How would learning Share Energy unbalance GURPS Dungeon Fantasy/DFRPG?

Question

So, Dungeon Fantasy/DFRPG doesn't offer Share Energy. To any character. It's a Healing College spell, and those (barring Lend Energy and Recover Energy) are the exclusive domain of Clerics -- but it's not on the Cleric spell list in DF:1.

Share Energy can only share up to 5 FP, for a single second, at the cost to the caster of twice the amount actually used by the target -- it's useless for enchantment (which isn't available to PCs anyway, and Q&D was deleted for the DFRPG complete game release; even NPC's can't make a simple magic arrow in a day). It's specifically blocked for Ceremonial spells, where the energy is used gradually, or for Slow & Sure enchantment (same).

The only uses I can see for it in the DF environment are allowing two or more casters to work together for immediate casting of higher-cost spells -- large Area spells, for instance, especially the ones with a base cost of 3 or higher.

What am I missing? How would it break the game (specifically DFRPG) to let two characters (at least one a Cleric) cooperate to cast a high cost spell only one of them knows?

Answer 1

The Share Energy spell is already part of the DFRPG. You can find it in the healing college of the Spells book, and it is available for all casters. But I would hesitate to use anything more efficient in energy usage. Lend Energy has a worse effect, but is also uses the minimum possible cost you can pay. The Vigor spell is a buff with similar costs and effects, but then you have the penalties for maintained spells. From there you quite quickly get into the discussion of spell design, which I think is far too big a topic for an answer.

While the DFRPG is certainly based on Dungeon Fantasy, it is still both a redesign and a standalone system. The fact it wasn't there initially implies that there was a change of mind in the 10 or so years since the initial release.

One of the main features of Dungeon Fantasy is that emphasis on resource control, so really it is up to the GM to decide how easy they want spellcasters to cast big spells.