Need some help with Magery

[Jackal_Strain]

I'm working on a fantasy game and I'd like to make magic a little different than what I'm used to.
I'm a big fan of the idea that magic is a gross violation of the rules of reality, and that there is a price for such power.
This is generally solved by following rigorous rites and rules for exact rituals, allowing safe casting of magic by investing both time and effort into act.
This seems to be represented by ceremonial magic in GURPS and I think it works quite well. I'd like to add the solitary ceremonial enhancement from Thaumatology to allow a little more flexibility.
So far so good.

There are time however, when a sorcerer simply doesn't have the time to perform an elaborate ritual or wants to cast a kind of spell that has a direct and immediate effect (like a fireball or similar).
Since the rules of magic states that there is a prize to be paid for such effects, the caster will have to pay a steeper prize.
I imagine that the caster will have to fuel the spells by accepting the damaging feedback of the spell, essentially taking damage from such an effort.
This seems to be solved pretty well by the injurious magic limitation from Thaumatology.

My question is; how would you do this. How would you combine these different kinds of spell casting, thus allowing a sorcerer to cast a spell with ceremonial magic without taking damage from the injurious magic limitation.

[Nereidalbel]

Sounds like you're thinking of Ritual Path Magery, explored in detail in GURPS Thaumatology: Ritual Path Magic. Throwing a fireball requires either preparing the spell ahead of time, standing there like a fool in combat, or burning HP/FP.

[DangerousThing]

I would just make it a part of the world that slow (ceremonial) magic works without bad things happening (except on a crit failure) and that quick has whatever price you want to give it.

I also second the use of ritual path magic or realm magic (this is from GURPS Thaumatology).

[Jackal_Strain]

Thanks for the replies!

I should probably read the whole supplement before asking questions next time.

I'll take a look at ritual path and realm magic right now!

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by DangerousThing

I would just make it a part of the world.

I agree. If that's the way magic works, that's the way it works. Ceremonial magic safe; regular casting follows the Injurious Magic rule, if that's one that you like.

[Refplace]

You could also add Corruption to Magery except when cast ceremonially. Just build a corruption table to suit your taste. Spiritual Distortion may also work.

[dagothdoom]

How about when cast ceremonially, magic works as RPM or Path/Book magic, and when cast quickly is threshold magic with a threshold of 0 or maybe a negative number.

[T.K.]

I'd do it as a scenario option:

Cerimonial Magic
Cast normally with FP, with times and costs as is or altered to better suit your needs.

Combat/Normal Magic
ALWAYS cast with HP, thus injuring the wizard and also being a lot more difficult to cast, since each HP point used turns into -1 to effective skill (unless you alter that, if you want to incentive the caster to burn his life).

You could also tackle "Reactive Reality" rules from Thaumatology p.193

[Qhaysh]

Yet another option is to use regular Spell Magic when casting ceremonially, and Threshold Limited Magery (Thaumatology, p76) for non-ceremonial spells. If you were to do that, I'd actually set the Threshold to 0, thus forcing a calamity check for each spell cast non-ceremonially.