Convert This Villain from D&D 3.5 to GURPS

Chethrok_Bloodfist · 08-15-2008, 01:44 AM

I'm currently taking a D&D 3.5 campaign I've been planning and changing it to GURPS. So far, the one thing that I'm completely lost on is how to properly balance a fight. The encounter balancing system is one of the strong points of D&D, in GURPS it seems like the only aid is lots of experience (which I don't have).

Any comments or advice will be greatly appreciated!

The Villain: Hardin Issacs, a witch hunter who has been possessed by a powerful demon.

The Design Requirements:
1) He needs to be able to provide a challenging (but not impossible) fight for four 150-point characters in a TL3 fantasy setting.
2) The central ability I have envisioned for him is having long, razor sharp blade limbs erupt out of him to impale the PCs (reminiscent of Kerrigan from StarCraft or Marcus from Underworld 2). This is the one ability he's gotta have.
3) Overall, he should be really tough but slow and not that hard to hit (the demon grants him resilience but his movements are jerky like a marionette's).
5) He should also have some sort of supernatural fear ability or terror effect.

Here's the stats I came up for him under the D&D rules, for those of you who are familiar:

Spoiler:

Major Questions:

1) How much HP should I give him? I was thinking somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 or 30HP, with DR 1 or 2, is that too much?
2) Should I even bother with a points cost for him, or should I just give him the abilities I want to give him?
3) So far, the best I can come up with for his limbs are Strikers (Impaling, Long x2, Cannot Parry). Any suggestions on how to better represent them?

If anybody feels like actually statting him out, that would be awesome. However, I'll take whatever advice I can get, no matter how general or specific.

Chethrok_Bloodfist · 08-15-2008, 01:47 AM

Well that attempt to create a spoiler failed miserably. Does anyone know how to create a spoiler?

Philosopher Rogue · 08-15-2008, 02:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chethrok_Bloodfist

Well that attempt to create a spoiler failed miserably. Does anyone know how to create a spoiler?

No, but I'm going to paraphrase you the next time my villain sets up a death trap the PCs avoid. :)

Diomedes · 08-15-2008, 02:11 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chethrok_Bloodfist

Well that attempt to create a spoiler failed miserably. Does anyone know how to create a spoiler?

That would seem to be the [fnord] tag.

Captain-Captain · 08-15-2008, 04:10 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chethrok_Bloodfist

Well that attempt to create a spoiler failed miserably. Does anyone know how to create a spoiler?

The command here is Fnord. ;)

The King is in the basement feeding tripe to his porcelin soldiers.

Completely invisible unless you highlight it. (hint hint).

Crakkerjakk · 08-15-2008, 02:15 AM

In reverse order.

Not sure on the spoiler tags. {fnord} and {/fnord} make things invisible(replacing the {} with the square brackets).

Quote:

1) How much HP should I give him? I was thinking somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 or 30HP, with DR 1 or 2, is that too much?

Do your players have human norm HP? If so, I would give him the normal HP for his ST, maybe +30%(If he has a ST of 10=13 HP, ST 15=20.) I would give him High Pain Tolerance so he can ignore blows that would stagger most men, and a HT of 15 or so, with perhaps Hard to Kill 2. This makes it almost impossible to knock him out and he'll only drop after the players have done 120 points of damage(assuming 15 ST and 20 HP), unless he crit fails a health roll. This may actually be too hard, depending on how combat capable your PCs are and whether they have time to prepare for this fight. If you want him to be able to shrug off damage that should be lethal, Injury Tolerance is your friend.

Quote:

2) Should I even bother with a points cost for him, or should I just give him the abilities I want to give him?

Ignore the points. They don't really gauge combat effectiveness well. My 75 point soldier will kick the crap out of your 300 point super accountant. Besides, points are for PCs, and abilities that the PCs can get.

Quote:

3) So far, the best I can come up with for his limbs are Strikers (Impaling, Long x2, Cannot Parry). Any suggestions on how to better represent them?

Sounds just about perfect actually. Is there some aspect of the blade limbs that don't fit in the striker design?

EDIT: I'd model the claws impaling ability as a linked binding effect, if I was making this as a PC. Since we're not, we don't need to really stat out the fiddly bits(unless you really want to) and can simply declare the effects taht we want, without worrying about the appropriate enhancements or limitations..

For the fear ability give him a few levels of Terror, and for the jerkiness give him a low DX(but perhaps shove some points into his brawling skill so that he still hits fairly easily, depending on how often you want him to be able to connect).

Remember as far as combat balance goes, the key statistics are your players armor, HP and HT, and their skill levels with their weapons and the amount of damage they can do with them. If your monster is tougher than the PCs, just make sure it can't cut them into little bits while it is shrugging off their blows.

I have to crash, but I'll stat up a few versions of him in the morning.

Captain-Captain · 08-15-2008, 04:53 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chethrok_Bloodfist

Major Questions:

1) How much HP should I give him? I was thinking somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 or 30HP, with DR 1 or 2, is that too much?
2) Should I even bother with a points cost for him, or should I just give him the abilities I want to give him?
3) So far, the best I can come up with for his limbs are Strikers (Impaling, Long x2, Cannot Parry). Any suggestions on how to better represent them?

If anybody feels like actually statting him out, that would be awesome. However, I'll take whatever advice I can get, no matter how general or specific.

Here's a shot at him. The Terror effect covers both his fear aura and Horrific Gaze.

Rather than inflate his HP I gave him Injury Tolerance: Damage Reduction /5. If 22 points gets past his DR he takes 4.4 (5).

I'm using the formula of 10 +/- Stat bonus to convert D&D to GURPS. ie 18 Str is 14 ST and 20 Con is 15 HT. Since his IQ and Wis scores are about the same, I added a point to Will to cover the difference.

His slow flight is Walk on Air here.

AC is about that of Plate Armor so I gave him DR equal to that till I saw all the DR 10s on your sheet. Subtract this and any armor first before dividing by five. (doing it the other way is waaaaaay too effective and explicitly illegal says Kromm.)

Unholy Blight is an Affliction that puts the "Wounded" disadvantage onto victims with +100% in enhancements for nastier stuff. It's almost 3 am here and I'm not going to calculate them out. But you can pretty much pay for some really nasty stuff with that 100%.

Long Talons do impaling damage. This gives you your extended reach and impaling.

Attributes [168]
ST 14 [40]
DX 8 [-40]
IQ 15 [100]
HT 15 [50]

HP 18 [8]
Will 16 [5]
Per 15
FP 15

Basic Lift 39
Damage 1d/2d

Basic Speed 6 [5]
Basic Move 6

Air Move 6
Ground Move 6
Water Move 1

Social Background
TL: 3 [0]
Cultural Familiarities: Hell (Native) [0].
Languages: Anglish (Native) [6]; Dark Speach (Native) [0].

Advantages [346]
Affliction (Unholy Blight) (1) (Disadvantage Wounded +100% (nasty stuff)(+20)) [12]
Charisma (5) [25]
Claws (Long Talons) [11]
Damage Resistance (10) (Magical; Tough Skin) [25]
Doesn't Sleep [20]
Injury Tolerance (Damage Reduction (Extended) (/10)) [150]
Magic Resistance (6) (Cosmic: ability other than an attack or a defense (Can be switched off and on)) [18]
Resistant (metabolic Hazards) (Very Common) (Immunity) [30]
Resistant (Mind Affecting Magic) (Occasional) (Immunity) [10]
Terror (1) (Always On; Magical) [21]
Walk on Air (Magical) [18]

Skills [78]
Brawling DX/E - DX+6 14 [20]
Broadsword DX/A - DX+6 14 [24]
Diplomacy IQ/H - IQ+1 16 [8]
Fast-Talk IQ/A - IQ+1 16 [4]
Hidden Lore (The Dark Arts) IQ/A - IQ+1 16 [4]
Intimidation Will/A - Will+0 16 [2]
Theology (Demonic) IQ/H - IQ+3 18 [16]

Stats [168] Ads [346] Disads [0] Quirks [0] Skills [78] = Total [592]

Chethrok_Bloodfist · 08-15-2008, 12:12 PM

Thanks for the replies everyone!

Captain-Captain, I like your take on him. I had thought about doing Long Talons for his claws, but the Striker advantage seemed to be exactly what was looking for. However, the Long Talons accomplish basically the same thing, and are a whole lot less complicated - I can just handwave it and say he has four of them in addition to his two hands, and they work in the same way a Striker does.

My only question is, is your version killable by a party of four 150-point PCs? The HP and High Pain Tolerance seems like appropriate and cool, but I'm worried about the damage resistance. DR 10 seems like it would stop basically everything the PCs could throw at him (even someone with ST 14 and a greatsword would only do 9 damage on average to him). I was thinking about toning it down to DR 2 or 3, especially if he can stick around up to -90HP. Especially because I don't think he should be that hard to kill given that he'll be dishing out powerful impaling attacks every turn as well.

Crakkerjakk, thanks for your advice as well. Perhaps, then, I should wait to make final tweaks until I know what my party can dish out and take. I'll base the impaling ability off of linked Binding (I actually started to do that before, and gave up because I wasn't sure what enhancements and limitations I needed to add). I'll just make it up as I go along.

Collective_Restraint · 08-15-2008, 01:01 PM

First of all, here is the best advice I can give you if you are new to GURPS and coming from D&D: DON'T BOTHER WITH CPs !!! I had to learn this the hard way as I have always been a perfectionnist and if you can just follow this simple advice, you'll save countless GM prep time. Unless you want this Vilain to join the group as a PC or follower, don't bother give him fully fledged stats. If you simply want him to be involved in combat, use the DF template for your vilain and it should be more than enough. What happens if the PCs interact with him in a way you didn't plan ? Figure the odds out on the spot. Suppose they run from him in a forest and your template doesn't show he has the Tracking skill, just do a quick assesment. Would it make sense to give him Tracking ? If so, how many points ? Just by looking at his Per score should give you a good idea on what his Tracking skill level should be. As for his abilities, make them work the way you want, don't start page flipping the Basic Set : Characters book to stat out all his abilities. Make them work as is. Here is a quick and dirty stats sheet for him :

Possessed Hardin Issacs
ST: 18 HP: 20 Speed: 4.75
DX: 8 Will: 15 Move: 4 (Air Move 2)
IQ: 15 Per: 15
HT: 15 FP: 15 SM: 0
Dodge: 7 Parry: 10 Block: N/A DR: 2 + 2 (leather armor and boots, protects torso and groin, legs, arms and feet)
Claws x 4 (14): 2d imp. May get stuck as a pick or warhammer
Unholy Blight : Deals 2d burn damage (doesn't start fires and armor doesn't protect) in a 6-yard radius area emanating from him. Follow-up Resisted by HT-2 or Stunned (by nausea).
Fear Aura (Fright Check at -2): As Terror Advantage but has a radius of 3-yard.
Traits: Doesn't Sleep; DR 5 (against acid/fire/holy); DR 3 (against cutting damage); Extra Attack 3 (with claws only); Flight (Air Speed 2); Immunity to Metabolic Hazards; Immunity to Mind Influencing Spells; Magic Resistance 2; Supernatural Durability.
Skills: Brawling-14.
Class: Mundane.
Notes: Possessed by a demon.

I gave him Supernatural Durability which includes High Pain Treshold and converted his special ability ranges using 5ft = 1 yard as you probably want the areas to affect the same numbers of "squares" which will be hexes in GURPS. Hope this helps.

Chethrok_Bloodfist · 08-15-2008, 01:49 PM

Collective Restraint:

1) That "gets stuck" rule for picks was exactly what I was looking for!
2) Do you think his claws do too much damage? If it's impaling, it could conceivably do 24 damage in one hit to an unarmored character, followed by another 12 damage next round when he pulls it out! Of course, on average it will only do 2 damage to someone protected by DR6 plate, but I think only one of my players is planning on suiting up in full armor.
3) Extra Attack 3 might be a bit much, especially in conjunction with the damage on the claws.
4) Overall, Ireally like your take on him. It's quick and easy, and works well. I'm just wondering if it's balanced against four 150-point characters.

08-15-2008, 01:44 AM	#1
Chethrok_Bloodfist Join Date: Aug 2008	Convert This Villain from D&D 3.5 to GURPS I'm currently taking a D&D 3.5 campaign I've been planning and changing it to GURPS. So far, the one thing that I'm completely lost on is how to properly balance a fight. The encounter balancing system is one of the strong points of D&D, in GURPS it seems like the only aid is lots of experience (which I don't have). Any comments or advice will be greatly appreciated! The Villain: Hardin Issacs, a witch hunter who has been possessed by a powerful demon. The Design Requirements: 1) He needs to be able to provide a challenging (but not impossible) fight for four 150-point characters in a TL3 fantasy setting. 2) The central ability I have envisioned for him is having long, razor sharp blade limbs erupt out of him to impale the PCs (reminiscent of Kerrigan from StarCraft or Marcus from Underworld 2). This is the one ability he's gotta have. 3) Overall, he should be really tough but slow and not that hard to hit (the demon grants him resilience but his movements are jerky like a marionette's). 5) He should also have some sort of supernatural fear ability or terror effect. Here's the stats I came up for him under the D&D rules, for those of you who are familiar: Spoiler: Possessed Hardin Issacs – CR 8 CE Medium outsider Init -2; Senses: Perception +13, blindsight 30ft. Languages: Common, Dark Speech AC 18, touch 12, flat-footed 18 HP 109 (8HD) Fort +13, Ref +4, Will +11 Immune: Mind-affecting spells, poison, disease, sleep Resist: Resistance to fire 10, acid 10, DR 10/good, DR 5/slashing, SR 15 Speed: 20ft., fly 10ft. (average) Melee: 1-4 Claws +12 Melee (1d8+4/x3) Space: 5ft.; Reach: 5ft. (10ft. with claws) Base Attack: +8; Grapple: +12 Atk Options: Impale Special Actions: Horrific Gaze, Unholy Blight Abilities: Str 18, Dex 7, Con 20, Int 20, Wis 21, Cha 20 Feats: Dark Speech (b), Great Fortitude, Improved Toughness Skills: Bluff +16, Diplomacy +18, Intimidate +16, Knowledge (the dark arts) +16, Knowledge (religion) +16, Perception +13, Sense Motive +16 Possessions: leather armor, wide-brimmed hat Issacs’ Claws: The possessed Issacs is able to cause long, jointed spears of bone to erupt from his body in a shower of blood and gore. He begins combat with no claws active; each round, he can cause up to 1d2 claws to sprout, to a maximum of four. Issacs can only attack with as many claws as are active, and he can attack with a claw during the round in which he sprouts one. Each claw also has the possibility of impale on a successful hit. Claws count as natural weapons, and can be sundered (each claw has hardness 10 and 5HP). Impale: Whenever Issacs hits with a claw attack, he may make a grapple check as a free action. Should he win the opposed grapple check, his target is now impaled on Issac’s limb. The impaled creature counts as grappled, with a few exceptions. The creature can still use any weapon, not just a light weapon, and attacks with only a -2 penalty on attack rolls and AC. Issacs, however, does not move into his opponent’s square (he and his target remain at the same distance from one another), and he does not count as grappled in any way. Each round at the beginning of Issacs’ turn, he may choose to maintain the impale or to pull his claw out. Should he maintain the impale, his target takes 1d6 points of damage that round on his turn. Should he choose to pull out, his target takes claw damage (1d8+4) and is released from the impale. If the target is able to escape from the grapple through an opposed grapple check, the target takes 1d6 points of damage as he pulls himself off the claw. Unholy Blight: In lieu of making claw attacks, Issacs can choose to unleash a wave of unholy energy from his body, affecting everyone within a 30ft. radius spread. Affected subjects each take 2d8 points of unholy damage and must make a Fortitude save (DC 19) or be nauseated for 1 round. Fear Aura: This aura has a range of 15ft. Enemies who enter the aura must make a Will save (DC 19) or be shaken for 5 rounds. Opponents who pass the Will save are unaffected by the aura for the next 24 hours. This is a mind-affecting fear effect. Major Questions: 1) How much HP should I give him? I was thinking somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 or 30HP, with DR 1 or 2, is that too much? 2) Should I even bother with a points cost for him, or should I just give him the abilities I want to give him? 3) So far, the best I can come up with for his limbs are Strikers (Impaling, Long x2, Cannot Parry). Any suggestions on how to better represent them? If anybody feels like actually statting him out, that would be awesome. However, I'll take whatever advice I can get, no matter how general or specific.

08-15-2008, 01:47 AM	#2
Chethrok_Bloodfist Join Date: Aug 2008	Re: Convert This Villain from D&D 3.5 to GURPS Well that attempt to create a spoiler failed miserably. Does anyone know how to create a spoiler?

08-15-2008, 12:12 PM	#8
Chethrok_Bloodfist Join Date: Aug 2008	Re: Convert This Villain from D&D 3.5 to GURPS Thanks for the replies everyone! Captain-Captain, I like your take on him. I had thought about doing Long Talons for his claws, but the Striker advantage seemed to be exactly what was looking for. However, the Long Talons accomplish basically the same thing, and are a whole lot less complicated - I can just handwave it and say he has four of them in addition to his two hands, and they work in the same way a Striker does. My only question is, is your version killable by a party of four 150-point PCs? The HP and High Pain Tolerance seems like appropriate and cool, but I'm worried about the damage resistance. DR 10 seems like it would stop basically everything the PCs could throw at him (even someone with ST 14 and a greatsword would only do 9 damage on average to him). I was thinking about toning it down to DR 2 or 3, especially if he can stick around up to -90HP. Especially because I don't think he should be that hard to kill given that he'll be dishing out powerful impaling attacks every turn as well. Crakkerjakk, thanks for your advice as well. Perhaps, then, I should wait to make final tweaks until I know what my party can dish out and take. I'll base the impaling ability off of linked Binding (I actually started to do that before, and gave up because I wasn't sure what enhancements and limitations I needed to add). I'll just make it up as I go along.

08-15-2008, 01:01 PM	#9
Collective_Restraint Join Date: Jun 2006 Location: Montreal, Canada	Re: Convert This Villain from D&D 3.5 to GURPS First of all, here is the best advice I can give you if you are new to GURPS and coming from D&D: DON'T BOTHER WITH CPs !!! I had to learn this the hard way as I have always been a perfectionnist and if you can just follow this simple advice, you'll save countless GM prep time. Unless you want this Vilain to join the group as a PC or follower, don't bother give him fully fledged stats. If you simply want him to be involved in combat, use the DF template for your vilain and it should be more than enough. What happens if the PCs interact with him in a way you didn't plan ? Figure the odds out on the spot. Suppose they run from him in a forest and your template doesn't show he has the Tracking skill, just do a quick assesment. Would it make sense to give him Tracking ? If so, how many points ? Just by looking at his Per score should give you a good idea on what his Tracking skill level should be. As for his abilities, make them work the way you want, don't start page flipping the Basic Set : Characters book to stat out all his abilities. Make them work as is. Here is a quick and dirty stats sheet for him : Possessed Hardin Issacs ST: 18 HP: 20 Speed: 4.75 DX: 8 Will: 15 Move: 4 (Air Move 2) IQ: 15 Per: 15 HT: 15 FP: 15 SM: 0 Dodge: 7 Parry: 10 Block: N/A DR: 2 + 2 (leather armor and boots, protects torso and groin, legs, arms and feet) Claws x 4 (14): 2d imp. May get stuck as a pick or warhammer Unholy Blight : Deals 2d burn damage (doesn't start fires and armor doesn't protect) in a 6-yard radius area emanating from him. Follow-up Resisted by HT-2 or Stunned (by nausea). Fear Aura (Fright Check at -2): As Terror Advantage but has a radius of 3-yard. Traits: Doesn't Sleep; DR 5 (against acid/fire/holy); DR 3 (against cutting damage); Extra Attack 3 (with claws only); Flight (Air Speed 2); Immunity to Metabolic Hazards; Immunity to Mind Influencing Spells; Magic Resistance 2; Supernatural Durability. Skills: Brawling-14. Class: Mundane. Notes: Possessed by a demon. I gave him Supernatural Durability which includes High Pain Treshold and converted his special ability ranges using 5ft = 1 yard as you probably want the areas to affect the same numbers of "squares" which will be hexes in GURPS. Hope this helps. __________________ Collective Restraint For GURPS 4E Game Aids, visit my site!

08-15-2008, 01:49 PM	#10
Chethrok_Bloodfist Join Date: Aug 2008	Re: Convert This Villain from D&D 3.5 to GURPS Collective Restraint: 1) That "gets stuck" rule for picks was exactly what I was looking for! 2) Do you think his claws do too much damage? If it's impaling, it could conceivably do 24 damage in one hit to an unarmored character, followed by another 12 damage next round when he pulls it out! Of course, on average it will only do 2 damage to someone protected by DR6 plate, but I think only one of my players is planning on suiting up in full armor. 3) Extra Attack 3 might be a bit much, especially in conjunction with the damage on the claws. 4) Overall, Ireally like your take on him. It's quick and easy, and works well. I'm just wondering if it's balanced against four 150-point characters.