01-31-2024, 01:25 PM | #1 |
Join Date: Nov 2022
|
Innate attack skill for shooting with magical items?
Dear all,
The Innate Attack skill "represents trained ability with a “built-in” ranged attack: fiery breath, super-powered energy bolts, etc." as described in the Basic Set Characters P 201. The detailed description the skill only evoke powers coming out of hands and eyes. What about using a magical (wand, ring, etec.) item to shoot fireballs or death ray? Is it also Innate Attack? Thanks in advance for your feedback. |
01-31-2024, 01:34 PM | #2 |
Join Date: Jun 2013
|
Re: Innate attack skill for shooting with magical items?
Generally speaking, yeah, you'd use Innate Attack for that. Note this is the skill used by mages to hit with missile spells (they roll against their skill with the spell to cast it, but actually attacking with it uses Innate Attack). Of course, if wands/staves/magic rings/etc in your settings have specific nuances to their use rather than largely feeling natural, you could introduce a skill - probably DX/E, although /A or even /H could be justified - that covers their use (possibly different required specializations of the same skill for each type of device). Note this would mean an untrained user would be at a penalty to use it (-4 for /E, -5 for /A, -6 for /H) rather than being able to just roll against DX.
__________________
GURPS Overhaul |
01-31-2024, 06:34 PM | #3 |
Join Date: Mar 2008
|
Re: Innate attack skill for shooting with magical items?
You might also have a default from weapon skills. While pointing a ring on a finger of a clenched hand is not the same as pointing a pistol I'd think there would be some default. Or a staff from a rifle.
|
01-31-2024, 08:01 PM | #4 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
|
Re: Innate attack skill for shooting with magical items?
Quote:
Assuming default/standard GURPS Magic, what a magic item usually does is allow the character to cast the spell, at which point the character uses the usual aiming skill for the spell, which is (usually) Innate Attack. However, there's no particular reason a "magic wand" with a shooting-beams effect not constructed using the default magic system might not instead use, say, Beam Weapons skill.
__________________
Steven E. Ehrbar GURPS Technomancer resources. Including The Renegade Mage's Unofficial GURPS Magic Spell Errata, last updated July 7th, 2023. |
|
02-01-2024, 07:06 AM | #5 | |
Join Date: Sep 2007
|
Re: Innate attack skill for shooting with magical items?
Quote:
Given that most fantasy games are pseudo-medieval tech, often without a great deal of variation in tech in the areas players will visit, the /TL skill for Beam Weapons doesn't seem any more appropriate to me. You could use it anyway -- but both BW and IA are DX/Easy, and both require specialization. So really, that's just a name change to "Beam Weapons/TL 3 (Magic Wands)". (Might as well just call it "Wands" for syntactic sugar, though sometimes changing names can be an annoyance when using software tools.) |
|
|
|