adding yet another pattern, beside those rules and Power Blow, seems like over-complicating things.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Gnomasz

Has anyone tried using the Time spent rules from Campaigns for magic? Adding yet another pattern, beside those rules and Power Blow, seems like over-complicating things.

There's a variant on it in Worminghall: You can't spend extra time on the spell roll, but you can get a bonus to effective skill in any spell with Symbol Drawing, and you can take extra time on Symbol Drawing, going from one second for a quick squiggle to 30 seconds for an elaborate diagram. That can give you a fair bonus to every spell as a payoff for good lab technique. I tried it out in a campaign about apprentice mages in their first year at university, and it seemed to work pretty well.