Sorcery: Shadow Magic

Sorcery: Shadow Magic

Tome of Magic probably is my favorite supplement for Dungeons and Dragons 3.5. It presents three distinct and unique magic subsystems and has amazingly well-written flavor. Pact magic deals with binding vestiges to your soul and gaining their abilities. Shadow magic is all about the shadows of all things, be they living or abstract, like magic. Truename magic allows the user to manipulate the world with the universal true language. Mechanically, only the first third was well done, the other two thirds range from underwhelming to unplayably broken. First, I'll present here a way to convert shadow magic into Sorcery.

Powers: Psionic Enchantment

Powers: Psionic Enchantment

Crafting, and crafting of magical items in particular, for me was one of the most confusing things. Enchantment rules from GURPS Magic could only be used for standard magic spells and didn't provide any guidelines beyond that. Then Pyramid #3-46 came out and presented us the Metatronic Generators. Up until the release of GURPS Thaumatology - Sorcery I thought that there's nothing better than the Metatronic Generators. By statting up some magical items both as Metatronic Generators and as Sorcery items (using spells or simply the advantages I wanted) I came to a conclusion that magical items made using the Sorcery enchantment system generally are more expensive, which could be a good thing if you want to make magic items rare. But what about psionic items? Here's my take on psionic enchantment using Sorcery as a basis:

Powers: Metacreativity

Powers: Metacreativity

I like psionics. But who doesn't? GURPS Psionic Powers is an amazing supplement, that provides tons of interesting powers, abilities, and modifiers. We all are used to the telepaths, tekes, pyros, espers, but those who came from D&D may notice the absence of the metacreativity power. In Dungeons and Dragons psionics is often associated with ectoplasm and crystals. Why? I don't know, but I would like to know. But anyway, here's my take on the metacreativity power in GURPS.

Powers: Control Magic

Powers: Control Magic

GURPS Powers offers the players and the GMs a new interesting advantage - Control. While being versatile and not vague for most of the controllable substances, it is much more difficult to define when dealing with abstract concepts, such as time, space, or magic.

Monster: Ankheg

Monster: Ankheg

Let's do something simpler - a bug monster. The ankheg is a burrowing giant ant-like creature that can spit acid twice a day. These bugs are big, tough, and their acidic bite is nasty. From all the monsters posted until this moment, I've only used ankhegs against my PCs. One of the akhegs got two of its legs cut off with a two-handed sword and then impaled through the skull, and another one survived a bullet through its face from a TL4 pistol, attempted to run away, but got immobilized by a divine spell and then beaten merciless to death with a mace by a cleric of a deity of peace, mercy, and healing.

Monsters: Angels

Monsters: Angels

From front to back - astral deva, planetar, solar

Angels are powerful good outsiders. Biblical angels have a 9-rank hierarchy, and some of the angels have weird non-humanoid forms. For example, the ophanim are wheels with multiple eyes. But D&D prefers generic-looking humanoid angels.

Sorcery: Angelic Spells

Sorcery: Angelic Spells

The next monster entry is going to be angels. D&D angels have many spell-like abilities, and many of the existing Sorcery spells fit, but some spells I've had to make myself. They aren't really anything special. Aid is a simple buff that improves durability and bravery. Continual Flame allows sorcerers to earn for a living being an illuminator. Lesser Restoration and Remove Disease fit very well for clerical "sorcerers" or other magical healers. Plane Shift literally opens up new worlds for sorcerers. Personal Invisibility allows a sorcerer to go unseen, and See Invisible allows him to see sorcerers using Personal Invisibility. Speak with Dead can provide answers when you wanted to intimidate a person with a fireball, but instead burned him a bit too much. Power Word: Stun is just a simple, but useful and showy spell.