GURPS Sorcery: Sound Spells

[Strabo]

Originally Posted by Anders

Is Aleksei the blogger also known as Enraged Eggplant?

Yes, that's me.

Originally Posted by Kesendeja

Yeah, trying to find him, because I wanted to ask him a question. Couldn't find a way on the blog.

You can send me a PM here or send me a message on Discord. I will be happy to answer any questions when I am able to.

[Anders]

Great. I've been compiling your spells in an ultimate compendium (for private use) and I want to thank you for all your work. It's amazing.

[Strabo]

Originally Posted by Anders

Great. I've been compiling your spells in an ultimate compendium (for private use) and I want to thank you for all your work. It's amazing.

Thank you, I appreciate that. But keep in mind that many of the spells have mistakes, inconsistencies, or are converted to be as close to the vanilla spell as possible, which sometimes make it very suboptimal as a Sorcery spell. I'm tacking the mistakes as they come up or get pointed out.

[Anders]

Yeah, I go through every spell and sometimes there are errors of calculation or rules questions where I disagree with you. It's impossible to do a work of this magnitude and have no errors.

[lvalero]

I am very pleased with GURPS Sorcery: Sound spells. It is a very good job. I would have loved if it had mentioned Bards and/or how to teawk the spells to sound more like "songs". Anyway, I recommend the book for anybody interested in "sound powers", even if you are not looking for "spells".

...

On the other hand. I also agree Enraged Eggplant blog is an impressive work. I dont always agree with the builds but I really appreciate all the time invested. Thanks!

[Strabo]

Originally Posted by lvalero

I am very pleased with GURPS Sorcery: Sound spells. It is a very good job. I would have loved if it had mentioned Bards and/or how to teawk the spells to sound more like "songs".

Thank you. As for the bards, that highly depends on the setting and is outside the scope of the supplement. The Song meta-enhancement from GURPS Power-Ups 4: Enhancement could be useful for you. Also, in my D&D-style game I'm using the following adjustments to emulate (not 100% accurately) the bards:
- Use Sorcery as the system.
- The bard’s scope of magical powers is limited to the Colleges of Communication and Empathy, Knowledge, Mind Control, and Sound. Apply the Limited Scope, Bardic, -10% limitation to Sorcerous Empowerment.
- Improvisation requires the bard to make a successful Musical Composition roll. Apply the Requires Musical Composition Roll, -10% limitation to Sorcerous Empowerment.
- For hardcore improvisation, bards use Musical Composition instead of Thaumatology.
- Decide if your bard will be based on singing or musical performance. In case of singing, all spells should have the Requires Magic Words, -10% and Requires Singing Roll, -5% limitations. This Singing roll will be in addition to any rolls required by the spell. In case of an instrument-based bard, all spells should have the Requires Playing Instrument, -10% and Requires Musical Instrument Roll, -10% limitations. Again, this Musical Instrument roll will be in addition to any rolls required by the spell. This does not eliminate the No Signature, +20% enhancement many spells have, because the bard can pretend to play mundane music.
- Playing an instrument or singing takes longer than normal spellcasting. For common spells with a one second casting time apply at least one level of Takes Extra Time, -10%. This is not included in the power modifier, because spells and/or advantages that they are based on can have longer casting times by default, eliminating the need for this limitation. This limitation is not applied to Sorcerous Empowerment, because while improvising a new spell takes one second, casting it takes at least two.
- Despite requiring Concentrate maneuvers to cast, bardic spellcasting is partly physical, making Compartmentalized Mind unable to speed up casting.
- Time Spent modifiers (p. B346) are available.
- Bardic spellcasting is subject to Repeated Attempts (GURPS Powers, p. 159).
- When rolling a critical failure on a casting roll, use the Critical Spell Failure Table (p. B236).

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by Strabo

Thank you. As for the bards, that highly depends on the setting and is outside the scope of the supplement. The Song meta-enhancement from GURPS Power-Ups 4: Enhancement could be useful for you.

First, I agree Power-Ups 4 or DF (forget which one) should make it pretty easy to rebuild these.
Second, I didn't catch this with the earlier comments.
So the blogger I think of as Eggplant is the author of this book? That is really cool! You put a lot of work into your Sorcery index and its nice to see it recognized and now canonized. I had hoped you would write for GURPS but feared all that work on the blog would have been wasted or disqualifying.

[Refplace]

Just a note of support for the author, at this point my review has 80 views, more than any other GURPS review at this stage, others have more but took longer to get there.

[Strabo]

Originally Posted by Refplace

Just a note of support for the author, at this point my review has 80 views, more than any other GURPS review at this stage, others have more but took longer to get there.

Thank you for your support. The view count is surprising to me - the supplement is a very niche one.

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by Strabo

Thank you for your support. The view count is surprising to me - the supplement is a very niche one.

Your welcome, I'm trying the best I can on various fronts to promote GURPS. And hopefully your sales are good enough to justify more. As you say its a niche but Powers as magic seems pretty popular and ready built spells can save people a lot of time, provide examples and be used for more than just Sorcery.