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Old 05-18-2018, 08:38 AM   #1
Kromm
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Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Montréal, Québec
Default GURPS Magic: Artillery Spells

We were surrounded
Goblins, orcs, ogres, and trolls
Just our kind of fight
— Archmage Nappy Krupp, 1st King's Artillery
As a magic-user, there are times when you want to be subtle. Often, the last thing you want to do is paint a huge target on your head – or worse, get strung up for witchcraft. If you travel with adventurers, you play it safe by focusing on tasks like healing, gathering intelligence, and enhancing your allies' abilities.

And then there are times when you want to erase the enemy from the map – maybe even erase part of the map itself!

GURPS Magic offers limited options for this, which is why we've rolled out GURPS Magic: Artillery Spells. The 50 new spells in this grimoire equip classic Magery-and-mana (or Power Investiture-and-sanctity) casters with the means to lay waste to the battlefield in decidedly unsubtle ways.

Here you'll find straight-up blasting power in the form of Improved Concussion, Improved Explosive Fireball, and Improved Explosive Lightning, and their distant cousins Explosive Mine and Minefield . . . a plethora of devastating beams and cones, including Arctic Blast, Chain Lightning, Cone of Corrosion, Death Ray, Fire Swarm, and Sun's Arc . . . scorched-earth tactics courtesy of Flammability, Scald, Sunburst, and Towering Inferno . . . horrid curses such as Creeping Plague, Death Field, Plague Touch, Psychic Scream, Spirit Incursion, Wilting, and Withering Wail . . . subtle magical judo like Mirror Mirror, Mass Mutilation, and Stabbing Party . . . straight up creative (dare we say "fun"?) stuff in the vein of Diminishing Dome, Ironweed, Seismic Shock, Splat, and Twisting Terror . . . and 20 other ways to blow up, burn, crush, gas, pummel, slash, and otherwise harm enemies in bulk lots. As with high-tech artillery, there are munitions for every occasion.

All of this firepower comes with plenty of advice on how to use it in your campaign. And while we stop short of a design system, there almost five pages of discussion on how to create (reasonably) balanced artillery spells of your own.

Give 'em hell!


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