Felltower Generic NPC: Guard

This is the standard "guard" NPC that PCs hire or sometimes fight. This is built off of the 62-point Guard template in Dungeon Fantasy 15: Henchmen.

Generic Guard

Available for hire, or to fight the PCs as they delve!

ST 12 HP 12 Speed 5.75
DX 11 Will 10 Move 4
IQ 10 Per 10
HT 12 FP 12
Dodge 7 Parry 9+DB 2 Block 11

Broadsword (13): 1d+3 cutting, 1d+1 impaling, Reach 1.
Large Knife (11): 1d cut, or 1d-1 impaling, Reach C, 1.

Traits: Bully; Code of Honor (Soldier's); High Pain Threshold; Overconfidence (12); Sense of Duty (Companions).

Skills: Armoury (Melee Weapons)-9; Brawling-11; Broadsword-13; Carousing-12; Climbing-10; Knife-11; Shield-12; Stealth-10; Wrestling-10.

Equipment: Heavy Leather Armor Suit (with face protection); Cheap Broadsword; Large Knife; Medium Shield; Personal Basics; Pouch; Wineskin (1 quart capacity).

Notes: For a bandit type, repace Code of Honor (Soldier's) and Sese of Duty (Companions) with Greed. Loadout puts the guard at Light encumbrance with an empty pouch and wineskin, medium with just about any load at all.



Note they lack - deliberately - empty carrying sacks, backpacks, etc. This is a design choice by the GM to make it harder to turn "hired fighters" into "loot carriers." That's a laborer's job. Armor is from DFRPG, not GURPS Basic Set.

Acrobatic Dodge & Criticals?

In our last game, one of the PCs attempted an Acrobatic Dodge (Exploints, p. 48, and Campaigns, p. B375). He rolled an 18 on his Acrobatics roll.

What happens?

The player agued, nothing except a -2. An 18 is a failure, and a failure is a -2 to Dodge. It says that explicitly in both referenced rules.

I allowed that, but I'm still not convinced.

The argument in favor of the player's position is that the rule doesn't specify anything about a critical success or critical failure, so therefore they don't have any special effect.

But does the lack of a specific result for a critical failure overrule this basic, underlying rule for making skill rolls? Success Rolls (Exploits, p. 5-7, Campaigns p. B343-348) calls out what constitutes a critical success or critical failure. Does the lack of a specific result for critcial success or failure mean there are no critical successes or critical failures?

For my game, I am willing but not terribly happy to have Acrobatics rolls for Acrobatic Dodge insert the concept of "only skill rolls with specified critical results have criticals" into the game. I would restrict it only to rolls in this case. Largely, though, I'm not sure I like the implications . . . but for DF Felltower, I'll go with it and say it's only for this case and the related case of Aerobatics.

How to use hirelings to boost a Felltower Party: GM's View

This is a GM's view of a useful way to use hirelings in DF Felltower. I'm focusing especially 62-point hirelings, since they're pretty much available in large amounts in a way that 125 point ones are not. Expected additional reading: What are Hirelings Good For?


Repeat after me: Hirelings are Not PCs

One of the biggest issues I see is expecting too much of hirelings. I've heard of walls of polearm-armed NPCs keeping the enemy back, archers or crossbowmen keeping the enemy pinned down (I think that's much more a modern rapid-fire firearms idea, anyway) or "sniping," backstabbing foes, etc.

The thing is, 62-point hirelings are boderline fodder or actually fodder vs. 250 point delvers, depending on how efficiently built for combat they are. Against 300 point delvers, they're fodder. Why is that important? Because they're at best better than 1:1 equal with fodder, but more likely 1:1 equal with fodder. They aren't 1:1 equal against worthy opponents. If orcs are fodder, ogres are worthy. If large spiders are fodder, giant spiders are worthy. If goblins are fodder, trolls are worthy. Is your 62-point hireling equal to an ogre or a giant spider or a troll? No.

So don't expect them to accomplish anything more in combat than an equal number of fodder opponents.

So what are they good for?

Largely, freeing up PCs to do PC things.

Hirelings can be best used in Felltower, in my opinion, to do the following:

- Covering the flanks. In a place like Felltower, this is largely acting as a rear-guard tripwire, and watching crossing hallways to keep the PCs from being surprised - or at least reduce the odds of that. This also slows down any attackers until the PCs can turn around on them and engage. It's unlikely they'd win a fight, but they can provide valuable assistance just by starting the fight before the threat reaches the PCs.

Guards are your template of choice for this situation.

- Carrying the loot and the bodies. Way too often, the PCs depend on PCs to carry loot, carry out unconcious buddies, and carry out the slain. Worse, it's often getting a badly wounded PC concious despite being at negative HP and just hoping they can limp to safety. Having some NPCs - especially those designed to do so - carry stuff is helpful. Laborers are rarely considered because people assume that arms-carrying mercenaries are happy to stop being warriors and start being laborers. They might tolerate it, even willingly do it thanks to high Loyalty, but a guy with ST 12 and armor and weapons and a shield has less carrying capacity than a lightly-clad lightly-armed laborer with ST 13 and Lifting ST 2.

- Junk Work. Guarding the camp probably takes an actual Guard, while minding the rations and the left-behind loot is a good job for Servants. But when a job needs doing, and the sessions devolves into "I don't want to discuss how we do (X or Y or Z) for 10 minutes" the answer probably is a cheap NPC doing it, instead. Leaving NPCs behind policing up the battlefield, guarded by a few guards, is risky and has drawbacks, but if you need the PCs immediately in another battle, at least it's getting done somehow. Having an NPC to routinely guard camp spares the 10 minutes spent discussing how you'll conceal your stuff left outside the dungeon. And so on.

The rest of the potential uses? Makeweight combatants, augmenting the front lines, etc.? Generally a bit of a waste in a high-lethality situation like Felltower itself. They're useful when you need to cover lots of angles of attack and slow down the enemy, but they aren't going to win you a fight. They can reduce the cost of such a fight, and let the PCs focus on what they need to focus on.

In other words, let the PCs do their jobs, but have NPCs be your eyes, ears, and hands for the flanks, rear, and loot. Bringing your own fodder to the main battle is good, but better is preventing the enemy from flanking you because your NPCs block the corridor for a time. Having some crossbowmen shoot at the enemy (and all the time that takes in actual play for the GM resolving it!) is nice, but nicer is having your Scout shoot at the enemy while your fodder prevents the enemy from charging straight in. Having your knights and barbarians fight instead of carrying your unconcious buddies and the loot sure beats anything else.

Pro Tips:

Have the Leader PC do the Hiring. Loyalty is set based on the reaction roll of the hiring PC; this PC should also be the leader. "We tell them to listen to any of us" sounds great, but in a fight, who do they turn to? Everyone? Anyone? "Listen to any of us" quickly becomes "Do whatever seems useful to someone at the moment." Better they have a set leader, who then delegates authority in non-combat situations.

Have a good mix. Don't just hire 10 laborers or 10 guards or 10 torch bearers. Get a mix depending on what you actually need.

Tell the GM ahead of time. If the GM is sitting down to play, the GM won't have so much time to generate NPCs and load in tokens and give them names and so on. VTT is slower on the setup than physical play.


Just my opinion. I could be wrong, but it's what I see from my side of the screen.

Friday Roundup 10/25/2024

Links for Friday.

- There is an article discussing a book that lets you build classes for B/X D&D.

Having fun with BX Options: Class Builder

There was a dragon magazine article that did exactly this, also with B/X, in Dragon #109, by Paul Montgomery Crabaugh. I wonder how much this matches up with that previous work?

- Undead Handmines. Cute.

- A bit of a look at AD&D's STR scores and bonuses.

DFRPG Monsters 2 sale

Warehouse 23 is doing a sale . . . on mostly Halloween-themed things.

One of them is DFRPG Monsters 2. 23% off.

Oddly, though, GURPS Zombies is not on sale. Huh. Too bad, it's a keeper! I'd use the horde rules for zombies for my DF game, but my players refuse to defeat foes, they want to destroy each and every single one of them. So no point in figuring out what a crowd of critters is like and what is enough to defeat it if I then I have to deal with each one individually anyway. But it's a great supplement. It's just oddly not on sale in an October game sale.

VTT Gripes

Foundry & Forge were a problem in our last game session.

We had some of the usual - slowdowns, occasional drops and hangups, etc. The usual network issues. That's typical.

- There has been a change since a few sessions back with dragging and dropping damage onto a token. The bounding boxes seem to be too large - if I drop damage onto a character, the nearby tokens also get put up as options. That's useless but not a problem when it's on, say, Hannari Ironhand, Chop, and Percy. It is when it is on Gnoll, Gnoll, or Gnoll.

In order to do damage to specific tokens with area-effect spells, I had to resort to dragging them one by one out of the fight, applying damage, and then putting them back - and then making sure their facing was correct.

This took a long time. It literally took 10 minutes (12:51 to 1:01 pm) to inflict damage from one explosive spell thrown into a packed field of about 8 foes. With better damage dropping, it could have taken 2 minutes, if not more like 1 (if I typed fast enough.)

- GCS/mook generator issues abound. DR doesn't always import well. Some stats are missing sometimes. I usually ffind out when I need them that, say, DR is 0 on the vitals of a golem. That slows me down because I have to generate a mook, then import it, then check it line by line. It would be vastly easier if I could just do the line by line in the first place because the mook generator imports poorly at best.

- I can't seem to figure out why the icon facing always chooses something inappropriate. You can drag your icon one by one by one along the map, and the facing it chooses will vary according to a pattern we can't discern. It would be much better if you moved hex by hex and had facing change as you faced into it by default, or not move at all by default, and then display the actual move when you click to end the movement.

- We can't have tokens cover more than one hex without just being bigger overall. I've had to essentially make falling prone a one-hex thing, and big monsters into one-hex foes. It's annoying at best - I've had to essentially change the rules so I don't have to deal with it.

Those things really slow us down in play.

Here are a few things I'd really like:

- Ability to put GM-view-only status effects down. I should be able to mark who has a Missile Shield or is poisoned or whatever without my players knowing automatically.

This is especially true with Reeling, which sometimes comes on for monsters that cannot suffer from Reeling. That's annoying. I need to figure out how to turn that off for certain NPCs without turning it off for everyone.

- droppable smoke or other vision-blocking effects.

- Actual item tokens I can put down.

- An actual, official, licenses, SJG-backed VTT package for GURPS. A person can dream, I guess.

Rules & Rulings from DF Session 199

Here are some rules and rulings from last session.

"15: You strain your shoulder!"

Ah, the most hated of all critical miss results.

My players comment? "There should be a clerical way to speed up the healing of the 30 minute cripple from the Critical Miss Table." I agree; it's Instant Restoration. I'm sure they meant cheaper, faster, and easier. But no, it's a cripple, but instead of 1d weeks it's 30 minutes; you can speed it up to instant with magic or you can wait. Just like a 1d week break isn't cheaper to heal if you roll a 1 instead of a 6, it's not cheaper if you only have 30 minutes to wait or 1 week. I don't think anyone will like that ruling but it's consistent.

Is Lightning's Stun too powerful?

Lightning stuns with a -1 per 2 injury. It's been suggested that it should be weaker. I think it's fair on the initial stun, but I do think my players are right - it probably should be an unmodified HT roll to recover from stun. I think that's what DFRPG Spells intends, too - so we can do that.

Does the DX penalty for fire affect you if your DR is too high to get hurt?

I said yes. DFRPG Exploits, p. 68, says that the DX penalty doesn't affect you if the injury can't hurt you. My players read this as "If the damage can penetrate your DR" and I read it as "If the fire could harm you." It says injury, not damage . . . my logic is that yes, your DR protects, but fire that could hurt you is distracting. If you can't be hurt by the flame - immunity or native DR vs. fire, say - it doesn't distract you if you have clothes on fire.

What if you have enough natural DR to not get hurt, asked someone running dwarf who'll probably try to get DR 5 for this purpose . . . still no. I just don't see it, given the DR that PCs can purchase. Last thing I need is someone with a barbarian's DR ignoring being on fire because he's got cinematic DR.

Just be grateful I didn't have the 3+ fire damage detonate alchemists fire like the rules says it does. But I know, you have it ready to Fast-Draw but otherwise completely covered from any possible damage or breakage.

Rapid Strike and Step

Just for the record, we don't allow you to Rapid Strike and split the attacks on either side of your Step. You can Step and then Attack with a Rapid Strike, or Attack with a Rapid Strike and then Step, but not split it up. Or Step, Attack, Step with two steps. You get me. No splitting the attack.

With Extra Attack you can. It's part of why it costs 25 points.

And, for what it's worth, I still hate the +4 for targeting a hex and Retreat.

GURPS DF Session 199, Brotherhood Complex 6 - Gnolls & Doors, Part II

This is a continuation of the previous session.

Real Date: 10/20/2024
Game Date: 9/18/2024

Weather: Sunny, warm.

Characters
Chop, human cleric (301 points)
     Harold, human guard
     Samual, human guard
Duncan Tesadic, human wizard (300 points)
Hannari Ironhand, dwarf martial artist (316 points)
Thor Halfskepna, human knight (306 points)
Vladimir Luchnick, dwarf martial artist (266 points)

We started off in the middle of a fight, with the PCs attempting to get out of a dead-end corridor and move to the exit of the dungeon, without being 100% agreed on where that was.

Thor moved forward down the hallway, engaging gnolls and cultist guards - the gnolls with shields, morningstars, and leather armor, the guards cheap broadswords and shields and leather armor. The guards were quite skilled, but with suspect morale and no leaders on hand; the gnolls tough and hard to kill but not terribly skilled warriors. Behind them were a handful of burgendy-robed wizard cultists hurling missiles spells.

Hanari opened up the fight with a Magebane grenade targeting two cultist wizards a yard apart from one another, but he missed by 1 (probably because he was partly on fire, for -2 DX) and only caught one in the radius, making him unable to cast wizardly spells for an hour. He let out some incoherent yelling and ran off.

Meanwhile, Chop began to move up to the fray, slowly (he's slow), and Duncan charged up an Explosive Lightning upon hearing what was being faced. Vlad continued to shoot arrows into the fray, pretty much trying to kill anything next to Thor. That lead to a scolding from Thor, who felt he could kill everything next to him, but Vlad was choosing his best target and trying to clear Thor's running route to the wizards.

The enemy, meanwhile, had pretty much no plan except to charge. They did that, with even more gnolls and cultist guards rushing up. The gnolls poured around the northern part of the hallway, the guards moved up southern part of the same hall. The wizards in the back readied more spells. The two hirelings with the PCs rolled out their burning clothes and stood up, but one and then the other fell unconscious.

Duncan hurled an large Explosive Lightning spell into the oncoming mass of gnolls and guards, stunning a number of them and wounding a few very badly. Hanari continued hurling consumables; he threw a smoke nageteppo to block off the line of sight of one of the wizards - he can throw pretty far with Throwing Art. He followed it soon after with a second nageteppo, and a Dragonstooth Warrior (from the Olympus adventurers) right next to one of the wizards, just as Thor burst into their main line. Vlad kept shooting.

The opposing wizards fled back through the smoke as Thor and the Dragonstooth Warrior (DW from now on) engaged. A few seconds later, one of them hurled a large Explosive Acid Ball through the smoke and - to his luck but not his allies - smacked a guard in front of Thor in the back. Boom. 19 Corrosion damage later, the field was in much worse shape, as was Thor's poor armor (now -3 DR on the front, -1 DR on the back). The cultists and gnolls were mauled, though, and the DW was disintigrated. Hanari helped with a Demon's Brew grenade. Vlad clipped Chop with a broadhead while shooting past him.

As the PCs moved up a little, and Vlad backed off even further, a wizard and a few cultist guards came around the side from a corridor leading to the north. Hananri threw down a couple of DWs to cover that flank, and then hurled a full-metal meteoric kama into the wizard, wounding him despite his Missile Shield. Then suddenly an unseen door the south opened up and two plate-clad culists stepped out.

Vlad immediately began to pincushion one of them, who carried a maul, wounding him over and over again. The other rushed north to engage the DWs, and to stay out of the line of shot.

Duncan turned invisible again, as Chop moved up and started to use Command to get his foes to do things like Drop Prone and Attack Yourself (it's a very powerful spell, as written in DFRPG Spells). That slowed them down. Hanari threw a few more DWs to the north, but the other plate-armored guy had a dueling halberd and just chopped them down as the other cultists helped. The DWs were just too overwhelmed as they appeared one after another, and where immediately engaged from multiple sides. They did wound two of the cultists and slow them down from reaching the casters.

Meanwhile, Thor chopped up a bunch of the enemy with his long knife - he had that out instead of his magical longsword (I think it's a longsword). Hanari spiked a Liquid Ice grenade into the halberdier, hurting him a bit, and then engaged in melee. Unfortunately he crippled his own arm on a critical miss.

By now, a few of the less enthusiastic cultists began to back off. The gnolls kept fighting, and mostly died, here and there hitting Thor but his armor was too much (IIRC it was base 12 or 14, depending on the spot). The PCs mostly were mopping up the enemy around now - Vlad and Chop, with bow and Command spells, kept the halberdier from getting anything done before he was down. Same with a cultist who tried to back off - Chop and Vlad and Hanari finished him.

As the smoke cleared from the nageteppo, Thor chased down the fleeing enemy (Impulsive and Overconfident) and plowed one cultist down from behind, knocking him down and cold. Sadly, as he moved after a wizard cultist, he was clipped by a nearby Explosive Stone Missile spell, wounded despite diving prone, and fell unconscious.

The enemy still ran, though, as the PCs mopped up the last of the guys who'd come around the sides. Duncan had moved the long way around the flank by another corridor and clipped the kama-wounded cultist with an Explosive Lightning spell and wounded him, before heading back. Hanari would eventually spike that cultist in the back, finding him motionless on the floor, while recovering his thrown kama.

At this point, it seemed clear that the PCs needed to drag Thor out of danger and take advantage of the lull. But it took a while for them to get near Thor, and multiple castings of Awaken to get him awake and Major Healing to keep him up. Vlad provided some covering arrows at the cultist wizards way down the hallway, crouching in the dark - behind a row of five plate-armored figures with hammers and shields. They could see the PCs from their lightstones, and Vlad could see them with Dark Vision. The PCs zig-zagged to avoid a few more missile spells, and Vlad rolled a 4 on one shot and knocked down a wizard cultist despite his Missile Shield . . . and knocked him out. He dropped an acid ball and it exploded all over his buddies and him, and a few of the plate-armored guys. But then Vlad decided that the plate-armored guys were a good target, and put two arrows into one.

It blocked them both, and then all five of them charged. And fast - faster than any PC except Vlad and Hanari. The PCs frantically started to get up to run. Hanari couldn't resist his dwarven greed and went to grab some swords as loot. Meanwhile, the plate guys ran up - they were mechanical knights. The PCs started to leave. Hanari gave Chop a Haste spellstone, and they all headed to the exit. Duncan tossed Explosive Lightning and hit a few of the knights, but it didn't stop them. A few started to make loud grinding noises and periodically halt. Thor got his sword out and put one down to one knee, but then backed off. Eventually the PCs got Flight cast on enough of them to fly faster than the knights could run, and ran and flew for it.

They managed to get to the surface, grab their stashed food and triger pelt, and run out of the dungoen. The knights didn't pursue.

After a brief rest, they immediately headed for Stericskburg, three days away.


Notes:

Well, that ended pretty well given how it looked last session. Just goes to show that high-powered delvers (and don't tell me 300 point guys aren't) vs. mooks and worthy foes back by wizards isn't as lopsided as it can look. That's especially true when both sides had very suspect tactical coordination. The enemy lacked any real plan others than "Charge!" (Aka, "Get her, Ray?") and the PCs can match that level of tactical subtlety.

I'm missing some details, especially at the end - it was a confused escape. But I did my best to remember what happened in what order.

Hannari used Throwing Art like crazy this session - throwing summonables, Demon's Brew, Liquid Ice, Magebane, Nageteppo, and more. Oddly, he wasn't using his Wand of Fireballs because 4d isn't sufficient damage, but used a few 1d and 2d throwables instead. I understand the circumstances that made them a good choice, but I'd have thought the wand - average damage enough to ignite a clothing-wearing foe completely - would have seen more use.

The Dragonstooth Warriors didn't do quite as well, despite this being a potentially good fight for them. Their problems were threefold. One, they take a full second to generate and act, so if they're next to an enemy, they can get hammered before they can put in any offense. Second, Hannari threw them right next to the enemy, so they disrupted the enemy advance but let them vulnerable to the first bit. Third, they were mostly fighting one by one each time against multiple foes. They're very effective fighters, but they're vulnerable to being swamped like any other fighters, and don't have the DR to tough it out. They still had a very positive effect. Note for myself for next time - I may have to make summonable things work like a spellstone, instead - activate it, and then the being appears in an open hex next to you that you designate. Throwable seems fine, but from a tactical perspective, they tend to work like paratroops - disruptive and surprising, but extremely vulnerable to immediate counterattack, and cost more than they get you. This isn't a rule change - I just am thinking of putting in less grenade-like, hurlable ally-summoning items.

Don't Poke the Bear - I honestly expected, having chased off the wizards and some of the cultists, the PCs would have time to do some quick looting (or at least to drag some bodies away for later looting, going the longer way around) But I didn't factor in on Vlad. The cultist wizards were depleted but not empty, and wanted to try to snipe at the PCs as they advanced (or fled, in this case) . . . but the mechanical knights weren't going to advance. You know, until Vlad started to shoot at them because - and I can't stress this enough - he wanted to make sure they weren't going to do anything. They weren't doing anything, and then he shot one, and then they did. Oops. I think he shot his way out of MVP right there.

The players did float the idea of staying nearby - fight the enemy, give them 2 weeks to recover, and then come back? Bad idea. But I put it very simply - if you camp nearby, we resume play next time as soon as they're ready to go back in or when the cultists rally up and find their camp and attack. If you go back to town, you're safe. They chose safe; probably a wise move. They'll likely go back again soon, since they have a better idea of what to do here than in Felltower at the moment.

The PCs did leave behind two fallen NPCs - Harold and Samual. They both fell after rolling out the flames on them and then standing up . . . but neither was able to stay concious after that. They fell. Since the VTT marks the fallen with blood splatters or skulls, everyone assumed they were dead. I'm not sure why - it's very hard in GURPS to go from concious to dead without using the bleeding rules, so if they just dropped on their own they're probably alive at the moment. I guess the players used the same logic that they use for a fraction-of-a-second battlefield analysis of "Is that guy over there dead or unconscious?", which I never answer straight. "He's decapitated." or "He's not moving." Because how do you tell at a glance that fast? In any case, they left two fallen behind.

XP was 2 xp each for everyone but Vlad for 20% of their loot threshold, and Vlad 4 xp for full loot, and MVP was Hannari IIRC for throwing stuff around like a maniac.

I have a whole complaint post about the VTT for tomorro or the day after. I won't muddy this one with it, but I was genuinely angry a few times at effect of some changes and some ongoing issues.

Brotherhood Complex pre-summary

We finished the split-session delve into the Brotherhood Complex today.

Short version?

The PCs fought their way out of a large mob of foes, cutting most of them down and driving some off, before provoking even more enemies and needing to flee. They escaped mostly with their lives . . . but in an entertaining session.

Full summary tomorrow.

Random Thoughts & Links for 10/18/2024

- D4 Caltrops gives magic axes some love.

- Not so much gaming time this week of any kind. I'm finishing a very long, very dense military history book on top of a lot of non-gaming reading and video review, so no video games or Revolt on Antares or anything to report there.

- I did get a little cleanup done on the Brotherhood Complex. It's done and just sitting around ready to play, so all that's left is the PCs fighting it out and possible surviving a close-in fight.

- This shouldn't be a side note, but another of my friend Ryan V's gamers passed away . . . age 48. Young to go, but I gather he'd suffered some issues from his younger days that just never really let go. I only played with Lou a few times, but they were fun times. I remember scaring the living hell out of him with something I did in game that was pretty intimidating. Which is funny, because Lou was a big, strong dude but had this deer-in-the-headlights look at whatever the hell I did. I remember his reaction far more than I remember anything about the game itself. Probably Armageddon, I played that the most with that group. Sorry for that Lou, but it's a pretty funny memory. Maybe my buddies Jon or Don remember what the hell I did that provoked that look.

Really sad to hear of a friend passing even if I didn't know him as well as I could have.

GURPS Magic clarification: Fire Cloud & Starting Fires

This clarification is for DF Felltower.

Add the following sentence to the end of the spell description:

"Damage from Fire Cloud is treated normally for setting fires."

In other words, a level 3+ Fire Cloud will partially light up clothes, etc. per the usual GURPS rules (p. B434 or DFRPG Exploits, p. 68), assuming a full turn spent in the area of the spell. It takes a level 6 Fire Cloud (and thus Magery 6*) to do that to anything that passes through the area effect. The note about lighting the easily ignited happens if the subject spends any part of a turn in a Fire Cloud area effect, regardless of the intensity of the damage inflicted - even a 1-point Fire Cloud is sufficient.


* We always allow all spells to cap at the level Magery if it exceeds the listed spell maximum.

Who Gets the Magic Item You Found? - Addenda

This is related to Who Gets the Magic Item You Found?

Who is actually going to use it?

Another option for handing out magic items is simply, who will actually use it? This approach hands off items - especially charged or consumable items, although not always - to the person most likely to actually use it. Yes, the high-DX Thief might actually be the best person to give a grenade-type potion to, but if the Thief isn't ever going to be ready to throw it, it's not a great choice. The wizard might be the most likely to use a wand, even if giving it to another PC means you have multiple sources of magical attack. The cleric might benefit the most from an undead-turning item, but if the cleric will generally end up healing and not turning, giving it to someone else might be a better solution. Somethings this isn't template or character based, but player based - some players are more likely to hold on to items until they really need it, others to use it whever it seems like a good choice. Conversely, you might keep certain items away from certain PCs or players because they're unlikely to use it well - the guy who insists on using his new-fangled Wand of Fireballs every fight, or who tosses back rare potions just to get to use them up. This approach chooses actually basic utility over maximal utility, either chosen to avoid waste or avoid lack of use.

Finders, Keepers

Even in a cooperative game, sometimes the person who gets it is the person who finds it. Or the group that finds in. In a rotating cast of PCs game, a delve might leave out the dwarf fighter because that player is busy on game day, only to find dwarf-sized magic armor . . . and sell it, trade it, or give it to some dwarf NPC because the PC wasn't around to earn it. You may have to have some part in the finding to have any part of the keeping.



Any I missed, in this post or the previous one?

My Modified Mook Rule & Hard to Subdue

I use a modified mook rule, as discussed in these two posts:

My Modified DF Mook Rule
Reflections on my Modified Mook rule in play

I still use these in play, although they don't come up as often as you'd probably expect; unsure of what foe is a mook or not, PCs generally fight as if everyone is a potential boss monster and go for random hit locations hoping for a cripple or lucky vitals/neck/skull shot, or "aim for the hit points" and try to just force the foe down to -5xHP as fast as possible. In effect, going for the surety of eventual death but skipping the possible quick knockout by forcing lots of rolls, penalized or otherwise. But still, they are there.

I am considering modifying the effect of Hard to Subdue, however.

Instead of an off/on switch for the auto-fail of HT rolls, each level of Hard to Subdue pushes the auto-fail threshold down 1xHP.

So a mook auto-fails at 0 HP or below.

One with Hard to Subdue 1 auto-fails at -1xHP or below.

Hard to Subdue 2 fails at -2xHP or below.

Etc. Only 4 levels matter as -5xHP is automatic death without certain advantages - none of which you'd find on something that counts as a mook!


This can allow Hard to Subdue to have its normal effect, but not act as such a big swing between automatic failure and a tough fight - especially since HT 12 is pretty common on the kind of foes that have Hard to Subdue 1+, and HT 13 is likely to keep a foe up for a long, long time.


I'm not sure if I'll do this, but I'm leaning toward it pretty heavily.

A "Dungeons & Dragons" Adventure - Comic Book Back Cover Ad

On the back of one of my comics - ROM: Spaceknight issue #28, March 1982, I found this advertisement for Dungeons & Dragons drawn by Bill Willingham.

As always, these are pretty goofy. Mysterious powers, an easily-scared (and easily-comforted) elf, a dragon-scaring sword, not a lot accomplished. At least there is a dungeon and a dragon.

The great sword Naril indeed. Just bite him, dragon, he's got like AC 4. And nothing more comforting after a red dragon nearly roasts you than relaxing by a warm fire, eh?

Felltower & Hiring Henchmen - Making Skill beat IQ

This post, and rules change, is heavily inspired by comments by Douglas Cole. His comment was that knights - with Born War Leader - should be better at recruiting hirelings - than the cleric, whose IQ beats the knight's Born War Leader-improved Leadership skill. I was immediately swayed by this, but I didn't love the rough proposed suggestion of making BWL or Leadership work better. I think the issue is that IQ is too broadly effective.

Here is my proposed solution. This is a change to Where Did You Find This Guy?, GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 15: Henchmen, p. 29.

The base roll for finding a henchmen is IQ-3, instead of IQ. Skill rolls are unmodified.

As a secondary note, Loyalty rolls are made based on the hiring character. To quote DF15, p. 30:

"Make a reaction roll when a hireling first signs up. Apply the usual reaction modifiers of the hirer, who may be a PC or an NPC companion, and record the result. This number is effectively a new stat for hirelings: Loyalty."

So if the cleric (IQ 14) or wizard (IQ 15) goes out and hires a squire or killer, the roll for Loyalty is 3d6 plus or minus the net reaction modifier of the cleric or wizard. If the Knight (IQ 10) with Born War Leader 2 hires the same squire or killer, the roll gains a +2 for Born War Leader. Who they nominally are commanded by or working for doesn't matter, the actual hiring character matters.

Notes:

Why didn't I just do this when I wrote it? Well, I actually didn't write that section, that I recall. I believe it was purely Sean Punch, and it draws on GURPS Basic Set.

With this change and clarification, it should be clear that the best person for the job will almost always be the template closest to the specialty.

You can always keep the base IQ roll, give a bonus to Loyalty for higher skill - each level above IQ is worth +1. So a knight with Born War Leader 2, IQ 10, and Leadership-13 has a net +3 (+1 for Leadership at IQ+1, +2 for BWL 2, not double-counting BWL) on Loyalty. Compare that with a cleric with IQ 14 gaining a Loyalty bonus of +0. Or do both.

For Felltower, I chose to go with the IQ penalty, but I'm open to persuasion - and yes, I do roll Loyalty whenever danger arises or there is a need for some roll for bravery or loyalty. I just like the idea that specialists - and yes, Merchant works across the board - do better finding people than someone who is just intelligent.

Random Links for 10/4/2024

It's Friday, time for stuff that doesn't warrant a whole post.

- Next game is 10/20. Ugh. We're monthly. I'll have to see if there is a way to play more often.

- Sorting through my comic collection, I realized I like sci fi/supers crossovers a lot - lots of Dreadstar, Silver Surfer, Guardians of the Galaxy, some later Thor when he's dealing with the Sentinels, etc. in my collection. Well, that and liking certain writers a lot (Starlin and Hama especially).

- Also sorting through it, I'm reminded how much I think the FASERIP system of Marvel Super Heroes did an excellent job of representing four color superheroes. We never got a campaign going because Joe M. would only play Silver Surfer and Jack, Jason, Fred, Rob, and everyone else wouldn't play anyone except Wolverine. Well, maybe Jack would have settled for Spider-Man, but that's about it. Hard for young me to come up with a game to challenge a superteam of Silver Surfer and Wolverine and Spider-Man. Too bad chargen was garbage.

- I've been re-reading some GURPS rules and noted a few I think my players largely honor in the breach - like the penalties to HT rolls to avoid knockout* - and ones I ignore without intending to, like the delayed effects of poisons on SM-positive targets. I have an idea for the latter I kind of like, though, that will see a post next week.



* Which I think I originated in my article for GURPS 3e in Pyramid called ". . . And Stay Down!"

Return of my long-lost Car Wars countermix

Literally decades ago - probably almost 30 years ago now - I introduced a few of my gamers to Car Wars, Deluxe Edition. We played a game. Afterward, I left my whole countermix out on a table on top of the folded-up board from the Dungeon boardgame in the basement. Sometime later - the next day, maybe? - I went down to sort out my counters instead of having them all in one big pile.

They were gone. Nowhere to be found. I searched high and low, and found the Dungeon board on the table, but no counters. All gone.

I searched for quite a while, but assumed they'd been accidentally thrown out during some other cleanup in the basement.

So I literally replaced my entire collection to get a countermix. I found a Car Wars lot on Noble Knight and bought it. Deluxe Car Wars, Dueltrack, etc. I replaced a few map-and-counter supplements, too.

Flash forward to yesterday. I was cleaning out my comics collection, and one by one pulling bags from the comic long boxes and seeing what collection was in each. In one bag, along with a mix of comics, was a weird lumpy mass at the bottom of the oversized bag.

In it was my old countermix.

How it got there, I have no idea. Did someone in my family pour it into the bag and I didn't notice as I put comics in it?

We had cats. Was it possible one sat on the board, dumped the contents into the comics box and therefore the open bag? I used to keep my bagged comics right near my gaming table.

Did I put them away in that bag and complete forgot about it right away?

I have no idea.

But now, decades after my last game of DCW, I have two full countermixes. It's definitely my old countermix - I'd glued wrecks to the back of their unwrecked cars, colored a few favorite black and white counters with colored pencils, and otherwise customized things. And here it is.

Weird.

My replacement mix, sorted, and my old, unsorted mix:

Er, anyone for DCW-era Car Wars?