Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tratyn Runewind" data-source="post: 449311" data-attributes="member: 685">Hi again!There are rules in place, right in the Basic Set, to take care of this sort of thing.  They are optional, since realistic lethality is the default mode of GURPS, but they are there.  The "Flesh Wounds" rule is the main one, allowing characters to expend an unspent experience point after combat to eliminate all damage - "It was just a flesh wound!".  The highly-cinematic version of the rule allows this to be done during combat.  And then there are the cinematic rules from the supplements...And as for the single-roll odds...hm, typical starting fighter, Shield-14, for Block 7, 3 PD for large shield, 2 for heavy leather armor, +1 for Combat Reflexes, +2 for a retreating defense - that's 15 or less defense on 3d6, or better than a 90% chance of avoiding attacks that do manage to hit.  All this without using the exotic defense options from GURPS Martial Arts or GURPS Swashbucklers, or taking the All-Out Defense action, or even counting the attacks that will "hit" but bounce off armor DR.  Compare this to D&D:  lvl-1 Orc Warrior, BAB +1, STR 12 for +1, Weapon Focus in his weapon for +1, total attack bonus +3.  Lvl-1 Human Fighter, Chainmail for Armor Bonus +5, large shield for +2, DEX 14 for +2, give him Dodge Feat for another +1 - effective AC 20.  The Orc will hit him on a 17 or better, or 20% of the time.  And at low level, D&D hit points aren't quite so abstract - such a blow will hurt.  So GURPS doesn't really seem any worse off in survivability terms there.Well, flavor is going to come from integration with a particular game world, or the actual game mechanics of the magic system, or from the details of individual spells.  GURPS strives to avoid close integration in its generic magic rules (and, to be fair, GURPS Fantasy did absolutely nothing to spice them up for GURPS' default fantasy game world).  The game mechanics follow typical literary conceptions, with magic as a set of skills usable by specially gifted "mages" (or by anyone in certain places of magical power), fatiguing the user when it is cast.  And the spell selection had to move to fine print just to cram a generic roster of typical fantasy spells into the book, leaving little room for the more exotic or unique stuff.  Perhaps some of the more interesting spells in GURPS Grimoire would stimulate some interest in the more magically jaded...  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />My own problems with the GURPS magic system are more mechanical - flavor is something I have fun working on myself.  The "hard-coded" limits on Magery and spell effectiveness, set at typical realistic-fantasy levels, are unseemly at best in a "Generic" system.  The use of physical Fatigue to power spells is problematical and breaks down completely with high-STR non-human spellcasters, resulting in one of the ugliest kludges I've seen in an RPG.  And the magical college system could use some tweaking - I'd love to see the colleges done the way they did the Paths in the Ritual Magic system (in GURPS Voodoo and GURPS Spirits) - with skill bought in the college itself, and individual spells treated as applications of the college skill, with varying difficulty modifiers, and capable of being individually improved from their defaults with character points.  Maybe in the much-discussed 4th Edition of GURPS, if we're lucky...  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />Well, since you asked...  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />High basic skill in a spell will still reduce the amount of gestures, incantations, time, and Fatigue needed to cast it.  Fatigue reduction is minimal, and requires phenomenal skill to reduce any but the cheapest spells to no-Fatigue casting or maintenance.  Time reduction is also minimal and requires high skill (20+), but most spells take only 1 second to cast, and thus will be reduced to 0 casting time at the first increment of time reduction (not as big an advantage as it sounds, since you can still only cast 1 non-Blocking spell per second, anyway).  "Missile" spells, the ranged combat spells like Fireball and Lightning, are never reduced in casting time for skill.  No amount of skill will reduce specific modifiers, such as those for repeated use of Divination or Healing, though high skill will of course help in overcoming those modifiers. And yes, I suspected that you had been away from GURPS for a bit by your use of "GURPS Fantasy" in reference to the magic rules.  The full Magic rules are now in GURPS Magic (and are summarized, with an abbreviated spell list, in the Basic Set), and GURPS Fantasy is now a worldbook for their default fantasy world, Yrth, with no magic rules.  This is actually slated to change in the future, with GURPS Fantasy planned to be turned into a fantasy campaign primer with no specific setting info (much like GURPS Space), and the Yrth stuff to be moved into GURPS Yrth.  I would guess you remember the old GURPS Fantasy, for 2nd Edition GURPS, staple-bound, with the reddish cover of a demon-summoning, and containing the magic rules plus a short introduction to Yrth at the end.Again, hope this helps!  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

Verification