Review: GURPS Thaumatology: Chinese Elemental Powers

Review: GURPS Thaumatology: Chinese Elemental Powers

In my opinion, “magic-as-powers” is the best way to represent supernatural powers in GURPS and also is the most GURPS way. GURPS Powers is an essential book that discusses this topic in great detail. Despite this, GURPS doesn’t have many worked examples for some reason. You only have two – GURPS Psionic Powers and GUPRS Thaumatology: Chinese Elemental Powers. I already made a video/post about why I do not even consider Sorcery a magic system, and much of the same applies to Divine Favor. There’s also GURPS Powers: Totems and Nature Spirits, but it feels… undercooked. It has some nice bits, but I consider it a very weak book overall. GURPS Thaumatology: Chinese Elemental Powers is a book that people rarely even mention, but it has been on my to-do list for quite a while. I was postponing it despite the requests I was getting because I was afraid I won’t be able to do it justice. So, let’s finally talk about it.

Chinese Elemental Powers is a 42-page-long book, and I would say that it doesn’t waste even a single page. It was written by William H. Stoddard, and that usually is a sign of quality. The book describes a set of five elemental powers based on the Chinese elemental system – wood, fire, earth, metal, and water. A hypothetical strawman might say “So what? GURPS Powers describes the same five powers but they take up only 2 pages. What do you need 40 more pages for?” The answer is that all the extra stuff is what makes this an actual magic system instead of a handful of powers with some example abilities.

The five Chinese elements do not exist in a vacuum – they interact with one another in something of a rock-paper-scissor way, where one element nourishes another, is nourished by another, destroys another element, and is destroyed by another element. Each element is a separate power with abilities that are either external or internal. External abilities manipulate the element outside a body, and internal ones manipulate the element inside a body. The former are obvious and spectacular, while the latter are subtle. The elements also have different yin and yang alignments. All this may sound like fluff, but it’s actually supported by mechanics. For example, I believe this book has the only printed instance of limited power talents. For example, a Metal Talent would give a bonus to all rolls to use Metal abilities, but you can apply External, -40% or Internal, -40% to limit it to only external or internal abilities, respectively.

Chinese Elemental Powers is a so-called “fixed spell list” system. The abilities you see in the ability section are not just short lists of suggestions – they are all you get. The powers are somewhat evenly balanced in terms of number of abilities, their strength, versatility, and cost. Unlike Sorcery spells, these abilities were designed with playability in mind, so almost none of them are way too expensive for what they do. Herding Clouds and Ruling Lakes and Seas are the only abilities that I’d consider too expensive, but they can be easily “fixed” by increasing their activation time. There is a paragraph on how a GM or even a player might want to introduce new secret abilities, but the implication still is that you have to use the ones you’re given. I’m a proponent of fixed spell lists, so I like the approach of this book.

There is also a bunch of fundamental rules that really make this system a proper system. You get rules for activating, resisting, and detecting powers; rules for power defenses and how elemental interactions affect them; rules for extra effort, skills enhancing abilities, abilities enhancing skills, and crippling. I should also note that rules for extra effort are baked in the ability write-ups, which makes it much easier to use. The rules for crippling abilities are particularly interesting, as they interact with the yin-yang imbalance, and also let mundane characters cripple chi abilities. By the way, I still believe that the Chi power modifier should be worth -15% and not -10% as per GURPS Powers, as it clearly has countermeasures that should add -5%.

There also are some extra rules bits that I appreciate. In this book, you can find rules for how much water plants require, and how much water is required to douse a fire. One Earth power ability can cause earthquakes, and since it has a proper build, now we know the rarity category of earthquakes for the Control advantage and some mechanical effects for earthquakes. Before that, in the 4^th edition we only had earthquake effects in one Creatures of the Night entry. An old 3^rd edition Pyramid article has a much more extensive description of earthquake effects, but no way to build them as an ability.

As any proper magic system should, Chinese Elemental Powers have rules for learning abilities. This is where I have to digress for a short rant. I can’t believe how many times I’ve seen people say that they don’t want to use Powers because they want learned magic, not innate magic, and Powers is inherent magic that characters can only be born with. Who the hell started spouting this nonsense, and why so many people senselessly parrot it? GURPS Basic Set, GURPS Powers, GURPS Social Engineering: Back to School, and probably other books clearly disagree with that, saying that you can learn advantage-based powers. The only place I saw the powers being inherent is the introduction in Sorcery, but even I, someone with terminal D&D brain damage, can see that this most likely is the case only because D&D sorcerers have innate magic, and that it can be safely ignored. However, many players conflate Sorcery and Powers, and hence think that this is some kind of universal rule. What?

Finally, the book has a chapter about campaigns that talks about how one can integrate this system into different settings and different genres. This is always appreciated.

Overall, I think this is an excellent but underappreciated book. I would rate it 10/10, because this is a very good example of how you can use what GURPS Powers gives you to create a magic system. It’s both simple and detailed, the abilities are interesting and sometimes unusual, and you can just grab this book and use it without any additional “homework.” If you’re already very proficient in GURPS Powers, then this book is much less useful, but there still are some interesting bits that you will not find anywhere else. I highly recommend this book, especially to less experienced GMs.