Casting Time for Rotting Death (GURPS Magic 4e)

[Balor Patch]

Quite close, it is:
"What is it to you, dead man? Have you so quickly forgotten my strength, once lent to you, that you come armed against me, you poor fool? I think I will take your heart, Kerim Shah!"

[Dalillama]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

"Ah, Kerim Shah! I think I'll take your heart!"

I won't swear that's a word-perfect quote from People of the Black Circle but I believe it's quite close.

So this is another Spell originally from Gurps Conan and adapted from REH himself.

Huh, guess it's been too long since I read those.

[Blind Mapmaker]

Well, there's also the random hit location crippling, so you could get lucky with the rolls and have the head rot off - or a leg for melee fighters. It also is faster to cast than sickness even with the errata. Personally I'd rule that is the kind of spell that forces a Fright Check from onlookers, even in Dungeon Fantasy.

But on the negative side it's a 3-second casting, 1-second duration, concentration required and damage only on a failed HT roll! It's those last two that take it firmly into necro festival showmanship territory. You'd have to hit most foes with a costly and chancy Frailty spell before you can get much of an effect there.

If I were to adjust it, I'd use 2-second casting, 3-second duration, make the HT roll a resisted roll vs. spell level, up the maintenance to 3 and add the fright check for onlookers after damage. That'd make it a showy niche spell that's useful against spellcasters and other middling HT types.

[Plane]

This doesn't say anything about damage type, I would assume Toxic?

For example on 1d-1 damage if you roll a 1, is that 1 due to Toxic doing a minimum 1 damage? If it was 0 then that would have to mean it was Crushing since Crushing is the only damage type which can be zero basic damage.

I'm also trying to figure out how the per-second HT resist would work, is that an unopposed roll or is the HT roll in a quick contest against the initial success roll for this spell?

Originally Posted by Phil Masters

I tend to feel that any Melee spell that takes more than a second has limited usefulness.

Why? Like a missile spell you can carry them around indefinitely until you're ready to make your melee attack (just don't miss)

This seems like a great ambush spell since unlike "my first is on fire, coming to punch you" there doesn't seem to be any obvious indication that you are enchanted, so you could walk up to someone and do a friendly handshake and then suddenly they'll go into spasms.

The biggest indicator is that they'll immediately feel crippling discomfort right after you touch them, so doing some kind of delay effect would help avoid accountability for the assassination.

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

About the only way that Rotting Death could be useful in combat is if the caster is behind the line of combat with another fighter protecting them until the spell is ready. Either that, or started several seconds prior to melee against a charging foe.

Makes me wonder if either Lend Spell or Throw Spell could let you impart melee spells onto your warriors, like if you have a monk martial artists doing HTH on the front lines (or maybe a zombie minion)

Melee+Missile spells operate strangely so I'm not as clear on meta combos like this.

Originally Posted by Dalillama

Rotting Death isn't really meant to be a combat spell. It comes from the old Conan supplement originally and is meant to be used by the antagonist to dramatically kill hostages, prisoners, minions who screwed up, etc

The way it bypasses DR seems like it'd be pretty decent for taking out armored tanks, less useful for guys who run around bare-chested with lots of HP and HT like Conan though.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Plane

For example on 1d-1 damage if you roll a 1, is that 1 due to Toxic doing a minimum 1 damage?

This would be my assumption. The lack of damage type specificity would be a 3e holdover. 3e was much more loose about such things.

[Phil Masters]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

Isn't village "elder" kind of an odd term for those young adults ruling the place that seem never to age?

And where are all the village kids, anyway? They grow up so fast.

Actually, I play Narkron as essentially ethical. Just a bit goth. It may help that his Ally (the party’s healer cleric) has made it his personal mission to keep Narkron on the straight and narrow.

Originally Posted by johndallman

A trawl through Magic: Death Spells might be worthwhile. Euthanize (p. 14) looks appropriate for a psychopomp.

I don’t think that book existed when I was writing Summoners, which provides the Necromancer spell list.

Originally Posted by Plane

I'm also trying to figure out how the per-second HT resist would work, is that an unopposed roll or is the HT roll in a quick contest against the initial success roll for this spell?

I assume that the victim gets a HT-based resistance roll against the casting roll, to check whether the spell sticks at all or not, and then gets a straight HT roll every round to check whether they take damage or not. However, even if they avoid taking damage, they still suffer the sickening effect.

The way it bypasses DR seems like it'd be pretty decent for taking out armored tanks, less useful for guys who run around bare-chested with lots of HP and HT like Conan though.

I suspect that a lot of tanks have decent HT. I’m torn between leaving it as a very occasional sneaky-vicious trick (to be followed by a ten minute lecture on ethics from the cleric) and buying it up to 20 (for faster casting and more difficult to resist).