Sorcery Buffs in GURPS are Simple - Fact or Fiction?
You probably know that I like magic as powers
in GURPS, and Sorcery is one of the premade examples of the powers framework.
Sorcery tries to be generic and understandably so – when all mechanics are made
generic, when all spells work the same way, it becomes easy to use premade
sorcery spells as a base for something less generic and more flavorful. Sorcery
has several different types of spells, and in this post I’d like to dive
deeply in how Buff spells work, because they might seem simple on the surface
level, but they actually have many little nuances that might require
explanation. Also, I will tell you how you can make Buffs work differently.
First of all, the Affliction has the Sorcery, -15% power modifier which in turn consists of Costs Fatigue, 1 FP, -5% and Magical, -10%. The Magical limitation means that the Affliction can be turned off by anti-magic abilities and is affected by the local mana level. Costs Fatigue is self-explanatory, but I guess I should mention that there’s a relatively commonly used houserule that makes it cost -10% per level, not -5%. In that case, the Sorcery power modifier will cost -20% instead of -15% and the spell’s cost might require recalculation.
Now, let’s talk about the benefit that the buff provides. Usually, it’s an Advantage, and Affliction has an appropriate modifier for that. It could be multiple different advantages as well. It sounds simple, but there are some nuances here. First, the advantages that the buff grants might need a power modifier too. For example, all the published sorcery buff spells have their granted advantages modified with Magical, -10%. This isn’t “double-dipping” – the Affliction itself is magical and it grants a magical advantage. The buff spell and buff effect are two separate things. But that’s if you’re using sorcery as it is in the book. Remember – it’s merely a framework that you can adapt to anything else. For example, what if you are using sorcery to represent divine spellcasting? Then your buff spell will have the Divine, -10% power modifier instead of Magical, -10%, but the advantage granted by the buff will have Divine, +0%, not -10%. Why? The buff spell, that is the Affliction advantage, has been granted to you by a deity, and the Divine power modifier requires you to have certain self-imposed mental disadvantages to represent the code of conduct. However, the target of your buff does not have to abide by the code, this is why the power modifier on the granted advantage should be Divine, +0% instead of Divine, -10%. Even though the power modifier does not change the cost of the advantage, it is still needed to make it part of the power and also make it depend on sanctity, which is a 0% feature.
There could also be situations when no power modifier should be applied to the granted advantage. Usually, this is only relevant to buffs that have a Truly Permanent duration. For example, a buff might permanently increase an animal’s IQ attribute to make it sapient, but if this IQ bonus had the Magical, -10% limitation, then the animal would revert back to normal after stepping into a no-mana area, and that bonus could be neutralized by anti-magic. Spells like that are very rare, in my experience of making sorcery spells, but they do exist.
What about an even more exotic situation? Even if your Affliction is, for example, magical, it can grant an advantage that has a different power modifier. Personally, I haven’t found any rules that say that you can’t do that, but I have had to make such a spell once when converting the Psychic Scream spell from GURPS Magic: Artillery Spells – this spell, despite being magical, grants the subject a psionic ability.
A buff could also, instead of granting an advantage, negate a disadvantage. There is an enhancement for that in GURPS Powers. In that case, you don’t apply a power modifier to this negated disadvantage, as it is all baked in, but the Affliction itself still retains its power modifier.
Finally, granting some advantages with buff spells is not very straightforward. Certain transformative abilities, such as Alternate Form, Elastic Skin, Growth, Loa, Morph, Shrinking, and Stretching, have an activation time of 10 seconds. Does the subject take 10 seconds to transform, or does the caster have to spend these extra 10 seconds casting the spell? There are some examples of Afflictions that grant Alternate Form, such as Body of Wood from GURPS Thaumatology: Sorcery (p. 23) and Frog from GURPS Powers (p. P143), and they do not mention any transformation time, but Body of Wood mentions that if the spell is turned into an item, then transforming takes 10 seconds. This seems to imply that transforming somebody into a different form by Afflicting Alternate Form, Loa, or Morph is instantaneous. By the way, if you want to buff the subject with a 0-point feature, you have to use Alternate Form. You also need to use Alternate Form when afflicting meta-traits that include both advantages and disadvantages.
However, the rest of transformative abilities – Elastic Skin, Shrinking, Growth, and Stretching – work differently. There is one premade example – Diminution from GURPS Powers (p. P143) that states that transformation is not instant and uses the normal rules for the advantage. I think it’s fair to apply the same to Elastic Skin, Growth, and Stretching, as these four advantages are similar – they do not forbid the subject from performing any actions while the transformation is happening.
Finally, there are some other advantages with an activation time – Warp, Jumper, and Snatcher. These work differently, as they assume to take the penalty for no preparation by default, and they force you to make all the rolls, not the subject. Thus, if you use Affliction to afflict Warp on a subject, then you have to make an IQ-10 roll to teleport him away, and all other penalties and bonuses depend on your senses and extra FP expenditure. Premade examples do not say anything about taking extra time to concentrate to lower the penalty, however, but I would allow that. To negate this penalty, add Reliable to the afflicted Warp advantage, not the Affliction itself. Jumper works the same way.
But here’s another thing – what if you want to buff the subject in a way that lets him use the ability instead of you? Kromm said on the forums that this is a 0-point optional switch that you have to take when you buy the Affliction and cannot change later. Thus, one caster might want to have his Affliction grant Warp to immediately teleport the subject away, while another will impart the subject with the Warp advantage that the subject will be able to use any number of times until the buff ends. The first buff is instantaneous, and the second buff has a proper duration, but both of them have identical statblocks. This is also important when you want to afflict an Affliction or an Innate Attack.
I have also been asked how to make a buff with an effect that only works once, and then has to be recast. For example, a buff that grants DR 10, but only against one attack. I believe that this can be accomplished by making the granted advantage a single-use advantage, which means dividing its final cost by 5.
There
are also some other advantages that need some attention when it comes to
afflicting them with buffs. First of all, time-limited abilities, such as Luck
and Super Luck. If you afflict the subject with Luck and he uses it, he still
shouldn’t be able to use it again that day even if you cast this spell on him
again. It’s not stated anywhere, but this is just common sense.
Then there are Ablative Damage Resistance, Energy Reserve, Vitality Reserve, and similar traits. Imagine the following situation: your buff grants DR 50 with the Ablative limitation. The subject takes some damage, reducing this DR to 10. Then you recast this buff on the same subject, and he has DR 50 again, right? Such situations are not explained in the books anywhere, but my common sense tells me that this is equivalent to free healing, and that this ablative DR should not go back to its maximum value, and instead stay the same. In effect, every subject will have a virtual ablative DR that will virtually regenerate even when the buff is off. Energy Reserve should work the same way. It can be a bookkeeping nightmare, but I think that it’s necessary to preserve game balance.
For
some reason there is a misconception that I often see brought up online that
buffs stop working when you switch to another spell. I have two things to say
to people who claim that – read the book, and have some common sense. The book
both directly and indirectly says that it’s not the case.
Also, you cannot cancel the effects of your buff prematurely. This is related to the previous thing that I brought up. To cancel your buff spell, you would have to use the Cancel Spells spell or any other dispelling spells. An alternative would be applying the Cancellation, +10% enhancement to the Affliction from GURPS Psionic Powers.
Some
things have to be said about stacking benefits from buffs. Specific benefits
from buff spells do not “stack” – you always use the largest or best benefit.
If one buff grants you DR 4, and another grants you DR 6, you have DR 6. If one
buff grants you Flight with Cannot Hover and another buff grants you Flight
with no limitations, then you have Flight with no limitations. I have no idea
how buffs of the same cost, usefulness, and power interact if they have different power modifiers, but I think
you can safely assume that the latest buff supersedes the earlier ones in that
case and resets the duration. I guess this is another way of dispelling buffs.
Some people claim that buffs as a concept are overpowered because you can
combine a whole lot of different buffs, but personally, I haven’t encountered
that problem yet. But if you do, then feel free to port the buff rule from
Ritual Path Magic – a given subject can benefit from no more than two buffs. If
you apply Cumulative, +400% to the Affliction, then all these stacking rules
are thrown out of the window, and your buff stacks with everything, including
itself. But don’t do that, please.
All
right. The next aspect of a buff spell is its range. By default, it has a range
of 100 yards, which might seem arbitrary. If you want, you can increase or
decrease it by applying appropriate modifiers. What you have to keep in mind,
since buffs are Afflictions, the default buff is an attack. An invisible
attack thanks to the No Signature, +20% enhancement. If you want your buff
spell to be a visible beam of energy or something like that, remove No
Signature, +20%.
Since buff is an attack, you have to make an attack roll to buff. This is a normal ranged attack with normal ranged penalties and other rules, and it is rolled with the Innate Attack (Gaze) skill. Depending on the flavor of your spellcasting and the flavor of the spell itself, you might need to use a different specialty of the Innate Attack skill, especially if you decided to make your buffs visible. You must do it if you have no eyes at all!
You can also cast buffs as a touch, if your subject is within reach. Then, it becomes a melee attack that requires a DX or unarmed combat skill roll to hit, unless the subject is willing – in that case no roll is required. You can also buff yourself automatically without any rolls.
In any case, since this is an attack, you can miss, and if you miss, you can hit and buff the wrong target, even an enemy! If this is not how you want your buffs to work, then I will provide you with alternatives later.
Hit location is important, because if the hit location has DR without the Tough Skin limitation, then the subject must roll against (HT – DR) to accept the buff. If he has Magic Resistance, then he must roll against HT – Magic Resistance to accept the buff, and any DR penalizes this roll further. If the subject does not want to be buffed, he may resist the spell automatically.
It is because of the existence of this potential resistance roll, each buff also has the Increased 1/2D, 10x, +15% enhancement. Without it, a subject further than 10 yards away from the caster gets +3 to his resistance roll, and this enhancement makes things more simple and streamlined.
But wait a second, why does the subject resist with HT to accept a buff? Will might be more appropriate, and if you think so, then add Based on Will, +20% to the Affliction advantage.
Now wait another second, why isn’t this roll mandatory? If you check the description of Affliction in GURPS Basic Set, you will not see anything about affecting willing targets automatically. And how come you can resist the buff automatically too? This is actually something new, something that was introduced in Sorcery. The subject may waive his resistance roll, unless he has DR or Magic Resistance, but he also may resist it automatically.
Normally, beneficial Afflictions use rules from GURPS Powers (p. P40) – where a resistance roll is made with a bonus instead of a penalty based on the level of Affliction, and the duration becomes minutes equal to the subject’s margin of success instead of margin of failure. If such an Affliction has Malediction, something the default buffs do not have, then the caster must simply make an unopposed Will roll to affect the subject, and duration depends on the caster’s margin of success. Alternatively, there is also Cosmic, Subject may waive resistance roll, +50% enhancement from Pyramid #3-105.
Why does sorcery have this new mechanic? I believe that it’s one additional measure that streamlines the process and makes it so you can only buff allies and cannot use buffs that are detrimental in some situations affect enemies. For example, something like a Body of Leaves is an interesting spell that does have some detrimental qualities, but you cannot use it to transform enemies into piles of leaves – for that, you’d have to make a different Resisted spell.
But
anyway, what if you don’t want your
buff to be affected by DR? After all, that’s how buff spells usually work in
games and fiction. This is even more important if you are running a high-TL
game, where armor suits become common and buffing anyone becomes almost
impossible!
Then there are several options.
Option #1 – Use Malediction
Honestly, I think this might be a good idea. Instead of being an invisible missile, your Buff will be a proper spell. Since this is going to be a beneficial Affliction, rules from GURPS Powers say that the caster will have to simply make an unopposed Will roll – no attack roll or resistance roll required. Of course, the Will roll will be penalized for range - -1 per yard for Malediction 1, +100%, normal range penalties for Malediction 2, +150%, or long-range penalties for Malediction 3, +200%. I wouldn’t recommend Malediction 3, however. Of course, you will also have to remove the Increased 1/2D enhancement, because your range will be theoretically unlimited.
However, even though the Beneficial Afflictions rules include rules for waiving your resistance roll, they do not have rules for automatic resistance for situations when the subject does not want to be buffed. If you want your buff to only work on willing targets, then you should limit your Affliction. GURPS Reign of Steel: Will to Live has Accessibility, Only nonvolitional or non-resisting subjects, -20% for Possession, but I think that it would work for Afflictions as well.
Option #2 – Make it Cosmic
By applying Cosmic, Irresistible Attack, +300% to your Affliction, you make it ignore DR. However, there are a couple of questionable moments here. First, it’s very expensive! Second, not only does it ignore DR, but it also ignores such traits as Magic Resistance, and you probably don’t want that.
Option
#3 – Weaponized Malediction
What if you want something in-between the first two options? There is one way that seems to be legal in terms of rules, but it feels janky. Apply Malediction 2, +150% to your Affliction and then apply Weaponized, -50% to it to make it behave less like a Malediction. It might seem counterintuitive, but I think it works. Basically, it will behave like the Cosmic variant from Option #2, but without ignoring Magic Resistance, and three times cheaper. Still, this might be a questionable approach.
Personally,
I’m okay with buffs working the way they do right now, but I also think that
using Option #1 is a very good alternative way that will make buffs better and
more intuitive. Using Malediction also solves another minor problem – Buffs do
not work at range underwater! For them to be usable at one-tenth the normal
range underwater, you would have to add the Underwater, +20% enhancement, and
if you want them to behave underwater identically to how they behave in air,
then you also have to add Increased Range, 10x (Accessibility, Underwater only,
‑50%), +15%. If you use Malediction – you do not have to do that. You
even become able to buff insubstantial targets. Also, since you will have to
roll against Will to cast the buff, you can drop Fixed Duration, +0%, if you
want to. The more I think about it, the more I am starting to believe that
Malediction is the way to go.
You know, if you are playing in an underwater campaign, then why would an underwater dweller learn a normal Buff spell that works at range, but actually does not work at range underwater? If you want a melee-range buff, you can make one by removing Increased 1/2D, 10x, +15% and adding Melee Attack, Reach C, -30%. You still will be penalized by DR, and to avoid that, you will have to add Malediction 1, +100%.
By the way, you can go even beyond and make a Buff that can only affect you! There is a precedent in Pyramid #3-91 – Accessibility, Self Only, -50% for Affliction. The author, however, said that if he were to use it again, he would price it at -80% instead. You might think that there is no point in making a self-only Affliction, but it actually is a good way to just buff yourself up and switch to another spell without losing the benefits. You cannot do that with Indefinite duration spells that require maintenance. If you want to be unable to buff yourself, then you should apply an appropriate limitation to your Affliction. GURPS Psionic Powers has Accessibility, Others only, -10% and GURPS Monster Hunters Power-Ups 1 has Cannot Affect Self, -50%. I think -10% is better.
You know, you could probably introduce a leveled scheme to buffs, something like the following:
Level 1 – Personal: Accessibility, Self Only, -50%.
Level 2 – Touch: Melee Attack, Reach C, -30%.
Level 3 – Ranged: Increased 1/2D, 10x, +15%.
I think that would work. If you want to use Malediction, then things will look differently.
Level 1 – Personal: Accessibility, Self Only, -50%.
Level 2 – Touch: Malediction 1, +100%; Melee Attack, Reach C, -30%.
Level 3 – Ranged 1: Malediction 1, +100%.
Level 4 – Ranged 2: Malediction 2, +150%.
Finally,
there’s one more topic to cover here – Area Buffs. If you check the Preserve
Fuel spell from GURPS Thaumatology: Sorcery, you will see that it has a casting
roll despite not being a Malediction.
And for some reason, there is no roll-to-hit, which seems off. In any case, the
spell says that the DR subtracting from the casting roll rather than forcing a
resistance roll (as for Buff spells) is a special effect. Honestly, I don’t
like this – I think there should’ve been Malediction 2, +150% there, but it’s
up to you.
And
that’s finally it! As you could see, Buffs actually are not as simple as they
might look at first, and that there are many ways you could adjust them to fit your vision of magic. Thank you for
watching, and I’ll see you next time!
First of all, the Affliction has the Sorcery, -15% power modifier which in turn consists of Costs Fatigue, 1 FP, -5% and Magical, -10%. The Magical limitation means that the Affliction can be turned off by anti-magic abilities and is affected by the local mana level. Costs Fatigue is self-explanatory, but I guess I should mention that there’s a relatively commonly used houserule that makes it cost -10% per level, not -5%. In that case, the Sorcery power modifier will cost -20% instead of -15% and the spell’s cost might require recalculation.
Now, let’s talk about the benefit that the buff provides. Usually, it’s an Advantage, and Affliction has an appropriate modifier for that. It could be multiple different advantages as well. It sounds simple, but there are some nuances here. First, the advantages that the buff grants might need a power modifier too. For example, all the published sorcery buff spells have their granted advantages modified with Magical, -10%. This isn’t “double-dipping” – the Affliction itself is magical and it grants a magical advantage. The buff spell and buff effect are two separate things. But that’s if you’re using sorcery as it is in the book. Remember – it’s merely a framework that you can adapt to anything else. For example, what if you are using sorcery to represent divine spellcasting? Then your buff spell will have the Divine, -10% power modifier instead of Magical, -10%, but the advantage granted by the buff will have Divine, +0%, not -10%. Why? The buff spell, that is the Affliction advantage, has been granted to you by a deity, and the Divine power modifier requires you to have certain self-imposed mental disadvantages to represent the code of conduct. However, the target of your buff does not have to abide by the code, this is why the power modifier on the granted advantage should be Divine, +0% instead of Divine, -10%. Even though the power modifier does not change the cost of the advantage, it is still needed to make it part of the power and also make it depend on sanctity, which is a 0% feature.
There could also be situations when no power modifier should be applied to the granted advantage. Usually, this is only relevant to buffs that have a Truly Permanent duration. For example, a buff might permanently increase an animal’s IQ attribute to make it sapient, but if this IQ bonus had the Magical, -10% limitation, then the animal would revert back to normal after stepping into a no-mana area, and that bonus could be neutralized by anti-magic. Spells like that are very rare, in my experience of making sorcery spells, but they do exist.
What about an even more exotic situation? Even if your Affliction is, for example, magical, it can grant an advantage that has a different power modifier. Personally, I haven’t found any rules that say that you can’t do that, but I have had to make such a spell once when converting the Psychic Scream spell from GURPS Magic: Artillery Spells – this spell, despite being magical, grants the subject a psionic ability.
A buff could also, instead of granting an advantage, negate a disadvantage. There is an enhancement for that in GURPS Powers. In that case, you don’t apply a power modifier to this negated disadvantage, as it is all baked in, but the Affliction itself still retains its power modifier.
Finally, granting some advantages with buff spells is not very straightforward. Certain transformative abilities, such as Alternate Form, Elastic Skin, Growth, Loa, Morph, Shrinking, and Stretching, have an activation time of 10 seconds. Does the subject take 10 seconds to transform, or does the caster have to spend these extra 10 seconds casting the spell? There are some examples of Afflictions that grant Alternate Form, such as Body of Wood from GURPS Thaumatology: Sorcery (p. 23) and Frog from GURPS Powers (p. P143), and they do not mention any transformation time, but Body of Wood mentions that if the spell is turned into an item, then transforming takes 10 seconds. This seems to imply that transforming somebody into a different form by Afflicting Alternate Form, Loa, or Morph is instantaneous. By the way, if you want to buff the subject with a 0-point feature, you have to use Alternate Form. You also need to use Alternate Form when afflicting meta-traits that include both advantages and disadvantages.
However, the rest of transformative abilities – Elastic Skin, Shrinking, Growth, and Stretching – work differently. There is one premade example – Diminution from GURPS Powers (p. P143) that states that transformation is not instant and uses the normal rules for the advantage. I think it’s fair to apply the same to Elastic Skin, Growth, and Stretching, as these four advantages are similar – they do not forbid the subject from performing any actions while the transformation is happening.
Finally, there are some other advantages with an activation time – Warp, Jumper, and Snatcher. These work differently, as they assume to take the penalty for no preparation by default, and they force you to make all the rolls, not the subject. Thus, if you use Affliction to afflict Warp on a subject, then you have to make an IQ-10 roll to teleport him away, and all other penalties and bonuses depend on your senses and extra FP expenditure. Premade examples do not say anything about taking extra time to concentrate to lower the penalty, however, but I would allow that. To negate this penalty, add Reliable to the afflicted Warp advantage, not the Affliction itself. Jumper works the same way.
But here’s another thing – what if you want to buff the subject in a way that lets him use the ability instead of you? Kromm said on the forums that this is a 0-point optional switch that you have to take when you buy the Affliction and cannot change later. Thus, one caster might want to have his Affliction grant Warp to immediately teleport the subject away, while another will impart the subject with the Warp advantage that the subject will be able to use any number of times until the buff ends. The first buff is instantaneous, and the second buff has a proper duration, but both of them have identical statblocks. This is also important when you want to afflict an Affliction or an Innate Attack.
I have also been asked how to make a buff with an effect that only works once, and then has to be recast. For example, a buff that grants DR 10, but only against one attack. I believe that this can be accomplished by making the granted advantage a single-use advantage, which means dividing its final cost by 5.
Then there are Ablative Damage Resistance, Energy Reserve, Vitality Reserve, and similar traits. Imagine the following situation: your buff grants DR 50 with the Ablative limitation. The subject takes some damage, reducing this DR to 10. Then you recast this buff on the same subject, and he has DR 50 again, right? Such situations are not explained in the books anywhere, but my common sense tells me that this is equivalent to free healing, and that this ablative DR should not go back to its maximum value, and instead stay the same. In effect, every subject will have a virtual ablative DR that will virtually regenerate even when the buff is off. Energy Reserve should work the same way. It can be a bookkeeping nightmare, but I think that it’s necessary to preserve game balance.
Also, you cannot cancel the effects of your buff prematurely. This is related to the previous thing that I brought up. To cancel your buff spell, you would have to use the Cancel Spells spell or any other dispelling spells. An alternative would be applying the Cancellation, +10% enhancement to the Affliction from GURPS Psionic Powers.
Since buff is an attack, you have to make an attack roll to buff. This is a normal ranged attack with normal ranged penalties and other rules, and it is rolled with the Innate Attack (Gaze) skill. Depending on the flavor of your spellcasting and the flavor of the spell itself, you might need to use a different specialty of the Innate Attack skill, especially if you decided to make your buffs visible. You must do it if you have no eyes at all!
You can also cast buffs as a touch, if your subject is within reach. Then, it becomes a melee attack that requires a DX or unarmed combat skill roll to hit, unless the subject is willing – in that case no roll is required. You can also buff yourself automatically without any rolls.
In any case, since this is an attack, you can miss, and if you miss, you can hit and buff the wrong target, even an enemy! If this is not how you want your buffs to work, then I will provide you with alternatives later.
Hit location is important, because if the hit location has DR without the Tough Skin limitation, then the subject must roll against (HT – DR) to accept the buff. If he has Magic Resistance, then he must roll against HT – Magic Resistance to accept the buff, and any DR penalizes this roll further. If the subject does not want to be buffed, he may resist the spell automatically.
It is because of the existence of this potential resistance roll, each buff also has the Increased 1/2D, 10x, +15% enhancement. Without it, a subject further than 10 yards away from the caster gets +3 to his resistance roll, and this enhancement makes things more simple and streamlined.
But wait a second, why does the subject resist with HT to accept a buff? Will might be more appropriate, and if you think so, then add Based on Will, +20% to the Affliction advantage.
Now wait another second, why isn’t this roll mandatory? If you check the description of Affliction in GURPS Basic Set, you will not see anything about affecting willing targets automatically. And how come you can resist the buff automatically too? This is actually something new, something that was introduced in Sorcery. The subject may waive his resistance roll, unless he has DR or Magic Resistance, but he also may resist it automatically.
Normally, beneficial Afflictions use rules from GURPS Powers (p. P40) – where a resistance roll is made with a bonus instead of a penalty based on the level of Affliction, and the duration becomes minutes equal to the subject’s margin of success instead of margin of failure. If such an Affliction has Malediction, something the default buffs do not have, then the caster must simply make an unopposed Will roll to affect the subject, and duration depends on the caster’s margin of success. Alternatively, there is also Cosmic, Subject may waive resistance roll, +50% enhancement from Pyramid #3-105.
Why does sorcery have this new mechanic? I believe that it’s one additional measure that streamlines the process and makes it so you can only buff allies and cannot use buffs that are detrimental in some situations affect enemies. For example, something like a Body of Leaves is an interesting spell that does have some detrimental qualities, but you cannot use it to transform enemies into piles of leaves – for that, you’d have to make a different Resisted spell.
Then there are several options.
Option #1 – Use Malediction
Honestly, I think this might be a good idea. Instead of being an invisible missile, your Buff will be a proper spell. Since this is going to be a beneficial Affliction, rules from GURPS Powers say that the caster will have to simply make an unopposed Will roll – no attack roll or resistance roll required. Of course, the Will roll will be penalized for range - -1 per yard for Malediction 1, +100%, normal range penalties for Malediction 2, +150%, or long-range penalties for Malediction 3, +200%. I wouldn’t recommend Malediction 3, however. Of course, you will also have to remove the Increased 1/2D enhancement, because your range will be theoretically unlimited.
However, even though the Beneficial Afflictions rules include rules for waiving your resistance roll, they do not have rules for automatic resistance for situations when the subject does not want to be buffed. If you want your buff to only work on willing targets, then you should limit your Affliction. GURPS Reign of Steel: Will to Live has Accessibility, Only nonvolitional or non-resisting subjects, -20% for Possession, but I think that it would work for Afflictions as well.
Option #2 – Make it Cosmic
By applying Cosmic, Irresistible Attack, +300% to your Affliction, you make it ignore DR. However, there are a couple of questionable moments here. First, it’s very expensive! Second, not only does it ignore DR, but it also ignores such traits as Magic Resistance, and you probably don’t want that.
What if you want something in-between the first two options? There is one way that seems to be legal in terms of rules, but it feels janky. Apply Malediction 2, +150% to your Affliction and then apply Weaponized, -50% to it to make it behave less like a Malediction. It might seem counterintuitive, but I think it works. Basically, it will behave like the Cosmic variant from Option #2, but without ignoring Magic Resistance, and three times cheaper. Still, this might be a questionable approach.
You know, if you are playing in an underwater campaign, then why would an underwater dweller learn a normal Buff spell that works at range, but actually does not work at range underwater? If you want a melee-range buff, you can make one by removing Increased 1/2D, 10x, +15% and adding Melee Attack, Reach C, -30%. You still will be penalized by DR, and to avoid that, you will have to add Malediction 1, +100%.
By the way, you can go even beyond and make a Buff that can only affect you! There is a precedent in Pyramid #3-91 – Accessibility, Self Only, -50% for Affliction. The author, however, said that if he were to use it again, he would price it at -80% instead. You might think that there is no point in making a self-only Affliction, but it actually is a good way to just buff yourself up and switch to another spell without losing the benefits. You cannot do that with Indefinite duration spells that require maintenance. If you want to be unable to buff yourself, then you should apply an appropriate limitation to your Affliction. GURPS Psionic Powers has Accessibility, Others only, -10% and GURPS Monster Hunters Power-Ups 1 has Cannot Affect Self, -50%. I think -10% is better.
You know, you could probably introduce a leveled scheme to buffs, something like the following:
Level 1 – Personal: Accessibility, Self Only, -50%.
Level 2 – Touch: Melee Attack, Reach C, -30%.
Level 3 – Ranged: Increased 1/2D, 10x, +15%.
I think that would work. If you want to use Malediction, then things will look differently.
Level 1 – Personal: Accessibility, Self Only, -50%.
Level 2 – Touch: Malediction 1, +100%; Melee Attack, Reach C, -30%.
Level 3 – Ranged 1: Malediction 1, +100%.
Level 4 – Ranged 2: Malediction 2, +150%.
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