Old-School D&D style game

[weby]

Originally Posted by Gnome

How does a DF character spend 2000 points? Buying all attributes to 20 only costs 600 points, and buying a few skills to 40 or so is only another 80-ish per skill, so where do the other 1000 or more points go? I ask because I've been fiddling around with creating a "DF supers" type 1000 point game, but I have no idea what kinds of very expensive power-ups a Swashbuckler (for example) would buy...

Things common to all: Luck, combat reflexes, high pain threshold, very fit and some ranks in some organisations.

They are all really multiclassed

One is Reactions+Melee with minor spell casting(control and fascination type+some combat buffs magic):
684 points are in advantages, 157 in spells, 115 points in combat skills, 61 in physical skills, 184 mental skills.
Things of note: Charisma 9. appearance 5, empathy, 61 points in talents, weapon master. Also has recently acquired alternate form to water elemental.

One is light fencer type melee with lore skills some knowledge and illusion magic and thief skills:
583 points advantages, 152 points in spells, 164 points in combat skills,120 in physical skills, 289 mental skills.
Things of note: warp, dark vision, weapon master. 52 points in smallsword, Bardic lore 48 points, stealth+traps+locks+acrobatics all around 20 points.

One is then a wizard/cleric with knowledge skills and fairly good melee skills to survive until he can win the fight. Funny enough he has really low number of points in spells:
679 points advantages, 178 points in spells, 112 points in combat skills,64 in physical skills, 257 mental skills.
Things of note: Regeneration, peripheral vision, Dark vision. 40 points in thaumatology, 36 points in Humanities! 33 points in innate attack, 28 points in smallsword.

One is tankish holy warrior type, but also the best sneaker in the group and fair archer and really many types of magic(but badly), really built to do everything(badly) except tank well:
952 points advantages, 139 points in spells, 101 points in combat skills,166 in physical skills, 196 mental skills.
Things of note: Alternate form(fire giant),Regeneration,Holy glory, resistant to evil super natural weapons, spirit weapon, Innate attack type sword, 65 points in sword!, stealth 24 points
Has total DR of 23 and injury tolerance /2 in fire giant mode and stealth almost 40 in elf form.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by Gold & Appel Inc

Actually, now that I think about it, it was only 80 in that example. 200 HP is kind of a lot.

Or not enough, depending. When the Invisible wizard with Magery 10 shoots you in the skull with his 30d+30 Stone Missile and you suffer 500 HP of injury even with your helmet. Or when 1,000 orcs rain down arrows on you, the GM uses stats to say that you take 10 hits/volley even considering the range and your Dodge, you have to dash through three volleys to start killing the army, and you get plinked for 270 HP before you reach them. Or when Zeus hits you with his 200d lightning bolt.

That's the thing with this kind of fantasy . . . The GM really, really needs to challenge the PCs. Of course, not everyone will survive via lots of HP. Some will retcon a miss with enhanced Super Luck, some will be insubstantial, and so on. And of course the GM will need things to challenge those guys, too.

It's nuts, which is why Dungeon Fantasy doesn't go there, officially. ;)

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Gnome

It sounds like you're talking about their significant social advantages, but earlier you seemed to be saying you weren't even counting those towards the 1000 points. Of course DF doesn't really consider social advantages (other than Ally)...but I could see how huge levels of Reputation, Wealth, large groups of Allies, etc. might add up to a lot.

The characters in this campaign are worth from 1,050 to 1,260 points in GCA. I'm guessing that around 300-500+ extra points in Wealth and social advantages would be counted if I was to represent in GCA, as opposed to just in game world terms, their ownership of a merchant house, shipping fleet, mercenary organisation and general East India Company -esque powerhouse, not to mention their personal reputations, contact networks, followers, allies, henchmen and hundreds of various friends, business partners and acquintances.

Each of them is worth at least a solid 1,000 points without social advantages. It's not cheap to learn all the skills needed to be such things as an awesome warrior with any weapon*; military leader or an architect of societies; polished courtier, crowd-pleasing entertainer or rabble rousing orator; heroic sailor, explorer, tinker, tailor, soldier, spy.**

Sir Michael has 455 points in skills and techniques and he has just over 100 individual skills and techniques.

Murlak has invested slightly less in terms of skill points, with 357 points in skills and techniques and his skill list has just under a 100 individual skills and techniques.

Their Attributes as ST 20; DX 14; IQ 12; HT 15 for Sir Michael and ST 12; DX 17; IQ 15; HT 13 for Murlak. Both have multiple Talents relating to their niches at high levels.

Murlak has a total of 539 points in Advantages, ranging from a wide range of Languages to various Power-Ups relating to roguish things and a 'Shadow Step' Warp power granted by the god of rogues and shadows.

Sir Michael has 455 points in Advantages, of which the most expensive, apart form Talents, are his Injury Tolerance: Damage Reduction /3 [75] and Weapon Master [45].

Both have at least Extraordinary Luck (all characters in the campaign have at least Luck and I suppose Extraordinary Luck is about the average level) and Murlak has both Ridiculous Luck [60] and Serendipity.

Sir Michael has skill 22-25 in more or less all combat skills.
**Note, no one is actually a tinker or tailor.

[Rasputin]

Originally Posted by Kromm

Taking that last point further, it's common enough to let delvers evolve into fantasy-themed supers – not via mutations and super-sera, but through the effects of divine, magical, and cosmic forces.

Which is pretty much what playing epic D&D 3 was like. I played a bunch about ten years ago, with a druid/ranger who wild shaped himself into a gold dragon and carried the others on his back, and made foes sitting ducks for the arcane archer with multiple reverse gravity spells (there's a spell that would be fun in GURPS…). Which was nothing compared to the cleric who regularly healed a thousand hit points in a single round.

[weby]

Originally Posted by Kromm

Or not enough, depending. When the Invisible wizard with Magery 10 shoots you in the skull with his 30d+30 Stone Missile and you suffer 500 HP of injury even with your helmet.

Injury Tolerance (No Brain) for 5 points.. helps a lot.. :p

[weby]

Originally Posted by tbrock1031

My biggest question is, in the 1000-2000 point spread, what exactly are you going up against? Demigods? Cthulhu?

Well, in my campaign the basic storyline is one of many ancient evils raising, and the players are trying to stop that, or at least to stop as many as possible of them.

There is clearly a cataclysmic war coming, all the signs and prophesies point to it, but most people see it as something that will happen at some far future time, the players are among the groups that see the signs as imminent threat and are trying tilt the balance of the coming big war.

Currently the campaign is towards end of "book 5" of a 13 "book" saga.

They have recently fought dragons, cultists, beholders, powerful demons and drow. Have been instrumental in turning the tide of one war and similar things. (Really in that way also similar to upper heroic levels in D&D)

They have been visited by and courted by demigods and lieutenants of major gods, but they have not yet fought any demigods directly, though they have stopped several of the truly powerful forces by striking before the force has awakened or regained it's true power.

In the campaign world typical demigod power levels are in the 3000-5000 point ranges, so they are approaching those levels "soon"(as in: not this year but next year or the year after)

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Bruno

Buying every single power-up in Dungeon Fantasy (from the core PDFs to the Pyramid articles) - they'll keep you plenty busy enough.

Many of them are extremely cool, or very class- (or species-) appropriate, or both (I like DF11 a lot), but I don't seem to recall a lot of them being very expensive. So yeah, I'm with Gnome here, unless I failed my Eidetic Memory roll (and I ain't got the full +5 bonus; mine is a Limited version), none of them adds up to two thousand points.

Is it that the Pyramid expansions add a bunch of very expensive power-ups?

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by Rasputin

Which is pretty much what playing epic D&D 3 was like. I played a bunch about ten years ago, with a druid/ranger who wild shaped himself into a gold dragon and carried the others on his back, and made foes sitting ducks for the arcane archer with multiple reverse gravity spells (there's a spell that would be fun in GURPS…). Which was nothing compared to the cleric who regularly healed a thousand hit points in a single round.

I was in a IIRC level 60 D&D game. GM just upped and said "Make level 60 equivalent characters, I don't care how." I hate going through all the actual levelling process, even with PCGen, so I slapped like six different templates on a minotaur and ended up with a four-headed four armed clawed semidivine paragon half-troll half-fiend half-minotaur[1] monstrosity or some such beast. Which was basically a superhero. Or a superbeing anyways, dubiously heroic.

The catgirl bard had a Diplomacy score over 100 and talked down Catastrophy dragons into becoming our loyal cohorts.

Originally Posted by weby

Injury Tolerance (No Brain) for 5 points.. helps a lot.. :p

I nearly earned that for my minotaur when he took arrows to the eyesockets and through to the brain on multiple occasions, and kept on fighting. It was less "and now you have No Brain" and more "... I guess you had No Brain all along. Explains some things."

Chasing the hysterical archer around the battlefield via Discriminatory Smell with an arrow sticking out of each of his eyesockets was definitely a high point in his career.


[1] Shut up, BAM-ofet was terrible with math.

[robertsconley]

I have lot of experience with this due to running my Majestic Wilderlands under GURPS since 1988.

Originally Posted by soulnafein

Hello there,
1) 250 points characters are complex for beginners

Well template do help. However I use 100 to 150 as my starting point.

Originally Posted by soulnafein

2) Old school 1st level characters aren't that complex

The key to make a set of template and explain the option. For example this for a Myrmidon of Set.

http://www.batintheattic.com/downloa...20Template.pdf

I typically go to the 4e Historical Folk netbook that is floating around as a starting point.

http://www.mygurps.com/historical_folks_4e.pdf

Originally Posted by soulnafein

1) Progression (what's a good progression rate for such a game?

2 Points plus 2 or more point for achieving a character or group goal.

Originally Posted by soulnafein

2) Adventure: can you suggest an old published D&D adventure that doesn't involve too many different type of creatures (lots of conversion work) and that they would enjoy?

My own Scourge of the Demon Wolf. It actually a GURPS adventure I ran converted and playtested to use classic D&D in the form of Swords & Wizardry. Just swap out the stats for GURPS equivalents, There is a roster in the back of the book. Pretty all you will need for certain are bandits, wolves, a demon wolf, and a demon.

http://www.batintheattic.com/scourge_demon_wolf.html

As for TSR or Wizards, I find using the the basic dungeons found in core books like the Porttown Dungeon in Holmes Basic D&D to be well suited for an initial foray for GURPS dungeon crawling.

As that may hard to find, I recommend the dungeon in Swords & Wizardry quick start. http://www.black-blade-publishing.co...tart-pdf-.aspx

Originally Posted by soulnafein

3) Anything else I should think about and I'm not?

My campaign have magic shops including healing potion. They are not cheap about $120 each, but a typical party in my campaign will have 2 to 6 of them as they are one of the first things they invest in.

Even with healing potions, forays into well-populated dungeon tend to be hit and run affairs. The group will scout out an area, pick a target, and hit it. If injured enough they will run and recuperate. Scouting and understanding the situation in the locale or dungeon becomes very important.

Because of this the dungeon tend to be more background heavy in my campaign. So that doing this has a clear payoff.

I stress that the key to make GURPS work for novices is clear, well written templates. Start out with the traditional set of Fighter, Priest, Thief, and Mage and go from there. I recommend Dungeon Fantasy Henchmen as a starting point for sub 250 point campaigns.

As for Dungeon Fantasy, what 250 points gets you is characters with endurance. They get injured, and badly. It is still GURPS after all. However they have just enough extra that they can last 3 or 4 encounters before recuperating. Similar to classic D&D except of course Combat takes longer to resolve most times. With my starting point of 100 to 150 points that number is one or two encounters.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by robertsconley

As for Dungeon Fantasy, what 250 points gets you is characters with endurance.

Which is to say, more old-school (not necessarily GURPS) hit points. At 250 character points, you can avoid, bounce, absorb, heal, or just function despite more incoming damage. Each character type does so differently – higher active defenses, more wealth for buying armor (and healing potions), more ST for lugging armor (and giving more HP), naked DR, defensive buffs, healing abilities, not being seen in the first place, Luck, or just being a berserker with ridiculous HT and HP – but all that stuff costs points. If you stick to the way points are spent on the canonical DF templates, then with one or two exceptions (bard . . .), the closest old-school-to-GURPS correspondence is between old-school hit points and GURPS character points – not 1:1, obviously, but there's clearly a relationship.