Iconic Forgotten Realms Spells - As Powers and/or New Skill-based Spells

[Icelander]

I've had a long-standing campaign set in the Forgotten Realms setting for D&D, but using GURPS rules. In fact, this campaign was campaign I started when the 4e GURPS Basic Set came out.

At the beginning, no PC was a spellcaster and I just winged it when spells came up. When PC spellcasters appeared, they were low-level and the feel of their spells was adequately matched by using GURPS Magic, with just a few headaches caused by that tome's poor relation with the rest of the system. Most of the 1st through 3rd level D&D spells could be modelled easily enough with Magic*.

I basically ruled that each level of GURPS Magery was equal to a spell level in D&D and that 1st-2nd level wizards or priests thus needed Magery or Power Investiture 1, 3rd-4th level needed Magery 2 and so on.

No PC has reached more than Magery 3, the equivalent of about a 4th-5th level wizard or priest in D&D. This is, however, mostly because the longest living PCs were a rogue who branched out into a merchant prince with some powers granted by a guild of thieves dedicated to Mask, the God of Shadows, and a pure warrior type. They were joined by a varied cast, but no long-standing PC was a pure spellcaster, so I didn't really have to work out the cost of high-level magic. I could easily enough figure out what effects it ought to have and bugger the cost.

In addition to the Magery or Power Investiture = Spell level that the character can cast rule, I introduced a few other benchmarks that have more or less held true. For each level of Magery, spellcasters needed about 10 points of Energy Reserve. This is true for the first few levels, but I suspect that it breaks down around Magery 3 and I need to push it up for higher level casters.

Finally, to fit with the Vancian memorisation scheme, characters could either know a spell permanently under the normal rules or they could memorise it in the morning using a Modular Ability: Cosmic Power [Accessibility: Must be well rested, total peace and quiet, has to have spellbook and be able to read** (-20%), Preparation Required: 1 hour (-50%), Spells Only -20%***]. High-level wizards need hundreds of points in this, how many hundreds I haven't quite determined. The PC with the highest in this has maybe 20 points, but he's a petty mage indeed.

Spells of the higher levels will mostly be built as powers. Of course, if some of the spells in Magic fit, I won't go to the trouble for that particular spell and if I can modify a spell in Magic, the same applies. But the cold hard fact of it is that at a certain point, the spells in Magic just aren't enough to model the awesome magical power that high-level D&D mages have to throw around. Nor should they, really, since 1 point per spell is a bit cheap for Meteor Swarm and suchlike.

Now, the Vancian 'forget spells once cast' is an important part. I have no wish to emulate that for minor spells and, indeed, much of the fluff appears to assume that wizards know a lot of useful lower level spells more or less permanently. Hence, there is no need to introduce any new mechanisms for the GURPS Magic spells. On the other hand, it would be perfect for the high-level spells. A caster who can only use Meteor Swarm once per day is a lot less trouble than one who can use it every turn for that day.

But the Modular Ability already comes out to -90% in modifiers, for a modified cost of 2 CP per point of the pool. Adding Limited Use wouldn't make it any cheaper. Which is nonsense, because, as noted, a spell that you can cast once and then can't use again until you can memorise again the next day is much less useful than one that you can use all day after you memorise it. Fortunately, in GURPS Supers, I came across a cost modifier that suited me perfectly. It was One Use Only, something which you could use only once and was then lost forever. That reduced cost by 1/5.

This seemed perfect. Granted, the use I was contemplating for it was not the same as the one Bill had in mind when he wrote it, but 1/5 price for a spell that disappears for memory when cast sounded about right. By a strict reading of the rules, this might or might not be legal, but frankly, no PC would have taken single-use spells in preference to 'use them all day spell' if they didn't come at a significant price break.

For people skimming, I shall make the questions I have for forumites easy to spot by high-lighting them in red.

Question the First. Does this use of the cost modifier from GURPS Supers sound kosher? Am I far too lenient in my interpretation? Ought I let spells that work once cost the same as spells that work all day?

My ad hoc system has worked well so far, but I've decided that now I'm defining how a lot of the iconic higher spells actually work. This will help if a new PC who is a battlemage ever emerges and/or if the magically inclined PCs grow in power and gain access to some of these. I plan to post them here, for review.

Question the Second. Apart from Magic Missile, Fireball, Lightning Bolt, Ice Storm, Lance of Disruption, Mordenkainen's Force Missiles, Stoneskin, Cone of Cold, Chain Lightning, Mordenkainen's Sword, Prismatic Spray, Prismatic [other] and Meteor Swarm; what iconic spells of the Forgotten Realms and D&D in general are not well modelled in GURPS Magic and I should focus on presenting? Does anyone have ideas for modelling some of them that at first would appear difficult to do?

Question the Third, are there any iconic D&D spells of 1st through 3rd level that are obviously not suitable for modelling by the spells already in GURPS Magic?

*And if some can't, I'd welcome people pointing this out to me and naming certain spells that I need to create as powers or make a new Magic spell to cover. Hell, I need to make this easy to spot for skimmers too, don't I?
**Practically speaking, this limits adventuring wizards to doing this in the mornings and they require a lot of nuisance to avoid being disturbed during it.
***A spell is anything listed as such in GURPS Magic and any GM-created spell-as-power that I say is a spell. This is still worth -20% because it rules out taking just any ability that you'd like, which normal and unmodified Modular Ability: Cosmic Power would allow.