Newcomer seeks advice: Ravenloft in GURPS?

[HuManBing]

Okay, so I've bought the Powers .pdf download and I'm reading through it. Here's my list of Darklord powers for Azalin, with the bits where I need guidance in italics.

Eternal Servitors:
1. Azalin can raise any corpse as a skeleton or zombie in his command.
Source: Darklord pact with the Dark Powers. (Cosmic)
Focus: Dead bodies within Darkon, or within a 2-mile radius if Azalin is outside of Darkon. (Death)
Advantage: It looks like it might be an Allies power, with Summonable and Minion enhancements. Also a Possession with Telecontrol subtype, applies instantly to any undead that he has Puppet control over. This would be Telecontrol-2, as Azalin does not need to surrender control of his own body to control his undead allies.
What should this be? Azalin can animate any number of corpses without limit and with only a momentary thought, so the limitation of "one second per corpse" should not hold here.

2. Azalin can command any preexisting undead within Darkon - doesn't need to be zombie or skeleton.
Source: Darklord pact with the Dark Powers. (Cosmic)
Focus: Any undead within Darkon (any power level), or within a 2-mile radius and limited to certain power levels if Azalin is outside of Darkon. (Death)
Advantages: This seems like a Possession with Telecontrol subtype, applies instantly to any undead that he has Puppet control over. This would be Telecontrol-2, as Azalin does not need to surrender control of his own body to control his undead allies.
This looks like it could have the Minion enhancement and Puppet advantage, as long as Azalin concentrates. If Azalin mistreats a sentient undead, the undead is powerless to refuse his commands unless and until Azalin releases it from control, at which point it becomes free willed again. Maybe this could take the Unwilling enhancement? In most cases Azalin takes pains to bargain with truly powerful free willed undead to operate freely instead of taking control of them... but if he has to, he has been willing to control such an undead and then command it to kill itself afterwards rather than have a resentful creature coming after him. Of course, most intelligent undead realize Azalin is an extremely powerful mage and do not want to cross him unless suicidally enthusiastic.

3. Like any other lich in Ravenloft, Azalin can look through the senses of undead under its control.
Source: Darklord pact with the Dark Powers. (Cosmic) [Also a side effect of his being a lich, but then again that condition was brought about by the Dark Powers while he was in Greyhawk.]
Focus: Dead bodies within Darkon, or within a 2-mile radius if Azalin is outside of Darkon. (Death)
Advantage: What should this be?

[Not another shrubbery]

Originally Posted by HuManBing

Eternal Servitors:
1.
What should this be? Azalin can animate any number of corpses without limit and with only a momentary thought, so the limitation of "one second per corpse" should not hold here.

Using Ally Group instead of Allies should fix that problem. Attach a limitation to show the range/area restriction (might be Environmental).

3.
Advantage: What should this be?

Possession already kind of covers this, or you could use Mind-Reading with Sensory.

[HuManBing]

Here's my revised list of Darklord powers for Azalin, with the bits where I need guidance in italics.

Eternal Servitors:
1. Azalin can raise any corpse as a skeleton or zombie in his command.
Source: Darklord pact with the Dark Powers. (Cosmic)
Focus: Dead bodies within Darkon, or within a 2-mile radius if Azalin is outside of Darkon. (Death)
Advantage: Ally Group, with Summonable and Minion enhancements. Also a Possession with Telecontrol subtype, applies instantly to any undead that he has Puppet control over. This would be Telecontrol-2, as Azalin does not need to surrender control of his own body to control his undead allies. Limitation: to undead within Darkon, or to those within a 2-mile radius if he is out of Darkon.

2. Azalin can command any preexisting undead within Darkon - doesn't need to be zombie or skeleton.
Source: Darklord pact with the Dark Powers. (Cosmic)
Focus: Any undead within Darkon (any power level), or within a 2-mile radius and limited to certain power levels if Azalin is outside of Darkon. (Death)
Advantages: A Possession with Telecontrol subtype, applies instantly to any undead that he has Puppet control over. This would be Telecontrol-2, as Azalin does not need to surrender control of his own body to control his undead allies.
Also has the Minion enhancement and Puppet advantage, as long as Azalin concentrates, and if Azalin mistreats a sentient undead, the undead is powerless to refuse but it remembers the mistreatment, gaining an Unwilling enhancement. (In most cases Azalin takes pains to bargain with truly powerful free willed undead to operate freely instead of taking control of them... but if he has to, he has been willing to control such an undead and then command it to kill itself afterwards rather than have a resentful creature coming after him. Of course, most intelligent undead realize Azalin is an extremely powerful mage and do not want to cross him unless suicidally enthusiastic.)

3. Like any other lich in Ravenloft, Azalin can look through the senses of undead under its control.
Source: Darklord pact with the Dark Powers. (Cosmic) [Also a side effect of his being a lich, but then again that condition was brought about by the Dark Powers while he was in Greyhawk.]
Focus: Dead bodies within Darkon, or within a 2-mile radius if Azalin is outside of Darkon. (Death)
Advantage: Whatever is not covered by Possession (at 1. above) is covered by Mind-Reading with Sensory.

(Azalin does have a massively powerful mindreading and memory-altering power that he acquires later in the campaign, but I will worry about that later.)

And now onto the issue of liches:

1. Phylacteries: D&D liches are a little different from GURPS liches. Azalin usually cannot be destroyed permanently, as he will reform as long as his phylactery is still in existence. I think this deserves the Unkillable 3 advantage, with the trigger limitation being that he must have his phylactery around (on the same plane of existence) and have a humanoid corpse to possess. Should this be a dependency of some sort? Or should I leave that to just mana dependency, and write in the phylactery as part of the Unkillable advantage?

I believe that this should override the potion requirement for liches in GURPS.

2. Powerstones: This was not particularly well explained in the Magic or the two core rulebooks. How do these work and what does a mage do with them?

3. In the d20 system, Azalin has Damage Reduction against everything except for magical bludgeoning attacks. Liches in GURPS don't have this, though they seem to have immunity to Shock (from High Pain), resistance to piercing or impaling damage (from Unliving). Accordingly they appear to take greater damage from bludgeoning weapons (from Vulnerability - Crushing), and they fall apart more easily (from Brittle).

Should I add anything to this? I want Azalin to be something that the PCs really need magical spells and enchanted weapons to be able to injure. If I limit his Vulnerability to just Enchanted Crushing, would that be too harsh?

4. Spells. I love the Spells-as-skills system, which is much better than the arbitrary "spells per day by level" pyramid system that DnD 1E through 3E uses. But what's the maximum useful skill level for spells for Azalin? There are several spells he knows very well and can cast probably over and over (meaning a high skill level negating FP cost) but then there are some others he must concentrate on, mostly gating and teleportation spells.

5. He also has a curse which is that he can't learn any new spells. I wonder how to do this. I could reduce his Mana to 0 as base, but give him the usual high Mana (maybe 5 or 6) for using magic that he already knows.

What do you think?

[The Benj]

Originally Posted by HuManBing

And now onto the issue of liches:

1. Phylacteries: D&D liches are a little different from GURPS liches. Azalin usually cannot be destroyed permanently, as he will reform as long as his phylactery is still in existence. I think this deserves the Unkillable 3 advantage, with the trigger limitation being that he must have his phylactery around (on the same plane of existence) and have a humanoid corpse to possess. Should this be a dependency of some sort? Or should I leave that to just mana dependency, and write in the phylactery as part of the Unkillable advantage?

Humanoid corpse to possess? Do D&D liches have that limitation? I thought they just reformed at their Phylactery. Or is that 3rd Ed Liches?
Anyway, yes, the Phylactery would be a Trigger. The Corpse requirement is "Requires Body", stolen from Extra Life.

I believe that this should override the potion requirement for liches in GURPS.

Sure, whatever works for you.

2. Powerstones: This was not particularly well explained in the Magic or the two core rulebooks. How do these work and what does a mage do with them?

They're like a battery that you can use only to cast spells. When you're touching one while you cast a spell you can use the energy they have stored inside instead of all or part of the Fatigue cost. They recharge over time (1 point of Energy/day in Normal Mana). They can also be incorporated into magic items and made more efficient if they can only be used to power that item rather than anything.
So they're sort of like a battery and a solar panel, for magic. :)

3. In the d20 system, Azalin has Damage Reduction against everything except for magical bludgeoning attacks. Liches in GURPS don't have this, though they seem to have immunity to Shock (from High Pain), resistance to piercing or impaling damage (from Unliving). Accordingly they appear to take greater damage from bludgeoning weapons (from Vulnerability - Crushing), and they fall apart more easily (from Brittle).

Their vulnerability to Bludgeoning in D&D is because they're skeletons and therefore relatively resistant to piercing, it's just that GURPS goes at this the other way around, making the undead scarily tough against stabbing. There's not much need to give them a vulnerability as well.

Should I add anything to this? I want Azalin to be something that the PCs really need magical spells and enchanted weapons to be able to injure. If I limit his Vulnerability to just Enchanted Crushing, would that be too harsh?

You could add some DR with a limitation that it doesn't work against enchanted weapons (value of this limitation depends on how common such things are, probably about -40% in most D&D games, probably less if you're focussing more on horror, less on replicating D&D) to make them tougher, so you can't easily just lay into a Lich with a blacksmithing hammer and expect to take it down.

4. Spells. I love the Spells-as-skills system, which is much better than the arbitrary "spells per day by level" pyramid system that DnD 1E through 3E uses. But what's the maximum useful skill level for spells for Azalin? There are several spells he knows very well and can cast probably over and over (meaning a high skill level negating FP cost) but then there are some others he must concentrate on, mostly gating and teleportation spells.

Even at high levels like 20 or 25 the cost reduction for those kind of spells doesn't cover much of their large costs, so that sorts that out mostly. It really depends how much you want him to be able to cast spells without worrying about penalties like not being able to see what he's casting at (-5) and how far away he can cast Regular spells (-1 per yard can add up VERY fast). If you want him to be able to almost always cast spells, but want him to worry about problems like those, give him Skills of around 20, so taking -5 is dropping his chances of successfully casting. If you want him to have a lot of leeway (being able to cast a spell at an unseen target 5 yards away before he starts changing his odds of success), give him 25s.

5. He also has a curse which is that he can't learn any new spells. I wonder how to do this. I could reduce his Mana to 0 as base, but give him the usual high Mana (maybe 5 or 6) for using magic that he already knows.

Just give him Cannot Learn (spells only). The value of this limitation is at your discretion, but I'd suggest around -30%, as it's more significant than in Modular Ability, because normally Cannot Learn also covers DX and IQ.

[HuManBing]

Thanks for the help with Azalin's stats. They were just a "stretching exercise" to warm up for the system.

I now have GURPS Horror 3rd. ed. I will start posting some broad brushstrokes of the campaign setting once I get a better handle on them. The sourcebooks I now have are:

Dual core (books, not the CPU...)
All four of the Dungeon Fantasy pdfs.
Horror 1st and 3rd
Magic
Powers
Mysteries
Martial Arts

All of those except Martial Arts will be useful. I'm thinking of setting the main body of the action in the northern Core, between Darkon and the more "modern" nations (Lamordia, Dementlieu, Borca, Richemulot). The nature of the game should still be the same: players start off as basic peasants, and then can choose to ally with factions, which will give them various skills to spend points on.

Possible factions include:

Azalin's Kargat police (magic)
Drakov's army (melee combat and horsemanship)
Lamordian border guard (ranged combat and rudimentary gunpowder)
Dementlieu infiltrators (rogue type skills)

Each faction will have a separate storyline.

[Gold & Appel Inc]

Originally Posted by HuManBing

All of those except Martial Arts will be useful.

Martial Arts can add to pretty much any campaign that will use melee combat, unless you don't want that kind of detail. There's some good stuff there for your mounted knights at the very least.

[HuManBing]

I have gotten the pdf of the Thaumatology addendum and will be working through that for a suitably Gothic type of magic system.

[Fwibos]

Originally Posted by Gold & Appel Inc

Hilda Hayfield (Talks to Dead People) [25]:

Culture: TL 3-4ish for Original Style, or 5ish for Masque of the Red Death [0]; Familiarity: The Core Domains [0]; Languages: Any Local (Native / None) [-3];

Attributes: ST 9 [-10]; DX 8 [-40]; IQ 11 [20]; HT 12 [20];

I love these. However, attribute reductions count as disadvantages now, which normally equals a characters half your final point cost. Of course, the lot of peasants in Ravenloft seems to be limited to use as foils for PCs and as set pieces for grandiose displays of horrific power by the Domain Lords, so maybe they can be allowed a greater amount of disadvantages.

[kidbrock9]

About the power stones: I had this problem too. They should consider reprinting Magic with a better index. You need to look under Enchantment spells (p. 69... hehe). All the rules for powerstones are listed under the spell (surprise!) Powerstone.

I agree with all the previous advice about Azalin. Using Powers for his extraordinary abilities, spell skills at 20 or 25, High Magery with cannot learn new spells, etc. Just make sure he has an enormous number of FP and he should be able to cast all day.

The disadvantages rule is not set in stone; it's completely up to you. If you want a higher than 50% limit (advisable with a lowly 25 point character) than go for it!

[mib2932]

Originally Posted by kidbrock9

They should consider reprinting Magic with a better index. You need to look under Enchantment spells (p. 69... hehe). All the rules for powerstones are listed under the spell (surprise!) Powerstone.

I always look up spells in the spell list, then use the page reference to go to the page; they don't need to also be in the index.