Revising GURPS Magic

[Randover]

If I may add something for the discussion at hand...

I would realy like if many things were simplified and more like Skills. I know it is not hard math but it would be realy great if values like 12, 14, 16 ment something.
I hope I am not alone magic is complex on its own. Lets keep only the very basics.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by dataweaver

As I mentioned in my last post, getting one step per +1 skill is arguably too slow already; I'm not inclined to slow things down even more.

Average pricing of buff spells is on the order of 1 fp/10 cp; even if we give a discount for magic, it should cost more than 4 cp for -1 fp.

[dataweaver]

Not following. Please define what you mean by “buff spells”.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by dataweaver

Not following. Please define what you mean by “buff spells”.

A 'buff spell' is a regular spell that can be cast on yourself or an ally to make them more powerful. Checking magic, the ratios are actually super-erratic; normalizing buff spells to a specific ratio might be helpful (for example, Invisibility grants you about an 80p advantage for 5/3); if some of the more ridiculous buffs were toned down I could see a -1 cost for +1 skill.

[dataweaver]

Well, this topic is featuring a walk through the book; toning down the more ridiculous buffs seems like just the sort of thing to do once we get to that section.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Gnomasz

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

They'll explode within a few weeks of that. With effective skill 6, you critically fail on a roll of 16. With 5, on 15. See B348.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by dataweaver

Keep the Magic Rituals rules exactly as they are, except that instead of skill level thresholds you use point investments. e.g.:

1 point in a spell: same rituals, cost, and time as listed for skill 9 or less.
2 points in a spell: same rituals, cost, and time as listed for skill 10–14.
4 points in a spell: same rituals, cost, and time as listed for skill 15–19.
8 points in a spell: same rituals, cost, and time as listed for skill 20–24.
12 points in a spell: same rituals, cost, and time as listed for skill 25–29.
+4 points: same as +5 skill.

.

Ick! This severely penalizes flexible mages and benefits no one significantly except the Johnny One-Spell. Not at all what I'd want to do.

At best you are reducing a mages number of spells by a factor of 4. What you should do after that is totally revise the spell list to make the average utility of spells 4x greater.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Hellboy

You can explode on critical fails casting magic?
Wouldn't that mean that a mage is likely to die after 216 spells even with perfect skill since 18 is always crit fail?

I was exaggerating for effect. As you'll discover if you look at the Magic critical failure table, nothing on there immediately kills the caster, although the demon summoning (which you get when you roll an 18 on the critical failure table, which is a separate roll to the spell casting roll), might well be indirectly fatal.

However, if a magician makes a habit of attempting say, 10 castings at skill 5 every day, he'll have a 38% chance of at least one critical failure each of those day. If a PC persisted in doing that in my game, I'd get bored, assume he had a deathwish, and grant it.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Hellboy

You can explode on critical fails casting magic?

Wouldn't that mean that a mage is likely to die after 216 spells even with perfect skill since 18 is always crit fail?

You can go through a lot of crits without getting anything potentially fatal. In my experience though, players were irrationally fearful of crits. With some reason since the GM can do anything to a crit failing magician.

[dataweaver]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Ick! This severely penalizes flexible mages and benefits no one significantly except the Johnny One-Spell. Not at all what I'd want to do.

At best you are reducing a mages number of spells by a factor of 4. What you should do after that is totally revise the spell list to make the average utility of spells 4x greater.

Hopefully, that should put the final nail in the coffin of the argument that I'm being too generous. :)

Yes, this approach makes mages with a lot of spells more expensive. But then, I've seen plenty of arguments that Magic is underpriced compared to Powers — largely due to this very reason: mages get a huge price break due to gaining much effectiveness from contributing only a single point to each spell. So from that perspective, the higher expense of being a mage under this tweak is a feature.