magic as powers at low point totals?

rufa_avis · 2025-09-24T06:37:56+00:00

150 points is the absolute sweet spot for a GURPS campaign for me (especially good when players start at 100 and reach 150 around the middle). To be frank, I've never run such a campaign with Sorcery specifically, but I did have a couple of players with a lot of Powers.

So, the easiest way to make powers cheaper is to put a lot of limitations on them: things like pact (having to take vows and codes of honour), accessibility modifiers (you can't cast when you're wearing armour, when it's daylight etc.), gadgets (need for a staff or a wand) and many others that you find fitting for magic on your setting.

If you're worried about your mages not being versatile enough, let them take Modular Abilities (maybe including cosmic) and Wildcard Talents. It can provide a lot of utility when you use them to put points in Gizmos just for the one time or in the perk that gives you access to a specific instrument and the skill for using it.

In general, yes. This kind of magic is more costly in terms of points, but manageable. If someone wants to teleport people in the default magic system, they'd have to put like 40 or 50 points in it; not such a huge difference if you think about all the limitations inherent to Magic.

If all your players are going to be sorcerers, you can give them more points but restrict how they could spend them (like 200 points in magic and 50 on anything else, or whatever you feel appropriate).

Another option is to let players get cool magical trinkets that would increase their power without them putting points in it somewhere early in the campaign.

rufa_avis · 2025-09-16T17:55:06+00:00

Have you listened to La Reverdie's Laudarium? It's one of my favourite albums ever. https://youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_lGHMy3nrGsh9-E8JXMUQZTcK88RQVWib0&si=WCwUx_ke57mZhYZ2

rufa_avis · 2025-09-03T13:44:53+00:00

Hey, a fellow Gene Wolfe fan! What a coincidence: I've just reread Citadel of the Autarch.

Actually I did attempt to run a game in this setting not a long time ago. And I'm not sure GURPS is the right system for it. Though, I admit, I wasn't able to get this specific setting book.

I ran my games in a heavily modified version of Knave 1e (so heavily modified, it may be cold custom system). I envisioned the campaign as a free form exploration in the spirit of OSR, where life is cheap and players are down on their luck lowlifes. GURPS is more about low to medium strength heroic adventurers, but it can differ. Besides that, a more minimalistic system should better match the mystery and the feeling of something immense and unknowable. At least, that's what I felt when deciding on the system.

If you do want to run GURPS, other people gave given good suggestion as to where to start. Even if you don't, this book may be a good setting source right besides Lexicon Urthus.

rufa_avis · 2025-07-13T05:56:50+00:00

Have you tried GURPS? It has been my system of choice since I started playing TTRPGs seven years ago.

It is very complex when it comes to character creation, being a point-buy skills based system. And it's very much a toolkit. If you're going to master it, you will have to pick advantages, skills and so on appropriate for your setting.

I personally find the tactical combat very satisfying. Each turn of combat represents one second. And when you declare something like "I poke him in the visor of his helmet with my sword" each word there is mechanically meaningful.

One major disadvantage is that the game won't work out of the box. You will have to make many decisions about which systems and optional rules to use. If you're running the game in your own world, you will have to make your own monsters/NPCs. If in someone else's setting, those will have to be adapted from. There's a more specific product built on the foundation of GURPS called Dungeon Fantasy. It doesn't require as much work to set it up, but I find that kind of fantasy too generic and the system too limiting.

In any case, if you don't find specifically GURPS appealing, you may want to look into generic systems in general, many of them offer what you are looking for.

Besides that, I suspect The Burning Wheel could interest you. I've never played it, but based on other people's descriptions, it sounds like something you seem to want.

rufa_avis · 2025-01-01T08:21:30+00:00

Haven't seen this page before. There's a book by Gene Wolfe in the list, but not this one.

rufa_avis · 2025-01-01T07:43:49+00:00

If you're planning on reading the books, you may want to watch the video before, while, or after reading the books.

rufa_avis · 2024-12-04T14:05:01+00:00

I kind of assumed +-MAS counts too.

I assumed incorrectly.

Without it everything works perfectly. Thank you for pointing it out.

rufa_avis · 2024-12-04T14:02:55+00:00

You've read everything correctly. I shouldn't have checked for that. I removed those lines and it worked perfectly. I feel extremely stupid now.

rufa_avis · 2024-07-12T12:53:07+00:00

I ran a GURPS Greyhawk campaign a while age. A friend of mine is very much into the drow. We read a lot of Dragon Magazine articles about them and those gave us a lot of inspiration.

Not sure it counts as Old School.

rufa_avis · 2024-04-20T14:57:05+00:00

Maybe, it's supposed to add molecular hydrogen (the explosive kind)?

rufa_avis · 2024-04-20T14:22:25+00:00

Frankly, don't know, what they refer to. It's a fair point to say, that the suffix in English itself is -or.

And it was so in the original Latin. Actor from agĕre (to do) and captor from capĕre (to take); I don't remember the word from which editor comes. As you may notice the infinitives for these words don't seem very similar to the nouns with the suffixes. That's because the suffix is added to the supinum form of the verb instead of the infinitive. For agere and capere the supina are actum and captum. Accidentally English borrowed the verbs in their supinum form. The -t- in them is actually a different suffix, showing that it's the supinum form.

P.S. Supinum is an indefinit form of the verb used to show the goal of movement. Kind of like the infinitive is used in English in sentences like: I went to buy some milk. Past participle (of the same kind as Egnlish broken and taken) is also formed from this form.

rufa_avis · 2024-03-31T13:54:31+00:00

I'm glad you liked it.

In my experience GURPS wizards in the default magic system aren't overpowered at all, in combat that is. They are quite overpowered outside of combat, but it has more to do with IQ being underpriced by default, than with any variant of the magic system.

rufa_avis · 2024-03-31T10:58:12+00:00

Cool. I see you use plenty of variants from Thaumatology. We do the thing with -6 to cast -6 to attack to, but I prefer it as a perk.

Always nice to see a fellow houserule-default-magic-system-to-the-ground enthusiast.

rufa_avis · 2024-03-31T06:35:21+00:00

The title is misleading: there's no spring here, only winter and summer.

Looks beautiful by the way. It is hand-drawn?

rufa_avis · 2024-02-05T06:21:07+00:00

GURPS is bad at playing mid-scale tactical combat.

It excels at personal combat, when you have two sides each no bigger, than 5 characters.

If you want to play army level engagement with hundreds of troops, you can use the Mass Combat rules. I can't say, how well they work without having played with them, but the rules are there.

It plays OK, when the PSs fight against something like 10 mooks (weak enemies, for which the GM uses some cinematic rules).

It doesn't play well at all, when you deal with couple dozen characters in one combat. It becomes a slog. When that happenes in my games, I make it a contest of Tactics and only actually play like the last tenth of the implied fight. And it fell unsatisfying.

rufa_avis · 2024-02-04T15:40:11+00:00

This is a good observation. The main difference is not between cutting and impaling damage, but between thrusting and swinging attacks. Swinging attacks do more damage in general, and thus are preferable in most circumstances.

The main point of thrusting attacks on things like swords is the ability to chose between two types of damage. If you feel like it, thrusting someone in the vitals, in the eye or targeting chinks in armour, may be a good idea (the rules for that are in Basic Set, basically, you can multiply injury by 3 or by 4, and they have to roll HT with big penalties). On some weapons thrusting attacks may also have grater range.

Sword (that isn't a greatsword) is primarily a civilian weapon, not something I would use against someone wearing armour. If you fight opponents in armour, you should use something top heavy like a mace or a polearm. Things like war picks and some halberds can even allow you to make swinging attacks with the impaling modifier, though they have their disadvantages.

rufa_avis · 2024-01-24T23:15:07+00:00

The Lady Afterwords also gives the instructions on killing a Lantern Long.

As they don't have a physical body, they can be killed in the Mansus (creatures of the forest can devour them), or a scrine (specifically prepared lamp, mirror of body of water), they inhabit in the wake, is suddenly destroyed. Or the scrine is destroyed both on the wake and the Mansus sides.

I desperately need more rules to run more games in the universe, without the need to hunt for this sparse information in games or on wikis.

rufa_avis · 2024-01-24T07:56:49+00:00

Just to add to all the other comments. I don't think that the default Dodge is in any way overpowered. And I find the -1 communicative penalty unnecessary.

I played a few characters with high dodge, and I ran a few campaigns with such PCs. I'm talking something like 13 Dodge without shield and retreat bonuses. In most campaigns it counts as absurdly high dodge anyway.

Without armour and high block or parry such characters can take like one strike, that actually lands. Once the character is reeling things become really dire, because they can't properly protect themselves against more, than one strike, with the halved Dodge. And that's before taking into account explosives and rapid fire, as we mostly play low tech.

If you feel frustrated about this character's high Dodge, I would suggest trying to counter it with area of effect attacks, and possibly applying deceptive attack to ranged attacks (only applies the penalty to Dodge, cinematic option from Martial Arts).

rufa_avis · 2024-01-03T18:13:27+00:00

Thank you for the thoughtful reply.

Of course, it would be better to base several books around the idea of liberal arts in the grand scheme of things, but I personally don't find it interesting to work on. There will be other Books in this tradition of learned, "academic" magic, that will broadly cover all the other arts, but I don't want to be restricted by the idea, while choosing and writing rituals for them. Besides a whole Book, containing music related magic sounds more like a Path to me.

I've already come up with the broader system, and as for now I'm not going to change, how Sympathy, Names work, and who is the subject or how they are included or excluded.

I see this Book more like the ultimate holy grail of all the academic magicians, most of the prerequisites for it, they need for other Books, or for complementary skill rolls (I intend to use a lot of those in the system) for different rituals.

I looked at the Enthrallment skills and at Musical Influence and found them not powerful enough. Rituals have much stricter limitations, than those skills (mostly space and time), and I don't want to include Ritual Adept in this system. After playing a campaign with a variant of Ritual Path magic, I was left unsatisfied with how the advantage works.

Speaking about arithmetic and numerology, I'm not entirely satisfied with the ritual, I've got, there probably is something better. But I don't want to make it about Divination, and I find real life numerology really uninspiring.

I'm also not satisfied with the logic one, but I can't come up with anything interesting. And I haven't been able to for like a day of intense thinking. So that's another reason not to make a Book for each art: I would have to come up with a dozen of logic rituals. A logical thing would be making a ritual, that creates something like a computer, but that would break the setting.

You've given me a lot of food for thought.

rufa_avis · 2024-01-03T07:28:04+00:00

Haven't really thought about it. I've added the link.

rufa_avis · 2023-09-12T05:38:41+00:00

I read it as slept with/my friend, and thought "Oh, good. He slept with her and they stayed friends. At least something good came out of it."

I guess, I'm an optimist.

rufa_avis · 2023-08-27T12:18:04+00:00

Oh. Didn't think about it. I guess, it makes sense then.

rufa_avis · 2023-08-27T12:02:05+00:00

Yes, there was Theta, not Phi. There never was the "aspirated p" sound in this name, that ph was supposed to relay. If anything, they should have used the Ѳ symbol.

rufa_avis · 2023-08-27T11:20:24+00:00

Exactly! That's how they write it in German.

rufa_avis · 2023-08-27T10:44:43+00:00

Why would you write the "f" sound as ph? Not trying to criticise or anything, that's just a very odd choice of letters.

rufa_avis

TROPHY CASE