02-12-2018, 08:53 AM | #1 |
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: Sin City
|
Please explain Imbuements to me?
I don't have the ruleset but other members of my party are using it. We are playing standard Dungeon Fantasy GURPS and so have starting characters with 250 points.
From what I've seen it seems to be a way to give martials spellcasting without IQ, Magery, or taking extra time. Is that the intent? These are some of the uses I have seen: Add enhancements (fire, acid, etc.) to a martial-based strike and attack during the same round. Conjure ranged attacks that work like missile spells without taking a turn to create the effect. Skill levels of 15 are sufficient to make imbuement time zero. Triple the striking strength (ST 12 ->14 through one effect and then 42 through a second) plus attack and do this every round. The effects are definitely cinematic and seem to be a great deal with little downside. Having not to worry about MAD (multi-attribute-dependency) or extra time in the middle of combat is amazing. Oh I have one more question: Are they subject to critical failure effects like spells or not? Thanks!
__________________
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke |
02-12-2018, 09:10 AM | #2 |
Join Date: Sep 2007
|
Re: Please explain Imbuements to me?
Not so much a way to replace spellcasting, though they could certainly be seen as magical powers. They might be chi, or divine paladin smiting, or whatever other flavor you might want to give them. You seem to pretty much have the general idea right.
Imbuements were invented as a way to address the problem of building (out of Advantages, Limitations, and Enhancements) a good way to build an ability that let you buff an ordinary melee attack -- say, a character that could make any sword he picked up burst into flame. That's not a property of the weapon, but of the character. And while you can build attacks easily enough, it's harder than you might think to build an ability that behaves exactly like the regular weapon rules, scaling with ST and so on. The mechanics are somewhat similar to the Basic magic system in that you sink a fair number of points into a fundamental Advantage ("Imbue", rather than IQ and Magery), and then buy some number of individual skills that let you create particular effects ("Homing Weapon", "Chilling Strike", etc). The skills are mostly DX/VH so your ninjas or kung-fu fighters or paladins or elven spell-archers or whatever don't have to go too far out of their way to get good at them. But it wil cost a lot of points. (Imbue is 10/20/40 points, plus a bunch for those skills. So players will have to choose whether they want that flaming sword, or +2 DX to be more generally amazing.) Using an Imbuement skill requires holding the weapon at ready, but it doesn't take an extra turn of Concentration. They're also not an enchantment in the sense that you can't make someone else's sword burst into flame, or make yours burst into flame and hand it to someone else to use. It's just a thing you, yourself, can do. |
02-12-2018, 09:11 AM | #3 |
Join Date: Nov 2008
Location: Yukon, OK
|
Re: Please explain Imbuements to me?
There not nearly as versatile as magery but more combat focused.
Basically its a way to enhance a melee or ranged attack. They can be pretty powerful though.
__________________
My GURPS publications GURPS Powers: Totem and Nature Spirits; GURPS Template Toolkit 4: Spirits; Pyramid articles. Buying them lets us know you want more! My GURPS fan contribution and blog: REFPLace GURPS Landing Page My List of GURPS You Tube videos (plus a few other useful items) My GURPS Wiki entries |
02-12-2018, 09:28 AM | #4 | |||||
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Saskatoon, SK, Canada
|
Re: Please explain Imbuements to me?
Quote:
They compete with magic abilities, certainly, though I'd say that imbuements are a) less flexible than magic, and b) generally less impressive for the same FP cost and skill level. The "less flexible" bit is simply a matter of magic being capable of almost anything, whereas imbuements are always going to be about buffing your gear. You won't see an imbuement capable of, say, the Create Fire spell, or Summon Elemental, or Invisibility, or Detect Magic, because none of those are logically things you could enhance an object to do as part of its intended purpose. The "less impressive" bit comes from comparing spells to comparable imbuements. Take Incendiary Strike, for example. This imbuement skill adds a flaming aura to your weapon, adding burning damage to the normal weapon damage. The most obvious comparison is Flaming Weapon. Incendiary Strike, like all imbuements, costs 1 FP for every turn you use it, and by default, adds 1 point of burning damage to your hits. In contrast, Flaming Weapon costs 4 points to cast, but then lasts for a minute, and costs 1 point to maintain after that, and adds +2 burning damage. Now, Imbuements can be improved by buying up the skill - Incendiary Weapon allows you to increase the burning damage added by taking a penalty to the roll to activate it, and all imbuements allow you to take a -5 penalty to the roll to eliminate the FP cost. But more points in skill also helps magic - high skill reduces energy cost and casting time. Also, the spell has the advantage that it can be cast on anyone's weapon, whereas the imbuement is limited to the imbuement-user's weapon. Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
|
|||||
02-12-2018, 02:02 PM | #5 | |
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Canada
|
Re: Please explain Imbuements to me?
Quote:
And yes, they suffer from critical failures appropriate to their power source. If they're "chi" powers, the wielder could become sick from imbalanced chi. If they're magic, critical spell failures are a risk. If they're clerical (paladin-style smite powers) they may not have significant critical failure drawbacks - or they have their own critical failure table. Psionic abilities are so wildly variable from world to world that you'd have to ask your GM what happens.
__________________
All about Size Modifier; Unified Hit Location Table A Wiki for my F2F Group A neglected GURPS blog |
|
02-12-2018, 08:58 PM | #6 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
|
Re: Please explain Imbuements to me?
I didn't really "get" imbuements either after a quick skim of the book. Upon a closer read, how to game imbuements seems pretty clear. Using skills for power-like effects feels odd, but the book makes its case for doing so.
The further explanations in this thread are also helpful. For me, what's missing most is the answer to this question: What well-known fictional characters/abilities are imbuements trying to address? Are there some good examples of "Imbuements are perfect for modeling X", where X is a movie character, a comic book superpower, a D&D ability, etc.? I think specific examples from fiction/gaming would really bring imbuements to life for muddled minds like mine.
__________________
T Bone GURPS stuff and more at the Games Diner: http://www.gamesdiner.com Twitter: @Gamesdiner | RSS: here ⬅︎ Updated RSS link | This forum: Site updates thread (occasionally updated) (Latest goods on site: GLAIVE Mini levels up to v2.4. Update to melee weapon design tool, with more example weapons and commentary.) |
02-12-2018, 09:39 PM | #7 | |
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Saskatoon, SK, Canada
|
Re: Please explain Imbuements to me?
Quote:
|
|
02-12-2018, 10:53 PM | #8 |
Join Date: Nov 2008
Location: Yukon, OK
|
Re: Please explain Imbuements to me?
Also the Heartbow in some cheesy made for TV movie, in the 70s I think.
Several Superheroes can benefit from limited Imbuements such as Captain America and Daredevil.
__________________
My GURPS publications GURPS Powers: Totem and Nature Spirits; GURPS Template Toolkit 4: Spirits; Pyramid articles. Buying them lets us know you want more! My GURPS fan contribution and blog: REFPLace GURPS Landing Page My List of GURPS You Tube videos (plus a few other useful items) My GURPS Wiki entries |
02-12-2018, 11:32 PM | #9 |
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Saskatoon, SK, Canada
|
Re: Please explain Imbuements to me?
Actually, on the superhero front, Green Arrow, Hawkeye, and other "super-archers" are also good candidates for imbuements. Certainly, in-universe, they're using special trick arrows for most of their stuff, but narratively, they always seem to have just the right arrow for the job. That could be modelled pretty well by giving them various imbuements (Binding Shot for net arrows, Crushing Strike or Fatiguing Strike for the infamous boxing glove arrow, and so on), and just saying that most of them can't be combined with each other.
|
02-13-2018, 12:00 AM | #10 | |
Banned
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: 100 hurricane swamp
|
Re: Please explain Imbuements to me?
Quote:
I'll let the 'cheesy' line pass... because, well, it is very accurate. Very, very accurate. |
|
|
|