Clerical Spell-Magic

Clerical Spell-Magic has had several incarnations in GURPS over the years.

Classic: Magic

Classic: Magic had Clerics as effectively mages with a limited version of magery: no bonuses for learning spells and cost was determined by the number of colleges the cleric could use.

• Non-mage clerics use spells as though they were mages
• Option of bonus to skill: +1/5 points (max 3) with Healing spells +2/5 points.
• Spells outside of those granted could be learned but were only castable in high mana and above areas.
• Rules weren't quite clear on how spells requiring Magery 1 or higher were handled.

Classic: Religion (1994)

Classic: Religion used Power Investiture in place of magery and Sanctity in place of Mana. There were several other differences from how Classic: Magic did Clerical Spells

• Clerical spells were cast as if they had only skill 11 (ie elaborate ritual movements and speaking certain words of power in a firm voice) and added in "ingredients"; Not doing this incurred penalties:
  • -2 for soft speech, or -4 for no speech.
  • -2 if gestures are made with only one hand, or -4 if no gestures are used. -2 if the proper foot movements and/or position is not used.
  • -4 if the proper ingredient is not used.
• Clerical Spells had Days of Strength and Days of Weakness
• Additional possible modifiers: Fanaticism. +1 to spells; Divine Favor, +1 to +5; Divine Disfavor, -1 to -5;
• Divine Favor: Deity as a Patron
• Clerical Enchantment was, for the most part, far more time consuming than magery based enchantment.
• Allowed the creation of Objects of Power

GURPS Voodoo (1995)

Perhaps this was due to being worked in parallel with Classic: Religion but instead of the advantages of Magery or Power Investiture, the advantage Initiation (which determined the strength of a character’s connection with the supernatural) was used instead. This made Voodoo's "shamanistic" system particular complex and cumbersome to use - especially when compared to the one in Classic: Religion.

GURPS Compendium 1 (1996)

The advantage of Divine Favor was introduced where a deity was treated as a Patron who, depending on their reaction to the Cleric, would do miracles (including casting spells on the Cleric's behalf).

Classic: Spirits (2001)

Classic: Spirits streamlined Voodoo's system by totally dropping the Initiation ranking mechanic and introducing the far more flexable Ritual Magic system. Even though Classic: Religion had been out for 7 years by this point, Spirits didn't use Power Investiture but rather s vague "it works through the powers of the spirit world." This was the work that had the term "magician" connected to anyone with the Ritual Adept advantage.

The GURPS 4e Basic Set (2004)

The Basic Set trimmed things back to Magic as Powers, Magery (alterable via enhancements and limitations), Power Investiture, and highly flexible Syntactic Magic. Ritual Magic was reworked to default to being mana based. Clerical Magic allowed Clerics to totally ignore prerequisites but effectively abandoned most of the elaborate requirements of the Classic: Religion system.

Fantasy (2004)

By way of Roma Arcana, Fantasy effectively made mana part of shamanism. Rather then energy mana represented "free" spirits. As worship of a deity in the area improved (causing Sanctity to go up) the deities would assign duties to the sprits in the area (causing mana to go down). An interesting exception to this is the goddess Isis who improves the magery of her followers making her clerics effectively mages. This appears to be true of other Egyptian deities as well.

Powers (2005)

GURPS Powers has a sidebar on Unified Metaphysical Theories. “Magic” and “psi” both tap the same energies, in one case by study and formal disciplines, in the other by raw talent and willpower. More over, likely using Roma Arcana as inspiration, it presents the idea that “Magical”, “spirit”, and even “divine” powers all work the same way - “magicians” work by commanding or petitioning supernatural beings.

Thaumatology (2008)

See also Meditation, Holiness, or Study

Thaumatology provided a tool box way to produce Power Investiture from Magery via a series of modifiers. Two modifiers totally blur the boundary between arcane and divine magic:

• Sanctity Replaces Mana: ±0%
• Pact: -10%

This raises the question: Do Magery (Sanctity Replaces Mana, ±0%) and Magery (Divine Pact, -10%) count as Clerical Spell magic? Does magery given by a deity (such as Isis and other Egyptian deities) count as Clerical Spell-Magic ?

Powers: Divine Favor (2011)

Powers: Divine Favor provides a 4e way of doing Divine Favor totally different from the method used in Classic.

References

• Classic: Magic p. 94-96
• Classic: Religion p. 100-105
• GURPS Fantasy p. 207,