A Thorough Look at Bards in D&D and GURPS

A Thorough Look at Bards in D&D and GURPS

Bard is one of the core D&D classes that has been present in every edition since AD&D 1e. The D&D community sure likes its bard memes about seducing dragons that totally didn’t get old twenty years ago. My personal D&D experience begins with 3.0 and I have to say that I’ve never seen a bard PC or even NPC. Nobody was interested in this class, and even I never liked it much. Something always felt off about the bard. About a month ago, when I was reworking my GURPS implementation of D&D classes, I decided to take a good look at the bard to understand what’s the reason for my distaste and what can be done with it.

Blood Magic: More Spells

Blood Magic: More Spells

It's time to expand the spell repertoire of the blood mages. In this post, I will list all already existing spells that are appropriate to the blood magic tradition, adjusted accordingly.

Is Sorcery even a system?

Is Sorcery even a system?

In the comments, I've been asked why I dislike Sorcery despite having written hundreds of spells for it, and it made me realize that I forgot to post a transcript of one of my videos here on this topic. Here's my rant about why I think Sorcery isn't a system and isn't good, and I don't even talk about people ignoring or misunderstanding rules and then blaming Sorcery for it - this is not my problem, but their problem.

Wizardry: Tome and Blood Spells

Wizardry: Tome and Blood Spells

Complete Arcane is widely considered to be Tome and Blood (a 3.0 book) updated to 3.5, but people who claim that haven't read the books or have only read the game mechanical parts and did that poorly as well. Aside from lots of different non-mechanical information, Tome and Blood has some spells and prestige classes that didn't make it into the 3.5 edition. I have converted all the Complete Arcane spells that I wanted, but some of these "missing" ones are pretty cool, so let's convert them.

Choke should be a simple spell, right? Just use Affliction with Choking, +100%, right? If you read the rules carefully, you will see that rules for suffocation (when you, for example, run out of air when diving), rules for choking and strangling (p. B370), Choke Hold technique (p. MA69), and the afflicted choking condition (p. B428) all use different rules. And then there's Fatigue Attack with Suffocation. The Choking affliction is something of a save-or-die where you cannot do anything. Why can you resist and act semi-normally when you're being choked normally then? Here, I decided to go a different way and stat this spell up as a limited form of TK. It may seem like the most convoluted option, but in reality it's done for the sake of streamlining the rules. Now, you get a proper choking attempt that can be resisted, and the spell is quite cheap too. So, if you see a chicken, cast Choke on it.

Feign Death is another interesting one. On the surface, it looks similar to Hibernate, but the devil is in the details. Feign Death is a buff, so it can only be used on willing creatures. The duration is limited, but there's another important difference - the subject still can hear and smell the surroundings, and the subject is the one who decides when he wakes up. This greatly expands the spell's utility.

Hide Life is a very cheap spell in terms of character points, but the casting cost is very high. The effects, however, turn you into something of a lich, making you unable to die, unless the body part where your life is hidden is found and destroyed.

Indifference is a spell that drains emotions. The subject becomes immune to fear and influence, but becomes socially inept.

Negative Energy Burst and Negative Energy Ray are simple attack spells that deal toxic damage. If I recall things correctly, these spells were later reprinted in Magic of Faerun, but I am too lazy to check the book right now.

Wizardry: Miscellaneous Spells III

Wizardry: Miscellaneous Spells III

Initially, I was planning to make a post with some cheap spells, but then I thought that I'd rather adapt some spells from the Lords of Darkness book, but then I found that there are too few of them there and opened the Wizard's Spell Compendium for 2e and found some interesting spells. So, this post is a mishmash of multiple ideas.

Acid Bolt is an acidic variant of Magic Missile.

Agitate Wounds is a cheap spell that reopens wounds.

Afterclap is a time spell that duplicates an injury that the target has recently received.

Alter Instrument is a spell for bards to save backpack space and money.

Handfang is a cheap spell that temporarily creates a fanged mouth on your palm.

Night's Mantle is mostly an NPC spell that lets wraiths, vampires, and other sun-repelled undead to operate normally in sunlight. This is a very expensive spell, but I don't mind that - it is supposed to be available only to very powerful undead spellcasters. Otherwise, wouldn't all vampires learn this spell and make their Weakness useless?

Phantom Plow plows the land quickly, but also is useful in combat. By RAW, this spell isn't supposed to work, because Side Effect depends on injury and not damage, but I don't care.

Stasis Clone is a more powerful variant of Clone that allows creating multiple clones that do not rot.

Massive Setting Document Update

Massive Setting Document Update

The last couple of months were almost completely devoted to reworking my own setting documents (link). While the setting itself is something few people will care about, the Races of Karilan and Powers of Karilan documents may be more widely useful. The way I do races, monsters, powers, and magic in my games often isn't the same as you can see it on the blog here (aside from all the Wizardry-related stuff - it is the same). The updated documents now have clickable tables of contents, which makes navigation so much easier. The Powers of Karilan document lost a lot of weight, as I cut down and reorganized the material. I have to say that it feels nice to select several pages worth of text and hit "Delete" because now you know better. Now, I can finally move on to something else - I have so many ideas! And none of them are original, of course.

Combat Scaling and Abstraction

Combat Scaling and Abstraction

Back in the day, I made a video about why I love crunchy tabletop RPG systems, where I explained why I enjoy such intricacies as weapon composition, partial armor coverage, optional hit locations, one-second turns, and other game mechanical intricacies that make GURPS so fun for me. However, I do understand that, in certain ways, granularity can limit you and sometimes even produce quite strange results that do not make much sense.