Cost of a flat bonus to spells from certain colleges

[King_Of_Bel]

Hey all, I'm currently in the planning stages for a fantasy campaign, and one of the parts of the setting is that many of the races have inherent affinities for certain colleges of magic. I would like to give these races a flat bonus to the checks for the schools their race is specialized in. This would not however stop them from using other schools. I had considered just giving them single-school magery or perhaps the 1-4 school magery from thaumatology, but was wondering if there wasn't another, simpler option. Especially since magery often gives more advantages than simply increasing the effective spell skill level.

[hal]

Are you trying to stay within the confines of rules as written for both GURPS and GURPS MAGIC, or are you perhaps willing to customize you own house rules?

For example. Suppose you wanted to do away with the traditional use of magery outside of magery zero. Suppose instead, you treat Thaumatology as either a broad based skill, or a specific tradition specialization, where all the specialization gains a +1 to skill, and non-specialization use of the skill is penalized by a -2. In your hypothetical game universe, Thaumatology at 12 or less is equivalent to magery 0, 16 or less is magery 1, 20 or less is magery 2, and 24+ is magery 3 for purposes of the magery requisite for spells in GURPS MAGIC.

Then, create the spell tradition groups as you see fit. Use GURPS THAUMATOLOGY MAGICAL STYLES to craft what you need for your game world.

There are other ways to go about it, but you get the point: get creative if what you want isn't available outright.

Another possible route you might go, is to create a new advantage that treats "MAGIC only" IQ as a discounted cost to IQ. The advantage might be called inherent talent, costs 5 points per level, with a limit "may not exceed 20% normal IQ. This way, players use inherent talent for ONLY spell related use for ONLY the style of magic it pertains to. Why 5 per level? JUST having IQ costs 10 per level. If discounted 50% for use only with one college, might be with -80%. Problem is? Racial skill bonus costs usually 2 points per racial skill.

People who use GURPS POWERS more than I do might give you a better answer. -80% seems too much of a deal, but 10 per level seems wrong.

[Anaraxes]

Define a Talent (B89). Talents give bonuses to skills. Magery is often referred to as "the magic Talent", but as you say, it has some differences as well (no reaction bonus, but used as a threshold for many spells, etc.) If you want to have just the skill bonus, then there are existing rules for Talents.

You may want to be generous on the cost, as every spell theoretically counts as a skill. So even one college would blow through the 130skill threshold for a "large" category (the 15-point Talent). At that point, players will naturally prefer Magery anyway. If the Talent is supposed to be preferred, it'd have to come under 10 points, or just be forced by a campaign Magery cap.

If "natural affinity" is supposed to include a broader notion of being inherently good at magic, rather than just study, I'd just use the limited forms of Magery. The Magery level prereq on many spells would be important. (Why can't the elves that are so good at nature magic actually use the better spells that need Magery 2 or 3? I'd probably want "Elf Magery" to count towards those limits, just like regular Magery.)

[namada]

If the bonuses you want to give are by college, why not just give the race Magery 0, which PCs could buy up, and also give One College Magery 1 for their affinities? This way, they cast any spell as if they have Magery 0, but their affinity areas as if they have Magery 1.

I'm not getting how that's not simple as is, however, you could simply write a new Advantage called X-Affinity, which is the same cost as One College Magery per level.

[Not]

This sounds like a level of aspected magery on top of a level of general magery. Thaumatology describes how to do this, but IIRC you just stack the costs of the levels.