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.