Druidic Spells: Weather Spells III

Druidic Spells: Weather Spells III

I looked through Priest's Spell Compendium I-III, and haven't really found any other interesting weather spells. It seems that the Weather spehere in D&D is even smaller than in GURPS. So, let's adapt my previous sorcery conversions of GURPS Weather spells to this framework.

Cloud Follower is based on the Cloud spell from GURPS Magic: The Least of Spells. I decided to shorten the range to make it cheaper. Still, at 15 points this is a rip-off, so better save it for improvisation.

Clouds is based on the eponymous GURPS Magic spell. With increased casting time and the new requirements, it became much more affordable. And it's actually useful at night!

Cloud-Vaulting is a weather-themed teleportation spell. While powerful, it is still quite affordable.

Cloud-Walking was reworked into a proper Malediction buff. I like this spell.

Control Currents changes the current's speed or direction. For such minor bonuses, it costs a lot, but that's the suffering you have to endure if you're using Control with Natural Phenomena.

Endure Elements is a spell that I simply forgot to turn into a druidic spell.

Environmental Adaptation is based on a relatively obscure Injury Tolerance variant.

Frost is a more-or-less cosmetic spell that also acts as a weak area attaack against fire beings. Also, very cheap!

Hail is yet another weather phenomenon that actually can deal damage. I found the exact numbers in GURPS Psionic Powers.

Predict Eclipse is a very situationally useful spell that one really shouldn't take as a learned spell.

Predict Weather, however, is a much more useful spell that definitely should be taken as a learned spell.

Rain probably is one of the most useful weather spells.

Rainbow, however, is one of the most useless weather spells.

Shape Clouds could be a fun way of sending messages or write slurs in the sky.

Snow is another weather spell that may be useful to adventurers.

Storm Shelter is a decent buff that may be helpful.

Tides is another spell that may be situationally useful if you need to inspect the shores.

Waves is probably very useful onboard of a seafaring vessel.

Weather Dome is a reworked Sorcery spell that now is affordable.

Druidic Spells: Weather Spells II

Druidic Spells: Weather Spells II

The College of Weather magic in GURPS is special, in my opinion. Without a doubt, these spells would be incredibly useful from the in-unverse point of view, but for a typical player character, they rarely do much, unless the player is creative and has time to prepare. For example, one could significantly alter the battlefield by causing rain, creating muddy difficult terrain and hampering vision. But creating rain to water the crops sure is nice, but it doesn't provide any mechanical benefits. Plus, if you are using magic-as-powers, these spells cost a lot! Still, I have to say that I love the Weather spells, as they make magic more believable - I think these spells would be ones of the first to be invented in the game world.

If you look at the D&D weather spells, you get... Control Weather, a generic spell that can do everything. Sure, you could add such spells that create fog (which do have mechanical benefits for adventuring combat-focused characters), but you'd still have a very small college. This is one of my gripes with the "modern" D&D (3.X is still modern in my mind) - everything revolves around combat, and it creates a feeling that the highly magical world is only magical when combat occurs. This is why I like GURPS Magic so much - it has spells for everything, including both combat and your normal day-to-day life.

While the older editions of D&D also devoted a lot of attention to dungeon crawling, I believe that they did a much better job at creating a lived-in, believable world. In AD&D 2e, priestly spells (including druidic ones) are divided into spheres. A character may have major or minor access to a sphere. In later editions, this became known as the "domain", and the minor/major thing was dropped (which, in my opinion, was a bad thing - I should think about how to introduce the minor/major domain/sphere division into my divine magic; I think that would make differences between the deities more pronounced and varied). One of the spheres is Weather, so let's take a look at some of the weather spells and see what we can import.

Faerie Fire actually is a spell that I already converted as an arcane spell, but it is listed as a Weather spell in the AD&D 2e Player's Handbook too. I assume that it's based on St. Elmo's fire, so it makes sense there.

Call Lightning and Call Lightning Storm were classified by me as Lightning spells and decoupled from the Weather college. However, I think that these two specific spells still should be in the Weather college, as they call in a lightning from an existing storm cloud, and do not create lightning out of thin air.

Control Temperature, 10' Radius is a combination of the two existing GURPS weather spells - Cool and Warm - both limited to a 10' radius. I prefer to GURPS way - do not limit it to an area, and split into two different spells. Basically, I just adapted the sorcery versions of Cool and Warm to this framework.

Cloudburst could be built with Control, but would be ridiculously expensive. Instead, I went with the  build-from-effect approach and made it via three linked Obscure advantages. Still expensive, but within the limits of affordability.

Cloudscape is an interesting spell. How do you solidify a cloud in GURPS? You could try Control, or maybe Create with Transformation, but I decided to go with an area Affliction that imparts "reversed" Walk on Air with Specific, Cloud. That works well enough.

Continual Faerie Fire is a permanent area version of Faerie Fire that I deicded to build as a reversed Obscure. Should be fine, I think.

That's it for now, but there are other books to look through, including plugging the holes with GURPS spells that do not have a D&D equivalent.

Wizardry: Adventurer Spells IV

Wizardry: Adventurer Spells IV

Let's have some more spells from Complete Adventurer. I'm trying to focus on spells that would make sense for wizards, skipping all the bard-exlusive ones that are abundant in that book.

Master's Touch lets you use a weapon or shield at DX+0 for a limited time.

Shadow Form makes you harder to see and grapple, and also lets you slip through a solid barrier once.

Sniper's Eye gives you a magical "scope."

Sonic Weapon is a simple weapon buff spell that makes it deal additional sonic damage.

Spectral Weapon lets you conjure a quasi-real melee weapon of any kind.

Wracking Touch causes pain or agony.

Wizardry: Adventurer Spells III

Wizardry: Adventurer Spells III

Let's take a short break from the Monstrous Compendium project and make some more wizardry spells based on those from Complete Adventurer.

The first one is Guided Shot that I decided to base on the Guided Weapon wildcard imbuement skill.

Swift Haste (what a dumb name) is an indefinite self-only version of Haste that will quickly deplete your FP reserves.

Hindsight is a spell that lets the caster look into the past with various degrees of clarity that depend on the desired timespan. While it is relatively cheap point-wise, it certainly is not cheap financially!

Insightful Feint is another very short spell that temporarily boosts your combat skills for the purpose of making Feints.

Instant Locksmith is a spell that lets you pick a lock in one second (based on the Masterful Locksmith power-up from GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Denizens: Thieves).

Swift Invisibility is another "swift" spell that will drain your FP in no time. You might've noticed that by RAW, 1 FP/second is merely a -10% limitation. I believe that this is waaaaay to low and inconsistent with the usage rules from GURPS Powers, and thus I built this spell differently.

Listening Lorecall is a two-in-one deal that improves your hearing.

Review: GURPS Underground Adventures

Review: GURPS Underground Adventures

In the previous review, I mentioned that GURPS Low-Tech Companion 3 has two pages on excavation and mining, but it was pointed out to me that I forgot about GURPS Underground Adventures. And that’s right, I did forget about that book. I often do, despite using certain rules from it relatively often. Still, this book often just escapes my mind, just like such books as GURPS Future Histories. So, let’s have a short review of GURPS Underground Adventures to give it some spotlight!

Karilan: New Aventus

Karilan: New Aventus

Several months ago, I contemplated developing my setting not in breadth, but in depth, i.e. focus on one nation and try describing it in more detail. The main goal was more of a challenge to myself - can I do this? Do I have it in me? After all, to write good, you have to learn how to write bad first, there's no way to do it without practice. So, I decide to focus on the nation of New Aventus - one of the major human nations of Karilan. What's difficult about it is that it's purposefully generic - this is just your good old mostly benevolent human kingdom with nobles, peasants, knights, and all your traditional faux-medieval stuff. And it's big, which means that there are many provinces, cities, etc. that require at least brief descriptions. If I chose something more interesting and small, I'd probably achieve better results, because writing lots of generic stuff is pretty difficult. However, as I was in the process of writing it, I sprinkled in some fun stuff here and there, and the final result is much less generic than it initially was. Also, Aventians ended up being jerks to many other human nations, but I don't mind that. Of course, as always, this is not the final version, and it will be updated. You can always find the most recent publically available setting material in the Karilan Setting Documents post.

New Aventus document link.

Review: The Quintessential Dwarf

Review: The Quintessential Dwarf

Many times before, I said that I love GURPS because any RPG book is a GURPS book. Back in the D&D 3.0 days, when the OGL was reigning supreme, and many third-party publishers were churning out tons of books of dubious quality, I haven’t really found any use for these books in my D&D games. Sure, some of the stuff there looked nice, but it was awful from the game balance perspective. Today, I’d like to talk about The Quintessential Dwarf, part of the Quintessential series by Mongoose Publishing. Mongoose Publishing is no small player in the RPG scene, and they produced tons of D&D content. The Quintessential series is quite large, with each book detailing a particular class or race, with some classes or races even getting two books.