Tuesday, March 4, 2014

GURPS Magic Notes 10: Energy Reserve and Extra Fatigue; Modular Abilities and Magery

Edit: I just got Powers
Energy Reserve is in GURPS Powers p.119. Its basically build in from Fatigue Points. I first heard about this in the forums. If you don't have GURPS Powers, you can just use extra Fatigue Points, with an accessibility limitation: Only for Spellcasting is in GURPS Magic p. 15 in the Box.

Capped energy Reserve to 15ER or 9cp when discounted.

Limitations for Fatigue or Energy Reserve*

  • note Weakened or Half Power B110  
  • Only in Emergencies (and Half power unless Emergencies)
  • (GM's call) Aspected to a College/Path (B67)
  • Granted by Familiar (B38)
  • Pact (B113)
  • Nuisance Effect (B113) like side effects when using the power. Either flash backs, supernatural special effects, or many other creative inconveniences that can be dangerous in the wrong time. 
    • Flashbacks any time the character taps from this FP. 
  • Preparation Required (B114) pretty awesome, its like "powering up". My call is that, you have to performing the Preparation before you can begin to recover again. 
    • Example. Killian meditates for a minute to gain start recovering 10FP in the the start of the day. After 20 minutes he has fully recovered. If he uses these all up, he has to meditate 1 minute to start "recovering" again after 20 minutes.  
  • Gadget Limitation (B116). Its basically like a Power Stone that you paid points for. But it is not limited to the Stone, it can take other forms. It would be interesting all the other combinations of limitations you can have. 
    • Example. Killian's has his father's watch, an old model from the war. But before he can use it, he has to make it tell the right time (preparation 1 minute -20% limitation). 
  • Limited Use (B115). After you used it up this power a number of times that day, you won't recover this "energy" until the next day.  Basically take the Pool and multiply it by the number of times per day. A pool of 10, that can be used 2x a day is a Pool of 20. After the character goes through a total of 20 points that day (after resting), he cannot use the power until the next day. 
  • Takes Recharge (B115) instead of regenerating at the rate you recover fatigue use the time multiplier (x2, x5, x10). 
  • Trigger (B115) like nuance effect it may be a little bit steep of a trigger. Enemy wounding the character would much more risky than the character having to inflict a wound on himself to access the power. 

*obviously I can't put limitations from Powers.

Side Note.

Modular Abilities vs Thaumatology

Modular Abilities (B72) can break my current magic system. Basically, I can take 80% worth of limitations and move around my points to paths I would need. At 80% limitations, that would be 0.6cp per modular CP points.  Note that its easy to stack up the limitations, although ONE interesting limitation is that by Super Memorization, you need something to memorize from. One needs an external "drive" lolz. The only precedent of how many Pages a Spell is can be found in the Make Scroll Enchantment Spell. A 250 power enchantment spell is a freaking book. This will fairly balance this out, a bit. So using a spreadsheet, take the College and all the Power Costs and add them up. Typically 50 spells, at about a very high variability in power levels. 
A simple experiment. Thaumatology IQ+10 is 48cp. With 48cp I have 78 modular character points for Spells. This would grant me a Thaumatology IQ+17 or Path/College of IQ+19. 

So to prevent this, I will have to change the costs 15 points initially and 10 points modular point. This would grant of 22 modular points. On its own it may look small, but if the mage already had points in a Path he may use the points to bring up spells like a technique at 1pt at a time, even more versatile if he can do it after a minute.  

The reason I went to increase the point cost is if you look at the Preparation Required, its easy to get -80% with just an 1 min to 1 hour of study, spells only, and something like Limited use. 

So yeah, GM's out there hopefully you will catch this "Bug" lols. Even in a Low Magery Game you can imagine how powerful it can be. Note the "Source" and "Focus" of the power "Super Memorization" the player has to explain how he got it. Its easy to just ban it for magic or just use the power cost I propose. 

DnD like mages will fall under this category. I'm tempted to use this combo in a Dungeon Fantasy game since its a 250 point character. In such a game.  

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