Dungeon Fantasy: Sorcerery advantages

[b-dog]

Sorcery: 12 initial/ 8 points per level after: A mage uses mana to cast his spells while a sorcerer controls spirits, elementals and demons to cast his. This advantage is similar to magery but is unaffected by mana level but is instead affected by spiritual levels.

A sorcerer must learn summon spirit before learning other spells. For fire spell, summon fire elemental, for water spells summon water elemental, for necromantic spells, summon demon, for most other spells, planar summons. A sorcerer can only learn spells up to the level of his summoning skill. For example a sorcerer can only learn fireball at 15 if his summon fire elemental is 15.

Spiritual dominance: 2 pts per level. This adds to the sorcerers spell skill + Will in controling spiritual beings: elementals, demons, nature spirits ect.

[Harald387]

...What? No. You need lots and lots of prerequisites for those Summon Elemental spells. They're big and powerful, and there's a reason for those prerequisites.

SUMMON DEMON as a prerequisite for Zombie? No, never mind Zombie.

SUMMON DEMON as a prerequisite for DEATH VISION? WHY?

Gah, no.

EDIT:

Planar Summons as a prerequisite for SENSE FOOD.

[sir_pudding]

I'm sure where you are getting the point costs, either. Is it limited Magery? If so what are the limitations? Does it include Magery's Detect(Magic) if not, then why is the 1st level 15 points? If so then why no Sorcery 0. At any rate, I don't think it's worth it.

What you are describing might be better represented as Animistic Magic (Fantasy page 19) or Powers with a Spirit source (Powers). If you want to use Subjective Magic for sorcerers and Intrinsic Magic for wizards with the standard GURPS spell system but a different mechanic consider Spirit Trapping (Fantasy page 130).

In general if you are interested in altering the GURPS Magic system you should look at GURPS Fantasy.

EDIT:

Originally Posted by Harald387

...What? No. You need lots and lots of prerequisites for those Summon Elemental spells. They're big and powerful, and there's a reason for those prerequisites.

That's a good point. The way he has it written, no one could learn any spells since you need to learn the prerequisites of the Summon Spells first, but you can't since you don't know any summon spells.

[Harald387]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

That's a good point. The way he has it written, no one could learn any spells since you need to learn the prerequisites of the Summon Spells first, but you can't since you don't know any summon spells.

Even if you rearrange the prerequisite charts, it still makes absolutely no sense to require the ability to summon CTHULHU HIMSELF before you can Sense Food.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Harald387

Even if you rearrange the prerequisite charts, it still makes absolutely no sense to require the ability to summon CTHULHU HIMSELF before you can Sense Food.

You summon Cthulhu and he tells you where the food is. Yum Yum!

[Witchking]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

You summon Cthulhu and he tells you where the food is. Yum Yum!

You summon Cthulhu and HE tells you that YOU ARE FOOD. YUM! YUM!

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Witchking

You summon Cthulhu and HE tells you that YOU ARE FOOD. YUM! YUM!

That was my thought.

Sorceror: Great Cthulhu, come forth and make me a damned sandwich.
Cthulhu: All right. You're damned and you're a sandwhich. Yum Yum!

[b-dog]

You don't get what I am trying to do. I want the sorcerer to summon spirits and then have the spirits do what he says. The spell is just how well the sorcerer can command the spirit to do what he wants. For example, when a character wants to cast flame jet what he is really doing is summoning a fire elemental to form a flamejet. Elementals can be of any sizes, small elementals are used for small things. The sorcerer takes fatigue from commanding the spirit not from using energy. The prerequisite of summoning spells is because if a player can't summon a fire elemenetal then there is no way for him/her to use fire spells. GURPS prerequisite for spells can be changed for a different concept of magery. If you are a skilled sorcerer then there is no reason you would summon Cthulhu unless you wanted to.

[DieMunchkin]

Originally Posted by b-dog

You don't get what I am trying to do. I want the sorcerer to summon spirits and then have the spirits do what he says. The spell is just how well the sorcerer can command the spirit to do what he wants. For example, when a character wants to cast flame jet what he is really doing is summoning a fire elemental to form a flamejet. Elementals can be of any sizes, small elementals are used for small things. The sorcerer takes fatigue from commanding the spirit not from using energy. The prerequisite of summoning spells is because if a player can't summon a fire elemenetal then there is no way for him/her to use fire spells. GURPS prerequisite for spells can be changed for a different concept of magery. If you are a skilled sorcerer then there is no reason you would summon Cthulhu unless you wanted to.

That sounds more like summonable Allies.
Or maybe powers with a Pact limitation.
Or just learn the necessary spells to summon/create/control Elementals and use those rules to make the elementals do what the summoner wants.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by b-dog

You don't get what I am trying to do. I want the sorcerer to summon spirits and then have the spirits do what he says. The spell is just how well the sorcerer can command the spirit to do what he wants. For example, when a character wants to cast flame jet what he is really doing is summoning a fire elemental to form a flamejet. Elementals can be of any sizes, small elementals are used for small things. The sorcerer takes fatigue from commanding the spirit not from using energy.

This is precisely what the section on Animistic magic on Fantasy page 19 that I mentioned is talking about. This is merely an alternate explanation for what Magery does, and how magic works. See the Roma Arcana setting for a worked example of how this might function in a campaign.

The prerequisite of summoning spells is because if a player can't summon a fire elemenetal then there is no way for him/her to use fire spells.

The problem with this is that the Summoning spells summon a powerful physically manifested entity. It seems backwards that someone would have to be able to force Angels to manifest, before they can cast Seek Food. Usually in both fiction and mystical belief being able to manifest spirits is a sign of great power. It seems backwards (and possibly unbalanced) to have that be the first step. If magic is the summoning and control of spirits, then doesn't it make sense that one can summon and control an invisible Food Seeking spirit before one can command angels to appear "in a form pleasing to mine eye"?

GURPS prerequisite for spells can be changed for a different concept of magery. If you are a skilled sorcerer then there is no reason you would summon Cthulhu unless you wanted to.

Sure, but remember that the prerequisite system is there as a game balance tool as much as anything. Being able to summon a powerful spirit is a potent ability. It seems to me that the only reason one would make a sorcercer is so that one can get these spells without prerequisites. If you want to cast other spells, it would be better to make a wizard, I'd think. I'm not sure why (at least in a DF context) why a sorcerer should want any other spells besides a Summon (Powerful Combat Monster) spell and a big enough power item or ER to cast it repeatably. You don't need to cast Fireball if you can Summon a Fire Elemental. You don't need to cast any spell if you can summon a demon that can cast it for you.

At any rate I really don't understand how you arrived at the cost. When presenting a modified advantage you should really include the modifiers eg. Foo (Bar-30%) [12/level]. That way other people can understand where you are coming from.