GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 9: Summoners

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

On the other hand, multiclassing Lenses will get out of hand, now that there are 17 rather than 11 classes.

18, if you count Mystic Knight (from Pyramid #13).

[PK]

Originally Posted by Phil Masters

As for power-ups; given their penchant for binding squads of supernatural allies, and their access to powers, anybody who can't already see uses for as many extra points as these characters can vacuum up, making them appropriately more powerful and flexible, isn't trying and should go back to playing a fighter.

QFT -- all four templates have an infinite number of "power-ups" available to them. The power-up for a summoner is "more summonable Allies"! That's their whole raison d'etre -- the more things a summoner can conjure, the more powerful he is.

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

I agree, lack of DF3-style Power-Up options is an important issue both with DF5 and the new DF9.

DF5? Is this a typo?

[Kuroshima]

Originally Posted by Rev. Pee Kitty

Those are explicitly optional at this point, for two main reasons. First, they garnered some complaints about being "filler-like". But more importantly, as you start to add more and more templates, it becomes ridiculous to try to keep up on it all. Going from 10 templates to 11 requires adding 20 new lenses, for example! It gets to a point where it's a question of page count. In this case, Summoners could have included all those lenses -- at the cost of losing a huge chunk of summoned creatures! Given a choice between a full range of elementals or 'cross-class lenses', I'd rather have the elementals.

EDIT: Specifically, this raises the number of book-official templates from 13 to 17 (not counting the two from Pyramid). That would mean 4 new lenses for each old class (52 total) and 16 new lenses for each new class (48 total), or 100 lenses needed to keep up. Assuming about seven per page, that's 14 pages of material that would need to be cut to squeeze that in. (And no, bumping the page count up by 14 pages and selling it at a higher price isn't an option -- see the complaints about filler, previous in this paragraph).

Well, I understand the issue of filler, but it would really be compressed, as I did with the Mystic Knight: Create a single X lens, that more or less lets you dabble into the template, and then stating that X takes Y's lenses when branching to Z. I feel that, done right, they would fit in 1-2 pages, tops

Originally Posted by ericbsmith

Rather than a full repertoire of Mixed-Profession lenses what would have been nice is a single 50-point Mixed-Profession lens for each of the new professions, to give a quick & dirty guide for PC's of other Professions to advance into the new Profession; this was done for the Artificer & Scholar in DF 4: Sages (The Artificer lens was [70], owing to Gagateer being so expensive). This would allow for maximum mixing without taking up too much page space.

Additionally, a short list of Power-Ups for each new profession adding a few "advanced" abilities that aren't available in character creation or unhinging an attribute important to that class would add something for players to strive for.

Exactly. This is what I was asking for.

Originally Posted by Phil Masters

Cross-training into any of the four character types in this book is really rather complicated - or infeasible. This is partly for fiddly rules reasons (mixing Magery and some of these specialist talents isn't terribly cost-efficient, for a start, and may require all sorts of on-the-fly tweaking), and partly because demonology or shamanism or whatever isn't just a job; it's a long-term lifestyle decision. It requires a lot of commitment (i.e. points) and really shapes the character's personality. Mixed-class characters are likely to come out a bit goofy, frankly.

As for power-ups; given their penchant for binding squads of supernatural allies, and their access to powers, anybody who can't already see uses for as many extra points as these characters can vacuum up, making them appropriately more powerful and flexible, isn't trying and should go back to playing a fighter.

Too bad. I mean, I feel that a mage, cleric or necromancer who dables into demonology, or into elmentalism, wouldn't be hard to do. As for magery/specialist talents, if bards can upgrade bardsong into magery and take bardic talent, why can't a necromancer upgrade his deathliness into full magery?

As for the Powerups, well, for starters, giving Energy Reserve would be a boon to these templates. Summoning spells are costly indeed. Also, demonologists could start taking demonic features or even full alternate form (representing summoning a demon and fusing with it), necromancers could replace parts of their bodies with undead parts (taking a look at the undead arms in Pyramid #3/1), Elementalists could replace parts of themselves with elemental matter too, and I would offer them the possibility of having unique spells only they can learn (a la secret spell from Magical Styles), and shamans could ask for spirits to posses them an gain the perks of Thaumatology's spirit warriors.

Also, why NO healing spells in for shamans? Healing Slumber certainly fits, and minor healing certainly isn't overpowering, at PI4+. Personally, I will give them Healing Slumber at PI2, Minor Healing at PI4, and Great Healing at PI6. With DF7, even some druids (Hunt and Harvest) will have healing spells, and the healer role is one of the harder ones to fill (Only clerics can heal in DF1. Holy Warriors with the Healing Advantage don't count. DF4 allows an extra option, though costly, with the artificer using gizmos for healing potions. DF7 opens up a little, where variant druids can learn healing spells)

[Turhan's Bey Company]

Originally Posted by Kuroshima

Also, why NO healing spells in for shamans?

Because, I imagine, that's just not how they roll (3d6). A shaman, as it is defined for DF, is sort of a supernatural fixer or middleman. This may be miles away from what real-world shamans do, but, hey, that's DF. If a shaman wants someone healed, he'll summon a spirit to find a nearby healing potion, a qualified cleric, or some such. While one might agree that healers are hard to come by, I don't think there's a compelling reason to lay that burden on the shamans.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Kuroshima

DF4 allows an extra option, though costly, with the artificer using gizmos for healing potions.

Scholars can use Wild Talent for Healing Spells as well.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Scholars can use Wild Talent for Healing Spells as well.

Once an adventure per slot is not very heal-y in my book.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Once an adventure per slot is not very heal-y in my book.

How is that different from the Artificer using gizmos?

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

How is that different from the Artificer using gizmos?

5 points per use versus 20 seems self-explanatory to me. Difference in degree rather than kind, I admit.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

5 points per use versus 20 seems self-explanatory to me. Difference in degree rather than kind, I admit.

Sure but my intent was to mention the one remaining non-cleric "healer" left. Not to claim it was ideal.

[SpaceGurper]

I gotta wait for money to start showing back up. I'm stuck at DF6 :( I do mostly space goodness but still. It's GURPS it's DF and it helps fuel my munchkiness.