DF Felltower & DFD Thieves - first note

I posted this in a comment earlier, but it bears repeating in a post:

Until I affirmatively add something from Dungeon Fantasy Denizens: Thieves to DF Felltower, none of it is canon for our game.

This isn't a knock on DFD: Thieves. I just need to decide what to add based on our campaign. I was in the playtest, and I've skimmed the final draft, and I know that some of what is in there doesn't fit the flavor and history of DF Felltower.

Run & Hit clarifications

Here I'm answering some questions about the Run and Hit power-up from DF11, p. 12.

So I get +2 to damage?

Not exactly. You get +2 to Striking ST, which is usually +2 to cut and +1 to thrust. Important note: For the sake of simplicity I'll be running this as +2 swing and +1 thrust.* You also only get this if your previous turn was a Move. If you attacked during that move, you took Move and Attack and not Move. So no, you can't basically keep running around full-speed claiming a Run and Hit damage bonus every turn. If you want +2 Striking ST, you must do the following:

Turn 1: Move.
Turn 2: Move and Attack.

Can I Hit & Run?

Yes. It's a Move and Attack, and you can attack at any point along the move.

Do I still get the +2 to Striking ST if I Hit & Run?

Yes, if the previous turn was spent doing a Move.

Can I defend normally with my off-hand weapon?

Yes, but you cannot Retreat and you're at -2 to any DX-based roll, so Acrobatic Dodge might not work so well.

Did I miss any FAQs not answered by the wording of DF11, p. 12 or in DFD: Swashbucklers, p. 22.


* You will not get to "choose" to raise ST instead if you're at some breakpoint. Game is slow enough.

Felltower - Shirtless Savage DR

More than a few times, I have had cause to regret giving Shirtless Savage barbarians DR in the way that I did.



When it comes to large blows, it's fine as is.

When it comes to small ones, it's not.

Part of it is simple aesthetics:

Players very often gloat about how "harmless" foes are when they get hit. "It bites you with its diseased fangs for 7 cutting damage!" "I take 0 and laugh it off." Amusing once, not as amusing 15-20 times in a combat, say, as someone drops nearly nude into a mass of giant rats, snakes, spiders, etc. confident that their high HT and Fit will shrug off any lingering effects and knowing they'll take 0 HP of injury.

So it's clear it's optically and descriptively "injured, but it doesn't affect you" it's seen as "uninjured completely." People say things like "It just bounces off!" and forget to do things like roll against poison, or disease, and don't think they're bleeding.

Another part is mechanics:

It's actually very hard to kill a barbarian without corrosion or high-damage attacks. They ignore fire, as it really can't hurt them even if they're engulfed in flames. And although they should be taking damage from spells like Fire Cloud or Rain of Stones and just not being seriously hurt, instead they're totally unharmed. (And yes, will gripe about how their clothes burned off but won't suffer injury.) The slow effect of corrosion - it's less effective on a barbarian dipped in acid than on a stone golem dipped in the same - is odd.

Here is one way I might fix it in the future in Felltower:

- minimum damage of 1. For any damage type that has a minimum damage of 1 from a die roll (corrosion, cutting, impaling, etc. - basically not crushing), a barbarian with Savage Warrior DR will still take 1 injury from the attack if other DR is not sufficient to completely absorb the attack.

For example, Mild Bruce has 7 DR - DR 2 with Tough Skin, DR 5 with Savage Warrior DR. He walked into a Fire Cloud cast at 3 HP of damage per turn. He takes 7 - 3 = 0, but he only has 2 completely protective DR. He takes 3-2=1 injury. A cloud at 5 HP would inflict 5 - 7 - 0, but 5 - 2 = 3 so he'd take his minimum of 1 HP of injury. Against a 1-2 point cloud, he'd be unharmed.

- cost would drop. Right now, the DR has -60% in limitations. One that allows damage to bleed through automatically with a maximum of 1 HP, against most damage types, is probably -10% or -20%. I'll have to see what Sean "Dr. Kromm" Punch says about it, but I'm leaning to -10%. It's a big limitation on DR, as it can take you from "invulnerable" to "takes harm" even when you have sufficient DR. It does feel generous if it's -20%. A -70% total it's 1.5 points per, so 2, 3, 5, 7, 8 for 1-5 points. If I made it -20%, it would be -80% total and 1-5 points for 1-5 DR. Even with this limitation that feels very cheap. I think people would still max it out right away for 8 points, and not blink an eye. Perhaps such a limition on its own would be -20%, but only -10% when combined with Tough Skin (-20%), which covers some similar limitations.

In a retro-active case like this, I would just refund the points and allow them to be spent right away without any in-game justication or cost. So 2 points back on each barbarian to do . . . something . . . or just save, would work.

I'm not yet 100% commmitted to this, but I'm getting close. We'll see how my players feel about this implementation. It's a "nerfing" of barbarian DR, to be sure, because they got a lot for those extra 2 character points . . . but it'll better reflect an appropriate feel of what's happening. They'll be tough as nails, and barely hurt after a nasty scrape, but won't be swimming with the pirhannas and standing in alchemist's fire totally unharmed. They'll stop ignoring attacks entirely just because they know they can't really get hurt. It'll still hurt, 1 HP of injury at a time.

Mountain of Meat for GCA

I had a PC recently take Mountain of Meat, the perk from DFD: Barbarians.

I had to write it up myself for GCA. Here it is. Put this in a file ending .gdf or stick it in another GDF file.

***

Encoding=UTF-8
Version=1
* The version information above MUST be the first line of the data file,
* or the first line AFTER the 'Encoding=UTF-8' line, when that is included.

Description=User created data file containing custom traits saved from within GCA.
Program=4.0.423

[AUTHOR]
************************************************************************************************************************
*
* Peter V. Dell'Orto
* GURPS(R) Character Assistant Data File
* Created: March 30, 2020
* Requires GCA v4 or later!
*
************************************************************************************************************************
[PERKS]
************************************************************************************************************************
<Barbarian Perks>
Mountain of Meat, 1, page(DFDB18), noresync(yes),replacetags(in "ST:Hit Points" with "maxscore(ST:ST * 2)")


If you take off the perk, the limit is still ST * 2, but there you go. Don't give it unless you intend to keep it.

Tentative Cleric Variation List for DFD

So, in a putative DFD Clerics, what kind of things would you need?

Fighting Cleric - essentially, a bridge between the spellcasting of the Cleric and the fighting of the Holy Warrior. Not quite so dedicated to fighting a single type of creature - save that for Holy Warriors and a spellcasting-oriented Holy Warrior - but still more dedicated to combat. You'd want to give them access to more of the advantages that really cause the have/have not split of DF - Extra Attack, possibly Weapon Master (I'd lean to no, but still, it's possible), Combat Reflexes, Enhanced Block, Enhanced Dodge, and Enhanced Parry.

You'd still want significant spellcasting, or you're just a Holy Warrior.

Holy Caster - a cleric that even further de-emphasizes physical combat. Lower ST, DX and HT unchanged, and higher IQ, with extra points available for spells and holy abilities.

Holy Might Cleric - not every cleric needs a lot of spells. This variant would reduce the points in spells and increase those in Holy Might. A minimum investment in Holy Might skills - probably 20 points - would go a long way to making them distinctive.

A lens wouldn't be out of place, either:

Hammer of God - add Higher Purpose and foe-specific skills to a cleric lens, allowing for anti-undead, anti-demon, and anti-evil cleric focused clerics.

I think this might be a hard sell, given DF7. But still, there is a lot that DF7 did not cover that the DFD series did. Lessons learned and all of that - it's why DFD: Swashbucklers covers more ground than DFD: Barbarians. Sean leaned from what I did well and what in retrospect I could have included but did not. So it's possible a DFD: Clerics could work. If Pyramid was still around, it would be a fun article.

Origins of DFD1: Barbarians

A book or so back I wrote GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 1: Barbarians.

It's got a bit of a convoluted origin story.

First, as a concept. Second, as a book.

As a concept

Ever since I got involved in GURPS DF, there has been a persistent call for a more combat-focused barbarian. A lot of folks were disappointed that the barbarian is more outdoor-focused and outdoor-expert than heavy combatant.

One of my arguments has always been, if you want to be a battle-focused strong guy without Outdoorsman and lacking Gigantism, there is a template for you already - the Knight. It's exactly what you are looking for, minus only Social Stigma (easily added.) It would make no sense for a barbarian to out-do the knight at combat, given that the knight only does combat. You'd be hard-pressed to do it with a point-buy system, too. But I also saw a niche for barbarians who bridged the gap between outdoor experts and combat experts.

So I started worked on my own. I'd seen other people's attempts, and even opined on them, but I found my own approach was significantly different. We had the same idea in mind - a barbarian that was more combat and less outdoors - but different ways we wanted to go about it. Plus I had ideas above and beyond changing the barbarian - I had ideas for a range of options.

Since I have this blog, so I started to write a post.

That post grew, and I realized - I could write this as an article for Pyramid Magazine. Why post up what I could write, polish, and make part of the GURPS canon?

I kept writing, and came up with a set of new barbarian templates and lenses.

I put that article into the grinder, had it reviewed and checked and playtested bits myself.

As a book

But then along came an email from Sean "Dr. Kromm" Punch, pitching some possible GURPS books in the post-Ogre-logjam world. I got that pitch because of my resume of previous writing, and my resume meant it had this cool option on it - a new subline of DF books on a profession-by-profession basis.

So within a day or so, I pitched an idea. DFD1: Barbarians. I had the core of it, I felt, and a lot of additional material that Sean and I had written for DF together* that I could draw on.

So I wrote an official pitch, an outline, and sent it in. A few iterations back and forth and we had a book outline and a contract.

And I got writing.

It was tough, like all books are tough.

As the book was finishing up playtesting, we added a new player to our group - Vic. I offered him a chance to run one of the templates I wrote because it seemed in line with his suggested character types. He made a Shirtless Savage Warrior.

It's because of Bjorn's antics in play that I slightly changed the Shirtless Savage to make it more flexible and a bit cooler.

My players had their own input - a lot of Honus Honusson is in this book, because of the asks of the player. Comments on "Raggi should . . . " and of course direct rules suggestions from the rest of my players kept sending me back to the book to re-write. Offhand comments named perks like "Walk It Off." "Wouldn't it be nice if you could . . . " digressions fed into power-ups. And so on.

It's one I'm quite proud of.



* A story in and of itself - Short versions is that I pitched an idea, I was told Sean was already working on that idea, we ended up collaborating and you got our article in Pyramid 3/61.

Outdoorsman (from T-Bone and the Barbarians)

T-Bone over at Games Diner has an interesting post up about the Outdoorsman talent, including options for a rebuild.

Tiny GURPS Idea: Better Outdoorsman

You can see my comments on the rebuilt Outdoorsman that T-Bone proposes in that post. You can see my take on barbarians in general in the Denizens book about them.



But I had a few more comments, more or less random notes:

Seafarer isn't something I can claim any credit for - it's in Power-Ups 3: Talents. It was an obvious addition to Barbarians if only because barbaric sea raiders are part of the fantasy barbarian milieu. They stalk around in horned helms and midriff-revealing mail, pose menacingly in loincloth and sandals, and raid from suspiciously Viking-looking ships. It's part of their thing.

Outdoorsman's Cost got a whole box in Barbarians. This is for a few reasons. One is the rounded costs of Basic Set makes Outdoorsman pretty pricey for skills that don't come up much in a dungeon. The second is the sheer number of levels a barbarian really wants or needs is pretty high, magnifying the effect on discretionary points. And third it's always nice to bring in options that other books have already explored. It's why Low-Tech's approach to weapon damage gets a nod in Barbarians, too.

Adding Weather Sense made sense as I'd done that in my own games; we never changed the cost of Outdoorsman but adding Weather Sense made it felt more complete.

Finally, when looking at expanding or changing a talent in DF, I always try to look at three angles:

- Who else is affected directly by the change?

- Who else is undercut?

- Is this really core to the mission of the template?

Outdoorsman is a good example of this. It's used by Barbarians and by Scouts, so changes ripple out. You can't buff it up just for barbarians without scouts equally getting a benefit. You need to be aware of that spread. Secondly, if you expand it with too much nature-ability or too much animal ability, you'd chipping into the already-narrow purview of the Druid and the Animal Friend talent. If it becomes all the physical skills a barbarian outdoorsy type will use, it's going to impinge on every else's use of those abilities. Instead of coming in as a half-price version of IQ for outdoor skills only with some leveled benefits and side bonuses, it comes in as a way to make the barbarian more nimble than the thief or better at spotting traps than the scout. And finally, I think you need to look at the core mission of the template. All of the barbarians assume you're the go-to guy when the going gets outside, to a varying degree (to least with Savage Warrior, the most with Survivor). So Outdoorsman needs to support that - once they say, "the barbarian isn't good at fishing" or "we need a scout, not a barbarian, because the barbarian sucks at survival," you're in trouble. You've undercut what the talent needs to do.

None of that is commentary on T-Bone's idea of how to redo the trait, just saying, it's a process I go through when someone says, "Talent X should cover Y!" Who is affected, who is undercut, and does this really go to the heart of the template?

Barbarians-related quote I wish I'd noticed earlier

I gave away a copy of a book on Vikings I had on my shelf. Mostly because it sat there, unread, for about 20 years, and when I took it down to read it I found I just wasn't looking for what it had.

But I did take a skim through it before I passed it on to a friend who likes Vikings.

I wish I'd seen this quote before I finished DFD Barbarians:

"I've been with swords and spear
slippery with bright blood
where kites wheeled. And how well
we violent Vikings clashed!
Red flames ate up men's roofs,
raging we killed and killed,
and skewered bodies sprawled
sleepy in town gate-ways"
(stanza by Egil Skallagrimsson, c. 925)

Quoted on pg 146, Else Roesdahl, The Vikings (seen here on Google Books)

That would have been a good one, had we had the room.

Oh well, I can always use it for something else!

DFD1 Barbarians: You Saw It Here First!

Some of the material in Barbarians first made an appearance in my campaign. Some had been tried out in a private game run by Christopher Rice, but this is about what first showed up in my games, often with the names filed off. Other are homages to things in my game.

The Shirtless Savage - Bjorn was the first in my own games. It was just good timing - Vic had contacted us a long time ago about playing, but inertia being what it was, it took us a long time to invite him for a tryout. Based on the characters he was debating playing, I offered him a chance to run something not yet in print and playtest it. He jumped on it, and his in-play demonstrations of the template led me to make some last-minute changes to make it a better one.

Savage Warrior - Ditto. Vic ran the first one in my game.

Weapon Master (Barbaric Weapons) - Hasn't shown up in my game, but it was originally written for Honus Honusson, who wanted some way to become a bit more combat-centric. So I kept tinkering with a long-term goal WM variation for his barbarian.

Raggi's Reaver - this is the axe Raggi picked up from the spectre. Actually, that treasure and monster is a self-homage to my 1990s GURPS 1st edition game, and the axe in question was used by Skullcrusher Kurgan the half-ogre, and later by Thylack the barbarian. It was even loaned to Vryce's player's half-ogre in a side game we ran in the same game world. So putting that axe into the book, with Raggi's personality embedded into it (to be fair, Skullcrusher thought All Out Attack was the only move worth doing and Thylack was a berserker, too), was a no-brainer.

Ferocious Beard - Two words: Jon Blackbart.

(Would have been good for DFD: Dwarves, too, but I'm not planning on writing that one.)

Two-Handed Axe/Mace Damage - We've been doing some of this since before the beta for GURPS Low-Tech. If it seemed like the axe-wielding maniacs did suspiciously high damage, this was why.

The customization notes for Armored Barbarian, Flailsman, and Shieldrusher are all based on Honus Honusson (seen here in solo action), who made shield rushing into a core combat feature in my games.

There are one or two other items which might have made an appearance, but the players went left when the thing in question was off to the right. Or just haven't reached it yet due to scheduling of play. It happens. But now you might have some idea what you saw but didn't realize you were seeing, or why something in DFD1 seems so familiar . . .

From Whence Strode the Barbarian Quotes?

With the possible exception of a session report on Sunday, it's Barbarians week here at Dungeon Fantastic. Quaff your mead, pick your best axe, and revel in your fictional barbarian cliches.

One of the most fun parts of writing DFD1: Barbarians was finding quotes.

I wanted to include some "can't miss" quotes, the ones that if I didn't include them I'd regret it. These include quotes from:

- the GURPS Basic Set, which had a can't-miss book opening quote.

- R.E. Howard (for many reasons - he's quoted in multiple places - and not just Conan, but also Cormac)

- Fritz Leiber (for the Civilized Savage - Fafhrd being the main model for that)

- Led Zeppelin - the hammer of the gods drove me to include this.

- Conan the Barbarian - a must-have or I'd hear the lamentations of my conscience forever.

But there were others that fit the book so well they had to go in.

- Groo. DF is nothing if not also a nod-and-a-wink enjoying the cliches of the genre. Groo is perfect for that.

- Equally, so is Mark E. Rogers. So I quoted from "Beyond the Black Walnut" from the original Samurai Cat book.

- The Lord Weigh Slough Feg, aka Slough Feg. They had an Erol Otus album cover and a (good!) song about Traveller. Heck, an album about Traveller. Their song "Highlander" provided just the quote I needed for one of the templates.

- a great David Gemmell quote about berserkers, to reinforce an even cooler one from the "Haakon of the Golden Axe" book series.

- my friend Tom's favorite, and my favorite, Conan the Destroyer quote - "Enough talk!" It's embedded in the TOC, which is awesome.

- Speaking of Conan, there were a few de Camp/Carter quotes about barbarians that I like a lot, so I selected one from Conan the Buccaneer to make it clear that giant female barbarians are equally in mind as I write this stuff. Like the men, they're tall, muscled, lithe, pantherish, and scantily clad and can lift you up with one hand to regard you before you die.

I also wanted to get some Manowar in there. It's a quotable band, and while I'm not a huge fan, I am a huge fan of The Dictators - and Ross "The Boss" is lead guitarist for both. The song "Swords in the Wind" had a great quote that fit one of the lenses.

When it came time to fill in some quotes, I had a lot to pick from. I found a couple of gems at the last minute to fit in. But I also got a great suggestion for a Terry Pratchett quote, from Phil Masters of course, and thus it went in, too.

Nothing makes me happier than skimming through my books when they come out, seeing if my quotes of choice really made it in. They all did, and I have to say I'm glad we decided to have a quote for each and every template and lens (although not the cross-template ones, that would be a bit much.) You have a real theme setter for each one, now.

My one regret is that, had I known that The Darkness did a song called Barbarian, I'd have included a quote from them! I just didn't notice until last night when I was reminded of an earlier song of theirs. Oh well. Maybe the next book will reference the Sons of Ragnar. And Bjorn and Raggi are always shirtless in the rain, too. What a missed chance!

GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Denizens 1: Barbarians

"Between the time when the oceans drank Atlantis, and the rise of the sons of Aryas, there was an age undreamed of. And unto this, Conan, destined to wear the jeweled crown of Aquilonia upon a troubled brow. It is I, his chronicler, who alone can tell thee of his saga. Let me tell you of the days of high adventure!"
- Conan the Barbarian



Now, out in the wild, is the "crude" and "rough" supplement that Dr. Kromm hinted I was writing.

It's the first of the Denizens line of Dungeon Fantasy books. First and foremost, it's a collection of templates and lenses for barbarians in GURPS Dungeon Fantasy. It's a collection of all of the previously written material on barbarians, too, no matter where in the supplements it was scattered.

It's a "splatbook" in the sense that it's an expansion of your options, but much of this was already an option - this book just pulls it all together into a one-book solution. It also adds some new options, previously unavailable in Dungeon Fantasy but available in GURPS (if you were pulling material from other supplements like Low-Tech Companion 2 or Martial Arts). And it adds some new options, entirely new to GURPS and especially valid for barbaric delvers, the likes of which you see in movies, comics, video games, and pulp novels.

If you've followed the adventures of Honus Honusson, Raggi Ragnarsson, and Bjorn Felmansson in my games, you will recognize some of this. If you've been wondering just how Bjorn gets away fighting nearly naked, or why Honus is so effevtive at short-range slams, or why Raggi's foes melt away after his Cleaving Strike instead of standing around to fight more (and why his axe does so much damage) . . . here are your answers.

Let me say it's a privilege to get to launch a sub-line of books, something I have managed to do in Dungeon Fantasy twice now (DFM1, and now DFD1.) If the sub-line does well, I have another one I can kick out, too.