GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 18: Power Items
 

Your fancy baubles
Transformed by clever magic
To sources of might

— Wizards' Guild ad

Every GURPS Dungeon Fantasy spellcaster knows the value of a power item: an object that stores supernatural energy for those times when only really impressive magic will do . . . or when even a small spell would be dangerously taxing. And like all delvers, magic-workers are always on the lookout for better gear and abilities. Yet the only way to improve a power item seems to be "find something worth even more money," and GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 1: Adventurers sets an upper limit on that path.

GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 18: Power Items presents a trove of arcane lore that changes all that. Upgrade your existing item through means both mundane and magical, whether by adding physical adornments, temporarily supercharging it, or permanently turning it into an "item of power." Learn about the different kinds of power items – including some that aren't limited to casters – and discover how many varieties you can exploit at once. Spend points on power-ups that bend and break the rules. Or simply use the formula or extended table to go way past 40 FP.

Whether you're a spellcaster who's frustrated that all the best treasure is nonmagical, a non-caster who's envious of the free boost that spell-slingers get from their gear, or just tired of being tired, Power Items has a solution. All you need to do is provide the cash or points. (Warehouse 23 doesn't accept points yet, sorry!)

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Store Link: http://www.warehouse23.com/products/SJG37-0334

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 18: Power Items
 

Yay, a new DF book.

Capsule review: It's short, it's $5, and it's written by Kromm. DF power items are so simple you don't really need this book -- the short sidebar in DF1 is plenty. But if you'd like to expand that little sidebar into 11 pages of detail, this is the book for you.

It goes into detail on what kind of items can be power items, and the benefits and drawbacks of a few types. Details on upgrading or replacing your power item as you get more cash. Some perks and advantages related to power items, including one that costs 75 points that I predict no actual PC will ever buy. And a few suggested optional rules for GMs who want to boost or limit them.

As someone who actually both plays a DF wizard and GMs a DF game with a wizard and a cleric, even I don't actually need this book. But I'll probably use a couple of things from it. Some of the ideas (for example, using your armor as a power item, or changing the rounding on the prices from up to down to be meaner) had already occurred to me. Others (like using your house as a power item, or self-charging power items that aren't powerstones) had not. It's a good read, for the right audience.

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 18: Power Items
 

Speaking only for my own DF group, I know the rules for heroic, endurance, and scholarly power items have all generated a stir. Our scout is always running out of FP, particularly because the wizard loves casting Great Haste on him, turning him into a machine gun of arrows. Our GM ruled that he could use an endurance item to recoup the FP he lost from that spell (since he isn't casting the spell, it seems more like a mundane exhaustion) -- I'm curious if Kromm would agree.

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 18: Power Items
 

Thanks for the in-depth, honest review, dripton!

Kromm, I'm curious -- how did you come up with the 75 point cost for Recharger?

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 18: Power Items
 

Rolled 1 d100. :)

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 18: Power Items
 

I immediately see use as an Alternate Ability, for example as a Learned Prayer/Miracle for a Dungeon Saint.

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 18: Power Items
 

It also includes a half-page on players upgrading their items, which is applicable to non-Power Items as much as it is to PIs. This is pretty critical to people with Signature Gear.

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 18: Power Items
 

I was curious as well. I suspected it was Regeneration applied to the the power item or something similar.

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 18: Power Items
 

I would agree. The FP lost by a third-party Great Haste subject is totally physical and mundane. It's basically an extra-effort cost. The bit where the caster doesn't pay it if he casts on himself is woo-woo magical hand-waving, but the casting cost isn't mundane fatigue.

There was a thread around here some time back wherein I proposed 100 points. I was called on it and therefore did some math. In the end, 75 points seemed fairer. Some people felt it wasn't worth more than a few points, others that it had no fair, finite price, but I chopped off both of the extremes and looked at the middle.

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 18: Power Items
 

That's the thing . . . Even with basic clerics and wizards using stock power-ups, it'll often be an alternative ability. Nobody will actually need this at the same time as Magical Bolt 2d-1 [45], Retribution [40], Secret Teleportation Spell [100], etc., so there will be a cost savings. It's even worth putting into an AA set with abilities that have limited uses and recovery times, because you could use it at the start of the day, recover, switch to your one-off, use that and freeze your AA, get your one-off back, use Recharger again, and recover, ad infinitum.

Of course, the ultimate test is "Would you buy it?" Those who won't, won't. Those who will, will find ways to make it useful. I've worked out more than a few abuses that give me pause at 75 points, and I'm pretty sure anybody familiar with DF could work these out.

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 18: Power Items
 

I just want to say that this book in incredibly illuminating of the assumed underlying principles of the DF universe.

How things are powered, what they store, how they're charged and tapped, what counts as being effectively the same despite looking very different to their users - all of these setting details make up the cogs and levers of the mechanical underpinning of the (steadily expanded on) world/s that DF inhabits, but also defines and expands on a lot of the lore and world building details that DF usually tries to shy away from.

As such this is actually a fascinating read just to see all the power sources listed out with both their mechanical interactions, but also their fluff (like how demonologists power items store a little bit of Hell in them).

The book is also very good at going into the details and expanding the options for power items and stuff, but who would want to buy it for that??

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 18: Power Items
 

A decent book, but only useful for an audience that actually uses power items. It almost succeeds in selling the concept to me and it certainly makes things much fairer by letting all character types have a piece of the cake. Suffers a bit from being too long for a Pyramid article and pretty short for a stand-alone book, though.

I posted a more detailed review on my blog: https://blindmapmaker.wordpress.com/...8-power-items/

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 18: Power Items
 

It was this post from this thread.

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 18: Power Items
 

http://pseudoboo.blogspot.com/2016/0...wer-items.html

My review. Good pull quotes. Very specific focus with no beating around the bush. Wish there was slightly more, but it delivers on exactly what it promises.

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 18: Power Items
 

Awesome book.

Quick question: Can mind control be used to make someone use up their power item against their will?

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 18: Power Items
 

Thank you!

They can't just be told, "Empty your power item," because there's no quick way to dump all the energy at once for its own sake, without using a fatiguing ability. If you can maintain control for an hour, though, you could order them to unlink from it (p. 11). But it would probably be easier to command them to use some fatiguing ability in a useless way – or even better, for your benefit – and to draw energy from their power item until it's all gone. Telling a wizard to cast the biggest Create Air he can manage would do the job in a second; ditto having a cleric cast, say, Awaken on a huge area.

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 18: Power Items
 

Question: How does this (And several other previous works when I think about it) effect the cost of magic items? And normal rules anything that allows a Mage to have more energy to put into spells changes the break points for enchanting, but DF doesn't follow the normal rules

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 18: Power Items
 

They would have a huge effect is on the limit for Quick and Dirty enchantments. This might already be figured in for DF, the Q&D limit is 100 energy, not 60.

Assumptions: 1 Master (1,400 per month), 5 journeymen (700/month). 6 50 FP Power Items ($69,000 each, spread out over 1 year), 30 apprentices whose job is to practice Recover Energy and Lend Energy (Poor, $200/month ea). 2 "cycles" of spend and recharge is 720 energy a day, which would actually bring the per energy price to almost exactly $1 again... but with a Q&D limit of 360.

Basically, the limit is more "how much capital does the guild want to have sitting around in expensive power items". A rich, established guild could really crank out Q&D items, or at least have a huge reserve for special rush orders. Especially since, with the above assumptions, after year 1, you could increase the value of each of those power items by $69,000 a year. Nice, steady progress to ever higher Q&D limits. You might run out of Lend Energy apprentices before you run into a limit on power item use, really.

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 18: Power Items
 

They don't affect it, because GURPS DF is explicitly not about world simulation.

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 18: Power Items
 

Yes and No. A large part of DF is getting stuff, so accurate rules regarding how this stuff is made is important, even if the PCs can't make it. If the PCs in a DF game you ran found a Psi 'enchanted' sword and wanted to have an NPC sage enchant it more with magic, what would your response be? Is it even possible? Are there special requirements or costs for performing such a feat? How will the 'enchantments' already on it interact with the ones the PCs want to put on it?

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 18: Power Items
 

Actually, DF is pretty clear that it isn't interested in where "stuff" comes from. This isn't a game about crafting, or about what NPCs do to keep the PCs running. It particularly isn't about where things you find in dungeons come from.

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 18: Power Items
 

In the spirit of DF:

Do you want the PCs to be able to get it crafted? If so how hard do you it to be to buy?