Life's Price Tag in GURPS

Life's Price Tag in GURPS

In my pursuit of a perfect monster statblock, I found something that isn’t covered that much detail in GURPS – the price of a creature. The animal section of GURPS Basic Set has prices for some of the more common domestic animals and guidelines for adjusting them for training and exceptional stats. The same book later has rough guidelines for pricing slaves. However, this is not enough for me, as I’d like to delve into the minute details. I just want to find a way to calculate a price for a captured monster.

Wizardry: Adventurer Spells II

Wizardry: Adventurer Spells II

More spells from Complete Adventurer. Cacophonic Shield creates a sound barrier that prevents hearing and damages those who cross it. Cloak of the Sea lets the subject traverse underwater environments with more ease. Distort Speech makes the victim's speech incomprehensible. Swift Expeditious Retreat and Swift Fly are variants of existing spells. Unlike the proper buffs, these spells can be cast as a free action on your turn and have an indefinite duration that quickly drains your FP.

Index: Video Content

Index: Video Content

You may or may not know that I have a Youtube channel called Dungeons and GURPS (I tried to sync it on Rumble, but Youtube disabled the sync feature a few days ago) where I talk about GURPS and other tabletop RPGs. My video editing skills are rudimentary, so they are basically narrated slide shows. And the narration itself could've been clearer, but I'm doing my best. Youtube isn't the easiest platform to navigate even with the playlists, so I will also post a categorized list of videos here for ease of access. Some of these videos (those I deemed good) have transcripts on this blog for convenience - you can find them by the "script" tag. I planned to post all the transcripts, but I accidentally deleted the files from my PC like a complete dumbass.

I'll mark the videos that I liked the most with an asterisk (*)

What would a perfect monster statblock look like?

What would a perfect monster statblock look like?

I’ve done a lot of work writing up monsters for GURPS, be they D&D conversions or something else. Because of that, I got to see many types of monster descriptions and statblocks from different systems and editions. Many times, I could not find some piece of information either on the statblock or in the description, and I had to consult other sources. This made me think – “What would be the perfect monster statblock?”

Wizardry: Adventurer Spells I

Wizardry: Adventurer Spells I

I didn't forget about wizardry. Let's convert some spells from Complete Adventurer. Absorb Weapon lets you absorb a weapon into your body. Balancing Lorecall is a dual spell that enhances your sense of balance. Bladeweave is a peculiar illusion spell that lets you entrance an enemy with the movement of your weapon. Branch to Branch is a brachiator self-buff. Exacting Shot makes a ranged weapon more accurate.

Monster: Dullahan

Monster: Dullahan

This conversion is something one of the readers requested. I was surprised that the dullahan appeared in D&D only in the 5th edition (if you do not count the headless horseman from Imagine Magazine #23). The dullahan also appears in Bestiary 2 for Pathfinder 1e. Both of the monsters are similar, so I decided to combine them into a single entry. Since there are some summoning abilities in play, I also had to convert some "support" monsters.

I vaguely remember that some media treat dullahans as fey, not as undead. In that case, you can remove the undead traits, such as Injury Tolerance (Unliving) and add Vulnerability (Cold Iron, x2) [-10] or something like that.

Monsters: Aquatic Ooze

Monsters: Aquatic Ooze

Fiend Folio introduced aquatic ooze (even though many, if not all oozes before that could live in aquatic environments). I have nothing against the concept, but the monsters themselves seem a bit boring. Perhaps, that is the reason why they've gotten an off-hand mention in one of the Forgotten Realms books and then never brought up again in more modern editions. Despite this, this monster entry is solidified in my mind. I remember opening up Fiend Folio for the first time and seeing this bloodbloater illustration, thinking "Man, this actually looks horrifying!"

Monsters: Aoa

Monsters: Aoa

The aoa are weird. Unless I am missing something, they were introduced in the 3e Fiend Folio and haven't appeared anywhere else, and I can see why. Even though the concept is pretty cool - reflective mercurial orbs that reflect all magic and dispel magic with a touch, there's not much you can do with it. They can just annoy spellcasters and bump into those who have lots of spells or magic items. You cannot communicate or otherwise interact with them.