GURPS Power-Ups 1 is out
 

And it's pretty frickn' sweet.

Go look!

Re: GURPS Power-Ups 1 is out
 

YOINK!

Skill based, eh? interesting.

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Klick->Order->Wait for Email

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The confirmation screen you get after you order should ahve a link to download it right there. It should also be on the File List for your account, so you don't have to wait.

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Assuming one isn't paying by PayPal...

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Serves me right for not checking anything before I went to work! Now I have to wait until I get home!

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As I wrote in the "Power Help: Tempered Blade" Thread:

"Bought it too! :)

Looks pretty cool, but I'm a bit worried about the skill based part of it."

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I keep thinking of a "Quick Draw McGraw" Episode, where McGraw's son, back from college in the east takes up his father's mantle as "El Kabong". While sword fighting the villain and the villain takes a break, makes a twist of his wrist and his sword continues to fight for him. Junior asks how he did this and the villain shows him. Both swords continue fighting while the foes and the distressed damsel discover they all went to the same college.

The reason I am thinking of this is I CAN DO THIS IN GAME NOW, by the RAW. The Villain has Imbue 3 and Project Blow [edit: er, Dancing Weapon actually] and perhaps teaching or even Instruction! at 15 or higher. Junior has Wild Talent.

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Don't be. It makes sense. And this is coming from a die-hard POWERS! guy.

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Well, with this, we're one step closer to a real GURPS Exalted...

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The advantage of this set up is that it goes from trying to price every conceivable piece of equipment as an advantage which would be fair at the points level, to making the cost equal at the Character’s level. Thus two characters can get the same effect, for the same cost. If character A only ever uses a .38 special and character B is using a .50 AE, then the price is still fair because character A could go get themselves a .50 AE and get the same effect.

All in all: this is an elegant solution to a persistent problem.

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The solution to that is define all equipment as powers right?

So when will the "How do I convert these things into powers" gripes will start comming up?

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they have both the source limitation and are affected by talents. Even though they use the skills game mechanic, by virtue of the two above things, they ARE powers, are they not?

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That does no stop people from complaining all the time about magic.

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Just a quibble, but I think a closer comparison is the chi skills.

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Yeah, except people don't complain as much about the chi skills. There's a reason for that. Chi's a lot more limited in terms of the number of powers you can get at a bargain price.

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The other big difference is that most of the Imbuements can be added to a point-based power by buying the correct enhancement. Comparing to Magic, I still can't create an Utter Dome using Powers because infinite DR (even with limitations) still costs infinite points.

I am a die-hard abilities-as-advantages guy. I don’t like Magic because there are a lot of spells I cannot emulate, when I feel I should be able to.

What I like about Imbuements is that it’s a new building block for new abilities. It improves GURPS to allow you to do things you could only kludge through before. And, this Imbuement ability is a balanced advantage in precisely the same way that Magery isn’t. (Sorry for the Adams-esque reference) I don’t want to get into a Magic discussion, but a little is going to be unavoidable.

Off the top of my head, I can think of one thing in Imbuements that I cannot do easily without it: Dancing Weapon. I’m sure, given a bit of time and some interest, I can come up with a way to do it (probably using Allies) for a “reasonable” point cost. For many spells in Magic it’s unpossible (some of the Protection and Warding college come to mind). That bothers me.

All that said, I realized something after reading Magic again before I ship it off to RPK (I think Kromm might have said something to this effect, but I don’t know, so don’t quote me on it). Magic doesn’t have to be consistent with Powers because the two books were designed for two, entirely different, reasons. The Magic reason was Skill-Based Super Powers, Powers’ reason was Point-Based Super Powers. Mixing the two is going to cause you a lot of problems because they’re not consistent with each other, and they were never intended to be.

Imbuements, on the other hand, is balanced between the two.

It’s not a cheap ability, but what it lets you do isn’t exactly puny. It balances well because if you have a Mage and an Imbuer (I have no idea how to spell that, so I’m sticking with that spelling) they’re likely to be spending the same number of points. The Imbuer will have fewer abilities, but, they will likely work faster than the Mage, and be limited only to the weapons the Imbuer chose. The Mage will have a lot of prerequisite spells that may or may not ever be useful, but were still required.

If you have an Imbuer and a Super, then the Imbuer will still have a lot of points to buy other abilities, but will likely spike their skills allowing the Imbuer to regularly soak -10 to their skills and pull off some awesome effects (“Oh, mister Ul-tron! This’ll ignore your ar-mor!”). The Super will be able to do amazing things, and so will the Imbuer. Sure, the Imbuer may not be able to fly or teleport or calculate pi to the 8-billionth digit in between combat rounds, but they’re not likely to ever be truly disarmed.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again:
It's an elegant solution to an inelegant problem.

Re: GURPS Power-Ups 1 is out
 

Did that too.

Damn the weekend for slowing banking down!

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You know, I was never fully comfortable with the Chi skills. Always seemed to do stuff that seemed to fit better as advantages.

Reading through this, particularly some sections of the intro, got me thinking of the Chi skills in a much more possitive manner. I've kinda surprised myself by really liking how this works.

Good book!

Re: GURPS Power-Ups 1 is out
 

I downloaded it while I was at the airport waiting for a flight. God, I love living in the future. After reading it on said flight, I was very happy -- especially about the "1" in the title. I hope this becomes another popular pdf series.

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What future plans/releases are there for this series?

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New skill: Extraction, should be restricted to Swing (imp) weapons. Prequiste Imbue 2.

This is an advanced version of the Forceful Blow skill. A hti with the swing imp weapon drives the target back as per that skill, but the weapon is successfully removed by the knockback doing it's standar4d additional damagein one turn. On a failure the weapon silips out of the body without doing the extra damage. On a critical failure the weapon goes with the target a distance of 1 hex. Because it was a crit failure, the victime does NOT fall down. (Unless he's dead or unconscious). You've just disarmed yourself.

Edit: On a roll that exactly fails, the weapon is forced out by the ability, but does not inflict any damage to the victim by extraction. On a failure by more, the power doesn't work. The weapon has to be extracted on a later action.

On a critical failure the knockback affects both or the person using the imbuement trait. As best suits the target. If the target is a PC, feel free to take input from that player as to where the characters end up. The target does not have a risk of falling down in any event. The imbuer however needs to make a DX-3 roll to stay standing.

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Crippling Blow - any way to make it so your character only knows *one* particular crippling effect, e.g., Xena's paralyzing blow with cyclic Fatigue attack from not being able to breath?

Same thought for Stupefying Blow.

On Sudden Death, does it seem to anyone that the default usage is actually more advantageous and flexible than the one that takes a -5? And again, it seems like there should be a way to have a fixed effect - e.g., the five-point palm exploding heart technique from Kill Bill.

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I don't see any reason you couldn't make those optional specializations. So you could learn Crippling Blow (Broadsword; Paralysis) as a DX/H skill, which always took the given penalty and couldn't do any other crippling effects.

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And my responce is so what? You can have the exact same problem with gear, so I really don't understand why people complain about having elements that can not be built with Powers as gear is fine but as spells is wrong.

Utter dome as a thin wall of statis surounding you protecting you from anything is something few would argue with, but the same effect as a spell and it really bugs people.

Re: GURPS Power-Ups 1 is out
 

I'm very happy with this PDF, even beyond Dungeon Fantasy. It covers something that I always wanted to be able to do in GURPS, and does it very easily and elegantly. Best of all, when pondering how to handle this same issue myself, I came up with something very similar to this -- so for $5, I basically saved myself a lot of time and got a superior product. Very well worth it.

Given that this was "GURPS Power Ups 1", I very much look forward to seeing what else Kromm has in store for us in this series.

Re: GURPS Power-Ups 1 is out
 

As usual with PDF releases, we don't have a specific date we can point to. However, Power-Ups 2: Perks is nearing completion. Future releases are certainly on the cards.

Re: GURPS Power-Ups 1 is out
 

LOL !




>>>

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How is Power-Ups: Perks different from More Perks?

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Thanks. I wasn't looking for a date; I know you guys are backed up (e.g., my current proposal has been sitting for six weeks). These quick-and-dirty game aids speed up game planning greatly, and are more than worth the $5.

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Snappy name and Kromm's name on the cover?

;)

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I think this is the necessary prereq *g*

I'm looking forward to the Power-Downs series :|

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more Perks are always nice!

...other nice Power-Ups I'd like to see:


PU: Talents

PU: Minions (from pokemons to familiars and pet demons)

Re: GURPS Power-Ups 1 is out
 

I'm kind of excited that a question I asked on these forums was the catalyst for the creation of these rules. :)

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Other power-ups I'd like to see would be ones that power-up supernatural beings like vampires, other undead, lycanthropes, ghosts, and faeries. Also I would like to see some based on law and chaos. Even ways to make runes and glysphs.

Re: GURPS Power-Ups 1 is out
 

Wouldn't that be more like a long list of possible powers for these creatures?
If so, I've got dozens lying around. ^^

Still, a thread where people come up with powers for the traditional supernatural beings would be nice. I think I'll start one.

Re: GURPS Power-Ups 1 is out
 

Also raisable undeads, as in zombies and skeletons and so forth, that a necromancer PC can summon with a modified Ally Group advantage.

And summonable elementals.

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And hordes of robotic drones.

And the troops that usually sit around at the military base, just waiting for the Lantern-Jawed Scientist to call them in to deal with this week's Atomic Horror.

Minions. They're not just for fantasy any more. <g>

Re: GURPS Power-Ups 1 is out
 

No idea what's planned, but I would like to see solutions for a couple other knotty problems:

1) I want to build a gadget that has variable properties related to the stats of the wielder, but which has a fixed cost regardless of the wielder's stats.

For instance, a crossbow with psionic power to fire a "mind bolt" that inflicts thr+4 fatigue damage (instead of say 1d+4 fixed) based on my Will instead of ST, with range determined by Will as well. I would like to calculate a flat cost for this item in points, and a corresponding flat cost in dollars in a campaign where such items are common enough to be a cash purchase. I'm inclined to think that the ST-Based Damage enhancement went the wrong direction; instead we should have it as a limitation where you have to have a certain minimum ST to get any effect and a maximum beyond which ST is no help...but it needs to have the flexibility for magic items which have a broader ST range than a mundane weapon would.

2) I want a "powercrafting" skill, such that a psionic character could enchant his psionic power into an item like the one above, or such that a skilled powersmith without no inherent power could work with a powered character or natural magic to make permanent items.

Right now, if I want enchanted items as a significant part of the economy accessible to PCs, I have to take the G:Magic route in favor of G:Powers. I can stat out a fair number of gadgets, but no game-mechanical explanation for their existence other than Afflict (cool power on gadget, permanent) which seems kludgy. For a powersmith who can get creative, I'd need Modular Abilities (Trait Limited: Affliction as above), which is even kludgier.

GEF

Re: GURPS Power-Ups 1 is out
 

Also need are rules for holy/unholy item santification. (instead of enchantment)

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What's the difference, other than flavor text?

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*nods* You should get a gold star, or something... seriously. Maybe the Golden Inspiration Award?

Another occasion to lament the lack of a 'rep' feature :/

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I got a comp, so I'm good. :)

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You could always start seeing examples of modifiers on perks. That would be one way it could be different.

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Getting playtester credit for it was pretty cool too!

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<nod>
Agreed.

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Especially since my main role was basically griping that we didn't have a way to do this easily under the existing rules.

Oh and commenting on the ms, of course, but still, griping was the main bit.

Re: GURPS Power-Ups 1 is out
 

...
I got a rock.

Actually, I couldn't be happier for all of you... really <gritted teeth>

heh

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I've been denied it for less (more?), you lucky dog.

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Thanks to a spam filter, it took me two days to know I was in the playtest. One errant email from Bruno snuck through to tell me something was going on.

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I think that most of the things would be qualitative but sometimes those give ideas for campaigns. The deity in question could instruct thefollowers to create items like robes that resist fire, cold, electricity or other hostile element that are part of the deities aspect. The deity could also instruct the creation of items to protect against evil energy or chaotic energy.

There could also be ideas for empowering clerical items like thuribles, censures, gongs, horns, chimes, drums, atars ect.

Also there could be divine limitation for use with items like only evil/godd can use, only chaotic/lawful can use, only servants of a particular deity can use ect. Plus glyphs and runes that afflict non followers of the faith.

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"Devotional Enchantment" I think it's in Magic, maybe Fantasy.

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lol, sounds like you need to spank that filter :p

Example use
 

Imbuement 3 (one skill only) [8] @ IQ -1 [12] the skill is Dancing Weapon (Flame Jet) and the spell is known at skill level 15 and thus can produce a 1 yard long 1d incindiary attack that is cast and maintained at 0 energy. A M3 IQ 14 wizard can probably have SEVERAL of these up and independently given "fight on it's own", "fights on it's own",

Admittedly without resupplying it with fatigue each turn, the effective skill they fight with drops, but on the whole, this sort of thing would let a wizard facing several low DR foes keep them at bay and do a fairly decent job of decimating a single low DR foe before the skill issue becomes a problem.

Worth the 20 pts? Depends on how often you expect to need active guardian spells vs low DR enemies.

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Haha! I got it, too. Now I have to think of a way to integrate these skills in a cyberpunk setting.

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Just got and scanned through it... It's pretty cool and allows you to do a lot of things that were difficult before.

A couple of skills/modifiers that I would have liked aren't there such as "Area" (Enhancement) and "Sense-Based" (Transformation).

These lend real well to the archer types such as Green Arrow:

DX 13 [60]
Chi Talent 4 [20]
Heroic Archer [20]
Imbuement 3 (Bow Only -20%, Chi -10%) [28]
Modular Abilities (Divine Inspiration i.e. super training, Archery Imbuements Only -40%, Chi -10%) 2 slots (Base 12) w/16 points (DX+1, Base 128) per slot. [70]
Weapon Master (Bow) [20]

Bow-15 (DX+2) [16]

Total: 224 points

for an archer that can do basically anything really well...

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Overall, I gotta chime in with the chorus of "this rocks!" Thanks, Kromm, for basically solving what had been a persistent issue with GURPS!

That said, I do have a couple of problems. Of course. :-) Fortunately, these are fairly easily solved, given the framework already created.

1) Fatigue-free usage. Not all abilities of this sort burn energy, and the -5 to skill for removing the FP cost is a pretty big skill hit. The solution is a Talent, I think, limited to only removing the penalty for removing the FP cost. I think -50% is a pretty reasonable limitation for this. That would mean that it would cost 13 points to remove the FP cost from 6 or fewer imbuement skills, 25 to remove it from up to 12 skills, and 38 to remove it from all imbuement skills. This is one place where I'd also allow the rules for single-skill talents, normally limited to racial templates, to apply to others, for when you only want to remove the penalty from one imbuement skill. That would cost 5 points.

2) Imbueing other's weapons. A number of abilities of this sort are "auras", enhancing not just your weapon, but also your allies weapons. For this, I suggest enhancing the base Imbuement advantage, with +50% Cosmic to ignore the "can only imbue weapons that you're holding" limitation, and levels of Area Effect to cover the desired area. There should probably also be a penalty to affect more than one person on the imbuement skills - I suggest -2 per additional person sounds reasonable. Alternatively, simply have the character with the imbuement advantage roll for each attack their allies make within the affected area, but this can make for a lot of extra rolls.

3) Making weapon damage "sourced". Sometimes, you want to make just the basic weapon damage have a power source - for getting through damage resistance or Injury Tolerance: Damage Reduction with Limited (not against a particular source), or to amp up the damage against things with Vulnerabilities against a specific source. This one just requires a new Imbuement skill.

Sourced Attack
General; DX/Very Hard

Default: Specialty for related weapon at same penalty as weapon default.
Prerequisite: Imbue 1.

This skill causes all basic damage dealt by the weapon to have a source - Magic, Divine, Psionic, etc. You must specialize by power source, and the GM will usually specify that you may only learn the skill for the power source of your Imbuement advantage.
On a successful roll, the damage caused by your weapon is treated, for all purposes, as if had the appropriate source modifier, with all the benefits and restrictions that entails. For example, an attack with the Magic source would penetrate Damage Resistance with Limited: not against Magic, but it would be subject to being dispelled, and it would be at a penalty in a low mana area, or impossible in an area with no mana.

Re: GURPS Power-Ups 1 is out
 

Do we need a new Imbuement skill for simply increasing raw damage, or would that be adequately covered by taking Power Blow? And in the latter case, should Power Blow be allowed as an Imbuement skill per se, or will the characters always be taking TBAM or Weapon Master in addition...?

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MA strongly implies that you can make the TBAM/WM skills available for a UB perk (each), so allowing Power Blow would not be a big deal IMO.

Since Envenomed Weapon and Incendiary already gives you up to +3d based on skill penalty I don't see it as game breaking to introduce another skill that does something similar. I would probably base it on incendiary but make the "perk" that it helps with DR penetration instead of setting things on fire.

Edit: Against non-armored opponents incendiary is much better and against well armored opponents it's still less effective than either Penetrating Strike or a combination of Incendiary and Penetrating Strike.

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I thought Imbuement had to be specified for Bow at purchase, so there wouldn't be a limitation on it.
Haven't looked at it beyond a brief talk with a friend about Imbuements.

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Looked again and I don't see that restriction... I don't think you're intended to buy it multiple times for a fighter that may use a few different weapons, though each skill is specific to one weapon.

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I had a similar idea, though I was thinking of making it more like a malediction; you can cause the effect on someone else's weapon with the usual malediction range penalties, and they can choose to resist with their Will if they don't know what you're planning on doing. Admittedly, I had a humorous mental image of a barbarian looking all confused as his axe flies out of his hands and starts chopping up his allies when the enemy imbuer successfully uses "Dancing Weapon" on it...

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Correct. The Imbue advantage needs only be bought once and can be used with any number of combat skills. It is essentially just an Unusual Background allowing access to any Imbuement skills. The Imbuement skills themselves must be specialized with a specific combat skill.

I'm strongly thinking that Imbue, One Combat/Weapon Skill should be -10%, not -20%. Limited Skill Access at -20% (page 4) and would allow you to pick up only four Imbuement skills altogether, while "One Combat/Weapon Skill" would allow you to pick up many more Imbuement skills, just limited to one weapon. Most people wanting Imbuement are likely to want it mainly for one weapon anyway, so limiting themselves to only that weapon skill just isn't a significant limitation. Now, if the Imbuements can only be used with one particular kind of weapon, e.g. Longbows or Thrusting Broadswords, that's more like -20%.

Re: GURPS Power-Ups 1 is out
 

4 skills that only rely on using your fists, what you can throw, or what you can use as a club seems less restrictive than finding something you can use as a bow and having ammo (arrows) as well.

My gut is that it's an accessibility that's worth -0% (fists, anything you're likely to always be able to find) to -40% (very rare perhaps / custom weapons)

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I could buy that - actually, for some reason I'd forgotten that "Limited Skill Access, Four skills" allows all the specializations for each of those four Imbuement skills. On reflection "Four Imbuements, any number of combat skills" probably is roughly equivalent to "Any number of Imbuements, one combat skill."

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Well a beneficial affliction would also cover the effect, but the individual skill levels might be a problem.

No wait, I was wrong, you can not have a skill as an affliction.

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So, what - you have to take an Affliction of Modular Abilities (under the Afflicter's control, of course), limited to one slot with one skill?

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Wouldn't that mean that the target would have the imbuement skill modified by their own DX?

I could see this as sort of a problem... I think it should work solely based on how good the imbuer is; he shouldn't impart his ability to imbue upon someone, whose skill may vary based on their attributes (their underlying talent), but should imbue the weapon for them. Sure, this method would work, but I don't know if it fits the same effect; you aren't causing an effect on someone else's weapon, you're giving them the ability to cause an effect on their own weapon, which may not be so useful for someone with substandard or average DX, and to make sure the effect has a high enough skill level, you'd have to pay a lot of points for the MA's point value...

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Yes.

The problem with just enhancements is that enhancements would not work on the skills, just imbue, so it would give people around you that kind of imbue, but not the skills to use with it.

Re: GURPS Power-Ups 1 is out
 

I was refering to the practice of giving someone the Imbuement skills with an affliction using Modular Abilities. I'd assume that, since the Imbue advantage is basically a UB, and that you probably wouldn't be able to qualify for an affliction that grants Imbuement skills without having Imbuement yourself, that those temporary skill grants would work for anyone, even if they didn't have Imbue themselves.

My main point of contention was that it would make more sense for the imbuer to imbue weapons from a distance, perhaps at a penalty per yard and possibly resisted, rather than to grant someone the ability to imbue their own weapons; that is, if the combat is going to be short. If you wanted to make sure someone can make their sword catch fire or hit ghosts throughout the entire combat, it'd make more sense to grant them the skill itself temporarially (I could see a Cleric using an affliction to temporially give Sourced Attack (Moral, Good) to an ally so he can wail on undead and demons for a few minutes).

Re: GURPS Power-Ups 1 is out
 

One other general comment: a reference sheet (skill, required imbue level, & modifers) would be really handy.

Re: GURPS Power-Ups 1 is out
 

I may be able to oblige - as I'm working on the GCA file I've got most of that information entered on a nice table already.

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That would be excellent... I can already see there's a fair bit of material to reference.

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Sounds like a reasonable use of an imbue power, I'd say a -10 modifier to skill as a base, and then normal range penalties beyond that.

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While I agree that there should be a base penalty for even attempting, I can't help but think that -10 is... fairly steep.

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-10 is only [40] points to overcome as a skill penalty, if you're going to be doing that type of power stunt that looks about right to me.

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Still, that's 40 points for one specific imbuement, on one specific kind of weapon or related weapons.

And lets not even get started with how many points that would take if it's a Wildcard imbuement to work on any weapon.

Re: GURPS Power-Ups 1 is out
 

I've just uploaded the Imbuement Reference Table to my website.

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Thanks, Eric! That will come in very handy.

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Ooooo. Um, I'm going to need a copy of that GCA file as soon as possible. :)

EDIT: Okay, I got the test file from the GCA forum.