[Thaumatology] Specialist Magic-Users

[Prince Charon]

Originally Posted by Plane

It isn't specified as being a separate spell, but I could see maybe treating it as some kind of specialty use. Like if you learned 1 specific college it might be 1 level easier to learn Powerstone, but then all other colleges (or generic) would be cast at -2.

Looking at the entry in GURPS Magic (p70), I can't see anything to suggest that it isn't a separate spell, other than not listing a prerequisite, which seems to be an error as it has a separate entry in the Spell Table at the end of the book (p231), and that one does mention the prerequisite (Enchant).

[ericthered]

The last time I built a character for a Monster Hunter's game I added some specialist sauce to a Witch with rules from Pyramid 66.

ST 10 [0]
DX 12 [40]
IQ 15 [100]
HT 12 [20]

HP 10 [0]
Will 15 [0]
Per    13 [-10]
FP 12 [0]

English (native) [0]

Magery 6 [65]
Full Adept [40]
Natural caster 3 [45]
Higher purpose (curse breaking) 3 [15]
Contact group (my crazy family, somewhat reliable, skill 15, occult skills, shows up on 12) [20]
Signature Gear (Grimoires+truck) [3]
Luck [15]
combat reflexes [15]
perk: substituted Attribute (IQ for Esoteric Medicine) [1]
perk: Romani (accented) [1]

Code of Honor (Never abuse magic) [-5]
Skinny [-5]
Reputation (traitor) [-5]
Obsession (stop magic abusers,CR 12) [-15]
Motion Sickness    [-10]
Stubborn [-5]
Charitable (CR 15) [-7]
quirk (Wander Lust)    [-1]
quirk (sub-optimal vision -- distance for range penalties *1.5 without glasses)[-1]
quirk (wildly rants when frustrated -- quirk level bad temper)[-1]
quirk (uses little metal figurines for almost all of her traditional trappings in spells)[-1]

MAGIC
Thaumology            IQ    VH    18    [8]    3
Path (magic)        IQ    VH    18    [8]    3
Path (chance)        IQ    VH    17    [4]    3
Path (mind)            IQ    VH    17    [4]    3
Path(cross roads)    IQ    VH    17    [4]    3
Path (spirit)        IQ    VH    17    [4]    3
Path (body)            IQ    VH    16    [2]    3
Path (matter)        IQ    VH    16    [2]    3
Path (undead)        IQ    VH    16    [2]    3
Path (energy)        IQ    VH    16    [2]    3

OCCULT
Mental Strength                    will E    19    [2]    3
Occultism                        IQ    A    17    [1]    3
Hidden Lore (sacred places)        IQ    A    15    [1]   3
Expert Skill (psionics)            IQ    H    14    [2]
Research                        IQ    A    15    [2]
Current Affairs (arcane,US)        IQ    E    15    [1]
Area Knowledge (gates,western)    IQ    E    15    [1]
Saviore Faire (occult community)IQ    E    15    [1]

COMBAT
Sword Sword                DX    E    14    [4]    
Pistol                DX    E    14    [4]    
Brawling            DX    A    13    [4]    
Throwing            DX    A    12    [2]                        
Fast Draw (pistol)    DX    E    13    [1]    1

SOCIAL
Psychology (human)    IQ    H    14    [2]
Detect Lies            IQ    H    14    [2]
Diplomacy            IQ    H    14    [2]
Indimidate            will   A    14    [1]
Fast Talk            IQ    A    15    [2]
Streetwise            IQ    A    15    [2]

Mechanic (auto)        IQ    A    14    [1]
Artist(figurines)        IQ    H    13    [1]
Stealth                   DX    A    12    [2]
Housekeeping           IQ    A    14    [1]

attributes: 160
advantages: 218
perks: 2
disadvantages: -62
quirks: -4
skills: 83

total = 397

The higher purpose (curse breaking) gives +3 when targeting the magic of others or undoing the effects of a spell. She also had a pair of grimoires that gave +4 to removing a ritual to a person or from a place.

As an RPM witch, she's not terribly specialized in the grand scheme of things, but the higher purpose and signature gear give her +7 for an effective skill of 25 when removing the magic of others.

[Plane]

Originally Posted by Prince Charon

Looking at the entry in GURPS Magic (p70), I can't see anything to suggest that it isn't a separate spell, other than not listing a prerequisite, which seems to be an error as it has a separate entry in the Spell Table at the end of the book (p231), and that one does mention the prerequisite (Enchant).

Yipes, great observation, I love easter eggs in those spell tables :)

Now the next question would be: would learning that once allow you to create OCPs of any college, or would we need to learn separate versions for each college?

The cost of casting OCP is -40% from the usual cost, exactly the value of 1-college magery (B67). This sets a convenient precedent for, if we wanted to invent other variations on the Powerstone spell NOT in GURPS Magic, simply adapting the limitations on Magery to come up with the energy cost for them.

T25 "Limited Colleges" for example would suggest:

2 colleges = 14 energy
3 colleges = 16 energy
4 colleges = 18 energy

It could be a worthwhile skill to buy if these were 3 extra skills which allowed you to make any combination of colleges. If you had to learn a separate skill for each combination (ie one skill for fire+water, a 2nd skill for fire+weather, etc) then it could get prohibitively costly though...

Do you think having "one spell only" powerstones costing 4 energy to make would be going too far? If that were possible, I could see someone building a Powerstone-only Powerstone to get their foot in the door of making the costly unrestricted ones.

4*4=16 so that would still be tricky to make if you didn't have a valuable thing to enchant. The previously proposed "one college" manastone (or better yet, a "one spell" manastone costing either 1 or 4 energy) would still be helpful in building up to that.

[Prince Charon]

Originally Posted by Plane

Yipes, great observation, I love easter eggs in those spell tables :)

Now the next question would be: would learning that once allow you to create OCPs of any college, or would we need to learn separate versions for each college?

I'd say that it depends on the GM, but that makes sense to me.

Originally Posted by Plane

The cost of casting OCP is -40% from the usual cost, exactly the value of 1-college magery (B67). This sets a convenient precedent for, if we wanted to invent other variations on the Powerstone spell NOT in GURPS Magic, simply adapting the limitations on Magery to come up with the energy cost for them.

T25 "Limited Colleges" for example would suggest:

2 colleges = 14 energy
3 colleges = 16 energy
4 colleges = 18 energy

It could be a worthwhile skill to buy if these were 3 extra skills which allowed you to make any combination of colleges. If you had to learn a separate skill for each combination (ie one skill for fire+water, a 2nd skill for fire+weather, etc) then it could get prohibitively costly though...

That looks good, IMHO.

Originally Posted by Plane

Do you think having "one spell only" powerstones costing 4 energy to make would be going too far? If that were possible, I could see someone building a Powerstone-only Powerstone to get their foot in the door of making the costly unrestricted ones.

4*4=16 so that would still be tricky to make if you didn't have a valuable thing to enchant. The previously proposed "one college" manastone (or better yet, a "one spell" manastone costing either 1 or 4 energy) would still be helpful in building up to that.

That also looks workable. Of course, I'm by no means an expert on the standard system, but your ideas fit what I do know about it, and it does not seem overpowered. Depending on the game, I'd either allow Powerstone-Only Powerstones, or not allow one-spell only powerstones at all, but if you hadn't brought it up, the idea of a cheap, Powerstone-only powerstone would probably not have occurred to me.

[Plane]

Of course, a one-spell powerstone (rather than an enchantment-only one) could only be used for EITHER the generic powerstone spell OR the separate "one college powerstone" spell, so it wouldn't be supremely versatile. You'd need a 2-spell powerstone for that versatility.

[Prince Charon]

Pelat the Dowser

Age: 22

Attributes

ST 10 [0]; DX 11 [20]; IQ 11 [20]; HT 10 [0]

Secondary Characteristics

HP 10; Will 11; Per 13 [10]; FP 12 [6]

Social Background

Languages: Qulan (Native) [0].

TL: 1^

Cultural Familiarity: Qulan. [0]

Subtotal: 56


Advantages

Magery 0 [5]

Perks

Attribute Substitution (Seek Water based on Per). [1]
SOP (Always makes sure camp is set up and taken down properly). [1]

Subtotal: 7


Disadvantages

Chummy [-5]
Curious (12) [-5]
Wealth (Struggling) [-10]

Quirks

Dreams of adventures. [-1]
Likes learning magic. [-1]
Mildly underconfident. [-1]

Subtotal: -23


Skills

Area Knowledge (local) [IQ/E] [1] 11
Bow [DX/A] [2] 11
Brawling [DX/E] [2] 12
Camouflage [IQ/E] [1] 11
Hiking [HT/A] [2] 10
Knife [DX/E] [2] 12
Naturalist [IQ/H] [1] 9
Occultism [IQ/A] [1] 10
Professional Skill (Butcher) [IQ/A] [1] 10
Running [HT/A] [2] 10
Spear [DX/A] [4] 12
Staff [DX/A] [default] 10
Stealth [DX/A] [4] 12
Survival (Desert) [Per/A] [1] 12
Survival (Plains) [Per/A] [2] 13
Tracking [Per/A] [4] 14
Weather Sense/TL1^ [IQ/A] [2] 11

Subtotal: 31


Spells

Ignite Fire [IQ/H] [1] 9

Seek Food [IQ/H] [2] 10
Test Food [IQ/H] [1] 9

Keen Vision [IQ/H] [4] 11

Seek Water [Per/H] [8] 14
Purify Water [IQ/H] [4] 11
Create Water [IQ/H] [1] 9

Subtotal: 21

Total: 92


Equipment

Durable clothes.
Boots (DR1).
Bronze knife.
Bronze-tipped spear.
Shortbow.
Quiver with a dozen arrows.
Pouch of personal basics.

Notes

Pelat was built using the Hunter template from GURPS Historical Folks p57 (and the 4e conversion hosted at RPK's MyGURPS.com, p24), albeit as a higher-value character than I planned at the start. 'Qulan' is a hypothetical Bronze Age culture somewhere around Eastern Europe or West Asia.

Pelat isn't much of a mage, and he knows it, but he's a good hunter and the best dowser he's ever heard of, and that's worth something. He dreams of bigger things, and will happily take opportunities to learn more spells where he can, but so far, no adventures have found him. I'd originally intended him to be a dowsing specialist with only Seek Water, but he seems to have developed into a 'hunting magic' specialist who happens to be a very good dowser (which is a useful ability for a hunter: animals tend to go where the water is). His knife and spear are the most expensive items he owns.


Thoughts?

[AlexanderHowl]

He is a dangerously pathetic mage, which that is not necessarily a bad thing, though it is weird considering the amount of effort he invests in learning magic. If available, I think that ritual magic might make him more interesting than standard magic. Use Attribute Substitution to default Ritual Magic to Per, change IQ 11 and Per 13 to IQ 10 and Per 16, drop Tracking to Per-1, take Ritual Magic (VH) Per+4-20, and you will end up with an interesting instinctive dabbler for the exact amount of points. Since Colleges default to Ritual Magic-6, he would have a 14 in every college (and, since Symbol Drawing defaults to Ritial Magic-4, a 16 in Symbol Drawing).

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Use Attribute Substitution to default Ritual Magic to Per . . .

At which point any sane GM throws the design out. Floating one detection spell, which has definite scope to be cued by subtleties of the environment, to Per, probably OK. Floating the core skill for ritual magic system to Per, definitely not OK.

[AlexanderHowl]

Originally Posted by johndallman

At which point any sane GM throws the design out. Floating one detection spell, which has definite scope to be cued by subtleties of the environment, to Per, probably OK. Floating the core skill for ritual magic system to Per, definitely not OK.

There are rules in Thaumatology (p. 29) for basing magic off Per rather than IQ. It actually tends to produce thematically better mages than IQ-based magic in my opinion (it avoids the 'every mage is a genius' problem), and it allows for animals having effective magic. It also makes it worthwhile to design characters around the ritual magic rules (as the benefits of ritual magic outweigh the costs).

[Prince Charon]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

He is a dangerously pathetic mage, which that is not necessarily a bad thing, though it is weird considering the amount of effort he invests in learning magic.

It doesn't help him that he needs to find people who know spells that he can learn, that they're willing to teach him. He's a specialist largely due to those limits, and as noted, my original plan was to make him a Johnny One-Spell for Seek Water. It's just that my mind wandered, and his limited backstory drifted about.