Ugh, GURPS is fiddly
Apr. 4th, 2015 07:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethOr, Ugh, several days of assumptions all wrong, I make error.
GURPS Magic rules are more fiddly than I thought and have more than one spell for changing shapes.
Shapeshifting is specifically for *animals*, which in GURPS rules are things with an IQ of 5 or less, which is why there's all the rules about the caster's IQ dropping slowly in the new form.
If dragons were animals once then the Shapeshifting spell would apply, but the dragon-mages using it would go bestial if they stayed in scales too long. Not the effect I was after.
To transform into a different but sapient species is a spell from a whole different college, Body Control, which isn't what I'd associate with becoming giant with scales and claws. But that part isn't relevant to the spell definitions: if dragons are smart, they are not animals.
Transform Body turns you into another sapient species. There's no fiddly rules about IQ, you keep your own. It costs *considerably* more to cast and maintain, 1/10 the form's physical character point cost and 1/20 respectively, which for a dragon works out at 18 and 9. And it only lasts one hour, with no Permanent version of the spell. It has a prerequisite count of 13, including three different forms of Shapeshifting and also Alter Body.
Alter Body was the spell I was looking up on purpose, which can change anything about a body that doesn't change its mass or basic stats. To my mind it's the sex change spell, because sex is a 0 point feature in GURPS, so I could handwave that as not changing a stat per se. You could read the description the other way, but I don't want to, so. Plenty good spell, change people to be how they want to be. And to make it permanent is simples, it just costs a lot more energy, but it can be done with Enchantment rules so you don't need all the energy at once.
But to learn Alter Body you have to have done a whole bunch of Body Control spells, which are very different from the get go from the Elemental colleges.
And as I've said before, while I understand the game balance reasons to make transformations temporary, it offends my sense of how physics and magic should interact.
Plus as long as there's room in a head to have your own brain, and as long as the spell only changes physical traits anyway, I don't see why IQ should be messed with.
So, basically, I am, as usual, going to ignore the rules and just make my dragons do like I already decided. Learn the elemental spells, get their breath attack, and then get their wings. They learn to perceive and manipulate their 'element', to distinguish between different chemical elements in their chosen state of matter, and move them around on a molecular level, or at macro scale, and then to create those elements from pure energy. Going from there to complex living matter is a jump, but it's one I'm making to give the story this particular flavour. Really they should have to master all the 'elements' before they can go on to simple alive things, but then they have to learn a whole lot more spells and spend far less time as dragons. Dragons are cool.
There are so many GURPS spells and they still don't do what I want them to. Plus prereq chains make it kind of difficult to do good without learning how to do harm first. Like, there's a Resist Pain spell that would make a handy anaesthetic, but you'd have to learn how to cause spasms and pain first. And that means practicing the spells for hundreds of hours. Who would you practice on? Is worse than learner surgeons, there'd be no pretence of it actually helping someone if you get it 'right'. And the way the biggest healing spell dips into the necromancy college is actually kind of irritating, because that's a very fantasy world assumption, that there's a spirit that needs calling back. If it's just a case of repairing a brain then it should be achievable by other paths, like the way ultratech does it.
... magic is not logical, why am I trying to make magic logical by our current scientific understanding?
... Because.
I guess a streamlined and simplified system of magic isn't going to appeal to the kind of RPGer who likes GURPS. And making it game balanced is tricksy. But for story purposes I'd rather have a handful of good tricks and make my characters work to apply them well.
using GURPS usually just makes me decide where the bones are on whatever idea I'm actually having.
the bits I won't bend on are the things the idea really needs.
... it's still embarrassing to have read the books so many times and still get the spells wrong.
GURPS Magic rules are more fiddly than I thought and have more than one spell for changing shapes.
Shapeshifting is specifically for *animals*, which in GURPS rules are things with an IQ of 5 or less, which is why there's all the rules about the caster's IQ dropping slowly in the new form.
If dragons were animals once then the Shapeshifting spell would apply, but the dragon-mages using it would go bestial if they stayed in scales too long. Not the effect I was after.
To transform into a different but sapient species is a spell from a whole different college, Body Control, which isn't what I'd associate with becoming giant with scales and claws. But that part isn't relevant to the spell definitions: if dragons are smart, they are not animals.
Transform Body turns you into another sapient species. There's no fiddly rules about IQ, you keep your own. It costs *considerably* more to cast and maintain, 1/10 the form's physical character point cost and 1/20 respectively, which for a dragon works out at 18 and 9. And it only lasts one hour, with no Permanent version of the spell. It has a prerequisite count of 13, including three different forms of Shapeshifting and also Alter Body.
Alter Body was the spell I was looking up on purpose, which can change anything about a body that doesn't change its mass or basic stats. To my mind it's the sex change spell, because sex is a 0 point feature in GURPS, so I could handwave that as not changing a stat per se. You could read the description the other way, but I don't want to, so. Plenty good spell, change people to be how they want to be. And to make it permanent is simples, it just costs a lot more energy, but it can be done with Enchantment rules so you don't need all the energy at once.
But to learn Alter Body you have to have done a whole bunch of Body Control spells, which are very different from the get go from the Elemental colleges.
And as I've said before, while I understand the game balance reasons to make transformations temporary, it offends my sense of how physics and magic should interact.
Plus as long as there's room in a head to have your own brain, and as long as the spell only changes physical traits anyway, I don't see why IQ should be messed with.
So, basically, I am, as usual, going to ignore the rules and just make my dragons do like I already decided. Learn the elemental spells, get their breath attack, and then get their wings. They learn to perceive and manipulate their 'element', to distinguish between different chemical elements in their chosen state of matter, and move them around on a molecular level, or at macro scale, and then to create those elements from pure energy. Going from there to complex living matter is a jump, but it's one I'm making to give the story this particular flavour. Really they should have to master all the 'elements' before they can go on to simple alive things, but then they have to learn a whole lot more spells and spend far less time as dragons. Dragons are cool.
There are so many GURPS spells and they still don't do what I want them to. Plus prereq chains make it kind of difficult to do good without learning how to do harm first. Like, there's a Resist Pain spell that would make a handy anaesthetic, but you'd have to learn how to cause spasms and pain first. And that means practicing the spells for hundreds of hours. Who would you practice on? Is worse than learner surgeons, there'd be no pretence of it actually helping someone if you get it 'right'. And the way the biggest healing spell dips into the necromancy college is actually kind of irritating, because that's a very fantasy world assumption, that there's a spirit that needs calling back. If it's just a case of repairing a brain then it should be achievable by other paths, like the way ultratech does it.
... magic is not logical, why am I trying to make magic logical by our current scientific understanding?
... Because.
I guess a streamlined and simplified system of magic isn't going to appeal to the kind of RPGer who likes GURPS. And making it game balanced is tricksy. But for story purposes I'd rather have a handful of good tricks and make my characters work to apply them well.
using GURPS usually just makes me decide where the bones are on whatever idea I'm actually having.
the bits I won't bend on are the things the idea really needs.
... it's still embarrassing to have read the books so many times and still get the spells wrong.