Sick of D&D 5e Magic? - GURPS Magic overview

Download my procedures, house rules and adventures free (or donate!) here:
ko-fi.com/cptclyde/shop

[@purplelibraryguy8729]

One thing I really like about the GURPS magical colleges is actually the "weak" spells that are the prerequisites for the more flashy stuff. In D&D, it's all very scattershot--you can do a fireball, but you can't generally manipulate fire; you can do a massive earthquake, but you can't take earth and shape it into a breastwork, or look into it, or generally get any sort of real expertise with earth stuff. In GURPS, you can cover the basics and those will tend to include stuff that's useful for a lot of non-combat situations, and if you go into a particular college and get serious you really have the feel of that character really knowing their stuff in that area and being able to handle stuff that comes up about that field.

[@easygurps]

Totally agree. I think the default magic system is the BEST magic system out there, certainly of any rpg I've played anyhow. Thanks for watching!

[@MarcosElMalo2]

Ah, G.U.R.P.S., one of the first, if not the first, alternate D&Ds to the Gygax D&D. (And yes, I am using D&D as a generic term for RPG in general.)

[@coldstream11]

Why?

[@varenoftatooine2393]

​@@coldstream11 good question

[@bopaintsminis]

I love these shorter videos. They are great tool to convert the disgruntled 5e refugees.

[@easygurps]

Hey Bo thanks for the comment, always good to hear from you man. Yeah lets hope this is the year where we create some new potential GURPS friends to play with!!! Thanks for watching!

[@bopaintsminis]

@@easygurps Hey, check your ko-fi messages.

[@easygurps]

@@bopaintsminis Thanks so much for the support!! Wow so generous!

[@warmtropicalwave]

This is GURPS , if this is not to your cup of tea in the way that magic works, there are many other ways you can do magic and GURPS ! Not to confuse the issue but yeah this is GURPS most rules are optional, many types many ways to do the same thing, take a look and enjoy! Great videos keep them up we need more people playing GURPS because gerps is awesome!

[@ardentdrops]

One of my favorite things about GURPS is not only does it have systems, it also has systems for making your own systems if you're dissatisfied with the one it provides. For example, GURPS Thaumatology gives you all the tools you need to make an alternative to the system laid out in GURPS Magic. You can replicate nearly any depiction of magic you've heard of, including the one in "The RPG of All Time" if you so desire. 😉

[@warmtropicalwave]

@@ardentdrops also want to have different types of magic in the same game you can do it! Have fun break your world put it back together again and destroy it once more! You got the rules for it!

[@bradywedshot4936]

Malazan sent me here. Never played anything before. Still cool.

[@secularisrael]

Ars Magica. It has the best magic system IMO, at least if you want a medieval-flavored highly-flexible and powerful magic system, that has little cost for spell casting (just fatigue). It excels at things like creating a magic item harnessing the magical powr of the wolf's heart, giving an actual in-game reason to study books of magic for years on end, creating your own original spells, and so on. You learn the "arts" of magic like skills - these are 15 skills, in things like "fire" or "create", so each wizard has types-of-magic he is good at (magic affecting plants, inducing changes, and so on). This gives your magic a flavor and direction, and you have virtues (~Feats) like Magical Focus to further refine your particular strong-suits and flavor of magic. If you want high costs to magic such as madness or infernal corruption, you'd need to tweak it or go to another system. The game itself is very different from D&D - but then again, so is GURPS.

[@easygurps]

I have honestly not touched my Ars Margica book since 1997 but always dreamed of running a troupe of wizards and grogs but never got around to it. Decent magic system for sure, but I think I can caputre that with GURPS if I needed but haven;t honestly needed to..... yet anyhow. GURPS Thalmatology has rules for noun+verb style alternate magic systems though I have never tried it. I may have forgot to mention it but every spell in GURPS has values/costs to create a magic item of that spell, which is overlooked gold I think. Thanks for watching!

[@thekaxmax]

@@easygurps not all, but most. A lot of spells don't make a lot of sense to be items. But a new enchantment can always be done by PCs, or just written by the GM. :P Note that a lot of magic items in the books are where someone has done exactly that. Which implies that a lot of spell s with no item listed are just (in game) too hard for most people to do.

[@sagizm0nd]

That's one great video, thanks for this overview!

[@easygurps]

Thank you for the kind words, and thanks for watching!

[@shitmandood]

GURPS makes it easy to merge magic with psionics too. No weird Gygax rules in place. lol

[@MarcosElMalo2]

G.U.R.P.S. was/is extremely flexible for playing whatever genre of D&D games you wanted to play, and of integrating different genres. You could play straight scifi or you could blend it with horror D&D, superheroes D&D, or whatever D&D you wanted.) I’m intentionally using D&D as a generic term for RPG, in order to break WOTC’s trademark.

[@thekaxmax]

@@MarcosElMalo2 Dungeon Fantasy is a great example of that.

[@Finfizzle]

@@MarcosElMalo2 I understand your intention to break the trademark. But that would mean, to be called a "D&D Player" - and I will NEVER accept this! I play Roleplaying games but not D&D!

[@torelethain3848]

I have always liked the base GURPs base magic system, for me it is way more thematic making magic powerful but not absurdly over powered like level based TTRPGs, power creep is not nearly as bad but the system still makes playing a caster feel good, you can make a super knowledgeable wizard or Johnny 1 spell who can cast a low end Fireball till the cows come home with a gesture of their hand. I get why they do it, but I and not as big of a fan of the limitation on healing spells though.

[@easygurps]

All good points I agree with. I love the versatility of the system, especailly in the epic levels of magery and spell skill above 25 where spells can be cast for free. Amazing to have that kind of upper limits. The healing spells? Something lacking for your tastes? There is the remove poison/curse/etc. spells, and all the protection spells, and healing, FP recovery, regeneration and resurresection....... everything I could ever think of or need for my games personally. Maybe you are thinking it is missing the D&D style "mass heal" spells? I think there is a meta-magic spell that could combine with any spell (such as heal) to give an area effect. I could be wrong, not near my books currently. Thanks for watching!

[@purplelibraryguy8729]

It's not that serious a limitation. Sure, -3 per additional casting same day on the same person . . . but a friend of mine eventually boosted their Major Healing skill to like 30 on one character. They could heal their friends till the cows come home. Not only did it take a bunch of heals for the penalty to bother them, they were so good it was free to cast at max effect.

[@purplelibraryguy8729]

I have found that with most wizards I've played, sure, you won't be as good (or as strong) as the fighters, but it's not impractical to boost one fighting skill up to solid levels, certainly enough to hold your own defensively so the fighters don't have to worry about you too much while they cream stuff. With a couple of combat support spells you can even be pretty dangerous hand to hand. I had one elf whose core magical interest was about improving his swordsmithing, although he was fairly versatile. He became an amazing weaponsmith, and he was a very solid sword-and-shield fighter who would cast a Might spell on himself, cast Flaming Weapon and other enhancements on his sword, which was of course an awesome sword he had made and enchanted himself--he cleaved, man. He was 3rd edition, so there was no rule making armour a problem.

[@easygurps]

That sounds pretty epic

[@purplelibraryguy8729]

@@easygurps He was fun to play. The campaign had a custom spell that was like Create Object, except you needed the raw materials but the result was PERMANENT. The limitation being that, like with Create Object, you had to be able to make the thing non-magically. So this guy learned about 20 craft skills; he could make almost anything. His boast was, if you dropped him in a wasteland naked, and came back in a month, he'd have a home, clothes, weapons, furniture, plates, glasses, tapestries on the wall, wine, all the comforts. He could build elvish elegance from scratch. He also had Earth and Plant spells and carried a bunch of different seeds, so if he needed flax, or herbs, or vegetable-based dyes, or yew for a bow . . . voila! Try doing THAT in D&D. After the party did something epic and got rewarded by the Emperor himself, his reward was a letter from the Emperor to all craft guildmasters saying they had to let him in and teach him.

[@migarsormrapophis2755]

_Sick of D&D 5e Magic?_ Holy-fucking-shit, was this video ever made for me

[@easygurps]

Welcome to GURPS my friend! The more the merrier!

[@migarsormrapophis2755]

@@easygurps I'm implementing this in my next campaign, tysm

[@purplelibraryguy8729]

One tactical issue that can come up is that a lot of the seriously bad news spells are a bit slow, while some of the simpler ones are faster. So, Charm is seriously badass--sure, there's a resistance roll, but if you're pretty good your chances are very solid of grabbing an opponent and having them on your side for the combat, which at GURPS scale is pretty decent--but it takes three combat rounds to cast. On the other hand, in the same college the easier-to-learn Mental Stun will just slow an opponent down a bit, but it only takes one round, you can snap it off quick, do THREE of them instead of one Charm, and the chances of someone interrupting you in mid-cast are lower. So, which way to go? It's a tactical decision, depends on the situation.

[@easygurps]

I love how GURPS has such depth that it offers these tactical nuances depending on tge situation. I REALLY like the high spell skill level stuff and how (if you really want) can sink points into learning a spell so well you can cast it quicker and cheaper. Just get magery+spell level up to 20 and you cast charm in 2 rounds. Skill of 25? Now your chucking charms every second and at 3 less mana cost. Wow.

[@stomtrooper_34]

One word: Thaumatology

[@easygurps]

you mean GURPS: Thaumatology? Lots of good ideas and expanded magic rules there for sure.

[@stomtrooper_34]

@@easygurps yeah. My primary base for magic systems for last few fantasy campaigns. For my new big campaign Im going to combine few systems at a time. Rather weakish Powers for natural magic of creatures and two systems based on Thaumatology for more complex things. These systems will be different only from narrative perspective and source of power, tbh, Im not that mad to make two distinct complex magic systems in one game

[@thekaxmax]

@@stomtrooper_34 using both main types of Ritual Magic is a simple way to do that. :P

[@mr-vir2324]

Magery is overpowered as hell, 14 IQ 7 magery wiz can learn all of his spells by spending just one point, and he will get this spells at 17 skill check, so he can buy almost all spells (except some spells like resistible spells) and have versatility of one-man-army but 14 IQ, 7 magery + about 80 spells will cost about 160 points, that's literally nothing for fighter-style characters, and this jack of all trades can easily kick out from all spotlight rogue-style characters also because he can overbuff himself to become undetectable and etc.

[@gataslice7663]

Well that's why Magic advises GMs to consider not allowing magery beyond 3 to the players or making them pay for Unusual Background (Archmage) to counteract such munchkin ideas

[@easygurps]

Not worth replying to that narrowly focused assertion. If you're playing at those high levels there are tons of ways to easily nullify the mentioned "overpowered" abilities. Magic Resistance, extra attacks, high Speed attributes etc. That super mage would be dead before he could cast his spell (even with his measly -1 to casting time). I disagree that 160pts is "nothing for a fighter-style character". How about sinking 100 into "Extra Attacks" for 5 attacks total since we're going cinimatic. How would any mage cope with that? Blocking spells can be used once.

[@mr-vir2324]

​@@easygurps >. If you're playing at those high levels there are tons of ways to easily nullify the mentioned Dungeon Fantasy recommended start is about 250 points... > I disagree that 160pts is "nothing for a fighter-style character". How about sinking 100 into "Extra Attacks" for 5 attacks total since we're going cinimatic. How would any mage cope with that? Blocking spells can be used once. 5 attacks? like..... flight? if you are not flying race or a mage too - you are useless because basically extra attacks don't give extra ready, so even with ranged muscle powered weapons you are useless, also if your foe don't have dark vision - just use blackout and then cast dark vision on yourself, 5 attacks? good, now find me LOL in minor cases, 5 attacks? good, i casted "Lighting armor" now you will get 5d6-5 damage Or even with "Body of air".... 5 attacks? injury tolerance(diffuse) says your maximum damage now is 2 points per attack... and with flight too... 160 points is for total game destruction, but this spells can be reached in 100 or even smaller point budget.... just because for mage most spells will cost 1 point per spell, if you find player with "rulebookworm munchkin" style of play he will drain your blood a lot, im saying that because i have pretty bad experience

[@easygurps]

The Mage will never act first due to his slow speed, giving the fighter a wide open shot with a melee weapon. A deceptive strike or multiple attacks will drop him in a single blow even if he attempts a blocking spell he's not going block 2 attacks, and relying on his feeble dodge is risky. With multiple attacks I believe you CAN make extra ready maneuvers so a fast draw arrow would also drop the mage in an all-out-attack. I allow extra ready maneuvers with extra attack. Lets not forget the increased chance of critical hits from the 16+ skill fighter on a 3 - 6 which does not allow ANY defense. In most cases the mage does not get a single action before death. And if he's not dead he's probably on his back suffering a major wound and max shock penalty. I just don't see how a Mage is "hands down" overpowered. In certain circumstances, if well prepared, yes he can be a game changer but it's a complicated comparison. His "utility" abilities are amazing for sure, but not something he can keep up doing for long so he still can't replace a rogue. But certainly some munchkin type players can ruin any game, no matter the system.

[@AF-tv6uf]

This is one of the big reasons I love the Ritual Magic system. It retains the flexibility, bumps up the historical realism, and limits the efficacy of Magery mechanics all in one fell swoop.