GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Monsters 5: Demons

[Kromm]

Summoned by magic
Or visiting on their own
Demons are trouble

— Anybody with any sense at all

So, you need a monster that's evil enough that good delvers want to destroy it on sight, that's untrustworthy enough that not-so-nice adventurers want to eliminate it as competition, and that isn't worthy of sympathy from idealistic redeemers, nature-loving pacifists, and other fence-sitters. Oh, and it has to make at least some sense sitting around a sealed dungeon for a few millennia. Well, that's practically the description of a demon!

But if your demon is too predictable, the demon-slayers, holy warriors, and spellcasters will simply whip out the usual countermeasures, reduce it to a smudge of brimstone, and yawn. GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Monsters 5: Demons ups the ante by providing a guide to designing demons to order, making it easy to select abilities that make for better adventures and better challenges – or, if you prefer to roll dice, letting you come up with surprises for those "Demons burst through the wall and attack!" moments. As a bonus, it includes six worked examples and an index of all the demons in GURPS Dungeon Fantasy and Pyramid.

Because demons should bring chaos to your game world, not to your game.

—

Store Link: http://www.warehouse23.com/products/SJG37-0367

[bert]

Bought it yesterday! Really like it.

How did you model the traits where you take half damage after missing the HT roll?

[tbone]

Well, there's an instant purchase. Summon W23 Order Form ...

[Celjabba]

At first read, the chapter on Demonic Flaws will be very useful even in non-demonic cases !

In fact, this very dense book is also nearly a treatise about how to build a DF monster !

It is also almost a perfect demonic pact : cheap, tempting, and once you have succumbed your cannot get away from it :)

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by bert

How did you model the traits where you take half damage after missing the HT roll?

I just said they worked that way – GURPS is full of examples of that mechanic (death elixirs, many poisons, etc.). Nothing in this work was built on points because I firmly believe that numerous abilities with no fair cost in the hands of PCs (who act in whatever chaotic, game-breaking way the players want) are fine for monsters (who act in accordance with the GM's direction for the adventure and campaign). But that one would be easy to build on points: Xd damage with Resistible on (X/2)d of it.

[Christopher R. Rice]

I want to say I REALLY enjoyed this. A lot. It's useful for more than DF. Way useful.

[Michael Thayne]

Thanks so much for this. I was actually trying to reverse-engineer some rules for creating demons in Dungeon Fantasy recently, and managed to grope towards some of the stuff in the book, but couldn't quite nail down all the details. I really like having guidelines like "most demons have this meta-trait, but one of the four broad categories of demons doesn't".

Originally Posted by Kromm

But that one would be easy to build on points: Xd damage with Resistible on (X/2)d of it.

Or just halve the value of the limitation. More or less mathematically equivalent and cleaner, especially for odd-numbered damage dice.

[tbone]

Originally Posted by Christopher R. Rice

I want to say I REALLY enjoyed this. A lot. It's useful for more than DF. Way useful.

Yes. I could see this fitting nicely into a modern Horror setting, Monster Hunters campaign, and more.

Particularly useful, IMO, is that it's a treasure trove of info to give out on Physiology/Psychology/Hidden Lore (Demons) rolls or even some Occultism rolls. Which is why I really look forward to more entries like it – not necessarily corresponding exactly to DF monster classes*, but more or less so.

*"Mundane", for example, doesn't sound like book material to me. : ) Best to break it up into categories - a la Dragons.

I'd love to see a Divine Servitors release, to better flesh out this category beyond "um, angels?" (though the naga from Monsters 2 takes a great step in that direction). I wouldn't mind if the release repeated a lot of the relevant info found in Allies. (I want to let Father Zombani show off his Hidden Lore chops in this field.)

I'd snap up Constructs, Faeries, Elementals, and Undead releases, too!

[Taneli]

Ohh, nice!

One thing I wished for that this didn't deliver on were rules for summoning these demons.

Third edition GURPS Magic had very different and more flavourful rules for demon summoning compared to Fourth edition GURPS Magic.

[Baldo]

Originally Posted by Kromm

and an index of all the demons in GURPS Dungeon Fantasy...and Pyramid

Premise: my Latin is *VERY* rusty, but still not sure about the title of Chapter Three. Does it mean "From the Census (Survey) of Demons" (EX Censu Daemoniorum, it lacks a 'EX'), or "Census of Demons" (CENSUS Daemoniorum, it dropped a 'S')?

EDIT:

Just remembered the preposition 'De' ('About') is very common in titles, therefore "DE Censu Daemoniorum" is correct too.