This GURPS supplement explains how to convert spells from the standard
GURPS magic system into power effects.
That probably doesn't mean much unless you already play GURPS.
The standard magic system was written in the early days of GURPS, and
while it's distinctly more flexible than those of many dungeon-bashing
games that's primarily what it was written for. There are set spells
with known names, energy costs, ranges, and other effects, and support
for designing new spells is minimal.
Which is fine. But GURPS Supers brought in a way of designing
superpowers based on their game utility, in much the same way that
Champions always had, and GURPS 4th edition extends that to
non-superheroes: pretty much everything in the game can now be built
in this way. Except magic. And the cost of spells is often unrelated
to their utility.
Building magic as powers tends to lead to characters with just a few
things they can do well, rather than the classic GURPS wizard's huge
array of specialised spells. There are two modes of casting in the
Sorcery system: Known Spells, ones that you've bought explicitly as
powers, and Improvised Magic. Sorcerous Empowerment, this system's
equivalent of Magery, caps the maximum point cost of both, in
different ways; improvised magic is much more restricted. By default
you can only use one spell at a time, which helps reduce their cost:
even something like Haircut now runs to a basic 11 points, while
Suspend Time is a minimum of 141, but normally one pays only one-fifth
of that.
Not every spell is explicitly converted into power terms (there are
several hundred, after all), though there's a reasonable set of
guidelines and a representative selection of a couple of spells from
each college.
I speculate
that, if there's demand, more spells may get the comprehensive
treatment.
In any case, the conversions don't make up the really good stuff here:
that's the Sorcery system (which will allow you to convert anything
buildable as a power into a spell), and particularly a new way of
enchanting (binding powers into) items. This is GURPS: I can see that
being the basis for a weird-tech gadgeteering system just as well as
for magic.
This book still leaves a fair bit up to the GM, but it may well end up
forming the core of a magic system which will be to many players'
taste. Thaumatology: Sorcery is available from
Warehouse 23.
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