Sorcery: Dominions Spells

Sorcery: Dominions Spells

Some battlefield spells from Dominions 5. Instantaenous spells with Bombardment are fun.

Monster: Avolakia

Monster: Avolakia

Avolakias are repulsive worm-like aberrations adept at creating undead for food and protection.

Monster: Craa'ghoran Giant

Monster: Craa'ghoran Giant

Craa'ghoran giants are stone giants infused by elemental earth energies.

Optional rules that I use in games

Optional rules that I use in games

I've noticed that the list of optional rules that I give to my players is almost always the same. This is a low effort post, but I will list the rules here and provide comments on why I am using these rules.

Monsters: Half-Undead

Monsters: Half-Undead

Dragon Magazine #313 has an article that details four half-undead templates, in case you want to play a really bizarre character. Fetches are half-ghosts, ghedens are half-zombies, ghuls are half-ghouls, and katane are half-vampires. In addition, there's also the mortif race that has half-undead ancestry (why are they outsiders in D&D?). Libris Mortis has another half-vampire template that has some differences from the katane. Technically, all these templates should be used as lenses.

Martial Art: Metered Style

Martial Art: Metered Style

Dragon Magazine #337 has a nice martial style - the metered style for monks. Let's port it over.

Monster: Death Giant

Monster: Death Giant

Death giants, while physically weak for their size, are tough to deal with due to them being attuned to the Negative Energy Plane. These soul-draining giants are very difficult to kill.

Monsters: Turtlemen

Monsters: Turtlemen

Red Steel is an obscure D&D setting that was discontinued. Dragon Magazine #315 talks about it and provides a conversion of the tortle race for D&D 3.5. And I'll convert it to GURPS. I wish they racial pantheon was expanded upon more - I will provide only some basics. In addition, I will convert several similar races from my Neritia mod for Dominions 5 to cover a wide range of turtles/tortoises. Turtlemen are amphibious beings (but prefer staying underwater). Hardshells are turtlemen with especially thick shells and slow reflexes. Snappers are carnivorous, barbaric turtlemen with sharp beaks. Zaratanlings are very young zaratans, humanoid and very strong. Blackshells are hatched from zaratan eggs corrupted by undead spirits. This does not make them malevolent, but makes them partially undead. Finally, dragonshells are turtlemen with dragon turtle blood.

Monsters: Cyclopes

Monsters: Cyclopes

I've always thought that cyclopes are underrepresented in D&D. Cyclops appears in Shining South and basically is a hill giant with one eye. Deities and Demigods has two cyclopes - the lesser cyclops and the greater cyclops. The former is identical to the one from Shining South, so I decided to make him different and scale him down to SM+1. The greater cyclops is resistant to fire and magic, is civilized, and adept at crafting magic weapons. Prior to the third edition, there was also the desert cyclops that is very good at detecting lies and the biclops. The biclops has two heads, but one head is dominant, so it still counts as having one eye. Dragon Magazine #323 describes two races - the feral-kind cyclopeans and Menta cyclopeans. The article is very interesting, I recommend giving it a read, and I'll make sure to introduce the cyclopeans in my setting.

Martial Arts: Generic Monk Styles

 Martial Arts: Generic Monk Styles

Unearthed Arcana for D&D 3.5 has several monk variants to represent different fighting styles. Let's convert them to martial styles.

Monster: Muckdweller

Monster: Muckdweller

Muckdwellers are small amphibious lizardmen that can spit water. That's all they've got.

Monster: Aarakocra

Monster: Aarakocra

Oh, I really like these. They always seemed to me like a fascinating race, and I am happy that their GURPS variant ended up being cheap enough for a PC racial template.

Lens/Monster: Ice Beast

Lens/Monster: Ice Beast

Ice beasts are magical constructs made of ice with variable ice-themed powers. Cool.

Monsters: Tohr-Kreen

Monsters: Tohr-Kreen

I've you've ever played D&D, you've probably heard of the thri-kreen - psionic nomadic mantisfolk. But torh-kreen? They are thri-kreen's settled and colour-coded relatives.

Sorcery: Forgotten Spells III

Sorcery: Forgotten Spells III

I've opened GURPS Locations: Metro of Madness and found out that I did not convert the spells from there! Let's fix that quickly.

Monster: Aquatic Dragon

Monster: Aquatic Dragon

This is a Dragonlance-exclusive dragon type that probably would fit well in any other fantasy setting.

Monsters/Lenses: Lesser Undead Dragons

Monsters/Lenses: Lesser Undead Dragons

There's five different undead dragon templates in Draconomicon. This post will detail the two lesser ones - the zombie dragon and skeletal dragon. Basically, they are variants of the common zombie and skeleton templates, but with some minor differences.

Powers: Ritual Casting

Powers: Ritual Casting

All right, I have been meaning to write something like this for a long time, but have never gotten around to it. And this is a requested topic as well! So I should stop being lazy, and do it. You probably know that I am an advocate of magic-as-powers, but one of the things magic-as-powers struggles with is powerful rituals that require a lot of preparations. Sure, it is possible to stat up most of them, but they will probably be prohibitively expensive for purchase (or even hardcore improvisation, if you are using Sorcery). GUPRS Supers has rules for one-use powers spread out across the supplement. Those require the Ultrapower advantage that is something akin to Quick Gadgeteer, but for abilities. That is close to what I am looking for – one-use rituals, every one of which must be invented from scratch. However, Ultrapower and GURPS Supers assume an adaptation of the Quick Gadgeteering rules. Let us try to downgrade them to non-Gadgeteering one-use powers and see if the result is satisfactory. The aim is to emulate things like ritual magic from Dominions or elven high magic from Forgotten Realms.

Martial Art: Bladesong

Martial Art: Bladesong

Bladesinger is a prestige class in D&D 3.0/3.5 for elves. Bladesingers use a rapier or broadsword in one hand, and keep the other hand empty for spellcasting. They are mostly known for speed and agility.

Sorcery/Powers: Tattoo Magic

Sorcery/Powers: Tattoo Magic

There's at least two kinds of special tattoos in D&D 3.5 - Thayan magic tattoos and psionic tattoos. If you look closely at the feats that allow their creation, you will see that they are almost exactly the same. How to make such things in GURPS? I'll tell you what I think about it.

Occupational Template: Arcane Archer

Occupational Template: Arcane Archer

This is a combination of the ranger template and the eldritch knight template from Pyramid #3-13. I am content with the result, the imbuements work perfectly for the arcane archer.

Occupational Template: Knight of the Weave

Occupational Template: Knight of the Weave

Basically, this is slightly reskinned paladin that worships the Weave itself and has access to Meta and Healing spells.

Sorcery: Assorted Spells XIII

Sorcery: Assorted Spells XIII

Even more random spells. Spell Phylactery - now that's what I call an extremely janky build of a D&D spell! Magic Weapon and Magic Fang are useful when fighting monsters vulnerable to magic.