One of the more interesting traits in GURPS is Blessed. The Basic Set only offered two options: Heroic Feats allowing you to temporarily increase your stats and the ability to receive visions from your god. It’s since be drastically expanded in multiple other books and was the subject of an entire Pyramid article (Blessed Be […]
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Boil and Bubble: Ritual Path Magic Miscellany
Today’s post is a small collection of random rules add-ons for ritual path magic designed to change the system’s dynamic and give it a bit of extra flavor. Curses! External Afflictions and RPM Damaging spells can be “external” based spells meaning the caster must succeed on a skill roll such as Brawling or Innate Attack […]
Continue readingBoil and Bubble: Ritual Path Magic Miscellany IV
Here’s another installment of Ritual Path Magic Miscellany – today I’m talking about area buff/debuffs, alternate spell modifiers, draining spells, and suspendable spells. Area Buff/Debuff Spells Having a spell that allies you to enhance your allies and weaken your enemies is a classic sort of magic – but RPM cannot natively handle it. You cannot with […]
Continue readingBoil and Bubble: Ritual Path Magic Miscellany III
Here’s another installment of Ritual Path Magic Miscellany – today I’m talking about spell requirements, renewable charms, and techbane magic. Requirements for Spells Some spells might require specific ingredients, components, gestures, or motions to even cast. To simulate this, use the following rule: If a spell requires a series of complex hand gestures or foot motions […]
Continue readingGURPS101: Astral Realm Meta-Rules
The astral plane (also called the etheric plane) exists alongside material reality. This is the place where spirits, ghosts, and other stranger beings dwell as well as where astral projectors send their spirits to walk free of mortal flesh. The following rules help to make the astral realm more interesting – especially performing tasks there […]
Continue readingGURPS101: Those Who Help Themselves
Most religions teach at least a modicum of self-reliance – faith that your god will sustain you through your trials, but the trials themselves are up to you to endure and figure out. GURPS Powers: Divine Favor offers a fairly comprehensive framework for characters who are divinely empowered by God, gods, powerful spirits, etc. But […]
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GURPS101: Intermediate Range Modifiers
Yet another “micro-rule” – this time playing with Range modifiers for GURPS. First, let’s look at the current existing range bands: Short-Range (-1/yard like a spell, p. B239) Normal-Range (per p. B550) Long-Range (p. B241) No Penalties GURPS Powers (p. 108) says each step up is worth +50%, while each step down is worth -10%. Interpolated Range […]
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Gamemaster’s Guidepost: When to Follow, Make, Ignore, Bend, or Break Rules
GURPS is one of those games where if you try to use every rule for every circumstance you’re going to create an unusable pile of crap. It’s like sticking a bunch of magnets on a refrigerator and then expecting to see what color the fridge is. You can do it – but it’s barely recognizable. So how do […]
Continue readingMelee Academy: Reordering Initiative II
A random stray thought while sleep-deprived over on my private Discord server for my gaming group had me asking if you could reverse the order of initiative in GURPS and what it would ultimately mean. This led to a couple of other thoughts and I’ve just kind of tossed them all down here. Do note that […]
Continue readingGURPS101: Preparation Required New Modifiers
A real quick “micro-rules” post on Preparation Required from stuff I had in one of my own campaigns. Intermediate Levels of Preparation RequiredIf we play with the values we can interpolate different required times with a given value for each one: Preparation Required, 5 seconds (-5%) Preparation Required, 30 seconds (-10%) Preparation Required, 1 minute […]
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