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Eberron Changelings for Dungeon Fantasy
The Doppelganger is a particularly unnerving D&D monster, not because of its direct combat power but because of its ability to look like anyone. Adventures involving them tend to be the urban, intrigue-filled kind where you never know who’s on your side and who’s been secretly replaced by a monster.
Eberron was the first setting to give that ability to a playable character race! As a Changeling, you get to enjoy the ability to look like anyone… and to be the target of a lot of prejudice from people who assume you’re secretly replacing innocent victims, even if you’re the most saintly of paladins. With the racial template in this article, you get to do those things in either version of the Dungeon Fantasy game.
Changelings
Copyright 2009 WotC Racial Cost: 25 points
Changelings are humanoids capable of altering their appearance at will. The story of their origin varies depending on who you ask. Some say “Changeling” is just a more polite way to call a Doppelganger. Some say the Changelings are the offspring of a human and a true Doppelganger, who is much more dangerous. The truth depends on which edition of D&D you’re stealing from.
A changeling’s basic appearance is that of a slender, pale-skinned, androgynous humanoid with large sunken eyes and an almost non-existent nose. They can quickly change to look like any humanoid of similar size and mass.
Changelings have no society of their own, and tend to live among humans. Their abilities tend to give rise to lots of terrible stories about, well, Doppelgangers, so most assume a “secret identity” in order to live peaceful lives. Some have several, in order to have a backup in case one of their covers is blown… and those who get too paranoid end up lending truth to those terrible stories.
In times of changeling-fueled intrigue, gnomes and halflings are prized as counter-intelligence agents. Members of both races tend to be quite crafty themselves, and can’t be replaced by changelings due to their small size.
Advantages: Changeling Shapeshifting {20}; Charisma 1 {5}; Night Vision 5 {5}.
Disadvantages: Terrible Secret {-5}.
Special Changeling Traits
Changeling Shapeshifting1
By concentrating for 10 seconds, you can assume the form of any humanoid with the same Size Modifier as you (0). Your weight remains the same and you don’t gain any abilities with game effects posessed by that type of humanoid (but see below). You do, however, retain your other racial advantages. Your clothing and possessions don’t change with you.
The Appearance and Honest Face advantages work differently for you. Instead of applying to your natural form, they allow you to assume humanoid forms that possess these advantages. In the case of Appearance, consider the level you pay for to be the maximum you can transform into. You can also take on less good-looking forms for no extra cost. You can’t take Appearance as a disadvantage, but changing into uglier forms doesn’t cost extra (or give you points!).
This power is of obvious use in Disguise attempts. When using this skill, you never require any tool more elaborate than a change of clothes, and need at most 5 minutes of preparation instead of the 30 required by others. You also never suffer penalties for race-crossing or trying to disguise yourself as someone “very different”. Copying the appearance of a specific person always requires a Disguise roll.
Terrible Secret2
“Civilized” society considers you a monster, but you are usually able to hide your true nature. The GM rolls 3d every time you go to town or start a session there. On a 6 or less, your cover is blown and you suffer the effects of Social Stigma (Savage) - including another immediate 3d roll to see if you’re kicked out of town! This lasts until you can re-establish your cover. How you can do that is up to the GM. It could range from a few skill rolls to a full adventure!
Optional Traits
Changelings can always buy the Disguise and Acting skills even if those aren’t part of their professional template. Even honest changelings often need these skills to escape persecution.
Changeling Characters
Any of these could be a changeling! Changelings often become delvers - it’s the only line of work where they don’t look much weirder than their colleagues. They do particularly well as Bards and Thieves! Even on the pure dungeon-crawling campaigns assumed by the default Dungeon Fantasy setup, their shape-changing ability can eliminate some reaction penalties from humanoid monsters if the character has time to prepare for the encounter (“You can trust me, I’m an orc too.”). They could also infiltrate a group of such monsters and gather precious information about the enemy. In campaigns with more social interaction or even intrigue, their utility skyrockets.
Changeling names tend to be short, unisex affairs: Qin, Kell, Tan, and so on. Most go by a pseudonym when in their cover identities, and some just are just given names from the society where they grew up from the start. Most changelings tend to think of themselves as being whatever gender matches their current form, though some do have a stronger preference for a single identity.
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GURPS Stats: This is Morph (Cosmetic -50%; Mass Conservation -20%; Retains Shape -20%). The maximum cost reduction from limitations is -80%, so it costs 20 points. ↩
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GURPS Stats: This is a -5 point Secret that converts into Social Stigma (Savage) when revealed. Since your cover can be re-established, the disadvantage doesn’t change in value while the Secret is out. ↩
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Warforged for Dungeon Fantasy
Eberron is pretty much my favorite published D&D setting, and Warforged are my favorite Eberron race. What would they look like in Dungeon Fantasy? Let’s find out!
In the racial template below I’ve tried to follow the same guidelines as the races in the DFRPG: they must alter the character enough for you to feel like you’re playing a member of that race, and they can’t cost more than about 40 points. This should allow characters following almost any professional template to be a Warforged if they so wish.
Warforged
Illustration by Will-E-H Racial Cost: 30 points
Warforged are living constructs. In Eberron, they were created and mass-produced by a powerful enchanter house, which sold them as ready-made armies to some of that setting’s warring nations. Once the war was over, most were freed and given citizenship. In other settings, their origins are usually less industrial: a warforged delver might be an experiment by a lone wizard, a relic from a lost civilization who was only activated now, and so on.
Warforged are more or less human-sized and -shaped, but are obviously made of metal, wood, and stone rather than flesh. Most look nearly identical save for the mystic sigil in their foreheads, which is different for every individual. A few have taken the time to customize their bodies and individualize their appearance.
Warforged are a little stronger than humans, but their real advantage over human soldiers lies in ther immunity to most weaknesses of the flesh. They don’t need food, water or even air, and though they must spend some time at rest each day, they don’t really sleep either. Unlike a “proper” golem, a warforged has a fully sapient mind and soul, too.
They are still alive, though, and still subject to some of those fleshy weaknesses. They have and can spend Fatigue Points. They are not considered Unliving or Homogenous, and still vulnerable to poisons and such that enter their bodies via means other than breathing or ingestion. They can be affected by Mind Control spells and other similar magic. And no-mana areas are deadly to them, which is something most other delvers don’t need to worry about. On the good side, Healing magic works fine on Warforged.
Even a newly-created Warforged will have the skills of a veteran fighter and an adult-level intellect, but that individual will also lack most of the social graces you would expect from someone with an adult-level intellect. Even after they overcome this initial awkwardness, people still tend to look at then a bit oddly given their exotic appearance and origin.
Attribute Modifiers: ST+1 {10}; HT+1 {10}.
Advantages: Composite Plating 1 {5}; Doesn’t Breathe {20}; Doesn’t Eat or Drink {10}; Unsleeping Watcher {10}.
Disadvantages: Dependency (Mana) {-25}; Social Stigma (Minority Group) {-10}.
Features: Individuals look very similar to each other.
Special Warforged Traits
Composite Plating1
Your skin is made of metal and wooden plates. This works like one level of the Barbarian’s Tough Skin (DRRPG Adventurers, p. 16), but it’s not flesh! It does protect against attacks that require a scratch or skin contact but don’t manage to get past its DR. You can still wear armor normally.
At the GM’s option, a warforged character might be able to buy up to two more levels of this trait in play. It requires spending some time in a machine shop along with 5 points and $500 per level.
Dependency (Mana)
As the monster trait on DFRPG: Monsters, p. 13. You lose 1 HP per minute you spend in a no mana area.
Doesn’t Breathe/Doesn’t Eat or Drink
As the monster traits in DFRPG: Monsters, p. 10.
Unsleeping Watcher2
Instead of sleeping, you must enter a state of inactivity for at least 4 hours per day. While in this state, you remain conscious and aware of your surroundings, so you can keep watch while resting. If you can’t rest like this on a given day, treat it as a night of missed sleep.
Optional Traits
Warforged characters may add the following disadvantages to the list of optional traits for their professional template, if those aren’t already there: Chummy {-5}; Clueless {-10}; Gregarious {-10}; Gullibility {-10}; Code of Honor (Soldier’s) {-10}. These represent the social awkwardness or initial programming of a newly-created warforged. Since they are personal disadvantages, they do count toward your disadvantage limit.
Warforged Characters
A female warforged While warforged were made to be members of the fightier professions, they can do equally well at any of them! That little bit of extra DR will come in handy to delvers who have to rely on lighter armor. Warforged are an excellent choice for players who don’t want to bother with buying rations and sleeping bags, or succumbing to poison gas traps. On the other hand, they have social difficulties in town, and their fleshbag buddies will always ask them to take the watch when setting up camp.
Warforged gender is mostly a matter of personal preference, perhaps accompanied by the use of the Armory skill. Warforged usually choose names from the culture in which they live, but some prefer simple one-word names that allude to their vocation or personality. A holy warrior who lives to protect the weak might name himself Shield, and there’s that one guy who called himself Awesome Bucket.
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A Review of Pyramid #3/106: Dungeon Fantasy
I’m a little later to this party than I thought I’d be, but here it goes anyway. Pyramid #3/106 is the first issue of the magazine to be released after the completion of the Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game. While the game itself is still not available to the public at the time of this writing, the many Kickstarter backers have started receiving their copies. I guess this issue is meant to both appeal to them and to get other players interested in the upcoming game.
What’s In It?
The cover is an illustration from the game itself, depicting an armored knight and a wizard or druid cautiously advancing through a tunnel whose walls are covered in glowing sigils. Maybe it’s the style of the knight’s armor, but the piece gives me a bit of a Dark Souls vibe.
After the usual introductory blurbs about what’s in the issue, we get the first “real” article: Designer’s Notes for the DFRPG, by Sean Punch himself. It tells us what it was like to write the game, and gives us an incredibly detailed account of what’s in each of its books (including the stretch goals and add-ons) and how that content differs from what’s in the Basic Set. If none of the excellent DFRPG reviews published on the Internet so far have answered all of your questions about the game, then it might be worth buying this issue for the six pages of designer’s notes alone - you won’t get a more complete description without reading the game itself.
Next comes an article on Quick Equipment Kits, by Peter V. Dell’Orto. It has loadouts in it, which is good because I love loadouts! The article is only four pages long, so if you don’t love loadouts you can rest assured that this isn’t reprinting the whole of GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 13 for the new “edition”. This article leaves weapon and armor selection entirely to players, and instead focuses on all the other stuff. It has a basic delver package with a minimum of generally useful gear like ropes and blankets. It then presents a set of add-ons separated not by character template, but by function within the party: Cartographer, Door Breaker, Medic, and so on. It also devotes some space to pre-filled quivers of arrows or bolts, pre-filled bags of sling stones, and bulk rations of all kinds, which are nifty time-savers all by themselves.
Next comes a whole bunch of Deathtraps by Cristopher R. Rice. While I haven’t gotten around to reading the Dungeon Fantasy Traps PDF, I’m told these are much more cruel than the ones on that book. This makes this a useful tool for GMs who want to go Gygaxian on their players with false-door crossbow traps or the Magical Magnetic Murder Machine.
In the Eidetic Memory column, David Pulver talks about Demi-Human Dungeons. Contrary to what you’d expect from a David Pulver article, there are no math-intensive rules here. Rather, this is a nice set of guidelines for designing dungeons built by dwarves, halflings, elves and gnomes. Why would each of these peoples build a large underground complex? What would they use it for? How can it fall into ruin and be infested by monsters, and what treasure would be left behind? Given that the implied Dungeon Fantasy setting is built on well-worn cliches, the answers will probably not come as big surprises to veteran GMs, but the descriptions are clear and filled with interesting references in their examples. Do you want to know what it would be like to delve into the shattered ruins of Bag End? Read this.
Secrets of the Living Tomb by Steven Marsh details the dungeon from the solo adventure in Pyramid #3/104 in a GM-friendly format, complete with some backstory and possible campaign hooks. I only skimmed this one, as I intend to play the adventure eventually.
Undead, Undead Everywhere by Sean Punch gives us six new undead monsters to play with. You have two new varieties of zombie (drowned and frozen), Swamp Wisps made of toxic gas, and Mummies which are every bit as dangerous as their OD&D counterparts. There’s also a couple of more exotic selections in the Herd Horrors and the Tomb Trees. The Mummies and the two “exotics” were by far the most interesting ones to me, though I liked all of them because you can never have enough monsters.
The State of the Dungeon is a short update on where in the official release process the game is. It’s close to the end, but not there yet. It does focus more on the physical product, which makes me think widely available PDF versions might take a while longer than that to show up, if they do at all. Personally, I would like to see them earlier rather than later. I already have mine, but I want something to link to people who are averse to shipping charges.
We end with a Random Thought Table by Steven Marsh on simplifying things to ease players into the Dungeon Fantasy RPG. It’s mainly a big old plug for the Delvers To Go! supplement, but some of the suggestions here are also interesting.
What Do I Think of It?
Overall, I quite liked this issue, and found it to be worth the price. My personal favorites were Quick Equipment Kits and Undead, Undead Everywhere, with Demi-Human Dungeons coming in close behind.
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Skynet's Avengers: The Damaxuri Deception, Part 2
Looks like my “real-time” gaming group liked the first session of the Damaxuri Deception so much that they decided to alternate between D&D 5th Edition and Planet Mercenary until we’re done with it. This made me quite happy, because I missed being the GM and the system is quite fun. Descriptions for our cast of player characters can be found here.
Rumble at the Warehouse
When we last left Skynet’s Avengers, they had just defeated a bunch of Kostavi’s thugs guarding a fake hideout, and interrogated the survivor before leaving the scene of the fight. The guy told them Kostavi had holed up in another abandoned warehouse with a small army of henchthings. This other warehouse had a cargo elevator that led right into the building from the spaceport on the surface.
The party figured that if they were the ones hiding, they would play to use the shaft as an escape route. After arguing about it for a while they came up with the following plan: Rufus and his fireteam would go topside and infiltrate the warehouse through the elevator shaft, while the rest of the company performed a frontal assault on the warehouse. This would trap the enemies inside and give the Avengers an edge in the fight.
There was one small wrinkle in that plan: the elevator door was locked! It had a big “Out of Order” sign on it, behind which hid a fairly sophisticated lock. The PCs would need to hack that lock or find another way to open the door.
So Orangus decided he would build a bomb. He didn’t have any boomex, and the company had no money with which to buy some, so he used household chemicals, random debris and a large trash can to build a home-brewed monstrosity. He succeeded by just enough to build something, drew the “Spit, Balling Wire and Brass Ball Bearings” Mayhem card, and succeeded in the Engineering roll it asked for despite not having the skill. The effect of that of course went into the bomb, which I ruled was what allowed it to breach the door when it went off.
With the bomb in place, they split up according to the plan, and begun the assault. Kostavi’s hideout was protected on the outside by a pair of minigun drones disguised as trash cans, and once the shooting started someone fired a rocket through the door from within, nearly missing Orangus.
It’s here that the party was formally introduced to what I call the Powered Armor Conundrum. Heavy armor in Planet Mercenary has 1 Hull Point, making it equivalent to an armored vehicle. This means it and its wearer can only be hurt by anti-vehicular weapons. However, even one hit by such a weapon will destroy the ruinously expensive suit, which means PCs wearing the best armor are the ones most afraid of being hit in any fight involving heavy weapons. Such as this one.
Aside from the two drones, Kostavi had four goon squads inside the warehouse, hiding amongst piles of containers arranged to serve as cover. I ruled one of these had rocket launchers - they’d still do the damage listed in their basic stat block, but that damage would have the Anti-Vehicular Payload tag. That prevented Orangus from running amok without fear of being hit.
Kostavi herself was in a suit of flying powered armor equipped with a rocket launcher and plasma cannon, in addition to a Goaltender drone. She fought openly until Orangus managed to tag her with a plasma bolt and destroy her armor. From that point on, her tactic consisted of hiding and sneaking around the warehouse while her goons distracted the PCs, taking every opportunity to snipe at the geatest threats. When Rufus revealed himself, it became obvious that the greatest threat was him, since he was blocking Kostavi’s retreat.
Kostavi broadcast that she had a bomb tied to a heart monitor, and would manually detonate it unless the PCs stood down and let her leave. The PCs called her bluff and kept fighting.
Unfortunately I never managed to hit anyone with a heavy weapon - the players wisely began to use one action each turn to dodge, and kept rolling well on those attempts. Some of the more lightly armored characters did get hit. I told them how much damage they would suffer and gave them a chance to spend a RiPP on Ablative Meat, which meant that the rule got used fairly often. Thus did poor Jonas from the grunt pool meet his death in battle. Other uses of the rule caused one Leto’s Joy clones to be named Joy Katislene1, and Rufus to remind me that he named most of his fireteam after the cast of Avatar: The Last Airbender.
Rufus was in a particularly bad position here because a lot of enemies were targetting him, and I ruled that since he on the opposite side of the battlefield from most of the company he didn’t have access to the Grunt Pool for Ablative Meat purposes. He also didn’t remember to dodge in the first few rounds. Fortunately, his grunts were lucky, and would survive to complain about him another day.
Soon the party began to spend more actions looking for Kostavi in the middle of the fight than actually fighting! The problem here was that only Orangus and Max had even middling Perception, and she had a Stealth of 11 and rolled really well.
Orangus decides he’s going to end this swiftly by finding the best place to plant a bomb on this building and doing that. He not only found the perfect spot, but also found that someone had already planted a bomb there. A nuclear bomb. That bluff wasn’t quite as bluffy as they thought!
Orangus recognizes the device as an Urthreep Industries Dial-a-Yield, which is currently set to something equivalent to 1 ton of TNT. He decides to disarm it right then and there, and between his high Demolitions skill, his specialty in Disarming and generous RiPP expenditure, manages to roll a 23. The bomb is deactivated!
Kostavi still eludes them for a while longer. Finally I turn to Leto, whose turn it was at the time:
Me: Pay me one RiPP and I’ll let you find Kostavi.
So Leto spots her hiding out aways from the main body of the fight, lining up another shot, and communicates her location to the company. Rufus leaves his position to charge hers, and attempts to subdue Kostavi in unarmed combat. She nimbly dodges away and shoots him point-blank with a plasma cannon.
Now, some time before the fight started, Rufus had drawn the “Oh Captain, My Captain” Mayhem card. This card can be invoked when the PC in question is about to take damage and has the effect of applying the damage to the Captain instead, essentially using them as free Ablative Meat for that attack.
I initially considered voiding the card, since the company Captain is Skynet, which is also their ship. Then I decided I would come up with something if the card came into play, and told him to keep it. Since Rufus was more afraid of losing his extremely pricey EX Supersuit than of losing his captain, he used the card when Kostavi hit him.
This means that the sound of an explosion was heard over the company comms, and Skynet cooly ordered them to finish that firefight already and come help her repel these pesky boarders. So yeah, Rufus was safe but the Captain took a hit.
The fight did end soon after that, when Leto attempted to charge Kostavi and melee her. He had a Melee of 1, she had a Defense of 18, he rolled a natural 17. Leto does a fixed 11 damage with his claws, which left Kostavi with 1 hp. I ruled she had been squashed like a bug and was unconscious.
Leto broadcasts to the enemies that he has their boss and that if they don’t stand down he’ll finish her off and make the bomb explode. The bomb in question has been very publically disarmed, so I he rolls Bluff to make the threat stick. It turns out Kostavi is so underhanded her goons are ready to believe she had another bomb hidden somewhere. They drop their weapons and surrender. The party lets them leave, since they claim they were just hired muscle and that’s something they can empathize with. Their stuff stays, of course.
That’s All, Folks!
And that’s where we stopped the session, since we were out of time. The party has to take the unconscious Kostavi to the authorities without getting implicated in the many shootouts and explosions they engaged in, and now they also have the matter of the boarders currently trying to enter their ship2.
Who are these boarders? I don’t know yet! We are entering uncharted territory here, since that bit isn’t in the published adventure. I have two weeks to come up with them.
This session was a little more “rules-intensive” from my point of view, which left less space for levity. The players, however, told me they found it even more fun than the first session, so I’m happy. I discovered I was operating under a slight misconception regarding Mayhem: only players draw Mayhem cards, and only when the test in question succeeds. Before this, they managed to turn at least one failure into a success due to a serendipitous Mayhem draw.
For the next session I’ll also refresh my memory on how goon squads work - for this fight, I ruled that a non-area-effect attack would kill at most one individual in the squad, so even though the goons only had 2hp apiece it took 3 successful attacks to take the whole squad out. It made them a suitable threat for the players and their up-gunned fireteams.
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Agnostic Dungeon Fantasy
The Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game follows a pretty traditional split for its magic. Wizards can do almost everything, but healing and other related magic are the sole province of clerics, who in turn get their spells from the gods. Druids also have their own “turf” staked out, receiving their powers from the might of Nature. This, of course, means that in your typical Dungeon Fantasy setting the gods are real and Nature as a whole is itself a sort of deity.
That’s not a problem for groups who want to play in the game’s implied setting, or in an established setting that follows the same conventions. On the contrary, it makes playing in those worlds very straightforward!
However, not all settings follow these conventions. One popular example is Thedas, the setting of the Dragon Age games. Another is the world of Dragon’s Dogma, which I have been covering in some detail on this blog. Though faith and religion are prominent themes in these worlds, priests don’t gain any supernatural powers from their deities. In fact, the very existence of the gods is a matter of, well, faith. All magic is wizardly in nature, even spells that deal with healing or with plants and animals.
Even some D&D settings take a similar approach. Eberron still restricts access to healing magic to “divine” characters, but their powers come from specialized training rather than being granted through prayer. Does the training put clerics in direct contact with their gods, or is it just a specialized form of wizardry? Once again, it’s a matter of faith.
And then there’s Final Fantasy, a series that does its own thing by having very present “god-like” entities in each of its games yet stating that the magic traditionally associated with clerics is wielded by especially trained wizards that don’t necessarily have any relation to those entities.
GMs who want to use Dungeon Fantasy to run a campaign in one of those settings, or in a home-brewed setting following similar themes, need to do a bit of work. I’ve included several suggestions on how to do it below.
First Step: Clerics are Wizards
In an “agnostic” Dungeon Fantasy setting, all magic is wizardly! Neither type of Power Investiture exists. Druids and clerics rely on Magery instead. In effect, they are wizards who underwent somewhat different training.
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The “set” advantages in the Cleric template become Clerical Investment {5} and Magery 3 {35}, leaving 40 discretionary points for advantages.
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The “set” advantages in the Druid template become Green Thumb 1 {5} and Magery 3 {35}, leaving 35 discretionary points for advantages.
This step is the same no matter what other decisions you make for the campaign.
Second Step: Spells
Since everyone is a wizard, everyone draws from the same spell list! This list should include all the spells that were previously forbidden to wizards, since that particular kind of niche protection is now unnecessary. All former clerical and druidic spells rely on mana, and are affected by the same countermeasures as wizardly spells.
If you’re using the Dungeon Fantasy boxed set, this presents a bit of a problem. Wizardly spells have complex prerequisite chains, while the others have no requirements beyond a certain level of Power Investiture. How to effectively combine the two? Here are some alternatives:
The Simple Option
If you’re trying to learn a spell from the Cleric or Druid lists that isn’t also on the Wizard list, look up its required level of Power Investiture, and read that as the required level of Magery for the spell. That is its only prerequisite! If the spell in question is on the Wizard list, you must use its standard wizardly prerequisites.
This is a good option for settings like that of Dragon Age or Dragon’s Dogma, where healing or nature magic is something any wizard can learn.
The Complex Option
Under this option, clerics and druids train in exotic styles or wizardry only taught to members of their church or circle. Record the Cleric’s Magery as Magery (Holy), and the Druid’s as Magery (Druidic)1. They use their traditional spell lists and prerequisite structure, though their spells still count as wizardly and are affected by mana levels and magical countermeasures.
All three spell-casting professions also gain access to the following advantage:
Magical Style Familiarity (2 points/level)
Prerequisite: Magery (Any) 1+
You have learned the secrets of another magical style. Specify which one (Wizardly, Holy, or Druidic) when you first buy this advantage. This must obviously be different from your first style!
You can learn spells from your new style as if you had that style’s Magery at a level equal to your level in this advantage. You can’t have more levels of this advantage than you have Magery. When you learn a spell, also write down which style it is from. Spells learned as part of one style can’t serve as prerequisites for another!
The GM might ask for a story reason for you to learn this advantage, such as joining a religious order, druidic circle, or wizard’s guild. If you already know two styles, you can buy the advantage again to learn the third one!
This is a good option for settings in the vein of Eberron or Final Fantasy, where the different types of magic are all gained through training but their practitioners jealously guard their secrets from each other2.
The Expensive Option
Use the prerequisite chains from GURPS Magic, which already organizes all of its spells as if they were wizardly. This is the expensive option because you would need to acquire the book if you don’t have it already, and using it just for the prerequisites might be a bit wasteful. It does have a fair number of spells that aren’t present in the Dungeon Fantasy boxed set, though those would need some careful scrutiny before you can let them into your game.
Third Step: Special Abilities
Clerical and Druidic magic are more than just spells! Each includes a set of intrinsic powers bought as advantages, known as Holy Might and Druidic Arts. They are an important part of these templates, and vital to the Holy Warrior, who relies entirely on Holy Might instead of spells.
What should we do with them? Once again, there are several options.
The Harsh Option
These abilities simply don’t exist in the setting. Magic means spells, period. This means that those discretionary points for Druids and Clerics that don’t go into advantages will go to spells instead, and that the Holy Warrior template cannot be used as-is in your campaign.
The appropriate template to use in its place depends on what the player’s central concept is. A warrior who is a member of a Church could be a Knight, perhaps with Clerical Investment added in. A character who needs to combine martial prowess with a bit of supernatural help could be a well-armed Cleric who put a few additional points into ST and weapon skills.
Spell-casting characters can still spend their points on supernatural advantages permitted to wizards, such as Wild Magic or Improved Magic Resistance.
This is harsh because it significantly cuts down on the number of available character options! It most resembles the very oldest versions of D&D, which didn’t have a cleric class. Most other fantasy settings I know of feature at least some kind of non-spell supernatural power, even if it’s just the ability to turn undead.
The Cool Option
Both Holy Might and Druidic Arts are now considered “wizardly” powers! Magery becomes the applicable talent for them. Instead of depending on the wielder’s virtuous conduct or on the strength of Nature, they now depend on mana, just like spells.
This means they work normally when the mana level is normal or higher. When it’s low, the character either gets a -5 to any rolls to use the ability, or a 50% reduction in potency if the ability doesn’t require a roll. In a no mana zone, they don’t work at all!
The flavor of each ability’s description should change to reflect their new nature, where appropriate. For example, Holy Might abilities whose descriptions imply divine guidance would instead be based on divination magic. Where a specific ability has an effect that overlaps with an existing Wizard power-up, use the Wizard version instead. This mostly means using Wild Magic (Adventurers, p. 41) instead of Contingency Casting (Adventurers, p. 20).
In a setting where any magician can learn any spell, they can also learn any of these abilities. In settings that use the Complex option, a character can learn the abilities for their own “style” and for any other for which they bought Magical Style Familiarity, with the level of that advantage serving as the talent for the power. Everyone who would have access to Contingency Casting still has access to Wild Magic instead without having to pay extra for it.
Mana-based Holy Might abilities don’t go away if their wielder stops behaving virtuously, which allows for stories where villains hide among the ranks of the Church, or where the organization itself behaves terribly while claiming virtue is on their side. These are the hallmark of “grittier” settings like that of Dragon Age.
Conclusion
By picking one option for spells and one for abilities from the ones outlined above you would be well on your way to having an “agnostic” Dungeon Fantasy setting.
For comparison, the Dragon’s Dogma adaptation I’ve been writing on this blog uses the Expensive option for spells because it predates the Dungeon Fantasy boxed set and assumes the GM will already have GURPS Magic. For magical abilities, it takes an approach similar to the Harsh option but adds a custom list of power-ups any magical character can learn. It would work just as well with the Simple and Cool options instead.
Which options do you prefer?
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