More Spellcasting Rules

More Spellcasting Rules
The GURPS spellcasting rules are too damn good. They're begging for dozens of variants, special effects, and other creative twists.

One-Man Enchantment

Sometimes you want to make a magic item, but you don't have the required energy. It's not a matter of slow-and-sure versus quick-and-dirty — you need hundreds of mana points immediately. Here are two methods.
Sacrifice Your Magery. You can have 1,000 energy for every Magery level. Once the magic item has been created, you lose the levels and any spells with Magery as a prerequisite. The loss is temporary. The levels return gradually over the next 2d days.
Dead-Spot Enchanting. The energy cost comes out of the local mana. When the item is complete, there is a No Mana spot surrounding it. The radius is one yard for every 100 energy. It lasts for 3d months. If you create a lot of these spots, other wizards will find out. They will track you down and punish you.

Temporary Sorcery

With this advantage, a character has a list of spells that he can use once. They are all cast at IQ level. Ignore prerequisites. Each spell is worth 1 character point.
The list can be long or short, unified or diverse. It might be every Movement spell, the first spell listed for each college, five randomly-selected spells, or every Blocking spell.
Normally, this advantage is gained during play. The character does something — drinks a potion, kills a magical beast, walks into a weird energy field — and gains the list of one-shot spells.
Does he know he has this new ability? Not necessarily. Even if he does, he may not know exactly which spells are on the list.
The character point value, in this case, is not very important. The character is suddenly worth more after he gets the list, with decreasing value as he casts the spells.
If you add a special recharge condition, the character can regain the spells. This raises the value per spell. How much more depends on the conditions. For example, if he automatically regains the spells after all of them have been cast, each spell is worth 5 points instead of 1. If he has to drink the same potion, the value is 2 to 4 points per spell, depending on how rare the potion is.
If the character has to pray to his god to get his spells back, then you're playing Dungeons & Dragons . . .

Circle Magic

In addition to specializing in spell colleges, mages can add geometric disciplines. This involves special training, learning how to focus magical energy on basic shapes (both natural and artificial). The known geometric disciplines include triangles, cubes, squares, arcs, pyramids, spheres, and circles.
(The wizard on the cover of GURPS Magic is a cone mage. That hat is a dead giveaway. The crescent is there just to throw you off.)
Circle magic is the most common of all geometric disciplines, so it is described here. All of the rules below apply to the other disciplines.

The Costs.
To represent the mage's knowledge of circle magic, he has to take an Unusual Background. The value is 10 points per level.

The Benefits
If the mage incorporates a circle in the casting of a spell, he gets a percentage reduction in the energy cost. The percentage is based on the purity of the form and its appropriateness to the spell. The GM determines the percentage, rewarding the player for creativity and resourcefulness.
For every level of Unusual Background, there is a minimum of 10%. The maximum is 90% — theoretically, at least. Every circle mage seeks the perfect circle, used in the perfect way, to reduce the energy cost to zero.

Example
A second-level circle mage is going to cast Flash. As he casts the spell, he holds a small hoop earring in the palm of his hand. The flash bursts from his palm.
Normally, the spell costs 4 energy points. The mage gets at least 20% off. The GM decides that the hoop is not very creative. He gives the player a 25% reduction, reducing the cost by 1 point.
Later in the adventure, the mage pays a jeweler to make a perfectly round mirror for him. When he casts Flash again, he holds the mirror, projecting the flash from its surface. The GM likes this use of a circle much better, so he gives the mage a 50% reduction.
The circle can be used as a focus — the spell is cast through it. Or, the circle could be part of the spell target. The subject of the spell might be standing in a circle drawn on the ground. Or, the subject of the spell could be an inanimate object that is circular.

Greater Spells
If the percentage is high enough, the circle mage can cast spells that are normally beyond his capacity. When he finds a particularly good circle, he might use the opportunity to cast an Area spell or enchant an item.

Seeking the Best Circles
The player of the mage will quickly learn to look for circles. Rings, round shields, and coins are an obvious place to start. Eventually, he will start using circular buildings, wheels, concentric circles, and rings of people holding hands.

Higher Levels
By the time the mage has 50 points invested in Unusual Background, he's getting a lot of bang for his buck. A minimum 50% reduction is pretty good.
That's when Trained by a Master comes in. By the time the Unusual Background becomes too cheap, the circle mage needs some one-on-one lessons. He has to find an old bald guy who says things like, "See the circle of life. Become one with the circles that surround us." That sort of thing.

Secret Societies
Like spell colleges, the geometric disciplines lend themselves to the creation of cults, secret societies, and guilds. It's very likely the circle mage will have a Duty to his circle magery society. His membership could be a Secret. He might have a Code of Honor. The society might have Enemies or Allies.
Members might mark themselves with a circle. This could be classified as an Unnatural Feature. In addition to incorporating the mark in their spells, the mages would use it to display their membership (and possibly their rank, as well). These marks could have a psychological effect — since the circle mage cannot avoid using a circle in every spell, he might develop some unusual personality traits. The circle might also fade after repeated use, requiring a special procedure to replace it.
In worlds where the geometric disciplines are common, they are subdivided into figure magic (the two-dimesional forms) and structure magic (three-dimensional forms). It is possible that the guilds and secret societies will make alliances along dimensional lines.

Area Spells and Casting Time

For Area spells, every doubling of casting time adds one yard to the radius. So, if the casting time is 30 seconds and the character Concentrates for one minute, the radius increases by one. If he concentrates for two minutes, the radius increases by two. If he concentrates for four minutes, the radius increases by three. And so on.

Spell Spots

A few mages have learned how to cast spells on a place instead of a person. By increasing the casting time and using all of your Fatigue, you can cast a Regular spell as an Area spell with a one-hex radius.

The casting time is increased to ten minutes. The caster must have his full ST when he begins. At the end of the casting, roll against the spell and drop the mage's ST to 1. If the roll succeeds, the target hex is enchanted with the spell.
Any character who steps into the hex is effected by the spell. Resistance rolls are allowed. The hex remains enchanted for 3d hours — or 3d days in the case of a critical success.
Feel free to limit this technique to certain spells. Spells in the Enchantment college, for example, cannot be used this way.
Any mage who knows this little trick should have an Unusual Background or be Trained by a Master.

Specialized Spells

If you are playing in a campaign with a lot of spellcasters, try this new rule.
Many spells have a range of effects. If you cast Hide Path, for example, you can target up to five man-sized creatures (Magic, p. 76). And Beast Speech allows the mage to communicate with any animal (p. 25). To make things more interesting, allow spellcasters to specialize, limiting the range of effects to one target, to a single species, etc. In exchange, the spell has a shorter casting time, a lower energy cost, or a skill roll bonus. The caster loses versatility, but he gains speed, ease, or mastery.
Specialization can be the result of inadequate teaching — maybe the mage's mentor didn't know the full range of the spell. If the student learns more about the spell in the future, he can get rid of the specialization.
Not all spells can be specialized. Some spells have only one effect, so there's no way to limit them.
The bonuses are up to the Game Master. They should be minor but not trivial. A +3 to the spell roll is good. Or, cut the casting time in half. Other possible benefits: a bonus against resistance attempts, a greater range, a lower cost to maintain the effects, or a Very Hard spell reduced to Hard.
If every spell the mage knows is specialized, and if those specializations have a general theme, the mage will be more interesting. Suppose you have a character with three spells from each of six colleges. His grimoire is useful, but generic. Then you add a zombie-related specialization to every spell — his Hide spell only works against zombies, Minor Healing is limited to injuries caused by zombies, and only zombies can hear his Altered Voice. Etcetera.

Connected Spells

For 2 character points, you can connect two spells. One has to be a prerequisite of the other. The spells are cast simultaneously.
For the casting time, use the longest of the two. Same with the duration. For the skill roll, use the lowest. The energy cost of the lower-cost spell is ignored; the mage effectively casts the lower-energy-cost spell for free. If both spells can be resisted, the subject is allowed only one roll — the better of the two.
The effects occur simultaneously (unless a slight delay of one spell makes the dual casting more fun). The subject of both spells must be the same.
Example. Merlin has connected Sleep-13 and Nightmare-15. (See pp. 66 and 67 of GURPS Magic.) This takes a minute to cast and lasts for eight hours. His skill level is 13. The energy cost is 6. The subject gets to resist with either IQ or HT.

Mana and Dragons

The local mana level affects the size of dragons. In normal mana areas (standard for fantasy worlds), a full-grown dragon is the size of a large dinosaur. In high mana areas, they are twice as large — increase their ST, HT, and breath weapon range accordingly. They heal twice as fast and their DR is doubled.
In low mana areas, a dragon is the size of a horse. Lower its ST and HT. Raise its DX by 1. Its breath weapon range is cut in half. These dragons sleep more often than their normal-mana counterparts.
In a place with no local mana, a dragon is the size of a large bird. Use the stats for falcons on p. B142. They have no breath weapon and their DR is limited to 2.
When a dragon passes into a different mana level area, it transforms to the appropriate size. This takes 3d+4 hours.

Delicious Magic Items

Dragons love to eat magic items. If you want to get on a dragon's good side, bring it an enchanted object to devour.
As the dragon digests the magic item, it becomes more powerful. It gains 5 character points for every 100 energy points spent enchanting the item. The character points are used to raise attributes and advantage levels.
Each item also causes the dragon to instantly heal any lost hits.
Only a few dragons are aware of the downside to eating magic items: every item gives the dragon two levels of Magic Susceptibility (p. 98 of the Compendium I). This is permanent. Enterprising mages can use this effect to enslave the dragon with Mind Control spells.
If you add Morgah to your fantasy campaign, this rule (and the one above) can be used.

Mana Reserves

In a campaign with lots of magic, encourage the players of mages to have a special energy reserve for spells.
Make Extra Fatigue an added feature of the Magery advantage: +3 fatigue for Magery 1, +5 for Magery 2, and +7 for Magery 3. Normally, Extra Fatigue costs 3 character points for every +1, but this is reduced to 1 point because the Fatigue is restricted to powering spells. That makes Magery worth 18, 30, and 42 points, respectively. Mages should be allowed (and encouraged) to add more.
Or, instead of altering Magery, you can say the Extra Fatigue comes from a mana organ. Any character who is able to cast spells automatically begins to grow a small mana-generator in his body. (Where? How big is it? I have no idea.) As he learns more spells and casts them, the organ steadily grows. The bigger it is, the more Extra Fatigue he has for spells. (Maybe the organ will grow big enough to be targeted.)
Why is this so important? Because players like their characters to succeed, and a 100-point mage who has depleted his ST with one or two spells will be a burden until he's rested. The Extra Fatigue is well worth the price, keeping the mage active and useful throughout the adventure.

Mage Sense

In addition to their ability to sense magic objects, characters with Magery can detect auras around other spellcasters. If you make an IQ+Magery roll, you can see a glow around any character who knows at least one spell.
The aura's brilliance reflects the number of spells the character knows. The color corresponds to the colleges he knows best. Choose a different color for each college before play begins.