Herb Gathering

Herb Gathering

One of my players wanted his character to use his Naturalist skill to find some valuable herbs to earn some money. This prompted me to investigate the rules and finding that there's no out-of-the-box solution to this somewhat simple request. As a temporary ruling, I ruled that this is similar to a job roll for the gatherer - this worked for that purpose, but what if the character wanted to find something more concrete? Let's see.

Random Generation: Cleric

Random Generation: Cleric

You can generate a cleric character using the following procedure:
1. Take the base template (below), rolling attributes as shown in the template.
2. Roll 1d3 twice on Table 1 to determine your alignment. If you prefer the classic law-chaos axis, just roll 1d3 once, ignoring the good-evil axis.
3. Roll on Table 2 to determine your pact disadvantage(s) for your divine abilities.
4. Determine an archetype by rolling on Table 3.
            4.1. Choose an appropriate patron deity or determine it randomly
            4.2. Roll 1d3 – this is the number of spells known at the start. Pick a domain from the list of domains of your patron deity, note down spells that cost 20 points or less, and determine a spell from them randomly. Continue until you have all the spells.
5. Roll 3dx40 to determine your extra money in $.
            5.1. Optionally, purchase a delver kit (DF13, pp. 5-6).
6. Roll 3 times on Table 3 to determine extra advantages.
7. Roll 3 times on Table 4 to determine extra disadvantages.
8. Roll 5 times on Table 5 to determine secondary skills.
9. Roll 6 times on Table 6 to determine background skills.
10. Roll 1d-2 times on Table 7 to determine languages.
11. Roll on Table 8 to determine appearance.
12. Roll 17 + 1d to determine the starting age.
 

Random Generation: Ranger

Random Generation: Ranger

You can generate a ranger character using the following procedure:
1. Take the base template (below), rolling attributes as shown in the template.
2. Determine an armor loadout by rolling on Table 1.
3. Determine a weapon loadout by rolling on Table 2.
4. Roll 3dx40 to determine your extra money in $.
            4.1. Optionally, purchase a delver kit (DF13, pp. 5-6).
5. Roll 3 times on Table 3 to determine extra advantages.
6. Roll 3 times on Table 4 to determine extra disadvantages.
7. Roll 4 times on Table 5 to determine secondary skills.
8. Roll 6 times on Table 6 to determine background skills.
9. Roll 1d-2 times on Table 7 to determine languages.
10. Roll on Table 8 to determine appearance.
11. Roll 17 + 1d to determine the starting age.

Random Generation: Sorcerer

Random Generation: Sorcerer

You can generate a sorcerer character using the following procedure:
1. Take the base template (below), rolling attributes as shown in the template.
2. Determine an armor loadout by rolling on Table 1.
3. Determine a weapon loadout by rolling on Table 2.
4. Roll 3dx40 to determine your extra money in $.
            4.1. Optionally, purchase a delver kit (DF13, pp. 5-6).
5. Roll once on Table 3 to determine sorcerer bloodline.
6. Your bloodline will have college or theme-based scope limitations. For each scope or theme that has its own table, roll on the Starting Spells table 1d4-2 (minimum 1) times and take these spells as alternative abilities. Then roll 1d6; on 1-2, take a number of levels of Sorcerous Empowerment limited with your bloodline scope limitation enough to take the most expensive spell rolled as an alternative ability.
7. Roll 3 times on Table 4 to determine extra advantages.
8. Roll 3 times on Table 5 to determine extra disadvantages.
9. Roll 4 times on Table 6 to determine secondary skills.
10. Roll 4 times on Table 7 to determine background skills.
11. Roll 1d-2 times on Table 8 to determine languages.
12. Roll on Table 9 to determine appearance.
13. Roll 17 + 1d to determine the starting age.

Please note that some steps may refer to not-yet-existent tables, such as the Expert Skill table.

Random Generation: Starting Spells

Random Generation: Starting Spells

So far I’ve made two sets of tables for random character generation – for fighters and bards. Next up in the queue is the sorcerer, but the sorcerer is a spellcaster. Not only is he a sorcerer, but also one whose scope of powers depends on the bloodline, and there are hundreds of them (yes, the table will be comically large). How do you determine the starting spells then? I do not want to make hundreds of bloodline-specific tables – that’s too much even for me. I’m going to make things easy for myself and instead make random tables for colleges and themes – after all, almost all bloodlines have their scope defined as 1-4 colleges or themes. These tables will also be useful for other spellcasters, such as wizards.

Random Generation: Bard

Random Generation: Bard

Back in the day, I wrote a post with some random tables that would let you quickly generate a fighter. Now, here's another set of tables that will let you generate a bard.

Random Generation: Weather

Random Generation: Weather

As I mentioned in some of my previous posts, I was positively impressed by the weather generation rules from ACKS II. Thus, here is my adaptation of these rules to GURPS. It may look intimidating and complex, but it's actually pretty damn simple. However, I probably will make an automation program to make it even easier in the future.

Random Generation: Fighter

Random Generation: Fighter

In one of my previous posts, I boldly declared that I'm going to make random "class"-based character generation tables. But as always, I didn't think it through before saying. GURPS may make such tables more difficult. For example, do you roll your attributes randomly or do you choose your class first and then roll attributes on a table for that class? In any case, let's say that you are rolling up a fighter and got, for example, ST 11. However, when you are rolling for gear, you get a maul that requires ST 13? And what if you rolled your combat skills and didn't even get Two-Handed Axe/Mace, but got Smallsword instead? This makes me think of just how granular such tables should be, because even the seemingly simple fighter has many complications along the way, and I haven't even started about, for example, getting a maul-wielding elf fighter instead of something more elvish. So, how do I do it?

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!