Wednesday 31 March 2021

Monsters: Abeils

Monsters: Abeils

Abeils are bee-like humanoids from the Monster Manual II. Honestly, this is an interesting race, but I do not think it was ever expanded upon in any other supplements.

Tuesday 30 March 2021

Monster: Crystal Dragon

Monster: Crystal Dragon

Crystal dragons are psionic dragons that dwell on the Elemental Plane of Air, or in cold mountains, where they compete with white dragons. Sometimes they even steal white dragon eggs and raise the wyrmlings as good dragons.

Monday 29 March 2021

Monsters: Dark Ones

Monsters: Dark Ones

The dark ones are a species of underground-dwelling humanoids that despise light. In D&D, they have two subraces - dark creepers and dark stalkers. Pathfinder adds 3 or 4 extra ones, but the only one I'm going to cover here is the dark empath.

Sunday 28 March 2021

Monster: Crow's-nest Dragon

Monster: Crow's-nest Dragon

This small dragonet follows ships, eats fish, and perches on the crow's-nest. Considered to be a sign of good luck by the sailors. Stat-wise this is basically a marine pseudodragon.

Saturday 27 March 2021

Monsters: Contemplatives

Monsters: Contemplatives

Contemplatives in Pathfinder are alien monsters that work out at the library. Enlightened contemplatives are their psychic variants.

Friday 26 March 2021

Occupational Template: Cleric

Occupational Template: Cleric

And here's the D&D cleric occupational template, using Clerical Empowerment as the casting system.

Thursday 25 March 2021

Occupational Template: Wizard

Occupational Template: Wizard

And now let's write up the wizard template, using my Wizardry as the casting mechanism.

Wednesday 24 March 2021

Occupational Template: Fighter

Occupational Template: Fighter

A long time ago, I was asked to write up some occupational templates for D&D classes. I know that there's DF templates, but my games usually are not as dungeon-y, so there's a place for social traits and skills. Also, I'm not using the vanilla magic system (and I'm not using templates either).
At last, I decided to write one up, starting from what seems to be the most simple - the fighter. I used the knight templates from GURPS Fantasy and GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 1: Adventurers as a base, adjusted some traits, added more options and skills, etc. And, most importantly, brought down the point value from 250 to 150, because that's closer to the starting points for my games. Making templates is difficult. I'll probably try writing up a spellcaster next to see just how difficult it is.
To be honest, such templates are probably useless for people, I do not know how many I will write up.

Tuesday 23 March 2021

Powers: Incarnum Abilities

Powers: Incarnum Abilities

Here's a new batch of abilities. All these ones are based on incarnum feats, but most of them can be taken by non-meldshapers, if they have ER (Incarnum). You may notice that the limitation value of the power modifier is different in some places. When it is Meldshaping, -25%, the character must possess a -15-point moral code, just like a normal meldshaper. But, unlike soulmelds, these abilities do not interfere with magic items. When it is Incarnum, -10%, the character is not limited by the moral code, and just needs to have a pool of essentia and has his incarnum powers vulnerable to anti-powers.

Monday 22 March 2021

Monster: Pan Lung (Coiled Dragon)

Monster: Pan Lung (Coiled Dragon)

What I found interesting about this monster that it is very similar to the shen lung in terms of magical abilities, but has a different body morphology - it is serpentine and limbless, unlike most other dragons.

Saturday 20 March 2021

Lens/Monsters: Necrocarnum Zombies

Lens/Monsters: Necrocarnum Zombies

I've noticed that I barely have any incarnum-related or incarnum-using monsters. It's not there's many of them in D&D, but I think that having them converted would be a good idea. Let's start with the necrocarnum zombie lens and some sample zombies.

Friday 19 March 2021

Monster: Tun Mi Lung (Typhoon Dragon)

Monster: Tun Mi Lung (Typhoon Dragon)

I have two lung dragon conversions done, so it only makes sense to finish what was started, gradually. Fortunately, lung dragons do not have as many age categories as the other dragons, so they take less time to convert.

Thursday 18 March 2021

Monsters: Bladeling and Spiker

Monsters: Bladeling and Spiker

Bladelings are outsiders with a metallic hide covered with spikes that they can launch at people. Spikers are something similar, but less spiky. Could work as PC racial templates.

Wednesday 17 March 2021

Monster: Gray Jester

Monster: Gray Jester

An old conversion that was lying around in my old conversion file and needed some reworking. A malicious fey that feeds on positive emotions.

Tuesday 16 March 2021

Monster: Chyzaedu

Monster: Chyzaedu

The chyzaedu are spacefaring gargantuan worms whose religion revolves around consuming and being consumed.

Monday 15 March 2021

Monster: Cerebric Cyst

Monster: Cerebric Cyst

Cerebric cysts are sentient, psychically empowered brain-shaped oozes that delight in mentally drainingsmarts creatures. Weird.

Sunday 14 March 2021

Powers: Creation Income

Powers: Creation Income

Create (GURPS Powers, pp. 92-94) is a complex advantage. To prevent ruinous impact on the economy, created matter is not stable and has to be stabilized with character points from the so-called Creation Pool. Alternatively, the book suggests purchasing Wealth and/or Independent Income. But what about using Independent Income as a proper alternative to the Creation Pool? In this mini-post, I will create a new Independent Income variant for that.

Saturday 13 March 2021

Friday 12 March 2021

Monsters: Aquatic Demons

Monsters: Aquatic Demons

Fiend Folio for D&D 3.5 also has three aquatic demons, in case the PCs decide that hiding underwater
in the Abyss is a good idea. The illustration always seemed very disturbing to me.

Thursday 11 March 2021

Solo GURPS: Moises Ramirez, Session #2

Solo GURPS: Moises Ramirez, Session #2

Let's continue the adventures of Moises Ramirez, an archeologist/geologist/carpenter on an alien world. In other news, a new version of Mythic GME is going to be released this month!

Session #1 - link

Monsters: Demons III

Monsters: Demons III

Fiend Folio has quite a lot of fiends, hence the title. It provides seven demonic entries. Alkilith is an ooze demon that is repulsive even to other demons. Blood fiend is not actually a demon, but a vampire variant that feeds on demon blood (fiendish dire bat was converted to provide a template for one of the alternate forms). Klurichir is a powerhouse that terrifies even balors. Maurezhi is a ghoulish demon that consumes corpses and assumes their form. The other three have a common theme, so I will write a separate post.

Monsters: Guards and Mounts

Monsters: Guards and Mounts

Arms and Equipment Guide has several new monsters hidden among its pages. Some of them are quitemundane, but some of them are interesting. Let's convert them.

Wednesday 10 March 2021

Monster: Amethyst Dragon

Monster: Amethyst Dragon

There's dozen of dragon types on D&D, but I still haven't converted any of the gem dragons. Their common traits are their psionic abilities and affinity for the Elemental Planes.

Tuesday 9 March 2021

Psionics: Amethyst Burst and Body Equilibrium

Psionics: Amethyst Burst and Body Equilibrium

I need to create two new psionic abilities for the upcoming monster conversions, so let's get started.

Monday 8 March 2021

Monsters: Caulborn

Monsters: Caulborn

The caulborn are a race of outsiders from the Ethereal Plane that subsist on the psychic energy andknowledge. There is three subspecies - the normal caulborn, the psychically enhanced caulborn thoughtkeepers, and the caulborn chrestomaths that serve as data banks (I will leave them for some other time).

Sunday 7 March 2021

Monster: Baku Dreamweaver

Monster: Baku Dreamweaver

All those posts about the Region of Dreams? Just an elaborate setup to convert the baku dreamweaverfrom the Occult Bestiary.

Friday 5 March 2021

Index: Powers and Abilities

Index: Powers and Abilities

I have accumulated quite a number of different powers and abilities that are not Sorcery spells, so let's index them for ease of reference.

Wednesday 3 March 2021

Sorcery: Dream Spells II

Sorcery: Dream Spells II

As a follow-up to my Region of Dreams post, let's create a bunch of new dream-related spells.

Tuesday 2 March 2021

Region/Dimension of Dreams in GURPS

Region/Dimension of Dreams in GURPS

I do not know when exactly the Region of Dreams has appeared as a plane of existence in D&D, but I know it from the Manual of the Planes for the 3rd edition. In Pathfinder, a similar plane called the Dimension of Dreams was introduced in Occult Adventures. In GURPS, there's the Dream Control psionic power in GURPS Psionic Powers and three dream-related spells in GURPS Magic. Also, do not forget the Dreaming skill! In this post, I will try to consolidate some of the rules and adapt them to GURPS. In the follow-up posts I probably will expand the Dream Control power and create some new sorcery spells for dream control.

Monday 1 March 2021

Monsters: Bakus

Monsters: Bakus

Bakus are psionic invisible chimeric elephant-lizard outsiders that dwell among humans and oppose evil. They have two additional subspecies - the dark ones (evil bakus) and the holy ones (neutral bakus with heightened intelligence and a trumpeting roar that can terrify creatures regardless of their alignment or moral disposition). Based on Asian mythology.