Low-Tech Musical Instrument Costs and Weights

Low-Tech Musical Instrument Costs and Weights

Bard is my least favorite "core" class. Despite that, I've been a bit frustrated because GURPS doesn't have that many low-tech musical instruments detailed. There are several on page 49 of GURPS Low-Tech, a few in DF1 and DF8, and a whole bunch of skill specialties in LTC1 with examples, but without costs and weights. I have no idea what 90% of these instruments even are. I found people asking about this on the forums and getting "it's too difficult to research" in response. If even GURPS authors found it too difficult to research, then I will not even try. I decided to look into D&D books (Song & Silence, The Quintessential Bard I and II), but found only lists of instruments with no costs and weights. Thus, I fed the data from GURPS Low-Tech into Deepseek and told it to extrapolate/interpolate the values. So, here's the slop.

Training Rules

 Training Rules

Most of the core concepts that are required for an AD&D-style game in GURPS are done, and one of the few things left to think about is training. AD&D is a class-and-level-based system, and advancement is done in levels, obviously. GURPS is a wildly different beast, with advancement rules being different as well. As a rule, the GM gives players some character points at the end of the session, and the players improve their characters using them. Sounds simple, right? On one hand – yes, it is simple. On the other hand, is it really that simple and do I want it this simple?

How Does Injury Tolerance (Diffuse) Even Work?

How Does Injury Tolerance (Diffuse) Even Work?

I've been working on the four basic elementals to add them to Monstrous Compendium II. I really want to get them right, because elementals are quite important - they can be enemies, they are the most frequently summoned creatures, they can be used as allies or shapeshifting forms, etc. Three of the four elementals (air, fire, and water) are diffuse beings. So, let's take a look at Injury Tolerance (Diffuse) in more detail.

Wizardry: Complete Mage Spells III

Wizardry: Complete Mage Spells III

All right, that's the final post with spells from this book. As you can see, there are only three posts compared to nine for Complete Arcane. I threw out plenty of spells indeed.

Rebirth of Iron is a very limited spell that removes HT and DR penalties caused by rust and corrosion. Can be very useful if you lack bronze gear when delving into an underwater dungeon.

Repelling Shield is a more expensive, but more fun version of Shield. This one may knock the attacker's weapon on a shield hit.

Resinous Tar is the opposite of Grease.

Steal Summoning is a spell that lets you control a summoned being.

Storm of Needles is a simple piercing cone spell.

Summon Weapon would've been incredibly expensive if built via Snatcher, so I had to ignore RAW and use Create to get a reasonable point cost.

Touch of Years is the first spell that ages the subject, making Extended Lifespan and Unaging slightly more important.

Toxic Tongue lets you spit contact poison.

Vigilant Slumber lets you wake up when a specific condition is met.

Replacing Resistance with Active Defense

Replacing Resistance with Active Defense

If you're reading this, you probably know by know that I love writing up abilities using the advantage/modifier framework of GURPS. However, it isn't perfect, and some abilities are either very difficult or impossible to stat up properly in GURPS. One of such cases is Affliction without a resistance roll. People who do not read the rules tend to parrot other people who do not read the rules and say "uuuuuhhhhh, you just add Cosmic, Irresistible Attack, +300%." I usually try to avoid tampering with the fundamental aspects of the rules, but I've had enough after an arguement with a friend about Otiluke's Resilient Sphere and how a Quick Contest of Will vs. DX doesn't make much sense. If you'd like other examples of such abilities, you can check out Glitterdust or, if you prefer canonical examples, look no further than the skunk spray from page 27 of GURPS Furries. "Okay, the skunk sprays you, but since you rolled HT good enough, it doesn't smell." Nonsense, am I right?

So, what I want to do is have an Affliction that has no roll to resist, but allows an active defense even if it's a Malediction.

Wizardry: Complete Mage Spells II

Wizardry: Complete Mage Spells II

We're nowhere near done with Complete Mage.

Endless Slumber is a permanent version of Sleep. I kept the value of Sleep at +150% because the fact that the subject doesn't need to eat or drink is counterbalanced by injury waking the subject up. Somewhat.

Finger of Agony is an expensive, but debilitating spell.

Flaying Tendrils gives you four tentacles of a mind flayer.

Genius Loci is a super-flavorful spell that no player character probably will take.

Jet of Steam is Gust of Wind with an additional burninng damage.

Melf's Slumber Arrow imbues an arrow with the power of sleep.

Otiluke's Suppressing Field is a cheaper alternative to Antimagic Field that suppresses only one college and also allows to "burn through" the ward with enough skill.

Otto's Imperative Ambulation forces the subject to move around.

Painful Echoes causes pain and makes the subject more vulnerable to sonic attacks.

Wizardry: Complete Mage Spells I

Wizardry: Complete Mage Spells I

Let's switch gears and instead of adapting difficult and important concepts make some filler content. Yet again, I determined a D&D book randomly from which to convert spells and got Complete Mage. This is a late 3.5 book that suffers from some late 3.5-isms, but its selection of spells is rather large. I expect to throw many of them out. Let's see how it goes.

Allied Footsteps is actually a pretty cool spell that lets an ally know where you are at all times.

Animate Weapon lets you attack with your weapon at range, but requires you to touch the weapon first and maintain constant concentration.

Arcane Turmoil is what I call a late-3.5 spell. You have an existing main effect plus something minor and often barely related. In this case, the main effect is, surprisingly, not damage, and both effects make sense together thematically. It's not a very practical spell to learn with points, but I can see it being useful against undead spellcasters, such as liches and deathlocks who rely on ER and buffs. In any case, my standard cope when it comes to very situational spells is "some spells were invented not to be learned, but to be enchanted."

Boiling Blood actually was converted before as a blood magic spell, but now there's a generic arcane version.

Cacophonous Alarm is another variant of Alarm that is restricted to the audible version. I really do not mind this variation - it is a little bit cheaper, but also fits into the College of Sound.

Catsfeet is a "swift" spell that improves your balance.

Caustic Mire is a spell that I wanted to skip at first, but then thought that the College of Acid really could use another spell, especially since it is something more interesting that just corrosion damage. While this spell is expensive, the bad terrain penalties are quite harsh, and the flammable fumes effect is interesting. The statblock, however, is huge and convoluted.