So many spells, so little time

I've been thinking about magic, again again. I get like that when I feel like I can't get things done in brickspace life, so, a lot. But I'm also attempting plot in a magic using 'verse, so, some understanding of system and reach required.

I've previously done endless spreadsheets to figure that, by the GURPS rules for study hours in character point equivalents, a mage can learn between 5 and 19 character points a year, depending how much is job, how much study by yourself, how much taught.
It can actually be as low as 2.5 if you only have a job and don't study, but, GURPS does reckon you get 2.5 CP every year from just doing a job, so that's nice, even if you do have to put them all into job related skills.
I didn't include Intensive because that's boot camp and the rule book is pretty clear there are very limited opportunities for that, but with sixteen hour days of twice as effective study and no weekends or holidays in the base assumptions you get about 58 CP a year *without* the Magery boost, which is enough to boost your basic stats, let alone your skills. However such courses are very much assumed to run for much less than a year, so, not so much likely.
Studying things that are not magic caps at a lower level, because Magery gives you a percentage boost to speed of learning magic. At Magery 0, or for things unmagical, between 5 and 13 CP a year is the best you get.
GURPS assumes college gives you 10CP a year, which isn't what I get from doing the math on actual courses, that comes out way lower with holidays and fewer teaching hours. But it's in that range of theoretically possible.
Magery gives the boost to learn spells up to 19 a year, and if you're learning that fast, you have enough Magery to learn any spell in existence.

I have previously got that far and noted that 19 spells gets you to Resurrection by the longest chain, so who would even need more than a year? That's spectacularly complex magic, and world changing, and you can do it as a freshman, if you can power it. Seems a little wonky.

But today I was thinking, there's 850 odd spells in my GURPS spreadsheet, and I haven't even added the gender spells from that one Pyramid. I invented a bunch of elemental spells last time I was poking those colleges, for things that should be logically possible cause they are in other elements. The Fire college looks kind of rubbish compared to a decent TL8 flamethrower, let alone grenades, and nobody has invented a magical nuke, even assuming the power requirements would be spectacular. You can't even say it would unbalance the game, because see real nukes. Plus every single Shapeshift spell is a separate spell, so if you want to be a wolf and an owl you learn it twice, and that's just for starters.

So if a magic user is zooming along a particular prerequisite chain to achieve a specific thing, they can do it in a year. But if they want to learn Magic, in general, they've got their 19 a year and like 900 options in front of them. Anyone spending a solid year thinking of nothing but magic kind of has to want one of the other very badly. So you'd get mages who really wanted That One Thing, like for example raising the dead, but you'd also get mages who just have to know how it works, and would feel like a smart kid with a university prospectus and only the one lifetime to go around.

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Game balance as a concept, making sure all the character classes are going to be useful, kind of makes magic not special by design. I mean, the same number of points in any other skill would add up as useful, if designed properly. So that leaves you stuck wondering why risk it.

Plus the entire reason the real world shifted to boom sticks instead of archery was the same amount of time going in *didn't* get you the same amount of skill or ability to hurt people coming out. Archery takes a lifetime investment of regularly maintained work and minimum stats, like magery. Firearms have some chance of hurting the enemy if you know which end the boom goes out of. They can be used at default, and spells cannot. It would take some spectacular advantage to magic to make it worth the time.

And the kinds of things we can't so at all with science tend to dip into the Restricted section, like Mind Control or Necromancy.

Or any variety of shapeshifting. Got to admit, many people would put in the time to be able to be a cat. Or whatever else.

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Pentagram

Today I learned a very little more about excel while trying to get it to calculate the area of several geometric forms, circle, pentagon, and pentagram.

Then I gave up and just copied across a bunch of numbers from a web page that would calculate it for me.

And then I gave up on that because ugh, hand copying, I don't even plan to use this stuff, I just wanted some vague idea of it.

The problem is that the cost of Pentagram is calculated by area in square feet, not area as in area effect spell. And the spell description says "The barrier is a star-shaped figure drawn on the floor or ground." The picture arguably shows the standard star in a circle, so, my assumption was the area in question was the circle, and I made a chart of circle areas to find costs. Simples. But! What if it actually meant a star shape? On account of that being what it actually says?

I have now seen the formula for calculating the area of a star shape, and it is... very maths.
Very.

But I copied a bunch of the answers down.

But I also tried a few pentagons, because one bright spark on a forum suggested only the central pentagon would really hold a demon. Also I more or less managed to put the formula for that into excel. probably. it got samelike answers anyways.

So these three understandings of a Pentagram spell get very different answers, and all of them are really very expensive, when you consider all it takes for an unmagical being to break the spell is a chalk mark or scuff. "If part of the pentagram is cut or erased, its power will be lost until the caster can rejoin the pentagram - all this requires is a piece of chalk and time (usually just a second) to draw the line." Okay, so, sounds like it doesn't need recasting, just redrawn? That makes a large investment of power more worthwhile. But if a demon actually breaks out of the pentagram it needs casting over again.

You can cast a ten square foot pentagram in ten seconds for ten fatigue. Nice. But not fast enough once battle is joined, and not resilient enough to feet.

But it's a fiddly pain, it not being clear, or giving any numbers.


Also, given you can use enchantment rules to make it, the inventive player is going to have all sorts of thoughts about portable versions, and the description just doesn't go there.

Spell Shield is a prereq for pentagram and protects against fewer things differently but does have a magic item listed. A spell shielding rug or area of floor costs 400 per yard of radius. Which is very different maths indeed from the cost per square foot of pentagram. Which you'd think could also be cast on a rug, and can certainly go on an area of floor.


I know magic is under no obligation to be logical, but rules certainly are, if they're going to be playable by fiddly clever people.


Really, they couldn't have given a single example with radius? *sigh*




ANYway, I got sidetracked with math and that was my afternoon.

Is a good thing I find this fun.

Gentlemen's jewels

Today I read that a three foot wand could use Shortsword or Smallsword skill
so I went over to tumblr https://beccaelizabeth315.tumblr.com/ and queued all the smallswords I could find
and that not being enough I searched the V&A website for more.

I still didn't find that one perfect sword that's in my head, basically diamond jewellery but with very pointy steel attached.
... diamond cross section blades screw the search results. also pinterest gums up any search really really hard.

I love swords from the era where they were on the one hand as perfectly made as historical blades ever got to be but on the other pretty much ornamental. They got the metallurgy and design licked just in time for almost everyone to stop carrying them. So when people did, they went all out on the shiny.

And that makes them so great as magical artefacts. Like, to have a Staff spell cast on them they'd have to be made of once living material, mostly wood or bone. Sadly magery and metallurgy seldom mix. But you could mix your media and set bone in a channel and get the same spells on. Strengthen it with a few enchantments. Set powerstones in the hilt. And that's where the bling gets practical, because a mage with one stone has a maximum, an upper limit on their power reserve based on the cost of the gem, which can be broadly guessed by appraising it. Yes, the details matter with gemstones, but still. A mage with gems all over everything, multiple, very large and shiny gems, can still only use one powerstone, and would bork the recharge time to be carrying more than one, but, you'd never know which one. And sure, you could spend all that money on a single bigger powerstone, but the biggest powerstones are simply unlikely to exist. They're certainly going to be harder to get hold of than some gemstones of variable quality. But if you're carrying something that maybe might be a powerstone of a size to tip the combat, you're ever so much less likely to have to prove it.

So you get gentleman dandies, peacocks, strutting their gem studded stuff, with at least one spell to their name, trying to make like they're gifts to wizardry.

And then you'd get some with one gem, just the one, sitting in the obvious place on the sheathed wand. And everyone is left to wonder, is that all they can afford, or is that just all they need?

And all of them are dangerous, but danger looks fabulous.



Add to this that every gentleman at least in theory serves a Lady, and wears her sign somewhere, and Ladies favour signs from their side of the magic and the natural world
and you get a lot of gentlemen in flowers.

And this is an aesthetic of wizardry I've not seen, but it seems like fun.



With that as the standard presentation, gentlemen Scholars, in their off white robes, carrying six feet of oak, and with chunky tough powerstones if any, are going to stand out. Even if the robes are mostly because the Clean spells is too enthusiastic for dyed cloth to last. They've all put years in to study, and if they keep wearing the robes after, that's like saying that's all they need. Which most of the time would be true. But it would also be keeping a collective identity instead of showing the signs of diverse interests, so as with any uniform, it warns that messing with one is messing with all. So being encouraged to change out of the robes might get politically complex...



But still, basically smallswords. So sharp, so pretty.