Thaumatolgy sorcery question

[Jaware]

I have a quick question that I'm not certain about.

I've read through the book twice and I didn't see anything written about it, though I may be mistaken, but I don't think it is addressed in said book.

I'm trying to find out if you can have alternate spells.

Like. I understand you have your main sorcery advantage. And it limits how big your other spells you can have are. And that you only pay 1/5th the price for the spells to "know" them.

My question is this.

Can you buy alternative spells to your spells?

For example. Say you begin with a sorcerer that throws 1d exploding fireballs for whatever the reason. After a bunch of sessions, you talk your dm into allowing you to up your damage to 2d fireballs. And maybe even 3d fireballs. So you calculate the additional costs from the previous versions etc.

But after wards, say you come into a situation where you want to cast a 1d fireball again for some reason. Do you have to "know" a separate spell to use a smaller fireball? And if so, can you buy it as an 'alternative firebal' to your full-size fireball?

Does anyone know off the top of their head?

[Varyon]

Thanks to Sorcery spells all being built as Advantages, this is pretty simple - add Variable +5% (B109) to the spell, which allows you to adjust your damage freely up to whatever maximum you paid for.

[Jaware]

That does answer my question.

But I suppose I wasn't entirely clear on what I was doing.

I'm ripping the guts out of the system and crossing it with another system and a few other odds and ends to create a system similar to the 'bending' from avatar:the last Airbender.

So while the damage example works, it's not an exact example to what I wanted.

Like perhaps, different sized AOEs, or Cones, or different properties like time to use it, or whatever.

[AlexanderHowl]

Unfortunately, Sorcery is probably the worst system to try to use for Avatar: The Last Airbender. When you look at one of the principle benders, like Katara, she possesses a minimum of Control 10 (Water; Ranged, +40%; Reflexive, +40%; Super-Effort, +300%) [960], meaning that she needs a Sorcery Pool of 960 CP and to spend 192 CP on her Control ability, for a total of 1,152 CP for that one trick.

I would suggest a heavily modified RPM instead. Bending would requires its own Magery, each Elemental Bending would be its own Core Skill, and each Variant would be its own Path (for example, Blood, Plant, and Water would be separate Paths of Water Bending). A character like Katara would start with the series with IQ 12, Magery 18, Water Bending-30, and Path of Water-30, costing around 377 CP. While she would still be a powerful character, she would cost a lot less than the Sorcery version.

[ericthered]

Sorcery Spells are alternate abilities in the first place. You can't have an alternate ability of an alternate ability: you have to pay full price.



Power Ups 4:Enhancements has an option that may assist you in building flexible powers. Its called alternative enhancements. Its like alternative abilities, but it applies to enhancements on a single power instead. Its not quite what you want, but its close.



The Powers book has a section called "Stunts", starting on page 170. You may find "Temporary Enhancements" and "Abilities from Default". Those require skill rolls to pull off, but the closer to an existing ability, the easier they are.

[Plane]

Originally Posted by Jaware

That does answer my question.

But I suppose I wasn't entirely clear on what I was doing.

I'm ripping the guts out of the system and crossing it with another system and a few other odds and ends to create a system similar to the 'bending' from avatar:the last Airbender.

So while the damage example works, it's not an exact example to what I wanted.

Like perhaps, different sized AOEs, or Cones, or different properties like time to use it, or whatever.

You just buy them all / maximum and take "Selectivity" so that you only have to use as many enhancements (or levels of them) as you want.

So you could have AE10 but with selectivity you can only apply AE5 if you want.

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

principle benders, like Katara, she possesses a minimum of Control 10

Control is generally the last thing you go for when building abilities, not the first. (Yes, even for people defined as "being able to control water".) It's a filler.

As I recall TLA, most of the benders generally only had a couple of tricks. They might theoretically have "been able to do anything with water" -- but they don't. Katara has her water-whip Innate Attack (where the "water whip" business is mostly special effects), throwing icicles (IIRC), heals, eventually pulls out a power stunt for remote Possession / Mind Control, and so on. Probably not ten different effects. So, it'd be just as easy and a lot cheaper just to build those abilities.

Sorcery is built on a Modular Ability (not a Control pool) to let you make up additional small abilities on a whim.

[AlexanderHowl]

Katara also moves vast amounts of water to extinguish fires, drown people into submission, etc. In the first few episodes of the show, she is regularly moving a few dozen cubic meters of water without any difficulty. Later on, the earth bender, Toph, is even more impressive in her own way. Of course, you could represent the control as TK, but it would still require a massive amount of points in TK (and in the Sorcery pool).

The RPM method is actually less of stretch, as the control effect would allow for moving large quantities of water. It would also not require at of twisting, as you are keeping the framework while adding a few rules. For example, water benders would halve energy costs during a full moon.

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

Sorcery is built on a Modular Ability (not a Control pool) to let you make up additional small abilities on a whim.

Also for a temp ability beyond what the Sorecery pool of Modular Abilities allows you could pull a power stunt from GURPS Powers. I think Sorcery refers to them as hardcore improvisation and thats what Psionic Powers does with its various Techniques..

[Jaware]

I'm not through building it yet. I'm just tinkering.

I'm thinking sorcery, more or less, modified pretty heavily. Using the path skill and thaumatolgy skill limits, but sorted out more like a martial arts skill being the limited and then each "move" having a skill, like in the psionics book, and those skills are a will based karate or something along those lines.