Comparison: Other Magic Systems

Aside: Fun book

Yesterday-ish.... three hours ago I wrote about the main three magic systems for GURPS. Note, these systems aren't the only popular ones. Indeed, there are a few very important ones I left out.GURPS Thaumatology is the handbook for customizing magic as you see fit for a campaign and a lot of the systems straight from that book are in use. Let's take a look at a few of the ones I find interesting.

Threshold-Limited Magic

Threshold-Limited Magic (Thaumatology p.76) is a system that uses many of the same spells as the vanilla system with a twist that you aren't burning mana when casting spells, rather a caster is tugging at the fabrics of reality or something not entirely comprehensible. It gives a more fluid or narrative feel of consequence for abusing spells, while also opening up the opportunity to throw oneself in harm's way for a heroic sacrifice or just over-exert oneself that tiny bit that's needed in an emergency. Instead of drawing on FP or Energy Reserve, spells slowly raise a value towards the reality wrecking threshold. If a character goes too far, then they might get sick, become permanently weakened, or render some other calamity.

Character Investment

The investment is pretty similar to Vanilla magic as you buy spells and magery and the like in just the same way, but since we have the threshold mechanic there are a few new advantages and disadvantages to consider that can make casting more powerful spells or weaker spells more often a possibility.

Balancing Considerations

Threshold-Limited magic comes with a much larger budget for spell casting than vanilla magic, but it has much harsher consequences for over-exerting yourself in the form of calamity checks, disasters that occur when you draw too much mana. It also tends to recover much slower than Energy Reserve, maybe an adjusted form of Threshold-Limited Energy Recovery is in order? (What would the implications of Threshold-Limited Steal Energy be?) Other than that, it has pretty much the same checks and balances as Vanilla magic.

In-Play Complexity

Complexity, again is similar to vanilla, but as it has even a few more rules, it is objectively more complex. The method of calculating consequences for a calamity is simple, but it is another number and formula to remember.

Existing Spell Lists and Creating New Spells

This is exactly the same as vanilla magic... except, it seems that there are edge cases here and there, as noted above, where a vanilla spell makes less sense in a Threshold-Limited system. So, to reiterate, great number of spells, but no solid mechanical way of creating new ones without getting really good at gauging appropriate costs for particular power levels.

Effect Shaping Magic

Disclaimer: This is practically
required along with RPM to
make this work.

This is an interesting alternative, on page 122 of Thaumatology to energy accumulation for long casting spells. Energy accumulation has an effect of randomizing ritual length as required energy is gathered in steps; sometimes a lot, sometimes not as much. Effect Shaping is a constant, so it therefore simplifies things. Let me be editorialize a bit ahead of time though: it was always an interesting concept to me, except it did not have any hard mechanics for spell creation. This is fixed in Pyramid 3/66, at p.6 where we are given mechanics to use Effect Shaping with RPM, also discussed in my previous post. That said, assume everything I say here is working from that angle.

Character Investment

Investment is, again, similar to RPM, meaning this system will require a large base of character points, but speedily gives a large return on investment as you approach the top. A few advantages where adjusted, but overall, it has about the same costs as normal RPM.

Balancing Considerations

The same balancing considerations that are in effect for standard RPM also apply to Effect Shaping RPM. In short, stronger spells are harder to cast, and they take longer to cast. Casting powerful spells takes a large number of character points to enable.

In-Play Complexity

This is actually an improvement from the standard RPM system as dealing with ongoing sums is no longer a problem. The in-game mechanics of interest are reduced to the penalty against the path skill and the time to execute the ritual. An uninterrupted ritual will complete successfully when the time arrives, or it won't.

Existing Spell Lists and Creating New Spells

This again is nearly the same as RPM, with the transformation from the original RPM spell to an Effect Shaping spell being a two step procedure. This means you get the grimoire that comes with the ritual path magic book, access to all the fan made grimoires, and the ability to easily create new spells in a matter of minutes with a reasonable measure of balance.

Syntactic Magic: Kinda like that.

Syntactic Magic 

Honestly, I've never used this system (p. 179, Thaumatology,) but it sounds like a really cool idea, but it requires a very good GM and very good players to deal with it sounds like, and I don't know if I'm ready for it. The idea boils down to breaking spells down into Noun-Verb pairs and casting based on that. If a caster knows an appropriate noun and an appropriate verb, the caster can do that spell. "Create+Fire" might set something on fire, make something a little warm, might launch a fireball, start a blazing inferno immediately. This is why I say it requires a good GM. There are not a lot of guidelines for what is appropriate besides what you and your group agrees is appropriate.

Character Investment

A character will need to buy a lot of nouns and a lot of verbs to be versatile, and need to spend a lot of points to make them worthwhile. Spells can require large sums of energy as well, so acquiring large energy reserves might be necessary.

Balancing Considerations

Nouns and Verbs are more expensive in terms of energy and time depending on how useful they are, and require large margins of success for larger effects. so, similar to RPM, extreme effects require larger investments in skill.

In-Play Complexity

Unfortunately, this is probably one of the most complex systems in play of all the systems I looked at. There are special edge rules for every case to consider and modifiers for all of them. A more narrative approach might help here, but that puts the cognitive strain on the GM to decide what effects are appropriate for a given noun-verb pair with a particular margin of success. It is on par with the difficulty of RPM at its greatest, except the majority of the calculations will occur during a session instead of in the off time, making it more jarring for on-going play. To compare many of the spell systems described in Thaumatology can be described in 1 to 3 pages. Syntactic Magic has about 15.

Existing Spell Lists and Creating New Spells

Syntactic Magic is for the players and GM who don't want a spell list. It is about coming up with everything on the fly. You have no list of spells to work from, but you are free to do anything you can come up with, Great if you have an awesome imagination and you hate limits; bad if you like careful limitations or looking over worked examples for inspiration.

Conclusion

I GM more than I play, but all of these systems sound really good in the right hands in the right campaign. I think Syntactic magic requires somewhat expert level players though, but Threshold and Effect Shaping might be possible for less experienced players. I really like the Effect Shaping variant of RPM; energy accumulation has a kind of book-keeping that can get aggravating if someone wants to do a ritual in the middle of a firefight. None of these systems are especially suited for a combat wizard though... except for the possibility of Effect Shaping RPM if using charms, but each adds some nice ambiance to a campaign where combat isn't the be-all end-all.