should being able to take on Corruption to get energy for spellcasting be a perk?

[Plane]

GURPS Magic pg 156 had a perk "contract with a demon" you bought to be able to use the Black Magic rules for energy. Presumably to gain this perk in play (if you didn't start off with it) you'd need to actually encounter a demon and RP this, possibly something you could speed along if you had the Summon Demon spell.

The downside of the CWAD perk is of course you might incur a Black Penalty disadvantage worth -3 points. It's a greater risk for those with a low Will+Magery total since that's what you roll against to avoid incurring a Black Penalty. High Will allows you to get rid of BP faster too, at best you can meditate 1 day to rid yourself of -3 worth of disad so it's actually easier to get rid of compared to corruption...

Horror 146 talks about Gaining Corruption being something "A Corrupt magus can claim" but doesn't distinguish what establishes a person as being a 'corrupt magus', as opposed to non-corrupt magi unable to use this option.

Should this also be a perk, or possibly more expensive?

Since the ceiling suggestion is 6xMagery energy (I assume this is per spell?) another alternative might be to consider this as being an enhancement on magery so that is applies increasing costs per level of magery that you by? There wouldn't be any benefit to having this at Magery 0 though, so you could probably skip applying the enhancement cost to that, only to 1+

147's left column "Access to Corrupt Magics" talks about how this ability perhaps "requires research or training in Hidden Lore of some kind" but doesn't allude to what the point cost should be. I guess maybe it might be assigned an arbitrary cost by GMs as some kind of "Unusual Background" but I'd prefer to just be told what the cost should be, like with Contract with a Demon.

In terms of "campaign feature that has no character-point cost" you can just say "there's some kind of Affliction present in this dimension which imparts an advantage to all residents" to explain why people get it without paying for it.

Magical Styles 24 takes the approach of 'Extra Option' for making mages pay for many of the optional rules which are beneficial.

I think there might've been a Quirk counterpart for where something is a standard option and you DON'T have it (like for example mages who can't burn HP for energy) but I'm not sure where to find that.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Plane

Should this also be a perk, or possibly more expensive?

Probably. And yes, it's functionally an Extra Option perk. But given that players who aren't insane should probably steer clear of it, and the forces of Evil (TM) generally make an effort to keep stuff like this easily accessible, if a player decides he wants it something will probably "generously" gift him the point.

[Plane]

Thaumatology also introduces some other systems based on Black Magic like T90's Assisting Spirits which probably should also require perks for each kind of Spiritual Distortion someone is able to undertake to cast different kinds of spells and risk different kinds of crit tables.

Originally Posted by malloyd

Probably. And yes, it's functionally an Extra Option perk.

Do you think that's fair pricing for being able to use the Meditative Magic rules on Fantasy 161 or should 1 character point invested in the Meditation skill give this as a free benefit?

200 hours study = 25 energy works out to 8 hours study per energy point, meaning the "each day meditating" is your standard 8-hour work day.

F162 halves or quarters these rates w/ less intensive meditation though I'm a bit fuzzy on the difference between "prayer or contemplation" vs "less intensive .. study of sacred books" especially since the basic version doesn't require a Meditation roll.

Originally Posted by malloyd

players who aren't insane should probably steer clear of it

Corruption is low-risk if responsibly managed. The biggest risk is spells cast with it use the Black Critical table, but if you have Stable Casting enhancement you minimize that.

You can cleanse 4 corruption per day of Penance, which is 4x faster than the 1/day energy you can gain pre-emptively via Meditative Magic. The only down-side is it does require a successful roll against the Meditation skill, but if your skill in that is even moderate, even being successul 50% of the time is still twice the rate of Meditative Magic.

The GM discretion of "may also require guidance" might help make this less easy, of course. I could see in terms of B292 maybe only allowing 4 corruption per day under "Intensive Training" scenario, 2/day under "Education", and 1/day for merely "Self-Teaching".

Unlike Meditative Magic (1 energy per 4 days) there probably shouldn't be any "On the Job" penance to clear corruption though.

One other nasty trick (if you have access to high-level healing magic) is just cutting off your arm . 25 corruption converts into -1char point, so the One Arm [-20] disad will pay for 500 energy worth of spellcasting (like if you need to enchant something)

M93's spell "Regeneration" by contrast, costs a mere 20 energy. The biggest drawback here is the "One Try" caveat though, so if you failed to regrow your arm you hopefully have taught this spell to an acolyte who can have a try too.

The 'one try' spells I think could have looser restrictions if you had (from Magical Styles) one of pg 21's "Adjustible Spell" perk variations allowing the use of the Thaumatology 39 rules to impart Decreased Immunity (PU4p13)

Basically you reduce it from level 4 (permanently immune) to level 3 (cumulative -2 penalty - "immune for one day" is not appropriate as a "temporary enhancement" if you're allowing for retroactive application) so there's merely a -2 penalty for each past failure.

That's +50% so it would cost +10 energy (total 35) and be -10 to skill to do.

You could try 2 levels of the enhancement (the cumulative -2 penalty is only incurrred from Regeneration failures in the past day) but that'd double it to +20 energy -20 to skill and be very hard to accomplish unless you specialized in a technique for that - much easier to hire an Acolyte and teach him the spell.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Plane

Do you think that's fair pricing for being able to use the Meditative Magic rules on Fantasy 161 or should 1 character point invested in the Meditation skill give this as a free benefit?

For 1 cp either way how much does it matter? I'd go ahead and charge it so there is something written on the character sheet and there can be people who have it without actual skill or vice versa.

Corruption is low-risk if responsibly managed.

There's no proof of negative side effects and I can stop taking it any time....