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Old 12-10-2011, 02:09 PM   #1
DuckTapeAl
 
Join Date: Jun 2011
Default Restricting Magery to One College Only

Hello. I'm writing up a setting where all Magery has to be purchased with the One College Only limitation. My idea is that characters can purchase multiple Mageries, each with a different One College Only. Since this will make it much more expensive for mages to have multiple colleges of Magery, I was considering increasing the limitation of One College Only to -60%. Does this sound reasonable?
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Old 12-10-2011, 03:19 PM   #2
Darth Cloaked Guy
 
Join Date: Jun 2011
Location: Earth
Default Re: Restricting Magery to One College Only

Most cases, limitations regarding "Almost Never" circumstances and "Rare" commodities tend to come to -40%, looking through the books, but I admit I am new and may be wrong.
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Old 12-10-2011, 03:30 PM   #3
whswhs
 
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
Default Re: Restricting Magery to One College Only

Quote:
Originally Posted by DuckTapeAl View Post
Hello. I'm writing up a setting where all Magery has to be purchased with the One College Only limitation. My idea is that characters can purchase multiple Mageries, each with a different One College Only. Since this will make it much more expensive for mages to have multiple colleges of Magery, I was considering increasing the limitation of One College Only to -60%. Does this sound reasonable?
I'm afraid not.

On one hand, it doesn't save enough points! With a -60% limitation, you pay 4 points/level for Magery; if you buy three Colleges, you're at 12 points/level, which is already less economical than just buying overall Magery would be if you allowed it. A mage who can handle 10 colleges is paying 40 points/level.

On the other hand, the proper way to scale this is logarithmically. GURPS Fantasy establishes that in a world with two colleges, One College Only is -10% rather than -40%. That's morally equivalent to having 12 of the 24 standard colleges. So each +1% reduction in the limitation multiplies the effective number of colleges x1.086. Thus

2 colleges, -31%
3 colleges, -26%
4 colleges, -23%
5 colleges, -20%
6 colleges, -18%
7 colleges, -16%
8 colleges, -14%
9 colleges, -13%
10 colleges, -12%
11 colleges, -11%
12 colleges, -10%

and the same calculation—30 x (log N/log 12) - 40—will get you to -1% for 24 colleges, which is close enough for government work.

Unfortunately, that doesn't work out to anything like a reasonable "N points per college."

How about this as a compromise? You only cast one spell at a time! Buy the first college for the full -40%, for 6 points/level. Then buy each added Magery as an alternative ability for one-fifth normal cost, or 1.2 points/level. It's a better deal than your proposal (six colleges by your system would cost 24 points/level, but by this method only 12 points/level) and it doesn't involve changing the canonical value of limitations.

Bill Stoddard
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Old 12-10-2011, 04:50 PM   #4
DuckTapeAl
 
Join Date: Jun 2011
Default Re: Restricting Magery to One College Only

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Originally Posted by whswhs View Post
How about this as a compromise? You only cast one spell at a time! Buy the first college for the full -40%, for 6 points/level. Then buy each added Magery as an alternative ability for one-fifth normal cost, or 1.2 points/level. It's a better deal than your proposal (six colleges by your system would cost 24 points/level, but by this method only 12 points/level) and it doesn't involve changing the canonical value of limitations.
That's a good idea. That seems much more like the costs that I'm looking for.

So, by your table, if there are 7 colleges in this system, One College Only would be about -25%?

Thanks!
-DuckTapeAl
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Old 12-10-2011, 04:57 PM   #5
Dinadon
 
Join Date: Aug 2007
Default Re: Restricting Magery to One College Only

According to Thaumatology all you do is reduce the limitation by 10% per extra college. So someone with 3 colleges would have a -20% limitation. Note that this makes 4 colleges the highest number of colleges you can have as a limitation.
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Old 12-11-2011, 07:51 AM   #6
Fred Brackin
 
Join Date: Aug 2007
Default Re: Restricting Magery to One College Only

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Originally Posted by DuckTapeAl View Post
That's a good idea. That seems much more like the costs that I'm looking for.
Note WHS' assumption that no one would be buiing more than 1 level of Magery in each College?

In such a system people would game the IQ/Magery balance to to get the advantageous Spell Skill num bers by buying IQ as much as possible. They even might sell back Will and Per to get hee IQ cost down to 10/level which is the same as overall Magery.

What I think you're doing in essence is using One College Magery as an Unusual Background to allow access to that particular College.

So as a counter-proposal, leave Magery alone and just charge a UB (of whatever cost you want) for each College.
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Old 12-11-2011, 08:21 AM   #7
whswhs
 
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
Default Re: Restricting Magery to One College Only

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Originally Posted by Fred Brackin View Post
Note WHS' assumption that no one would be buiing more than 1 level of Magery in each College?
No, I'm actually not assuming that. I'm just stating costs as points/level. Since the cost of N levels is N x the cost of one level, figuring total cost is straightforward.

Bill Stoddard
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Old 12-11-2011, 09:33 AM   #8
gilbertocarlos
 
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Default Re: Restricting Magery to One College Only

The problem with only 2 base and 4/level for magery(the costs of -60%) is that would be even more tempting to have many levels, and many levels of magery=super strong and focused mage, if he chooses fire school, he could easily kill many enemies with his fireballs, probably expending very little FP.
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Old 12-11-2011, 01:29 PM   #9
Fred Brackin
 
Join Date: Aug 2007
Default Re: Restricting Magery to One College Only

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Originally Posted by gilbertocarlos View Post
The problem with only 2 base and 4/level for magery(the costs of -60%) is that would be even more tempting to have many levels, and many levels of magery=super strong and focused mage, if he chooses fire school, he could easily kill many enemies with his fireballs, probably expending very little FP.
Well, he could make big Firebals and make them faster than lower level mages but he's not going to be able to do that much about FP costs really. For that 4 cp/level cost it's going to be 20 cp for each FP he takes off.

Of course, he gets to add another 5D/turn to his Fireballs but he'll never make much of a dent in the _relative_ FP cost (and the higher the character's cp base the tougher the foes he's likely to face).

He's still going to need FP and then there's Innate Attck Skill and other costs too. High Magery is more potentially abusive for non-combat Spells than combat ones.
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Old 12-11-2011, 05:09 PM   #10
vitruvian
 
Join Date: Aug 2004
Default Re: Restricting Magery to One College Only

Quote:
Originally Posted by whswhs View Post
I'm afraid not.

On one hand, it doesn't save enough points! With a -60% limitation, you pay 4 points/level for Magery; if you buy three Colleges, you're at 12 points/level, which is already less economical than just buying overall Magery would be if you allowed it. A mage who can handle 10 colleges is paying 40 points/level.

On the other hand, the proper way to scale this is logarithmically. GURPS Fantasy establishes that in a world with two colleges, One College Only is -10% rather than -40%. That's morally equivalent to having 12 of the 24 standard colleges. So each +1% reduction in the limitation multiplies the effective number of colleges x1.086. Thus

2 colleges, -31%
3 colleges, -26%
4 colleges, -23%
5 colleges, -20%
6 colleges, -18%
7 colleges, -16%
8 colleges, -14%
9 colleges, -13%
10 colleges, -12%
11 colleges, -11%
12 colleges, -10%

and the same calculation—30 x (log N/log 12) - 40—will get you to -1% for 24 colleges, which is close enough for government work.

Unfortunately, that doesn't work out to anything like a reasonable "N points per college."

How about this as a compromise? You only cast one spell at a time! Buy the first college for the full -40%, for 6 points/level. Then buy each added Magery as an alternative ability for one-fifth normal cost, or 1.2 points/level. It's a better deal than your proposal (six colleges by your system would cost 24 points/level, but by this method only 12 points/level) and it doesn't involve changing the canonical value of limitations.

Bill Stoddard
You may only cast one spell at a time (barring Compartmentalized Mind), but what about maintained spells? They make the Alternative Ability construct a mite less desirable, I think. And since in theory you never had the two types of Magery at the same time, I'm not sure what it does to cross-College prerequisite chains.
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