Druidic Spellcasting Revised

Druidic Spellcasting Revised

It's time to solve the druid question. I have a problem with druids in GURPS - I love druids conceptually, but mechanically... let's say that they are subpar in most situations. For the most part, this is due to their power modifier. In this post, I'd like to talk about the power modifiers, about druids in general, and try to rework my druidic spellcasting framework into something more functional.

Wizardry: Food Spells II

Wizardry: Food Spells II

I've been neglecting one of my favorite GURPS Magic colleges, and that is the College of Food. It may seem silly to many, but in my opinion, this is an extremely welcome addition and the most unD&D things that Magic has. It does provide genuine utility both in downtime and in adventuring situations, and I definitely can see why some wizards would like to learn some of these spells from the in-universe standpoint. From a point of view of an actual player, I will try to make these spells cheap enough to be used with normal improvisation.

I do not recall any such spells in D&D books, but if I'm mistaken, feel free to call me a midwit in the comments.

Cook is a spell that lets you save time and effort with cooking. I'd love to know this spell.

Decay is a spell for jerks.

Distill concentrates a liquid, just in case you want a stronger alcoholic beverage.

Far-Smelling was decoupled from Far-Tasting. *snifffffffffffffffffff* Quite pungent indeed! Technically speaking, this should have been an Indefinite spell, but I made it instantaneous because I can. The most important thing here is to spell this spell's name correctly.

Far-Tasting can be used to identify potions and poisons without actually drinking the liquid in question or even without opening the container.

Hunger is a fatigue attack spell. Its Thirst counterpart is not present as it's covered by Horrid Wilting.

Know Recipe can be a useful spell not only for chefs, but also for alchemists.

Mature gave me a lot of food for thought, pun unindended. Back in the day, I made this spell as an expensive Affliction that afflicts Unaging with Age Control. Now, at first I thought I'd do it via Control as per GURPS Powers: The Weird, but that would be way too expensive. Instead, I went with the simplest option available - Create. Now, you simply transform food/drink into matured food/drink. Simple, cheap, and exactly what the original spell in GURPS Magic does.

Monk's Banquet lets you circumvent the need for sustenance entirely.

Poison Food is a rather expensive delayed damage spell.

Prepare Game can be quite useful, carefully separating a slain animal into meat, bones, skin, etc. for cooking and crafting. In addition, the spell does it 60 times faster than you'd be able to do it manually.

Preserve Food has shorter duration than its GURPS Magic counterpart. Since I'm making these spells for my games, this one incorporates a houserule that makes Unaging cost 5 points instead of 15. If you're not using this rule, increase the cost by 9 points, or pretend that this is Immunity to Rot [5].

Season can enhance (or worsen) an existing meal's flavor.

Seek Food is much more expensive, but it can be very useful even in adventuring situations. Even more useful to predatory casters.

Test Food is a crucial spell for court wizards.

Water to Wine does exactly that - turns water to wine.

Druidic Spells: Complete Arcane Spells

Druidic Spells: Complete Arcane Spells

And here we have a bunch of spells from Complete Arcane adapted for druids.

Wood Rot is the only druid-exclusive new spell that is a simple corrosion touch attack that only works against wooden objects and plant creatures.

Wizardry: Complete Arcane Spells IX

Wizardry: Complete Arcane Spells IX

It's time to finish this book.

Transmute Rock to Lava transforms merely one hex of rock to lava. This still has a potential to deal a lot of damage, but the dissipation rate from the center is fast, and the duration is very long.

Unluck doesn't afflict the target with Unluckiness, but prevents it from using Luck and gives a -1 penalty to most rolls. Temporary attribute penalties in GURPS always felt off to me. You can afflict the target with -4 to DX, but it will not affect parries. And I think that the rules concerning this are inconsistent with other rules that impose penalties. Usually, I ignore the active defense part. Here, I decided to add Task Modifier, Broad Range, -1 to Active Defenses, +20% from GURPS Meta-Tech (it did appear in a very late Pyramid issue before that too). Why is it only +20%? Seems that it should be at least +30% because Defense Bonus costs 30 points, but this doesn't take into account power defenses. Ah well, who cares.

Vitriolic Sphere is an acid variant of Fireball (it actually works a little bit differently in the original source).

Wall of Bones conjures a semi-permeable barrier of sharp bones.

Wall of Gloom is Deeper Darkness in a wall form.

Withering Palm is a necromantic spell that weakens the victim.

Wizardry: Complete Arcane Spells VIII

Wizardry: Complete Arcane Spells VIII

Resonating Bolt is a sonic line attack spell.

Ring of Blades surrounds you with a ring of orbiting blades.

Secret Signs is actually a pretty cool spell. It allows you to transmit a message non-verbally, but is more limited than proper telepathy.

Sign of Sealing creates a magical explosive lock on a door or object.

Sphere of Ultimate Destruction creates a mini black hole that disintegrates anything it touches.

Spirit Binding is a more limited variant of Planar Binding. More likely to be used by shamans than wizards.

Spirit Needle is a bit convoluted, but I think it's very cool, even if expensive. I feel that this spell is based on some Oriental myth, but I cannot confirm that. Anyway, this is a metal spell that can hinder incorporeal creatures, which is nice.

Spirit Self lets you project your spirit out of your body.

Steam Breath is a simple steam cone attack.

Stony Grasp is a stronger variant of Earthen Grasp that can be cast in rocky areas instead of earthy areas. Only 1 point more expensive.

Wizardry: Complete Arcane Spells VII

Wizardry: Complete Arcane Spells VII

Otiluke's Dispelling Screen creates a barrier that dispels any magical effect that crosses it.

Pain is a weak and relatively cheap debuff.

Poison Needles is a high RoF spell that deals minor piercing damage and follow-up toxic damage.

Prismatic Ray is a beam attack with a random damage type.

Programmed Amnesia is basically identical to Mental Surgery from GURPS Psionic Powers. In D&D, this is a 9th-level spell, but here it costs only 20 points. Interesting.

Protection from Charm is a buff that protects from compulsion effects.

Rain of Needles is a quite weak area attack spell.

Reciprocal Gyre is an interesting spell that deals damage based on the number of buffs or debuffs affecting the target. In GURPS, you are unlikely to have more than a couple of them, so it shouldn't get out of hand. I had to borrow the Margin-Based enhancement from Affliction and apply it to the entire advantage.

Refusal is a spell that wards an area against spellcasters. No mages allowed!

Repair is a single spell instead of all the Repain Minor/Light/Serious/etc. Damage spells. Healing by RAW cannot work on inanimate objects. I found a forum post that introduces new modifiers to be able to do that, but that leaves out constructs that count as animate beings. Thus, I decided to go for a +50% modifier to cover both of them, I think that works fine.

Wizardry: Complete Arcane Spells VI

Wizardry: Complete Arcane Spells VI

Boy, this book sure has many spells, even if you filter out the ones you don't want.

Kiss of the Toad is a poison touch spell that requires a toad tattoo. This is a limitation because the tattoo can be removed either by mundane means or with the Erase spell.

Leomund's Hidden Lodge is a variant of Leomund's Secure Shelter that is protected by an illusion. Costs a character point to reduce the point cost.

Lightning Blade is a lightning variant of Flame Blade.

Low-Light Vision is a buff that lets the subject see better in the dark.

Magnetism is a magnetic tractor beam. Cool stuff, even though the limitation are deep below the -80% cap even despite my increasing the range tenfold compared to the original.

Melt is a more limited variation of Thaw from Frostburn.

Metal Skin turns the subject's skin into metal, providing DR and reducing DX.

Orb of Acid/Cold/Electricity/Fire/Force/Sound are simple missile spells of different flavors. The original spells also have some... strange additional effects that don't make much sense.

Wizardry: Complete Arcane Spells V

Wizardry: Complete Arcane Spells V

Freezing Fog is a cold variant of Incendiary Cloud.

Ghostform is an expensive spell (both in terms of points and FP), but insubstantiality is a very powerful effect, so that's appropriate.

Hail of Stone is a simple area bombardment spell.

Heart of Stone is an interesting spell. At first, I wanted to include a character point cost, but then saw that it can be dispelled like any other spell, so it shouldn't as overpowered as it may seem at first.

Heart Ripper simply tries to rip the target's heart out of its body.

Ice Blast is a cone breath attack that drains FP. Since this is a contact agent, this is an expensive but powerful spell. Also, we're back to converting ice spells!

Ice Knife is a cheap ice missile spell that may produce fragments. Fun stuff.

Illusory Pit is exacrly that - a specialized illusion spell to create pits. Actually, a pretty powerful effect.

Internal Fire is a spell that burns the target from within. Gruesome.

Iron Scarf is the most simple of the scarf spells - it just gives you a melee cutting attack.

Wizardry: Complete Arcane Spells IV

Wizardry: Complete Arcane Spells IV

Familiar Pocket is a situational spell for those wizards that have small and vulnerable familiars.

Fiendform lets you transform into a demon, devil, or another fiend.

Fiery Eyes is a spell that lets you set objects ablaze with your gaze.

Fire Breath is a very simple jet spell.

Fire Shuriken is a 1-point spell that, however, requires Thrown Weapon (Shuriken) skill and doesn't have scaling damage.

Fireburst is another simple fire spell that is basically a fireball centered on you. No, it doesn't harm you.

Fist of Stone transforms one of your hands into stone. The effect is quite weak, so I included a limited form of Cumulative for free just so you could transform both of your hands with two castings and a limited for of Injury Tolerance (Homogenous) for free, because come on!

Flensing is a gruesome spell that required some rules-bending to work properly. It is quite expensive as a result, but appropriately so.

Force Whip (it actually got renamed to Sonic Whip in Spell Comendium) got reworked significantly compared to its original form. Now it's a proper weapon without the fancy sonic fear effects. I like it more this way, and it's nice that now you have an excuse to use the Force Whip skill. This spell also required some RAW-stretching, but who cares?

Mass Fly is a mass version of Fly. Expensive, but this is a very powerful effect, so it's okay.

Wizardry: Complete Arcane Spells III

Wizardry: Complete Arcane Spells III

Now, let's have som fun spells.

Decapitating Scarf is a wu jen metal spell that lets you flick a silk scarf at enemies to decapitate them. Stylish!

Defenestrating Sphere is one of my favorite spells ever. What can be better than throwing enemies into windows?

Discern Shapechanger could've been built using Detect, but I think a variant of See Invisible works better and is more simple.

Duelward is an active defense spell that nullified any spell that directly affects the caster. At first, I wanted to make this a self-only buff that afflicts a single-use Static, but this is much more fun and interactive.

Earthbolt is an earth spell that strikes in a line along the ground. Very cool. I remember this spell being used in one of my D&D games in the past.

Earthen Grasp calls an arm made of earth to grapple the victim.

Elemental Ward is an elemental-specific variant of Antilife Shell with some extra rules.

Emerald Flame Fist is a complex spell that lets you illuminate an area for a short time or set an enemy ablaze with a touch.

Enhance Familiar imbues your familiar with Luck just in case you don't want to lose it due to a poor die roll.

Entangling Scarf is another spell that turns a silk scarf into a metallic lariat.

Wizardry: Complete Arcane Spells II

Wizardry: Complete Arcane Spells II

Accuracy is difficult. I already adapted Exacting Shot from Complete Adventurer to give +2 to attack rolls with a ranged weapons, and increased Accuracy would be worse despite the underlying advantage having the same cost due to hitting the -80% cap. Thus, I decided to make this one last longer, but provide a +3 bonus to Acc to compensate. Now the two spells should be competitive.

Body Outside Body is an interesting spell just because it uses an advantage that you barely ever see in use - Duplication. This is a powerful spell, but it has an appropriately high cost.

Chameleon is a simple illusion that lets the subject blend into the surroundings.

Cloud Chariot is a costly spell that lets you travel really fast but requires character point expenditure.

Cobra's Breath is a cone poison attack and the first time I'm using Blood Agent as an enhancement.

Commune with Spirit is mostly intended for the oriental wu jen class and shamans, but I see nothing wrong with adding it to the variant Spirit College that I'm using. This is the first time I'm using the Medium advantage.

Corpse Candle is a spooky spell with a janky build. Illuminates the area and outlines invisible and ethereal creatures.

Creeping Darkness is a mobile and shapeable variant of Deeper Darkness. In the original version, it also blocks sound, but I found it inappropriate.

Dancing Blade is a simple spell in concept, but not in execution. I tried to write something of a flowchart for how it is supposed to operate.

Mass Darkvision is just a mass version of Darkvision.

Wizardry: Complete Arcane Spells I

Wizardry: Complete Arcane Spells I

The next book on the list will be Complete Arcane. This one has a long list of new spells because it introduces three new spellcasting classes. There's going to be plenty of combat spells (this book introduced the wargame class, after all), but many of them probably are going to be redundant. We'll see!

Absorption is a self-only buff that lets you absorb other spells.

Anticipate Teleportation is a pretty cool spell that delays all teleportation effects in the area and reveals their destination.

Arc of Lightning is a unique lightning attack spell that causes a lightning bolt to run between two distant targets.

Arrow of Bone turns an arrow or a crossbow bolt into a deadly necromantic projectile.

Backbiter - now that's what I call a fun spell. I remember it being used in my D&D games of the past. It has a very unintuitive build under the hood.

Bands of Steel is a spell that conjures metal hoops that pin the victim's limbs to the torso.

Blackfire is an interesting necromantic spell with contagious effects.

Blades of Fire is a slightly unusual weapon buff spell that may affect two weapons at once and does not require gestures. Thus, you can use it when dual-wielding.

Blast of Flame is quite boring - just a wider and longer version of Burning Hands. But why not? I made it take longer to cast to prevent this spell from making its shorter version redundant.

Random Disease Generator

Random Disease Generator

Diseases in RPGs are very much underused. How many times have you seen Resistant/Immunity to Disease? And how many times have you seen a disease actually come up in the game? The answers are probably “occasionally to often” and “never”. It’s understandable – diseases are passive threats that, depending on their severity, either mildly inconvenience you or force you to rest for a long time akin to crippling injuries. If one PC caught a debilitating disease, then everyone has to wait for him to recover, or the GM just goes “Okay, you find a suitable priest, pay him $100, and he cures you. Let’s keep going.” Diseases probably work much better if you’re using 1:1 time. But I’m writing not to advocate for 1:1 time (mostly), but to tackle an adjacent problem – GURPS has barely any diseases statted up. There is one in GURPS Basic Set, some in GURPS Bio-Tech, and a couple in, surprisingly, GURPS Tactical Shooting: Extreme Conditions. In addition to that, GURPS has a generic “infection” that sort of makes things better. I did write up some D&D and Pathfinder diseases in the past, but how do you decide on what disease does the character catch?

A few days ago, I opened the AD&D Dungeon Master’s Guide and found a bunch of tables for random disease and parasitic infestation generation on the first pages. To be honest, they look pretty damn good, and they inspired me to adapt them to GURPS. As always, I’m not doing a 1-to-1 conversion, because GURPS has a different degree of granularity, and I have to take into account more parameters than AD&D did. I hope this will be useful!

Wizardry: Cityscape Spells

Wizardry: Cityscape Spells

I've forgotten Cancel Spells, so let's fix that. In addition, let's convert the few spells from the Cityscape splatbook.

Cancel Spells is not a D&D spell, but a GURPS Sorcery spell that is nonetheless very much necessary, so here it is. It's unique in that it's a universal spell that doesn't belong to any college.

Peacebond is a spell the locks a weapon to its sheath. This is not an offensive spell, but something cast by magical law enforcement who hate fun.

False Peacebond is the same, except that one individual chosen at the time of casting can draw the weapon freely.

Detect Weaponry is another spell for the fun police in impolite societies.

Impeding Stones creates an area of unstable terrain on rocky surfaces.

Leomund's Spacious Carriage creates a carriage and a pair of horses to pull it.

Secret Weapon gives a big Holdout bonus to hide the enchanted weapon.

Zone of Peace is an area of no-fun-allowed.

Summon Pest Swarm is the only druid-exclusive spell from the book and in GURPS... it's a bit counterproductive. The Nature power modifier makes the spell weaker in urban environments, but the spell only works in settled places, so there's no way to avoid the penalty. A cool spell for urban druids, however.

Wizardry: Frostburn Spells VIII

Wizardry: Frostburn Spells VIII

Suppress Flame is a weird spell. The effects aren't very strong, but it is a 6th-level spell that also requires an expensive and rare material component. Here, I drastically reduced the duration and removed the need for the material component.

Thaw is the inverse of Flash-Freeze.

Thin Air decreases atmospheric pressure in an area.

Wall of Coldfire creates a wall that deals damage of this exotic frostburn type.

Zone of Glacial Cold creates a zone of cold that deals damage and nullifies Infravision.

That's it, isn't it? No, we still have the epic spells! Well, at least one of them that I'd like to keep.

Coldfire Blast doesn't really feel like an epic spell. Just a frostburn fireball.

Druidic Spells: Frostburn Spells

Druidic Spells: Frostburn Spells

Now that I'm done with wizard spells from Frostburn, I still have to druidify some of them. The book actually assigned many spells to the druid spell list, but since I separated Cold/Ice and Water into two different colleges, most of the spells are not going to make it in. At least for now, because I like the concept of an arctic druid, but I want to restrict the list to "standard" stuff first. Aside from the adjusted spells from previous posts, there are new spells that are exclusive to druids, mostly related to weather manipulation

Dire Winter drastically lowers the ambient temperature for one day in a huge area. An expensive spell for powerful druids using cooperative magic or ritual casting.

Evergreen is a spell that makes plants (both regular ones and animated ones) resistant to cold for almost a week.

Fimbulwinter causes intense winter for 8d weeks. A very powerful spell where I had to stretch the rules a bit, but I think the result is fine, and the cost is appropriate for the effect.

Ice Age is an even bigger version of Dire Winter. I intentionally didn't include a character point cost because I think it would be too cheap if I did that. Now, it's a ritual casting spell that seems to have an appropriate cost. Don't mess with druid circles.

Wizardry: Frostburn Spells VII

Wizardry: Frostburn Spells VII

Mantle of the Icy Soul by RAW should cost 450 (!!!) character points for each casting!, but I think that 33 is more reasonable. After all, you are imbueing the subject with a 33-point meta-trait, and the spell itself is something of a point tax to be able to do that to others.

Meld into Ice is an ice variant of Meld into Stone. Ice is a category that is four times cheaper, so this spell is very affordable. By default, it also includes snow, so I had to remove this capability with a limitation.

Mindfrost is a weak damaging spell that freezes the mental pathways of the subject.

Move Snow and Ice is an ice variant of Move Earth. Ended up being a point more expensive due to the inclusion of snow.

Numbing Sphere is a cold variant of Flaming Sphere.

Obscuring Snow is a snow variant of Obscuring Mist.

Pass through Ice sounds like a variant spell, but it actually isn't. The swimming part is something unique and interesting.

Raise Ice Forest is interesting. Did you know that there's a formula to calculate a volume of a tree? No I do know that. A 15-foot-tall tree with a 5-foot-diameter trunk at breast height has a volume of 4.155 cubic meters or 146.733 cubic feet. With ice having density of 53 lbs/cubic foot, an ice tree would weigh 7777 lbs.

Shivering Touch is a melee cold spell.

Snow Walk is a simple buff that lets the subject move and fight on snow unpenalized.

Snow Wave may seem very expensive for what it does, but you can layer the created snow! This is a very powerful battlefield control spell.

Snowdrift is a snow variant of Ice Shape.

Snowsight is peculiar. How do you give yourself an ability to see unimpeded through falling snow? Penetrating Vision, even with Specific, even with Accessibility, Only falling snow would be extremely expensive. But think about it logically (*hits pipe*), if darkness is a kind of Vision penalty that is completely ignored by Dark Vision, why not create a variant advantage that ignores all Vision penalties for falling snow? I think that is sensible.

Wizardry: Frostburn Spells VI

Wizardry: Frostburn Spells VI

Oh, dear, we've reached the letter "I", and that means that we're going to have a bunch of ice spells.

Heartfreeze encases the heart of the target in a block of ice. This deals cold damage and has a chance to stun on cause a heart attack.

Heat Leech is a cyclic freezing attack spell.

Hibernate forces the subject into a deathlike trance. Could be useful when cast both on enemies and allies.

Ice Castle conjures up an entire castle made of ice. Instead of doing it via Create or Snatcher, I decided to go a roundabout way and do it via Jumper.

Ice Darts is a rapid fire ice attack spell.

Ice Rift is an icy variant of Earthquake.

Ice Shape is an icy variant of Stone Shape.

Ice Shield is a very limited variant of Stoneskin.

Ice Ship conjures a vessel made of ice.

Ice Skating lets the subject ignore combat penalties on ice and improves top speed.

Ice Slick lets you do one of Sub-Zero's special moves.

Ice to Flesh is an icy variant of Stone to Flesh.

Ice Web is similar to Web, but also deals frostburn damage.

Icicles is a triggered trap spell that isn't actually a variant of an existing spell, surprisingly.

Ivory Flesh turns the subject's flesh white for camouflage purposes.

Leomund's Tiny Igloo lost its furnishing and became a specialized form of bulk snow creation. To calculate the requires Create level, I had to calculate the volume of the walls in Unigraphics NX.

Wizardry: Frostburn Spells V

Wizardry: Frostburn Spells V

I think that when I'm done with this book, the Ice college will be the largest one.

Frost Weapon is a simple weapon buff that adds cold damage.

Frostbite is a Malediction spell that deals fatigue damage.

Frostburn (the spell) deals frostburn (type) damage that was introduced in Frostburn (the book) and not mentioned anywhere else. In D&D, it reqruies a caster level check to heal magically, doesn't heal naturally in temperatures below freezing, and it cures cold creatures. Here, I made it so it cannot be healed at all unless the victim is brought into a warm area.

Mass Frostburn is an area version of Frostburn.

Frostfell is a very high level spell in its original form, but here I decided to turn it into a limited version of Cool that has a fixed temperature shift, no range, and a very long duration with a possibility of making it permanent. It also is affordable!

Gelid Blood imposes the normal side effects of cold damage without actually damaging the victim. Kind of sucks, doesn't it? But I guess it could be situationally useful, as it is less expensive than, for example, Frostbite.

Glacial Globe of Invulnerability is a fire-specific version of Globe of Invulnerability.

Glacial Ward makes the subject very resistant to fire spells that directly affect it. There actually aren't many of spells that this spells would be useful against, at least for now.

Glacier is a limited form of Column of Ice.

Glaze Lock jams a locking mechanism with ice, making it harder to pick.

BrOSR and GURPS

BrOSR and GURPS

A few months ago, TheRyujinLP introduced me to the Joy of Wargaming YouTube channel, something for which I'm thankful. Aside from providing interesting battle reports, solo RPG playthroughs, and other RPG and wargaming-related videos, this channel introduced me to the concept of BrOSR (a portmanteau of OSR and Braunstein), something I wasn't aware of before. I watched some videos (both from the proponents and detractors) and read some blogposts. The most material can be found on Jeffro's Space Gaming Blog, but it was surprisingly difficult to find posts that clearly explain what BrOSR is. However, he who seeks will find, so I'll link you two posts that explain the concept very well:

1. BROSR Principles: A Primer (the blog of the Joy of Wargaming host, be sure to check this one out, it has a lot of good stuff).

2. How to Play D&D Like A Wargame (this post really could use some editing, but that's rich coming from me out of all people).

All this for the most part assumes AD&D or similar games, but the principles themselves are universally applicable. I found the concept of BrOSR fascinating, but since AD&D and GURPS are so different, it made me think - what principles can and cannot be applied in GURPS? So, here's a rambly post that'll probably bring me some heat.

Preface: I've never played AD&D, and I'm merely dipping my toes into the subject - there's a chance that I do not understand some of the concepts properly.