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Wednesday, September 26, 2018

Spells "On" Control on Bless

So dripton has a very interesting approach to the Bless spell.

As you can see in this summary, they treat it as an ongoing spell.

So, you have put a Bless spell on each of your five companions? That's a -5 to cast additional spells. That's a big penalty to eat up, especially since Bless isn't something you can casually cancel. You're taking a solid, lasting hit for keeping your friends protected.

I'm still not sure I'd use the spell - my experience with it has led me to ban it in my current game - but it does make it a lot harder to abuse!

7 comments:

  1. It's that way in DFRPG RAW, actually. I don't remember RAW GURPS ... (looks) it doesn't say.

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    1. Magic calls it a Regular spell with a Duration that is not Instant, so by RAW... yeah, dripton's way is legit.

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    2. http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/faq/FAQ4-4.html

      4.1.2 specifically calls out Bless as one of the types of spells that do not count as spells on

      It is very much one of the sources of my irritation with DFRPG they got so nerf happy with bless

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    3. DFRPG clearly sides with dripton; the Bless spell calls it out as a "spell on." For DF, the GURPS FAQ ruling would stand, but I think the approach of applying it broadly is the right way to go for DF. It's far to easy to abuse, and too much of an easy way to get a bonus to everything for everyone for very little, with a fool-proof way to undo bad effects as well.

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    4. Yeah, as I said it's one of my points of irritation with DFRPG is they got so nerf happy with the spell

      I hardly think it's a spell that leads to much abuse, I mean, it very clearly does what it says it does, cast it on all your friends is pretty much the point of it in GURPS, it's not something weird like using enlarge object on a flower pot to crush a city

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    5. I mean, I COULD see some attempt to abuse it 'I bless Fondue and then Fondue crashes a cart full of explosive fireball potions into the gate'. But I haven't seen it, people seem happy to collect the +1 on their friends and the safety net.

      If I was going to fix it to curb abuse some kind of 'The Good God helps those who help themselves' clause which invalidates bless if they do something stupidly suicidal with it

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    6. I never even went to "avoid death from a kamikaze attack" as an abuse. It's "everyone gets a +1 to everything, and if they blow a roll and the consequences aren't good, the bad roll never happened." That's a critical reduction in risk in a game where taking that risk is the main point of fun for me.

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