Water Wizards, the Direct Damage Mages

GURPS provides damaging attacks in the form of Melee and Ranged spells. Some players don't like these spell because:

• It takes a minimum of 2 turns to attack.
• Requires 2 rolls to hit.
• With Ranged attacks, you need to be close, or have high skill, or take time to aim.
• Melee skills require you to be in melee range.

Of course there are plenty of other ways to deal damage in combat. Area spells make a nice continuing damage source for the length of most combats. There are many spells that neutralize enemies completely (on a failed resist).

Still, for those players that want to deal damage, I suggest focusing on Water spells.

As far as I can tell the water college is the only one with Regular, Resisted spells that do direct damage to the subject. Dehydrate and Frostbite are similar to melee spells like Deathtouch, Burning Death, and Rotting Death, but don’t require that the caster be touching the subject. Dehydrate takes 2 seconds to cast and Frostbite, 3. So, skill levels of 20 and 25 are required for these skills for cast every turn, but you’ll want high skill to offset the -1 per yard distance penalty for regular spells.

So, next time you have a player (or are that player) that wants a damaging attack spell that can be cast every turn, build a Water Wizard!

Dungeon Fantasy and Threshold-Limited Magery

I like some of the ideas behind Threshold-Limited Magery (aka Unlimited Mana). Particularly, I like that it lets mages always have a chance to do something (albeit with some risk). One of the things that annoy me about the standard FP magic system is that you can cast yourself to exhaustion and then there isn't anything else you can do.

But, using TLM has a several issues especially with Dungeon Fantasy type games. DF can be about frequent combats with a bit of rest between each. The standard magic system works great for this. Casters can blast, buff, heal, etc. till they are tapped out. Then can rest for a few minutes then are back at full strength to do it again. Sure power items and other secondary pools might not recover that quickly but the point remains.

With, TLM, things are quite a bit different. Players can run from combat to combat, without the need to rest and recover, and pull off big flashy effects. The down side is that after a several castings they are going to be nearer to the limit and nothing other than waiting days for your tally to wind down, which might not be an issue with long down time and travel times between runs. The way I see it, TLM makes dungeon runs easier earlier on, but as the players keep going, they will get to a point where the best option is to just leave.

At first, I was going to have both systems available for character to pick, but now I am concerning using a mixed system. The idea is to have the standard FP based system, where the players can use FP to power spells, but this switches over to TLM when they get to 1 FP. At that point they can keep casting, but all cost (or additional cost if they still had some FP to burn) goes to the Tally. This system has a Threshold of 0, so after burning down FP casters are risking backlash with just about any casting. FP (and energy reserves) still have their normal regeneration rates, and tally is reduced by 8 each morning.

So this system takes the most interesting part of TLM (risking backlash for the ability to keep casting), and replaces the least interesting part of the FP system (running out of energy and passing out).

I'll run this by my group and see if they want to give it a try. I'll post what I find if we do start using this.

GURPS Magic: A Mixed Bag

Many years ago, when I first picked up GURPS, one of the things that sold me on it was the magic system. I had been used to other games where even if they tried to have a "unified mechanic," magic was always a special case. Not so in GURPS! Spells were skills, and to cast you just needed to roll under the level just like any other skill. Granted there were a few other additions like FP cost and cast time, but it wasn't really a whole other system. I remember thinking, "This is genius! Why don't other games do this?"

Other aspects of the magic system also followed a logic that I could understand: Advanced spells required understanding of basic spells (to make a Fireball, you need to know how to create a fire, then shape it). Spells tire out the caster. And so on. It felt... un-arbitrary.

Today I still like the magic system... mostly. Over the years there have been a few issues that have caused problems for me as a GM and for my players.

One issue is that there are SO MANY spells. I don't retain the knowledge of what each spell does, how it can be used, etc. As a GM I don't want to consult books to look up things in the middle of a game, but I don't have a better resource for spells other than the Magic book. This effects PC and NPCs.

Players (especially those coming from other games where they needed to know far fewer spells) have a hard time knowing the details of a very large spell list. I've often had a player forget they have spell X, but then something comes up where they feel that spell could be put to some use. Then, I need to look up the details to make sure the spell works as we think it does.

For my part, I dread making NPC casters. I don't want to use the same spell list every time, but creating a new list of spells and trying to figure out what each do and what is a good strategy can be a huge pain. I've tried just creating the 5-6 combat spells I think that they will need, but often find that if they had the prerequisite spells, the encounter would have played out very differently.

Even when I know what a spell is "supposed" to do, players are going to find new and creative ways to abuse utilize them. This is usually a good thing, but does require a lot of off the cuff rulings. I tend to try to keep with the intent of the spell more than anything else. Many times, I find after doing some research and further thinking that I would have ruled a different way, and have to make sure I convey that to my players so that they are not angry when things don't work as they did last time.

None of this makes me hate the default GURPS magic system, but it does make it a pain some times. I've been tempted to use something other than the default system, but since my current game is DF I've decided to stick to the RAW as much as I can. If I had more time, I'd probably make a (digital) "spell card" for each spell that a PC has with full details of the spell, which would probably address my biggest issues.

I'd love to hear other issues, concerns, and solutions others have.