Monster Hunters [MH] for a Convention Game?

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by thulben

Black powder?

The old-fashioned kind of gun powder. It was the only kind up to the 1880s, but was then rapidly replaced by "smokeless powder".

Smokeless powder is more powerful and burns completely, but making it requires industrial chemistry. Black powder is simpler to make, but less powerful, makes huge quantities of sulphurous smoke, and leaves deposits ("fouling") on the inside of the gun.

For most of the black powder era, guns were loaded with powder, bullets and priming separately. Late in the black powder age, cartridges came in, but fully modern cartridges appeared at the same time as smokeless powder.

Classical black powder guns are muzzle-loaders, which take tens of seconds to reload, using a ramrod. Machine guns and auto-loading weapons can be built to work with black powder, but they don't tend to work very well.

Under GURPS, the effective way to use black powder weapons is to use them as one-shots at the start of a fight. Then drop them and use a melee weapon. If you start trying to reload them, the fight will be over before you've done it.

[PK]

For a spellcaster in a con game, there are some basic guidelines:

1. Have a maxed-out list of conditionals prepared ahead of time. "You have the following spells ready to cast, once, by simply pointing and saying the right magic words: <list>. You carry the following charms (tiny bamboo sticks) that you can give to anyone, which cast the listed spell when broken: <list>," and so on.

2. For sages and other slow casters, that's probably all you need. For a witch, in-game spellcasting is going to be a thing. Pick 4-6 useful, low-cost spells and take Ritual Mastery for them. Include a simple description: What they do (in simple English) and the energy cost, nothing more. Make it clear that #3 (below) applies to these spells.

3. Add a note that the caster can attempt any spell, but it'll take longer (for adepts: "but it will take several combat turns, and possibly a few minutes"; for others: "but it will take several minutes and is thus not an option in combat") and should leverage the caster's best Paths . Don't bother explaining any more than this; if someone wants to cast a spell on the fly in play, it's your job as GM to give them a reasonable estimate of how wise the decision is ("You have skill 13 and you want to give everyone in NYC Precognition? Um, no, I wouldn't recommend attempting that.") and then to do the work for them.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by johndallman

Under GURPS, the effective way to use black powder weapons is to use them as one-shots at the start of a fight. Then drop them and use a melee weapon. If you start trying to reload them, the fight will be over before you've done it.

That's not necessarily true. With Fast-Draw Ammo and Quick Reload you can get you down to 3 Ready Maneuvers.

At any rate that's not what thulben was asking. He was asking if Captain Joy meant "black powder" when he typed "black power". A "black power" weapon is one with the Limit (Only usable by Black Panthers or Nation of Islam) enchantment. :)

[nick_coffin]

Originally Posted by PK

For a spellcaster in a con game, there are some basic guidelines:

1. Have a maxed-out list of conditionals prepared ahead of time. "You have the following spells ready to cast, once, by simply pointing and saying the right magic words: <list>. You carry the following charms (tiny bamboo sticks) that you can give to anyone, which cast the listed spell when broken: <list>," and so on.

2. For sages and other slow casters, that's probably all you need. For a witch, in-game spellcasting is going to be a thing. Pick 4-6 useful, low-cost spells and take Ritual Mastery for them. Include a simple description: What they do (in simple English) and the energy cost, nothing more. Make it clear that #3 (below) applies to these spells.

3. Add a note that the caster can attempt any spell, but it'll take longer (for adepts: "but it will take several combat turns, and possibly a few minutes"; for others: "but it will take several minutes and is thus not an option in combat") and should leverage the caster's best Paths . Don't bother explaining any more than this; if someone wants to cast a spell on the fly in play, it's your job as GM to give them a reasonable estimate of how wise the decision is ("You have skill 13 and you want to give everyone in NYC Precognition? Um, no, I wouldn't recommend attempting that.") and then to do the work for them.

Again, PK beat me to it.

In my GenCon 2013 adventure, I had a Sage character, which I outfitted with a list of charms that he could hand out or use during combats. I also told him that he could attempt to cast any spell he could think of outside of combat and that I would help him figure out how to do it.

As it turned out, the sage used his ability to prepare for, and strongly contribute to, the successful conclusion of the adventure by coming up with a ritual on his own. I used my RPM app to calculate the cost on the fly. It took only a couple of minutes to work through what effect the sage wanted, determining the cost, and another minute to run through the rolls needed to successfully cast the ritual. It worked very well.