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Let's Read Hell's Rebels: Adventure 04, Part 02
This article is part of a series! Click here to see the other entries.
Before I launch into a description of the big dungeon raid in this adventure, I think it’s useful to go over some background information.
Barzilai’s Desperation Move
As we say back in the background for Adventure 01, Barzilai’s scheme to become a genius loci will only work exactly as planned if he dies a natural death from old age. So he very much wants to keep on living.
As soon as he sees he’s lost the upper hand in the rebellion (at Authority 0), the dictator will turtle up in the Temple of Asmodeus, and will order its high priest to enact a ritual to contact Mephistopheles directly. The ritual takes three days and a lot of sacrifices to complete, and when it does Mephistopheles answers by sending six pit fiends to serve Barzilai and by giving him and all his underlings a major boost in stats that’s going to last for a whole month. So you can see why the PCs should be very interested in stopping this. This is why the final part of this adventure is an assault on the temple.
The Song of Silver
Fortunately, after completing all the missions in Part 01 of this adventure, the PCs should have eliminated some of Barzilai’s main goons and acquired everything they need to perform the Song of Silver: the score, the lyrics, and control of the Opera House.
The Song of Silver is a ritual developed by the original Silver Ravens. It must be performed on stage at the Kintargo Opera House, though it doesn’t really require an audience beyond the PCs and maybe some of their main allies. It’s short, taking only one minute to sing, and requires a skill test that should by now be trivial for any bard in the party. Shensen can also sing it if there are no PCs trained in Performance.
As soon as it completes, the dome of the opera house shines with a bright light and the whole city is enveloped in a protective field that lasts for seven days. While it’s active, all weapons in the city count as being made of silver, and all evil outsiders must succeed at a moderately difficult caster level check to teleport or use similar abilities. The performer, every other PC, and up to four additional allies also gain a major bonus on saves against charm and compulsion effects, and become completely immune to fear. They can choose to end this blessing to automatically pass a save, or to gain the effects of the breath of life spell (which yes, can return them to life if they die).
The song can only be performed once a month - the PCs should ideally only need to perform it once in this adventure. When it’s performed for the first time, Barzilai’s Authority is reduced by 15 if that’s still an issue. It would be optimal if the PCs went into the Temple while under the effects of the Song, as it makes the assault much easier.
The Temple of Asmodeus
The temple is a very large round building. It used to be dedicated to Aroden but was converted to the worship of Asmodeus when House Thrune took over Kintargo. The Asmodeans sacrificed all the remaining priests of the dead god back then, turning them into undead that hang around the temple and help defend it. In addition to this atrocious contingent, the place is as heavily fortified as its current occupants could make it.
As mentioned earlier, when Thrune’s forces retreat to the temple its Asmodean priests will begin a summoning ritual that will mean Game Over for the rebellion. This takes 3 days to complete, so that’s the window of time the PCs have to stop it. You should definitely inform them of this.
PCs can use rebellion actions to make their assault on the temple easier. These require DC 30 Secrecy checks, so if you haven’t been tracking the Rebellion rules so far, that’s where the PCs should put their +15. Their actions during the previous missions will gain them allies that will further help with this. One of the actions gives them a nearly complete map of the temple. The other sabotages the ritual, making it take 6 days instead of 3, penalizing its divine spellcasters (they’re demoralized!) and even reducing the frequency with which the temple bells ring (see below).
Raiding the Temple
The Temple of Asmodeus is a huuuge dungeon, and detailing every one of its rooms would be a bigger slog than raiding the place in play. So let’s take a more concise approach.
The party has two main goals when raiding the temple: disrupt the infernal ritual, and disable the cursed bells that are the temple’s main defense. This will break the remaining morale of the Thrune leadership, and cause them to flee the city.
The first thing is to get inside. There are three double doors on the temple’s ground floor and a balcony with another double door on the second floor. All four are protected by a magical trap that can teleport a PC straight to Hell unless it’s disarmed or dispelled first by the usual means.
The ground floor doors lead to empty foyer areas from which the PCs can either go to the central nave or through doors into a series of small side rooms. The balcony door leads directly into the rooms in the second floor loft.
As soon as the PCs enter, they must contend with some temple-wide magical defenses. There’s an effect similar to the Unhallow spell which is powered by a pair of “infernal engines”. These engines also maintain a series of more localized magical hazards inside the temple.
After every fight in here, the bells gather 1d6 power points (1d4 if the ritual was disrupted). When they reach 10 they ring, which inflicts a random bad effect on the PCs. The Song of Silver can help resist some of them, but the only way to stop the bells is to reach the belfry and exorcise them.
The ritual is happening in the nave on the center of the ground floor, but going there directly is suicidal. The enemies at that location are not only a hard encounter, they can also issue a general alert that will draw many of the temple’s other defenders there.
The optimal route would be to enter through the balcony, which puts the PCs on the second floor loft where they can head more or less directly to the infernal engines. This is something they should be able to figure out if they get the full map through a covert action.
Each engine is a magic circle carved on the stone floor with an imprisoned outsider inside. The circle slowly drains the outsider’s life force and uses it to power the temple’s security system. Disabling them requires either expert use of Thief skills, damaging the (very tough) floor carving, or killing the “fuel source”. One holds a rakshasa, the other a lillend azata. Both have a high number of negative levels and will gladly join in as temporary allies if those are restored, despite their opposite alignments.
With the engines disabled, it’s time to take care of the reinforcements. The dragon Rivozair has most likely been defeated before the PCs make it into the temple, but if that didn’t happen for some reason she will be in her lair here on the second floor. She will join in to defend the ritual unless she’s defeated first. In either case her hoard will be here, which is something to keep in mind for after the dungeon is cleared.
The rest of the reinforcements are in the side rooms on the ground floor. Most of these rooms are used in the temple’s day to day activities and populated either by the people and monsters responsible for those activities, or by assigned defenders. Many of these would respond to a general alarm, but none of them can raise one. Individually, each room is a medium-to-easy encounter, made a bit easier by the fact that the engines are already off.
With the reinforcements neutralized and the engines disabled, it’s finally time to assault the ritual. The team performing it can stop for long enough to put up a fight: that’s High Priest Grivenner, five lower-ranking clerics, and five summoned devils. Also in the room is a vampire high priestess of Zon-Kuthon (the shadow-and-torture god) acting as a bodyguard, and a fiendish-shadow-snake thing that will become a lot weaker with the infernal engines disabled.
It’s still a tough fight, but much more manageable without additional enemy waves or magic hazards. Theoretically there are several ways to disrupt the ritual, but “killing everyone involved” is probably the best one.
Optional Goal: Kill Thrune
This is the first time in the whole adventure path where the books recognize the PCs might be able to fight Thrune and win. He’s holed up in his inner sanctum on the second floor, though exceptionally stealthy PCs might be able to catch him sleeping in his room. He’s a tough fight on par with the other boss battles in this dungeon, but he’s definitely defeatable.
The problem is he’s nearly unkillable. The same infernal pact that lets him survive without a heart also make him supernaturally resilient to HP damage. He can keep operating normally until reduced from 206 all the way to -24 HP, after which he becomes stunned. The stun only clears if he’s healed to above -24 HP, but he does have access to a class ability that gives him fast healing and he uses that at the start of every fight.
There are two ways to kill him for real: total bodily destruction, or a certain set of insta-death or soul-trapping spells.
The first happens “naturally” if you get him to -191 HP (!) via standard damage sources, basically turning his body into hamburger. It also happens if you hit him with Destruction or Disintegrate spells when he’s below -24.
The second consists of spells like flesh to stone, soul jar, and other such magic that bypasses damage reduction. This triggers a clause in his infernal contract that kills him instantly to prevent capture.
Killing Barzilai here will prevent a later battle with him and will give the PCs early access to a vital plot coupon, but it’s perfectly possible to bypass the guy entirely. Given what awaits the PCs in the belfry, avoiding Thrune to preserve resources is an equally valid choice as killing him early.
Raiding the Profane Belfry
The dungeon is set up so that this is the last thing you do regardless of the path you took through the Temple. It’s not an optional goal, and it’s no simple victory lap either - it’s the real final boss fight for the Temple of Asmodeus.
The belfry can only be accessed via the hole on the roof of the nave, which only “unlocks” once both infernal engines have been deactivated. There are no stairs - you need flight or teleport magic to get there. A couple of magical traps lie in wait just past the lip of the hole. And then there are the guardians: four powerful undead with an even stronger leader, all former priests of Aroden.
The leader can and will ring one of the bells with his mind as a free action every round, causing an effect much more powerful than the ones the party has been experiencing so far. A Silence spell will prevent this, but will also prevent the PCs from casting most spells too.
Hell’s Bells
Once all guardians are destroyed, it’s time to exorcise the bells. The procedure for this is quite elaborate and it’s definitely something I’d allow the PCs to easily find out via prior research, because if they find themselves unprepared here the whole raid was for nothing. They’re going to need to at least one scroll of Hallow and five of Dispel Evil, though I’d also recommend multiple spares for each one. Preparing these spells also works, of course, but it eats into the number of slots they have available for the fights in the temple.
Steps 1 and 2 are disabling the infernal engines and killing the guardians. Done and done.
Step 3 is casting a Hallow spell on the belfry, or a Consecrate spell on each of the five bells.
Step 4 is drumming the chorus to the Song of Silver on one of the bells, which requires a trivial Performance check.
Step 5 is casting Dispel Evil on the same bell within a minute of drumming the chorus on it. This causes the bell to begin glowing. A PC must then touch the bell within 3 rounds (18 seconds). This will plunge the PC into a semi-real vision related to the bell’s nature, and if the PC can endure and overcome the vision, the bell is exorcised.
Failure to perform the song’s chorus, to enter the vision in time, or to overcome the vision causes the bell to ring a discordant note that dispels the Hallow effect and possibly summons a devil. The PCs must fight the monster and begin the process anew from step 3.
For each vision, the GM describes the scene, lets the player describe their PCs reaction to it, and then asks for a roll to overcome the ordeal. Good roleplaying on the part of the PC can give a +5 on the roll. Success exorcises the bell, failure deals ability drain and resets the procedure as above. The GM should tailor the vision to the PC. Here’s a summary of the visions and their tests:
Bell of Torments: The PC is being tormented in Hell by an enemy that particularly vexed them in the past. After a while they realize they are holding their favorite weapon, and can strike at their tormentor. Test: Attack roll vs. AC 28.
Bell of Slaves: The PC is enslaved to a cruel master (someone who lorded over them in the past), working on a grueling task. They must either tough it out, escape their bonds, or stand up to their overlord. Test: Player’s choice of Fort, Ref, or Will vs. DC 21.
Bell of Pride: The PC is called before one of the gods to display their skill or craft. Failing the test turns the vision into one of humiliation. Test: A Craft, Perform, or Knowledge skill test vs. DC 30.
Bell of Tyrants: The PC is the defendant in a trial where Barzilai is the judge, and the PC’s friends and allies jeer at them from the crowd. The PC must mound a successful defense. At the end of the trial, the crowd riots; on a success, they tear the judge apart, on a failure they do it to the PC. Test: A social skill vs. DC 30.
Bell of Infernal Darkness: The PC is sharing a happy moment with a loved one, when suddenly the entire world becomes a giant Barzilai Thrune with a black hole where his heart should be. The PC must lead the loved one away from danger through a shifting surreal landscape. Test: A movement skill vs. DC 30.
These tests seem to be calibrated so that only the PC most specialized in that skill has a decent chance of success, so unless the GM is very cruel I’d recommend giving advance warning that a different PC must touch each bell and throwing the PC in question straight into the vision they are most likely to overcome.
Concluding the Raid
Once all bells have been properly exorcised, the temple can be considered cleared. Any remaining defenders, including Barzilai himself, either flee or get banished back to hell if they were summoned creatures. The party has some time to finish looting the temple as well.
We’ll look at what happens after they leave in the next post.
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Let's Read Hell's Rebels 04, Part 01
This article is part of a series! Click here to see the other entries.
The first three volumes of this adventure path were dedicated to building up the Silver Ravens and their rebellion. Strikes against Thrune were indirect and targeted peripheral facilities, which prevented the enemy from mounting a big response.
All of this changes at the very end of Adventure 03, where Barzilai lays a deadly trap for the PCs and potentially kills a lot of innocents. At the start of this one, Barzilai Thrune makes his final three proclamations: he outlaws the Silver Ravens, he forbids worship of any god that’s not Asmodeus, and he blockades the bridge that separates the two halves of the city. As soon as this happens, his forces begin a brutal series of reprisals against the Ravens and the population in general.
The Silver Ravens immediately begin to fight back, since at this point their rebellion has reached its maximum power and anyone who was even a little sympathetic to them throws their full support behind the organization.
In summary, shit’s going down.
PCs start this adventure at level 10 and are expected to finish halfway into level 13.
GMing the Rebellion
The bulk of this adventure is dedicated to commanding the full might of the rebellion to topple Barzilai Thrune. While you might have been able to ignore the custom rebellion rules up until now, they’re unavoidable here. If you didn’t bother with them before the book suggests assigning a default set of stats for the organization (Notoriety 75%, focused stat +15, secondary stats +10). Those numbers are higher than what’s on the Player Guide, probably to account for bonuses the PCs would have gotten if they kept track of things in detail. Even if you were using detailed rules before I recommend upgrading the org’s stats to at least that level.
Now that Thrune’s government can be “killed”, it gets stats of its own. The important one is Authority, which must be brought down to 0 for the Ravens to win. When that happens, Thrune and his remaining lackeys lock themselves up in the Temple of Asmodeus for a last-ditch desperation move, and the PCs can get at them with a final assault.
The PCs and the Silver Ravens fight the Thrune government by completing missions. These usually involve raids against important facilities controlled by named villains. Success at these usually removes whatever capabilities that villain brought into play, and gives the Silver Ravens control of the city district they’re in. Districts under Raven control become safe from patrols and such, and lower both current and maximum Authority by a certain amount (10 or 20 points, depending on the district). This is why I linked the Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood trailer above.
Thrune’s government tries to resist the rebellion through brutal reprisals against the Ravens and the population in general. They can launch one such reprisal per day for every 25 Authority or fraction thereof they have. Specific reprisals are rolled out of a d100 table. The best possible result here is “No Reprisal”, an organizational snafu that actually decreases Thrune’s Authority. The other events result from mere defamation or increased patrols all the way to a dragon air strike, each one increasing Authority by an amount proportional to its badness. As Authority drops and named villains are killed, some of these entries will be removed and replaced with No Reprisal. Can’t have a dragon attack if the dragon is dead! Authority also increased by 1d6 at the start of every day, to represent the population’s and the Ravens’ war weariness.
The problem with those reprisal events is that they also kill some of the city’s population. While the chance that the PCs will lose the game at this stage is small, they must act quickly and forcefully to prevent Thrune from doing too much damage to the city they’re trying to protect.
Authority starts at 100 by default, but past Silver Raven victories in previous adventures can reduce this starting amount. A “perfect run” means allying with both the sea elves and Vyre; destroying Menador keep and stealing the documents kept there; and finishing the Ruby Masquerade with 20 or more Masque Points. This would mean Thrune starts this adventure with Authority at 65/100, giving the PCs a major starting advantage.
The Missions
The default expectation here is that the PCs managed to win the battle at the opera house and fully explore it at the end of the last adventure. If this is the case, the adventure starts with an emergency meeting of the Silver Council taking place as soon as the PCs are recovered, to update them on the state of the rebellion and explain the available district control missions.
If on the other hand the PCs lost the opera house battle, they wake up in a cell in Kintargo Keep, and must escape. They basically tackle the hardest mission first, from the inside out, and then add the Opera House to their to-do list later - it’s still full of stuff vital to their success.
Most of the missions consist of relatively short dungeon raids that are essentially big set-piece battles against the villain of the hour and their minions. These encounters tend to all be CR 13. This is where the game introduces a new monster type, the Troop, which works a lot like a 4e Swarm but occupies an area that’s more “malleable” than the standard square. There are Dottari and Inquisitor troops here, representing the fact that Thrune’s security forces are out in well, force.
As I mentioned above, PCs can order the Ravens to perform support actions before every dungeon raid instead of just at the end of every week. If the named villains in each one manage to survive and escape, they’ll likely join Thrune at the Temple of Asmodeus. Even if this happens, they still count as defeated for district-taking purposes.
This is the mission list:
Rescue Hetamon (Jarvis End District)
Hetamon Haace is the Rose of Kintargo. He became an ally and a member of the Silver Council back in adventure 02, but is missing from this adventure’s emergency meeting. Finding him is a priority.
Turns out he’s been kidnapped by his evil half-succubus sorceress of a mother, who is holed up in the basement of Shensen’s former home and plans to sell him to Thrune in exchange for some sort of cushy job or at least a license to hunt people in Kintargo. She has a bevy of minions both voluntary and enslaved. The former consist of a covey of hags; some of the latter can be freed instead of fought.
Shensen can give the PCs the full layout of her own basement, of course. And if she comes along the PCs might also recruit her best friend who is hiding in there, a sapient dinosaur rogue!
Completing this one and reconsecrating the basement as a shrine to Sarenrae gives PCs control of Jarvis End.
Take the Records Hall (The Greens District)
The Records Hall is full of important information about the city and its inhabitants, and denying this to Thrune will be a major blow to his forces. It’s also the current lair of Tiarise Izoni, the witch responsible for most atrocities of an arcane nature committed so far in the campaign. Opposition here consists of the witch, two inquisitor troops, and two invisible stalkers.
Tiarise’s notes can give the PCs clues about Thrune’s ultimate plan for immortality, and also alert them to the fact she has performed a ritual on herself that will turn her into a powerful undead creature when she dies. Unless she is killed under specific circumstances, Tiarise returns in the last adventure in undead form as one of its named villains.
Bleakbridge (Yolubilis Harbor District)
The bridge is blockaded by a huge force of dottari (three troops, two captains, a named commander). They’re being helped by a gang of tengu named the River Talons, who are acting as lookouts. Fortunately, their alliance is shaky and the Talons’ leader is the brother of Silver Council Member Chok (a weapon shop owner who joins at the start of this adventure). If the PCs can arrange a meeting between Chok and his brother, the latter can be convinced to betray the dottari. In that case, the Talons will not raise the alarm when the PCs sneak into the bridge, and will take care of one of the dottari troops “offscreen”.
Sneaking into the bridge is possible at all because it’s huge - there are actually buildings on both sides, with plenty of space to cross in the middle.
Skinsaw Assassins (Villegre or Redroof Districts)
These cultists are led by Hei-fen, the spiteful and vengeful wererat who has it in for the PCs. The PCs are warned about them by Molly Mayapple, the helpful and grateful wererat from Vyre.
The cultists will attack the PCs in three separate occasions, possibly while they’re busy with something else. The first strike is six cultists, the second one a jorogumo, and the final one another twelve cultists, another jorogumo, and Hei-fen herself. They’re also doing murders for Thrune on the side.
Eliminating all of them changes the corresponding reprisal table entry to “No Reprisal”, and gives the city enough breathing room for the PCs to take control of either Villegre or Redroof.
Kintargo Keep (Castle District)
This is where Thrune’s most important political prisoners are being kept. If the PCs have been captured at the end of the last adventure, they start here and must escape. Otherwise, this will probably be the last place they hit. The keep and castle are much less guarded than usual because Barzilai ordered most of the troops stationed here to go out and hunt for the PCs, which ironically lets them approach the Keep.
While the tower has five levels, only the ground floor and basement are truly relevant. When the PCs attack the tower is being guarded by six Hellknights of the Rack and their leader, Paralictor Kyrre Ekodyre. The knights should spot the PCs as soon as they make it past the door, so they will eventually need to deal with all of them and the paralictor in the same fight. There are some undead knights possessing suits of armor guarding a shrine, but they will not join the main fight unless disturbed.
The keep’s archives contain the contracts Barzilai made with the order of the Rack, to transfer all of the assets of the Order of the Torrent to them (back in adventure 02). Turns out there are a lot of irregularities in these contracts that make them illegal. The Hellknights, who are Lawful-Eviler-than-thou, will abandon Thrune once these documents are made public. This will remove them from all random and pre-arranged encounters!
The archives also contain prisoner records showing that Jackdaw, the original leader of the Silver Ravens, is still here! House Thrune’s redaction efforts were so effective that not even Barzilai or the knights remember why she was important.
Jackdaw is being held in a special cell in the basement, behind a secret door. She’s guarded by a being known as the First Warden, a former warpriest of Asmodeus who was turned into a lich and bound to this prison as a punishment for some forgotten transgression. The Warden will at first attempt to talk to the PCs because it’s been a long time since she had a proper conversation, but will attack when she realizes they’re here to free Jackdaw. She has a lot of priestly abilities and the help of four more of those possessed armors.
Jackdaw is in a pretty sorry state - the lich has kept her from dying, but hasn’t done anything to make her comfortable. Once the PCs restore her health and sanity, she becomes a very valuable ally. She can also supply them with the lyrics for the Song of Silver, which combined with the score from the opera house allows the PCs to use the ritual.
The Dragon (Villegre or Redroof District)
I did mention a dragon, didn’t I? She’s an adult blue dragon named Rivozair. She first attacked the city during the Chelish civil war, and was nearly killed by the original Silver Ravens. Rivozair returned shortly before the campaign started and agreed to join up with Barzilai for a chance to take revenge on the city. He invested her with additional infernal power, binding her to a horned devil in the same way Nox from Adventure 01 was bound to a bearded one.
Rivozair is a powerhouse of a solo boss, and one of Barzilai’s most powerful minions. In addition to her usual “I’m a dragon!” suite of abilities, her lightning breath has been replaced with hellfire, she can summon barbed devils, and she has Regeneration 5 that can only be overcome by Good-aligned spells and weapons (though that last bit shouldn’t be a problem at this point). After the PCs finish the other five missions, or after they reduce Barzilai’s Authority to 0 (whatever happens first), the dragon will be unleashed to hunt down and kill the PCs directly.
If the GM wants to make this battle a bit easier, they can have some of the PC’s allies help in the fight. If on the other hand they want to make it harder, they can have the dragon begin its hunt earlier than scheduled. Rivozair will try to become invisible and run away when she’s badly wounded, but instead of rallying at the Temple she will flee the region. She might come back to disrupt the victory celebration, if the GM wishes. Otherwise she will remove herself from the campaign.
Defeating Rovizair removes her entry from the reprisal table… but more importantly it instantly reduces Authority to 0. I guess any remaining minions will see that the PCs can handle the dragon and will immediately leave their posts as if they had been defeated, rallying at the Temple of Asmodeus. We now enter the final stage of the adventure.
Conclusion
And that brings this post to a close. There’s actually little I would cut from this part of the adventure, since all of the fights here seem pretty cool. When playing in Pathfinder, they are also quite amenable to alpha-strike tactics.
In the next post, we’ll take a look at the effects of the Song of Silver and at the Temple of Asmodeus, which unlike these short raids is a huge grinding slog.
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GURPS is Brutalist, or Tweaking The Flow of Combat in GURPS
The Long Lines Building in New York A common complaint I hear about people who tried GURPS for the first time coming in from other systems is that the “flow” of combat feels odd. Mainly that those 1-second turns are too short and don’t let you do enough. Sometimes also that these short turns lead to fights that end too quickly to be dramatic1.
I think this comes from a mismatch between the player’s learned expectations and the way GURPS actually does things. In this post I’ll try to describe this difference, and give a few suggestions on how to reduce the friction.
Describing the Difference
Let’s start with an example. You’re in a typical dungeon fantasy combat against a bunch of zombies, playing an archer character. You make an attack, and describe it like this:
“I draw and nock an arrow, then I take aim at the closest zombie and shoot! As soon as the arrow flies, I’m already drawing another one from my quiver!”
How do other systems2 usually handle this, and what does GURPS do that’s so different?
Abstract Action Economies
Most tabletop RPG systems are fairly abstract when it comes to combat. To the rules, it doesn’t matter what motions your PC is actually going through when they perform an action, nor does it matter how long a turn lasts. It is enough to know what the action is, and that a turn is long enough for you to do it.
In systems that work this way, our archer’s narration is just a cool embellishment that adds some fun detail to a standard ranged attack roll. All the rules need to know is that it’s a ranged attack.
However, the choice of which actions perform in your turn matters a lot. You get a certain number of them, all of which have an immediate effect in the current turn but don’t influence future ones. Therefore the system’s incentives gently push you to be maximally efficient on a turn-by-turn basis3. Attacks are good because they bring the fight closer to an end. If you use your main action for something else, it better bring as much benefit to you as attacking would, or you have just “wasted” your turn. This set of mechanics and incentives is usually called an “action economy”.
The GURPS Way
Where other systems are abstract, GURPS is so concrete it’s practically brutalist. Turns last one second and its combat maneuvers are a lot more fine-grained than combat actions in other games.
In the Union of Generic Universal Republics our example description is not just a bit of flavor: it’s a five-turn plan. Ready (draw arrow), Ready (nock arrow), Aim, Attack, Ready (draw arrow)4.
Only the actual blow from your weapon, press of the trigger, or release of the bowstring counts as an Attack. The other stuff in the plan above are maneuvers that make your Attack possible and set it up for success. In GURPS, you want to increase the quality of your attacks, not necessarily their quantity.
For the same reason GURPS is a bit less amenable to “needless embellishment” than more abstract games. Combat goes much more smoothly when you keep your action declarations to short sentences that map to a single maneuver. The structure you build out of these simple blocks can end up looking every bit as beautiful as the freeform narrative, though. This too, is brutalism.
The Barbican Conservatory in London Proposed Solutions
“The GURPS way” is neither better nor worse than the action economies of other systems. It’s just different. But it’s different enough that it can trip up people coming in from other games.
If the description above helped you smooth the friction between the rules and your expectations, then great! But it’s likely that it didn’t, and you still having trouble with it. In that case, here are a couple of suggestions on how to make your experience smoother.
Solution 1: It’s a (Character) Skill Issue
One of the big reasons to use “setup” maneuvers like Evaluate, Feint, and Aim is that your character’s skill level might not be high enough to give you a decent chance of success. Without those maneuvers, you’ll end up missing more often, or will have trouble getting past your enemy’s defenses. This is common at the core books’ default 150 points.
One way to make attacking every turn more feasible and fun is to raise the power level of your characters. This is the approach taken by Dungeon Fantasy and Action: not only do they use 250 point templates, they optimize them a fair bit.
All the physical combatant templates in DF start with 16 in their main combat skill at the very least. Many have a 18, and a couple either start with a 20 or can get there with a bit of point shuffling.
This might sound excessive at first glance. Your base chance of success doesn’t increase past 16, and it’s unlikely anyone had more than a 18 in all of human history. Why allow PCs to start there, and possibly go even higher with earned points? Because this is what you need to be able to reliably attack every second without taking the time to perform setup maneuvers.
With these “overpowered” skill levels you can absorb more penalties without having to Evaluate or Aim to offset them, and you can use Deceptive Attacks instead of Feints without affecting your chances of success. If you still have enough spare skill levels left, you can even thrown in a Rapid Strike to make two attacks in that second.
Solution 2: Mandatory Dramatic Pauses
Fighters in real-world combat sports and action movies don’t spend every second of their fights furiously attacking each other. They’ll circle while looking for openings, stop to catch their breaths, and only go in for an exchange of actual blows every once in a while.
The use of setup maneuvers helps stretch fights out to be more similar to these examples, but if you’re reading this it’s because you don’t think they’re a good solution. And even if you do, you might want to go further.
One way to do this is to crib from the rules for tournament fights in GURPS Martial Arts. Under those rules, fights are composed of lulls and flurries. Combatants can only use the Attack maneuver5 during a flurry. During a lull, they cannot attack but can still use maneuvers like Change Posture, Evaluate, Move, Ready, Aim, or even just Do Nothing while waiting for an opening. In fantasy settings it would be a good time to cast those healing spells.
GURPS Martial Arts has flurries last for 2d seconds and lulls for 4d seconds, rolled at the start of the corresponding period. You can tweak these durations to best suit your campaign. If the combatants’ actions look like they’re going to force an early change, you can end the current “period” early.
The main purpose of introducing lulls is to extend a fight’s in-character duration to something like that of a real-world boxing or MMA round. They can also help change the mental “efficiency” calculation of someone who’s used to action economies. If there’s a part of the fight where you can’t attack, performing setup actions for when you can becomes the most efficient thing to do.
Lulls work both in melee and ranged combat (when everyone might hunker down behind cover for a while), but they might get a bit hard to manage or look a bit silly when you have a large number of combatants in a fight.
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10 minutes to beat the bad guy and disarm the bomb is not a problem at all if you beat the bad guy in 5 seconds. ↩
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“Other Systems” here means the last three editions of D&D, Pathfinder 2E, most editions of Shadowrun, and any others that might be similar in outlook but which I’m not too familiar with. ↩
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And if there are any obsessive optimizers in your group, they’ll push you much less gently. ↩
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I admit I tacked that extra Ready at the end to make the “five-second plan” joke work. ↩
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And its cousin All-Out-Attack. ↩
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Abandoning Weapon Master
A while back I made a post about combining Weapon Master and Trained by a Master into a single advantage. After thinking about it for a while, I think I might have changed my mind about it. I not sure the two traits are really meant to coexist in the same campaign, despite what Dungeon Fantasy tries to do.
Dungeon Fantasy character creation rules are all about replicating a lot of D&D’s conventions in GURPS. And one of the D&D-isms it tries to replicate is that a combat centric character can be either strong or fast, but not both.
D&D Combat Conventions
In recent editions of D&D, that happens because characters have a very limited number of points to distribute at creation, and every class is meant to have only 1 or 2 attributes that are important to its abilities. Physical combatants end up having either STR or DEX as their main attribute, and the rules are usually set up so that the other member of the pair can be safely dumped.
STR-based combatants use the heaviest armor and weapons they can get. The vast majority are melee specialists. Some buy a single thrown weapon at creation and then promptly forget about it. All of these options are designed to make Dexterity not matter to them.
DEX-based combatants are the opposite: they wear light or no armor, and are evenly split between archers and melee skirmishers who rely on “finesse weapons” that use DEX instead of STR. Therefore Strength doesn’t matter to them.
Every physical combatant1 in the last three editions of D&D is going to lean heavily towards one of these archetypes. A few classes incentivise players to try and be a bit of both, but for most of them that’s going to lead to a weaker character.
What about GURPS?
Dungeon Fantasy gives you templates to emulate the classes from recent D&D, so it ends up bringing this particular trope wholesale into GURPS. You have your Strong Delvers, and your Fast Delvers2. But we run into some issues because GURPS is much less abstract than D&D.
Both in real life and in GURPS, combatants want to be both strong and fast. You need speed and precision to hit, and you need to put some force behind your blows for them to be effective. Sure, an individual character might have ST or DX that’s a bit higher than the other, but they’ll never be 10+ points apart like they are in their D&D equivalents.
Still, DF tries, and Weapon Master is a significant component of this attempt. It’s a mandatory trait for Swashbucklers, and an optional one for the other fast delvers. It more or less takes the place of D&D’s Weapon Finesse, since it allows these characters to do improved melee damage without investing many points into ST.
But it’s also an optional Knight trait. And it’s quite easy to take a starting Knight and give them ST 18, Weapon Master (Dueling Halberd), and a starting weapon skill of 20. Such a character literally combines the best of both worlds. They can do all the same fancy tricks as the ST 11 Swashbuckler, and their strikes to a massive amount of damage when they land, due to the higher base number of damage dice and the per-die damage bonus.
As a player, this damage bonus seems so good to me that I’d feel bad about “leaving it on the table” and not taking Weapon Master. As a GM, I worry that any enemy that can withstand a hit from the Knight will be impervious to attacks from the other PCs.
What to do about it?
The first option is of course to do nothing. This is admitedly a very niche concern and you might be okay with it in your game. But if you are having Weapon Master Problems at your table you might try one of these other possible solutions.
Solution 1: Flat Damage Bonus
A “minimally invasive” solution is to change the damage bonus from +1 or +2 per die to a flat +1 or +2. All advantage costs remain the same, as do all templates.
This means that the skinny swashbuckler who rolls a single die for damage still gets the same bonus. Meanwhile Mister Halberd with his three dice of swing damage gets a much smaller relative benefit.
Solution 2: No More Weapon Master!
Weapon Master no longer exists and Trained By a Master comes in categories similar to the removed advantage:
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20 points makes you trained in One Weapon. This gives you improved parries, improved Rapid Strikes, and access to the same limited set of Chi Skills as Weapon Master did. No damage bonus, though!
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25 points gives you the same benefits for Two Related Weapons or all weapons covered by One Skill.
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30 points works as printed, giving you the full set of Trained By a Master benefits for all muscle-powered weapons and unarmed attacks.
“All knives” counts as a single weapon for these purposes, like in the books. So do “all unarmed attacks”.
Everyone who had Weapon Master as an optional advantage gets the corresponding version of Trained by a Master instead, and has the option to upgrade to the full version.
This is a more drastic and slightly more complicated solution. No one gets a damage bonus any more, but no one overpays for the full Weapon Master package either.
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Let's Play Hell's Rebels: Player Character Origins
Hell’s Rebels includes some traits in its Player’s Guide that can be assigned to PCs to tie them to the campaign either by providing a motivation or by giving them additional ways to contribute. A PC could be a minor worker in the opera, or a fed-up citizen, or interested in the city’s history, and so on.
I don’t think those quite fit what I have in mind for my solo campaign. They are suitable as backgrounds for level 1 starting characters and their mechanics can be useful at the start, but pretty much cease to be a factor in the story once the “main plot” kicks in.
Despite being released six years earlier than Hell’s Rebels, the Neverwinter Campaign Setting for D&D 4e does a much better job at allowing players to create characters who are deeply involved with the campaign at hand. More than starting motivations, its character themes provide entire story arcs that will remain relevant throughout the entire campaign.
I want the same thing for my game, so I’m going to replace the relatively generic reasons given in the Hell’s Rebels player guide with something that’s narratively on par with Neverwinter’s themes. I want them to not only be more exciting, but also to reflect the increased starting power of Dungeon Fantasy characters. They’re going to be key players in the rebellion from minute one of the campaign. Why just be a random history buff when you can be The Last Archivist instead? This status might be reflected in some of their traits, but the story consequences are the main thing here.
Here are the “character themes” I intend to use. There are five, one for each of my intended PCs, but presenting them separately will help provide some inspiration to other GMs who want to do the same thing whether in GURPS or another system. I’m using Dungeon Fantasy archetype and ancestry names instead of those from Pathfinder, but the correlations should be pretty easy to deduce. Each of them also has plot ties to some of the game’s possible allied factions.
Each theme bellow includes a short background description, and paragraphs listing prerequisites, benefits, and drawbacks. These are mostly story-related, but they might also add optional mechanical traits to your character’s template. You can buy these right away with your starting points, or buy them later with earned points like any other template trait.
The Sixth Raven
Most surviving historical documents about the Silver Ravens say they were five in number: Jackdaw the elf swashbuckler, Amyreid the half-elf cleric, Ba the halfling wizard, Kyda the human bard, and Brakisi the human scout.
These documents were wrong. There was one other: you.
You were a small orphan child then, adopted by the group as a kind of mascot somewhere along their career. You shared their love for Kintargo and its freedom, but you were too young to go on any actual adventures, so you mostly helped by running small errands, and heard from their big battles when they returned to tell the tale.
This lasted until the last battle, the one against the massed armies of House Thrune. Jackdaw sent you away with many of her other non-combatant friends the day before that one, promising she’d call you back when the danger was past. She never did, because the Ravens lost. Jackdaw surrendered so that the demonic army would spare the city, and the others were either killed by Thrune agents over in subsequent years or disappeared forever.
Over the following decades you would finally reach adulthood and set out on your own, becoming an adventurer of some skill and renown elsewhere in the Inner Sea region. Now, you’re ready to return home and finish the work of your old friends. Your name has been struck from the history books, but your passion burns as brightly as it ever did.
Prerequisites: You must belong to a species long-lived enough that you could have been a child 70 years ago and still be of adventuring age in the present. Being a dwarf or some kind of elf is enough, but the Half-Spirit ancestries from DF 3 might also fit. Another alternative is to play a Warforged who was an active member of the Ravens and spent some of the intervening decades disabled and unconscious, but was recently repaired. You can belong to any profession.
Benefits: You remember things. The GM might occasionally give you hints and clues about old Silver Raven safehouses and stashes. You also knew the Ravens personally and they knew you - should any of them still be around, you will be able to recognize each other.
You can add the Serendipity {15} trait to your template if it’s not already present. This represents your memories of old Kintargo and Raven hangouts, and might let you find useful shortcuts, items, and passages that are not pre-written into the campaign.
Drawbacks: Things remember you. Demons, vampires, and other similarly long-lived monsters who faced the original Ravens back in the day will recognize you just as readily, and will be extra-mean to you as a result. Once word spreads that you’re back, some of them might even travel to Kintargo for the sole purpose of killing you.
This can be represented by the Enemy (Monster of the Week, 9 or less) {-15} trait, which gets added as an optional disadvantage to your template.
If you only have the DFRPG, the disadvantage works like this: the GM rolls 3d6 in secret at the beginning of each adventure or each session of an extended adventure. If the result is a 9 or less, a significantly powerful monster will appear somewhere along the coming adventure or session, inserting itself into one of the upcoming situations and making things more complicated and dangerous for you and your group. It’s usually something complicated to fight, and not necessarily the same monster every time. This is in addition to any pre-existing monsters in the adventure who recognize you and want you dead.
The Last Archivist
You were a member of the Sacred Order of Archivists, a secret society made up of worshipers of various deities of knowledge and wisdom. The Order was dedicated to preserving the true history of Kintargo and other such “forbidden” knowledge from Thrune redactors.
The Order is no more: its hideout was raided and ransacked by Thrune forces during the Night of Ashes. You were away when it happened, on a mission to retrieve an important document in another city. That’s why you survived. When you returned, you reached out to a few contacts and learned that some of your colleagues have surviving family. They were nobles and their family estate was razed during the Night of Ashes, but one of their sons is still at large. You are now trying to find this son, help him stay safe, and then get revenge on House Thrune.
Prerequisites: None! While the Order is an excellent origin for Clerics, Wizards, and other big brains, it could easily have employed fightier or sneakier types as security or retrieval specialists.
Benefits: It’s impossible to be a member of the Archivists and not learn something. In addition to being familiar with the Order’s hideout and its procedures, you also know a bit of the region’s unredacted history and a few other tidbits of unrelated but potentially useful knowledge. You can recognize the Sixth Raven if run into them.
You can add the History and Research skills as an option to your template, and also all specialties of Hidden Lore if they aren’t there already. You also add Wild Talent {20} as an optional advantage, representing a large trove of random knowledge. If you’re using the Basic Set, add Intelligence Analysis to your template as well.
Drawbacks: You’re riven by grief and driven by revenge against Barzilai Thrune and his minions. This might manifest as Intolerance (Diabolists) {-5}, an Obsession (depose Thrune)(12) {-10}, or both! The Obsession might seem redundant since it’s also the overall campaign goal, but it also compels you to take potentially risky and unwise courses of action if they seem like they will yield quicker results. It could also prevent you from retreating from a fight against Thrune’s minions.
Knight of the Deep
You come from one of the subaquatic communities off the coast of Ravounel, where you enjoy an heroic reputation. You recently went to visit your friend Aava in the coastal village of Acisazi, only to find her missing and the village suffering under a strange malaise. The village’s elder told you Aava had led a small party of scouts into Kintargo to ask seek help breaking the curse, but she never reported back. She begged you to find Aava, and you accepted.
You arrive at this land-lubber town to find it embroiled in a lot more trouble than you thought possible. Aava is nowhere to be found and neither is her contact, the singer Shensen. You suspect both of them vanished into the prisons of the despotic Barzilai Thrune, and your queries have led you to the Aria Park protest. You suspect you might need to bloody this human despot’s nose to fulfill your mission, and that’s just fine with you.
Prerequisites: You must belong to a species capable of breathing underwater! Dungeon Fantasy 3: The Next Level contains two possible choices here: the Sea Elf and the Water-Infused. From this blog, you might also pick the Argonian or perhaps a Warforged who has been modified to be hydrodynamic and Amphibious. And of course we also have a whole article about the Denizens of the Sea that also contains a few usable ancestries.
This theme is open to any profession, but martial types should probably keep in mind the rules for underwater combat for fish-people.
Benefits: The people of Acisazi know and trust you, and Aava is your good friend (or even a relative if you’re also a sea elf).
You can add Swimming, Aquabatics and Survival (Undersea) to your template as optional skills, and should probably put some points in them during character creation.
Drawbacks: Add Obsession (find Aava and her scouts) (12) {-5} to your template as an optional disadvantage. It’s what you already want to do anyway, but like the Last Archivist’s Obsession it might drive you to unwise actions.
Phantom Thief
You are one of Lady Docur’s School for Girls’ most distinguished graduates. You had parted ways with your alma mater and set up shop in nearby Vyre, but a recent letter from Lady Docur herself brought you back to Kintargo. The city’s political climate is getting rather inhospitable to the school, and she hopes you will be able to help them survive these turbulent times.
In other words: the school is currently the closest thing Kintargo has to a thieves’ guild. They specialize in training secret couriers and the nicer sort of thief. Thrune prefers the nasty sort of thief, so things might get difficult for the school and its students. That’s where you come in.
Of course, you’re not here just to help your old school. You’re also, er, taking a breather from some rather complex entanglements you left behind in the good city of Vyre. Hopefully it will be a long while before you have to set foot there again.
Prerequisites: It’s a school for girls, which means you either are a woman or only discovered you weren’t after graduation. You must also be some manner of Thief, either the base template or one of the variants from the corresponding Dungeon Fantasy Denizens book.
Benefits: You know Lady Docur and other characters associated with your alma mater, and have their trust. You also know Vyre’s customs, which might come in handy if you ever need to go back there.
Add Area Knowledge and Current Affairs for both Kintargo and Vyre to your template, as well as Connoisseur, Savoir-Faire and the Fashion Sense advantage. The School does give one a proper high society education.
Drawbacks: Those Vyre entanglements will come back to haunt you if you ever return there during the campaign.
No extra disadvantages here: everything which could make a thief’s life harder is already part of the relevant templates.
Mysterious Satirist
Even before Barzilai Thrune rolled in like he owned the place, you were already well-known among Kintargo’s rebels, malcontents, and antifascists. Whether you make poems, plays, essays, or songs, your work criticizing House Thrune was on everybody’s minds and the pseudonym you chose for yourself was spoken in the same tones as that of The Poison Pen and other such figures. Thrune’s opponents speak it with admiration; his supporters, with disgust. That’s how you like it.
While no one has figured who you are yet, Barzilai’s arrival and the Night of Ashes have made your life very difficult already. Most of your contacts among Kintargo’s several resistance organizations have vanished, left town, or gone to ground. While you still value your art, you also feel it’s time to engage in more direct action against this dictator.
Prerequisites: None! While Bards obviously have a head start in terms of the artistic skills implied by this theme, the Mysterious Satirist could be anyone.
Benefits: Choose one of the Bellflower Network, the Cult of Sarenrae, the Rose of Kintargo, or the Poison Pen. You’re indirectly acquainted with that group or individual. Though you have never met, you have corresponded and set up pre-arranged signs that will let you recognize each other when the meeting does happen.
Add the artistic or performance skills of your choice to your template, as well as an appropriate Talent covering them to your optional advantages. Writing, Poetry, and Musical Composition are appropriate if you share your work through in written form. Public Speaking, Singing, Acting and Musical Instrument are also good if you actually perform it. If you have the GURPS Basic Set, you can also add Artist to the list of possible artistic skills, and you also add Propaganda no matter what your medium is.
Drawbacks: Add a 10-point Secret (Mysterious Satirist), Selfless, and Trickster to your optional disadvantage list if they are not already there. The first represents the risk of bad things happening when the authorities discover who you are, above and beyond what being a Silver Raven would bring. The other two represent possible reasons for you to have chosen this path in the first place.
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