GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 20: Slayers

[Kromm]

A funny joke: A
Lich, a demon and a mage
Walked into my sword.

— The End

A puzzle faced by GMs since the dawn of hack 'n' slash games is how to match monsters to adventurers. You can have the heroes start out fighting one-eyed kobolds and slowly work their way up to undead dragon archmages, but that's boringly predictable – and many gamers find it downright artificial. It's easy to keep fodder relevant by using hordes or giving them a competent leader, but it's a bit harder to use major bosses early in the delvers' career.

Well, unless the adventuring party includes specialists in defeating such bosses.

GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 20: Slayers provides three new professions that are exactly that: the demon-slayer, who hunts Hell's spawn; the mage-slayer, who collects bounties on troublesome spellcasters; and the undead-slayer, who turns the walking dead into the just plain dead. Each has a variety of special abilities optimized for tracking down and defeating their preferred prey. With them on the squad, even a relatively green group of adventurers stands a fighting chance against serious supernatural foes.

Even delvers who don't belong to these professions will appreciate the chapter on gear for slaying demons, magic-users, and undead. This highlights what existing hardware is valuable for those tasks, and offers a number of entirely new items, both mundane and extraordinary. After all, who doesn't want a holy hand grenade?

Of course, another way to use seriously powerful enemies in a less-than-epic-scale game is to give them exploitable flaws. Slayers has you covered there, too: It includes advice on adding fitting disadvantages to supernatural baddies, rules for ferreting out secret (or legendary) means of defeating specific villains, and game mechanics for demonic amulets (which can be exploited to make short work of any demon less than HIM).

NOTE: The mage-slayer and undead-slayer are only loosely inspired by "The Mage-Hunter" (Pyramid #3/109) and "The Undead-Hunter" (Pyramid #3/122). Both have been significantly rethought for GURPS Dungeon Fantasy and given a substantial boost in special abilities.

—

Store Link: http://www.warehouse23.com/products/SJG37-0350

[Dalin]

More DF goodies!

I haven't digested this fully yet, but it was great to browse through last night. The Holy Hand Grenades are great along with the shopping lists. I may use the Even More Slayers! sidebar on p. 18 to design an Evil Thing Slayer (or a lens* to offer to an existing cleric in my DFRPG game who is a pitted foe of Evil Things).

* Only after careful consideration of the rationale under Why No Cross-Profession Lenses? on p. 8, of course!

[Celti]

I feel slightly offended. This book takes an entire setting I've been mucking about with for years and makes it fit into the Dungeon Fantasy rules so much better than I ever did. 🙃

Oh well, I'd been planning on a re-write anyway...

[Bruno]

1) I want to play a Demon-Slayer now. With a trenchcoat and a fedora. Probably with a mail shirt and coif underneath because practicality is important... but so is style!

Mail trenchcoat?

2) PERKS. I love all the new perks.

3) I love the slayer training for snatching cursed jewelry.

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by Bruno

3) I love the slayer training for snatching cursed jewelry.

I forgot about that in my review but it is handy, and inspirational to a cutpurse type thief.
My review here.

[Blind Mapmaker]

Put up a review my blog.

Warning: May contain ads, depending on your ad-blocker settings (really should make my own site I know). It's only Wordpress, though.

Short version: Good, specialised supplement.

[jackcelso]

That is very good .... i am also expecting more books from the Denizens series!!

[Woodman]

Originally Posted by Bruno

Mail trenchcoat?

Coat of Plates?

[Dalin]

I'm curious about why the Iron Soul advantage (p. 5) doesn't apply to ranged weapons. I get the logic (and balance) for why it doesn't affect traps, fires, etc., but my first instinct is to consider a ranged attack to be "direct" under most circumstances, especially in a fantasy context. A demon glaring at me and throwing a knife (or firing a crossbow) seems to be similar, dramatically, to when it swings its spiky sword or casts a spell at me. It's directing its malevolence onto me, specifically, not just generally creating dangerous mayhem in the area. But this is from the fluff angle. I don't know the GURPS DF line as well as I know DFRPG, nor do I have any expertise at designing powers, so I assume this is in line with similar abilities in other books.

If one wanted a version that applied to ranged attacks (but not traps, fires, etc.), how would that adjust the cost?

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Dalin

... Even More Slayers! sidebar..

Here I was going to make a joke about the lack of a Goblin Slayer! template, but it sounds like that might be covered too. Kind of tempted to buy it now...

To add something of substance:

Originally Posted by Dalin

If one wanted a version that applied to ranged attacks (but not traps, fires, etc.), how would that adjust the cost?

I won't know for certain until I see the Advantage, but it sounds like they probably did it as something like "Melee Attacks by Demons," which would be a subset - one category less common - of the "Attacks by Demons" category. So, making it one category more common would increase the price (doubling it if "Melee Attacks by Demons" is Rare -80%, increasing by 1.5x if it's Occasional -60%) and have it apply to all attacks by demons. It would be up the GM if traps and fires set by demons would be included in that "all attacks" category.