Help with "Tech" levels for Magic/Psyonics

[dataweaver]

I'm thinking that there should be a “Zeroth Movement” where the only spells available are the IQ/A spells found in GURPS Magic: The Least of Spells, with IQ/H skills beginning to be introduced during the First Movement and IQ/VH spells not becoming available until the Fourth or Fifth Movement.

I do like the idea that the First Movement restricts spells to those that don't have spell prerequisites; the Second Movement allows spell prerequisites, but doesn't include the concept of Colleges (and thus no prerequisites that refer to Colleges); and the Third Movement adds the concept of Colleges.

The “Five Movements” article also said that spells requiring Magery 1 don't become available until the Fourth Movement, and that spells requiring Magery 2 or higher become available at the Fifth Movement. I'm not sure about keeping that, in light of the possibility of taking IQ/VH spells off the table until the Fourth or Fifth Movement. Or maybe I should? I'm still debating that. Maybe it should be “Magery 1 at Third Movement, Magery 2 at Fourth Movement, Magery 3 at Fifth Movement, and so on”?

The First Movement should operate under the rules of Ceremonial Magery (Thaumatology p.23); the Second Movement should require three levels of Extravagant Rituals (Thaumatology p.24); the Third Movement should only require two levels of Extravagant Rituals; the Fourth Movement should only require one level of Extravagant Rituals; the Fifth Movement should operate according to the standard magic rules; the Sixth Movement should benefit from a level of Easy Casting (Thaumatology p.28); and if there are any Movements after that, they should benefit from additional levels of Easy Casting. I think that IQ/A spells should be exempt from this, neither being restricted by the Ceremonies/Extravagant Rituals not benefitting from: they're magic that's barely magical at all, and are already written to be exempt from some of the restrictions that apply to regular magic.

And finally: while I'm debating whether the notion of Colleges becoming available incrementally, I do like the idea that Essential Magic ([I]Pyramid 3/25: Epic Magic[/i<]) becomes available in the Sixth Movement. Since they all require Magery 4, this would be in line with the “Magery 1 prerequisite unlocked at Third Movement, and raised this by +1 per Movement after that”. Note that Under theHood: Essential Spells (Pyramid 3/25 p.20) gives the secret for how the Essential Spells were created (adding Enhancements to other spells), and this opens the door for creating more of them: they need not be restricted to the Elemental Colleges.

[dataweaver]

Originally Posted by Polydamas

There was a Pyramid #2 article on how to break up the GURPS Classic Magic spells into 'tech levels'.

I think this was in the back of my mind while I was writing my earlier response. It was in the March 4, 2005 issue of Pyramid Volume 2: “The Five Movements of Magic”, by David Moore. It's no longer available on the web; so I'll summarize:

First Movement: Intuitive Magic
Basic Spells Only: spells that have other spells or Imagery as prerequisites don't exist.
No concept of Colleges.
“Agrarian” Spells only: animals and plants, food and water, fire and light, body and movement spells are the only ones available.
Elaborate Rituals: no matter how high your skill in a spell, treat it as11 or less for the purpose of casting rituals.
Magical Props: all spells require a prop representing a contagious or sympathetic link to the effect.

Second Movement: Utilitarian Magic
Prerequisite Spells: spells requiring Magery still aren't allowed, but others are.

No Colleges: The continued lack of Colleges means that spell prerequisites referencing “x spells from y Colleges” aren't possible yet.

New Spells: Mind-altering spells become possible.

Simple Rituals: you can gain the benefits of skill 12 for casting rituals.

No props: they're not needed anymore; but if you use them anyway, they're good for a +1.

[U]Third Movement: Structured Magic[/U[
Colleges. At this point, the only restriction on prerequisites is that spells requiring Magery are still unavailable.

Elemental Theory: add Air and Earth spells to the mix.

New Spells: add Knowledge, Making & Breaking, and Sound.

Improvised Magic: in 4e terms, Syntactic Magic becomes a possibility.

Simpler Rituals: you can gain the benefits of up to skill 18 for the purpose of casting rituals.

Fourth Movement: Abstract Magic
Magery: Magery 1 is now allowed as a prerequisite.

More Elemental Colleges: Electricity, Ice, and Weather are available.

New Colleges: Illusion & Creation and Necromantic.

No Rituals: you can gain full benefits of your skill level for the purpose of casting rituals.

Fifth Movement: Higher Magic
The remaining restrictions are lifted: spells requiring Magery 2 or 3 become possible (including the Elemental College of Acid), and the Enchantment, Gate, and Meta Colleges are added.

Advantages, Disadvantages, and Skills
Higher Magic and Unenlightened are introduced as “Magical Movement” counterparts to High Tech and Primitive; and a “Spell Research” variant of Gadgeteer is introduced.

Alchemy, Herbary, and Thaumatology become “/Mvt” skills, analogous to “/TL” skills. Thaumatology gains College-based specializations.

The article then ends with a discussion on how magic and technology interact, offering three options:

Magic Leads Technology: magic developed first, and technology developed later as a way to take some burden off of the mages: what technology can do, magic doesn't have to.

Technology leads Magic: a high-tech world suddenly gains access to magic. Third Movement Magic is achieved within a few years because the conceptual groundwork has already been established by the scientific community.

Magic Supplants Technology: everyone has access to magic from the beginning, so there's almost no incentive to develop technology. In this sort of world, “/TL” skills become “/Mvt” skills as their development is driven by magical research instead of technology: research into Body Control and Healing leads to breakthroughs in medicine and anatomy; Making & Breaking leads to metallurgy and craft skills; Elementalists develop chemistry, while physics comes from research into Light & Darkness, Movement, Sound, and Radiation. And so on.

———

This isn't quite how I'd do it. For one thing, I disagree with a number of decisions that were made in that article; for another, it's a 3e article and didn't have the benefit of access to GURPS Thaumatology; I would remake it using Thaumatology throughout. I'll make another post later with my reworking of the concept.