Tweaked Retribution spell for DF

During the Dungeon Fantasy Kickstarter, Pee Kitty, aka the Assistant Line Editor for GURPS, put up a new spell for clerics, called Retribution. You can see it here:

New Spell: Retribution

You can see in the comments that I came down pretty hard on the idea of using it in my games. I can see a lot of potential abuses. And even making clear it's injury, not damage, that is reflected, it would still be extraordinarily useful against "glass cannon" type monsters (attacking kills themselves), those with Cosmic Ignores DR attacks (same), and especially against high-damage boss monsters (suddenly, they are vulnerable to being attacked and from attacking). The last one would have very strong negative effects on my game.

It took about five minutes after that went up for one of my players to say, "We need Brother Ike to learn this!" With two berserkers in the group, and some low-DR types and free access to zombies, skeletons, created servants, etc. this spell would be a fantastic benefit to the group. It's easy to learn (PI being so useful in and of itself that it's not an obstacle), cheap to cast and maintain (3/1, which is 2/0 with skill 15), combat-fast to cast (3 seconds, much like the offensive spells generally I see used and buffs like Great Haste) - all of which compound the concerns I had.

As I put it to my players:

"Would you guys fight The Lord of Spite without putting this on everyone? No, right? How about the orcs? Might not matter, but may as well? The dragon? The "behir"? Stirges? (low HP, always seem to cause damage to you guys)?
ANYONE?"

Equally, though, it would be a fantastic detriment to the group. People already seek to maximize their defenses at all costs, and then (and only then) increase offensive firepower. If there is a potential that striking foes who hang around clerics means you might take your injury back, you really are encouraged to ensure you can't reasonably hurt yourself on the first strike and then open up with the followups. Easiest way to do that is lower damage strikes and more HP in case you don't pull the blow enough.

And with two berserkers in the group, one of who regularly gets pasted for a lot of damage, this would be an automatic buff for them. And a repeated one - first guy striking the naked screaming guy hurts himself, and then 2-3 seconds later it happens again, and again.

So we said no to it.

One of my players liked it, but then it turned out he thought it was caster-only.

And that is a tweak I think I like.

Retribution

As written, except the spell is caster-only.


. . . and, done. I might use that. In order to have this matter, the cleric has to get injured. Now, to paraphrase the wise man Malak, "It's bad luck to kill an evil high priest." It's spending 1 character point you can use elsewhere and accepting a -1 to your other castings to make sure if your cleric gets hit the attacker will take injury if you do.

If that's too restrictive, you can limit it a bit less:

- only subjects with Power Investiture or Holiness. (Clerics can shield other clerics and Holy Warriors)

- only living subjects. (No zombies, no doors, no Created Warriors)

- only living, willing subjects. (No orcs forced into your service, no rats)

- Only those with a specific subset of disadvantages that apply to your Holy Might powers (Must have one of, say, Honestly, Disciplines of Faith, Sense of Duty (Co-Religionists), etc.)

Or you can tweak any of the costs and duration and time to cast:

- Cost: 3/2.

- Time to Cast: 5 seconds.

- Duration: 10 seconds.

Me, I like caster-only. Evil clerics can be tricky to attack because, hey, the demons and Chaos Gods and Elder Things they serve might smite you back. Hitting the good cleric might be the last thing anyone does (and the good cleric baring his chest to the vampire might be faith in his god's Retribution, not self-sacrifice.) Then it's a cool spell, not the automatic buff for berserkers and the source of "what can we get the dragon to breathe on so it kills itself?" tactics.