Podcast Episode 3 Transcript - Sorcery, and Enemy NPC Creation

Enraged Eggplant:

Hello, I'm EnragedEggplant, welcome to the third episode of Only the Parts You Need, a GURPS podcast. We will be talking about two topics this episode; first up is the detailed analysis of Sorcery, and second, Legendsmith will teach you how to quickly create Non-Player Characters.

    Sorcery is one of the premade Magic as Powers systems, using power-building rules from GURPS Powers. Initially, it was published in Pyramid #3-63, but then it was reprinted in its own dedicated GURPS Thaumatology - Sorcery book with slight alterations. Sorcery has received some support in Pyramid issues #82 and #105, and then had its grimoire expanded in GURPS Sorcery - Protection & Warning Spells.

    Let’s start at the beginning and explain how it all works mechanically. The main advantage for Sorcery is Sorcerous Empowerment that was estimated by creating a custom Modular Ability. Note that it is priced differently in Pyramid #3-63 and GURPS Thaumatology - Sorcery. In the former case it costs 18 points for level 1 plus 9 points per additional level, while in the latter case it was slightly reworked by adding an extra +20% enhancement that increased the cost to 20 points for level 1 plus 10 points per additional level. GURPS Thaumatology - Sorcery has a sidebar that describes this internal structure and suggests against modifying it, treating Sorcerous Empowerment as its own trait. I have gone against this suggestion a few times and I will explain why later. Sorcerous Empowerment can be limited by colleges and scope. That’s practically the same thing.

    The next component is Sorcery Talent. It costs 10 points/level or 5 points/level if your Sorcerous Empowerment is limited in scope. As with all other talents, Sorcery Talent adds to every roll made to cast a sorcerous spell and to Occultism and Thaumatology rolls when answering questions about magic. Don’t forget to set a level cap. Sorcery Talent has another function - you add the higher of Sorcerous Empowerment or Sorcery Talent to Will when your spells must resist countermagic. Never knew the part about adding Sorcerous Empowerment until I began writing this script. We’re not done here yet. One thing that often is forgotten is that the subject’s Size Modifier cannot exceed the caster’s Size Modifier + Sorcery Talent. This can be very important.

    The book also notes that Magic Resistance is somewhat weaker against sorcerers, because many sorcerous spells do not require a casting roll. Only casting rolls are affected, not rolls made to use the spell, such as Innate Attack.

    The last component is the spells themselves. They are bought as alternative abilities to Sorcerous Empowerment. Put simply, this means:

1. The full cost of the spell cannot exceed the cost of the caster’s Sorcerous Empowerment.
2. The sorcerer pays only 1/5 of the full cost of the spell, rounded up, when learning the spell.
3. The sorcerer can use only one spell at a time. But we will talk about that in more details later.

Let’s talk about the structure of a spell now. Every spell is defined by the following:

1. Name. That’s obvious.
2. Keywords. We will talk about them later.
3. Full cost. This is the full cost before it is divided by 5 when learning the spell.
4. Casting roll. Many spells have no roll to cast, and some have additional rolls, such as attack rolls with Innate Attack. All of those benefit from Sorcery Talent.
5. Range. This can be either a static number, or “Self”, or “Unlimited”. In case of unlimited range, by default assume that range penalties from p. B550 apply.
6. Duration. This can be a fixed duration, “Permanent”, “Indefinite” (which means that the spell lasts for as long as the caster maintains it), or “Truly Permanent” (which means that the spell is permanent, but is not vulnerable to countermagic).
7. Casting cost. Sorcery assumes that all spells cost 1 FP to use for the sake of simplicity, uniformity, and reduction of bookkeeping. If you can handle some additional bookkeeping, you can assign different costs to spells, but do not remove it. The lack of casting cost would make the sorcerers feel more like superheroes who can use their abilities whenever they want and as many times as they want without running out of gas.
8. Casting time. Again, Sorcery assumes that all spells take 1 or 2 seconds to cast. We will talk about that more in-depth later. If you can handle additional bookkeeping, you could assign different casting times to spells.
9. Description.
10. Statistics. Those are specific game mechanics behind the spell.

   

Casting a known spell requires the caster to take two Concentrate maneuvers - or just one if he is repeating the same spell he last cast. If the spell requires an attack roll, then the last maneuver changes to one that allows attacks (such as Attack or All-Out Attack). This additional Concentrate maneuver to “switch” the spell is justified by the standard rules for alternative abilities as defined in GURPS Power-Ups 8 - Limitations with slight alterations. It always takes a full second to switch spells, even when switching between two attack spells, but this is balanced by allowing the sorcerer to maintain multiple copies of the same spell. One vaguely defined rule is that casting a spell is a single continuous action that can be interrupted, forcing the caster to spend two seconds to Concentrate again. Typically, he cannot “switch” to another spell in advance. If he does not mind spending FP and the spell is harmless enough, he could cast it, for example, into the sky, in a non-combat situation to “switch” to this spell. However, Jason Levine, the author, says that switching can be done for free and in advance, if you want it.

    By default, you have to only Concentrate to cast the spell - you do not have to wave your hands around or chant, making your casting obvious. This might not be the flavor you’re looking for, so the book provides the alternative rituals rules: to cast a spell, the sorcerer must meet two of the following three requirements: pay 1 FP, perform obvious physical gestures, or speak an obvious ritual chant. This makes casting far less subtle and makes the casters more easily countered by silencing or binding them. In addition, this allows other characters with magical knowledge identify spells that are being cast with an Occultism or Thaumatology roll (at -4 if the caster is only chanting or gesturing). If you’re using spells that cost more than 1 FP, then these requirements replace only 1 FP from the full cost. Note that even if the sorcerer paid no FP when casting the spell, the maintenance still costs 1 FP/minute.

    The Super-Sorcery article from Pyramid #3-105 adds extra options for alternate rituals, like paying 1 HP, selling a part of your soul, manifesting obvious, flashy arcane signs when casting the spell, or invoking a deity’s name. It is suggested that the character picks the rituals from the list of available ones during character generation - this is a permanent alteration of the way he works his magic. The choice of rituals can add a lot of flavor and tactical considerations. The same article provides rules for situations where the caster can pick from more than three rituals, stronger versions of the rituals, and allows picking the FP or HP-spending ritual multiple times. This allows for subtle spellcasting.

    However, as stated by Jason Levine, the creator of the Sorcery system, experience has shown that it can be unbalancing for sorcerers to invoke alternate rituals to cast repeated spells with no FP cost in a fight. Because of that, he suggests the following rule: Every sorcerous spell with no FP cost takes the longer of normal casting time or (1d+1)/2 seconds to cast (round up). Roll for this when beginning to cast; if you don't like the result, you can abort, wasting your action this turn. In most non-combat situations, you can simply ignore this limitation. Personally, I like this houserule and use it in my games.

    The next step is making a casting roll, if it is required. A critical success eliminates the spell’s FP cost and provides additional benefits, something around a +50% increase in effectiveness. Failure means that the spell fizzles, FP spent on it is lost, but the sorcerer can try again at no penalty. A critical failure causes the caster to lose 1d FP, have his sorcery shut down for 1d seconds, or something equally bad to happen.

    When casting a leveled spell, the caster can opt to use Extra Effort by making a Will+Talent roll at -4 per added level. Success raises the effective level of the spell for this particular casting, costs 1 extra FP, but does not take extra time. A critical failure makes the caster lose 1d FP and his sorcery shuts down for 1d seconds. Typically, this extra effort option is only available for known spells, but the GM can allow it for improvised spells too, but never for spells cast with hardcore improvisation. The Super-Sorcery article from Pyramid #3-105 adds optional rules for applying even more extra effort.

    Now that I’ve mentioned it, let’s talk about improvisation. This feature is what makes sorcerers flexible. A sorcerer may improvise any spell with a full cost no greater than his Sorcerous Empowerment level. This makes sorcerers that limit their Sorcerous Empowerment by scope or colleges able to improvise stronger spells than their peers with unlimited Sorcerous Empowerment, because their level will be higher despite spending the same amount of points. Otherwise, casting an improvised spell works just like casting a normal spell.

    There’s also hardcore improvisation that is stronger, but much more difficult. Hardcore improvisation lets the sorcerer improvise a spell based on the cost of his Sorcerous Empowerment rather than its level. This requires no additional time, but requires at least 3 extra FP. After the first Concentrate maneuver, the caster pays 3 FP and rolls against his Will + Talent. He may substitute Will-based Thaumatology for Will, if better.

    This roll takes the following modifiers: -4 if the full cost of the spell is no more than 25% of the cost of your Sorcerous Empowerment; -6 if no more than 50%; -8 if no more than 75%; and -10 if higher (up to 100%). +1 for every additional FP you spend above and beyond the 3 FP required – but this can only offset the penalty for spell cost, not provide a net bonus.

    If the caster succeeds, he improvises the spell for a single casting. On a critical success, he recovers all FP spent on improvisation and gets a +1 bonus on any rolls to cast or use the spell. He still has to cast the spell, paying its normal FP cost and making all required rolls. If he fails the casting roll, he’ll have to improvise the spell again. Note that casting a spell improvised this way does not “switch” you to this spell - you still have to take two Concentrate maneuvers to cast it again. If your improvisation roll results in a critical failure, then your sorcery shuts down for the next 1d minutes. If you have GURPS Powers, feel free to use the more complex Crippled Abilities rules.

    The most important thing about improvisation that is often overlooked is the improvisational limits. The GM should restrict sorcery to an approved grimoire for the campaign, declaring that only these spells can be learned and improvised. If he allows sorcerers to improvise completely new spells, then such spells must make sense as new, general spells for the setting - with “general” being the keyword here. Ignoring this part will make the sorcerers way too powerful and flexible and probably will ruin the whole experience.

    Before I start talking about the spell types, I’d like to talk about simultaneous spells and spell maintenance. The huge discount on known spells stems from the alternative abilities rules - the sorcerer can only maintain one spell at a time, at least by default. He can increase this limit by paying the full cost for his most expensive known spell. This way he’ll be able to maintain two spells at once. To maintain three spells, he must pay full cost for two of his most expensive spells, and so on. The Super-Sorcery article from Pyramid #3-105 adds optional rules for more flexibility - Partial Sorcerous Empowerment and Fractional Full Cost. It should also be noted that since Sorcery is built using the alternative abilities rules, anything that disables one ability disables the whole collection, regardless of the number of slots as per GURPS Power-Ups 8 - Limitations. This includes crippling Sorcery with a critical failure, overexerting yourself with a spell based on Warp, or being affected by Neutralize. However, if you are casting a spell that is based on an advantage that can’t be activated again until its duration expires, such as Luck or Neutralize with the Power Theft enhancement, then you are “freezing” only that slot - you may continue to swap other abilities into your remaining slots. If you have only one slot, then your entire array is disabled for the duration.

    Some spells require maintenance. If a spell has an “Indefinite” duration, then it lasts as long as the sorcerer maintains it, paying 1 FP per minute. This requires no special actions. While the sorcerer maintains a spell, he cannot cast other spells, unless he paid some extra points as I’ve explained before. Spells with any other kind of duration do not require maintenance. I’ve heard people say that a buff is dispelled once the caster switches to another spell, but this is wrong. If you are using Jason Levine’s house rules, Costs Fatigue should be -10%/level instead of -5%. Therefore, the version bundled into the Sorcery power modifier needs to be weakened slightly. As such, all indefinite spells cost 1 FP every 10 minutes instead of every minute.

    Now let’s talk about spell types - the things that go into the “keywords” field of the spell. They are used as a shorthand to indicate which special rules apply without writing them out every time.

    Area spells can have a fixed, leveled, or special area. These effects are placed at a +4 for aiming at an area. Note that an area has a height of four yards. If the area depends on the spell’s level, then the caster can always opt to affect a smaller radius. One thing that is new to me that you calculate range from the sorcerer to the edge of the area, not the center.

    Buff spells apply beneficial traits to others. The caster makes an Innate Attack (Gaze) roll to “hit” the subject from afar. If the location hit has DR with no Tough Skin limitation, then the subject has to make a HT roll at a penalty equal to that DR for the buff to work. Magic Resistance forces the subject to roll against HT even if he has no DR and penalizes this roll. It should be noted that buffing unwilling subjects works differently in Pyramid #3-63 and GURPS Thaumatology - Sorcery. If using the Pyramid rules, then the unwilling subject can resist by rolling against HT as normal; but if you’re using updated rules from GURPS Thaumatology - Sorcery, then the unwilling subject resists buff spells automatically. This is important, because some buff spells provide situationally negative traits. I remember using buff spells to turn enemies into piles of leaves - that was a mistake. Don’t do that. One other thing I haven’t noticed before is that buff spells lack the Underwater enhancement. This means that they can only be used as touch spells underwater. This is very important if you are playing in an aquatic campaign. If you want to make an Area Buff spell, remember how DR works against such abilities. This will force subjects who have even a single piece of armor with no Tough Skin to make HT rolls to be affected. Build such spells with Malediction, like Area Resisted spells.

    Information, Jet, Obvious, Resisted, and Weapon Buff spells do not have anything special worth talking about. I’ll just say that I see no reason not to introduce Armor Buff spells. If you do make such spells, remember that spells typically affect discrete objects - so only a single piece of armor will be affected, not the whole suit.

    Some more things should be mentioned before I get to the juicy parts. Mana-dependency of the spells is worded slightly differently in Pyramid #3-63 and GURPS Thaumatology - Sorcery, although the +3 to resist Resisted spells in low mana might be just an interpretation of halved effectiveness. Consult your GM prior to the game on this topic. The other one is the damage limit. GURPS Thaumatology - Sorcery provides its own guidelines on how to limit damage of spells based on the damage an optimized character could inflict at range; Pyramid #3-82 introduces the sorcerer template for Dungeon Fantasy and limits the damage based on Sorcery Talent, and Jason Levine on his blog suggests limiting damage based on the Sorcerous Empowerment level. The link to the post will be provided in the description.

    The book also provides rules for improving spells, deprecating spells when gaining new levels of Sorcerous Empowerment, and quite extensive rules on enchanting that can be used to estimate the dollar cost of gadgets even if you are not using Sorcery at all. The system might serve as an alternative to Metatronic Generators from Pyramid #3-46 or as an additional option. Depending on the flavor you’re aiming for, you might want to limit spell improvement somewhat. For example, if sorcery is an inborn ability then it would make sense letting sorcerers improve their powers in any reasonable way they want, but if sorcery represents study of arcane formulas and static spells, then even changing the spell’s duration might require learning a separate spell. In any case, do not let the sorcerer remove the spell’s FP cost.

    I’ve talked about the system’s upsides and downsides in the first episode and explained how the system works in detail here, and now I’d like to talk about customizing sorcery. The Sorcery system out of the box provides a way to make spellcasters that fling spells quickly and almost effortlessly, as if it was their second nature. It does provide an option for limiting spell access, but does not go beyond that. Many stories and settings feature many different magical traditions, and while you can represent them with different magical systems in GURPS, you could even make unique traditions or subsystems just by modifying the Sorcerous Empowerment advantage and/or spells, available to these traditions.

    There’s three aspects of sorcery that you can modify:

1. Sorcerous Empowerment. Modifying this advantage can change the scope of the magical abilities available and how you improvise them.
2. Spells. Restricting spells to a certain form, changing their power modifier - all that can change how your magic works.
3. Special rules. Allowing and forbidding certain powers-related special rules from GURPS Powers can add some extra flavour.

   

    Let’s go over the applicable modifiers.

    Quite often in fiction mages require to perform arcane gestures and pronounce incantations. While the default alternate rituals allow that, you can force the sorcerer to use them by applying Requires Gestures and/or Requires Magic Words limitations to the spells, not Sorcerous Empowerment. In addition, you can apply Requires Material Component, if the caster must hold a specific object in hand to cast the spell, or Trigger, if this object is also expended. These limitations make sorcery feel more like magic than like superpowers, but allow the opponents to counter the sorcerer’s abilities by restricting his speech or movements. But perhaps that is exactly what you were looking for. If these requirements apply to all spells, then they can be combined with the existing power modifier. If they vary from spell to spell - then you have to spell them out separately.

    You might want to switch the base attribute for spellcasting by applying Based on (Different Attribute), Own Roll enhancement to spells that need it. This allows you to replace the spell’s casting roll (that is more often than not either IQ or Will) to DX, HT, Per, or even a calculated base. This can represent the caster channeling his inner lifeforce, spotting the flow of mana in the ley lines, or something else. But be careful, as this enhancement can have unforeseen consequences. Consult the Magic Based on Other Attributes section in GURPS Thaumatology, pg. 29-31. The Fifth Attribute article by Christopher R. Rice from Pyramid #3-120 has guidelines on basing sorcery spells on Quintessence - a new attribute introduced in the article. Although, I’m not completely sure about why it is suggested to add the Based on QN, +20% enhancement to buff spells instead of the Requires QN Roll, -10% limitation.

    Backlash is an interesting limitation. Applying it to Sorcerous Empowerment will make improvisation more risky and dangerous in combat, but can represent you overloading your magical abilities. If you apply it to the spells, then spellcasting itself becomes very unpleasant. Probably too much.

Cardiac Stress and Cerebral Stress can do the same, but with a risk of death. I suggest against applying it to spells, but it could be fun to apply it to Sorcerous Empowerment.

Sorcery has a sidebar about making spells with high FP costs, and if that is not enough for you, you can also make some spells cost HP. Or make all spells cost HP. But remember that the blood magic alternate ritual from Pyramid #3-105 exists.

The Corrupting limitation from GURPS Horror is very flavourful and customizable, fit for both spells and Sorcerous Empowerment. It is especially fitting for divine or spiritual sorcerous traditions. Adding Fickle makes it even better.

If you want to limit the out-of-combat utility of sorcerers, consider applying the Emergencies Only limitation to Sorcerous Empowerment.

There are other ways making Sorcery a trait that is granted by other being. Consider using the Pact, Granted by Other, or Gadget limitations, maybe even a combination of them. Although, you should keep in mind that if you are planning to replace the power modifier with, say, Divine, then you should disassemble the Sorcerous Empowerment advantage, because it already includes the Magical power modifier. This is simple with other -10% power modifiers, but it can create problems with other power modifiers. For example, if you want to replace Magical, -10% with Nature, -20% for a druidic spellcaster, then you should come up with a way to compensate those 10% that are left with something, so you don’t have to worry about fractional final point costs. I use Reliable 2 to make hardcore improvisation easier, but maybe you can come up with something better.

You can change the time it takes to cast or improvise spells by applying Takes Extra Time or Immediate Preparation Required. Applying the latter to Sorcerous Empowerment can greatly decrease the sorcerer’s flexibility in combat, but leave his out-of-combat utility relatively unharmed. On the other hand, you can apply Takes Recharge, Limited Use, or Periodic Recharge to let the sorcerer improvise once or twice in combat.

Nuisance Effect and Accessibility can do almost anything you can imagine. There’s a wide array of things you can do with them - from allowing the sorcerer to cast or improvise spells only at night to limiting him to spells written in his spellbook to whatever you can imagine.

In addition, consider looking through the Powers in Action chapter in GURPS Powers and decide what rules apply to Sorcery or to specific magical traditions in your game. These combinations can greatly enhance the flavor. Specialized critical failure tables from GURPS Thaumatology and GURPS Magic could work too. In the most extreme cases you can also replace Sorcerous Empowerment with a different type of Modular Abilities using the rules from GURPS Powers.

There is eleven Sorcery-based traditions on my blog, but I use even more in my own games. What can I say, I love kitchen sinks. Every tradition in use is somehow limited, as the experience showed that straight, unlimited Sorcery feels a little too powerful for my tastes. On the other hand, my gaming group frequently points out how dumb and unbalanced some of my rulings are, so take everything I say here with a grain of salt. I have not seen many other people create their own variants, but one Sorcery-based system I’ve found is Dungeon Sorcery by Rindis. It gives Sorcery an old-school AD&D feel, and I suggest you to check it out. The link will be provided in the description.

I believe that all I have to say for now. I hope that now you understand how Sorcery works, just how flexible it really is, and how you want to adjust it for your game.

Notes:

PK’s houserules

rindis

Legendsmith:

Creating NPCs is something every GM needs to do. GURPS has a variety of premade NPCs spread throughout the books, but custom NPCs are of course completely necessary. A trap that many new GURPS GMs can fall into is trying to stat every NPC out as though they were a player character. This should only be reserved for recurring NPCs such as allies, dependents, and major enemies such as main villains, and potentially their lieutenants. Statting these is like statting a player character, so we'll leave villain design for another episode.

This episode will mainly focus on enemy NPCs for combat. So how do we stat NPCs for encounters? The method varies by genre, so I'll focus on fantasy at first, since that's what many people are familiar with. Before I continue, I have to mention a pyramid article titled "It's a Threat!" by Christopher Rice, from Pyramid Issue 3/77. This article provides a system for assessing Combat Effectiveness Rating of players and enemies. I recommend it even though it's not perfect, It's a good rule of thumb. The rules in Action 2: Exploits also has a lot of resources for how to speed things up, I can't recommend it strongly enough. Now, that aside. Making NPCs.

With enemy NPCs, it's a good idea to think about and decide how much damage they can deal first, and how good they are at delivering it. Since this will determine much of the player's behaviour. You can categorise enemy damage into 5 broad categories:
Minimal. 1 or 2 damage.

Minor. Less than a major wound
Major. A major wound

Knockout. Full HP of damage.

Lethal. Instant death.

An enemy that can only defeat the players armor on a maximum damage roll is not much of a threat, it's minor damage and so can be deployed in larger numbers. Players will be able to wade into combat, and enjoy a sense of power, though they can also be used to provide pressure.

Enemies that can beat the player armor a little over half the time is a good measure if you're trying to provide more of a challenge. For example, an enemy that deals 1d+4 cutting damage, against 6 DR. About 65% of the time they will defeat this armo and deal 1 damage, and about half the time they will deal 2 damage, which equates to 3 injury past armor, that's significant.

Another example is an enemy that deals 2d6 damage, against again, players that have 6 DR. About 60% of the time these enemies will roll 7 damage, which is minimal. It might be 2 damage if they are using impaling weapons. However about 40% of the time they will deal more. This makes them less of a threat, as adds are more reliable than extra dice. As hits can be rare past defenses, don't be afraid to allow for usual minor wounds with major as a max roll potential. Additionally, keep in mind damage types. Impaling damage is double injury to the torso, but not the limbs, wheras cutting is 1.5 times everywhere, except neck where it's more.

Enemies that can deal significant damage, such as taking a Player Character from full HP to 0 in one hit through armor should be handled with care, especially if they themselves die in a few hits. This can turn the battle into a contest of who hits first, which can be frustrating if not handled correctly. Unready weapons such as pollaxes and other polearms are a decent choice here, since while they deal devastatingly high damage, they suffer from being unready and thus only able to hit every other turn. This can give player characters openings and teach them tactics where they want to go on the defensive, and then attack once the polearm wielder has swung.

Also take into account the player's active defenses. If this is a low level campaign, they might not amount to much. For enemies, they should have a melee skill of twelve to thirteen for most mooks. This enables them to hit most of the time and at least keep the players on their toes. Elites may have higher skill levels, such as sixteen, and use deceptive attacks and feints in order to lower player character defenses. A Skill level of sixteen means that said elites can have a better chance of hitting by lowering their skill to twelve with a deceptive attack in order to penalise defenders by two since deceptive attacks use a 2 to one ratio. They can also attempt to target chinks in armor in order to get through high player DR.

However, Even weaker enemies can be a threat, especially if they outnumber the players, and grapple and pin. Enemies that grapple can put player characters in a place where they need help from their teammates; this is a great way to encourage teamwork and looking out for each other. I  recommend the grappling rules from Douglas Cole's Hall of Judgement, but that's a topic for another episode. I personally use Technical Grappling, by the same Author though.

Furthemore, outnumbering the players allows enemies to outflank the players. This is important. You cannot defend an attack you cannot see or sense. This is of course, terrain dependent. Try to provide options for the players to exploit in any combat, but especially against a numerically superior force. Remember, an attack from behind can claim a telegraphic attack bonus for plus four to hit without giving the enemy the usual dodge bonus, since they can't see it coming. This can be combined with All out attack determined or strong too, for devastating knockout blows. The skull is only minus five to hit from behind. So this vulnerable location is far more easily targeted by flanking enemies. Additionally, parry is often the best defense, but it's at minus two to defend the opposite side the weapon is held in, meaning 2 enemies to the sides is considerably more difficult defend against, though defensive grips can mitigate this.

If dealing with extra large numbers of enemies, the horde rules from GURPS Zombies are great. These don't suit every enemy type, but large numbers of tightly packed enemies are what it is meant for, so it can suit masses of melee foes.

That's a lot to keep in mind, but remembering skill level, enemy toughness, and the damage compared to player defenses is the meat of it. The final thing is enemy defenses. The longer an enemy survives, the longer they might get a hit in. The way to think about this the same as the enemy's damage compared to player defense. GURPS is deadly, so having enemies that go down in one, two, or three hits is usually fine. As advised in the books, it's a good idea not to make health rolls for every single enemy. Make them for only important bosses and the like, others can be assumed to fail their health check at zero and fall unconscious. But you needn't assume they're dead. If a mook is reduced to the death threshold, you can call them dead, or if you like more suspense, you can secretly roll for their deaths at the end of combat. If they survive, perhaps they can reappear. Previously wounded enemies making an appearance later can be a great way to spice up combat with grudges.

When I make an enemy NPC, I just need their four primary stats, their basic speed and move, a few weapon and combat skills, and then I give them a wildcard skill that suits their particular archetype. For example, a soldier may have strength twelve, dexterity 10, IQ ten, health eleven, and the skills Spear Thirteen, brawling thirteen, wrestling twelve, and Wildcard skill Soldier at eleven or twelve. The leader may have leadership and tactics at eleven too.

Their strength, and spear weapon give them a damage of one d plus two with their spears, and one d minus one with their punches.

I can say they have simple jack of plates armor for DR 3, and their move is 5, or if their armor is heavier, their move will be 4. That's all I need to write down. No need to worry about point value, what matters is their effectiveness. If these spearmen are up against a player character with 6 DR armor, the spearmen will be in trouble. A character with weapon skill 16 and 6DR armor can take quite a few hits from these spearmen. Rolling these numbers off the top of my head is rather easy for m e, but for a newer GM, I recommend making a cheat sheet that contains the damage adds of a few common weapons, a strength table of strength 9 to 14 or so, and a few armour values and the usual move that an enemy wearing them has. That means you can easily have  the combat-relevant parts of fodder enemies on hand all the time.

Back to the spearmen for a moment; they can posse differing levels of threat depending on how the GM plays them. I mentioned a leader. More competent NPC leaders another great way to spice up combat. Consecutive blocks and parries incur large penalties, so if these spearmen were fighting superior player characters, they may be ordered by a good leader to target one player to wear them down. They're not telepathic though, so having their leader shout the orders means the characters have warning of the onslaught. Shouted commands is an excellent way to make extra languages valuable in combat too; if the enemies are foreigners, they won't speak the player characters' common tongue.

Alternately, these spearmen under a incompetent leader will be disorganised and unfocused, making the fight easier. Player characters may wish to focus on eliminating competent enemy leaders to make fights easier.

A final note is on special powers. Damaging powers are straightforward, you can simply work out the threat level that they can exert in the way I mentioned earlier. Enemies that can deal Lethal hits with powers should be rare, have cooldowns or wind ups, or parrying. Special powers can be used to spice up fights a lot. A great way to think about it is consider enemy powers that force the players to help each other, but try to avoid things that make all but one player obsolete, like flight if only one person has a ranged attack. But letting players shine is also good; such as a magic enemy against a player wizard with dispel. Then the other characters need to keep their wizard safe lest they be at a large disadvantage.

Here's an example.

This was created as a boss fight for my group which consists of four, 400 point characters and their followers.

The vine ogre is supposed to be very threatening, and thus I gave it a powerful attack, a 2d+7 giant axe. There are some very tough characters in my party, including some with DR over 8. This axe attack is a very powerful attack, capable of potentially bringing a player character down to zero in one hit, but it's not guaranteed.  In light of this I made it an unready weapon. This lends a sense of pondering power to the fight and means that it's not an omnipresent threat. I use the Teamwork rules, so the PCs can help shield each other too. But there is another threat. The Vine ogre has two binding attacks, and a shield. It can always shield bash as this is not an unready weapon, though this deals far less damage at 1d+2 . The binding is strength eight, but can be layered. It's also vulnerable to cutting and fire. The shield is merely a slab of bark and wood, and so it can be destroyed, it has Defence bonus 3, DR 3 and HP 66. At HP 33 it's defence bonus drops by one.
Finally, it has a 'thorn burst' attack that has a 5 second cooldown, but is vulnerable to being destroyed; thorn fruit swell and burst to shower a large aoe with thorns that inflict moderate pain. But the fruit can be destroyed by just 1 point of damage before it's finished swelling.

To top it all off, the Vine Ogre can use two attacks every turn, one of them being a binding attack. and since it's made of plant matter, it is homogenous and lacks a blood and a brain, but does have vitals. The idea is that the players must work together, freeing each other from vines, and making sure to destroy the bursting thorn fruit. The shield can be destroyed by main force, or bypassed.

While the Axe is ponderous, the Vine ogre is skilled, it has skill 16 for all its attacks, and will often use a deceptive attack on its axe swing.

It has dodge nine plus the three of its shield, for 11, and an parry of 14. This is quite high, but my player characters are very skilled, so they're expected to use deceptive attacks and feints. It's Huge, at a size modifier of +3 so it is easier to hit too, meaning that even more effective deceptive attacks can be used. If its shield is destroyed, the dodge and parry both drop as well as its no longer in the way.

I hoped to have an after action report of the battle with this enemy but unfortunately for that plan, my players managed to use diplomacy to reach a nonviolent solution. If you're listening, don't feel bad about it.

Let's talk about NPCs in general now. I plan to cover this in greater detail in future episodes.

Major recurring NPCs such as a party's main patron, and recurring allies should often be statted as full characters as I said, though shortcuts can be made. The most important shortcut is the use of wildcard skills. For example, an important diplomat NPC may have the DIPLOMAT! Wildcard skill. This lets him do diplomacy, know international law, attend diplomatic functions, manage an embassy and its staff, and negotiate treaties.

But it wouldn't let him defend himself if the embassy was attacked, he'd need a regular weapon skill for that.

More minor characters can be created with wildcards. An NPC needn't be more than 4 primary stats, a disadvantage (if relevant), and a Wildcard skill that encompasses their primary role.

In a future episode I'll go more into detail with general NPCs and how to create lots of NPCs with differing traits at once.

 

Podcast Episode 2 - Introduction to GURPS

EnragedEggplant:

Hello, I'm EnragedEggplant, welcome to the second episode of Only the Parts You Need, a GURPS podcast. The topic of this episode is the Introduction to GURPS.

“Introduction to GURPS” is a very difficult topic to talk about, as there is a lot that needs to be said, compared, and explained, and it’s hard to find a good starting point. First and foremost, it must be said that GURPS is a system that the GM can adjust in any way he wants, or use one of the ready-to-use genre books, such as Action, After the End, Dungeon Fantasy, or Monster Hunters. The generic nature that allows running games of all genres, styles, and tones requires the GM choose rules and components he wants to use from the vast array of options, as many of the options are not meant to be used with each other. I feel like this should be stated right in the introduction of the GURPS Basic Set, but it is not, unfortunately, which can lead to some misunderstandings. However, this is stated in the introduction of How to be a GURPS GM, a book that was released much later. The book layout in general is frequently criticized.

    GURPS has a default setting - Infinite Worlds that is an “everything goes” kitchen sink, at least at the first glance. While I really like the setting and feel like it’s well written, I believe that it leads the new players to believe that GURPS was made for such “everything goes” games. As a result, new GMs and players try running such games, use everything available, get overwhelmed by the number of rules and options, have a bad game, and become discouraged from trying GURPS ever again. While the current edition of GURPS is a relatively modern system, it retains the property of old-school wargames that are not very accessible to newcomers and work much better when an experienced player leads you through the process, like Advanced Squad Leader, for example. Although, it is still very much possible to learn the game from scratch and with no outside help - I did it that way.

    GURPS has four key points that you should be familiar with when deciding whether you want to use it or not:

1. GURPS has precisely one task-resolution mechanism: “Take a score, add a modifier, and roll three six-sided dice under the result.” No other dice are used, but sometimes you have to roll more or fewer than 3 dice, for example, when rolling damage.
2. It is a point-buy system. Every advantage, disadvantage, skill - everything costs a certain positive or negative number of points that are taken from a single pool (or multiple pools, if you’re using certain optional rules).
3. Every game of GURPS is different, as the combinations of rules and options (most of which are optional) that the GM uses can create different tones and styles - from gritty and realistic to cinematic and over-the-top games. The modularity of the system allows the GM to add or omit certain parts that he likes or does not like. For example, if the GM wants more detailed combat, he adds rules from GURPS Martial Arts. If he want to have magic in his setting, he adds one of the various magic systems. If he want a simplified combat system, he removes the tactical combat chapter entirely. If he does not like called shots, he removes hit locations. If he wants detailed and realistic firearm combat, he adds rules from GURPS Tactical Shooting, but if he wants cinematic gunslingers, he adds rules from GURPS Gun Fu. And so on, and so forth.
4. While GURPS is generic, it is grounded in real life, by default trying to give the game a “heroic realism” style. If there is something one could do in real life, you probably can either find the rules for it or estimate them with relative ease. This quality is in part accomplished by thorough research that goes in the production of most books. Many books are very entertaining to read even if you’re not planning to use them, or even use GURPS.

    It should be said that GURPS can handle almost every setting, but it might not do every genre right. However it can do a lot of genres quite well. For example, modern-time action hero games, historical games, sci-fi games, fantasy games, social or merchant-based games. It can struggle with high-power superheroes games in the hands of new GMs.

    Let’s say that your GM told you everything about his game and asked you to make a character. Usually, the GM provides the starting point total, disadvantage limits, advantages and disadvantages that you are required to have, a list of forbidden advantages, optional rules that will be used in the game, and, perhaps, a list of skills that should be had by at least one party member. The GM might also provide a list of character templates that you should be using when creating a character. Templates do help new players by providing familiar archetypes, and limiting decision paralysis that is a problem often encountered in GURPS. Personally, I’m not a fan of character templates as I feel that they limit your options too much, but I still like to use them as starting points for character creation.

    Characters built on the same amount of points can be vastly different. Combat is one of the most common ways of conflict resolution, but having the same point total does not mean that the characters will be identically effective in combat. One example that is often brought up is a 25-point warrior that put all his points in combat skills versus a 250-point lawyer with points in non-combat skills and advantages. If the GM wants the characters to not differ much in combat effectiveness, then he should create appropriate templates or just state his intent outright. Test combats against each other or typical enemies after character creation and the following adjustments are a good option too. If you are playing Dungeon Fantasy, then you can use Combat Effectiveness Rating from Pyramid #3-77 to gauge combat capabilities.

One of the common mistakes made by new players is taking disadvantages that they won't enjoy roleplaying and that they don't want to come up in play. GURPS does not consider a disadvantage that does not actually penalize you a disadvantage and hence, suggests against providing extra points for it. Typically, disadvantages are taken to flesh out the character, make him or her feel more real, not to cheat the system to get more character points. Also, I've noticed that many players see the disadvantage limit and try to force as many disadvantages into their characters as they can, which can result in both roleplaying difficulties for the players and difficulties for the GM trying to come up with engaging adventures for such characters. Thus, if the GM says that you can take up to -100 points in disadvantages, it doesn't mean that you should. Character progression usually is slow in GURPS, so keep in mind that it might take a while to buy off disadvantages that you don't enjoy.

As I mentioned before, it seems to be a good practice to work with the new players on their first characters before they read the rules, instead of letting them trod off into a silo to do everything by themselves, and ultimately getting completely overwhelmed because there is too much to read when they don’t have any direction. While doing that, it’s important to be able to say “no”. You have to get them into the game as fast as possible, so that they can learn only what they need to learn. Whether you abstract that behind a template or “tell me four things you want to be good at, and four problems you have” is six in one hand, half a dozen in the other. You have to narrow the scope of what they need to learn - for example, there is no need to learn car collision or radiation rules in a low-tech game.

The scope of the game is important, the GM must decide on it and the rules he is using, but players have to abide by it too. For example; if a GM is running an archetypical medieval fantasy game, and a player decides he wants to play a psionic alien, the GM needs to be prepared to say "no", even though GURPS does support playing psionic aliens in medieval settings.

Mechanically speaking, GURPS characters consist of basic attributes, secondary characteristics, advantages, disadvantages, skills, and techniques. There is only four basic attributes - Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, and Health. Strength determines how much the character can lift, how hard he hits in melee, and how many hit points he has. Dexterity plays a part in determining the character’s speed and Dodge values, and is the base of many skills. Intelligence determines perception, will, and is a base of many skills. Health determines how many fatigue points the character has, how resistant he is to physical ailments, plays a part in determining the character’s speed and Dodge values, and is the base of several skills. One of the latest Pyramid issues has rules for the fifth attribute - Quintessence, that governs supernatural abilities; and there are some fanmade houserules regarding introducing additional attributes or separating Intelligence from Perception and Will, but we are not going to touch that in this episode.

Advantages are positive traits that the character possesses. They can be passive or active, have static costs or have leveled costs. Advantages are split into physical, mental, and social, and additionally split into mundane, exotic, and supernatural. The categories speak for themselves - advantages range from having your right arm being stronger than the left one and having acute hearing to having powerful patrons or contacts to abilities to launch explosive fireballs. Technically, positive basic attributes and secondary characteristics also are advantages. Advantages can be modified with enhancements and limitations that increase or decrease its cost, respectively. Thus, you can make your fire attack homing, make your mind control only work if you maintain eye contact with the victim, and so on - the possibilities are endless. The list of advantages is very long and new players often feel overwhelmed, when in reality they usually never have to read it all. I suggest for the first time to just skim the chapter, stopping only to read things that caught your eye, or just ask the GM “what advantage do I have to take to be able to do the thing I want to do”? On the other hand, when I was reading the Basic Set for the first time, this huge list impressed me and made me keep reading - I was excited to see what the system has to offer. It can be different for different people. It’s rare to have a game that allows the whole range of the advantages - many are quite specific. For example, you’re unlikely to need Temporal Inertia in a game with no common time travel, Vacuum Support in a game with no space travel, or all exotic and supernatural advantages in a realistic game about mundane humans.

The next chapter covers the disadvantages. They can represent physical or mental defects, negative social standing. The name “disadvantage” might be misleading, as some disadvantages can represent “good” traits, such as Truthfulness and Honesty. The disadvantageous part of such traits is that they limit your agency somewhat, forcing the character to behave in a certain way. It should be repeated that you should not take disadvantages that you won’t enjoy roleplaying. Just like the advantages, some of the disadvantages will not be appropriate or useful for all settings and games. For example, Magic Susceptibility will not be relevant in mundane realistic games, and so on.

The next chapter covers skills and techniques. Most of the tasks you’re going to do in the game are resolved by rolling against your skill level. Skills have the attribute they are based on, difficulty, and, possibly, required or optional specialties (sometimes even two) and technological level. Skill level depends on how many points you have spent on it, on the attribute they are based on, and the difficulty, which can be confusing at first. For example, Interrogation is an Average difficulty skill based on IQ. According to the table on the page 170, to upgrade the skill level to IQ+1 you have to pay 4 points. Thus, if you have spent 4 points and have IQ 11, your Interrogation skill level will be 12. If you then decide to upgrade your IQ to 12, your skill level will rise along with it. Almost all skills default to other skills or attributes, so you can use them even if you haven’t put any points in them. For example, Bow defaults to DX-5, so if you have DX 12, you can use Bow at skill level 7 without putting any points in it. This whole thing might seem complex at first, but you quickly get used to it.

The skill list is enormous, covering everything you can imagine - from skills that have very limited and questionable uses, like Speed-Reading and Typing, to various weapon skills, to Administration, Free Fall, Theology, etc. As always, you don’t have to use all skills in your game. For example, a low-tech game causes most of technological skills to become irrelevant. If that’s still too much for you, you can use the optional wildcard skills that cost more, but are much more broad. That is a great solution for cinematic games, where you expect a person that is good an a specific thing to be good at all related things. For example, the Detective! wildcard skill replaces Criminology, Detect Lies, Forensics, Interrogation, all specialties of Law, Observation, etc., and the Gun! wildcard skill replaces all specialties of Beam Weapons, Gunner, Guns, and Liquid Projector, as well as all related Fast-Draw skills. New players often overspecialize and put a lot of points into a single skill, and that’s usually a bad thing, because skill improvement grants diminishing results, and realistically a person with a skill level of 14 is considered to be an expert.

Techniques… I don’t recommend them to new players. I suggest to skip them until you have at least some experience. They are quite hard to get your head around at first, let’s not talk about them in this episode.

Let’s talk about the combat system now, as combat often is an important part of the game. As I have said before, by default GURPS assumes “heroic realism” and the default rules reflect that. Turns are not represented by abstract rounds or actions, but are granular 1-second intervals, during which a character usually can perform only a single maneuver. This might take time to get used to, if you are used to thinking that a combat turn not spent on an attack is a waste.

Even the default rules might seem quite complex compared to what some other systems might provide. You might want to take things slow at first, especially with newer players. GURPS Combat Cards might come in handy if your players are physically present. I would also recommend running a few test combats with the player characters against typical enemies or against each other to help the players familiarize themselves with the combat system.

Here’s the basic attack resolution sequence:

1. The attacker makes a roll against his combat skill.
2. If he succeeds, the defender is allowed to make an active defense - Dodge (derived from Basic Speed), Parry (derived from weapon skill), or Block (derived from the Shield skill).
3. If the defender succeeds, he is unaffected by the attack. If he fails, the attacker rolls damage.
4. Damage Resistance of the defender is subtracted from the damage rolled, and, if any damage goes through, the defender takes injury.

    That’s the basic gist of it, but it gets much more complex and fun with hit locations, injury modifiers, deceptive attacks, feints, etc. If that’s still not enough, you can add rules from GURPS Martial Arts, other supplements, and Pyramid articles.

    Since GURPS is not a level-based system, hit points of humanoid characters do not vary that much, usually. This prevents hit point bloat and makes it that every landed hit counts. If this is not what you’re looking for, then you can use optional cinematic rules that can make combat much less deadly.

    GURPS supports both board-less combat, so called "Theatre of the Mind" and grid combat, what the books call Tactical Combat. Both have ample support, though for groups transitioning to GURPS from D20 and other games, it should be noted that Tactical Combat uses a Hex Grid. While hex grids have some advantages over square grids, for example, the lack of sometimes confusing diagonal distance calculations, it might be difficult to use when playing without any virtual tabletop software. I know that there are game mats, erasable transparent sheets, and other helpful tools, but I’m way too used to playing with a sheet of paper torn out of a notebook and a pencil. I have only played GURPS using virtual tabletop software, such as Roll20 and MapTools, so I have not experienced any difficulties with drawing a map on a hex grid.

    In general, I’m a big fan of the GURPS combat system - you can do anything you can imagine, because the rules are grounded in reality and there are no artificial barriers that forbid you from certain actions. Combat can be as complex and as deadly as you want it to - just like with every other aspect of GURPS, you just have to decide what feel you want to accomplish and choose appropriate rules.

    I believe that’s all I have to say for now. I hope that this short introduction to GURPS will help you determine whether you want to use the system or not, and help you get a general feel of the system as a whole.

Legendsmith:

I do have some thoughts of my own to add.

I think a great way to introduce GURPS is to talk about why I use it.

When I have a campaign or setting concept, I already know how I want the key points to be and usually, I can make GURPS do it that way. I don't need to describe it in GURPS terms, I make GURPS describe it in my terms. I can't do that in D&D, because D&D only works on its own terms. This is an important distinction, and one of the greatest strengths of GURPS. However, this does mean that I have to do more work than a D&D GM has to, especially if my concept diverges drastically from GURPS' default of cinematic realism. Super high power games that feature awesome powers like Demigods are, as Enraged Eggplant already mentioned, much more work for the GM, just because he has to define so many different traits and powers. But then again, there's the game books like Monster Hunters to help with some of things that are quite demigod-level. For the GM who likes running his original settings, GURPS is great, especially if those are historical, feature gritty themes, or have a kind of heroic realism vibe.

I also have a fair bit of experience in running GURPS with tactical combat in offline, face-to-face groups. I have a transparent hex grid map, and wet erase markers to draw on it. It's quite straightforward to use, and simply being able to draw on the map makes mapmaking quite easy. Before I bought the map I simply printed hex grids onto paper. I found that my players adapt to the hex grid quickly and easily, as it's quite intuitive. The only thing they struggle with is the number of options in combat, but as a GM it's easy to just introduce them to each option one at a time, or print cheat sheets, or use combat cards.

Thanks for joining us for episode 2. A GURPS Character Sheet program tutorial was meant to be part of this episode, but some difficulties with video codecs have prevented me from including it. Once it's re-recorded, it will be uploaded as a different video. See you next time.