My Notes on GURPS Magic Enchantment

I've made a few rulings on enchantment over the years, and this is a good place to share them.  I use the standard magic system's enchantment rules in large part, but with my own assumptions and tweaks like I'm sure every GURPS GM has.

Overall Goals and Problems

My primary worldbuilding goal was to have enchantment be a one-man process of artistry as opposed to a factory type arrangement with large circles of enchanters, the standard assumption presented in GURPS Magic.   This presents a few challenges:

1. As written, Slow-and-Sure enchantment only allows you to put 1 energy per enchanter per day in, so even simple items would take years;
2. Quick-and-Dirty enchantment rapidly becomes non-economical unless you have multiple Enchanters sharing the load; 
3. if the supply of Enchanters is limited the PCs are going to be behind a big queue of Dukes, Kings, Archbishops, and the like so any enchantments they paid for would be even more years in coming.

My primary gameplay goal was to have PCs be able to commission enchantments and get their stuff in a reasonable timeframe, say six months to a year or so.  I also wanted PCs to be able to enchant lesser items, especially Scrolls and Powerstones, on their own.  In addition, I wanted to rationalize the price of enchanted items, as I've never cared for the sliding scale of prices between Quick-and-Dirty and Slow-and-Sure, preferring a flat rate for either.

My Solutions

I came up with a few solutions and some changes for flavor, and as stuff I find useful has come out for GURPS over the last few years I've added to the list.

#1: Removed the Scroll spell

I changed the way scrolls are prepared.  I've never found the Scroll spell to be useful or necessary, so I dropped it.  Scrolls are still enchanted items, but you don't need a separate Scroll spell, or Enchant, or any prerequisites other than knowledge of (i.e., 1 point in) the spell to be scribed and Magery (or Power Investiture for a clerical Scroll.)  You can add 2xMagery energy per day for an Uncharged Scroll, Magery per day for a Charged Scrolll, 1/2xMagery per day for a Universal Scroll, or 1/4xMagery per day for a Charged, Universal Scroll (keeping track of fractional points until the scroll is completed).  I'm using the terms from Dungeon Fantasy, but I've been treating the standard Scroll as Charged for years as my players have long viewed a Scroll that doesn't provide any energy to be useless.  Best use of a Scroll over the years: creating a 100 hex area of Suspend Mana over an evil spellcaster's sanctuary.

A Scroll has to be scribed at a minimum effective skill of 15 to be activated, and you can use Thaumatology and Symbol Drawing (Scrollmaking) as Complementary Skills to increase your effective skill as well as trading energy for skill as in Ceremonial Magic.  Scribing the scroll requires a roll against the spell when you're done as well as any complementary skills.

#2: Made Slow-and-Sure and Quick-and-Dirty Mutually Exclusive

An Enchantment can either be Slow-and-Sure or Quick-and-Dirty, but not both (with one exception and at this point a few workarounds).  The Staff spell or Powerstones and similar items are Q&D, while other enchantments are S&S. Weapon Enchantments cast on ammunition can be either.  If you take the 1/10 energy cost on appropriate ammo enchantments, you cast it Q&D but it's strictly one-shot, the Enchantment fading after it's used.  If you cast it at full cost, it's S&S and permanent (on a very fragile item, hope you added Shatterproof!)  I also broadened the list of spells that get the 1/10 ammo reduction.  After some back of the envelope calculations and a liberal amount of BSing, I decided Q&D enchantment costs $1/point, while S&S costs $20/point.

#3: Assume Professional Enchanters Put 10 Energy a Day Into Slow-and-Sure Items

I assume that there are enchanted tools, Advantages or Perks, and maybe even Techniques that PCs don't normally take that allow a professional enchanter to put 10 energy into an Enchantment a day while performing Slow-and-Sure enchantment.  PCs can put energy equal to their Magery a day in the field for S&S enchantment.  I had a simple goal here: my gut instinct was that a Sword enchanted with +1 Accuracy and +1 Puissance or a wand of Fireball should take at most a month or two to enchant.  At 10 energy a day, assuming no breaks, that's 50 or 60 days.

#4: Raw Magic to the Rescue

I added the Raw Magic rules from Thaumatology (page 227) when that book came out.  One-shot sources of Raw Magic have been excellent additions to my Random Encounter Tables.  Raw Mana can be used for any of the listed uses in the book.  In addition, you can burn a point for +3 to Alchemy when creating an elixir or +3 to any rolls required to create a new spell, and the last option has by far been the most popular use in my campaigns.

Note that when you're enchanting an item using Raw Mana, you always use Quick-and-Dirty enchantment (one of the workarounds to #2 above.)

#5: A New Addition: Magical Essences

I'm also using the rules on Magical Essences from Pyramid 3-66, "The Material Difference."  This method also uses the Q&D times like Raw Mana.  I'll post more on this one later as it deserves it's own post.

Bibliography

GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 4: Sages by Sean Punch
GURPS Fantasy by William H. Stoddard

GURPS Magic by Steve Jackson, S. John Ross, and Daniel U. Thibault

GURPS Thaumatology by Phil Masters

Pyramid 3-66: The Laws of Magic, "The Material Difference" by Sean Punch

Review: Pyramid 3-91: Thaumatology IV

Today, it's time to review the May 2016 Pyramid: Thaumatology IV.  Anyone reading should know by now that I'm a big fan of the standard magic system, so these sort of issues are always right up my alley.

Technomysticism by W. A. Frick

This is an article geared towards GURPS Monster Hunters, and I don't own or use that series, so I skipped this one entirely.

Grade: No grade on this one; I don't like Monster Hunters so I didn't even read it beyond the intro.

The Tome of the Black Island by J. Edward Tremlett

This article centers around a black magic grimoire a-la the Necronomicon or Conan's Books of Skelos.  The background is interesting, and creepy as black magic should be.  It looks like the germ of a good idea, but there's not enough information about the spells included in the book to make them useful.  The game rules here are too bare bones, and the spell descriptions are missing any mention of any of the existing GURPS magic systems, which I find to be a fatal flaw in a GURPS article.

Grade: D.  A simple paragraph or two, or an inset with stats for at least the standard magic system or even Ritual Path Magic would easily have made this one a B, but for me it would be much more work than it's worth to write up detailed write-ups of all the spells.

Update: PK reminded me on the forums that the color codes for the articles have meaning.  I don't pay that much attention, usually, as I think of Pyramid as the GURPS magazine so anything in it should relate to GURPS, but it's certainly accurate that my judgement of the article  was unfair based on that .

Revised Grade:  C.It's no more usable to me in it's current format but lacking any relevant GURPS statistics is irrelevant.

Eidetic Memory: Dark Alchemy by David L. Pulver

This article is about evil alchemy, more or less. I think with two big articles about naughty magic you have the seed of a good Halloween Thaumatology issue here. I liked the elixirs and found most of them immediately useful, and I always like articles about Alchemy anyway.

Grade: A.  Good and usable stuff here, which fits my games with minimal tweaking.

The Thaumaturgy of Metallurgy by Ted Brock

An expansion for GURPS Magic, we get the College of Metal here.  There are some really good spells in here, and it's a good addition with notes about spells already in the magic system. I have to say both that I like the Anvil Strike spell since it puts me in mind of Bugs Bunny and that it's a bit too cartoony for my use.

Grade: A.  Another solid one that I'm seriously thinking about putting in to my gameworld with some minor adjustments.

Codex Duello by Christopher R. Rice

A duelling system for spellcasters, this article is something I didn't even know I wanted.  The general framework is really good, and I like the idea of a mutually created magical shield that keeps bystanders safe.

The stages of the magical duel are evocative and there are a couple of ideas I may develop more.  For a while now I've been giving Wands, Staffs, and Rods all a +2 to offset Regular and Area range penalties instead of reducing range by their length.  I'm going to riff off the Foci mentioned here into more of a range of things that can reduce the penalty from anywhere from 1 to 4 based on the price.  It would give me a reason to present a "wand of hawthorn with a core of basilisk sinew" or similar descriptors like in Harry Potter, and it could make the Focus of a particular PC or NPC mage more vivid, which is always a good thing.

Grade: A+.  Really top notch.

Random Thought Table: The Power of a Good Reputation by Steven Marsh

Fame as magical power.  This one's a bit far out for me and I don't think I'd use it but it's a neat idea nonetheless.

Grade: B.  I'm not going to use it but it's a cool concept.

Final Grade: B.  A good issue overall, but I found one of the articles had some serious flaws.

Revised Grade: A-.  "The Tome of the Black Island" wasn't a strictly GURPS article so I regraded it.

Review: Pyramid 3-90: After the End

Today's review is the April Pyramid, which offers more support for the new After the End books.  It's good to see so much coming out for a fresh line.

"Are We Not Men?" by Jason "PK" Levine

The first article is an expansion of After the End 1's mutant powers.  There are both new abilities and some discussion of a few the that were already described in AtE1.  There are some neat abilities in here, and barring a full book of "After the End X: Power-ups" a Pyramid article is probably the best vehicle to add these.  Some of the abilities in here are a bit more "comic book rubber science" instead of "B-movie rubber science," but for my part there aren't any I wouldn't use in a game that had mutant powers in the first place.

Grade: B+.  A solid article with some neat abilities in it.

"Robots After the End" by Roger Burton West

This article is a quick rundown of how to use GURPS Reign of Steel as a setting book for After the End campaigns.  I consider Reign of Steel one of the best GURPS settings ever, so this was definitely a good article to include.  A GM has lots to consider and work on in doing conversions of the 3rd edition material, and anything helps.  My only objection is that this one could have been longer, but what's here is really good.

Grade: A-.  An excellent but short article.

"Eidetic Memory: The Mercy Dolls" by David Pulver

This article presents an After the End setting, a post-plague world which includes lots of elements of AtE goodness: mutants, radiation, robots, and a depopulated Earth.  If I was to run a post apocalyptic game I could see myself using this setting, or at the least drawing inspiration from it.  The Mercy-bots themselves are definitely an element you could lift wholesale for another setting and throw in without much difficulty.

Grade: B.  A generally interesting setting, and I'd probably use bits of it even though I'd likely create my own background.

"Warping Monsters Into Mutants" by Peter Dell'Orto

A short piece on using Dungeon Fantasy Monsters in an After the End game.  This is probably a good idea, as DF has a fairly large stable of beasties to use, though changing the magical background out is really a matter for long consideration.  My own instinct would be to use material from other post-apocalyptic RPGs first, but it's definitely easier to convert stuff over from another GURPS sub-line.

Grade: B-.  Useful notes, and there's nothing I really disagree with in it.

"Survival at the End" by Christopher R. Rice

This is an expansion or reworking of Survival, and I like the random Survival Skill Modifiers table at the beginning.  There's a lot of information for a high-detail survival approach, but personally I like the low-detail approach from After the End 2 more.  The reduced die-rolls per day in that suit me better.  Since it clashes with my own style I wouldn't use it, but I will say that doesn't make it a bad article and if you prefer a more highly detailed approach to Survival it will prove useful to you.

Grade: C.  A good article in general but not personally useful.

"Random Thought Table: The Aftermath Protocol" by Steven Marsh

A scenario which I could describe as "After the End: After Harder," it presents the threat of an almost-apocalypse the PCs might be in the right place at the right time to stop.  Or facilitate.  It's a decent outline and could be fleshed out to an interesting adventure.

Grade:  B-.  A scenario that could be thrown in to most AtE settings that involve nukes.

Final Grade: B.  A good issue, with the traditional mix of short and longer articles. There were a couple that could have been longer but I liked it overall and all the articles were thematic.

Review: Pyramid 3-89: Alternate Dungeons II

Last week's release was the March Pyramid, which a follow-up to Pyramid 3-72.  It's focused on Dungeon Fantasy, and even though I don't run straight DF I find most of the releases for that series useful.  Here's my opinions article-by-article.

Havens and Hells by Sean Punch

A big article on a specific background for Dungeon Fantasy campaigns: the characters are citizens of Havens, totally safe zones where no-one can die except by old age or suicide, surrounded by a vast Hell of chaos.  The Havens are safe, but lack resources, so PCs are required to adventure in Hell to get stuff (including wood and other mundane supplies.)  If they die outside the Havens, they respawn in the nearest Haven minus their equipment (and 25 points.)

This would be a good basis for a MMORPG or Diablo inspired campaign.  I'll never use it myself but it's a solid setting.  So: this one was an enjoyable read, but not much practical use for me and not very inspirational for my purposes because it's very far removed from what I run.

Eastern Adventures by Christopher R. Rice

This one is essentially Oriental Adventures for GURPS.  There are notes on the basic Dungeon Fantasy 1 templates, a Samurai lens for Knights and Swashbucklers, new Races, and Power-Ups.  It goes to show that even the aggressively background-free DF line can use some tweaking to cover cultures removed from the "Medieval Europe with modern sensibilities" default of most dungeon-fantasy gaming.  It's good, solid advice and I could see similar articles for other broad scopes, like African or Arabian Nights inspired settings.

My favorite bit was a tweaking of the Duel of Wills from Martial Arts at the end of the article.  I've always found that a neat rule and this expands it a bit.  This was a good article and somewhat timely as my next campaign (all fighters all the time) may be set in my gameworld's East.

Eidetic Memory - The Titan’s House by David L. Pulver

A short adventure showcasing the stronghold of a really, really big giant (30') and his family and attendants.  I usually only find published adventures useful for inspiration, but a short and sweet one like this is an exception.  I think the enemies are a touch too stout for most of my starting characters as I normally run at 150 points.  It's an adventure which would probably take no more than a session to play out.

I liked this one. I could see myself throwing this at a party at some point, and I don't often use published adventures of any sort.  The shortness of it, the inherent danger present with high ST foes in GURPS, and the generous potential treasure (much of which is easily overlooked) makes it useful to me. The thought of PCs being savaged by a deadly giant chicken also had me chuckling.

Random Thought Table - The Secret of the Explorers by Steven Marsh

"What if adventurers were outlaws" is the best explanation I have for this one.  It's another setting framework, wherein the players can cause too damn much trouble by kicking in doors.  The world's in the grip of a supernatural Cold War and jerks like the PCs could make it hot again.

I found this one neat, though once again I doubt I'll ever use it.  The nature of the Explorers is a bit of setting background the gameworld would have to start with, and since I run in the same world I've used for twenty five years or so, it's not happening.

Short Bursts - Five Best Places to Nearly Get Killed Before You Die! by Matt Riggsby

Cool, Car Wars is coming back.

Final Grade: B-.  A solid issue, but there's too much in there I won't ever use.  I'd likely use some of it if I was creating a new campaign from scratch, but I run in the same world I've used for quite a while.  Still, the articles are thematic and it includes a rarity for me: an adventure I might run as written.

Philosophical Schools as Civil Arts

Pyramid #54 has an article on Social-Interaction Styles, the Social Engineering equivalent of martial arts styles.  It occurred to me recently that this might be a good fit for different Schools of Philosophy instead of just using a single skill to cover them.  I don't much like the required specialization of the given Philosophy skill anyway; I think the skill should be more comprehensive and about the study of Philosophy and not an individual school.  So, with that in mind, here's an example Schools of Philosophy as a Style.  I think it could use some filing out, feel free to suggest additions in the comments.

Stoicism

6 points

Stoicism is a philosophical school founded in Athens by Zeno of Citium in the 3rd Century BC.  The Stoics taught that destructive emotions resulted from errors in judgment, and the active relationship between cosmic determinism and human freedom, and the belief that it is virtuous to maintain a will that is in accord with nature. Because of this, the Stoics presented their philosophy as a way of life, and they thought that the best indication of an individual's philosophy was not what a person said but how that person behaved. To live a good life, one had to understand the rules of the natural order since they taught that everything was rooted in nature.

Stoicism taught the development of self-control and the proposition that knowledge and truth can be attained through reason.  During the Roman era it was a popular school and included many Emperors among its students.

Skills: Detect Lies, Expert Skill (Natural Philosophy), Meditation, Philosophy, Public Speaking (Rhetoric)
Techniques:  Cutting Out (Public Speaking); Irony (Public Speaking).
Cinematic Skills: Mental Strength; Persuade.
Perks: Social Arbiter.

Optional Traits

Attributes: Increased Will.
Advantages: Fearlessness, High Pain Threshold, Indomitable.
Disadvantages: Code of Honor (Stoic), Stubbornness.
Skills: Autohypnosis.