Wednesday, July 12, 2006

Harry Potter Magic for GURPS

It's been banging around in my head for a while, so I figured I'd write it down.

Easy Magic
Magic needs to be easier, overall. Characters in the books can cast spells after very little practice, often reasonably competently. So, two elements to this.
1) Spells are not all Hard or Very Hard. Simple enough: some spells, particularly those that don't require high levels of Magery, are Easy or Average. As a rule of thumb, spells with no prerequisites are Easy, spells with other spells or Magery 1 as prerequisites are Average.
2) Spells can default. To either IQ or to their prerequisite spells.
These two elements lets student wizards with only a little training cast spells - so, you can spend a week or three days learning a levitate spell, and still be able to use it to disarm a monster when you have to.
However, spells should probably have familiarity penalties applied. If all the student wizard has ever learned to levitate is a feather, levitating a club should take a familiarity penalty.

Wands
Wands are obviously very important in the Potterverse, but not absolutely nessecary. Therefore, casting can be done without a wand, but at a -5 penalty. Further, wands improve your ability to cast spells with reduced fatigue costs. A Cheap wand doesn't improve matters at all, but it eliminates the -5 penalty. A Good wand (the standard) means that energy cost of spells is reduced for every 4 points in skill, rather than every 5. A Fine wand reduces energy every 3 points. A Very Fine wand reduces energy for every 2 points in the skill. All wands are very personalized - a wizard is supposed to "match" their wand - but Very Fine wands are moreso. A wizard trying to use another wizard's Very Fine wand treats it as only a Fine wand, for energy reduction.
Probably all Olivander's wands are Fine. Hogwarts probably subsidizes him to keep their students in decent magic supplies, and he relies on good advertising to make more money.

Common Enchanting
Enchantment is quite clearly common as dirt in the Potterverse. Enchant should be at best a Magery 1 spell, and drop the "spells from 10 other colleges" prereq entirely. Further, enchanting should be faster - probably 1 point/hour in slow and sure enchantment, as I saw suggested in a Pyramid article.
Further, enchanted items practially all seem to have some sort of intelligence. Possibly this is a side effect of the enchanting process.

Colleges
Obviously, there are fewer colleges in this world - possibly only 3 or 4. Also, One College Magery never seems to happen on its own, only possibly in combination with some levels of full Magery.