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Apr. 3rd, 2015 06:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethSometimes I spend hours and hours with GURPS rulebooks just to get really really sure that the underlying, game balanced, assumptions GURPS uses are not things I can be having with in this story.
Like, dragons. If you assume a dragon starts out in dragon form and later gets Alternate Form to turn themselves human, that costs them 15 character points after character creation. But if you assume they start out in humanoid form and somehow become their grand draconic selves, that's going to cost at barest minimum 150 character points they'll have to earn. Which would take a bit of a while to accumulate. Dragon humanoid children would go adventuring just to develop themselves to the point they could possibly some day think about becoming a scaly dragon, and they'd have to spend points on survival skills along the way, and they'd just take forever on it.
The other way to shapeshift is to use magic. Each shapshift spell is specific to one form, and you have to be familiar with that form. So, okay, no problem, if they grow up around dragons they can learn Shapeshifting (Dragon). They'd need Magery 0 and it would be really helpful to have an energy reserve since that spell costs 9 to cast and 3 to maintain. If you want 2 hours in dragon form you need 12 energy for that specific task. 36 character points for a 12 point energy reserve, 5 for Magery 0, 6 for the spell prerequisites and 1 for Shapeshifting itself. 5 they're born with, 36 they mature into, and then only 7 of study, which takes like 1400 hours of study time. Easily attainable.
But... since when do dragons exhaust themselves or their magic just to stay dragon shaped?
Or the flip side, what kind of adventure do we have if they're going to have to go have a nap in dragon form after every 2 hours in humanoid skin? Shapeshifting (human) is a cheaper spell though, if they turn into a perfectly average human that's 3 to cast and 1 to maintain, so for the same 12 energy reserve they could be a human ten hours, which gets more done. Still, if you're trying to keep your scaly self a secret, a bit tricky.
And then there's the fact that I just object to the whole idea that shapeshifting can wear off. It ought to be hard to change one set of matter into another. If you're wearing an illusion, sure, that can wear off. But if you've actually changed your physical self into a fully functioning biological entity of another species, it ought to my mind to take at least as much magic spell to get your form changed again, even if it's changing back. Because it's the shifting that takes work, not ... holding a distortion in the mana based morphological field that creates an unstable second form.
Permanent Shapeshifting is an existing spell, studied right after Shapeshifting, but it requires Magery 3 and it costs 5 times more energy to cast than the other. So, 9*5 of energy reserve solely to become dragon shaped. Any further spells, like dragon breath attacks, would either come out of their physical fatigue or need even more energy reserve from the get go. And a humanoid with 45 energy to pour into spells is going to be able to do some really spectacular things and basically never run out of puff magically speaking.
If they aren't born with this gigantic reserve and have to develop it through doing magic a lot, that's another reason to have adventurer dragons, trying to find useful places to apply their magic and stretch themselves. But it would cost, for minimums, 9*5*3 = 135 character points for energy reserves and 35 for Magery, 8 for spells studied, 178 in all. It's a bit more than having an alternate form, would take even longer to get there... but be rather more magically versatile along the way.
I don't know, I could do it that way, it's just... is anyone really going to sit there investing their every character point into the distant dream of one day being scaly and flying?
Especially if you use magic to get there, the points could go towards so many different things that were much less boring, including the spells to armour themselves and fly!
Unless I call it all instinct or tie it to mating or some such, I'm just not believing it.
So, make the Energy Reserve innate, not something they have to study, something they grow into like a human grows into their Fatigue. They'd get that at-least-45 point pool of magical energy to draw on as they reach adulthood, however dragons define that. It'd be part of their racial template and not something to study.
They're still going to be really and sincerely better mages than they need to be if just going dragon shaped is the end game.
Dragons hatched from eggs have it so much simpler.
But humanoids who can maybe become dragons one day, but that I don't want to reach that goal as an inevitable result of time, that seems like a magical study sort of thing. And the shapeshifting spell even does what I want it to as quickly as I want it to, in enough time for dramatic rescues from falls and so forth. It's just also supposed to wear off.
Having turned the idea around a few times, I think I just want to make the Shapeshifting spell work my way and ignore the stupid wearing off part. And that makes it super powerful, though it has built in drawbacks because you'd have to learn a second shapeshifting spell whilst in a whole new body if you ever wanted to get back, which takes 140 to 200 hours if you can find someone to study it from.
So all that poking GURPS rules did for me was make me really sure I want things to work my way, and I had to decide what my way precisely means.
Energy Reserve can mature along with the tiny human form future dragon, it can parallel fatigue and be something there are exercises for so they go up together. Then they can learn 7 spells, shapeshift, and have some energy left over for breath attacks and so forth. Actually on first changing probably only breath attacks, since they only require speaking and mouth movements, and being designed by dragons can be handwaved to work the same in slightly toothier mouths. Otherwise there'd be problems with unfamiliar configurations trying to do precise magical work. Or having to learn their entire repertoire over again from scratch.
Those six spells as prerequisites can be anything, as far as the spell tables show. But if you're going to be a dragon they should obviously lead up to a breath attack. It's not an innate physical feature of the alternate form, it's the penultimate spell in their arsenal.
GURPS, however, requires a longer prerequisite chain to get a Breathe spell. You need the matching Resist spell first. Which, okay, clearly the ability to resist fire seems sensible before you can have it pour out of your mouth, but there's no such requirement to have it pour out of your fingers, which ought to be just as tricky.
... I remain irritated by the refusal of someone else's made up system to conform to my ideas of scientific principles. This is such a waste of irritation I can't even.
Dragons that become fireproof in human form would clearly be nifty, but, well, you know how there's 6 spells and then turning into a dragon? It's the perfect time to use "Welcome to Level 7."
... is that a reason for an entire system of magic? To set up that line? Absolutely.
So! Six levels of magical mastery. One very specific chain that each dragon family teaches. Divide it up by elements so you can have some fire breathers and some ice and so forth.
GURPS spells roughly follow the order Seek -> Purify -> Create -> Shape -> Jet -> Resist -> Breath
But not every element has that sequence, and some breath attacks require two different elements' chains to lead up to them, and there aren't that many breath attacks anyway.
Also, flame is rather uniquely damaging. Ice and Acid can damage too, but you have to learn the Water spells first. Air and Earth and Water just to knockback. 'Just' knockback means being slammed into walls like you're falling from a height, but still.
Air, Earth, Fire, Water and Ice dragons.
Magery 0 gives you an extra sense, one for magical energy, and a way of manipulating it. Without that sense it don't matter how long you study, nowt happens.
Seek spells are level 1, basic spells, ones that give you a feeling for your element. Seek Air makes the least sense, but in general, it gives you an idea of where the nearest of your element is and roughly what it is composed of. You can seek specific gases, for instance. So level 1 just develops your senses and attunes them to a specific element.
Purify Water is the only one GURPS reckons follows directly after that one. Air can Purify without a prerequisite, Earth requires a whole lot of plant spells and focuses on making the Earth good for plants to grow. Fire has Ignite instead, and Ice has Freeze. It's a bit of a mix and match, putting them all together at level 2. But where Seek spells only let you perceive the subtle compositions of your 'element', Purify spells let you nudge it. Ignite and Freeze nudges the temperature, Purify spells nudge the chemical composition, both involve moving molecules around just a bit. Or about a yard, actually, that being the radius you can purify at once, though you can pour more energy in to do more. It is an example of magic being really incredibly fiddly if you think about it. And I think it makes a logical level 2, because after perception, small scale manipulation.
GURPS for most elements then says Create. But I object. To Create air in a vacuum you're converting magical energy into matter, and that seems a tad bit more complex than just pushing matter around like the Shape spells.
... Earth spells put 'Earth to Stone' after Shape and before Create. That's the only element that goes in that order or has the magic of squishing the element into a harder form. Thing is, it can also change earth to metal, which is elemental transmutation, and makes your mages instantly as rich as they want to be. Also, if I make my dragons gold dependent and then make Earth dragons able to create their own gold, that's not much of a limitation. Takes a lot of messing around, if you say they either somehow can't make gold or that it costs exactly its other cost to make it that way. So no, just nope away from Earth to Stone, leaving it out.
So level 3 is Shape. You can move your bit of element about 5 yards, make anything from a gentle breeze to a blast, or turn 20 gallons into a wall 2 yards high and 1 yard wide. It's large scale movements, so it seems the logical next level up.
Level 4 then is Create. Energy into matter, or magical energy into heat energy, or... ice is doing its own thing. ANYway. Create. Something from apparent nothing.
... it uses old school categories, so you tend to get a breatheable mixed atmosphere or a bit of earth suitable for planting things if you just Create your element. But logically you could then Purify it into whatever fractions you wanted? But probably you couldn't get much gold out of Earth optimised for plants. Create Water doesn't specify anything other than pure H20 though. Create Fire is awkward because while Ignite Fire requires flammables in the area, presumably including oxygen, Create Fire just makes fire. Flames that sit there without anything to burn. Presumably they could be flames in vacuum? So they're just turning magic energy into heat, and making chemical reactions happen if there is something around to burn.
Create Ice allows you to specify density. It can be an ice cube, or ice shavings, or fluffy snows. It can appear in mid air or in a container or on the floor, you choose. At which point you realise how very limited Create Earth is in comparison, because it just creates some earth that is touching existing earth. You can't specify density, though in the GURPS scheme of things you could use Earth to Stone to change the density... only actually you get a block the same size as the lump of earth you start with, so you're adding in more chemistry by way of making it with magic, so again it should logically only be possible after Create Earth.
... magic is not logical. Magic does not have to be logical. Nobody was prioritising logic when they made magic systems piece by piece.
1 is Seek, 2 is Purify/Ignite/Freeze, 3 is Shape, 4 is Create, 5 is Jet and 6 is Breath.
A Jet of your element can shoot out of your finger, causing many possible effects but almost always just knockback damage. Some elements can be blinding temporarily, like getting sand in your eyes. But only Flame Jet actually does plain old lethal damage.
... if setting out to be a Fire Dragon is a personal choice out of a range of options, I feel I don't quite like Fire Dragons. But then straight away I thought, if Clint could learn to be a dragon, he'd probably learn to throw stuff as close to his exploding arrows as he can get. Of course at the moment he has versatile other options too, and that's harder with magic meaning you have to work along study chains to get there. So would he choose Fire if that meant only having Fire around?
Breath attacks are generally described as like the matching Jet attack, plus one damage, but with no gestures necessary. You just move your mouth and a spell effect comes out. And the existing spells all do potentially lethal damage. So it's like the jet spell but with more teeth.
6 spells of your chosen element, Shapeshifting (Dragon), and then eventually Shapeshifting (Human).
... and Phil the dragon turns up again a level 8...
If that is all a dragon can learn then their Magery becomes super extra cheap, and probably their Energy Reserve too if it takes Magery limitations. A level of Magery usually costs 10 points but One College Magery is only 6 and a College is far bigger than 8 spells.
But they might also be cheap as Racially Innate Spells. You can ignore prereq chains then, which solves the Resist->Breath issue. Where's the rules... GURPS Basic Campaigns p453
Huh, that makes Racially Innate Spells Only the same as One College, 6 character points per level for an 18 point Magery 3.
You would end up with a seriously inflexible form of Magery though. And you'd have to decide how the spells are inherited, like if there's six slots for elemental magic or if there's bloodlines with particular elements available to them.
Spending out for full cost Magery in the first place would be a big waste if they're only going to have six spells and two shapeshifts. They could spend 5 on Magery 0 and then just buy the spells. But if they have the Magery, then the only true limitation is their lack of teachers. If a family line only knows a certain set of spells, and so has become limited to one element, then some dragons could go out and try and find other families to study with. Plus there could be higher magics available after the first six. Those 8 spells would signify dragon adulthood, but there might be mage dragons with whole libraries of spells. Depends what I want to do with them as a species. Are they limited gimmicks? Or are they students with a culture veiled in secrecy?
... okay, that phrasing shows which side I'm favouring.
But a dragon who doesn't want to be a mage, they're still going to be pressured to spend those hours studying for those 8 spells. That's minimum 1120 hours with a teacher there all the time, or at least double that to learn unsupervised with adequate texts. If you put 8 points into any other subject you'd have a degree. No, wait, I've figured that one before, a British 3 year degree came out at 12 character points, and GURPS reckons uni is even more per year. "A college semester (21 weeks) of classroom study equals around one point per subject, and a full-time student could study up to five subjects per semester." Ten points per year? More? I don't know where their math is different. 8 points would either be 2 years of a degree or a couple of semesters.
Not everyone would actually want to do a couple of semesters of tedious magic study.
Not everyone would actually want to be a dragon. ... weird, but, it's got to be true for someone.
If Magery is something every dragon has but few dragons use beyond the basics, that makes no sense in points cost optimisation, but plenty of sense as background. Like, not everyone who can hear is a musician? Not everyone who can sense magic is a mage.
But if they can't change into dragons they're considered in some ways children, and they're in that awkward changing phase until they can change all the way back to humans. Like adolescence, much delayed. ... or like the Change of Life rather later on. I was thinking on a dragon 50 years old when the first change occurs...
Dragons can pass on their Magery in human form while mating with humans. Because my story needs this to be so. Sooooo... if not everyone wants to be a dragon, and some plain don't study, and yet they can still pass on Magery, there will be dragon children whose dragon parent does not know enough to teach them magic. This can also be true if lines are interrupted, say by war or knights with pointy sticks. So there's more people with the potential to become dragons than there are actual dragon shaped dragons. Do all mages have dragon ancestors? Do the shapeshifting sort of dragons get sad about the mages who grow up never knowing their cultural heritage? Do they get angry and feel like humans are stealing their children or their blood?
If dragons are rare enough and secret enough, they might just be someone with a parent and grandparent teaching them spells. If they're all trying to hide from humans they might accidentally hide from each other too. But then it's a bit difficult to hide once they can turn themselves into a big scaly thing the size of a bus.
See, this is typical for me, I dreamt something that was basically porn with a dragonish excuse, I end up with numbers for an RPG system and a bunch of questions about dragon society and how it is shaped by both biological and magical imperatives, and how it bumps into human society and assimilates or not, and just generally lots of system level stuff that isn't likely to come up in a particular adventure. And, thus far, no fiction.
It's possible I just keep on trying to work in the wrong genre. Maybe narrative just isn't going to happen.
... ugh, bad feeling, that possibility.
So, maybe I make actual story later.
You never know.
(Dragons are cool though).
Like, dragons. If you assume a dragon starts out in dragon form and later gets Alternate Form to turn themselves human, that costs them 15 character points after character creation. But if you assume they start out in humanoid form and somehow become their grand draconic selves, that's going to cost at barest minimum 150 character points they'll have to earn. Which would take a bit of a while to accumulate. Dragon humanoid children would go adventuring just to develop themselves to the point they could possibly some day think about becoming a scaly dragon, and they'd have to spend points on survival skills along the way, and they'd just take forever on it.
The other way to shapeshift is to use magic. Each shapshift spell is specific to one form, and you have to be familiar with that form. So, okay, no problem, if they grow up around dragons they can learn Shapeshifting (Dragon). They'd need Magery 0 and it would be really helpful to have an energy reserve since that spell costs 9 to cast and 3 to maintain. If you want 2 hours in dragon form you need 12 energy for that specific task. 36 character points for a 12 point energy reserve, 5 for Magery 0, 6 for the spell prerequisites and 1 for Shapeshifting itself. 5 they're born with, 36 they mature into, and then only 7 of study, which takes like 1400 hours of study time. Easily attainable.
But... since when do dragons exhaust themselves or their magic just to stay dragon shaped?
Or the flip side, what kind of adventure do we have if they're going to have to go have a nap in dragon form after every 2 hours in humanoid skin? Shapeshifting (human) is a cheaper spell though, if they turn into a perfectly average human that's 3 to cast and 1 to maintain, so for the same 12 energy reserve they could be a human ten hours, which gets more done. Still, if you're trying to keep your scaly self a secret, a bit tricky.
And then there's the fact that I just object to the whole idea that shapeshifting can wear off. It ought to be hard to change one set of matter into another. If you're wearing an illusion, sure, that can wear off. But if you've actually changed your physical self into a fully functioning biological entity of another species, it ought to my mind to take at least as much magic spell to get your form changed again, even if it's changing back. Because it's the shifting that takes work, not ... holding a distortion in the mana based morphological field that creates an unstable second form.
Permanent Shapeshifting is an existing spell, studied right after Shapeshifting, but it requires Magery 3 and it costs 5 times more energy to cast than the other. So, 9*5 of energy reserve solely to become dragon shaped. Any further spells, like dragon breath attacks, would either come out of their physical fatigue or need even more energy reserve from the get go. And a humanoid with 45 energy to pour into spells is going to be able to do some really spectacular things and basically never run out of puff magically speaking.
If they aren't born with this gigantic reserve and have to develop it through doing magic a lot, that's another reason to have adventurer dragons, trying to find useful places to apply their magic and stretch themselves. But it would cost, for minimums, 9*5*3 = 135 character points for energy reserves and 35 for Magery, 8 for spells studied, 178 in all. It's a bit more than having an alternate form, would take even longer to get there... but be rather more magically versatile along the way.
I don't know, I could do it that way, it's just... is anyone really going to sit there investing their every character point into the distant dream of one day being scaly and flying?
Especially if you use magic to get there, the points could go towards so many different things that were much less boring, including the spells to armour themselves and fly!
Unless I call it all instinct or tie it to mating or some such, I'm just not believing it.
So, make the Energy Reserve innate, not something they have to study, something they grow into like a human grows into their Fatigue. They'd get that at-least-45 point pool of magical energy to draw on as they reach adulthood, however dragons define that. It'd be part of their racial template and not something to study.
They're still going to be really and sincerely better mages than they need to be if just going dragon shaped is the end game.
Dragons hatched from eggs have it so much simpler.
But humanoids who can maybe become dragons one day, but that I don't want to reach that goal as an inevitable result of time, that seems like a magical study sort of thing. And the shapeshifting spell even does what I want it to as quickly as I want it to, in enough time for dramatic rescues from falls and so forth. It's just also supposed to wear off.
Having turned the idea around a few times, I think I just want to make the Shapeshifting spell work my way and ignore the stupid wearing off part. And that makes it super powerful, though it has built in drawbacks because you'd have to learn a second shapeshifting spell whilst in a whole new body if you ever wanted to get back, which takes 140 to 200 hours if you can find someone to study it from.
So all that poking GURPS rules did for me was make me really sure I want things to work my way, and I had to decide what my way precisely means.
Energy Reserve can mature along with the tiny human form future dragon, it can parallel fatigue and be something there are exercises for so they go up together. Then they can learn 7 spells, shapeshift, and have some energy left over for breath attacks and so forth. Actually on first changing probably only breath attacks, since they only require speaking and mouth movements, and being designed by dragons can be handwaved to work the same in slightly toothier mouths. Otherwise there'd be problems with unfamiliar configurations trying to do precise magical work. Or having to learn their entire repertoire over again from scratch.
Those six spells as prerequisites can be anything, as far as the spell tables show. But if you're going to be a dragon they should obviously lead up to a breath attack. It's not an innate physical feature of the alternate form, it's the penultimate spell in their arsenal.
GURPS, however, requires a longer prerequisite chain to get a Breathe spell. You need the matching Resist spell first. Which, okay, clearly the ability to resist fire seems sensible before you can have it pour out of your mouth, but there's no such requirement to have it pour out of your fingers, which ought to be just as tricky.
... I remain irritated by the refusal of someone else's made up system to conform to my ideas of scientific principles. This is such a waste of irritation I can't even.
Dragons that become fireproof in human form would clearly be nifty, but, well, you know how there's 6 spells and then turning into a dragon? It's the perfect time to use "Welcome to Level 7."
... is that a reason for an entire system of magic? To set up that line? Absolutely.
So! Six levels of magical mastery. One very specific chain that each dragon family teaches. Divide it up by elements so you can have some fire breathers and some ice and so forth.
GURPS spells roughly follow the order Seek -> Purify -> Create -> Shape -> Jet -> Resist -> Breath
But not every element has that sequence, and some breath attacks require two different elements' chains to lead up to them, and there aren't that many breath attacks anyway.
Also, flame is rather uniquely damaging. Ice and Acid can damage too, but you have to learn the Water spells first. Air and Earth and Water just to knockback. 'Just' knockback means being slammed into walls like you're falling from a height, but still.
Air, Earth, Fire, Water and Ice dragons.
Magery 0 gives you an extra sense, one for magical energy, and a way of manipulating it. Without that sense it don't matter how long you study, nowt happens.
Seek spells are level 1, basic spells, ones that give you a feeling for your element. Seek Air makes the least sense, but in general, it gives you an idea of where the nearest of your element is and roughly what it is composed of. You can seek specific gases, for instance. So level 1 just develops your senses and attunes them to a specific element.
Purify Water is the only one GURPS reckons follows directly after that one. Air can Purify without a prerequisite, Earth requires a whole lot of plant spells and focuses on making the Earth good for plants to grow. Fire has Ignite instead, and Ice has Freeze. It's a bit of a mix and match, putting them all together at level 2. But where Seek spells only let you perceive the subtle compositions of your 'element', Purify spells let you nudge it. Ignite and Freeze nudges the temperature, Purify spells nudge the chemical composition, both involve moving molecules around just a bit. Or about a yard, actually, that being the radius you can purify at once, though you can pour more energy in to do more. It is an example of magic being really incredibly fiddly if you think about it. And I think it makes a logical level 2, because after perception, small scale manipulation.
GURPS for most elements then says Create. But I object. To Create air in a vacuum you're converting magical energy into matter, and that seems a tad bit more complex than just pushing matter around like the Shape spells.
... Earth spells put 'Earth to Stone' after Shape and before Create. That's the only element that goes in that order or has the magic of squishing the element into a harder form. Thing is, it can also change earth to metal, which is elemental transmutation, and makes your mages instantly as rich as they want to be. Also, if I make my dragons gold dependent and then make Earth dragons able to create their own gold, that's not much of a limitation. Takes a lot of messing around, if you say they either somehow can't make gold or that it costs exactly its other cost to make it that way. So no, just nope away from Earth to Stone, leaving it out.
So level 3 is Shape. You can move your bit of element about 5 yards, make anything from a gentle breeze to a blast, or turn 20 gallons into a wall 2 yards high and 1 yard wide. It's large scale movements, so it seems the logical next level up.
Level 4 then is Create. Energy into matter, or magical energy into heat energy, or... ice is doing its own thing. ANYway. Create. Something from apparent nothing.
... it uses old school categories, so you tend to get a breatheable mixed atmosphere or a bit of earth suitable for planting things if you just Create your element. But logically you could then Purify it into whatever fractions you wanted? But probably you couldn't get much gold out of Earth optimised for plants. Create Water doesn't specify anything other than pure H20 though. Create Fire is awkward because while Ignite Fire requires flammables in the area, presumably including oxygen, Create Fire just makes fire. Flames that sit there without anything to burn. Presumably they could be flames in vacuum? So they're just turning magic energy into heat, and making chemical reactions happen if there is something around to burn.
Create Ice allows you to specify density. It can be an ice cube, or ice shavings, or fluffy snows. It can appear in mid air or in a container or on the floor, you choose. At which point you realise how very limited Create Earth is in comparison, because it just creates some earth that is touching existing earth. You can't specify density, though in the GURPS scheme of things you could use Earth to Stone to change the density... only actually you get a block the same size as the lump of earth you start with, so you're adding in more chemistry by way of making it with magic, so again it should logically only be possible after Create Earth.
... magic is not logical. Magic does not have to be logical. Nobody was prioritising logic when they made magic systems piece by piece.
1 is Seek, 2 is Purify/Ignite/Freeze, 3 is Shape, 4 is Create, 5 is Jet and 6 is Breath.
A Jet of your element can shoot out of your finger, causing many possible effects but almost always just knockback damage. Some elements can be blinding temporarily, like getting sand in your eyes. But only Flame Jet actually does plain old lethal damage.
... if setting out to be a Fire Dragon is a personal choice out of a range of options, I feel I don't quite like Fire Dragons. But then straight away I thought, if Clint could learn to be a dragon, he'd probably learn to throw stuff as close to his exploding arrows as he can get. Of course at the moment he has versatile other options too, and that's harder with magic meaning you have to work along study chains to get there. So would he choose Fire if that meant only having Fire around?
Breath attacks are generally described as like the matching Jet attack, plus one damage, but with no gestures necessary. You just move your mouth and a spell effect comes out. And the existing spells all do potentially lethal damage. So it's like the jet spell but with more teeth.
6 spells of your chosen element, Shapeshifting (Dragon), and then eventually Shapeshifting (Human).
... and Phil the dragon turns up again a level 8...
If that is all a dragon can learn then their Magery becomes super extra cheap, and probably their Energy Reserve too if it takes Magery limitations. A level of Magery usually costs 10 points but One College Magery is only 6 and a College is far bigger than 8 spells.
But they might also be cheap as Racially Innate Spells. You can ignore prereq chains then, which solves the Resist->Breath issue. Where's the rules... GURPS Basic Campaigns p453
Racially Innate Spells: Every member of the race might have the inborn ability to cast one or more spells. Ignore the usual prerequisites and buy the spells using the rules for racially learned skills. Add racial Magery, if any, to the race’s skill level. Magery is not required for racially innate spells – but without Magery, the race’s magic only works in areas of high or very high mana (see Mana, p. 235). A race that can only cast racially innate spells pays the usual 5 points for Magery 0, but may buy Magery 1+ with a -40% Accessibility limitation: “Racially innate spells only.”
Huh, that makes Racially Innate Spells Only the same as One College, 6 character points per level for an 18 point Magery 3.
You would end up with a seriously inflexible form of Magery though. And you'd have to decide how the spells are inherited, like if there's six slots for elemental magic or if there's bloodlines with particular elements available to them.
Spending out for full cost Magery in the first place would be a big waste if they're only going to have six spells and two shapeshifts. They could spend 5 on Magery 0 and then just buy the spells. But if they have the Magery, then the only true limitation is their lack of teachers. If a family line only knows a certain set of spells, and so has become limited to one element, then some dragons could go out and try and find other families to study with. Plus there could be higher magics available after the first six. Those 8 spells would signify dragon adulthood, but there might be mage dragons with whole libraries of spells. Depends what I want to do with them as a species. Are they limited gimmicks? Or are they students with a culture veiled in secrecy?
... okay, that phrasing shows which side I'm favouring.
But a dragon who doesn't want to be a mage, they're still going to be pressured to spend those hours studying for those 8 spells. That's minimum 1120 hours with a teacher there all the time, or at least double that to learn unsupervised with adequate texts. If you put 8 points into any other subject you'd have a degree. No, wait, I've figured that one before, a British 3 year degree came out at 12 character points, and GURPS reckons uni is even more per year. "A college semester (21 weeks) of classroom study equals around one point per subject, and a full-time student could study up to five subjects per semester." Ten points per year? More? I don't know where their math is different. 8 points would either be 2 years of a degree or a couple of semesters.
Not everyone would actually want to do a couple of semesters of tedious magic study.
Not everyone would actually want to be a dragon. ... weird, but, it's got to be true for someone.
If Magery is something every dragon has but few dragons use beyond the basics, that makes no sense in points cost optimisation, but plenty of sense as background. Like, not everyone who can hear is a musician? Not everyone who can sense magic is a mage.
But if they can't change into dragons they're considered in some ways children, and they're in that awkward changing phase until they can change all the way back to humans. Like adolescence, much delayed. ... or like the Change of Life rather later on. I was thinking on a dragon 50 years old when the first change occurs...
Dragons can pass on their Magery in human form while mating with humans. Because my story needs this to be so. Sooooo... if not everyone wants to be a dragon, and some plain don't study, and yet they can still pass on Magery, there will be dragon children whose dragon parent does not know enough to teach them magic. This can also be true if lines are interrupted, say by war or knights with pointy sticks. So there's more people with the potential to become dragons than there are actual dragon shaped dragons. Do all mages have dragon ancestors? Do the shapeshifting sort of dragons get sad about the mages who grow up never knowing their cultural heritage? Do they get angry and feel like humans are stealing their children or their blood?
If dragons are rare enough and secret enough, they might just be someone with a parent and grandparent teaching them spells. If they're all trying to hide from humans they might accidentally hide from each other too. But then it's a bit difficult to hide once they can turn themselves into a big scaly thing the size of a bus.
See, this is typical for me, I dreamt something that was basically porn with a dragonish excuse, I end up with numbers for an RPG system and a bunch of questions about dragon society and how it is shaped by both biological and magical imperatives, and how it bumps into human society and assimilates or not, and just generally lots of system level stuff that isn't likely to come up in a particular adventure. And, thus far, no fiction.
It's possible I just keep on trying to work in the wrong genre. Maybe narrative just isn't going to happen.
... ugh, bad feeling, that possibility.
So, maybe I make actual story later.
You never know.
(Dragons are cool though).