Create Servant abuses

Someone asked about abuses of the Create Servant spell in Here a few things people used Create Servant for that I did allow:

- touching basically anything that a PC might touch that wasn't immediately, obviously dangerous (no touching living things, say)

- as scouts. They're terrible scouts, but you can make them act as lookouts and hope for the best with their low Per and IQ

- carrying things

- taking up back rank space so attacks from behind will have to shoot past them, or just take them out and spare a PC a single attack

- opening doors (stuck doors, no, because of ST 9)

Anything that basically had them be a warm body without the will to resist a potentially (but not obviously) harmful suggestion worked out fine.

Here are some things they wanted to do, but I wouldn't allow:

- havng a servant go into the druagr tombs and pour oil all over the place so someone could lob in an alchemist's fire to light it up

- having a servant hold a grenade potion and then drop it at their own feet

- using servants to throw grenades

- pretty much anything that allowed for a combat use except as a speedbump

- set off traps meant for living things (they aren't living and won't detect as "life.")

My logic for these is not that they can't fight well, but that they can't fight at all. They just crumple under the pressure of doing anything remotely violent. Even in combat, they won't stand around and force someone to kill them - they'll whimper and curl up and move out of the way. Bend a little on this, and I expect the floodgates would open. They'd be running out into mobs of foes with grenades and getting shot down by the scout to act as a kamikaze, holding weapons to fend off attackers with their default skills, etc.

This is almost a teaser of a list - if you read the session summaries that feature Dryst, you'll see these guys getting used and abused to the point that everyone assumes Dryst is basically the Evil One of the servants. But this is a start.

DF Felltower Spellstones further rulings

There are a bunch of rules about spellstones in this post - I'll duplicate them here, to save clicking around when my players search.

Spellstones

Crushing a spellstone takes the Concentrate maneuver. However, unlike most spells, you can crush a spellstone while grappled if you have it ready and the hand holding it can potentially crush the stone given the circumstances (which is usually the case.)

You must crush it willingly to complete the spell. You must crush it with your hand and will it to activate, it can't be done accidentally.

You cannot crush more than one spellstone at a time. It takes a full second's concentration to complete the action.

You can hold them in your mouth, but remember, they're small (1-5 carats for 1-5 power). You will have issues if you're wearing hand armor beyond light (cloth or light leather) - this may require a DX roll with Ham Fisted modifiers.

You cannot learn Fast-Draw (Spellstone.) They're too small.

You cannot hold one ready in the same hand as another item unless you have the "Third Hand" perk.

You cannot use a spell stone on another person by crushing it against them. Known Exceptions: Gem of Healing, Gem of Awakening.

Only Wizardly magic can be made into spell stones, with the exception of the Awaken spell. Gems of Healing and Gems of Awakening are made by the church in some secret process, and are available for sale.


***


Here are the additional rulings/frequency asked questions:


You can't put maintenance costs into a stone. It's just a one shot, base duration spell. You are not able to, say, buy a 4-point powerstone that contains 3 rounds of maintenance for a 1-energy spell.

You can buy an Area spell with a larger than 1-hex AOE, or Missile spells with larger sizes, or Resist Fire at a higher level of flame resistance, or similar improved castings.

You cannot maintain the spell yourself, since you are not the caster.

Unlike GURPS Magic, which specifies that the spell is cast (against the Power level of the enchantment) on the turn after you activate the stone, in DF Felltower the spell takes place immediately - in other words, on the turn in which you Concentrate and activate the spellstone. That can make them more effective, but means spells that require an action to effectively use must have a duration longer than one second in order to be useful.


Finally, although the parlance in my games is to "crush a spellstone" the actual verb phrase is to "Concentrate and activate a spellstone." I understand what is meant, but a lot of the "can't I?" questions come from assuming "crushing" is the goal - can I hit it with a hammer, can I put one on the tip of a blunt arrow and shoot it at someone, can I bite one with my teeth, can I crush more than one, etc. It's more like reading a scroll or activating a wand or staff or special ability - it takes Concentration and, in this case, a specific hand action - holding a stone in the hand. A good number of FAQs are self-answerable by changing the verb phrase to the most accurate one.

Seek Earth

DF Whiterock has a nice post on Seek Earth.

Find it here.

In DF Felltower, I do the following:

- Even a single coin is a "significant" amount. This means that small hoards, and even single coins layed out, can distract a Seek Earth spell.

- I don't allow specific gemstones. Casting on gold, silver, rubies, emeralds, sapphires, etc. one after the other - trivial with high skill - just doesn't work out. I basically just shut this down to avoid the annoyance of needing to know the direction to everything in my dungeon from every point in my dungeon, in three dimensions.

- I give relative directions but not "lead" people to anything. Directions are rough - I tried being very specific, but people believe their maps and measures, so if I said 40 yards northwest and they go what on their map is 45 yards NW and find loot, they think there is more 5 yards closer as well and keep looking. Insisting on vague has actually made for more clear communication.

- I always choose to lie on critical failures. Lie, lie, lie. Oh, and roll on the table for what else happens. Information spells are great, but when they're wrong, they're really wrong.

Optional rule ideas:

- Give a -1 for each source you ignore in the casting. Make everyone pool their gold together or move away from them so you can treat them as one "hoard" of gold. This fits the DF -1 per adjective approach to obstacles, makes for a challenge to find a "big" hoard in a mess of little ones you're carrying, and rewards the 20+ skill of better casters. It also explains why skill-12 pikers out in the world have troubles and your IQ 16, Magery 6 guy does not.

- Make it akin to an divination spell - give a direction, but not a distance. Let people triangulate . . . it'll be easier for you, the GM, as they do the trig to determine how far to go.

- limit the castings to once per period of time - says, once per hour, or once per substance per day. Don't allow spamming it out.

I haven't tried, these, but I love the second one and like the first one . . . and that first one is an easy implementation.

DF Felltower: Tiger Sprint, Haste, and Serenity.

Our current martial artist PC did a lot of running around last session. Questions came up - not relevant at the time - about Tiger Sprint from DFRPG Adventurers, pg. 31.

Here is how we'll deal with it in DF Felltower.

First, although DFRPG doesn't show you under the hood, this is Enhanced Move with a Chi limitation (-10%). Thus, when we need rulings, especially with how it interacts with the non-DFRPG Power-Ups in other, GURPS DF sources, we'll have to go back to how it was built in GURPS before becoming a rules-lite version of itself.

It doesn't affect Basic Speed, Basic Move, or Dodge. It only works when Sprinting - from the second consecutive Move maneuver where you use all of your movement points to travel "along a relatively straight, smooth course" (p. B52).

How does this interact with . . .

Serenity (Pyramid 3/61, p. 12)? This improves DX, which improves Basic Speed, and thus improves Move before multipliers. For reasons mostly due to hating impenetrable defenses, I don't have any plans to allow the optional version of Serenity that affects Basic Speed. My post on the matter has been amended to make that clear.

Sprint Bonuses are a final add, and Tiger Sprint is used instead of the listed bonuses . . . taking the +20% for sprinting (min +1) to +50% and +100%. But DF Felltower doesn't use Sprinting. To be perfectly fair, this should increase the price of Tiger Sprint to 10 and 19, respectively, with a 1-point perk to cover allowing a non-used rule to apply. I won't do that.

Haste? Haste adds to your final numbers. We've been playing with Haste for a while and I have it add to your final numbers. If it adds to your base, then encumbrance should affect it. Have Move 6 and medium encumbrance? That's 6 x 0.6 = Move 3, and you get Haste +2, you're at Move 5 in DF Felltower. If it adds to the base, then it's 6 +2 = 8 x 0.6 = Move 4. No one liked that, so we don't do that. As a result, this also means that things that multiple move multiply your base, and then Haste is added afterward. This includes all similar effects from magic items. Speed elixirs do add to your base, as it specifies increasing Basic Speed, which then affects calculations down the line. So, Haste +2, for example, will add +2 to the final move after multiplying.

Some notes on all of this:

- This will not apply to Move and Attack. DFRPG Exploits, p. 33 is very specific about calling out Move and Move and Attack for how movement works. It then only references Move, not both Move and Move and Attack, under "Three-Minute Miles" and Sprinting on the same page.

I take that as sufficient evidence that you cannot "sprint" and do Move and Attack together.

- You must use all of your movement points for this; if you miss using your full movement points the sprint bonus ends. This may end up with seeming oddities like being able to run 18+ in one second or only half of that, not in between, but it's not unreasonable to have your weird Chi power only work under specific circumstances. If it bothers anyone sufficiently, it's probably better to save your 9 or 18 points and spend it on straight-up and more versatile Speed and Move.

- Although you can technically run in a circle with "forward movement," Exploits and Basic Set also say that when running away you only get a sprint bonus for "A straight, clear course (not twisting tunnels)" so I'll be harsh on attempts to zig-zag to keep speed up or otherwise min-max a sprint bonus.

- Perception rolls at speed will be penalized by your own speed on the Size and Speed/Range Table. It's hard to scout while running full speed.


I'll modify this post if anything changes or additional qualifications or notes need to be added.


These types of posts are fun, but this took a few hours of on and off writing, reading, and cross referencing. That's all for a movement powerup that someone may or may not take, and may or may not use. That's why I don't write as many as I used to back when I worked many less hours per week!

DF Felltower: Why can't you temporarily suppress magic?

Over the course of Felltower, the question of countering magic has come up. Canonically in GURPS Dungeon Fantasy, there is no way for PCs to temporarily suspend an enchantment. If magic is permanent, the effect remains and is not subject to the relatively simple and easy counters of Dispel Magic and Counterspell. Curse-like effects are often removable with Remove Curse, and you can dispel/counter non-permanent magic.

But it's deliberate that the spell list doesn't include Suspend Enchantment. Because of this, these things are generally true:

Dispel Magic doesn't harm created undead, contructs, or permanent enchantments (wether on items or locations.) It does generally have the potential to end the magic behind spells like Animate Shadow or Animate Object or Create Warrior. Some spells have very specific counters, and thus aren't subject to Dispel Magic - examples include Flesh to Stone and Entombment.

Counterspell can only directly counter spells, not magic effects in general, and are subject to the revised rules we use.

Ward is only useful defensively, and again, only against spells, not enchantments and magical effects that just happen to be possible to create with a spell. Just because you may potentially be able to Ward against Burning Touch doesn't mean all touch-based fire attacks from magical creatures are subject to Ward.

Remove Curse is effective against a special set of spells and effects - they're called out specifically in the descriptions of the individual spells.



Why?

Because enchantments should be special. They should not be subject to a high-skill caster or a good roll to end. Magic-based obstacles should be solved with cleverness or sucking up the effects, not by just spamming out Dispel Magic.

In additional, magical creatures - undead, constructs, mana-dependent beings, etc. - shouldn't be singled out for a special generic damage / save-or-die spell (such as allowing Dispel Magic to damage or outright kill such creatures). And if even some are, that means step one should always be casting Dispel Magic to see if it'll damage or kill such creatures. The spell would go from a way to counter temporary magic to doing that plus potentially killing otherwise potentially problem-causing foes. Don't know what to do with a critter? Start with Dispel Magic.

Therefore I don't even allow it on a critical - the "I rolled a 3, so a miracle occurs!" that is the equivalent of post-1st edition D&D/AD&D's "I rolled a 20." Allowing such would encourage people to just keep trying to same spells over and over and over, hoping/praying for a 3. Once that's possible, generally, people will just try Dispel Magic on everything unti it works. I've seen this with our special rule on Missile Shield that allows a 3 or 4 to penetrate it (if you had an effective 1+ skill in the first place, of course) - people just keep plugging away, hoping for that low roll that will solve the problem without them needing to find a different solution. I like that rule enough to keep it, but allowing it does push people to a thoughtless repetition of a failed tactic until they've rolled a 3 to see if it "really" doesn't work.

With that in mind, players can be sure that only NMZs really mess with their enchanted items, magical creatures won't just take damage from one spell that automatically acts as a damage spell / off button, and that spells designed to counter spells aren't the answer to fantasy problems that aren't instantly amenable to "I hit it really hard in the hit points."



Related:

Revised Dispel Magic (and for people who groan that a 1-hex spell was 3 seconds, 2 with Skill 20, is now 5 seconds, 3 seconds with skill 20, thus making the spell "useless" for combat . . . feel free to not cast it!)

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.

Felltower GURPS Magic Rulings: Shield

I'll keep all of the oddball FAQs that come up about the Shield spell in DF Felltower.

Shield and Attacks on Weapons - Defenses against an attack on the subject's weapon do not benefit from Shield.

Shield and Arcs - Frontal attacks specially only includes the front arc; it does not help againt flank or rear attacks, even if those attacks are part of a runaround attack.

Shield and Meteoric Weapons - DB from Shield doesn't help against meteoric weapons; this is true for both Wizardly and Clerical Shield spells.

More thoughts on Only Heroes Get to Resist

I've never implemented this rule, but I keep thinking about running a game that would use it:

Only Heroes Get to Resist

I have a few more thoughts on it, nine years on.

- I think it should totally affect allied NPCs, too, with an exception made for any characters 125+ points, who'd get treated as worthy and get a roll.

- In a DF-style split, Fodder don't resist, Worthies may, Bosses do. Worthies with a base resistance below the effective skill of the caster don't get to resist; those with equal or better do get a chance. Don't apply the Rule of 16 until this comparison is made.

- If an effect has a chance for recovery, the same rules apply - Fodder stays down until the effect naturally ends, Worthy and up get to try and evade the effects.

- You still have to make the roll to put the resistable effect on the target.

I don't intend to use this in Felltower, but I do think it would make a good Heroic DF rule.

The frustrations of spells vs. effects in Pathfinder: Kingmaker

One real frustration I have with Pathfinder: Kingmaker is when descriptions and effects don't really match.

Many, many debuffs have very specific counters. You can get stats drained, paralyzed, petrified, frightened, stunned, level drained, blinded, sickened, exhausted . . . all good. But then how do you fix it? It depends. You have spells like Lesser Restoration, Restoration, Greater Restoration, Remove Curse, Inspiring Recovery, Heal . . . which one fixes what? It's not always clear.

It's not always clear what effects are countered by what countermeasure. I've had plenty of my companions made to flee by a fae's Frightful Moan . . . despite being accompanied by a Paladin who cast a spell to render them immune to fear effects. Cast Delay Poison, Communal to be immune to spider's venom . . . but not the stat-drain poison of other monsters or the save-or-die poison effect from a Prismatic Spray.

Countermeasures seem very idiosyncratic, specific, and arbitrary. From a person versed in the game Pathfinder only from the video game, it's tough. I often struggle to figure out what exactly would help me counter foes who spam Slay Living or Prismatic Spray. I have to dig, dig, and dig in the rules to figure out what does what.

It's really annoying. Mostly I deal with my issues with Mass Heal, rest, and lots of healing spells. But even several playthroughs through the game, and late in the game, I just have a vague idea of how to deal with certain issues. It's not really ideal.

When it comes to magic, I really like when effect-based counters just work based on the effect. If you are immune to fire, fire damage should just fail. Poison immunity? Then "save vs. poison or die" should just be something that garners a chuckle from you. And so on. It's useful food for thought as I continually revise my version of GURPS Magic for Felltower . . . I want it to seem clear why something works or does not work; strange exceptions should be rare and should allow for an "ah-hah!" moment as you figure out why. I'm not getting it from this game, but it is making me think about how not to do things the way Pathfinder seems to do them.

Assorted GURPS Magic / DFRPG Spells questions and answers

I'll use this post to track all of the weird spell rulings I make that don't otherwise have a home.

Does Wizard Eye have 360 degree vision?

No. It has a facing just like any other character would; if you want 360 degree vision cast the appropriate spells on someone.

How much concealment does See Secrets eliminate?

I cap concealment penalties at -10, so it cancels -10. As always, you must be able to see to take advantage of this spell; a secret door will stand out clearly, but if it's behind a curtain it will not, because the curtain breaks your line of sight.

What temperature do Fireball spells burn at?

It doesn't matter - we resolve it all by HP of damage vs. DR/HP of the targets, and the usual rules for setting things on fire (Exploits, p. 68)

GURPS Magic - Panic is weird

Panic is a truly weird spell. It's an area, but the effects last on the people who leave the area. Yet it also continues to affect the area, so anyone coming into the area is also forced to resist.

I struggle to find parallels. You can get lit on fire with the flames in a Create Fire-affected area, leave, and still be on fire. It doesn't go out. And you could be put to sleep with Mass Sleep and be carried out of the area and still be sleeping. But I still find the Panic effect really odd. It both causes an effect on the targets they carry with them - and which is clearly magical, and which would go away if they went into a NMZ - and keeps a lasting effect elsewhere.

One of our current PCs uses it a lot, and did so in Vic's side game, and I've kept the ruling from there. But my original ruling was it stayed on the targets, not the area. Essentially, like Mass Daze or Mass Sleep, it did its thing and then ended on the area . . . but not on those who failed to resist. I felt like that was a more consistent effect with the other spells in the game. Yeah, fire and being set on fire, yes, but the effect wouldn't keep trying to set you on fire . . . you wouldn't need magic or 1 minute to pass without maintainence to have it end. I don't know . . . sometimes I think I should have kept my ruling just to keep the spell more consistent with the rest of GURPS Magic.



Not for nothing, but I want to highlight this rule, which is still in play, even if fodder types generally don't avail themselves of it in my games. As noted, that applies to fear effects, too. So you can Panic some monster and it can just decide to suck up the penalties and fight, if that's better for it.

Uniform Range and Acc for Missile spells?

Would it harm anything to make all of the missile spells range 40/80, Acc 2? Even Curse-Missile?

I'm thinking no. It slightly nerfs a few (Lightning, with its 50/100 Acc 3, for one) but smoothes it all out in terms of rules since we'll never need to look anything up. Acc 2, 40/80, effects as listed.

You could potentially sweeten up one of the weaker missile spells - like ice dagger - with more Acc. I'm inclined to sweeten that one up with a (2) armor divisor, but whatever, you can note that in the spell description instead of needing a table.

Unless my players have a reasonable objection, I will make this change to the basic Acc and Range of Missile spells for DF Felltower.

Missile spells in DF Felltower - Are they effective?

Combats in Felltower very, very often feature Missiles spells. Probably 50/50 regular and explosive. Combats in Felltower often feature table discussion about how Missile spells are underpowered, hard to hit with, too easy to defend against, not cost-effective, and really unfair to wizards because they should be able to do some damage-doing effect every turn.

Heh.

I'm totally serious about both. We see a lot of Missile spell use. It's almost every combat.

We do have some or all of that discussion of Missile spells, even as people are using them.

It's odd but true.

I think the "Missile spells are weak and not cost-effective" opinion has a lot of validity to it. I don't think it's true in Felltower.

Underpowered: Missile spells do 1d base damage per 1 point of energy, or per 2 points if explosive. A 3d spell does about as much damage as a front-line fighter's hit, but often less. It's a little weak compared to fighters. In DF Felltower, this is the same . . . but I feel like it's mitigated by two factors - the ability to hit multiple targets or single targets with the same spell (since Explosive spells aren't a different spell), and that they are often coupled with an effect melee weapons don't get - electrical stunning, armor divisors, burning, or even high-damage impaling. It's not a 1:1 matchup but I don't think they should be, nevermind need to be for fairness.

Speaking of underpowered, the rules for blast effects for explosives in plain GURPS (and even DFRPG) are a bit underwhelming. DF Felltower makes all explosive spells area 3 (so diameter 5). Damage in the center hex is full, in the next ring out it's 2/3rds, the third ring 1/3rd. That makes big explosive spells less fratricidal and smaller ones have more utility in hitting an area. It's also faster to play.

Hard to Hit With: Hitting with a Missile spell takes an attack roll, which is a DX-based skill, and wizards aren't always good with those. But DF takes care of that in two ways. One, even wizards routinely have a 14 or 15 skill in it. And by the book, you can buy the Psychic Guidance perk to let you use your spell skill instead as your attack skill. DF Felltower uses Mystic Guidance, instead, which rather gives you +1 per level of your spellcasting talent as a plus to your attack roll. I just find that a better solution, but either way, in DF Felltower it's only hard to hit with missiles you don't put some of your available spellcasting perks into improving with.

Too Easy to Defend Against: This one I just disagree with. They're not harder or easier to deal with than any other missile, and the explosive ones are usually thrown to hit with the blast effect so it's hard to avoid damage altogether. Just no to this one.

Not Cost Effective: In standard GURPS Magic, it's 1 for 1d and 2 for 1d explosive. You can save 1+ energy per spell for a high effective skill. A Magery 6 wizard can throw an 18d spell for 18 or 36 points . . . with skill 15 that's 17 and 35, with skill 20 that's 16 and 34. In DF Felltower, it's 1 for 1d or 2 for 1d explosive as standard, but you can subtract for your effective skill each turn. That 18d spell costs 15 or 33 at skill 15, 12 and 30 at skill 20. Still expensive, but much more doable. A 9d - the cap for Magery 3, and still a very nasty attack - would cost 6 and 15 or 3 and 12 for skill 15 or 20, respectively.

The damage you can cause to a packed formation of foes with effectively 9d/6d/3d attacks, especially with a Fireball (3+ ignites fires, 10+ ignites everything on a target, and average damage will do 10+ at all three bands), is terrific. It's not going to cause all of your foes to char and die . . . but it can make all of them combat-ineffective. Not bad for 12 or 15 points, given that most save-or-die type spells cost around 10 per target and are resisted.

Can't Do Something Every Turn: Well, fair enough. It takes 3 seconds to pump up a spell to the most powerful level, and 1 second to throw. So they're 4 second spells. Seems a bit much . . . or does it? Personally I disagree with this one. I don't think you need to be able to do damage every secod in order to be combat-effective. Wizards are critical for combat - ask any foe who confronts Missile Shield or Levitation or Panic spells with no way to counter them. They just aren't pure damage engines. The Heroic Spellcaster advantage from Delvers to Grow can help make them so . . . but I feel like the changes I've made make that less necessary. The author may disagree, I'd have to ask, but I think the many changes we made for DF Felltower make for better Missile spells without needing to add this advantage.

I don't think you need to deal damage every second to matter; I actually think you gain a lot of non-combat ability and combat flexibility by choosing to use magic but can't also effectively deal damage every second.

And I think the constant use of Missile spells in my game says something about the value of them, modified as they are.

Addendum to the DF Felltower Explosive Missile Spells FAQ

I've added this to my explosive spells FAQ:

- While full cover does block an explosive spell, it has to be strong enough to resist the spell (sliding paper doors, for example, wouldn't help much), otherwise it merely acts as DR. A target's body doesn't provide cover unless it completely covers the potentially shielded victim. For example, a child or pet covered by a prone adult, or anything beyond a dragon larger than the radius of the fireball so nothing can "leak" past. Generally, assume everything in the covered hexes gets hit.

Next Game set & Ruling from Last Session

Looks like our next game of Felltower will be Friday, November 24th.

The plan is a short session to finish the fight and then - hopefully - they'll finally go back to town.


One ruling of note from last game:

- Does a foe with Loyalty on them still count as a foe for cost multiplication purposes? No, in that we don't cost Loyalty based on hostility in my revised system. You can cast it temporarily, and then order them not to resist a lasting version, though.





That's it for today. Not a lot of rulings to make based on the previous session.

Revised GURPS Magic for DF Felltower: Steal Vitality

Here is a proposed revision to Steal Vitality.

Steal Vitality

As GURPS Magic, p. 150, until the last sentence. Change everything from ". . . or when the subject's HP reaches -1" to "or when the subject's HP reaches -1 or less."

Otherwise, as written.

Rulings: HP do multiply - healing is healing. SM matters - a positive SM multiplies the time taken by 1+SM, minimum 1.

Note that this means healing from foes you've beaten into submission is effectively impossible - they need to have at least 2 HP left to drain. Like poison, draining from bigger foes takes longer. I'm sure of the logic except that it amuses me and makes it more interesting.

The trouble with magic

Rules provide for a way to resolve situations that come up in games in a consistent way.*

Those situations generally have a real-world equivalent or match that can help you shape those rules

Magic provides a way to get a result that may or may not have a real-world logical underpinning without the usual paths to make that happen.

When magic meets rules, especially over a long enough campaign and enough use of magic, you end up with all sorts of weirdness. Attempts to resolve them can be equally weird - Fireball spells that fill cubic volume, but oddly don't have cover shadowing effects from others caught in the blast. Invisibility spells that don't address what happens to the light from your light source. Healing magic that can completely heal a wound yet leave you with an arrow or pick embedded. These all need rulings* that quickly become the basis for the next ruling. Often, solutions to edge cases beget more edge cases.

In a short game, or one with relatively little ability to fling around magic (so-called Vancian systems, say), you don't end up with too many issues. There just aren't enough situations and enough spells to make that happen. In a long game - my DF Felltower game is one - you just end up with so many layed rulings and cases that it can be confusing. And that's assuming well-written rules with well-written spells that match the rules. For GURPS and the magic system, the system has a lot of 1st-3rd edition legacy thinking with a 4e chassis to run on. It's not perfect. Then you add in the assumptions of DF - which further modifies the system.

So many of my GURPS Magic revisions are just attempts to make the spells match the assumptions of the game, with as little creation of new edge cases and weird uses as possible. I don't mind creative use of magic, but I do mind spells that have effects that have an outsized impact on the game or create loopholes and munchkin toys. "I can use spell X to solve our problem in new way Y!" is cool. "I can use spell X to eliminate probem Y for all time for minimal cost!" is generally not. Finding ways to let spells work well without doing great violence to the game world and the game system can be tough.

That's the real trouble I have with magic. It's providing power but with appropriate constraints on runaway game effects. The lack of a base reality means all of the rules have to be based on in-game effects with the rules consistency. I can't let the description of how it works derail the discussion of how the spell will change the game if the description is followed to the letter.

I won't say it's fun but it is interesting.




* In case someone quotes "Rulings not rules!" here is my take on that. Rulings are just rules you didn't know until they came up in play.

Steal Vitality & HP & SM questions

One of the 20+ HP fighters in DF Felltower now has the spell Steal Vitality.

It's a rarely-used spell in my games, and never before in 4e, with has rules for 20+ HP healing rates or for SM.

Plus it has some inherent weirdness. I don't yet know how I'll sort this out.

Steal Vitality and SM.

The issue here is the spell has no cost to the caster. So how does it interact with SM. How does it interact with HP healing multipliers?

Are those drained HP multiplied like other healing? Probably yes by a strict reading of the rules.

Are the HP lost multipled by HP 20, 30, etc.? Nothing in the rules would point to yes. But with a no, when a 20 HP PC drains a 30 HP foe, does that mean the PC can drain 30 HP and get 10 x 2 = 20 HP healed?

Should it take longer to drain a big target, perhaps, much as positive SM causes poisons to affect the SM+ target more slowly?

Dead at -1 HP?

The "foe dies at -1 HP" thing is a brutal limit, but also means you can kill something at -1 HP that wouldn't even normally die until at least -1 times HP. That's 9 HP less than usual for a normal HP. It can be as much as 49 less than usual for a DF Barbarian with max HP. Also, technically, a reading of this means you can't do this to a foe wounded past -1 HP. If they die at -1 HP, how do you drain HP from them if they are already at -1 HP?

I think this is just a bad effect of the spell, and should be removed. You could say "at -1xHP" but that allows for even more draining.

It's a tough call - either way, it means how we ran it this past session is flat-out against the rules - all of the foes were below -1 HP, and further below -1 x HP, so even a revised version wouldn't allow for it.

I'm really not sure how to deal with all of this. For now, listing the issues has to get the ball rolling.

Quick and Fuzzy thoughts on Fuzzy Turn Length

I often put up odd, untested rules ideas I've had here on this blog just to see the response - yours, and mine.

Bira at Octopus Carnival jumps on board with this approach!

"Two can play at that game!"
- Detective Frank Drebin, as he grabs his own hostage

Fuzzy turn length. Changing the GURPS turn length. It's not a new idea, but it's a thought provoking one as it deals with issues such as Time Spent and not simply multiplying turn length. It's roughly 5-10 seconds, ish, so you can pretty much get in a big action and then move on, or get in a long action given a few turns.

One thing the post says, though, is

These changes make characters such as archers and wizards more powerful in combat, since the number of things they can do over a given amount of turns has increased, while melee-focused character can still take more or less the same number of actions. Note that I have not tested how these changes interact with the magic system, so I can’t measure how much of an impact it’s going to have on spellcasters.

I've played quite a bit with the spell system, and my feeling is you would see the following:

- less concern with getting the breakpoints for speeding up spells. Who cares if Great Haste takes 3 seconds if you can cast it in one turn anyway?

- Missile spells should be unchanged, since for every one turn's worth of sword swipes a wizard gets to build up 1-6d worth of energy into a spell. The balance in unchanged.

- Thanks to sped up casting times, breadth of useful attack spells should be larger.

- Thanks to sped up casting times, people will try to cast Zombie in combat.

- Buff spells will end much more quickly, since their duration is in seconds and minutes, not turns. Changing this to "turns" might restore this balance, but then equally it means you're leaving wizards with second-by-second efficiency but taking it away from others. Some spells will be so short as to be useless (Great Haste), and might need tweaking just to prevent them from being fuzzed out of existance.

- Energy recover will actually occur at a fast enough rate to matter in fights - more so at "10 seconds" than "5 seconds," but it's either +1 FP every 12 turns or 24 turns with Recover Energy-20.

I think it would be interesting to try, but the default magic system is so tightly tied to seconds - and player expectations about spell utility to duration and time to cast - that it might need tweaking in play even as you playtest it.

Still interesting.

Important note on +2 Staves for GURPS Magic

Important addendum on my post about swapping the penalty-reduction of staves to a bonus.

GURPS Magic: Staves as bonuses instead of penalty negators

As I noted in the comments, "This is +2 to effective skill, not to the skill level of the spell. You'd need still need a base skill level of 15 to get a -1 to energy costs, or a 20 for a -2 and half casting time, and so on."

I figured this would come up from one of my players, but it's worth noting outright. This is an effective skill bonus for using a tool, not a flat bonus to magical base skill. Only base skill matters for Magic Rituals, GURPS Magic, p. 8-9.