Newcomer seeks advice: Ravenloft in GURPS?

[The Benj]

Originally Posted by HuManBing

Hmm, interesting! This opens up good possibilities then. I'm reading through the GURPS Undead 3E book, and there's a fun little sidebar with the question of "does the symbol have to be priest's faith or the undead's faith?" and it gives the example of a Jewish vampire who laughs at a Crucifix.

It's an interesting concept (and I think that example is originally from The Fearless vampire killers), but doesn't seem appropriate for D&D, where the ability to turn undead is the power of your god, not the psychology of the undead. You'd be a pretty crappy cleric if you couldn't use the symbol of your own faith, that's the whole point.

True Faith works as normal. Self-willed undead cannot approach you, but they don't flee from you. This relies on your divine patron protecting you. This is already a considerable downgrade from the d20 mechanism, so I think GURPS as standard should be suitable for Ravenloft, where the undead are rather bold anyway.

Fair.

I don't know if there's a "turn undead" mechanic (make them affirmatively scared and run away from you)

There is: the Turning Enhancement from Powers (p. 84)

GURPS 3E also states that mindless undead such as zombies and skeletons are immune to True Faith because they're more akin to automatons, just following orders.

Really? Do you have a page reference? I don't remember this at all and it seems completely wrong for Ravenloft. If anything, it should be the other way around: that mindless undead can't resist and sentient undead can, because they can think things through.

[The Benj]

Originally Posted by HuManBing

Colleges of Magic:

In Ravenloft, the max starting Magery level is 1, so mages (and priests) have little in the way of actual power. Further levels must be bought later in one's career, likely with a compelling adventure or two, demonstrating how the apprentice becomes an adept. Most domains will limit the level to 3 maximum. High-magic domains (Darkon, Hazlan) could go higher, and people like Azalin could have up to 6, given that Greyhawk and other outworlds might be high fantasy settings.

High magic domains shouldn't influence Magery directly, but you could rule that spells that require certain levels of Magery won't work in lower-magic ones.

However, there are some schools that Ravenloft makes more difficult. I have not decided on how the powers impair the casting. I'd rather not just say "They're inexplicably impossible unless the DM decides to allow it". I'd like to do something with ceremonial magic, or ritual magic, or otherwise impose a massive penalty so that the appropriate effect is gained.

Sounds sensible, though in some ways there's a lot to be said for "It's not going to happen unless I say so, because it's wrong for the setting" :)

Gate spells will be heavily opposed by the Dark Powers. Gating things into the demiplane is bad enough, but they almost never allow mere mortal magic to effect an escape. Gate spells almost never work. Gating things into Ravenloft is not very Gothic (demons are a little too supernatural for a Gothic horror game - in much the same way as "The Monk" left Gothic horror and became medieval morality play when Satan appeared at the end to throw the monk off a mountain) and Gating things out of Ravenloft should flat-out neven happen, otherwise a mighty wizard like Azalin should have accomplished it by now.

Is there a mixture of mechanics I can apply to make this feasible? The Dark Powers could put a large negative modifier, and/or require ceremonial magic for it, so even having an effective 15+ skill level to start the ceremony for the Gating spell is going to be very difficult.

Just giving a huge penalty will be enough to make Ceremonial Magic more fitting, as you can use extra energy to get a bonus, which you'll probably need to have a hope of success.

Incidentally, Azalin's major goal is to Gate himself out of Ravenloft. His curse (being unable to learn new magic) needs retooling to be more focussed on this goal, I believe. Something that pairs up with the demiplane's general hostility to the Gate spells should be good. E.g. if the Demiplane itself requires all such spells to be done as Ceremonies, and on top of that gives a effective -10 skill level, then in a normal mana area you'd need a skill level of 25 to just start casting it. If Azalin's personal curse is that he suffers a further -10 skill for Gate spells, then he'll need an effective skill level of 35 to start casting. Reaching such a skill level could take millennia of research... to say nothing of the time required to cast the spell itself and keep it going (logistical impediments to this will be detailed later).

Well, it's quite clear that he's never going to succeed (isn't that really the point?), so you could just say that he's never going to and that's that.

Healing spells are seriously curtailed, but not as bad as Gating spells. Many of these should be reserved for priests with Power Investiture, rather than Mages. They should not be necessarily harder to cast, but should take time to cast. (So if you get into a fight, you can be taken to the temple to be healed overnight, but you can't ask a cleric to tap you with his finger mid-fight and suddenly feel better.)

Really? I don't remember this.
Anyway, GURPS healing spells are weaker than D&D anyway, what with the cumulative -3 for castings after the first.
If you want them to not be mid-combat, though, just require that they be cast Ceremonially and that's that. A minimum of 10 seconds means it just won't happen most of the time.

[quote]

Knowledge spells change slightly. In d20 Ravenloft, most Knowledge-type spells work less well in Ravenloft than in other realms. However, GURPS magic is already less distance-based than d20 magic is, so on reading through the Knowledge spells, I think most of them can stay as they are without too many changes.

However, there are certain specific limitations. In d20 Ravenloft, magic cannot determine alignment (ethics, in GURPS). This shouldn't be a huge problem, since GURPS doesn't adhere stringently to the alignment system anyway, so the Ravenloft PCs will still have to rely on a person's actions rather than magic to determine their true character.

Yeah, the closest things are the mind-reading spells and Sense Foes. The former is probably wrong for the setting anyway and Sense Foes only tells you whether someone is hostile, not whether they're evil.

Know Location could be a problem - much of Ravenloft is based on disorientation and misdirection (the Mists are a sublime example of this). This spell could have an arbitrary modifier imposed by the DM depending on how much interest the Dark Powers take. For similar concerns, Astral Vision, Pathfinder, Seeker, Trace, and Remember Path may also encounter a modifier, as deemed suitable by the DM. (If the DM applies a modifier judging on circumstances, it means the players may still have some reason to justify learning and using the spell. It could still work, but it might take more attempts to get it to do so.)

Finally, many evils in Ravenloft are disguised by magic, and the purpose of this is to force the players to rely on their own judgment to determine the truth. Thus, spells like Know True Shape and See Secrets may also need to be nerfed with penalties.

Yeah, these should all have penalties or just not be available, I think.

On the flip side of the coin, Divination magic is very well suited to Ravenloft. It's lengthy, dependent on knowledge of History, and imprecise - basically, all the hallmarks of Gothic horror portents and omen-telling!

Sounds like regular Divination already. Time-consuming and vague. :)

[The Benj]

Originally Posted by GURPS Banestorm, p.26

The following Gate College spells have a -25 penalty when cast on Yrth: Banish (when used on travelers from normal alternate worlds, rather than, say, demons), Create Gate (when used for anything besides long-distance travel), Hide Object, Phase, Phase Other, Planar Visit, Plane Shift, Plane Shift Other, Sanctuary, and Scry Gate (if the gate leads to another time or plane). An attempt to use Planar Summons to bring something from Yrth fails outright if the spell doesn’t specify an individual entity, and is at the standard -25 penalty even if it does.
The following spells have the same penalty, and no one on Yrth has even conceived of them: Accelerate Time, Rapid Journey (when used to travel through time), Slow Time, Suspend Time, Time Out, Timeport, Timeport Other, Timeslip, and Timeslip Other. There may be ways to reduce these penalties, but what they are and who knows them is up to the GM.

I knew there was something relevant like this in Banestorm, but I don't own it (it's the only 4th Ed book I don't own). Luckily, however, somebody quoted this over in another thread and it seems like a useful guide.
-25 is sure a lot, but it means only people who are really good and put a lot of effort in will have any hope of avoiding just producing Crit Failures, let alone having any chance of success.

[HuManBing]

Thanks for the Banestorm rules, I think I'll work those in as well. As an aside, I'm going to tweak Azalin's curse so that his inability to learn spells is only directed at Healing and Gate spells (since those are the two areas of magic most dear to him, so he can resurrect his son and leave Ravenloft). I'm also toying with the idea of making another curse that his undead nature will gradually become apparent to any living creature - regardless of his illusions to conceal it - after sufficient time spent in his presence.

This is devastating to him, since Darkon culturally has a terrible fear of death and undead, and because he has instituted propaganda to cast himself as the "last stalwart defender" of the people against the tides of undead. This effectively shuts down any possibility of collaborating with mortal spellcasters in ceremonial castings... and given that Healing and Gate spells have a penalty that he must use ceremonial castings to overcome, it's a heavy burden.


As for your question about 3E's True Faith ineffectiveness against mindless undead, I do indeed have a page citation for you:

From GURPS Undead 3E p. 101 sidebar:

Specifically, revenants cannot be turned. Neither can mindless undead; they aren't "malign supernatural beings", they're just following orders.

For what it's worth, I agree with your take. I believe mindless undead should be more susceptible to turning (perhaps even overriding the "Need undead's faith symbol" requirement, since they're mindless and don't remember it anyway - so anybody's holy symbol will work as long as the cleric believes in it). And self-willed intelligent undead should have a Will Roll or some such to resist turning, with a penalty (or maybe no Will Roll at all) if a symbol of a faith significant to the undead is used.

[Faolyn]

I'm late to this thread, so sorry if any of this has already been said. I'm running a GURPS Ravenloft game right now, and it's going swimmingly.

GURPS Powers is very useful in fine-tuning anything you throw at the PCs in ways they may not think. In the first GURPS RL game I ran, I had a villain (a delusional ex-werewolf) who, due to various Dark Power gifts, could summon up "shadow wolves"--which were basically an FP-draining, Mobile, Homing Affliction, the idea taken directly from the description of Allies in Powers. This book also has the Awe and Confusion checks tables. Awe isn't likely to come into play too often in Ravenloft, but Confusion might, especially in the Shadow Rift or in Bleutspur, and for other sanity-blasting things.

I decided on a very simple roll for Powers check: roll 3d. On a 3-17, nothing happens. On an 18, roll again. For a minor act of evil, the player needs to roll an 18 to have attracted the Dark Powers; for a moderate act of evil, the roll needs to be 17-18; and for a major act of evil, the roll needs to be 16-18. You can tweak these if you want Powers checks to be more or less problematic. I'm not sure how effective it is--I've only had to roll a Powers check once.

As for turning lesser undead, in Ravenloft, even mindless skeletons and zombies are evil by nature, as they're tied into the negative material plane (and according to Van Richten's Guide to the Walking Dead, they have to kill on a regular basis or they crumble, and this includes undead animated purely by magic, even by a non-evil caster).

I don't have any mages in my current party, but I do have a Witch of Hala. I use a type of ritual magic for them, based (very roughly) on the Celtic-type tree magic from Celtic Myth and Thaumatology. I'd probably do the same for Druids, if I had any. My personal preference for magic is toning down on the flashiness factor. Fireballs are rare, for instance.

I also wouldn't limit the level of Magery available. Just make it so that higher levels of Magery lead to temptation with darker and darker magicks, as the magic becomes Things Man Was Not Meant To Know, which is always fun, even when there are no shoggoths. What I might limit would be the amount of spell-casting Fatigue allowable, to encourage players to look into weird and disturbing ways to cast spells. Like blood magic! And there shouldn't be any power stones. Mana stones, maybe.

If you like the idea of sorcerers from 3e D&D (the idea that that some people just have off abilities), allow some people to take exotic advantages, like Healing or Medium. Evil sorcerers have these powers with the Pact limitation.

My group doesn't use priests, per se. rather, we let anyone pray for miracles, using a modified Reaction Roll (we got the idea from one of the new GURPS books, but darned if I can remember which one. Priests--i.e., those with Clerical Investment--just are more likely to get their prayers answered. Any miracles that occur as a result may act like spells, or they might be skill bonuses, premonitions, beneficial "coincidences," and so on. Of course, really bad rolls annoy the deities (eta: didn't know the 'p' word was a bad word here). You just need to decide if the gods in your game are really the gods, or are the Dark Powers pretending to be gods.

One limitation that hasn't seemed to make its way into 4e GURPS is the "Weak" (-40%) limitation for Dominance--the ability to create minions from your infectious attack that don't have Slave Mentality. This was in 3e Horror, and should have been brought over into 4e.

One other thing to remember is that, while GURPS likes to claim that a person or being's point cost is a good indicator of their power level, this isn't always the case. The geist in D&D is a 1/2 CR creature, IIRC, but in Ravenloft works out to something like 200+ points, because Invisibility and Insubstantibility are so expensive.

Honestly, I wouldn't worry too much. I make all my monsters and stuff up as I go along, and I don't really care if they've been converted "exactly." Ravenloft is all about the tone. Rules aren't that important.

[HuManBing]

(Cross posted with Faolyn, whose post I will address later when I've had time to do it justice! :) )

So my proposed rundown:

Defensive Faith: requires True Faith and your own faith's symbol. Mindless undead simply cannot approach you, they're held at bay automatically. Intelligent undead can approach you only if they succeed in a Quick Contest Will Roll, and the cleric gets to add their Power Investiture level to the roll to see if it works. Non-clerics can still do this but obviously lose the Power Investiture bonus. Circumstantial modifiers can apply, eg if the area is sanctified or desecrated, etc.

Offensive Faith: requires True Faith and the symbol of the undead's faith. (Undead does not need to have been a strict adherent to the faith. Any acknowledgement of the god's effectiveness and power during their life is enough, e.g. accepting healing from that god's clerics.) Cleric needs to present both his own symbol and the symbol of the undead's faith. Same Will Roll applies, same modifiers. If the undead fails it, it must get all of its body parts out of line-of-sight from the symbols. Merely covering or averting its eyes is not enough. If it doesn't, it takes a shock penalty equal to the margin of failure in the Quick Contest.

If both the undead and the priest are adherents to the same faith (i.e. the priest only needs one symbol to turn the undead) then the priest's Power Investiture bonus is doubled. Again, the undead's shock penalty cannot exceed -4, which is the usual shock penalty max cap, but the doubled Power Investiture bonus means it's much more likely to fail the Quick Contest roll.


How does this sound?

[The Benj]

I still don't think the requirement of using the symbol of the undead's former faith is right. That's fine where it's the symbol that's important, because of its relevance to the creature's beliefs, but that's not what's going on with D&D Turning; it's the power of YOUR god, not their mind or their god.

If it was, you wouldn't need to be a Cleric (or, in GURPS, have True Faith), you'd just present the appropriate symbol. Sure, firmness and strength of will might be important, but if your belief in what the symbol represents isn't important, you're not acting as a priest, just as a scarecrow.

If anything, I would argue that using the symbol of a god OTHER than your own is probably a violation of the Pact that's inherent to True Faith and you'd lose it until you atone to your god.
You're certainly not a good priest if you're waving around some other god's symbols in lieu of your own.

I strongly urge you to reconsider.
Either:
1. Drop the idea of the undead's former faith being imporant
2. Reduce it to being a bonus against undead of your faith (preserves something of this, without being silly)
3. Remove True Faith and make it a simple Dread of the appropriate holy symbol, so it's the sign and not the bearer who matters (this will make clerics less important, which is up to you to decide whether that's good or bad)

[HuManBing]

Originally Posted by The Benj

I still don't think the requirement of using the symbol of the undead's former faith is right. That's fine where it's the symbol that's important, because of its relevance to the creature's beliefs, but that's not what's going on with D&D Turning; it's the power of YOUR god, not their mind or their god.

Yes, but I've already demonstrated I'm very happy to selectively depart from the D&D system's example. In fact, part of the reason that I switched to GURPS in the first place is that I think D&D is entirely too cinematic and inflexible for a Gothic horror game to work.

Consider Ravenloft, which has traditionally given the gods lesser sway. Undead in the d20 system just are uniformly harder to turn. Also, consider that unlike the monochromatic "Christanity über alles" theology of Harker's Dracula, Ravenloft has a good number of powerful faiths (Hala, the Morninglord, Ezra of the Mists, the Eternal Order). And none of them is as powerful or as effective as the Dark Powers themselves.

Think of this as being less an issue of bargaining with a rival faith for the use of their symbol, and more in the line of an archaeologist who stumbles across Imhoptep's tomb and discovers that the Crucifix has no sway over these undead. But, an Ankh is very effective. It opens up the adventure to a lot more investigation and historical research, so that the intelligent undead really becomes a character, with weaknesses and a backstory, rather than just another dusty stiff for the priest to immobilize and the fighter to whack.

If it was, you wouldn't need to be a Cleric (or, in GURPS, have True Faith), you'd just present the appropriate symbol. Sure, firmness and strength of will might be important, but if your belief in what the symbol represents isn't important, you're not acting as a priest, just as a scarecrow.

Another way of looking at it is you need to be a firm believer in some faith to turn anything at all. But your god alone is not going to be enough to turn an intelligent undead in Ravenloft because the Dark Powers generally make them more powerful. Your faith is enough to defend yourself (keep them from advancing) but if you want to affirmatively drive them away from you, you're going to need your own faith plus an indicia of their own faith. (The actual in-game fluff rationalization can be varied - perhaps it reminds the undead of the unbearable past of being a mortal, perhaps it reminds them of the situation they are in now, etc.)

In a full fantasy setting, there might be a decent degree of universality of faith power against undead. But in Ravenloft, I think this is overpowered, and a dynamic where you have to find out what the specific undead is vulnerable to is more in keeping with the idea of strong, relatively memorable and unique undead encounters.

If anything, I would argue that using the symbol of a god OTHER than your own is probably a violation of the Pact that's inherent to True Faith and you'd lose it until you atone to your god.

In a monotheistic setting, like that envisioned by most West European writers of classic Gothic fiction, this might be a very suitable interpretation. Ravenloft, however, is a polytheistic domain (even though individual priests may treat this with a certain degree of denial) and my earlier example of the European explorer using an Ankh to control a native undead still stands. I would also note that assimilation by culture is nothing new in the line of missionary work - the word for the Christian "God" in Chinese is exactly the same as the millennia-old name for the Chinese mythological "Celestial Emperor", and mostly because early Christian missionaries in China realized it would save them time and effort with the local populace to just use that mental shortcut in their proselytizing work.

I strongly urge you to reconsider.

I'll keep it in mind. Maybe if the playtesting doesn't work out well, I'll cast around for some other solution, but for now I like the mechanic and I think it brings something new and unusual to my former-d20 players.

[HuManBing]

Originally Posted by Faolyn

GURPS Powers is very useful in fine-tuning anything you throw at the PCs in ways they may not think.

I've heard that too, and I bought a copy of the pdf from e23 so I could muck around with this. I'm finding it more complicated than other sourcebooks, however, so it's slow going. I tried statting some of Azalin's higher-level powers and wasn't sure what I was doing was right. Could you give me suggestions for those? The ones I tried statting were: 1) Can instantly raise and control any mindless undead in Darkon, 2) Can instantly control any preexisting undead (regardless of mindlessness) in Darkon. (For campaigns set after the events of Death Ascendant, I'll need to stat out a power where he can read and rewrite the memories of anybody within Darkon, as well.)

I like your Powers check mechanic. I think I'll tweak the actual numbers a little, but it's good to know that I can do something similar on 3d6 as on d%. As you have it, I believe the Powers check mechanic is considerably rarer in your campaign than it is in Ravenloft, as it's considerably less frequent than 1-in-216, whereas the rarest Ravenloft Powers Check is (by definition) 1-in-100.

I have VRGttWD as well, and while I like a lot of the suggested powers for undead, I have specifically overruled the "must kill something every so often" rule. A large part of the attraction of mindless undead is that they make for good guardians of forgotten crypts and tombs, where they might encounter a marauding party once every few decades at most. If they crumbled to dust in the interim it would kill that game mechanic.

I also wouldn't limit the level of Magery available. Just make it so that higher levels of Magery lead to temptation with darker and darker magicks, as the magic becomes Things Man Was Not Meant To Know, which is always fun, even when there are no shoggoths.

Okay, that's a good idea. I'm still going to limit them to Magery 1 at creation, but I think your idea of magic-as-temptation is excellent. Ravenloft has relatively few high-level mages, but your explanation shows it's because most people don't survive the higher levels, and not because they're actually less competent than existing mages elsewhere.

Thanks for the other suggestions too, I'll give them more thought later. As it is, I'm still so new to the system that they don't make much sense to me now, but that's a defect in my knowledge, not your explanation. :)

[Faolyn]

Originally Posted by HuManBing

[...] I tried statting some of Azalin's higher-level powers and wasn't sure what I was doing was right. Could you give me suggestions for those? The ones I tried statting were: 1) Can instantly raise and control any mindless undead in Darkon, 2) Can instantly control any preexisting undead (regardless of mindlessness) in Darkon.

The problem with that is that I'm not sure that can be statted. I mean, here's my 1-minute attempt at controlling undead: Control (Godlike) 10 (Based On Will (Targets Roll), +20%; Cosmic, +50%; Extended Duration, +150%; Group Size, *18 (501-1,000); Increased Range, +150%; Magic Power, -10%; Malediction, +200%; Minion, +50%; Natural Phenomena, +100%; Persistent, +40%; Puppet, -40%; Ranged, +40%; Special Abilities, +50%; Summonable, +100%) [Total Cost: 54,000]. This is based on Control at 30/level.

The reason I said his group size was limited to 501-1,000 is that, quite frankly, he can't sic any more than that on a party of PCs at any one time. I'm going to guess that, because this is Control and not Affliction, the Malediction uses the Control's level to determine the Target's Will modifier, which would be -10. If he fails, he can try again next round. To up this, by a few levels of Compartmentalized Mind. And this is probably not a very good try.

I'm sure someone here can do a much better and cheaper job with it, but this is where I'd say "the heck with it" and just not bother to come up with the stats. The other problem is that there isn't an official description of Darkon's physical size, which makes range problems...problematic. Up there, it assumes a range of under 2,000 miles. I think. I'll see if I can work up the Memory Control later on; right now, cold medication beckons.

For Azalin, I'd say just work up his immediate combat abilities, just in case your PCs are suicidal, and ignore everything else.

Originally Posted by HuManBing

I like your Powers check mechanic. I think I'll tweak the actual numbers a little, but it's good to know that I can do something similar on 3d6 as on d%. As you have it, I believe the Powers check mechanic is considerably rarer in your campaign than it is in Ravenloft, as it's considerably less frequent than 1-in-216, whereas the rarest Ravenloft Powers Check is (by definition) 1-in-100.

Well, this game is fairly new--we've only finished the fourth adventure (so maybe eight sessions). But now that you've done the math (me: "Math hard"), I might tweak it, too, make it 17-18 for the initial roll. Of course, nothing my players have done have been that evil yet. Yet.

Originally Posted by HuManBing

I have VRGttWD as well, and while I like a lot of the suggested powers for undead, I have specifically overruled the "must kill something every so often" rule. A large part of the attraction of mindless undead is that they make for good guardians of forgotten crypts and tombs, where they might encounter a marauding party once every few decades at most. If they crumbled to dust in the interim it would kill that game mechanic.

True.

Originally Posted by HuManBing

Thanks for the other suggestions too, I'll give them more thought later. As it is, I'm still so new to the system that they don't make much sense to me know, but that's a defect in my knowledge, not your explanation. :)

No prob. The thing about GURPS is that actually making the characters is tough, even with the Character Assistant, but the play itself is hard. And thanks! Glad to have been of help.