Random Encounters in GURPS

Random Encounters in GURPS

You all certainly are familiar with the random encounter tables. These could be wandering monsters in the dungeon, or random wilderness encounters. Do we have such tables and rules in GURPS? We actually do, but they are pretty well hidden.

Druidic Spells: Stormwrack Spells

Druidic Spells: Stormwrack Spells

The previous four posts had quite a few spells that would make sense as druidic spells, so let's rework them with the Nature power modifier. For some of them, this will affect the cost quite a bit.

Wizardry: Stormwrack Spells IV

Wizardry: Stormwrack Spells IV

    I'm not done yet.

    Stormrunner's Ward makes a ship more stable during storms.

    Stormwalk is a very flashy way to teleport.

    Swim is a simple buff that grants Amphibious.

    Thalassemia thins the subject's blood, dealing toxic damage.

    Turbidity is something akin to Obscuring Mist but for underwater use.

    Urchin's Spines is a fun buff that covers the subject in poisonous spines.

    Water to Acid is self-explanatory.

    Waterspout is something like a reverse Maelstrom and uses a very similar build.

    Wave Blessing is a naval variant of Feather Fall that can be cast reflexively. At first, I wanted to do this ability as Walk on Liquid with a made up Passive limitation, but then decided to make things simple. After all, Fat and Very Fat increase buoyancy and give bonuses to Swimming, so why not do it this way?

    And now I'm done. I didn't convert all the spells from Stormwrack - I only did it with those that I would allow in my games.

Wizardry: Stormwrack Spells III

Wizardry: Stormwrack Spells III

    Stormwrack sure is a book that makes your noggin' going.

    Part the Waters is an epic spell that ended up being less expensive than I thought it would. The build was borrowed from GURPS Powers: Divine Favor and changed up a bit.

    Planar Navigation is a plane shift spell that transports an entire ship to a different plane. I decided to apply some of the limitations to Jumper instead of Affliction because... because I just did, okay? Also, two rolls were combined into one, yet again because I said so.

    Pressure Sphere is an underwater pressure-based area damaging spell.

    Quickswim makes the caster swim faster.

    Red Tide creates a circular surging wave that may wash others away and also poison them.

    Sink makes the subject lose buoyancy.

Wizardry: Stormwrack Spells II

Wizardry: Stormwrack Spells II

    Let's have some more spells from Stormwrack.

    Detect Ship is an interesting sensory spell with a complex build.

    Disguise Ship cloaks a ship in illusion.

    Favorable Wind... man, this is one of those complicated spells. GURPS Basic Set and GURPS Low-Tech say that a craft's speed depends on the wind, but doesn't provide any details. How strong should the wind be? How strong of a wind risks tearing the sails? Fortunately, GURPS Vehicles 3e answers this question by providing a motive force formula that depends on the craft's weight, sail area, and wind force on the Beaufort scale. It also says that typical water move of a vessel is calculated as for a light breeze (Beaufort Degree 2), and sail breakage may occur on Beaufort Scale 6 (strong breeze). GURPS Magic has the Beaufort Scale table on page 194, and we can see that Beaufort Degree 2 (light breeze) equals to wind speed of 4-7 mph and Beaufort Degree 6 (strong breeze) equals to wind speed 25-31 mph. Multiply those speeds by 2 to get wind Move in yards per second. The spell as it is written in Stormwrack produces a 30 mph wind, whic is definitely not favorable wind, as it would tear sails. I will decrease it to a light breeze of 4 mph. The spell produces a line of 20 hexes, and Control 3 lets you affect 19 hexes. As a kind GM, I will round it up to 20. To get the speed of 4 mph (Move 8), I'll have to add five more levels of Control that do not increase the area of effect.

    Fins to Feet is a spell from the Little Mermaid.

    Kuo-Toa Skin would've been a boring buff if it simply granted Slippery, but the granted immunity to webs makes it more interesting.

    Maelstrom is a spell based on Whirlpool from Sorcery.

    Mordenkainen's Capable Caravel creates an entire caravel with a spectral crew. I tried hard to make it not character point-powered, but I just couldn't do it without discarding the spectral crew.

Wizardry: Stormwrack Spells I

Wizardry: Stormwrack Spells I

You might know that I like to include aquatic hazards in my games, and I am a big fan of underwater adventures. Thus, let's convert some spells from Stormwrack, a D&D 3.5 supplement about under- and overwater adventures.

Aboleth Curse has the same effects as an aboleth's slime.

Air Breathing is the reverse of Water Breathing.

Airy Water is an interesting spell. Building the spell required a spreadsheet, but you only have to do it once - it's much better in play.

Blackwater Taint is a necromantic/water spell that saps heat and lifeforce out of enemies.

Blackwater Tentacle creates a blackwater tentacle somewhere that attacks a designated target.

Dark Tide is a very expensive spell with a huge area of effect. Water becomes dark and toxic for a long time.

Depthsurge is an underwater explosion spell. Rules for underwater explosions from Pyramid #3-26 are incorporated.

An Ode to GURPS

An Ode to GURPS

I’ve been quite negative towards some of the recent GURPS releases, so let me talk about something positive – why I love GURPS.

Monster: Slag Giant

Monster: Slag Giant

I've been asked to convert the slag giant from Pathfinder. This is a simple monster - just a crossbreed of a stone giant and fire giant. They have a demeanor closer to that of a stone giant, but an aptitude for smithwork of a fire giant. In the original source, they could also do extra damage to objects, but I consider that a gamist ability not worthy being on the statblock - if you want that, learn the Breaking Blow skill. Also, I'm sure it's possible to make a "giant slag" joke here somewhere.

Move and Ready and All-Out Ready

Move and Ready and All-Out Ready

This has been bothering me for a while, so I decided to make two new maneuvers for my games. Initially, I wanted to also have Committed Ready and Defensive Ready, but I thought that deez two should be enough for most of the cases. No need to overcomplicate things.

All-Out Ready: You take a Ready maneuver, making no effort to defend against enemy attacks. If the action in question requires a roll, such as a setup maneuver for a technique or readying an item while grappling, then you get +4 to DX-based rolls or +2 to ST-based rolls.

Movement: You may remain stationary, turn in place to face any hex, or run forward. If you turn or move forward, you may perform the desired action at any point during or after the move. If you move forward, you may move up to two hexes or expend movement points equal to half your Move (round up), whichever is more, and may not change facing at the end of your move.

Active Defense: None! You may make no active defenses between when you take this maneuver and your next turn.

Move and Ready: Move as described for the Move maneuver, but also take one poorly coordinated action from ones listed under the Ready maneuver. This requires a DX-2 roll; failure means you fail to perform the Ready action, but still suffer the defensive penalties for this maneuver. Failure by 5+ or a critical failure means that you drop the object you were readying, spill the potion you were trying to drink, or fumble your action in a similar way. If the Ready action was to turn an ability on or off, then make a Will-2 roll instead.

Movement: You receive movement points equal to your current Move score – but trying to do two things at once gives you ‑2 on all rolls to avoid falling down, and to avoid obstacles or traps.

Active Defense: Any – but you cannot parry or block with the object you’ve just readied, and you cannot retreat.

The Ultimate Enchantment Post

The Ultimate Enchantment Post

Now that GURPS Meta-Tech is out, I should finally set in stone how enchanting will work in my games. Ironically, most of the rules will have nothing to do with GURPS Meta-Tech and instead will be based on the enchantment system from GURPS Thaumatology: Sorcery. After all, the rules in that book are clear, concise, consistent both in terms of game mechanics and in-universe economics, and flexible. I will try to cover everything in this post to make the amount of cross-referencing as little as possible.

Wilderness Exploration Procedure

Wilderness Exploration Procedure

Lately, I've been reading ACKS II Judge's Journal, and I can say that I highly recommend this book - it's a great resource regardless of what system you're playing. One thing it made me realize is how useful it can be to have a clearly written sequence of actions required to resolve a particular task. For example, the book has sequential procedures for dungeon exploration, wilderness expeditions, trading, etc. Why not do that in GURPS? The obvious answer is that every GURPS game is different and uses different rules. However, you can do that for your specific game, and that should make things more simple. Let's try writing a wilderness exploration sequence for a game ran my way. This is not a mandatory sequence, but something of a checklist that sometimes may require changing or can be ignored altogether.

Addendum to GURPS Meta-Tech Review

Addendum to GURPS Meta-Tech Review

Earlier this morning, a wrote a review of GURPS Meta-Tech with my first impressions. Almost all my free time today was spent thinking about the book and reading some parts more thoroughly. And you know what? My opinion actually worsened.

Review: GURPS Meta-Tech

Review: GURPS Meta-Tech

GURPS Meta-Tech is finally out! I was excited for this book, but I did have my worries. In short, I’m both pleasantly surprised and disappointed. The book was written by Christopher Rice who has a broad range of writing quality – he wrote some of the best Pyramid articles but he also wrote GURPS Realm Management. The book also had the same questionable “marketing strategy” as GURPS Realm Management, which was one of my reasons to start worrying – I’ve already got burned once. So, let’s actually open the book and see what it is about.

GURPS-ACKS Conversions: Why?

GURPS-ACKS Conversions: Why?

You probably noticed that lately I’ve been interested in ACKS – Adventurer, Conqueror, King System, and that I’ve even written some conversion notes. I have been asked a question – why am I doing this? Here, I’d like to give an extended answer.