GURPS Magic: Artillery Spells

[Kromm]

We were surrounded
Goblins, orcs, ogres, and trolls
Just our kind of fight

— Archmage Nappy Krupp, 1st King's Artillery

As a magic-user, there are times when you want to be subtle. Often, the last thing you want to do is paint a huge target on your head – or worse, get strung up for witchcraft. If you travel with adventurers, you play it safe by focusing on tasks like healing, gathering intelligence, and enhancing your allies' abilities.

And then there are times when you want to erase the enemy from the map – maybe even erase part of the map itself!

GURPS Magic offers limited options for this, which is why we've rolled out GURPS Magic: Artillery Spells. The 50 new spells in this grimoire equip classic Magery-and-mana (or Power Investiture-and-sanctity) casters with the means to lay waste to the battlefield in decidedly unsubtle ways.

Here you'll find straight-up blasting power in the form of Improved Concussion, Improved Explosive Fireball, and Improved Explosive Lightning, and their distant cousins Explosive Mine and Minefield . . . a plethora of devastating beams and cones, including Arctic Blast, Chain Lightning, Cone of Corrosion, Death Ray, Fire Swarm, and Sun's Arc . . . scorched-earth tactics courtesy of Flammability, Scald, Sunburst, and Towering Inferno . . . horrid curses such as Creeping Plague, Death Field, Plague Touch, Psychic Scream, Spirit Incursion, Wilting, and Withering Wail . . . subtle magical judo like Mirror Mirror, Mass Mutilation, and Stabbing Party . . . straight up creative (dare we say "fun"?) stuff in the vein of Diminishing Dome, Ironweed, Seismic Shock, Splat, and Twisting Terror . . . and 20 other ways to blow up, burn, crush, gas, pummel, slash, and otherwise harm enemies in bulk lots. As with high-tech artillery, there are munitions for every occasion.

All of this firepower comes with plenty of advice on how to use it in your campaign. And while we stop short of a design system, there almost five pages of discussion on how to create (reasonably) balanced artillery spells of your own.

Give 'em hell!

—

Store Link: http://www.warehouse23.com/products/SJG37-0154

[Kromm]

Speaking now as the author rather than a shill: This stuff is eminently suitable for GURPS Dungeon Fantasy . . . you could probably win at "Spells from That Other Game Bingo" with the options in this supplement.

This stuff also has the potential to break the game. In true GURPS tradition, "arms control" is left to the GM. If you wouldn't let characters start out with rocket launchers and flamethrowers in your modern-day grime-and-crime campaign, you won't want to let starting delvers learn these spells. Which makes grimoires containing them the perfect reward for high-powered casters who complete difficult quests!

[Rasputin]

Might I suggest that the putative Poison Food against a whole army suggested on page 6 be called "School Lunch"?

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by Kromm

a plethora of devastating beams and cones

Suddenly I'm reminded of a classic of a different genre.

At Kinnison’s word of command, eight of those indescribable primary beams lashed out ; stilettos of irresistibly penetrant energy which not even a Q-type helic could withstand. Through screens, through wall shields, and through metal they hurtled in a space of time almost too brief to be measured. Then, before each beam expired, it was swung a little, so that the victim was literally split apart or carved into sections. Performance exceeding by far that of the hastily improvised weapon which had so easily destroyed the heavy cruisers of the Patrol ; in fact, it checked almost exactly with the theoretical figures of the designers.

As the first eight beams winked out, eight more came into being, then five more ; and meanwhile the mighty secondaries were sweeping the heavens with full-aperture cones of destruction. Metal meant no more to those rays than did organic material ; everything solid or liquid whiffed into vapor and disappeared. The Dauntless lay alone in the sky of that new world.

[lvalero]

More spells for DF! This is an auto-buy for me. Thanks!

If anybody makes a book with the same spells but in "Spells as power" it will be also an auto-buy.

Yes, such book could be redundant, and yes I could build the powers by myself but I am lazy and I prefer to pay 8$ = 7€!

[martinl]

In my heart, this will always be GURPS FWAKOOM.

[Onkl]

Brilliant, awesome, long-awaited, well received... thank you so much! I bet it will quench the thirst of the mages of our DF game for more oomph.

Cheers!

Onkl

[Blind Mapmaker]

A very good supplement that provides GURPS damage-dealing spells with much-needed variety and flavour. The difference between the worthy-killing Death Spells from the previous supplement and the crowd-controlling Artillery Spells is well-developed. The spell-building guidelines are, in retrospect, better than the more rigid building system from Death Spells.

A more in-depth review can be found at my blog:

https://wordpress.com/post/blindmapm...press.com/3122

[Bruno]

An excellent read, very enjoyable. My only real complaint is that we don't actually have some sort of artillery Knowledge and Food spells. Come on! We've got the Death Spells precedent to live up to!

For instance, for the Food college a spell called Mass Slaughter seems pretty self evident...

[scc]

Originally Posted by Bruno

An excellent read, very enjoyable. My only real complaint is that we don't actually have some sort of artillery Knowledge and Food spells. Come on! We've got the Death Spells precedent to live up to!

For instance, for the Food college a spell called Mass Slaughter seems pretty self evident...

A GURPS version of Locate City Bomb could work for Knoweldge