Rules & Rulings from Session 224

A few things came up in Session 224.

- He probably wasn't seriously fishing for this* but a player asked if the Gorilla Gloves from DFT3 give him any affinity towards apes . . . sense their former presence in the "Apetrium" (a player-named room in the dungeon where they fought killer apes a decade or so back.) No, they may have an affinity towards you from the gloves but it's one way.

- Step for Move 11-20 is 2, for 21-30 is 3. How does that mesh with Committed Attack done for an extra step? I consider all of this additive, not multiplicative. So you get +1 step for CA if you choose the extra step. It's already a lot; it gets out of hand fast if each "step" gets doubled. This lines up with extra attacks from AOA, for example, which gives +1, not a doubling.

- The magical shield bracelet the PCs found gives DB 3. It doesn't create a magical translucent forcefield. Or an opaque one. Or whatever crappy sci-fi/Marvel movie image you're considering. It's a bracelet which gives DB 3 and acts like a shield. It doesn't gain any extra "width" any more than a DB 1 shield with Deflect 2 gains any. It's just magic, take your 3 DB without needing a shield in hand and be happy about it. The hand still needs to be able to block, so no, you can't be holding a bow or a two-handed weapon or whatever and block with it. That hand is effectively occupied, barring the Third Hand perk's benefits.

- It's $100 per item for a mage in town to check if it's magical. You can wait for your mage buddy to ID it when he's around, but he damn well should be charging you $100 per item per guild regulations. Not charging for it in the dungeon is fine, of course, because that's extralegal territory per established Felltower law.

* Although I assume most joking suggestions are more like hopeful suggestions with plausible deniability.

GURPS DF Session 224, Felltower 141 - Second GFS exploration

Game Date: 6/14/2026
Weather: Hot and partly cloudy.

Characters
Chop, human cleric (367 points)
Hannari Ironhand, dwarf martial artist (360 points)
Persistance Montgomery, human knight (347 points)
Rogar Thane-Blood, human barbarian (259 points)
Thor Halfskepna, human knight (373 points)
Vladimir Luchnick, dwarf scout (333 points)

We started off in town, with the PCs gathering rumors and sorting out a lot of purchases.

The PCs headed down into the dungeons, and made their way to the gate level, using the taxidermied six-fingered hands to open doors. That worked, but didn't mitigate any downsides (like the one door that inflicts injury when touched.) On the gate level, they noted the Lost City gate was open. They found that the black hemisphere in the room where they'd fought the slorn was back, so Vlad shot it apart with Cornucopia Quiver arrows.

They found their way towards the "will wall," but stumbled into a huge pudding - three yards across and a yard high! They lit it up with a lightstone, briefly, as it was tossed too far. Then Hannari lit it on fire with a splash from a close miss from an alchemist's fire. It charged them. Rogar charged back. He blocked its slam but was still overrun and smothered down to the floor. Chop but Resist Acid on the front line before contact, so he was more-or-less fine. The pudding got chopped into submission by Percy (with an axe), Hannari (with two axes), and Thor (with his flaming sword). Thor dealt a crazy amount of damage to it, and soon it was motionless. They pushed it up enough to get to Rogar and drag him out, and then climbed over it to safety. First, of course, they gave it a once-over to see if any loot was stuck to or in it. I blame D&D for making everything thing slimes and such have treasure in them.

They pressed on, and soon to the first landing. They used Walk on Air spellstones to cross the floor, but they soon expired. Hannari downed two Speed potions and Thor two Strength potions (since the first turned up a "1") and they got to exploring, ready to fight at any time. Eventually it fell to just exploring.

Several times, they found small rooms with floor that inflicted damage (Deathtouch, they believe), mostly on Vlad before they swapped scouts. They found a room with some meditation mats, well-worn yellow ones, of no clear value. Chop had See Secrets on to help explore.

They found a stone chest with a 4 x 4 grid of buttons, and despite some clever investigation they couldn't figure out how to puzzle out the puzzle. So Hannari tried his dwarven lockpicks to directly spring the lock. He rolled a 6 on an effective skill of 25 or so. It was enough - a critical, assuming a penalty of -9 or less, but either way, it was enough to work.

Inside was 10,000 sp (40 pounds . . . ) in coins, four gold necklaces, and three potions (they eventually turned out to be Giant Strength and two Oil of Puissance.

In another room they found an iron chest with a different puzzle lock. Thor tried to force it, hear a noise, and found he'd jammed the lock. Hannari found it was never going to open for his lockpicks, and a try with the crowby by Thor was a disaster. He jammed it tn and rolled an 18 . . . oops. So he decided to carry the chest by the handle. Coins shifted inside, but something also made tinkling noises. Hannari used an alkahest on it to dissolve the lock entirely. Inside was 1000 gp ($20k, and 4 pounds) and the broken bits of a semi-corporeal ruby dagger. Oops. Was it magical? Was it one of the "glass monsters" recent rumor had pointed to? Was it a magical key? Who knows? Thor likes to think it was a cursed item of great danger and clearly already broken when he did his thing.

Next, they found a room with four levers. They managed to convince Thor not to play around with them, but it took some work.

After this, they found an armoury of sorts, and recovered three suits of magescale, a few grenades (nothing special, just normal stuff), two pieces of star-shaped soapstone, and a bracelet of silver with golden D'Aboan horses on it.

Then they found a room with a damaging floor, again, so Thor drank a flight potion and flew over. And kept going. And going. He's Impulsive and Curious, and it showed. Eventually Hannari jumped the floor's length to catch up to Thor, who'd found a scenic overlook, and then another room overlooking a large cavern that smelled of ammonia and something gone sour.

They regrouped, spotting three rooms with gemstone-patterend walls along the way, and did a little mapping before they headed out.

Back to town.

Notes:

- Puddings are fun, but it's pretty much all or nothing for them as monsters. Against a high-damage-output squad, it's nothing. I was interested to note the PCs never even tried to back off, see if it would move on, tried to lure it away - they just stood to fight it. Rogar will rush into a fight, always, but that doesn't mean before one starts they can't find another option. Who am I kidding? They were curious if any of the rocks embedded in the pudding were valuable. If you regard monsters as something you must kill on the off chance they may have loot, well . . . you'll fight everything.

- the loot total was $32,350 per person. That didn't include any of the jewelry because they didn't want to sell them without having a PC evaluate them. Duncan is currently the only person who has the skills to evaluate magic items, gems, jewelry, and assorted luxuries. They're really cleaning up, which is the reward for the heavy fighting that it took to open up these areas. Megadungeon play is both immediate and cumulative.

- I'll reveal it here - the puzzle lock was solvable either of two ways - the players figure out either of the codes, or someone makes an IQ-based Lockpicking at a steep penalty. Or, you know, brute force. I doubled the penalty for the complexity of the lock to swap to DX, and that made that 6 not nearly a critical . . . but still enough to pop the lock.

- MVP was Hannari for his lockpicking. XP was 4 each for loot, 1 each for exploration. Thor really should have gotten extra for exploration but he didn't quite get enough extra places. But he really leans into his disadvantages and it makes for a better game. That's a pretty good reward.

GURPS Ring of Fire

There is a new GURPS book in the offing over on BackerKit. GURPS Ring of Fire. Sadly, it's not about the Johnny Cash song or the Wall of Voodoo cover of said song.

It's not my kind of setting, I'm not a big alternate-history kind of gamer. But it might be yours!

It also is a chance to get the new GURPS 4th Edition Revised - a combined volume of the two Basic Set books plus some additional material. I don't really feel a need for it, as I'm not planning on doing any GURPS writing at this point. But it might be worth getting in just to get that.

Felltower House Rules Examined

As promised in the comments, I decided to take a look at some house rules/ways we run the rules in Felltower. Our base rules set is DFRPG, but with specific add-ons from Basic Set, Martial Arts, and some other DF supplements.

The format here is a quick look at what the rule is, the slant towards PCs or NPCs, and why I think so. I'd be curious to hear comments on the ratings from both players and readers, but obviously play experience is critical for determining how they actually work.

My ratings are:

Pro-PC: This generally makes the game easier on PCs, usually by making it easier to accomplish tasks that save their lives or inflict damage.

Neutral: A toss-up. Helps NPCs and PCs equally. Probably exists in the game to make everyone's lives easier but that's not always the case.

Pro-NPC: Turns up the difficulty on PCs.

This is probably definitely not a complete list, but let's try.

Missile Spell Casting/Explosion Rules

Missile Spells in DF Felltower get a cost reduction every second of buildup, contrary to the rules as written. They also do damage at 1, 2/3, and 1/3 of the roll in a 3-hex area blast for explosive spells, there are explosive variants of every missile spell, and explosive spells are not a different spell, just a different cost.

Favorability: Pro-PC. These make casters much more effective at a lower costs in character points, energy costs, and skill. Sure, NPCs also use these spells, but NPCs don't have the same issues - they aren't working with a point budget (not a fixed one, anyway), and don't have to worry about FP recovery and Paut costs as much.

Potion Drinking Speed

The rules as written require you to draw a potion (Ready), open it (Ready), then quaff it (Ready.) The effects take place the following turn.

As we run them?

Draw a potion (Ready), Open and Drink (Ready), effects are instant.

Favorability to the PCs: Pro-PC.

It's quite rare for enemies to use potions. They'll use grenades, some quite liberally, but not as drinkable potions. The speed is so quick that a major wound can be dealt with very quickly and efficiently, and any special-purpose attack (like, say, Magebane grenades) can be undone in a single second with a good Fast-Draw roll. NPCs can deal an attack in the order at A, the PC can go on B and undo it, and then we move on before anyone can take advantage. This happens so frequently that if we switched back to the rules as written it would significantly alter the balance of power against the PCs in resource-heavy fights.

Item Enchantment Speed

The rules as written don't have any enchantment speed.

Our rules are 1 day per $100. $30,000 items take 300 days.

Favorability to the PCs: Neutral.

NPCs don't ever order magic items, so this doesn't affect them. But the PCs get access to on-demand enchantment, which isn't actually what the rules as written say - they specifically say the GM decides what the shop has, not that the PCs can order whatever they like. Those two changes I feel cancel each other out and make this neutral. You can order from a list but you have to wait vs. you have to just have cash in hand and luck into the shop selling what you want.

Bypassing Missile Shield with a 3-4

The rules as written makes this spell absolute defense, just like any other immunity-type spell.

Favorability to PCs: Pro-PC.

PCs dominate the higher-skill and damage missile role, and often have missile types - Scouts, wizards - in the back of heavy front line fighters. Monsters don't always have the luxury of this in encounters that come off as believable - you can't have archer-types and ranged spellcaster variants of every monster to mix in, or at least Felltower does not. The house rule allows for missile-heavy characters - let's face it, basically Scouts - to put 1-2 shots per second at a magic-using foe out of their inevitable twin Cornucopia Quivers until they get a lucky hit. That hit is a critical, so it also means the foe cannot defend . . . although the original ruling states they could. It does not spell out how to square "3-4 always a critical" and criticals bypassing defenses with the issue of two defenses. I have ideas, but they add a lot of complication and can and will get rules lawyer arguments about expanding them to Sacrificial defenses or All-Out Defense (Double) in ways I don't want to deal with.

No special effects on most criticals

Rules as written? Roll on the Critical Hit Table.

Our rules? 3 is max damage. Any other critical hit just bypasses defenses. (This is taken from the abstract combat system in Basic Set.)

Favorability to PCs: Pro-PC.

The PCs are on the receiving end of more criticals than they deal out, and also generally have high-damage attacks. Foes with lower damage attacks simply can't get a lucky double or triple damage hit, or force a funny bone cripple, or reduce or bypass DR, get a fluke disarm or eye shot. You have 1d+1 cutting damage and the PCs have DR 7+? Oh well. PCs never have to adjust for an unexpected case - their DR really does decide if they can be hurt or crippled and no roll can bypass that unless it's a random hit on a lightly armored or unarmored location.

Unconsciousness Roll Timing

Rules as written have you roll to fall unconcious at the end of a turn where you do something other than Do Nothing.

Felltower has them rolled at the start of a turn in which you decide to do something other than Do Nothing.

Favorability to the PCs: Pro-NPC.

This would be neutral, but look at the potion rules. Allowing a full turn to act before needing to roll means you can get out and drink a potion to heal yourself, which, with a good enough potion and roll, potentially takes you out of the range of injury that forces a roll. Or you can move close to your cleric and let the chips fall where they may, knowing Major Healing and Awaken - also boosted in speed of casting time by potion recovery timing with Paut - will undo a poor roll.



There are more, but this is a good start. I'll have to get to Size Modifier poison rules, our grappling rules, effects of PI and Magery levels on spell limits, etc. some other time. But at a quick glance, it seems like the rules generally slant pro-PC . . . and that the potion rules really skew other rules hard.

Defense trumps offense in GURPS DF?

My players have some recently discovered the whole "amulets" section of the magic item list. So, naturally, with a big windfall, there are a lot of Ironskin Amulets getting ordered. They'll take 288 days to arrive, but it's +3 DR for, almost everyone. Oh, and at least one is looking at Defending Weapon, for a bonus to block or parry. Salamander and Serpent's Amulets are getting ordered as well.

So pretty soon everyone will be immune to fire and poison, and have +3 DR. Given that 8 DR is low for this group, it's likely this will be DR 11 being the bottom end of basic armor. Foes with 2d attacks are going to have a hard time being a threat. Those with 1d attacks will be harmless barring a max-damage hit on an eye. I already expect to be asked about the Armor spell stacking with this - no, it does not. It probably should by a strict reading of the rules, but do I really want people chucking +3-6 DR on top of their "soft" characters to give them DR 15+?

No, I do not.

I regret not putting in a limit ala every video game - one ring on each hand maximum, one necklace. Even if I did, people would be asking about nipple rings, bracelets, anklets, pocket lucky charms they could sew into a pouch in their under-armor clothes, whatever. So I'm not sure it's worth the effort. But cash is becoming a route to flat-out immunities. It's my own fault for selling the things, true, but 15 years into the game is a bit late for deciding to restrict magic item purchases even further.

What I find interesting is that the first, second, and third priorities of most people with money is improved defense. Better armor, enchanted with Fortify and Lighten, layered with other, better armor whenever possible (Knights always do this, thanks to Armor Mastery). Better shields, with DB boosted up quite high and further enchanted with Lighten and, of course, made Balanced. Defensive-oriented magic - the above-mentioned amulets - also factor in. Thank goodness I'm not allowing people to buy Bless items or they'd all have those as a matter of course.

Offense is harder to come by. You can spend tens of thousands of dollars to get better and better defensive gear - those amulets, more armor, lighter armor, better shields. Getting a primo weapon is hard . . . and even if I allow for much more powerful weapon enchantments, people generally would rather have +1 DR than +1 or +2 damage . . . and you can buy nearly "end-game" armor - say, Fortify +2 Lighten 50% Fine Epic Plate - but the best you can get weapon-wise is just a few more points of damage. Or a specialty weapon, such as a meteoric weapon to bypass enemy defenses.

Even then, defense outsells offense.

I get the logic - this is my only guy, I don't want him to die, it's a dangerous dungeon. But from my side of the screen, if everyone has defenses that fail on 17-18 only, DR that shrugs off anything that isn't armor-bypassing or armor-dividing or very, very high damage, and immunities to very broad types of special attacks . . . what do you think comes along as a challenge? I think the answer is obvious. The arms race is real. And obviously I'll need to make foes that require more offense . . . which probably will just lead to "we need EVEN MORE DEFENSE to keep up!"

As I say, I can't blame them - it's the best use of the money in the system - but it leads to an arms race in which fun probably isn't the winner.

GURPS DF Session 223, Felltower 140 - Second GFS Assault, Part III

Real World Date: 5/31/2026

Game Date: 4/11/2026
Weather: Mild and sunny.

Characters
Chop, human cleric (367 points)
Duncan Tesadic, human wizard (355 points)
Hannari Ironhand, dwarf martial artist (360 points)
Persistance Montgomery, human knight (347 points)
Rogar Thane-Blood, human barbarian (259 points)
Thor Halfskepna, human knight (373 points)
Vladimir Luchnick, dwarf scout (333 points)

We started off in battle, with Hannari getting up after being healed from crippling injuries by Chop. The Gith "Master" and several of the other Gith tried to overwhelm him with attack after attack. The master, Hannari's peer in (DX-potion-boosted) skill, traded Feint-and-Attack combinations with him while the others and a few golden swordsman just launched as many attacks as they could. Hannari had Blur 5 on but it didn't seem to make a big difference against the Gith, and to a lesser extent the golden swordsmen. Chop's curses stopped at least one critical from bypassing Hannari's defenses and getting to his "low" DR (only 8 . . .).

Meanwhile, Thor, Percy, and Rogar finished off the remaining non-sleeping trokers. It took a bit of work but with all three of them having Affect Spirits on their weapons. It took a few seconds but they butchered the rest of them and moved on to help Hannari.

The Gith were pushed back, as Hannari took out two of the wounded, downed golden swordsmen as they fought from seated. Another gith fell, and the remainder moved back past the 2-yard wall Duncan made to cut the battlefield in two. The enemy set up on the other side, so the PCs could come through one after another but they could double-team the PC lead fighter. It worked, sort of.

Hannari rushed the gap, throwing a sleep grenade at the rear of the group to take out the trokers. But a waiting golden swordsman cut the grenade out of the air as it passed through his hex, shrugged off the sleep effect, and then struck twice. This was the one who'd been injured by Vlad's arrows earlier and then relegated to the back ranks by the flow of combat. He hit. Hannari rolled two 17s, with a net defenses in the low 20s. 17-18 always fails. Both hit, and random location but them both at the legs. The first did 20 cutting past DR, and lopped off Hannari's right leg. The other did 15 past DR, which is 1 point less than enough to dismember, and just crippled Hannari's leg. He dropped to the ground.

Rogar pushed up behind, eager to get into the fight. Thor snaked out a few sword blows. And then Percy waded into the fray. He critically hit the Master, stunning him with a skull shot. Over his next two turns he rolled one more, and then two more critical hits, downing another gith, a goldem swordsman, and a thorker. The enemy was left with a handful of trokers, the Master, and a wounded Gith. Hannari crawled back to Duncan. Duncan let loose with an Explosive Lightning spell, using Chop's eyes to aim (see the notes) but it only clipped a few for minor injuries.

Duncan shifted to putting Flight on Hannari, which got him back into the action. Thor remembered he had Flight on and moved further into the fray. But they found the Master was gone - he'd briefly gotten out of sight and then was gone. They simply swarmed the wounded gith in the hallway and the half-dozen or so trokers and made short work of them.

With that, the field was theirs. Thor and Rogar butchered the trokers, cutting off their heads to ensure they were dead. There was some talk of burning them, or throwing them all down the staircase opening to the depths below, but in the end they did not. They took the axes off of the couple of norkers, and every one of the fallen gith, with them. They also looted the fallen golden swordsmen of their various jewelry, magical force bracelets, and bone swords. They beheaded them, too.

They then headed back to town, gathering their slorn hides and eggs.

Notes:

- The PCs would have delved deeper, except that Hannari missing a leg made that difficult. They're concerned that they can whip up a bunch more mooks and re-set the level's defenses, but pushing on didn't make much sense.

- I ruled for Duncan's lightning attack as follows: He's blind, and Invisible, and airborne, and he's shooting at a target that he's seeing through a third-party's eyes. So he can't see from the launch point, and can't see the launch point but knows where it is. I gave him the -10 for shooting blind but not the skill cap of 9. It seemed fine.

- I kind of wish we didn't use that long, long ago house rule about 3-4 bypassing Missile Shield. Mostly because it ends up with a lot of "well, I guess I'll just shoot at the guy and hope" turns, which take time and rarely matter, plus resolving Hitting the Wrong Target, usually at an angle as the PCs exclusively shoot from height these days. And it's out of line with how all the other immunities work. Imagine if I said that Resist Poison worked except on a 17-18, or Resist Fire except on a 17-18, or that you could ignore the Armor spell with a 3-4 . . . it would make perfect sense. I doubt anyone would like this, but it's a genuine idea. It would take the logic ("a perfect hit can bypass magic") and extend it to all defenses magic and all offensive effects. It's an odd exception - you can literally make yourself immune to fire, poison, lightning, acid, and more yet worry that your perfect defense against arrows doesn't always do it . . . and only fails against the most lethal shots.

- I ruled that you can hold your breath and ignore a breath-based attack like a Sleep grenade, but it's not a free, defensive action. They can Dodge out of the area effect with Retreat, of course, but that's always been true.

- MVP was Duncan's player, as he ran Percy during most of the session. It was heavily luck dependent, but his run of 4 criticals in 3 turns shifted what could have been a disaster (Hannari being crippled) into a minor problem.

- Speaking of Hannari being crippled, air-movement spells make a mockery of crippled legs, floor traps, bad footing, and combat ranks. Hannari had a leg amputated and a leg crippled and it took him out of the fight only for a couple of seconds. Once Flight kicked it, he was good as new, or actually better. Walk on Air makes for very crowded fights, as people tend to cluster in tight and walk "over" their friends. It encourages people to clump up and fight in tight as they have vertical space to fight in. Meanwhile, they're effectively immune to mobility kills. This is to say nothing of the effects on travel.

- The PCs took home 6 xp each: 4 for loot, 2 for the additional two sessions it took to resolve the fight. The take-home of loot, minus a few magic items they kept, was around $48K each. Rogar has joined at a very good time . . .

- They also took all twelve hands from the gith and had them taxidermied, at $100 each. They kept them to use to touch doors that won't open to their own hands.

DF Pre-summary

We finished our big fray today in DF Felltower.

- dozens of thorkers were slain

- the "gith" were repelled and the field held

- magic was critically failed

- and crits rolled on endlessly for a brief, but very destructive, span of time.

Full details tomorrow.