>>96085461>>96085984I really enjoy the distinction between wizards and sorcerers in GURPS.
I like how wizards have spells as learned skills, while sorcerers have spells as innate traits/advantages.
Wizards have a whole list of premade spells that they must learn in a certain order of branching spell trees representing set progressions divided into well-defined schools of mastery, while sorcerers can have literally any kind of spell effect they can think of and learn them in any order without regard to prerequisites.
Wizard spells are always limited by casting time, energy cost, and magic ritual, which become less costly or restrictive as the wizard's skill with the spell improves. Meanwhile, sorcerers can have whatever limitations on their spells they want. They can cast all their spells instantly at no energy cost and with no somatic/verbal/material components if they want to. But limited spells cost less XP, so it's still useful to have limitations.
Wizard spells require very little investment to be able to attempt to cast (only 1 XP per spell), allowing wizards to learn many hundreds of spells for cheap, and still have a good chance of casting them if their IQ/Magery is high enough. Sorcery spells will almost always be more expensive, because they're based on advantages, unless they load up on a huge number of limitations.
Wizards are often constrained by the precise specific effects listed in their spell descriptions, with little room for improvisation. But sorcerer spells are truly flexible, able to boost the raw level of effect (think "Upcasting"), add temporary enhancements (think "Metamagic"), or even improvise entirely new spells on the fly. This doesn't even require any special feats to do so. Every sorcerer can just do this. It just costs extra time and energy, and requires a Will roll.
