Pyramid, edited by Steven Marsh, is the monthly GURPS supplement
containing short articles with a loose linking theme. This time it's
a return to thaumatology, looking at magic and what to do with it.
Magnum Opus (James Amaral) expands alchemy to make it something
interesting for player characters to do. There are four influences,
based on the mediæval humours but not opposed to each other, each with
a potential range of -2 to +2 (the author suggests that this should
produce 608 combinations rather than 625, for no obvious reason).
Multiple ingredients can be stacked together, but the ones that only
give +1 or -1 to a single value are hard work to produce. Then they
can be combined to reach the appropriate position in the coordinate
space to produce a particular alchemical effect. There's less to this
than I'd hoped for, but it certainly has potential not just as
something for PCs but as a generator of odd clues for investigators.
The Mage-Hunter (Sean Punch) is a Dungeon Fantasy template for a
non-magical warrior who can go up against magicians and survive –
without having Magic Resistance, which makes him harder to heal. Much
of this is done with new advantages to give defences against, and the
ability to counter, spells; just how these are "non-magical" isn't
really clear, but the principle is there.
Eidetic Memory: The Teramancers (David L. Pulver) deals with a group
of magicians who specialise in monsters: controlling, and later
breeding or otherwise creating, them. Mostly this is an excuse for
strange monsters showing up, rather than something for PCs to get
directly involved in, but one could readily put them on the other side
and that might be rather more fun.
The Glorious Book of Valadir (J. Edward Tremlett) is a book of
good magic to counter all those books of evil magic one reads about.
It engages with casters' intent, but there are of course significant
side effects. Um, yes, significant; this is essentially a
campaign-defining artefact.
Designers' Notes: Incantation Magic (Christopher R. Rice and Antoni
Ten Monrós) describes the genesis of the book (how it was adapted and
modified from Thaumatology: Ritual Path Magic), and includes some
material cut for space.
The All-Scroll (Alice Turow) delivers magical knowledge… as
something like modular spellcasting abilities, but only once for
each effect for a single user, and only for a limited time. It seems
regrettably arbitrary to me, but may appeal to others.
Random Thought Table: Too Powerful for Your Own Good (Steven Marsh)
looks at limiting magical powers by making them too powerful (long in
duration, damaging, etc.) for convenient use, with great skill needed
to restrain them.
This is a good one; I don't use much magic in games, but there are
ideas here that I'll gladly take and incorporate into various of my
campaigns. Pyramid 109 is available from
Warehouse 23.
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