GURPS Monster Hunters 1: Champions

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

Did Joss Whedon change his mind about that at some point?

That implies that he actually cares about logical consistency and isn't just making stuff up as it comes along.

Which doesn't really fit the evidence. Have you ever tried to work out the ramifications of the setting in Firefly/Serenity?

[PK]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

How much effort did working out those magic rules take?

LOTS.

the party's vampire as a mild-mannered fellow who raises chickens for food. I like that image, but it makes me wonder what will be responsible for making sure most vampires are villains.

MH3 will touch on this. In brief, a vampire eating animal blood is like a human eating days-old trash from a Dumpster -- you can do it, but nobody would without a damned good reason. (Plus there's the whole Uncontrollable Appetite most of the NPC vamps have, of course.) So Monster Hunters vamps can live off of animal blood, but as doing so is absolutely disgusting, only a real Good Guy would go to the trouble.

Related aside: One of the quotes included in the book implied that Buffyverse vampires can survive on animal blood (quote specifically from Angel). Hadn't realized this; the episode of Buffy I'd seen implied Angel was stealing plastic bags of blood from the local hospital. That seems like unnecessary work if he could have been drinking animal blood. Did Joss Whedon change his mind about that at some point?

Can't tell you for certain. The quote is what it is -- though I was pretty sure I remember Angel or some other vamp living off pig's blood in a previous episode. At any rate, it doesn't matter to MH1. Buffy and Angel may have been primary sources and influences in this work, but it's definitely Rev. Pee Kitty's GURPS Monster Hunters, not GURPS Loose Adaptation of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. :)

(Not that I think you're saying as much, mind! I just want to be extremely clear from Day One that this series is an amalgamation of many sources of inspiration -- nearly all of which clash or contradict each other -- along with a rather large dose of my own ideas and experiences from previous campaigns. Not only was I happy to cherry-pick and steal the bits I like, I wrote an entire section of advice in MH2 for the GM on how to cherry-pick and steal the bits he likes when setting up a campaign!)

Originally Posted by Brett

Any chance it [MH4] will be out by, say, the 21st?

Zero chance of MH4 coming out by April 21, sorry. I'm tempted to say what our tentative release plans are, but I just know that Murphy will yank that rug out if I do -- so let me just say that we plan to release 1-4 within a reasonable time frame of each other. You should have a bit of time to digest each one, but hopefully not so long that you've forgotten what you read in 1 by the time 2 comes out, and so on. :)

Originally Posted by Icelander

That implies that he actually cares about logical consistency and isn't just making stuff up as it comes along.

Which doesn't really fit the evidence. Have you ever tried to work out the ramifications of the setting in Firefly/Serenity?

<MOD> Just a preemptive note here -- let's not take this thread on a director-critiquing tangent, please. Discussions of Joss' source material (and its issues) as it relates to this product are on-topic, but a digression about Firefly or the man's works in general doesn't really belong in a MH thread. </MOD>

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Rev. Pee Kitty

Zero chance of MH4 coming out by April 21, sorry. I'm tempted to say what our tentative release plans are, but I just know that Murphy will yank that rug out if I do -- so let me just say that we plan to release 1-4 within a reasonable time frame of each other. You should have a bit of time to digest each one, but hopefully not so long that you've forgotten what you read in 1 by the time 2 comes out, and so on. :)

Unfortunately I have a rather retentive memory. I am, however, reassured that MH4 will be out before I get Alzheimer's.

[walkir]

I had hoped for something about tranquilizer weapons/chemicals to fell a monster (and was thinking more like primeval in that direction). Well, I didn't read enough hints, I guess.

[Celjabba]

Originally Posted by Rev. Pee Kitty

Zero chance of MH4 coming out by April 21, sorry. I'm tempted to say what our tentative release plans are, but I just know that Murphy will yank that rug out if I do -- so let me just say that we plan to release 1-4 within a reasonable time frame of each other. You should have a bit of time to digest each one, but hopefully not so long that you've forgotten what you read in 1 by the time 2 comes out, and so on. :)

Could there be a special hastened release program for those of us with goldfish memory (the myth one, not the real one !) ?

More seriously,

Great work!
Thanks.

I haven't played in month and this will jumpstart my new campaign.

Celjabba

[aesir23]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

Related aside: One of the quotes included in the book implied that Buffyverse vampires can survive on animal blood (quote specifically from Angel). Hadn't realized this; the episode of Buffy I'd seen implied Angel was stealing plastic bags of blood from the local hospital. That seems like unnecessary work if he could have been drinking animal blood. Did Joss Whedon change his mind about that at some point?

IIRC, he was only there to prevent other vampires from stealing the blood, or so he claimed.

From at least season 2 on, Joss is pretty consistent about Angel getting his blood from butcher shops.

Rev, I really appreciate all of the work you've put into this fine product, so I hate asking you to do more work, but...can we expect you to add templates to the GCA datafile soon?

[zoncxs]

Originally Posted by Rev. Pee Kitty

Not exactly. Note that the rules on stacking spells explicitly apply to conditional spells as well -- you cannot hang the same spell effect on the same subject (including yourself). One way around this is to make the spells as charms -- that way the spell isn't in effect until you break the charm. So you could have 20 lightning-bolt charms, but not 20 lightning bolts ready to go if you snap your fingers. It's a subtle but important difference. In particular, it means your lightning bolt spells can be stolen. :)

Also, just a heads up. Playtesting has borne out that direct-damage spells are rarely the most effective use of magic. (This was an intentional design choice.) Witches aren't walking guns -- their edge is versatility, not firepower. You're much better off, IMO, coming up with spells that give all of your enemies -3 to their active defenses, spells that detect or ward off monsters, spells to buff your teammates, etc. An imaginative witch is a powerful witch -- but a witch who uses his magic as a fancy gun is much less so.

(And by "warp," I'm assuming you mean a spell to create a gate or a shortcut, not actual teleportation, since no Path skill covers the latter.)

after re-reading the whole book again (and the magic part twice) I realized that, but by that time I have thought up of many great things lol. my witch is a one man army with enough time LOL. charms + 20 different hang spells + cool looking silver coated staff = me having fun. anyone starting up or thinking of starting up a game PM me!

[vitruvian]

Originally Posted by Rev. Pee Kitty

Now, as you start to move down that list, IMO, the spells become more effective in terms of bang for the buck. And this is just with Path of Energy -- start using Paths together and it's amazing some of the things you can pull off . . .

How would one tweak things to allow magical 'thugs' like Harry Dresden to be relatively effective, do you think? Just improve the progression for direct damage on the Effects table, allow Effect Mastery (e.g., Greater Damage) instead of individual Ritual Mastery and leveled, something like that?

[vitruvian]

Originally Posted by Rev. Pee Kitty

You're missing that Magery is the cap on your Path skills! That's its most important benefit by far -- the mana reserve is secondary. High skill levels let you gather much more ambient energy and make all of your spells more effective.


Because that amount worked well during playtesting. Casters shouldn't be relying on their FP, because it is a bad deal. They're better off using their mana reserve and gathering ambient energy.

The mana reserve is very nice, though. And if it's conceived of as a form of Energy Reserve, pretty cost effective - you could have spent 9 of your 10 points for each level of Magery on 3 points of energy, since it doesn't seem like having to gather energy to replenish the reserve is really worthy of Special Recharge.

As for the FP thing, I suppose if a particular GM wanted witches and other spellcasters to be tempted into often tapping their FP and physically exhausting themselves for dramatic effect, at the cost of making somewhat bigger spell effects almost instantly castable, they could just make it 1:1 and that would do nicely. I'd anticipate a lot of miscalculations resulting in witches being physically carried by their more physical compatriots, though.

[Langy]

Originally Posted by vitruvian

How would one tweak things to allow magical 'thugs' like Harry Dresden to be relatively effective, do you think? Just improve the progression for direct damage on the Effects table, allow Effect Mastery (e.g., Greater Damage) instead of individual Ritual Mastery and leveled, something like that?

They'd probably need both a much higher reserve and be able to pull in a lot more power at once. Maybe Path skills at around 20 and Magery at 10. A Technique for lowering the penalty for gathering ambient energy fast would be very useful for a Dresden-like character, especially for Path of Energy. If he's got a reserve of 30 and can reliably gather 30 energy in three seconds, he's going to be extremely dangerous, even with the extremely high costs for direct-damage attacks.

Another possibility is some expensive advantage that removes the Greater Effects multiplier, or just saying 'the greater effects multiplier doesn't exist in this campaign's magic system'.