Abjuration in GURPS - Making Protection Fun

Abjuration in GURPS - Making Protection Fun

In games with magic, you are bound to encounter magical protections. Perhaps, you’d like to use magic to protect yourself against damage or other hazards, or you try to strike down an enemy wizard only to find your sword bounce off with no effect. Magic of protection is undoubtedly useful, but it might be boring, so let’s talk about it in more detail and see if it’s possible to make it more fun and interactive.

In D&D, the school of defensive magic is called abjuration, and it’s not the same as the College of Protection & Warning Spells in GURPS. Abjuration also contains spells that dispel magical effects, banish outsiders, but for some reason does not contain such spells as Wall of Force – that one belongs to evocation. In GURPS, Force Wall and Force Dome do belong to the college of Protection and Warning, but there are some other minor oddities. For example, this college has such spells as Resist Lightning, Resist Acid, Resist Sound, but doesn’t have Resist Cold and Resist Fire – they are exclusive to the colleges of Fire and Water. Why? I have no idea.

 

When using sorcery, I allow an optional scope limitation for D&D-style abjuration – the entire college of Protection and Warning, plus Banish, Resist Fire, Resist Cold, and all the anti-magic Meta-spells. That’s roughly equivalent to two colleges and is a -30% limitation on Sorcerous Empowerment. Even if you are using the basic Magic system, you can limit your Magery in a similar way to create a specialized abjurer.

 

If we take a look at the college of Protection and Warning, we will see that it borrows most of the spells from other colleges. On one hand, it feels appropriate, but on the other hand, it creates something of an identity crisis. If we were to introduce a college of Force spells (and I actually do use one in my games), then there will be barely any exclusive spells left in the college of protection and warning.

 

Aside from what some could say is the lack of identity, the protection and warning spells suffer from being very passive. Sure, the effects are very good and useful, but they rarely create new ways to interact with the world. Sometimes they do allow you and the rest of the party to explore new places – for example, Resist Pressure would allow you to explore the ocean floor, and Resist Fire would let you survive on the Elemental Plane of Fire, but still – these spells are passive. What would you prefer as a player – a ring of protection that gives you DR 2 or gloves that give you Telekinesis 2? You’d probably prefer the latter, even though the former will significantly increase your survivability in a low-tech game. This is why I actually prefer D&D abjuration to GURPS Protection and Warning – all the anti-magic spells given the abjurer more ways to affect the world actively. However, there are some ways to be more active with them. For example, the Force Wall spell is a great battlefield control tool. Positioning is important in GURPS, and a well-placed Force Wall can cut off a path to retreat for an enemy, provide cover against ranged weapons or area attacks, separate a vulnerable enemy from his powerful allies, etc. Return Missile reflects missile, so it’s both defense and offense at the same time. Force Dome can be used to isolate an enemy, not only to protect yourself. And that’s pretty much it – but if you can create custom spells, you have an opportunity to flex your creativity to make some spells that can be used actively. Even something like an Armor spell that works only once, but also knocks the attacker back could be very fun.

 

If you’re using basic Magic, it’s all good, but if you are using Magic-as-Powers, you’re going to find another problem – protective spells are expensive. For example, Resist Lightning from GURPS Sorcery: Protection and Warning Spells costs 71 points for level 1! And that’s a highly situational spell – in most of the cases, you’d be better off getting Armor 5 [67] instead – it would be cheaper and effective against all damage, not just lightning. Some cool spells, such as Mystic Mist, cost almost 200 points! Nobody has enough points for that! However, many of these expensive spells last a long time, so they become valid options for hardcore improvisation, provided you even have enough points in Sorcerous Empowerment.

 

Another problem might arise – too much protection. If your abjurer makes the entire party invincible, it might make the game boring, as there is no risk involved at all. But what is available to the player characters, is also available to NPCs, and this can result in a fight where two invulnerable combatants just whack each other with no effect until one of them passes out from exhaustion, like late game in Dominions 3. One way to deal with this is to restrict the power level of defensive spells. Just like the GM has to set damage limits for magical attacks, he should also set a limit on defensive spells. These limits can be different for different spells. For example, the universal Armor spell might be limited to DR 4, while the specialized Resist Fire might be limited to DR 20. Second, you should remember that all magic has countermeasures. Ironically, abjuration gets countered by abjuration, as this school has the ability to dispel magic. You should not forget about special materials – for example, in GURPS Dungeon Fantasy, weapons made of meteoric iron bypass all magical defenses. This is the perfect silver bullet, but don’t go overboard with it. Since people in the game world know about magic defenses, they should also know how to counter them, and thus, encountering an occasional enemy with a meteoric iron dagger isn’t something extraordinary. Finally, you should remember that not everything can be resolved with combat. Sure, an abjurer would be very powerful in combat, but that won’t help him negotiate a trade agreement or find a hidden object.

 

Overall, abjuration and defensive magic in general is a vital part of any game with magic, but making it exciting might take some effort and creativity, and you should devote some time to thinking how it can upset the internal balance, affect the game world, and how the game world itself would adapt to deal with commonly encountered protective charms. Also, I would like to recommend you a book – Encyclopaedia Arcane: Abjuration – Shielded by Sorcery by Mongoose Publishing. This is one of those cases where a third-party D&D book for D&D 3.0 might get overlooked, but it has a lot of generic advice that can be applicable to GURPS, and prestige classes, feats, and spells can be adapted to GURPS easily.