Posts

• Jun 13, 2018

  Catalog of Equipment For the Discerning Assassin: 1191 Edition

  

  Like millions of people worldwide, I’ve been playing Assassin’s Creed games for a long time. One of the big draws of the games is all the cool gear you get to use, and I often bounce a few ideas around the inside of my skull about how this stuff would look on the tabletop. This is my first attempt at actually writing it down. In this post in particular we’ll look at the equipment used by Altaïr in the original Assassin’s Creed, using GURPS stats.

  There’s one obvious Cool Gadget here, and we’ll get to it eventually, but the rest of the equipment is surprisingly mundane considering the crazy stuff that appears in later games.

  Clothing And Armor

  Altaïr and the rest of the Assassins don’t seem to wear too much in terms of armor, which makes sense since they’re portrayed as valuing stealth and mobility. Armor is a mainstay for the opposition in this game, and it seems to be portrayed in a historically accurate manner: check out GURPS Loadouts: Low-Tech Armor p. 27-29 for a very detailed breakdown. In short, both the Templars and Sarracens tend to wear DR 3 or 4 mail, with metal helmets.

  The infamous hooded outfit (AKA the Menacing Hood) is probably not very historical, since looking cool was a greater priority in its design than being period-appropriate. There’s a million jokes out there about how absurd it is that Altaïr can hide amidst the crowd at all while basically dressed as Medieval Batman, but that’s clearly something the Assassins are supposed to be able to do in-setting.

  It would make sense for Assassin characters in a tabletop game to wear Undercover Clothing (Low-Tech, p. 100). Altaïr’s iconic outfit isn’t quite bulky enough to count as a Long Coat (Low-Tech, p. 99), but wearing one in addition to the undercover clothes would definitely make sense for PC Assassins. The total +5 or +6 bonus to Holdout would make hiding all those weapons much easier!

  Weapons

  Assassin’s mostly fight with period-appropriate weapons. All the one-handed swords seen in the game would use the stats for a broadsword (and the Broadsword skill). Altaïr also gets access to a Long Knife, and to Small Throwing Knives. The opposition uses the same sort of sword. Those enemies posted as rooftop guards tend to carry Light Crossbows as well. You can find stats for these and many other suitable TL 2-3 weapons in the Basic Set, Low-Tech, or Martial Arts.

  But that’s not what you’re here for, is it?

  The Hidden Blade

  This marvel of Fantasy Tech-style engineering is a pure assassination weapon unsuited to open combat. It consists of a leather and metal bracer with a built-in, retractable knife blade. The spring-loaded mechanism is controlled by a ring around the hand’s little finger, and the blade is concealed along the underside of the arm. The model used in the original game can only be used by someone who had amputated the ring finger on the corresponding hand.

  The bracer is mostly leather covered with light metal plates that give DR 3 to that forearm. While the blade is retracted, the user has a +5 bonus to Holdout to conceal its nature as a weapon unless the people doing the searching know exactly what to look for. Extending the blade usually takes a Ready action, but the user can make a Fast-Draw (Knife) roll to do it instantly. Retracting the blade is a free action: just relax your hand!

  Stabbing with the Hidden Blade uses the Knife skill. It cannot parry, and counts as Cheap quality for other breakage purposes. It’s different enough from a plain old knife to inflict a -2 unfamiliarity penalty to both Knife and Fast-Draw on users who haven’t trained with it before. Such a newbie would also probably lose their ring finger the first time they extended the blade!

  TL	Name	Damage	Reach	Parry	Cost	Weight	ST
  3	Hidden Blade	thr imp	C	No	$150	1kg (2 lbs.)	6

• May 2, 2018

  Pathfinder Iconics in the DFRPG: Merisiel

  In this post I continue to write up the Pathfinder iconic characters for use in the Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game. Links to all of them will appear in the project page, which also contains links to the GURPS Dungeon Fantasy versions.

  Today’s template is the Thief, which means today’s character is Merisiel. Here she is:

  

  Merisiel has all the knives. All of them. We’re back in familiar territory with her, as she’s one of the Iconics from the core book. Her bio is here and her stats are here. From these, we can learn the following:

  • Merisiel is one of the Forlorn, an elf raised among humans. They get this depressing name because Pathfinder elves are of the type that takes nearly a century to grow up. She spent these decades as a street urchin who stowed away on ships bound for different cities when her current buddies outgrew her.

  • She’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer but makes up for that by carrying a lot of really sharp knives on her person. She tries to start every combat hidden, to better backstab her foes.

  • Merisiel has an open and expressive personality, always tries to have fun in the moment, and is always chasing the next get-rich-quick scheme.

  Despite being pretty much a bog-standard d20/Pathfinder character, Merisiel presents us with several interesting challenges when it comes to adapting her to the Dungeon Fantasy RPG.

  First of all, she’s an elf, but not the woodsy type of elf shown in DFRPG: Adventurers. No, she’s a Forlorn elf, which means she grew up among humans and had no contact with elven culture to speak of. The racial template from Adventurers that best models this is actually the Half-Elf, down to the problems they have in relating to both humans and elves. She’s not an actual half-breed, but the effects of Social Stigman (Forlorn Elf) would be pretty much the same. And theorietically she would have a much longer lifespan than a half-elf, but that’s not worth any points in Dungeon Fantasy campaigns.

  The other challenge is that the Thief professional template from Advanturers is built to resemble the Thief class of early D&D - a middling combatant who’s great at stealth, trap-finding, and reaching difficult places. The d20 Rogue class is still good at these non-combat things, but its main focus is stabbing monsters in the back for massive damage. This is why Merisiel’s Pathfinder stats give her a rapier despite her bio’s focus on knives - it’s the best melee weapon for rogues in that system. Fortunately, the list of Thief-appropriate traits in Adventurers gives us tools to fix this discrepancy.

  As a result, Merisiel’s DX and IQ are both a point lower than you would expect for an elf thief, to make room for the extra stabby (Ambidexterity, Weapon Master, Expert Backstabber, and increased combat skills). She’s still quite a bit sharper than her original bio indicates, though it might not be apparent to someone who witnessed her failing two or more self-control rolls.

  This version of Merisiel is almost identical to her GURPS Dungeon Fantasy counterpart, with the biggest variation being her armor. She’s now at Light Encumbrance, and must drop the backpack before entering a fight to avoid combat penalties.

  Our advancement options here are many. As a member of a “skill monkey” profession Merisiel can always use more and higher skills. Players who want to save points for a while might want to consider buying back that “lost” IQ point for this reason. Those who want to make her stabbier would do well to add a couple points of ST for that sweet 2d swing damage, and more Expert Backstabber would make her sneak attacks even better. Spending treasure on a lighter loadout and better-quality knives would also bring a lot of benefit to the character.

  Merisiel, 250-point Forlorn Elf Thief

  ST 11 {10}; DX 15 {100}; IQ 12 {40}; HT 11 {10}

  Damage 1d-1/1d+1; BL 12.1kg; HP 11; Will 12; Per 13 {5}; FP 11; Basic Speed 6.00 {-10}; Basic Move 7 {5}

  Advantages

  • Ambidexterity {5}
  • Expert Backstabbing 5 {10}
  • Flexibility {5}
  • High Manual Dexterity 1 {5}
  • Magery 0 {5}
  • Night Vision 5 {5}
  • Perfect Balance {15}
  • Weapon Master (Knives) {20}

  Disadvantages

  • Compulsive Carousing (12) {-5}
  • Curious (12) {-5}
  • Greed (12) {-15}
  • Impulsiveness (12) {-10}
  • Sense of Duty (Adventuring Companions) {-5}
  • Social Stigma (Forlorn Elf) {-5}

  Skills

  • Acrobatics (H) DX-1 {1}¹ - 14
  • Brawling (E) DX {1} - 15
  • Carousing (E) HT {1} - 11
  • Climbing (A) DX+3 {1}¹² - 18
  • Escape (H) DX+1 {1}² - 16
  • Fast-Draw (Knife) (E) DX {1} - 15
  • Fast-Talk (A) IQ-1 {1} - 11
  • Filch (A) DX {2} - 15
  • Forced Entry (E) DX {1} - 15
  • Gambling (A) IQ-1 {1} - 11
  • Gesture (E) IQ {1} - 12
  • Holdout (A) IQ {2} - 12
  • Lockpicking (A) DX+2 {4}³ - 17
  • Main-Gauche (A) DX+3 {12} - 18
  • Pickpocket (H) DX {2}³ - 15
  • Search (A) Per {2} - 14
  • Shadowing (A) IQ {2} - 12
  • Sleight of Hand (H) DX-1 {1}³ - 14
  • Smuggling (A) IQ {2} - 12
  • Stealth (A) DX+3 {12} - 18
  • Streetwise (A) IQ+1 {4} - 13
  • Thrown Weapon (Knife) (E) DX+2 {4} - 17
  • Traps (A) IQ+1 {4} - 13
  • Urban Survival (A) Per {2} - 13

  Loadout

  • Ordinary Clothing [Body, Limbs]: Free, 1kg
  • Light Leather Armor [Body, Limbs]: DR 1. $137, 8.25kg.
  • Backpack, Small [Body]: Holds 20kg of gear. $60, 1.5kg.
  • Bull’s Eye Lantern [Backpack]: 10m beam, burns for 6 hours per 0.5L of oil. $100, 1kg.
  • Oil, 1L [Backpack]: Includes flask. $4, 1kg.
  • Personal Basics [Backpack]: $5, 0.5kg
  • Rope, 3/8”, 10m [Backpack]: Supports 150kg. $5, 0.75kg.
  • Lockpicks [Backpack]: $50, 0.05kg.
  • Long Knife x2 [Torso]: Damage sw-1 cut or thr imp. $240, 1.5kg.
  • Dagger x4 [Torso]: Damage thr-1 imp. May be thrown. $80, 0.5kg.

  *Defenses

  Assumes No Encumbrance (Merisiel needs to drop the backpack for that).

  • Dodge 9
  • Parry 11F (Long Knife)

  *Attacks

  • Long Knife (18): 1d+2 cut or 1d+1 imp; Reach C, 1.
  • Long Knife Backstab (18): 2d+5 cut or 1d+3 imp; Reach C, 1;
  • Thrown Dagger (17): 1d imp; Acc 0; Range 6/11.

  1. +1 from Perfect Balance ↩ ↩²

  2. +3 from Flexibility ↩ ↩²

  3. +1 from High Manual Dexterity ↩ ↩² ↩³

• Apr 16, 2018

  Deterministic Heroic Feats

  

  As I mentioned in my recent Quick and Dirty Technical Grappling post, the biggest GURPS showstopper in my experience has been recalculating ST scores on the fly, and this wasn’t only a Technical Grappling issue. Today I’ll try to tackle the other rule where this issue has bit me: The Blessed (Heroic Feats) advantage.

  This is one of the most powerful Holy Warrior abilities in both versions of Dungeon Fantasy, and it allows you to temporarily increase your ST, DX, or HT. The problem here is that the increase is variable, expressed in dice (+1d or +2d). It’s also an increase that applies to the full attribute, which means the following:

  • Increasing ST changes your HP, Basic Lift and base damage.

  • Increasing DX changes your Basic Speed and potentially Move.

  • Increasing HT changes your FP, your Basic Speed and potentially your Move.

  Of these, the HP and FP changes are pretty straightforward. Basic Speed changes are the next easiest to calculate on the fly, since each extra point of DX or HT changes it by 0.25. Basic Lift is not too bad, since the formula for it is easy to memorize (ST * ST/10 kg, or twice that in pounds).

  But then you get to base damage, and the gears of your game grind to a halt while you look it up in a table. Now, I’ve been dealing with GURPS for a number of years now so I know that this table is in page 16 of the Basic Set, but people who are new to the system won’t have that memorized. And knowing that didn’t help me in the event that prompted me to write these articles, as I was using the Dungeon Fantasy RPG and had to look up the table like anyone else who is new to those books.

  There is actually a specific algorithm for figuring out your change in basic damage, but it’s fiddly enough that finding and consulting the table is usually quicker. And whether you calculate or look up your new basic damage, you still have use that to figure out the damage of your actual attacks, with things like weapon modifiers, Weapon Master, or high Karate bonuses.

  My Solution: Deterministic Heroic Feats

  The Heroic Feats advantage now increases your attribute by a fixed amount: 4 per level. This still lasts for 3d seconds, to still keep the favor of the gods somewhat fickle. GMs who want to get rid of that remaining bit of randomness can just have it last 10 seconds instead.

  When you take the Heroic Feats advantage, write down your new total stats somewhere, and use those when the power is active.

  Example: Our friend Seelah has ST 13 and Heroic Might 1, so in a separate space in her character sheet we record her stats with ST 17: Basic Lift 28.9kg and Damage 1d+2/3d-1. We also pre-calculate her enhanced sword damage (3d cut or 1d+4 imp). When Seelah uses Heroic Might, we refer to those stats instead of her usual ones.

  If she later increases Heroic Might to its maximum level of 2, her enhanced strength becomes 21, so we recalculate her secondary stats: Basic Lift 44.1kg and Damage 2d/4d-1. Her sword damage becomes 4d cut or 2d+2 imp.

  If later still she buys Weapon Master, we apply the damage bonuses from that advantage to both sets of stats. Her normal sword damage becomes 2d+4 cut/1d+4 imp, and her enhanced sword damage becomes 4d+8 cut/2d+6 imp. Now that’s what I call a smite!

• Apr 6, 2018

  Quick and Dirty Technical Grappling

  

  2018-04-09 Update: After receiving some feedback from Douglas Cole, who wrote the original Technical Grappling rules, I’ve updated this article to better handle people with wildly varying SMs and ST scores. I believe the resulting rules can still be considered “Quick and Dirty” :).

  As I mentioned in my previous post, I like the Technical Grappling rules on principle but find them way too detailed for most games in practice. Here’s my attempt to simplify them into something I can use.

  My main goal here is to completely eliminate on-the-fly ST adjustments from the game. In my experience, nothing has ever reduced the pacing of my games to a screeching halt like having to look up someone’s new damage dice and recalculate all their attacks. This is not just a Technical Grappling issue, but since that is the topic of the day let’s stick to it.

  Referred Control as written also has to go, because it involves a similar amount of “recalculate everything right now”.

  Any references to “the book” below refer to GURPS Technical Grappling, and the “core rules” are the ones from GURPS Characters and Campaigns.

  Trained ST

  This is gone. It’s one more thing to track for each individual skill and it raises too slowly to make any difference for most games.

  Use the Wrestling bonus from the core rules for that skill and ignore the concept for the others. Buy Lifting ST instead.

  Grappling Attacks and Damage

  Grappling still does Control Point damage, because that’s the core of the system! CP damage is annotated as “control” in attack stat lines.

  All unarmed grappling attacks inflict CP damage equal to the “thrust” value for your ST. Lifting ST improves your ST for this purpose and so does the Wrestling bonus when using that skill. Add +1 damage for each limb used beyond the first two. If attacker’s SM is larger than that of the target, apply the difference as a control damage bonus as well.

  Armed grappling works mostly like in the book, except you always use your full ST to calculate control damage. Entangling weapons use your base skill level instead (not the effective one for that specific attack). This allows you to write the control damage for your armed grapples once and not worry about it later on, similar to how normal attacks work.

  Any monster whose attacks “automatically count as a successful grapple” in things like Dungeon Fantasy do linked control damage equal to the basic damage of their attack. So if that Giant Enemy Crab has claws that do 2d+2 cut, they now also do 2d+2 control!

  Grapplers can still only maintain a maximum amount of CP equal to their ST.

  Control Threshold

  Every creature has a Control Threshold (CT) equal to their ST/5, rounded down to the nearest whole number. This determines how easy it is to impair that character’s movements via grappling. In relatively “realistic” games with human-scale characters, 99% of people will have a CT of 2, and the remaining slabs of pure muscle will have a CT of 3. Things can get quite a bit more varied in Dungeon Fantasy or other fantastical games.

  Write this down once during character creation, and only worry about changing it if your permanent ST changes.

  Effects of Control Points

  Every (CT) Control Points applied to a target translate into a -1 penalty to DX¹. If the target’s torso or head is being grappled this applies to all their actions. If a limb is being grappled, the full penalty applies to any actions involving that limb. Half the penalty applies to all other actions. Treat grapples to multiple locations as a single grapple to the torso with their combined CP.

  In the example from page 6 of Technical grappling, that would give our pal And’Rezik a total of 13 CP on his target. It’s only 2 CP less and you didn’t need to halt your fight for 5 minutes to figure that out!

  Control points can be spent in the same ways as in the book, and grappled targets can attempt to erode them with their own grapple attacks subject to the DX penalty, as usual.

  That’s All, Folks!

  That’s pretty much it. I haven’t actually tested this system in play, but it’s what I’m going to use in the next game I run where grappling is a thing. I’m sure I’ve missed some edge cases from the original book, but if those ever become a problem I’ll address them at that time.

  1. Creatures whose CT rounds down to 0 take -2 DX per CP applied to them. ↩

• Apr 2, 2018

  My GURPS House Rules

  As a way to get back into the habit of writing I thought I would expound a bit on my preferred GURPS house rules. These are the modifications I make on every campaign I GM. Some are tried-and-true, some are experimental, and one I haven’t really used yet but intend to.

  None of them are original creations, though. There’s so much stuff out there already that I don’t feel inclined to come up with my own stuff.

  The Permanent Fixtures

  These rules should be in effect in pretty much any game I GM.

  Metric!

  If I have one complaint about GURPS is that it uses Imperial measurements for everything. I don’t! I use metric instead. By now I’m pretty used to applying simple conversions for lengths and weights.

  Areas and volumes are more annoying, though I suspect this site would help me there. I don’t agree with everything on it (for example, I’m not rounding Basic Lift to the nearest whole kilogram, that’s not granular enough), but it does a good job overall.

  Alternate Guns Specialties

  These are from Pyramid #3/65. It greatly simplifies the existing Guns specialties, and I think it makes a lot of sense. I use it on any game that has guns at all.

  Occasional Appearances

  These don’t always appear, but I like them nonetheless.

  Complimentary Skills

  This rule originally appeared on GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 2 and GURPS Action 2, and was restated on Pyramid #3/70. It encourages teamwork, and gives heroes a bit of an extra edge in general. It hasn’t appeared in all of my games because people rarely think to invoke this rule, but if anyone asks whether they can use it the answer is always “yes”.

  Tactics For the Win

  This originally appeared in GURPS Martial Arts. It allows the Tactics skill to grant rerolls when not using tactical maps, or to enable tricky positioning shenanigans when using them. It makes playing “warlord” characters mechanically viable, and the only reason it’s not a permanent fixture is that people don’t always make those types of character.

  Team Efforts

  Another one from Action and Dungeon Fantasy. It simplifies group tests.

  Range Bands

  This is from GURPS Action. It’s a lot easier to use than the Size/Speed range table for combats without a map! In practice it mostly means giving nearly everyone a -3 penalty for ranged attacks and calling it a day, since combats in my games rarely happen further away 20m that even when everyone has guns.

  Experiments, Tried and Untried

  These are rules I want to use more often, but I still don’t feel I’m good enough at applying them to so in every game.

  Technical Grappling, Simplified.

  This is obviously from GURPS Technical Grappling. I like the basic idea of the Technical Grappling system, but as written it’s way too complex to use in any game that is not entirely about playing through an entire MMA tournament at a high level of detail.

  I would like to keep the central mechanic where grapplers to “control damage” according to their skill and strength, and where this damage makes it increasingly harder for the opponent to move. Referred Control has to go, however, and I strongly dislike the idea of adjusting people’s ST mid-fight. I’m also not too keep on calculating multiple ST scores for every possible combination of limbs you’re using for a grapple.

  Sometimes I’m strongly tempted to buy Douglas Cole’s Dungeon Grappling supplement for D&D-alikes and port it back to GURPS, since it seems to do lot of what I described above already. However, now that I’ve discovered that the official GURPS conversion of his Hall of Tyr adventure is real, I’ll probably wait for that instead. In the meantime I might work something out on my own.

  Hybrid Ritual Path Magic

  I’m a big fan of the Ritual Path Magic system as described in, well, GURPS Ritual Path Magic. I like the energy accumulation model and the flexibility it allows. That book is more geared towards settings where magic is rare and/or hidden, though, which means it tends to limit magic by what is “mundanely possible” in the setting in question. You can exceed those limits with Greater effects, but it’s expensive.

  GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 19: Incantation Magic describes a variant of this system meant to fit a D&D-like setting, where magic is known and common. The limits it imposes are a lot less fuzzy (you can do this much damage, or give this big a bonus). The exact amounts are dependent on Magery and there are no Greater effects that allow you to exceed them. That’s good for my purposes, but unfortunately the system is based on an “effect shaping” model where spells give you more skill penalties the more powerful they are.

  What I want here is a hybrid system, one that’s based on energy but also geared towards obvious-magic settings. What I’d do here is basically use the system from RPM with the Magery-based limits from DF, and the removal of Greater effects. I haven’t tested this in actual play with real players, but I would like to.

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