Per GURPS Magic, p. 10, it costs 1 FP per ongoing spell to cancel it early.
It doesn't exactly specify if this is a free action, or takes concentration. We've always rule it takes a Concentrate manuever, since it's a 1 FP cost and that's extremely unusual for something that would count as a Free Action.
But what if you have a lot of spells up?
We've started to think about ways to do this. Here are two options we're considering playtesting.
Cancelling Spells
To cancel an ongoing spell early, take a Concentrate maneuver. For one spell, success is automatic and costs 1 FP. You can attempt to cancel multiple spells, but there is a risk. Roll vs. IQ, with a penalty of -1 per spell you wish to cancel. You must specify which spells are being cancelled before you roll. If you succeed, you remove all of the specified spells and pay 1 FP each. If you fail, none of the spells are cancelled. On a critical failure, ALL of your spells are cancelled, at a cost of 1 FP each. On a critical success, you may choose after the fact to cancel additional spells beyond the first - however, the FP still remains 1 per spell.
Another option is IQ+Magery, but -1 per spell up, no matter how many you want to cancel. Have 10 spells up and want to drop 2? Roll IQ+Magery-10, and if you make it you remove 2.
A further option is -1 per spell you don't want to drop or -1 per spell you want to keep, whichever is higher, which inverts the penalties and says dropping one is easy, all is easy, but picking and choosing is hard. Have 5 spells up and want to drop 2 or 3? -3. Want to drop 1 or 4? -4. 5? -5.
Why not Will? Because Will is pretty cheap, and I like the idea that its a question of magical power (Magery) and intellect (keeping tabs on all the things you are doing) or just intellect and not a question of your force of character.
I'm not sure which one we'll try, but it's fairly certain will will try one of these. I'll run some test case numbers when I have a chance.
"A further option is -1 per spell you don't want to drop or -1 per spell you want to keep, whichever is higher, which inverts the penalties and says dropping one is easy, all is easy, but picking and choosing is hard. Have 5 spells up and want to drop 2 or 3? -3. Want to drop 1 or 4? -4. 5? -5."
ReplyDeleteI think the penalties you want for the examples are...
2 or 3: -2,
1 or 4: -1,
5: no penalty
...as this is consistent with "dropping one is easy, all is easy, but picking and choosing is hard."
Also, while the "higher" penalty is technically correct here (-1 is higher than -4) is is ambiguous enough that I would prefer something along the lines of "easier."
I'm not sure why "dropping one is easy, but picking and choosing is hard" should mean picking the lower of the penalties. Maybe I should say "if you drop one out of a group, it's just as hard as dropping all but one out of a group." So dropping 4 out of 5 is -4, dropping 1 out of 5 is also -4. Otherwise picking and choosing out of a group gets what I think is the odd effect that dropping 1 out of 5 is just as easy as dropping 4 out of 5, and therefore it's weird that dropping 2 out of 5 is harder. It's the dropping that's hard, it's not like I intend that you just wall off the "keep" from the "drop" and then either do some easy "keep" action or some easy "drop" action.
DeleteI'm not sure why "dropping one is easy, but picking and choosing is hard" should mean picking the lower of the penalties.
DeleteThe way you have it, dropping one is not easy, it is -4. It is easier to drop two or three (-3) than to drop 1, and dropping everything is hardest of all (-5).
What I thought you meant to do was to assign difficulty based on the number of specific choices that had to be made. "Drop everything but these X spells" is a penalty of -X, and "Keep everything but these Y spells" is -Y. Assuming the caster can choose, this amounts to the easier penalty of -X or -Y, not the harder one.
Am I wrong?
I'm explicitly saying that you cannot choose between those two options. There are not two options - the only action is dropping spells. It's just settling on the penalty for dropping spells. The only action on the table is "I drop the following spells" but the penalty is affected by the total spells you have up.
DeleteYour argument has convinced me I'd hear that argument at the table, though, so I'm definitely not going to even bother playtesting that. I'll go with one of the other options.