Monster: White Dragon

Monster: White Dragon

Dragons are iconic monsters of fantasy, and I'm sure that they are one of the first things that comes up in peoples' minds when they hear "fantasy". Sometimes they are just flying reptilian beasts, sometimes they are sentient and cunning. For more information about dragons, one can read GURPS Dragons. Dragons in Dungeons and Dragons are divided into several categories: chromatic, metallic, gem, lung, ferrous, planar, etc. White dragons are considered to be the weakest of the evil chromatic dragons. They aren't very bright (when they are young, at least), but they are strong nonetheless. KYOS makes them deal ridiculous damage with their natural weapons and have huge HP. The racial template is provided only for the adult age category.

Sorcery: Cryomancy Expanded

Sorcery: Cryomancy Expanded

Even though I have already posted some ice spells, there are many other cool possible spells left. Let us expand the ice spell list even more, looking in GURPS Magic and other RPG works for inspiration.

Monster: Twig Blight

Monster: Twig Blight

These weak plant monsters appear in a low-level D&D module The Sunless Citadel, but they were Monster Manual II. Since I'm preparing to run this module in GURPS, I have to convert it. Looks like the racial template is cheap enough to use for PCs, but IQ-3 is not everyone's cup of tea.

Sorcery: Ice Spells

Sorcery: Ice Spells

Ice magic probably is my favorite elemental magic, even though ice sometimes is separated from water. GURPS Thaumatology - Sorcery has the Icy Weapon spell, and this post has the Body of Ice spell. Let's make some more!

Sorcery: More Body of (Element) Spells

Sorcery: More Body of (Element) Spells

In the last post I have converted the primary four elemental Body of (Element) spells. But there are some more. Body of Leaves and Body of Slime I already have converted in this post. Body of Wind ended up being ridiculously expensive.

Sorcery: Elemental Body Spells

Sorcery: Elemental Body Spells

A staple of fantasy elemental mages is transforming their bodies into the corresponding element. GURPS Thaumatology - Sorcery has the Body of Wood spell, so let us build the variations on it, using the existing Body of (Element) meta-traits.

Monster: Quasit

Monster: Quasit

The weakest of demons, quasits are tiny flying beings that can turn invisible and deliver poison. They
are weak in combat, but mobile and hard to hit. More useful as spies or familiars for evil wizards.

Sorcery: Weather Spells

Sorcery: Weather Spells

First thing that comes to my mind

I always liked the college of Weather magic. I feel like mages who have power over the weather are invaluable in low TL societies. They could help with farming, traveling, sailing, or hinder their enemies. Statting up these spells was a difficult task, although most of them look identical aside from a couple of words. Control advantage is not my forte.

Magic: Gravity College

Magic: Gravity College

Gravity manipulation is barely covered in GURPS Magic, so I decided make a new Gravity college with some appropriate spells from the Movement college. Gravity mages may be very useful in settings with space travel, but in other settings usefulness of this college is determined by the popularity of the college, because the spells manipulate gravitational anomalies that can only me created by other gravity mages. This is my first serious attempt at creating new Magic spells, using existing spells as the guidelines, as well as the guidelines in Magic, so I'm not sure if I did a good job.

Monster: Water Mephit

Monster: Water Mephit

I think the one we're looking for is on the right

I always liked the mephits. They are small impish-looking humanoids from the elemental planes. Let's start with the water mephit. I have always wondered why they need wings, when they live on the Elemental Plane of Water, but whatever. The template is cheap enough to be used for characters.

Sorcery: Even More Acid Spells

Sorcery: Even More Acid Spells

That's right, there's more to acid than just throwing balls of it or produce acid fog. You can also simply create is with Create Acid, spit it with Spit Acid, produce jets with Acid Jet, rain it on your enemies with Rain of Acid. If you want acid that dissolves even glass, then you can produce it with Essential Acid.

Sorcery: Cloud Spells

Sorcery: Cloud Spells

There are many spells in fiction that produce clouds with some additional effects. What these spells have in common is that they affect an area, obscure vision, and drift with the wind. Fog Cloud simply obscures vision. Hallucinogenic Cloud causes hallucinations. Sleep Cloud makes the creatures caught within it to fall asleep. Stinking Cloud produces a horrible smell that makes the victims cough.

Sorcery: Necromantic Spells

Sorcery: Necromantic Spells

Just three necromantic spells from GURPS Magic. Death Vision frightens the target, Final Rest prevents a body from being reanimated or raised, Sense Spirit detects undead and spirits.

Monster: Thoqqua

Monster: Thoqqua

A thoqqua is a worm-like elemental creature of magma. It tunnels through rock by melting it, and senses its surroundings via vibration sense. The monster is quite neat, but not very interesting. Still, I like it, although I have never used it yet.

Eggplant Strategy

Eggplant Strategy

by Enraged Eggplant

Play-by-post turn-based strategy system

Version 0.2

The rules you see below are not tested, and do not have enough content. It's just a framework, that will be expanded if I ever find somebody to test it with.

Monsters/NPCs: Goblinoids and Kobolds

Monsters/NPCs: Goblinoids and Kobolds

I am preparing to run a conversion of a classic D&D module. Having made the goblinoid and kobold racial templates, now I can convert some NPCs too! They are weak, but I always felt that there needs to be more weak monsters for low-level play.

Monster: Arch-Vile

Monster: Arch-Vile

"One of the worst of a bad lot. You can't think of enough rotten things to say about him. He's fast, hard to kill, casts spells, and resurrects dead monsters! At least these suckers are rare."

― Doom II Manual description

I couldn't have said it any better. I hate these guys, and always will. They are primary targets, but they are hard to hit if they are surrounded by other monsters. They do not have any problems hitting you back though. And if you clear out the monsters in the way, the arch-viles just resurrect them back.

Here's my GURPS adaptation of this truly vile monster. His supernatural abilities are presented in a form of Sorcery spells, so they may be useful even for those who won't use the monster.

Ultra-Tech: Modern BFG9000

Ultra-Tech: Modern BFG9000

We all know and love the classic BFG9000, but its modern (Doom 3 and 4) variant is easier to use, has less unique mechanics, looks less cool, but is deadly as ever. Let's take a look!

Sorcery: Suspension Spells

Sorcery: Suspension Spells

I had difficulties coming up with a theme for a post, but then I glanced at my converted spells document and noticed Suspend Enchantment among the spells. So I decided to convert every other GURPS Magic spell with the word "suspend" in it (except Suspend Time, because it is already presented in GURPS ThaumatologyL Sorcery).

Monster: Shadow

Monster: Shadow

Shadows are lesser incorporeal undead creatures that can create shadows from killed victims. Never been fond of these things in D&D. Also, I find it peculiar, that the shadows did not have anything like Shadow Form advantage/disadvantage in the original source, even though they look two-dimensional on their art.

Monsters: Rats

Monsters: Rats

I bet you all have heard stories of low-level adventurers clearing out basements from rats. Of course, most adventurers succeed, unless there's a giant fire-breathing rat in the basement. Here are some rat templates - a common rat, a cave rat, and a dire rat. Their only difference is their strength and size, but you can add some variety by altering some attributes. For example, you can increase a dire rat's HP, make it Fat, and lower its DX and/or Basic Speed to create bloated dire rats. Common and cave rats are not formiddable opponents, but they can be used as familiars, pets, or food.

Racial Templates: Kobolds

Racial Templates: Kobolds

Kobolds, just like goblins, are commonly used low-level emenies. These small scaly humanoids are draconic descendants, masters of trapmaking and mining. Unlike the goblins, the kobolds are much more social and open to negotiations and trade. I like kobolds, but who doesn't?

Racial Templates: Goblinoids

Racial Templates: Goblinoids

Goblins are a common "bad guy" race for low-level adventures to deal with. But there is much more to goblinoids than just the small weak goblins, and some of the goblinoids actually are formiddable opponents. Here I present you all goblinoid racial templates from D&D that I've converted. As a side note - after looking some things up, I found out that I missed some obscure subraces of orcs, dwarves, and gnomes, so I updated those posts too.

Ultra-Tech: BFG9000

Ultra-Tech: BFG9000

Sometimes you need a big gun. And do you know a gun bigger than BFG9000 from Doom? Here's my attempt to convert it to GURPS and this is probably the case where you shouldn't convert the exact mechanist and just stat it up as a cone attack, but I decided to try to make it closer to the original source. Some numbers probably should be tweaked, mechanics simplified, but it still works, although clunky, right?

Monster: Athach

Monster: Athach

The athach is a hulking, misshapen giant with a poisonous bite and three arms. Despite their humanoid appearance, they are not giants, but abberrations. This monster deals huge damage, especially when wielding three clubs and taking advantage of Ambidexterity and Extra Attack 1.

Also, I'm done with letter A of Monster Manual!

Sorcery: Modifying Sorcery

Sorcery: Modifying Sorcery

The Sorcery system out of the box provides a way to make spellcasters that fling spells quickly and almost effortlessly, as if it was their second nature. It does provide an option for limiting spell access, but does not go beyond that. Many stories and settings feature many different magical traditions, and while you can represent them with different magical systems in GURPS, you could even make unique traditions or subsystems just by modifying the Sorcerous Empowerment advantage and/or spells, available to this traditions. Let's look at the appropriate enhancements and limitations that will help us accomplish this task!

Monster: Azer

Monster: Azer

Azers are dwarf-like outsiders from the Elemental Plane of Fire. They are skillful smiths, armourers, engineers, and they have a fiery aura. The template is cheap enough to be used for some player characters too.

Monster: Animated Manacles

Monster: Animated Manacles

Monster Manual provides statblocks for animated objects of various sizes, but does not specify the type of the object in question. Pathfinder RPG, on the other hand, provides several statblocks for
specific animated objects. Let's try to stat up something weird - the animated manacles. I was not sure how to represent their ability to actually shackle people, so I decided to give them Accessory (Manacles). Thus, the manacles are incapable of damaging anyone, unless they use All-Out Attack (Strong), but can shackle people like Iron Shackles from GURPS Low-Tech, page 130.

Sorcery: Creation Spells

Sorcery: Creation Spells

And here's the second and last part of the college of Illusion & Creation. Create Object can be found in GURPS Thaumatology - Sorcery, page 18. Create Mount can be found in this post.

Sorcery: Illusion Spells

Sorcery: Illusion Spells

Let's tackle the first "half of the college of Illusion & Creation from GURPS Magic, the college with the most ridiculous art piece in the book. Complex Illusion appears in GURPS Thaumatology - Sorcery, page 18, and Inscribe appears in this post. Some of the following spells were quite difficult to stat up. Independence and Initiative seem to be included in Complex Illusion and hence the other illusion spells. Phantom Flame appears in Pyramid #3-63, page 9.

Ultra-Tech: DR/Damage Comparison

Ultra-Tech: DR/Damage Comparison

So many times have I heard people complaining about GURPS Ultra-Tech. One of the most common complaints is the so-called "rocket tag" firefighting. Weapons are far ahead of body armor, which makes body armor pretty much useless. The worst offender is the HEMP warhead, that shreds even battlesuits to pieces easily. At least this is what the complainers claim. I've GMed 4 or 5 TL 10 games, and I have encountered this problem too. It can be partially mitigated by restricting available gear (LC is here for a reason) and using optional rules from GURPS High-Tech. But it's still not enough. To see how the issue can be fixed, we have to do some research first.

Monster: Assassin Vine

Monster: Assassin Vine

Now this is a monster I've used personally in my D&D and Pathfinder games. It's stealthy, strong, resilient, and very deadly. Its ability to animate vegetation coupled with its own strong grappling capabilities makes it terrifying.

Monsters: Archons

Monsters: Archons

In this post, I would like to show an update of one of my oldest conversions – archons from Monster Manual. Archons in D&D are exemplars of the lawful good alignment. These celestial beings, just like other celestials, do not get as much attention in D&D as demons and devils do, and the reason, as I believe, is that the typical PCs are not supposed to fight them – they serve as allies or patrons. This is why there are only seven or so angels in D&D and dozens upon dozens of different fiends.

Sorcery: Movement and Communication Spells

Sorcery: Movement and Communication Spells

Who said that envoys, ambassadors, and messengers cannot use magic? Create Mount will create a horse for the messenger. Haste will accelerate the messenger, and Great Haste will do so even better. Inscribe will inscribe the message on any surface. Teleport will transport the messenger instantly. Walk on Air will allow the messenger to navigate the terrain with ease.

Sorcery: Attribute Debuffs

Sorcery: Attribute Debuffs

As I said in the previous post, the spellcasters sometimes need simple spells. Last time we were talking about the attribute buffs, and this time let's turn it around!

Sorcery: Attribute Buffs

Sorcery: Attribute Buffs

GURPS Thaumatology: Sorcery provides a neat list of premade spells, but I found it lacking in simple buffs. There's nothing complex or very interesting in such spells - they just increase the attributes, but they are useful nonetheless. In D&D they are called Bull's Strength, Cat's Grace, Fox's Cunning, and Bear's Endurance, and GURPS Magic equivalent spells are Might, Grace, Wisdom, and Vigor.

Sorcery: Plant Spells

Sorcery: Plant Spells

In the last game I played my character was a druid who specialized in plant spells. We were using Sorcery as the magic system, and this was my first time seeing it in play. I liked it, what can I say? My druid only had some minor spells, but they were useful nonetheless. One of the spells (Antiplant Shell) was converted from D&D, and all others were based on spells from GURPS Magic and GURPS Magic - Plant Spells. My druid only knew Identify Plant, Heal Plant, Shape Plant, and Razor Leaves initially, but then learned Body of Leaves. Body of Leaves was used not only defensively, but also offensively. Is there a better feeling than transforming yourself into a pile of leaves and then turn the angels that assault you to piles of leaves too and let your friend take care of them?

Treasure: Vorpal Sword

Treasure: Vorpal Sword

Who doesn't like decapitating enemies in a single hit? Depending on the degree of realism in your games, the difficulty of this task may range from easy to practically impossible. You can see this feat being done in movies, books, games, quite often. In D&D any slashing weapon could be enchanted with the vorpal enchantment, but it was one of the most expensive enchantments. Let's see how to do this in GUPRS!

Racial Templates: Half-Orcs

Racial Templates: Half-Orcs

I think I will have to take a break from racial templates after this one. Half-orcs never striked be as anything particularly interesting. Here are the templates for the normal half-orcs and their environmental subraces.

Racial Templates: Orcs

Racial Templates: Orcs

Orcs are commonly used barbaric bad guys. Big, strong, brutal, numerous, fecund, they plague the lands, and sometimes even gather armies big enough to conquer kingdoms. In some worlds they are more or less civilized honourable warriors.

Racial Templates: Gnomes

Racial Templates: Gnomes

The gnomes in D&D are small humanoids with minor magical powers, in Pathfinder they also are migrants from the First World, the world of the fey. While interesting, I've never seen a person play a gnome, and even use gnome as an NPC. I think gnomes are the most overlooked "core" race.

Racial Templates: Halflings

Racial Templates: Halflings

Halflings in D&D traditionally were used more often for sneaky rogue-ish characters, but if you read their lore (for example, in Races of the Wild) you'll see that they can fit almost any archetype. The most significant difference between D&D halflings and GURPS halflings is their strength. While in D&D they are twice shorter than a human, but had only a -2 penalty to Strength, in GURPS a person with SM-2 usually has ST 5-6 and the same amount of HP, which is a serious problem to martial halfling characters. Keeping that in mind, in GURPS halflings would make much better wizards than warriors, and even though they will be adept at stealth, they won't be able to deal a lot of damage with their low ST. Perhaps using Knowing Your Own Strength will help with that a bit. To be honest, most, if not all halfling subraces are very bland.

Racial Templates: Dwarves

Racial Templates: Dwarves

I've always liked the dwarves. Sturdy, stubborn, clannish creatures. Some people would consider a bearded drunken berserker dwarf or a dwarven rune mage/priest cliche, but I like those archetypes. Despite being a quite popular PC race, I've had one one player playing a dwarf. And that was a dwarf ninja. Let's see how the dwarves look like in my opinion in GURPS!

Racial Templates: Half-Elves

Racial Templates: Half-Elves

Another batch of D&D racial templates. For some reason humans seem to be able to interbreed with many other races in fantasy, and half-elves probably are the most well known half-breeds. There isn't a lot to say here, they are just "Elf Lite".

Content Update: Knowing Your Own Strength

Content Update: Knowing Your Own Strength

Knowing Your Own Strength is a great article from Pyramid #3-83, and I keep seeing people recommend it. This is why I have decided to update all content I have posted so far to include the KYOS versions of monsters/abilities/spells, etc.

Racial Templates: Elves

Racial Templates: Elves

There are very many various elven subraces in D&D. Some are similar to others, some are actually identical to others, some are vastly different. But they all share some features - pointed ears, long lifespan, immunity to supernatural sleep effects, and 4-hour trance instead of sleep. This trance makes the elves immune to dream-related effects, both positive and negative. I decided to make it a perk.

Okay, here we go, get ready for a long list!

Racial Templates: Humans

Racial Templates: Humans

The possibility of playing a character of a non-human race always appealed to me in roleplaying games. It's fun to try to view the world through the eyes of a long-lived elf, a dwarf from a clan-based society, a homeless halfling that is always on the road, a tribal lizardfolk, etc. Nowadays I see people claim that playing a non-human is uncreative, restrictive, cliche, and is a "roleplaying crutch". I disagree with this point of view. Some people like playing non-humans because of mechanical benefits, some do it for flavor, or because some racial or cultural trait fascinates them. Personally, I belong to the second group. Even though many D&D races have very minor differences and may feel redundant, I think that the GM should put an accent on cultural differences.

Anyway, here's every single D&D 3.5 human subrace converted to GURPS.

Monster: Aboleth Mage

Monster: Aboleth Mage

For completeness' sake let's convert the aboleth mage, presented in Monster Manual. The aboleths are psionic creatures, but Monster Manual was released before Expanded Psionics Handbook, and I think this is why there was an "improved" monster included. This monster is based on the aboleth racial template from this post and uses Sorcery for its magical abilities. If I recall correctly, Lords of Madness mentions the aboleths use their special glyph magic, which I probably will try to represent later as an alphabet for Symbol magic.

Sorcery: Acid spells and more

Sorcery: Acid spells and more

Here's some more converted D&D spells that will probably be used in the future monster entries. Acid Arrow and Acid Ball are basic acid missile spells, while Acid Fog affects an area and obscures vision. Alter Body and Invisibility are good spells for stealthy operations. Daze is a simple incapacitating spell, and Magic Missile is a well known classic.

Monster: Arrowhawk

Monster: Arrowhawk

Here's another entry in the D&D monsters series. Arrowhawks are very agile birds from the Plane of Air. They are intelligent and can project rays of electricity. Nothing too interesting, but not too mundane as well. Personally, I've never seen this monster in use.

Martial Arts: The Sublime Way

Martial Arts: The Sublime Way

Tome of Battle for D&D 3.5 was released quite late, but was an amazing supplement. It provided three new martial classes, a whole new maneuver system, and was fun overall. Probably one of the best things written by WotC. In Pathfinder there was no such thing until a 3rd-party publisher Dreamscarred Press released their own "conversion" of the system, called Path of War. While I think that Tome of Battle is in all ways superior to Path of War, I decided to convert every single discipline from the Tome of Battle, Path of War, Path of War Expanded, and Lords of the Night (the last three all from Dreamscarred Press) into martial arts styles for GURPS. I didn't convert every single maneuver, of course, but just attempted to capture the feel of every discipline.

Magic: Shadow Magic and Incarnum Update

Magic: Shadow Magic and Incarnum Update

A few days ago I noticed a glaring mistake in my incarnum conversion - you can freely switch soulmelds on a particular chakra. Now I've edited the post, corrected the mistake, making switching the soulmelds on and off take 1 minute, and fixed some minor mistakes and miscalculations.

I've already covered the shadow magic conversion to Sorcery, but what if you wanted to give the shadowcasters more of a scholarly feel, using spells as skills, like in GURPS Magic? Here's my attempt.

Magic: Ritual Magic Paths, Part 2

Magic: Ritual Magic Paths, Part 2

And here is the second half of the paths. Strangely, this website doesn't let me do it all in one post. Perhaps there's a character limit?

Magic: Ritual Magic Paths, Part 1

Magic: Ritual Magic Paths, Part 1

Ritual Magic is presented in GURPS Magic and expanded upon in GURPS Thaumatology. Basically, each college is a separate skill that defaults to the core Ritual Magic skill, and every spell is a technique that defaults to its college skill with a penalty equal to the spell's prerequisite count. This may sound confusing, especially if you are aware of all the other magic systems. Ritual magic, ritual path magic, path/book magic, oh boy! Ritual magic looks like a nice concept, especially if you want to differentiate two magical traditions while keeping the mechanics almost identical. This way you can have scholarly wizards who study spells normally and clerics that use ritual magic representing their more general and less "scientific" grasp of magical powers. It feels like some prerequisite counts should be deliberately altered to prevent ritual mages from abusing their powers, so this system might need some fine tuning. I wish it got some more attention from the writers. If you're used to Dungeons and Dragons, I feel that you can represent clerical magic using ritual magic very well, making each divine domain a separate path.

Monster: Aranea

Monster: Aranea

Next up is this interesting monster. I feel like the araneas get too little attention. Come on, they are intelligent man-sized shapeshifting spiders with sorcerous powers! Personally, I like this monster, but I have never had a chance to use it and have never seen it used. It appeared first in Monster Manual and has never been expanded upon. One thing I had doubts about is the aranea's anatomical oddity - its brain is contained in the hump on its back, and I wasn't sure how to stat it. After thinking for a bit, I just decided to make it a feature.

Treasure: Wand of Fireball

Treasure: Wand of Fireball

Here's another piece of fantasy treasure piles - a wand of fireball. Here I present three power variations, and each variation is build either as a Sorcery item or a Metatronic Generator. You can find the Fireball spell in Pyramid #3-63. Here and in the previous post we see a trend - on lower TLs metatronic generators are cheaper than Sorcery items, even when the spell-less variation is used, and on higher TLs metatronic generators are much more expensive.

Treasure: Ring of Protection

Treasure: Ring of Protection

A staple of all fantasy treasure piles is this simple magic item - a ring of protection. I used it to see the price differences between different enchantment systems - Sorcery, spell-less Sorcery (when you simply enchant the advantages required without using a predefined spell), and Metatronic Generators (from Pyramid #3-46). You can see the Armor spell in GURPS Sorcery - Protection and Warning Spells.

Powers: Incarnum, Part 2 - Totemism

Powers: Incarnum, Part 2 - Totemism

Here's the second and last part of the incarnum power. This one deals with magical beasts instead of moral principles and forces. Totemist provides an additional special chakra - the totem chakra. Almost every soulmeld grants the character a natural attack when bound to the totem chakra. The totemist class in D&D was essentially a build-your-own-monster class, and was quite fun to play. Let's see my attempt at converting it!

A GCS library with all soulmelds can be downloaded here.

Powers: Incarnum, Part 1 - Meldshaping

Powers: Incarnum, Part 1 - Meldshaping

Magic of Incarnum was released quite late during the lifetime of D&D 3.5 and contained a whole new "magic" subsystem with three new classes, tons of options. The wielders of incarnum (raw stuff of souls) create semi-permanent magic items on their bodies and bind them to their chakras to gain additional benefits. In addition, incarnum bears a moral flavor, and this fact makes this power more appropriate for settings where good, evil, chaos, and order powers are clearly defined. I liked everything about this book - the mechanics (eve though some options were quite bad), the lore, the flavor, the art, and I can't recommend it enough even if you don't play D&D. While converting this subsystem to GURPS I've encountered many problems. In this state it doesn't look like an exact mechanical duplicate of the original subsystem, but it still looks quite unique and different from all other powers.

A GCS library with all soulmelds can be downloaded here.

Powers: Channel Energy

Powers: Channel Energy

"Traditional" fantasy clerics usually at least somehow interact with the undead. In D&D clerics can turn or rebuke undead. This ability can easily be represented with the True Faith advantage, Turn Zombie spell from GURPS Magic or GURPS Thaumatology - Sorcery. But in Pathfinder RPG clerics channel positive or negative energy, depending on their alignment. This energy heals the living and harms the undead or vice versa. Since there's no positive energy or negative energy damage type in GURPS, such abilities are more tricky to build than usual.

Sorcery: Blood Magic

Sorcery: Blood Magic

And now let's take a short break from the D&D conversions. Dominions 4 is one of my favourite video games. It's a fantasy turn-based strategy with a vast amount of nations, monsters, and spells. The most unique magic school in the game is the blood magic. It requires a special resource - blood slaves that must be sacrificed. Most of the spells of this type of magic deal with madness, bloodletting, blood boiling, healing, and, most importantly, summoning demons and TMWNMTK.

Sorcery: Pact Magic

Sorcery: Pact Magic

And here goes the last magical subsystem from Tome of Magic converted into Sorcery. This one is much more different than the others, as the spell consist solely out of various Alternate Forms. The basic idea was taken from the Spirit Vessels section in GURPS Thaumatology. I list every single D&D 3.5 vestige ever printed, but with no fluff. Better get Tome of Magic and read it, because the fluff is superb (and the implementation too, if you're interested in the mechanics).

Sorcery: Truename Magic

Sorcery: Truename Magic

As I said in the previous post, Tome of Magic provides three magic subsystems. Truename magic is rich in flavor, but suffers from terrible implementation. I remember one player and I were playing some homebrew "fixed" truenamers in D&D and had a lot of fun.

It looks like the authors came up with these subsystems by capitalizing on one of the spell components. Shadow magic only requires gestures, and truename magic requires only magical words.  But truenaming also had this unique thing - every utterance had an additional reversed version of itself. Here's my attempt at bringing this system over to GURPS.

Sorcery: Shadow Magic

Sorcery: Shadow Magic

Tome of Magic probably is my favorite supplement for Dungeons and Dragons 3.5. It presents three distinct and unique magic subsystems and has amazingly well-written flavor. Pact magic deals with binding vestiges to your soul and gaining their abilities. Shadow magic is all about the shadows of all things, be they living or abstract, like magic. Truename magic allows the user to manipulate the world with the universal true language. Mechanically, only the first third was well done, the other two thirds range from underwhelming to unplayably broken. First, I'll present here a way to convert shadow magic into Sorcery.

Powers: Psionic Enchantment

Powers: Psionic Enchantment

Crafting, and crafting of magical items in particular, for me was one of the most confusing things. Enchantment rules from GURPS Magic could only be used for standard magic spells and didn't provide any guidelines beyond that. Then Pyramid #3-46 came out and presented us the Metatronic Generators. Up until the release of GURPS Thaumatology - Sorcery I thought that there's nothing better than the Metatronic Generators. By statting up some magical items both as Metatronic Generators and as Sorcery items (using spells or simply the advantages I wanted) I came to a conclusion that magical items made using the Sorcery enchantment system generally are more expensive, which could be a good thing if you want to make magic items rare. But what about psionic items? Here's my take on psionic enchantment using Sorcery as a basis:

Powers: Metacreativity

Powers: Metacreativity

I like psionics. But who doesn't? GURPS Psionic Powers is an amazing supplement, that provides tons of interesting powers, abilities, and modifiers. We all are used to the telepaths, tekes, pyros, espers, but those who came from D&D may notice the absence of the metacreativity power. In Dungeons and Dragons psionics is often associated with ectoplasm and crystals. Why? I don't know, but I would like to know. But anyway, here's my take on the metacreativity power in GURPS.

Powers: Control Magic

Powers: Control Magic

GURPS Powers offers the players and the GMs a new interesting advantage - Control. While being versatile and not vague for most of the controllable substances, it is much more difficult to define when dealing with abstract concepts, such as time, space, or magic.

Monster: Ankheg

Monster: Ankheg

Let's do something simpler - a bug monster. The ankheg is a burrowing giant ant-like creature that can spit acid twice a day. These bugs are big, tough, and their acidic bite is nasty. From all the monsters posted until this moment, I've only used ankhegs against my PCs. One of the akhegs got two of its legs cut off with a two-handed sword and then impaled through the skull, and another one survived a bullet through its face from a TL4 pistol, attempted to run away, but got immobilized by a divine spell and then beaten merciless to death with a mace by a cleric of a deity of peace, mercy, and healing.

Monsters: Angels

Monsters: Angels

From front to back - astral deva, planetar, solar

Angels are powerful good outsiders. Biblical angels have a 9-rank hierarchy, and some of the angels have weird non-humanoid forms. For example, the ophanim are wheels with multiple eyes. But D&D prefers generic-looking humanoid angels.

Sorcery: Angelic Spells

Sorcery: Angelic Spells

The next monster entry is going to be angels. D&D angels have many spell-like abilities, and many of the existing Sorcery spells fit, but some spells I've had to make myself. They aren't really anything special. Aid is a simple buff that improves durability and bravery. Continual Flame allows sorcerers to earn for a living being an illuminator. Lesser Restoration and Remove Disease fit very well for clerical "sorcerers" or other magical healers. Plane Shift literally opens up new worlds for sorcerers. Personal Invisibility allows a sorcerer to go unseen, and See Invisible allows him to see sorcerers using Personal Invisibility. Speak with Dead can provide answers when you wanted to intimidate a person with a fireball, but instead burned him a bit too much. Power Word: Stun is just a simple, but useful and showy spell.

Sorcery: More ethical spells

Sorcery: More ethical spells

While statting up some monsters, I've noticed a lack of basic alignment-based spells in Sorcery. The following spells may be useful for sorcerers that use variant moral magic rules from GURPS Thaumatology, particularly so if Sorcery has a divine nature.

Monster: Allip

Monster: Allip

The art looks kind of cool

Now this is an infamous D&D monster - a slayer of many 3rd-level adventurer parties.

Monster: Achaierai

Monster: Achaierai

In this post, I want to take a closer look at a weird monster that I’ve never actually used in D&D or GURPS – the achaierai. Yes, I looked up the pronunciation. These sentient, goofy looking four-legged birds inhabit the plane of Acheron, where they hunt everything that moves. Their depiction varies from edition to edition, but I prefer their 3e incarnation, where they at least have something like a short body instead of being a huge head on legs. So, let’s get to work and see if there is anything interesting there.

Imbuements and Sorcery: Align Weapon

Imbuements and Sorcery: Align Weapon

Alignment is an eternal topic for discussion and debates in the D&D/Pathfinder community. Thankfully or not, GURPS lacks such a thing by default, but GURPS Thaumatology offers some spells related to ethical categories. Personally, I do not use alignments in my GURPS games, but for the purpose of ethical categories-based spells and effects I assume that some creatures, objects, or areas have an ethical aura. For example, when playing in a D&D-style setting the outsiders, characters and items with divine abilities, sacred/unholy places have an aura that represents their cosmic alignment, and this aura can be detected by some abilities. If you use Detect Evil, you can detect a cleric of an evil deity (even if the cleric in question isn't evil himself; maybe he's just appeasing an apocalyptic deity to prevent the destruction of the whole world?), a demon, a devil, but not a simple criminal.

Monsters: Aboleths

Monsters: Aboleths

Their original art doesn't really make them look very intimidating.

I decided to update my very first blogpost – the aboleth. I really like aboleths, they are one of my favorite D&D monsters, and I even picked up Dominions 3 because that game had an aboleth nation. So, who are the aboleths? They are huge fish-like beings with tentacles that drip slime that suffocates air-breathers, but also gives them ability to breathe water, making them dependent on the aboleth for survival. The aboleths possess a racial memory that makes them a great repository of knowledge, as they have been in this world even before the gods. Highly-intelligent, they also have an array of psionic abilities. There are multiple subtypes of aboleths, but I am not going to cover them all in this post, only some of them.