Magic: Assorted Spells

Magic: Assorted Spells

Continuing on with the D&D spells conversion. Here we have Clone that isn't quite Simulacrum or Doppelganger. Status allows the caster to know the condition of his friends across long distance. Ventriloquism allows the caster to displace the origin point of his vocal sounds.

Magic: Light and Darkness Spells

Magic: Light and Darkness Spells

These spells expand the college of Light and Darkness. Faerie Fire, Glitterdust, and Invisibility Purge are good countermeasures to invisibility, which is very good, especially if you do not use the DF version of Invisibility.

Magic: Necromantic Spells

Magic: Necromantic Spells

Here are some necromantic D&D spells that do not seem to have analogues in GURPS Magic. I feel like these spells will make necromancy significantly more diverse.

Magic: Water Spells

Magic: Water Spells

And here are some water spells. Most of the ice spells deal impaling or crushing damage, so I've decided to convert some cold spells that deal burning (no incendiary) damage to make cold resistance of some creatures more useful.

Magic: Plant Spells

Magic: Plant Spells

GURPS Magic - Plant Spells significantly expands the Plant College, but even with this amazing supplement I've managed to find some unrepresented spells from D&D 3.5 Player's Handbook.

Magic: Fire and Mind Control Spells

Magic: Fire and Mind Control Spells

Wall of Fire feels like such an iconic spell, but I was surprised to not find it in GURPS Magic. Fire Seeds is a useful spell for unarmed druids. Hideous Laughter and Irresistible Dance apply irritant conditions to the victims. Useful for parties.

Magic: Earth and Metal Spells

Magic: Earth and Metal Spells

And here are some D&D earth and metal spells! Meld into Stone is good for hiding, spying, ambushing, or sometimes even escaping, if you have 5 spare seconds to cast the spell. Spike Stones can give you time to run away. Repel Stone and Repel Metal can hinder armored opponents. Wall of Stone can hinder unarmored opponents as well. Stoneskin is a good defensive spell, if you have no access to the Protection & Warning College. And Stone Tell is a useful spell for information gathering. If you're not using the Metal college from Pyramid #3-91, then you may integrate the function of repelling metal into Repel Stone but with a 1 energy = 1 ST ratio.

Powers: Attachment Modules

Powers: Attachment Modules

There are examples in fiction of two independent beings merging to either gain completely new abilities, enhance the existing ones, or transfer abilities between each other. As far as I know, GURPS does not have such abilities out of the box, so let us look for some ways to implement at least one of such abilities - robotic modules that can be attached or detached. I will try to cover various fusion dances and parasitic infestations someday later.

Magic: Animal Spells

Magic: Animal Spells

And here are several animal spells from D&D 3.5 Player's Handbook that could be used by GURPS druids or other animal mages. Animal Growth and Reduce Animal change an animal's size. Animal Messenger forces it to deliver a message, and Hide from Animal makes the subject invisible to animals.

Magic: Air Spells

Magic: Air Spells

So far I have made four additional colleges for GURPS Magic - Gravity, Poison, Time, and Force. Let's expand on the existing ones. To look for inspiration I decided to skim Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 Player's Handbook. I've found only 4 spells that do not seem to have an analogue in GURPS Magic. Call Lightning is just Lightning that hits from above. Chain Lightning hits multiple targets. Both of these spells also are Weather spells. Another Air/Necromantic spell is Cloudkill - it creates a toxic cloud. And Whispering Wind is an Air/Sound spell that allows the caster to send a message on the wind.

Additionally, I'm going to update the domain posts with these new spells and spells I find from other sources.

Sorcery: Earth Spells II

Sorcery: Earth Spells II

Even more earth spells! The jet spells were tricky to build, but the trickiest one of all was Steelwraith.

Sorcery: Healing Spells

Sorcery: Healing Spells

There are two healing spells in GURPS Thaumatology - Sorcery, and they are Minor Healing and Relieve Madness. While there are already many abilities and spells that damage or afflict creatures in some way, we should make some more diverse healing abilities to counteract the afflictions. To convert Lend Energy, I had to look up a post by Kromm, where he said that Heals FP Only, +0% seems like a fair limitation for Healing, but only if you make the ratio 1:1 instead of 1:2. To make HP healed by Lend Vitality temporary, I had to use Maximum Duration, 1 hour, -10%, even though Healing is not a valid advantage for it. I even ignored the "can't use the ability for 5 minutes" part. A similar limitation for Magery appears in GURPS Fantasy, and it's called Impermanent Magery, -10%, so I decided that -10% is a fair limitation value.

Sorcery: Earth Spells

Sorcery: Earth Spells

While I have already covered some earth spells in Earth Transmutations, there are many earth spells left! Create Earth and Essential Earth produce raw material that can be shaped with Shape Earth. Seek Earth, Seek Pass, and Predict Earth Movement are useful information spells for wilderness adventures. Earth Vision can be a godsend in dungeons and caves. Stone Missile is a basic attack spell. Stone to Flesh is crucial when fighting medusas or basilisks.

Monster: Displacer Beast

Monster: Displacer Beast

Displacer beast is one of the original D&D monsters, and, if I recall correctly, it was based on a monster from some sci-fi novel. It's a large catlike predator with six legs, two tentacles, and the ability to warp light in its vicinity. They are sentient, but bestial, and have a mutual total intolerance of blink dogs. I can safely say that it is a cool monster, and here is my attempt at converting it and its pack lord variant to GURPS.

Magic: Force College

Magic: Force College

There are many “force” spells in the colleges of Movement and Protection & Warning, but some iconic wizardly spells, like Magic Missile, do not really fit these colleges, so I have decided to make a new one.

Monsters: Basilisks

Monsters: Basilisks

Basilisk is a classical mythological monster, typically a multilegged lizard or a serpent with a petrifying gaze or bite. Some media replace petrifaction with paralysis. I have always liked the basilisk, but I do not remember ever using it in a game. In addition to the common basilisk, I provide stats for the abyssal greater basilisk - a stronger fiendish version of the beast.

Magic: Time College

Magic: Time College

Time manipulation spells belong to the Gate College in GURPS Magic, but their selection is quite limited, and most of them can influence the game significantly. I have decided to look through the book again and create a Time College from existing spells and make some new ones (mostly converted from AD&D Chronomancer).

Sorcery: Cantrips

Sorcery: Cantrips

Sorcery allows the caster to improvise spells, but the ability is limited by the level of the Sorcerous Empowerment advantage, unless the caster is using hardcore improvisation. If the caster only has a single level of this advantage, he will be able to improvise only really weak 1-point spells. GURPS Thaumatology - Sorcery and GURPS Sorcery - Protection & Warning Spells give us only a couple of such spells, so let's make some more. Most of these spells are based on perks from GURPS Power-Ups 2 - Perks with some adjustments. Accessory works wonders!

Sorcery/Treasure: Sorcerous Alchemy

Sorcery/Treasure: Sorcerous Alchemy

GURPS has many alchemy systems, from the one in GURPS Magic to the one from GURPS Fantasy-Tech 1. All of them have their good sides and bad sides, but one of the systems does not even have any sample potions - GURPS Sorcery. Here I tried to make some elixirs using the system. They ended up being very expensive! For comparison - a potion of minor healing using alchemy from GURPS Magic costs only $120.

Sorcery: Body Control Status Effects

Sorcery: Body Control Status Effects

These guys made me hate status effects

GURPS Magic provides quite a few Body Control negative effects that all can be based on Affliction. It can range from simple things like Stun to more complex spells like Paralyze Limb, Total Paralysis, or Spasm.

Magic: Truename Magic

Magic: Truename Magic

I've already covered the truename magic conversion to Sorcery, but it always felt that studying true names of things should be skill-based. I can imagine academies where scholars study huge tomes of true names and practice the pronunciation. I figured that if you know a true name for the word "body", for example, then you would be able to affect the bodies in different ways, and for this I think Ritual Magic works the best.

Treasure: Special Materials

Treasure: Special Materials

One thing I liked in Dungeons and Dragons was the special materials. Some had neat qualities by themselves, some were used only to exploit the vulnerabilities of monsters. In my opinion, GURPS usually depends less on magic and magic items than D&D, so the special materials provide additional mundane options. There are some materials described already (silver, orichalcum, meteoric iron, and so on), but I decided to convert some of the most common ones from D&D. I really have no idea how to assign CF modifiers, so I was working on a hunch, but I would appreciate any suggestions.

Treasure: Sundering Sword

Treasure: Sundering Sword

An adventurer is presented with various dangers - monsters, traps, curses. Some of them can be overcome with sheer strength - slaying a monster, breaking a door, or bending the bars. But what should an adventurer do when he's got not enough strength? He can target a monster's vitals or skull to deal more injury, but he can't do the same against a door. Let's help him!

Sorcery: Elemental Weapon Buffs

Sorcery: Elemental Weapon Buffs

Icy Weapon from GURPS Thaumatology - Sorcery, page 25, allows the caster to enchant his weapon with cold. Let's make variations of this spell for other damage types.

Magic: Divine Domains, Part 2

Magic: Divine Domains, Part 2

As I'm preparing for a fantasy game, I have been thinking about differences between arcane and divine spellcasters. To differentiate them, I decided that the arcane spellcasters will use the standard college-based system, while the divine spellcasters use ritual magic with colleges replaced with domains. Clerics get access to domains depending on their patron deities. Some of the spells within the domains have been moved to make them harder or easier to cast (for example, I wanted to make deadly spells from GURPS Magic - Death Spells more difficult to cast).

Here are the domains of Metal, Nobility, Plant, Protection, Repose, Rune, Scalykind, Strength, Sun, Travel, Trickery, Void, War, Water, and Weather.

Magic: Divine Domains, Part 1

Magic: Divine Domains, Part 1

As I'm preparing for a fantasy game, I have been thinking about differences between arcane and divine spellcasters. To differentiate them, I decided that the arcane spellcasters will use the standard college-based system, while the divine spellcasters use ritual magic with colleges replaced with domains. Clerics get access to domains depending on their patron deities. Some of the spells within the domains have been moved to make them harder or easier to cast (for example, I wanted to make deadly spells from GURPS Magic - Death Spells more difficult to cast).

Here are the domains of Air, Animal, Artifice, Chaos, Charm, Community, Darkness, Death, Destruction, Earth, Enchantment, Evil, Fire, Fungus, Glory, Good, Healing, Knowledge, Law, Liberation, Luck, Madness, and Magic.

Sorcery: Earth Transmutation

Sorcery: Earth Transmutation

The Transmutation modifier for the Create advantage from GURPS Powers seems to allow only to transmute matter within categories of the same size. For example, both Earth and Metal are medium categories, and transmuting Earth to Metal, Earth to Earth, or Metal to Earth would be a +50% enhancement. After a short discussion on the GURPS Discord channel, I've been suggested to halve or double the modifier value for every size category between the products. For example, Earth is a medium category, and Water is a specific item, so the value gets halved twice, resulting in Transmute Earth to Water, +13%. Earth to Air was a difficult one - I had to look up some average density values and then calculate how much air will be produced.

Sorcery: Strike Spells

Sorcery: Strike Spells

No, this isn't what you probably thought when you saw the heading. These spells are not attacks, but debuffs with short durations. Side effects of Strike Numb turn it into a buff spell, and Strike Barren is here only because it had "Strike" in its name.

Sorcery: Perception Debuffs

Sorcery: Perception Debuffs

And now it's time for simple debuffs. There is no granular disadvantage that penalizes a specific Sense roll, so I've decided to invert the Acute Senses advantage.

Sorcery: Perception Buffs

Sorcery: Perception Buffs

Here's another batch of simple, but useful Sorcery spells. This time we're dealing with senses and perception.