First GURPS Mage

[Godogma]

Epic magic is a pdf - the title is self explanatory :)

[Christian]

Why did nobody name timeout yet? Buy photographic memory, time out, delay or hang spell and an illusion spell.

Now get your friendly elf companion to carry a few hundred arrows with him. Cast time out with a delay or hang spell, and carry it with you. When you stumble into the orks, you get close to your friendly elven companion (who happens to carry a bow and a cornucopia for arrows or a few hundred arrows).
Activate your time out around you and your friendly elf. Using your photographic memory you "paint" the scene you saw just before you activated the time out around you, just an inch or so from the time outs inner walls. Thus your elvish friend "sees" the freezen situation outside of the time out. He may fire at will. Once he is out of arrows, or bored, both of you leave the time out, and loot the corpses.

EDITH says: if you do not happen to have an elvis friend, learn winged knife as well, get yourself a cornucopia with appropriate missiles, and it's up to you to fire the missiles using winged knife.

EDITH says TWO: of course an elvis friend might even be more deadly. ;)

[Godogma]

Yes, that seems a vastly amusing tactic when I have an archer handy. However the situation is generally well in hand with the various very mean party members (of our small group) tend to try and out do each other with the amazingly deadly and legal builds they can come up with off the top of their heads, each character being weirder sometimes than the next.

What does ER stand for? I must admit my brain isn't functioning on all cylinders right now for contractions. How much is Regeneration just for mana? Assuming that's what it is?

[Christian]

Energy Reserve = ER. Regeration (FP instead of HP) is 0%.

[Godogma]

Originally Posted by Christian

Energy Reserve = ER. Regeration (FP instead of HP) is 0%.

Ah, so what I noted down as "Mana Points" on my character sheet is called energy reserve. Makes sense, too much Final Fantasy as a youngster, not that I'm ancient now.

Regeneration, definitely a "insert at beginning of character preferably" advantage.

[jacobmuller]

300cp character? With 150cp unusual background?
Have you seen the GURPS Dungeon Fantasy books - based around beginning characters with 250cp. I may be wrong but I got the impression that the 250cp was meant to equate to AD&D 1st level. If so, 300cp isn't much better.
How effective is a 1st level AD&D Mage? I only played AD&D once and my warrior was the only survivor of our parties first encounter with an equal number of 1hd monsters.

GM tip: low-level mobs of bad-guys needn't be treated the same as the Boss or important npcs. One hit kills or autofail HT checks, etc. Make the minors easy to kill and save the epic battles for epic targets.

[vierasmarius]

Very Fast Regeneration (ER Only, 0%; Magic, -10%) costs 90 points and restores 1 "mana" per second. Now, I'm not sure if having 20+ ER increases the regeneration to 2+ per second, the way it does for HP (Basic pg 424). If so, the combination of Regen and a large ER is incredibly powerful.

[Godogma]

Originally Posted by jacobmuller

300cp character? With 150cp unusual background?
Have you seen the GURPS Dungeon Fantasy books - based around beginning characters with 250cp. I may be wrong but I got the impression that the 250cp was meant to equate to AD&D 1st level. If so, 300cp isn't much better.
How effective is a 1st level AD&D Mage? I only played AD&D once and my warrior was the only survivor of our parties first encounter with an equal number of 1hd monsters.

GM tip: low-level mobs of bad-guys needn't be treated the same as the Boss or important npcs. One hit kills or autofail HT checks, etc. Make the minors easy to kill and save the epic battles for epic targets.

Indeed I have, I cannot make myself on 300 points thus I have my doubts I can make myself on 250. Much less a hero class adventurer. 150 point UB and LOTS of flaws.

Honestly, hand eye coordination and manual dexterity as well as sheer IQ (as provided by those daffy high school and online tests) and body build conferred strength, aided by red meat and beans and various good things growing up have blessed me that way.

My disadvantages list is fairly extensive as well but I still can't go into all the various things I have skills in on 300 points... Though on second thought with some qualifiers I'm actually sure depending on how the build was set up I could be done on 300 points - currently anyway as I've nearly ruined my eyes with too much reading and gone to flab because I don't weight lift and exercise so much anymore.

In GURPS 4e, stats are expensive, advantages are expensive... and flaws aren't worth as much as they should be in some cases. Skills also aren't cheap when you get up there in skill level.

That being said the character has nearly 150 in flaws as well.

~~~~~

We do some mitigation of the mooks and such and generally do treat them as disposable stuff most of the time... Sometimes we forget however, and generally an AD&D mage is a very tetchy character to play until mid levels - they're very squishy and the term glass cannon favored by MMOs came from D&D originally as far as I can remember. And you not only need a party that's willing to work together but also one where people know their classes and the right class mix to survive encounters with an equal number of monster HD to party HD in AD&D.

D&D 3.5 etc pretty much made mages more survivable and the like but still very tetchy at low levels. That being said, my character was no where near easy to build even on 300 points and may have been fudged a bit with aid by the GM but I can't recall whether we did or didn't to get him to work.

EDIT: Yeah, he's not a first level character remotely at this point and is crap on skills even now due to specialization in tons of magery but generally I can use spells to make up for the lack of skills due to the tons of Magery and Magic! Then again he's over 410 points now.

[Godogma]

On the topic of making oneself and using the character for gaming - has anyone else ever done that or attempted to do that? We do so fairly often in our gaming group just for Zombie Apocalypse/WWIII games where we play out what we do to survive and all that rot sometimes also the Wolverine style games where we roleplay out what we'd do in invasion situations. (I believe the characters in the movie Deerhunter called themselves the Wolverines anyway).

But yeah, that's a completely off topic digression as a matter of curiosity.

EDIT: Tabletop gaming group, not the online gaming group of which Kalzazz is one of the founding members.

[Witchking]

Originally Posted by Godogma

Then there needs to be another option with different spells to handle the differing situation.

If it hasnt been suggested yet...buy darkness up to Invisibility and then blast them or use the 2 hex reach of staff and attack/step step/attack and the occasional full move to either obliterate them or crack their morale. (With the constant movement it should be nigh impossible for them to even make a decent guess as to which hex you MIGHT be clubbing them from-if you are blasting be sure to attack and then move).