Monster/Lens: Death Knight

Monster/Lens: Death Knight

The death knight is something like a martial equivalent of the lich, but without the phylactery.

What optional rules and tweaks I use for Sorcery and other powers

 What optional rules and tweaks I use for Sorcery and other powers

Sorcery and other powers-based systems are very flexible and customizable, and that's one of the reasons I like them so much. I've played with them a lot, adding more and more little tweaks and options here and there. Perhaps, sharing them will be helpful to some other people. This is the list of general options - specific spellcasting traditions may change, add, or remove some of them.

Monster: Deathbringer

Monster: Deathbringer

Deathbringers are general-type undead creatures that lead armies of necromancers.

Monster: Darktentacles

Monster: Darktentacles

This monster has an excessive number of tentacles. Effective skill of 77 when grappling with all of them at once seems a bit off.

Monster: Leviathan

Monster: Leviathan

The leviathan is basically a 4K blue whale upscale with Infravision, and additional point of IQ, and Magic Resistance.

Sorcery: Witch Spellcasting

Sorcery: Witch Spellcasting

Pathfinder introduces a new arcane spellcasting class - the witch. She gains her powers from an unknown patron through her familiar. Let's see how we can sorcerify it.

Monster: Chimeric Ankheg

Monster: Chimeric Ankheg

Replace the lion head of a chimera with an ankheg head - done! Also, we're done with the letter C of Monster Manual II.

How to organize play-by-post GURPS games on Discord

How to organize play-by-post GURPS games on Discord

Due to my geographical location and a chaotic work schedule, most of my GURPS games are in the play-by-post format. Many consider PbP unacceptable, but for me it's a comfortable way of playing. If you want to read my thoughts on PbP in general, you can read this post. Perhaps some of you wanted to try that out, but do not know how to organize the channels?

Monster: Crimson Death

Monster: Crimson Death

A quite uninteresting undead mist monster that drains blood.

Simple Spell Component Butchering

Simple Spell Component Butchering

Simple Spell Components from Pyramid #3/113 by Peter Dell'Orto is one of my favorite Pyramid articles. It is only two pages long, but it provides an elegant solution to the material component problem. Many people love material components, but they usually create a bookkeeping nightmare, and this article simplifies that greatly. However, since this is a DF article, it does not describe a way to obtain these components, except for buying them.

Monster/Racial Template: Xvart

Monster/Racial Template: Xvart

Xvarts are small humanoids, akin to goblins. They can speak with rats and bats. Despite their insignificance, they have a racial deity - Raxivort.

Low ST struggles, or how do I halfling?

Low ST struggles, or how do I halfling?

Several months ago, I hosted a fantasy game where the PCs were goblins. While in D&D a -2 racial penalty to Strength might not be that significant, SM-2 people in GURPS are expected to start at around ST 5, and that's very significantly changes how you should approach combat. That game's purpose was exactly that - explore the combat capabilities of low-ST low-SM characters.

Monster/Racial Template: Asherati

Monster/Racial Template: Asherati

The asherati from Sandstorm are an interesting race, something like sand merfolk. They should be cheap enough to be a valid PC racial template. Also, I provide a statblock for the deity that they worship.

Pantheon: Warrior Gods

Pantheon: Warrior Gods

Complete Warrior for D&D 3.5 describes a pantheon of warrior gods for martially focused games. The book provides only barebones descriptions. Let's adapt them to GURPS, so there's more variery among the warpriests.

Lens/Monster: Half-Fey/Half-Fey Centaur

Lens/Monster: Half-Fey/Half-Fey Centaur

Since I just did the feytouched, let's also do the half-fey.

Monster: Feytouched

Monster: Feytouched

Feytouched are quarter-fey or less. Probably should be a lens instead of a template. I've decided to replace their charm person ability simply with Charisma 2, that should be charming enough.

Equipment: PHB Adventuring Gear in GURPS

Equipment: PHB Adventuring Gear in GURPS

Player's Handbook for D&D 3.5 has a relatively long list of various adventuring gear pieces (most of which become irrelevant past the first few levels). I'll just go through the list and try to find analogs in GURPS.

Equipment: Exotic D&D Weapons

Equipment: Exotic D&D Weapons

You probably are aware of some exotic D&D weapons that you've always wanted to use. Some of them were quite lame mechanically, some of them were quite good. So, let's see how to makem them in GURPS and if some of them already exist.

How to: Spirit Shaman Spellcasting

How to: Spirit Shaman Spellcasting

Complete Divine also has another class - the spirit shaman. It is very different from the Oriental Adventures shaman (even though their spell lists seem similar). I decided to make the spirit shaman more specialized on actual spirits, while the normal shaman is more of a druid-type spellcaster.

How to: Shugenja Spellcasting

How to: Shugenja Spellcasting

Shugenja is a divine spellcaster class introduced in Oriental Adventures for D&D 3.0 and slightly updated in Complete Divine for D&D 3.5. How to represent them in the Sorcery framework? Probably not very difficult.

Pantheon: Vedic Pantheon

Pantheon: Vedic Pantheon

Just like in the previous post - here's a Vedic pantheon for India-inspired nations and peoples. Mostly just taken from Planescape and GURPSified.

Pantheon: The Celestial Bureaucracy

Pantheon: The Celestial Bureaucracy

While working on the "oriental" parts of my setting, I realized that the standard D&D deities do not really work thematically. So, I had to read how Planescape, Forgotten Realms, and Dominions did it, and wrote up a quite generic pantheon. Nothing inspired, but at least now there are statblocks for deities, and that's important for the clerics and other characters with divine powers.

Racial Templates: Hengeyokai

Racial Templates: Hengeyokai

Oh boy, do I hate statting up shapeshifters! Oriental Adventures for D&D 3.0 has a race of hengeyokai - sentient animals that can turn into humans or a humanoid hybrid form. And 13 subraces of them, and as far as I know, there are many more in the previous editions. Good lord, I wanted to tear my hair out. Big props to Anon's Animal Album and GURPS Animalia.

It's hip to hate D&D

It's hip to hate D&D

Quite often, when I decide to check out some online discussions, I see people hating on D&D. And it seems to be very common amonst GURPS players, in my experience. But is it really justified? In the majority of cases it is not, as people bring up problems that are not unique to D&D or have nothing to do with D&D at all, and are a result of bad DMing or bad players instead. Many of described situations can happen in GURPS, so all that criticism should apply to their favorite generic system as well. For example, I've seen people complain about DMPCs (well, in GURPS they would be called GMPCs), and this is not setting-specific at all. Caster superiority is another such example - it can happen in GURPS too.

The second type of complaints I've seen is even less reasonable. For example, "Why would you separate sorcerers and wizards (or demons and devils, etc.)? That's just stupid!" or "There's so many high-level NPCs, I just lose my suspense of disbelief or sense of agency." These people cannot separate system from one of its settings and blame the system for what is not the system's fault at all.

Don't get me wrong, I got into GURPS because I was dissatisfied with D&D 3.5/PF as systems (but I'd still love to play those with a good group), but many of the complaints I've seen about those systems just do not seem valid to me, but seem like something like virtue signaling. "Look how cool I am, I hate D&D, I love GURPS so much!"

Monster: Corollax

Monster: Corollax

A small tropical bird with some magical qualities. Neat.

Monster: Corpse Gatherer

Monster: Corpse Gatherer

Corpse gatherers are animated graveyards. Basically, a titanic zombie that eats corpses.

Monster: Protectar

Monster: Protectar

I like the Miniatures Handbook because it has very simple monsters not overloaded with abilities (and intentionally so, according to the book). Protectars are very basic celestial beings, within the summoning point range for normal PCs.