Dark Sun: An Interlude

I still want to put a GURPS version of Gob together, and maybe, maybe, maybe Scorrin as well. However, Lance and I were talking today (Saturday) and he said we should burn my campaign world down and play GURPS Dark Sun, and now I am thinking of conversion ideas. Because that's fun. 

So there are a couple of core concepts to Dark Sun. The first and foremost is that magic is the worst. Arcane magic is broken down into two different types: defiling and preserving. Preserving is the "good" way and defiling is the "bad" way. Magic eats life in Athas. Unrestrained use of magic is why the planet is such a wasteland. Defilers don't bother attempting to restrain their magic, they just let it kill vegetation and reduce earth to inert dust and such. Preservers restrain that energy. Defiler kits typically advance quicker than Preserver ones. 

If you're unfamiliar with 2nd Edition DnD, each class used a different experience chart. Rogues his level 2 at 1250 experience, Clerics at 1500, Fighters at 2000, and Wizards at 2500. In Dark Sun campaigns, the experience to get a Defiler to 2nd level is 1700, and they function as Wizards with some heavy social issues to overcome and a mandatory non-good alignment. They can even specialize in a school of magic. 

The next core concept is psionics. Almost everyone on Athas is psionic, even some of the fucking plants. 

The next is weird races and shit. Muls (super tough half-dwarves), Thri-Kreen (mantis men), Half-Giants.

There's also the issue of increased toughness. Characters start at 3rd level in Dark Sun campaigns. The races also have different ability score set ups. In 2nd Edition, basic races got a +1 to one score and a -1 to another score. Humans had neither, but they could advance to any level in any class and they had the option to dual-class, which is a weird option I'm not even sure I understand. Demihumans had level caps (Dwarves could only go to level 12 in the Fighter class for instance), but they could multi-class and advance along multiple classes at the same time, splitting their experience gained between the two or three classes. For instance, instead of the +1 Dexterity, -1 Constitution, Athasian Elves get a +2 Dexterity, +1 Intelligence, -2 Constitution, and -1 Wisdom. 

Let's start with Defiling. So the best way is to use Magery with a limitation or something. Magery 0 is always 5 points. Magery of 1+ is 10 points per level. So what we do is have Defilers buy Magery levels with the temporary disadvantage limitation and we choose the Lifebane disadvantage. This causes plants and such to die around the character when they cast spells. It ends up being a 10% reduction in the cost of Magery, so it costs a Defilier 9 points per level, rather than 10. This also goes along with the idea that Defiling is easier to master because a Preserver will have to spend more character points on Magery than a Defilier. It would also be appropriate to give the Defiler the Secret disadvantage with the Imprisonment of Exile option for -20 points or the Possible Death exile for -30. I suppose it depends on what kind of Defiler you are. A Defiler working for a Sorcerer King probably has some leeway to be forthright about their nature. 

I've talked about psionics before, buy advantages and apply the appropriate modifiers to them. To display the heavy psionic nature of Dark Sun, you could make psionic powers accessible to everyone so they don't need to buy an Unusual Background or something. You could also let everyone have a free psionic perk (a 1 point advantage). I have a GURPS book called Psi Powers and it lists several quirk level psionic things. Like being able to light fires with a finger (but not be hot enough to do damage). 

Elves are different in Dark Sun. Athasian Elves have this thing called the elf run. A regular Elf in 2nd Edition can move 120 feet in a 10 second round. Athasian Elves can move 240. Apparently in 2nd Edition combat round movement is done in tens of feet, which outside of combat/dungeon movement is handled in tens of yards. So regular Elf wandering around outside can move 120 yards in a round. So while mucking about the desert, Athasian Elves can move 240 yards in a round. Actual overland travel during the day by doubling their movement rate and calling it miles. So the Athasian Elf's movement rate of 24 is 120 feet in combat, 120 yards while outside, and 48 miles during 10 hours of walking during the day. In addition to all of this nonsensical nonsense, Athasian Elves add their Constitution score to the miles per day they can cover. So John P. Elf Pants with a 10 in Constitution can cover 58 miles when he walks around Athas. If he does a forced march he can cover 70. 

I just want to point out the 2nd Edition is painful to talk about sometimes. 

So I guess you'd give Athasian Elves Enhanced Move (Ground). This only increases your top speed, so you would have to accelerate up to the movement rate. Because of that, I don't think this one requires any specific limitations or modifiers. It also has no effect on the dodge or base speed of the character, so it won't make Elves any more dodgy or anything than normal, which is consistent with 2nd Edition elf runs. 

Muls. Muls are pretty easy. No wait. Muls are crazy. So Athasian Dwarves get a +1 to their Strength and a +2 to their Constitution. Humans, like other campaign settings, have no modifiers to their ability scores. Muls get +2 to Strength and a +1 to Constitution. Because half-breed? Fuck if I know. Half-Elves in Dragonlance get a +2 to Dexterity in 2nd Edition, and Elves still only get a +1. So basically, being half anything in weird campaign settings refines the demi-human traits, instead of diluting them. Fucking 2nd Edition. 

Anyway. Muls are super tough and hard to tucker out in Athas. They have a bunch of rules for strenuous work and how long they can go before needing to rest. For instance, normal activity like walking, they can do that for days equal to their constitution before needing to rest. Muls, so they can walk at a regular normal pace for at least at days straight without getting tired. 2nd Edition has racial minimums and maximums for ability scores, and the minimum Constitution for Muls is 8. 

The first modification I would do would be to say that Muls have to have a minimum of 10 Fatigue Points, and instead of saying their maximum number of FP is 30% above their HT, I would say they can increase their FP up to double their HT. That covers endurance for the most part. It might also be appropriate to give them levels of Hard to Kill and Hard to Subdue, or at least say they can buy more than 2 levels of those advantages, which is the maximum for a human type character. I could also probably justify giving them High Pain Threshold, which lets characters avoid the shock penalty to DX and IQ you get when you get injured. Yeah, GURPS does that. When you take damage, it penalizes your DX and IQ for your next turn only, so it reduces them by the amount of HP you lost to an attack, up to a maximum of -4. 

Thri-Kreen are also an oddball race. They'd obviously need two doses of the Extra Arms advantage, as they have 4 arms. They're also like 7 feet tall, so they'd have a +1 Size Modifier. They also have a tough exoskeleton (equivalent to chain mail), so they'd need Damage Resistance to some degree with the Can't Wear Armor limitation (they don't wear armor, per the background material). Their eyes are sort of on the side of their heads, so they'd need a wider vision arc, but I forget the name of that advantage. They have antenna that improve their vision a bit, so they'd need a level of Acute Sense (Sight) and Night Vision. They'd also need Claws and the Teeth advantages for their claws and mandibles. They have a paralytic venom, so they'd need an Affliction linked to their bite that paralyzes. They can also make 20 foot jumps or leap a distance of 50 feet (when they hit third level). So they'd need like three levels of Super Jump (for thirty freaking points). At 7th level, they gain a 75% chance to dodge missile weapons that they attacked with, which is like, fucking a. I guess using the 3d6 system of probability, bell curve, whatever, that's only a 13 for the Dodge active defense. I guess they'd need some levels of Enhanced Defense (Dodge). 

Yeesh, Thri-Kreen would be expensive as fuck in GURPS. Thri-Kreen are the best. 

Half-Giants. They're big. They get a Size Modifier of +2. They also have this bizarre thing where one aspect of their alignment is fixed and chosen at character creation, but the other portion is chosen every day after they wake up in the morning. Fuck that. 2nd Edition can keep alignment. I want no part of it. Half-Giants also roll double hit dice in 2nd Edition. I think just saying that Half-Giants can buy HP up to double their ST, similar to Muls and FP, is sufficient to represent that. They're already buying ST cheaper because of their size. You can do that in GURPS. If you have a positive Size Modifier in GURPs, you multiply it by ten an apply it as a reduction to your ST costs. So with a +2 modifier, Half-Giant's would buy ST for 8 points per +1, rather than 10 points. So yeah, Half-Giants are big and stuff. 

I think that covers the rules related stuff from Dark Sun. There's also elemental Clerics, Druids, and the Templars to convert I suppose. Templars would require some degree of Power Investiture, which is like the "divine" form of magic in GURPS. Sort of. Your magical power for spells stems from power granted to you by someone else. It would probably need to be accompanied by some sort of Duty or Vow disadvantage and some sort of social Rank advantage or some form of the Legal Enforcement Powers advantage. Clerics and Druids would be the same thing, just without social advantages. Clerics drawing power from the elemental planes would obviously have heavily restricted access to spells. Druids in Dark Sun draw their powers from spirits inhabiting natural features, so their spells would be determined by the spirit. 

Alright, I think that'll do. This was fun. I like Dark Sun, and GURPS. They are collectively the best. 

Gunslingers Are Stupid

Ok, so after seeing my post, Jason wanted to know how to covert Gunslinger deeds and such. Specifically, the liquid courage, sea dog's gait, and utility shot deeds. 

Liquid Courage

Liquid courage is a Gunslinger (Buccaneer) ability that lets you drink all day to create grog points, which power some of the special abilities of the Gunslinger. It also grants a bonus on fear saves for each grog point Karrak currently has, and a dodge bonus to AC vs. attacks of opportunity. Attacks of opportunity aren't a thing in GURPS as far as I know, but fear is definitely present. 

How we represent this ability is as follows: we buy the Fearlessness advantage. GURPS has things called fright checks, which is pretty self explanatory. They're fear checks, but not just scary things. They are for representing terrifying ice in your guts terror shitting feat. You roll against your Will to resist them. Each level of Fearlessness (2 points each) adds a +1 to your Will when rolling against it for fright checks. We then modify the Fearlessness advantage with the trigger limitation, which means that Karrak has to be exposed to a substance before Fearlessness activates. We choose alcohol, which is a very common material, and provides a -10% reduction in the cost of Fearlessness. So, whenever Karrak is exposed to alcohol, he gains his Fearlessness bonus for 1 minute. 

Sea Dog's Gait

Sea dog's gait grants the Gunslinger (Buccaneer) the Sea Legs feat (+2 on Acrobatics, Climb, and Swim checks). It also lets them spend a grit/grog/whatever point to ignore difficult terrain. Hmm. 

The Sea Legs feat is easy, buy skill levels in Acrobatics, Climbing, and Swimming. The other stuff, no idea. There is an advantage called Terrain Adaptation that removes the DX and Move penalty for moving in a type of unstable terrain type, but I'm not sure what that penalty is in the first place. Seems like an appropriate place to begin though. It would be appropriate to slap on the trigger limitation with alcohol as well. 

Utility Shot

Utility shot is a collection of three utility deeds. Blast lock lets you shoot a lock off to unlock a door. Scoot unattended object lets you shoot something to move it without damaging it. Stop bleeding lets you shoot your revolver and use the hot barrel to end a bleed effect. 

Blast Lock: Shoot the lock with a gun. I don't know why this is even a special ability for the Gunslinger. Every other class can attack an object to break it, I would assume that Gunslinger's should be able to as well, but I guess I'm wrong. 

Scoot Unattended Object: Hmm. There's nothing directly in the advantages that I can find with a quick search, but the High-Tech appendix Gunmen has a perk called Schtick, which is a cool move you perform like whirling a pistol around your finger, and using bullets to scoot small objects feels like that style of ability. So I create a perk (a minor 1 point advantage) called Scoot. You roll against Guns to fire a bullet at an object to move it one yard. Failure deals the firearm's damage against the object. 

Stop Bleeding: Bleeding is an optional rule in GURPS. If you use it, every minute after you take an impaling or cutting wound, you roll against HT -1 per 5 hit points of damage, or you lose 1 hit point to blood loss. If I were to use these bleeding rules, I would just create another perk, Cordite Cauterization. The perk would let you fire off a bullet and roll against HT to "cauterize" a wound. 

So that's that. Good enough, Jason? Anyone have anything else they're interested in seeing?

Pathfinder Staples Converted

This is going to be part advice column and part exercise for myself in converting a bunch of Pathfinder staples to GURPS to see how much hard/easy/etc it is to make the transition from a Pathfinder character/mindset to a GURPS one. 

Combat Style

Combat style is a stupid feature of the Ranger class. Ranger is a stupid class. 

Familiars

This includes animal companions, cohorts, eidolons, thralls, and so on. Use the allies advantage with the appropriate modifiers. Minion for thralls and familiars, summonable for Eidolons, etc. 

Interesting note: Eidolons, the outsiders summoned by Summoners from other planes that evolve over time as the Summoner grows more powerful, are Extraordinary abilities in Pathfinder. Things anyone can learn to do. Just like the subtle psionic pulse of the Thrallherd that goes out into the wide world and turns weak willed individuals into fanatics devoted to them, and Armor Training. All three are Extraordinary abilities. That makes sense. 

Intuitive Casters
Magic in GURPS is learned, you buy spells like skills after buying the Magery advantage. There's also a mana concept I need to review at some point. The concept of the intuitive caster that can cast because of bloodline or leadership qualities or undead lifeforce has existed in DnD for a while now. To recreate this, you buy advantages like Innate Attack and Affliction and various other defensive or offensive advantages with the magic modifier for -10%, Sorcery 0, and add a fatigue point cost to each of them, which applies to your energy threshold and such, rather than actual FP. All magic is prone to misfire in Hekinoe, not just spells. 

Mind Blades

Soulknives use a sort of mental construct of idealized will called a mind blade. It just erupts from their hands and so forth and takes the form of a blade or whatever. There are many varieties of mind blade, some deal fire damage, some emulate specific weapons, some are thrown or shot like a bow. This is pretty easy to recreate in GURPS. You buy levels of Innate Attack up to a sufficient damage level, and appropriate type of damage, and apply modifiers limiting it to close combat instead of range (if you want) then apply the psychokinetic modifier. A variable mind blade can be achieved by using the alternative attack option like I did with Donovan's mind acid, fire, and lightning. 

Mythic/Epic

This one is odd because there's no real carry over other than progressively higher points. Which is something, but not exactly what we think of when we say mythic or epic. I think the way I would do this would be to create an advantage called Mythic or Epic or something. I like Mythic more though. It would be 30 points or so. I would incorporate like +5 hit points into it and maybe a level or two of Hard to Kill and Hard to Subdue and I'd also say it counts as a special background and Weapon Master or some such for the purposes of advantages, skills, and techniques, and such. 

In GURPS, some special skills like Throwing Art or advantages like Weapon Master require you to have some form of training or special background, you can't just up and take them. Additionally, supernatural advantages can't be taken by normal people ever. So your 500 point human sword swinger (or epitome of human physical fitness/shield chucker) can't just up and take Damage Resistance, Regeneration, Supernatural Durability, or Unkillable because he can afford them. This Mythic advantage would allow him to do so with GM fiat. Obviously, you couldn't take this advantage until I OKed it. 

Psionics

I kind of went over this with Donovan on the blog, but the gist is that you buy various advantages and apply psionic modifiers to the advantage, then apply a FP cost or use per day limitation to it. Then you burn down the campaign universe.

Psychic Reformation

Psychic reformation is this real neat power that lets a Psion delve back into his brain to rearrange skills and feats. The further you go back, the more penalties you accrue for doing so (equivalent to 1 negative level per level back you go). You can augment the power to reduce the duration of the penalties though (Donovan can currently afford to only suffer them until he gets a chance to rest for 8 hours, in four levels he'll be able to ignore them though). The best way to recreate this is with the Modular Abilities advantage in GURPS. Basically, this lets you "buy" a set of character points that can be changed up when you deem it appropriate. These variable points are limited to skills and spells though. The most appropriate method of doing it is the Super-Memorization option, which has a base cost of 5 points, plus 3 points per point of Modular Abilities points you have. It also requires that you spend time memorizing what you are changing on your character, so you need reference materials. It's not as quick as the Pathfinder Version, but it works quite well I think. To reduce the cost, you can limit it to a 1/day ability and of course add the telepathy modifier and charge an FP cost for use. 

Rage/Mutagen

These abilities are more or less the same thing for all intents and purposes. They differ slightly in that the Alchemist mutagen is more versatile and is a alchemical concoction, rather than just something he does. For rage, I'd buy ST, then add the link modifier to link it to Hard to Subdue and Hard to Kill and add a Fatigue Point Cost then add the limitation Temporary Disadvantage to it coupled with the Bloodlust or Berserk disadvantages. With the mutagen, I'd buy ST, DX, HT, or whatever characteristic you wanted to improve temporarily and link it with Damage Resistance (along with whatever other special effects you want, there are lots of special mutagens, Gob had an invisibility one) to simulate the natural armor, then apply some gadget based limitations or the limited uses per day limitation. In Hekinoe, you'd give the mutagen the sorcery (i.e. magic) limitation and it would incur a misfire chance and cost FP that would be applied to your threshold.

Shadowdancer

The spells can be handled with Magery with a limitation limiting it to darkness, or with a one school limitation stating it only applies to the illusion college of spells. The walking through shadows is easily achieved with Warp and limiting its accessibility to shadows or darkness and a limited range and uses per day. The shadow companion is bought with Ally and giving the ally Shadow Form and an Affliction that damages ST. The hide in plain sight is achieved with Invisibility enhanced with switchable and an accessibility modifier limiting it to when near shadows. 

Sneak Attack

Sneak attack is a staple of rogue and assassin types. It's actually pretty easy to do, and there are two options. The first is to buy techniques to reduce or eliminate the penalties for attacking vital areas of the body like eyes, neck, or vitals. The other option for melee characters to take is to buy Striking ST, which increases your ST only when calculating how hard you hit for 5 points per point of effective ST when hitting someone. Then you apply the surprise only modifier for -60% to the cost. Ranged weapons will have to be satisfied with targeting specific spots on the body for increased damage and additional effects and buying techniques to offset that. But ranged weapons also have an aim characteristic, which increases their effective skill level by a set amount when they spend a round aiming, which also serves to offset the penalty for targeting the head or eyes or neck. 

Spell Combat

Magi have this neat ability that lets them use two-weapon fighting with a weapon in one hand while casting a spell in the other. Fuck. I don't know how to do that off the top of my head. Hrm. Got it! Compartmentalized Mind lets you perform an extra mental maneuver during your round of combat, so in theory, you could use a concentrate maneuver to cast spells while using a physical maneuver to attack. I think I'd apply the normal -4 penalty to DX while doing things with both hands if the spell had a gesture based component though, so Ambidexterity would still be necessary. Boom! I'm sure I could cut down on the cost of compartmentalized mind by applying some sort of accessibility modifier limiting the mental maneuver to spellcasting only. 

Spellslinger

Karl casts his spells through his gun. GURPS already incorporates rules for magic staffs that extend your reach and stuff. So we can attach a gadget limitation to a character's sorcery and we can perhaps use an advantage like Alternative To Magic Staff for like 10 points or so. It was a pretty rough idea when I was making Karl's rough draft, and it still is, but it can be done. 

Edit After The Fact: The magic staff concept is actually an enchantment spell designed to invest a staff with power. I see no reason you couldn't do the same with any weapon or object, so this doesn't really require a specific advantage or anything. 

Trapfinding

Buy Acute Senses but with an accessibility modifier tied to traps only, limiting when it applies. You could also incorporate the Detect advantage with an accessibility modifier limited to magic traps. Or you could buy the Detect ability and modify as special trap detection. 

So those are some things. Anyone have any other stuff they can think of that they'd be interested in seeing converted or think would be challenging to convert?

Karrak Seaborne (Rough Draft)

Once more into the breach and all that. Karrak Seaborne is a Fell Human Descendant. Our first step is to find out what exactly that means. 

Fell Human Descendant

-11 points

Blah Blah Background Stuff.

Disadvantages: Short Lifespan 1 [-10]
Optional Advantages:
Optional Disadvantages: Unnatural Features 1 [-1]
Special: Fell Human Descendants may select one advantage from another The Known World racial template and is determined by their non-Fell Human parent, assuming both parents aren't both Fell Human Descendants. This may not be chosen from the Fallen, Fell Soulless, Rankethlek, or Soulless racial templates. 

Alright, so what this means is that Karrak Seaborne reached maturity at 9 years old or so, at 25 years old he'll be middle aged and need to start making aging rolls every 6 months. These are checks that penalize some of your characteristics that are made against your HT. At 35 years old, he'll need to make these checks every 3 months, and at 45 years old it'll be every 45 days. Shortly thereafter, he'll die. 

Unnatural Features is an option because it kind of simulates weird shit, like Karrak having runes on his skin and in his irises. Not every Fell Human descendant looks all jacked up though. Each level provides a -1 to your skill level of Disguise or Shadowing and provides a +1 to the skill level of other individuals on their attempts to identify or follow you. I just realized this doesn't work for Elduman. With Elduman, I'm trying to convey that their "hair" is actually flexible fibrous crystalline stuff and their faux skin is unnaturally pale and their eyes are raw gemstone. I imagine this would help identify them, but it's not unique to each member. With Fell Humans and their descendants, most of these wonky features come out in completely unique ways. Oh well, I'll revamp it as needed.

The special option is meant to show the varied biology of the Fell Human descendant race with more than just a specific stat bonus like I do in Pathfinder.

Alright, so Karrak has Gifts. Gifts are a strong advantage completely outside of normal advancement. So what I intend on doing is saying that each heap of Gifts Karrak gets provides 20 points of supernatural crap related to the Nel. However, when you gain Gifts, you stop gaining character points until other players catch up. I'll tally them up to give you if you ever end up losing your Gifts. You'll still gain character points from excellent role-playing of your character, and you'll still be able to gain character points during downtime study or practice, but from the adventure reward standpoint, you're frozen. This is similar to the Pathfinder mechanic I'm using. Karrak has two levels of Gifts (three technically, but his immortality with caveats isn't a big deal), so he currently counts as a 12th level character even though he only has 10 levels. He won't gain an 11th level until he reaches the experience necessary to hit 13th. Because Karrak got his Gifts before everyone else reached their current power level, I'm going to attempt to build him first as a 200 point character, then tack on like 60 points of Gift related crud. Wee. 

Gifts are going to have a few special limitations. Specific to Karrak, they're going to come with a variation of a Vow disadvantage that is going to mean that Karrak will lose his Gifts shortly after harming a Feronel or Sokarnel (assuming someone tells Keroen), they'll also come with the Gift modifier for -5%, meaning they're not sorcery and not psionics, so they aren't vulnerable to things that negate or affect things with those modifiers, but they're vulnerable to anti-Gift stuff, which is much rarer so it's a modifier worth less of a reduction. They'll also come with a gadget limitation that states they can be stolen by other Nel. But I'll get to all that later. 

Let's get to the good stuff.

Basic Attributes

Karrak is of average Strength, Intelligence, and Wisdom, so we leave ST, IQ, and Will at their bases of 10. He's almost as Dextrous as Eran though, so we boost that up to 12 for 40 points. He's also pretty hardy, so we boost that to 12 as well for 20 points. He's super unPerceptive, even has a flaw, so we drop that down to 9 for -5 points. His ST is 10, so he only has 10 hit points, we max that out at 13 for 6 points because not being dead is awesome. Karrak's HT is 12, so he has 12 FP, but Karrak is a pretty tough customer so we max his FP out at 15 for 9 points. 

Karrak's Basic Speed comes out to 6 (12+12=24, 24/4=6), which makes his Dodge defense 9 and his Basic Move 6. His weight, height, and ST come to an average build on the build table, so he's of average build. He's normal human size, so we leave him with a Size Modifier of 0. Aside from the runes on his skin, everything about his appearance is average as far as I know, so that's where we leave it all. 


Social Background
His TL is 5, because he's a native of Haven and they have a TL of 5, so we leave that alone. We give him Haven as his native culture, because that's where he's from. He knows Malstern with native comprehension because it is Haven's language. He also knows Goebleen, so we give that to him at accented level comprehension for 4 points. 

We give him Dead Broke for -25 points because he's a lazy adventurer type that can't hold a job down. He's not particularly well known and doesn't have a reputation or rank or anything, so we leave all of that as average. 

So that all brings Karrak up to 39 points for his characteristics and racial template. 

Advantages
Everyone apparently wants to be special and unique and a leader of men, so Karrak also has the Allies advantage. They're constructed similar to Donovan's guys. They're built with 25% of Karrak's point value (25 points each) for 1 point. There are twenty or so of them (way more, but come on, let's be conservative here), so we multiply it by 8 for 8 points. They're around all the time, so we multiply by 4 for frequency of appearance, so we total out at 32 points. Wee! Next, we have to buy Jeremiah. Jeremiah is built at about 75% of Karrak's points, so his base cost is 3 points, and he's around all the fucking time, so we multiply that by 4, for a total of 12 points for Jeremiah Mastsworn. 

Karrak is pretty accustomed to his sword and pistol style of combat, so we also purchase Ambidexterity for him for 5 points, so he doesn't suffer the -4 penalty to DX when using his "off" hand for stuff. This doesn't grant him any extra attacks, he'll still have to use the All-Out Attack maneuver to make more than one attack in a single round. 

Karrak is a dodgeasaurus, so I think I'm going to buy him Enhanced Defenses (Dodge) for 15 points. This will improve his Dodge active defense to 10. So if he wants to try to dodge something, he needs to roll less than 10 on 3d, assuming there aren't a bunch of other modifiers causing him grief. 

Being a Gunslinger and doing the whole Rapid Shot/Deadly Aim/Grog points shit, I think Karrak qualifies for the Gunslinger advantage for 25 points. This means that when he uses the Guns skill and fires at a rate of fire of 1-3, Karrak automatically adds the accuracy statistic of a one-handed firearm to his skill level without having to first perform an Aim maneuver. With a two-handed firearm or with automatic fire, he adds half the weapon's accuracy to his skill level (rounded up). If he does decide to Aim, he adds the accuracy statistic score as normal in addition to the bonus provided by this advantage. 

Time to check our totals here, we've got 49 points from characteristics, -10 from the racial template, and 89 from advantages, for 128 points so far. Luckily, I think I'm done with advantages at the moment. Oh! Nope. We're going to give Karrak Extra Attack for 25 points as well, because he's all fucking pew pew pew swordy sword. This lets Karrak take an extra attack maneuver once per round in addition to the base single maneuver each character can perform each round. So in effect, if he could use All-Out Attack to fire two shots with his revolver, then use another All-Out Attack maneuver to fire two more (assuming he had the ammo for it) or use his sword, or something. Whatever. He attacks a lot. 

Disadvantages
Keeping the trend, Weirdness Magnet for -15 points. Shockingly enough, we give Karrak Alcoholism for -15 points. Every time he is in the presence of alcohol, he must roll vs. his Will to abstain from binge drinking. If he fails the Will roll, he ends up drinking himself stupid for for 2d hours following by a hangover, which GURPS has rules for. The version of alcoholism Jason typically roleplays Karrak as having is probably more appropriately perk level alcoholism, worth -1 point. Basically, this would in theory amount to Karrak needing to have alcohol on hand a all times, or suffer a -1 penalty to certain things, probably in the same vein as withdrawal from alcohol. 

Our disadvantage limit is -25, and we've hit -30, so that's all we're taking. With Extra Attack factored in, we're up to 153, but his disadvantages drag that down to 123. On to skills. 

One last thing about disadvantages, if i were running a GURPS campaign, my rule would be -25 from disadvantages no from racial template or characteristic, but if there is a flaw or weakness central to your character's theme or background, I would allow you to go over the point total. As long as you can justify and explain why your character has it from the narrative perspective.

Skills
Because Karrak is Karrak, we buy the following skills: Acrobatics 14 [12], Carousing 12 [1], Climbing 13 [4], Diplomacy 10 [4], Escape 12 [4], Fast-Draw (Pistol) 13 [2], Fast-Draw (Ammo/TL5) 13 [2], Fast-Talk 11 [4], Guns (Pistol) 15 [8], Jumping 12 [1], Leadership 12 [8], Melee Weapon (Shortsword) 12 [1], Navigation/TL5 (Sea)12 [8], Seamanship/TL5 12 [4], Shiphandling/TL5 13 [16], Sleight of Hand 11 [2], Stealth 12 [2], and Swimming 14 [4]. This comes to 87 points. Wee. 

Now, we have 49 points from characteristics and such, 114 from advantages, -30 from disadvantages, -10 from the racial template, and 87 from skills. This comes to 210 character points for Karrak, excluding Gifts crap. I had originally said 175 points, but I'm ok with 210. He's still lower than 250 character points, which I kind of have in my head as the appropriate character point level for these guys, so we'll call it good. 

Actually, we're at 220. I'm buying two techniques at default+4. They're both Dual-Weapon Attack, once for shortsword and once for pistols. This buys off the -4 penalty to skill level for attack with a weapon in each hand. I think. I might be wrong. I need to review the rules for using a weapon in both hands. But that's what rough drafts are for. 

On to his Gift crap. 

Gifts
The first Gift related thing we need to do is make Karrak immortal with caveats. So we buy Unaging for 15 points and apply the gadget limitation must be forcefully removed for -10% for a net of 14 points. Next we have to sink 10 points into Karrak's short lifespan and temporarily (as long as he has Gifts) buy it off. That's 24 points out of 60. Next we buy Reduced Consumption 2 for 4 points, which means Karrak only has to eat or drink once day, we apply the same gadget limitation as we did to Unaging, but we don't apply the Gift modifier because we don't want his lack of a need for food or water turned off. This amounts to 3 points, for 27/60. The Vow to not harm Feronel or Sokarnel and not piss off Keroen amounts to -10, so we're at 17/60. Nel regenerate, and so does Karrak, albeit super slow in comparison. We'll start at Regenerate (Slow) to regenerate 1 hit point every 12 hours for 10 points, we apply the gadget limitation, but again we leave off the Gift modifier because this isn't something that can be directly turned off by anti Gift stuff, so we're down to 9 points. Nel aren't really affected by the normal elements, so we need Temperature Tolerance 6 for 6 points, this adds Karrak's HT to the temperature ranges he treats as normal. His HT is 12 and we want to even it out so we'll add 36 to each end. Karrak treats temperatures from -1 to 126 degrees Fahrenheit as normal. Again, we want this always in effect, so we only apply the gadget limitation, meaning it only costs 5 points.

One of the things Karrak is really fond of doing is summoning a swarm of monkeys that shit all over their target. There are two ways we could do this, Allies with minion and summonable, and just make some monkeys with an affliction that causes the Nauseated condition. The other way is to just give Karrak an Affliction that causes the Nauseated condition. I'm going to do that. We start with Affliction 1 for 10 points. We give it the Gifts modifier for -5% and the gadget limitation for -10%. Instead of stunning the target, with have it cause the Nauseated condition for +30%. Nauseated causes a -2 penalty to all skill levels and attribute checks, as well as a -1 to all active defenses. It also forces you to make a HT check when exposed to foul odors, if you fail you could end up vomiting for quite a few rounds of combat. That's pretty decent. This comes to +15% to the cost. The target will also gain a bonus on their HT check to resist this Affliction equal to their DR, but we can modify this by giving the Affliction some penetration modifiers. In this instance, I'm not going to do that because DR proving a bonus to the HT kind of goes along with the idea of the swarm of monkeys attempting to shove shit down the target's mouth and having to get around armor to do it. Additionally, there's also a secret modifier to the cost because this is a Gift related effect with a potentially longer than instantaneous duration. This secret limitation provides an additional -10% to the cost, putting us at +5% overall and amounting to 11 points. 

Karrak also has the ability to detect Gifts, so we give him the Detect ability. Gifts are a rare substance, so it is only 5 points. But it is precise because it tells him how far away the Gifts are, which increases the cost by +100%, it also has the analyzing modifier because he automatically detects the nature of the Gifts and their power, so that's another +100%. This advantage gets the Gift modifier for -5% because some Nel can conceal their Gifts. It also gets the forcefully removable gadget limitation for -10%, so we have a net cost of +185% for a total of 15 points. 

Karrak has the ability to create liquor at will. This uses the Create advantage, and rum is a very small and specific section of matter, so it costs 5 points per level. At level 1, Karrak can create up to 10 pounds of rum, this will last 10 seconds unless he stabilizes it via the means listed in the Create ability. Basically, to stabilize $500 worth of his rum, he would have to invest it with a character point. When you stabilize the matter you create, you can spend a character point to stabilize matter equal in value to 10% of the campaign's starting wealth, so for TL5, that's $500. You can unstabilize the matter to gain the character point back though. This ability has the can be forcefully removed and Gifts modifiers, so we drop the cost down to 4 points.

Karrak has the ability to surround himself with a cloud of ash to obscure vision. So we buy Obscure (Vision) 10 (ten levels completely block a sense). The boundaries of this cloud are easily detected, and it only covers a two yard radius. Karrak's Pathfinder version of this has a 40 ft. radius. We can get it to an 8 yard radius for +100%. Cool. Now, we also need it to block related senses. So we modify it with the extended enhancement for +20% to cover infravision, then another +20% for dark vision. So, Karrak can surrounded himself with this cloud of ash that extends in a 24 foot radius around him and blocks vision, dark vision, and infravision. Alright, so we modify it with Gifts for -5% and the can be forcefully removed thing for -10%, putting our net cost 23 points. If we wanted to add another +50% modifier, we could make it so Karrak is not impeded by his own cloud of ash. Which is much handier, but slightly more expensive. 

This unfortunately puts us at 69 points for Karrak's Gifts. Slightly over what I'd originally said I wanted it to be. Oh well. 


Karrak also has a special weakness because of his Gifts. We give his Gift section the Weakness disadvantage, and we say he takes 1d of damage per 5 minutes of exposure to it. This material he is exposed to isn't exactly common, but I wouldn't call it rare, so we say it is an occasional material, which modifies the Weakness disadvantage point value by x1. So, it is worth -10 points total, bringing us down to 59 points of Gifts. I'm calling it good. 

Hmm. Apparently I did some mathing wrong. Karrak actually has 73 points worth of Gifts. Whatever. I don't even like Karrak. He's dumb and has a stupid face. 

So here is Karrak Seaborne:

Character Sheet

293 points

Karrak Seaborne
19 year old Fell Human Descendant/Gift Invested Mortal

6' 170 lbs. 

ST: 10 [0]

DX: 12 [40]

IQ: 10 [0]

HT: 12 [20]

HP: 13 [6]

Will: 10 [0]

Per: 9 [-5]

FP: 15 [9]

Basic Speed: 6 [0]

Dodge: 9

Basic Move: 6 [0]

Build: Average [0]

Size Modifier: 0

Appearance: Average [0]

Technology Level: 5 [0]

Cultural Familiarity Haven (native)

Languages: Malstern [0], Goebleen (accented) [4]

Wealth: Dead broke [-25]

Point From Characteristics: 49

Points From Advantages: 114
Allies: 20 redshirt followers (25% points, always around) [32]
Ally: Jeremiah (75% points, always around) [12]
Ambidexterity [5]
Enhanced Defenses (Dodge) [15]
Extra Attack [25]
Gunslinger [25]

Points From Disadvantages: -30
Alcoholism [-15]
Weirdness Magnet [-15]
Points From Perks: 

Points From Racial Template: -10
Short Lifespan 1 [-10]
Unnatural Features 1 [-1]
Points From Skills: 87
Acrobatics 14 [12]
Carousing 12 [1]
Climbing 13 [4]
Diplomacy 10 [4]
Escape 12 [4]
Fast-Draw (Pistol) 13 [2]
Fast-Draw (Ammo/TL5) 13 [2]
Fast-Talk 11 [4]
Guns (Pistol) 15 [8]
Jumping 12 [1]
Leadership 12 [8]
Melee Weapon (Shortsword) 12 [1]
Navigation/TL5 (Sea)12 [8]
Seamanship/TL5 12 [4]
Shiphandling/TL5 13 [16]
Sleight of Hand 11 [2]
Stealth 12 [2]
Swimming 14 [4]
Points From Quirks: 

Points From Techniques: 10
Dual Weapon Attack (Melee) 12 [5]
Dual Weapon Attack (Pistols) 15 [5]
Points From Gifts: 73
Ash Cloud: Obscure (Vision) 10 (extended x2, area of effect x2, Gifts, can be forcefully removed) [23]
Create Rum 1 (specific item, Gifts, can be forcefully removed) [4]
Detect Gifts (analyzing, precise, Gifts, can be forcefully removed) [14]
Negating Short Lifespan [10]
Reduced Consumption 2 (can be forcefully removed)  [3] 
Regeneration (slow, can be forcefully removed) [9]
Shit Monkeys: Affliction 1 (Gifts, can be forcefully removed, causes Naseated, REDACTED) [11]
Temperature Tolerance 6 (-1 to 126, can be forcefully removed) [5]
Unaging (can be forcefully removed) [14]
Vow (Major: Do No Harm to Feronel or Sokarnel,Don't Piss Off Keroen Skathos) [-10]
Weakness: REDACTED (1d per 5 minutes, occasional material) [-10]

So yeah, that's Karrak. He came out pretty well after everything is said and done. There's a few spots where he could be modified slightly, plus he lacks all the magical crap provided by his Sorcerer bloodline in Pathfinder. Fuck it, I'm out. 

Eran Jenevan (Rough Draft)

Fuck you, Lance. Prepare for numbers and statistics and tweaking.

I've shifted my expectations up, so we're going with a 225 point character with a possibility of taking 25 points in disadvantages, not counting those that stem from characteristics or racial template.

Sereth

60 Points

Blah Blah Background Stuff.

Advantages: Acute Senses 1 (Vision) [2], Extended Lifespan 2 [4], Flexibility (Double-Jointed...dick) [15], Long Arms x2 [20], Long Legs [20], Nictitating Membrane 1 [1], Night Vision 2 [2], Temperature Tolerance 1 (hot) [1]
Disadvantages: Skinny [-5]

Optional Advantages: Magic Resistance 1 [2], Signature Gear 1 (Sereth Long Rifle) [1]
Blah Blah Height Weight Lifespan Stuff.

That's another big racial template. Yeesh. So what that all means is that Sereth have good eye sight and get a bonus on checks to notice things, they live for over 200 years, get a big bonus on climbing and escape artistry (and a skill called, I shit you not, Erotic Art), they have 1 yard more reach and gain a bonus on their swing damage, have an easier time clambering over stuff and 1 yard more reach with their kicks, a nictitating membrane that gives a bonus on HT rolls for eye based attacks and a DR of 1 for their eye targeting area, a bonus to reduce the penalties for darkness, and they add their HT to the hot temperature they are comfortable in. They're also skinny, which means that have a penalty when resisting being knocked back by blows and it also limits their HT score. They also have the option of giving themselves Magic Resistance (granting a bonus on rolls to resist magic crap) and taking a Sereth Long Rifle. I should probably show that that is in GURPS. Lemme bring up GURPS High Tech, which has insane amounts of technical and statistical information on firearms.

The Sereth Long Rifle is modeled after the M1 Garand, because. This means it does 7d+1 pi damage (for a damage range of 8-43 with no modifier for penetrating damage), has an accuracy of 5 (an aim maneuver adds +5 to your skill level on the next attack), a range off 1100/4500 (it deals half damage at 1100+ yards and has a max of 4500 yards), a weight of 10.1/.5 (a fully loaded weapon is 10.1 pounds and a full reload weight .5 pounds, (a rate of fire of 3 (can fire a max of 3 shots per 1 second turn), 8(3) shots (it can fire eight shots before reloading and needs 3 ready maneuvers to reload fully) but we're changing that to 3(1)i (the "i" indicates each round must be reloaded individually, obviously rate of fire is limited by how many rounds are loaded) and this changes the weight to 9.6/.19, it needs a strength of 10 to wield, a bulk of -5 (this penalty is applied to your attack skill when you move and attack with the weapon), but Sereth Long rifles are super long, so we increase that to -6, a recoil of 3 (when making a rapid fire attack and firing more than 2 shots, for every 3 points you succeed on your attack skill check, you score an additional hit with the weapon), and a cost of $510 (in The Known World this would mean 510 marks).

The weapon also has a scope that increases accuracy by +1, for a total of 6, and increases the weapon's cost by $100 and its weight by 3 pounds for a total price of $610 and 12.6 pounds when fully loaded. The weapon also has the very fine (accurate) modification, which increases its accuracy by +2, for a total of 8. This all ultimately brings the weapon's price tag to $2012. This is why we use the Signature Gear advantage to buy it. Signature Gear grants you 1/2 the campaign's starting wealth per character point spent on it to "buy" special gear you wouldn't necessarily have the cash for when you start out. This is based on your technology level, which is 5 for The Known World, and is $5000, so Signature Gear grants $2500 to "spend" on crap, which works well for the Sereth Long rifle.

Eran has both Magic Resistance and the Signature Gear advantage. His spell resistance in Pathfinder isn't exactly impressive, so we'll only give him one level of Magic Resistance, and we've already discussed the Signature Gear advantage. Also, his Magic Resistance is unmodified, so he can't cast spells. Which is good, because he shoots things and doesn't cast spells at them. Rangers are an idiotic class. Sigh.

Alright, let's do this.

Characteristics
Eran is a skinny, thin-limbed fuck, so we'll leave his Strength at 10. I haven't explained it yet, but the damage you do in melee is determined by your Strength score, then modified by your weapon. So with a 10 in Strength, Eran's thrust damage is 1d-2, while his swing damage is 1d+1 (his bonus for stupid long arms is factored in). If he wields a longsword, his thrusting damage becomes 1d impaling damage and his swing becomes 1d+3 cutting damage. Anyway. Eran is a pretty nimbly bimbly dude, so we'll jack his DX up to 13 for 60 points. He's pretty intelligent, so we'll give him an IQ of 11 for 20 points. He's rather hearty, so we'll give him a HT of 12 for 20 points. He has 10 hit points, and is a tough guy, so let's jump that up to the max of 13 for 6 points. When I say max, I mean that a regular old humanoid character can't vary his hit points by more than 30% from his ST score. Eran has an above average Wisdom in Pathfinder, so we'll jump his Will up to 12 for 5 points. He's very perceptive in Pathfinder, so we'll buy his Perception at 14 for 15 points. His HT is 12, so he has 12 fatigue points, and he's very tough and whatnot, so we'll buy that up to 14 for 6 points.

Eran has a HT of 12 and a DX of 13, for a Basic Speed of 6.25, his dodge is 9 and his Basic Move becomes 6. Serethnem is a TL5 society, so Eran doesn't need to buy up his tech level. Culturally speaking, he's a native of Serethnem so he gets that familiarity for free. He's also a (former) citizen of Haven, so he buys that for 1 point. He knows Serevish as a native, but also knows Malstern, Asosan, Goebleen, and Vyanvish. So we'll buy those four at accented level of comprehension for 16 points total. He has no rank, influence, or wealth, so we give him Dead Broke for -25 points and leave everything else alone.

This puts our points for Eran at 124 from his characteristics. On to advantages.

Advantages
Eran is a Ranger, so we give him Absolute Direction (Absolute Direction) for 5 points so he always knows where north is. Eran has a pet wolf, so we buy the Ally advantage and we say that Garath has about 25% of Eran's points, and is around all the time, which ends up culminating in a 4 point cost. We'll make Garath a minion as well for +50%, totally a 6 point ability. Eran is a hardened desert survivalist type guy, so we'll give him Fit (Fit) for 5 points so he has a bonus on HT checks and such. Eran is accustomed to desert travel, so he has Terrain Adaptation (desert) for 5 points, and well give him that for snow as well due to his time in Orcunraytrel. This just allows him to utilize full DX and Move without penalty in those terrains. This amounts to a grand total of 26 points in advantages, though there are more I think might be appropriate for him to take.

Disadvantages
Obviously, we're giving Eran Weirdness Magnet for -15. Eran is also a curious fellow, as shown by his inner battle to look into the mirror Karrak told everyone was dangerous. He wiffle waffled for a bit though, so we'll give him Curious with a fairly often self-control roll, so on a 9 or less he resists. This multiplies the base -5 by x1.5 for -7 points total. This means every time Eran sees a button, lever, door, he has to roll a 9 or less on 3d or he pushes, pulls, or opens it. Those put us a -22, so I think we're good.

After characteristics, racial template, advantages, and disadvantages we're sitting at 191 character points. This leaves us with 34 for skill points and techniques.

Skills
After much tweaking and poking and prodding I've bought Eran the following skills: Acrobatics 12 [2], Animal Handling 11 [2], Bow 12 [1], Camouflage 13 [4], Cartography/TL5 12 [4], Climbing 13 [2], Fast-Draw (ammo) 13 [1], Fast-Draw (longarms) 13 [1], Guns (rifle) 16 [8], Hiking 14 [4], Jumping 14 [2], Knot-Tying 14 [2], Light Walk 12 [2], Lockpicking/TL5 12 [4], Melee Weapon (knife) 13 [1], Naturalist 11 [4], Navigation/TL5 12 [4], Observation 14 [2], Running 13 [4], Search 14 [4], Stealth 14 [4], Survival 14 [2], Tracking 14 [2], Traps/TL5 11 [2]. This comes to 68 points and puts Eran at 259 points. Close enough.

Have I talked about skills much yet? I can't remember. So skills are purchased for prices based on the attribute they are based on. Guns for instance are a DX based skill and are classed as easy, so it's very cheap to buy. Light walk (moving so as to leave no traps and to avoid setting off pressure plates) is also based on DX, but it's a hard skill. So for 8 points, Eran gets a 16 (DX+3) in Guns, but Light Walk at DX-1 costs him two points. If we bought it at DX+3 like we did Guns, it would cost 16 points. Most skills have defaults as well. For instance, if you don't have Lockpick bought at any level, it defaults to IQ-5, which would be a success on a 6 or less on 3d for Eran if we hadn't bought Lockpick at 12. Some skills don't have defaults, and some have prerequisite. Light Walk actually requires the Trained By a Master advantage and having Acrobatics and Stealth at 14+, which Eran doesn't meet. I should probably remove that...

Ok, so Eran is a 257 point character.

Techniques
Techniques are a lot like skills, but their purpose is to buy off penalties for regular actions. So let's say we want to give Eran a technique for buying off the penalty for shooting someone in the head specifically. This normally carries a -7 penalty, so Eran's effective skill with his rifle would be 9, needing a 9 or less on 3d. If he takes an aim maneuver with his Sereth long rifle (for +8 to his skill level), then shoots at a target's head, his effective skill level would be 17 (16+8=24, 24-7=17). This doesn't mean he automatically hits, a 17 or 18 is always a failure. They're actually critical failures, but a 17 turns into a regular failure if your effective skill level is 16+. Anyway. So let's create a technique so Eran has a reasonable chance of headshots without taking extra time to aim.

Boom! Headshot

Hard

Defaults: Bow-7, Gun -7, etc.

Prerequisite: Bow, Guns, etc.; cannot exceed prerequisite skill.

This technique lets you buy off the penalties for specifically targeting heads. 

Simple enough. Let's halve the penalty, so we'll buy the technique at default+3, which means that Eran will only get a -4 penalty to his skill level when targeting the head specifically in combat. This costs 4 points. Wee!

Edit After The Fact: Apparently there is already a technique for this, and it has a hard cap of only being able to reduce the penalty to skill checks for targeting by half. I like mine better. 

Character Sheet

261 points

Eran Jenevan

36 year old Sereth

5' 11" 150 lbs. 

ST: 10 [0]

DX: 13 [60]

IQ: 11 [20]

HT: 12 [20]

HP: 13 [6]

Will: 12 [5]

Per: 14 [15]

FP: 14 [6]

Basic Speed: 6.25 [0]

Dodge: 9

Basic Move: 6 [0]

Build: Skinny [0, factored into racial template]

Size Modifier: 0

Appearance: Average [0]

Technology Level: 5 [0]

Cultural Familiarity: Serethnem, Haven [1]

Languages: Serevish [0], Asosan [4], Goebleen [4], Malstern [4], Vyanvish [4]

Wealth: Dead broke [-25]

Point From Characteristics: 124

Points From Advantages: 26
Absolute Direction (Absolute Direction) [5]
Ally: Garath the Wolf (25% points, always around, minion) [6]
Fit (Fit) [5]
Terrain Adaptation (sand, snow) [10]

Points From Disadvantages: -22
Curious (resist on 9 or less) [-7]
Weirdness Magnet [-15]
Points From Perks: 0

Points From Racial Template: 63

Acute Senses 1 (Vision) [2]
Extended Lifespan 2 [4]
Flexibility (Double-Jointed) [15]
Long Arms x2 [20]
Long Legs x2 [20]
Magic Resistance 1 [2]
Nictitating Membrane 1 [1]
Night Vision 2 [2]
Signature Gear 1 (Sereth Long Rifle) [1]
Temperature Tolerance 1 (hot) [1]
Skinny [-5]

Points From Skills: 66
Acrobatics 12 [2]
Animal Handling 11 [2]
Bow 12 [1]
Camouflage 13 [4]
Cartography/TL5 12 [4]
Climbing 13 [2]
Fast-Draw (ammo) 13 [1]
Fast-Draw (longarms) 13 [1]
Guns (rifle) 16 [8]
Hiking 14 [4]
Jumping 14 [2]
Knot-Tying 14 [2]
Light Walk 12 [2]
Lockpicking/TL5 12 [4]
Melee Weapon (knife) 13 [1]
Naturalist 11 [4]
Navigation/TL5 12 [4]
Observation 14 [2]
Running 13 [4]
Search 14 [4]
Stealth 14 [4]
Survival 14 [2]
Tracking 14 [2]
Traps/TL5 11 [2]
Points From Quirks: 

Points From Techniques: 4

Boom! Headshot (Guns) 18 [4]

So Eran (Rough Draft) comes in at 261 character points. Fuck off Eran, you're expensive too. Karrak is probably going to be obscene though. Hehe, it'll be fun. 

Donovan of the Elduman (Rough Draft)

Because I can.

Alright, so Donovan, like Karl, has been around for a while. So again we're building him under the same concept of a 200 point character that can boost that by taking up to 25 points worth of disadvantages. Again, the first step is to create a racial template.

Elduman 

36 Points

Blah Blah Background Stuff.

Advantages:  Elduman Resilience: Damage Resistance 3 (costs 1 FP/min -5%, psionic -10%) [13]; Doesn't Eat or Drink [10]; Injury Tolerance (No Groin) [2]; Unaging [15]
Disadvantages: Unnatural Features 1 [-1], Unusual Biochemistry [-5]
Special: Elduman, unlike other races, base their Fatigue Points off of their Will characteristic. 

Blah Blah Height Weight Lifespan Stuff.

Let's run that crap down. So basically, Elduman resilience (when activated), will reduce incoming damage by 3 points. The template also indicates that Elduman don't eat or drink, so that fits with Elduman repletion. If I made it psionic and charged fatigue points to activate it, it would be cheaper, but Elduman would have to spend 1440 fatigue points each day to go without food and water, so yeah. Injury Tolerance (No Groin) means that Elduman don't have groins. Attacks are resolved in targeting areas in GURPS combat. Unless specified, everything resolves against the torso. But, if you take a penalty and target regions like the head or eyes or groin, it can have an additional effect on a successful hit. Or like quadruple your damage. Unaging means Elduman are immortal (with caveats). Unnatural features means they look funny, and Unusual Biochemistry means that Uncout (human) medications and drugs and such affect them differently.

We should probably figure out how psionics in GURPS work, eh? So here's what you do. You find an advantage, and you find the psionic modifier, and you apply it for a 10% reduction in the cost of the advantage. Wild. You also make it cost fatigue points to activate it for another 5% reduction, or more. Whoa. The reason making it psionic is a reduction is because it makes the advantage vulnerable to anti-psionic effects.

Characteristics
We're already starting out on the heavy end here with 32 character points for the Elduman template, but here goes. Donovan has a Strength of 7 in Pathfinder, which is low. He could literally die from a single touch from a shadow. Yeesh. Hit points are based off of Strength in GURPS, so let's not be retarded. We'll go with a Strength of 8 for -20 points. Donovan has a 13 in Dexterity, so let's go with an 11 in GURPS for 20 points. Donovan has a 22 in Intelligence, but we'll go with a 14 in GURPS, because fuck, that's expensive enough. Donovan has a 10 in Constitution, so we'll leave it as a 10 in Health. Donovan isn't exactly robustly hit pointed in Pathfinder, so we'll just bring him up to 10 in GURPS for 4 points. Will is important, because as the template says, it governs Elduman Fatigue Points. We have a 14 from IQ already, so lets push it up to 15 for 5 points. Perception is based on IQ, so we're sitting on a 14, but Donovan is really really bad at Percepting in Pathfinder, so we'll knock it down to 9 for -25 points. We're sitting on 15 Fatigue Points, but Donovan is an Elduman psionics guy, so we'll bump that up to 20 for 15 points.

Donovan's basic speed sits at 5.25 (11 + 10/4), which makes his dodge 8 (5 + 3), and his basic move 5. On the Built table, Donovan's Strength, height, and weight show him to be of average build, so he has an average build. The Elduman aren't an exactly technologically advanced culture, but they are aware of technological advancement among the primates, so Donovan isn't disadvantaged the way Karl is when coming to the lands of firearms and internal combustion engines. Donovan is from The Old Empire and later immigrated to Haven because of his love of performing piracy as a move action. So his native cultural familiarity is The Old Empire and he's also purchased familiarity with Haven for 1 point. Donovan's character sheet shows no languages, but I assume he speaks Malstern, since it is the language of his homeland. We'll also give him Asosan and Goebleen at accented comprehension levels as well for 4 points each. Much like Karl, Donovan is dead broke, has no rank, status, honor, etc, etc, etc.

If I'm mathing right (I'm not), that puts us at 73 points from Donovan's characteristics. Not terrible.

Advantages
Alright, so advantage time. Hmm. We'll move around a bit. The first thing we'll do is upgrade Donovan's damage resistance to 5 for a grand total of 21 points for the ability. Next thing we need to do is create Grey. So we take Ally and buy him a 75% of Donovan's point total for 3 points with a multiplier of 4 because he's around Donovan all the time, so that's 12 points. However, Grey is also enslaved to Donovan's will, so we buy the minion enhancement for +50% and come to 18 points. Next we need Donovan's believers. We start with Ally at 25% of Donovan's points total for 1 points, we add the quite rarely appearance modifier (a roll of 6 or less on 1d for them to appear), since they never hang out with Donovan, which puts us at a 1/2 point. We'll say Donovan has like 20 believers for a x8 multiplier, so they cost 4 points. However, they are all enslaved to Donovan like Grey is, so they have the minion enhancement as well, which puts us at 6 points. Now, this Allies advantage just covers a crap ton of dudes that have the same stats. If we wanted to specialize them, like Donovan's higher end believers are in Pathfinder, we'd have to buy them individually like we did Grey.

Another iconic power Donovan has is mind control, so let's wander over to Mind Control. So basically, you roll a quick contest of your IQ vs. the opponent's Will. If you win, they do whatever you tell them to until you release them. (Are you reading this Cary?! You can tell them to shoot themselves in the face and I can't do anything about it!!1!) The base cost of the ability is 50 points, but we're going to make it telepathic/psionic for -10%, and say it costs 2 Fatigue Points to use for -10%. Mother fucker. You have to roll another quick contest every time you attempt to force the target to act against his principles. At least he wouldn't get a bonus on the roll like in Pathfinder? We should probably make it independent, so it doesn't shut off when Donovan takes a nap and he can do stuff other than stand there concentrating on his mind slaves, so that's +70%. Yeesh, we're at 75 points still. I can reduce it further by saying he can only Mind Control to make a new slave 1/day for a -40%, or I can soup up the Fatigue Point cost. I'm not Cary, and this isn't my character, so fuck it. We'll say 3 Fatigue Points per use for -15% and only 1/day for -40% and it's telepathic/psionic for -10%, so it's only +5% for the independent enhancement. So we come to a grand total of 53 points.

Psychic crush is a really cool ability that I hate. Let's give Donovan that as well. We'll start with Affliction 2 for 20 points, this means the target will make their HT check to resist at HT-1, so if Donovan did this to Karl from the previous post, Karl would need to roll a 10 or lower on 3d to resist the affliction. The normal effect of Affliction is stunning. We want dead dudes, so we'll give it the heart attack enhancement for +300%. Hehe. We'll also give it the based on a different attribute enhancement and say it's Will, not HT, for +20%. We'll say it costs 3 Fatigue Points to use for -15%. We'll give it the malediction modifier so it operates like a spell and requires a concentrate maneuver, rather than an attack maneuver to activate it and can affect creatures that have damage resistance and it'll take range penalties for distance for a total of +100%. We'll also obviously give it the telepathy/psionic modifier for another -10%. This comes to +390% to the 20 point cost for 78 points.

So at this point with no skills or disadvantages, Donovan is a 182 point character. I'm just going to drop psychic crush down to Affliction 1 for 39 points for the time being.

We'll grab Mind Probe with the telepathy/psionic and 1 FP per use modifiers along with touch-based (he has to touch someone to probe their mind) for -20% so Donovan can bury himself in people's minds to learn what they know. It'll cost 11 points. We'll also get Mind Reading with the FP and telepathy modifiers, along with the hearing-based limitation (he has to be close enough that he could hear the target verbally to hear their surface thoughts) for -20% for a total cost of 20 points.

Wow. We're at 258 character points already. Geez. We're done with advantages now, kthanxbai. I'm just going to wander over to characteristics again and reduce IQ by 1 for -20 points, then I'm going to go back and change up Mind Probe a little. Which puts us at 232. Sigh. An option to reduce the cost might be to change psychic crush to a coma or just unconsciousness. Fuck it. We're firing heart attacks with our mind bullets here. Because that's awesome. Hmm. I just developed an idea for a dragon whose breath weapon is a cone of heart attacks. That's neat. Moving on.

Damn, forgot Elduman don't have junk. We'll add Injury Tolerance (No Groin) for 2 points to the Elduman racial template. Alright, so we're at like 237 points at the moment. I know we're lacking a lot of things like energy attacks and telepathy, but lets skip ahead to disadvantages.

Disadvantages
First is weirdness magnet, because player. Because Cary represents Donovan as so physically frail in Pathfinder, I'm going to give him Easy To Kill 1 for -2 points. All this does is give a 1 points penalty to HT rolls to survive at negative hit points.

Cary plays Donovan as fairly honest, at least directly. He doesn't often speak a lie, despite the things he conceals or doesn't speak up about. I'm going to give Donovan Truthfulness for -5 points. Because Donovan so rarely likes, I'm going to make his self control check resist quite rarely. This does two things. The first thing is that even if Donovan wants to lie, he has to roll 3d and get lower than a 6 to do so. The second is that it multiplies the points from the disadvantage by x2. So Truthfulness ends up being -10 points.

So even with disadvantages chose (-37 total) we drop down to 200 points on the nose. We still don't have skills and we're still missing some iconic powers Donovan has used in the Pathfinder campaign. I think we're going to have to ease the character point totals up to 225 if we want a similar level of power between the Pathfinder game and these GURPS remakes of the group. Dog damn, Eran is going to be reaaaaaalllllllllyyyyyyy good at shooting things.

First thing I'm going to do is go back up to our psychic crush ability and drop it to coma, for a reduction in cost. The net result only reduces it by 5 points, but that could be important.

Our first step here is to wander up to Innate Attack. This ability is used to represent stuff like a dragon's fiery breath, a cyborg's implanted firearms, or other stuff that is of that nature. If I were making Andorian, I'd use Innate Attack to represent lightning bolts and ice shards and thunderous screams. If I were making Evandor or the Herald (you know, if I had like six hours to kill trying to make a 4000 point character), I'd use Affliction to represent his death wail.

Alright, so Donovan has used every major energy type, and just done straight damage with mind thrust. Now one of the neat things about GURPS is the Innate Attack ability. It lets you, as I said, make things like dragon's breath and whatnot. However, one option you have is to say that a series of Innate Attacks are all part of the same ability. If you do that, you only pay full price for the most expensive one, then all the rest are purchased for 1/5 the cost. This does prevent you from using more than one at a time though, even if you have multiple attacks you can make in a round. It also means that if one is disabled somehow, they all are. Anyway, so we'll need an acid attack, a fire attack, an electricity attack, and a mind thrust attack for sure. Donovan also uses sonic and cold damage, but those are represented as fatigue point damage (and coupled with deafening/stunning) in GURPS, they don't have specific damage types like burning or toxic or whatever. I think to save points we can just go with a cold attack. Wee!

Step one, fire blast. Innate Attacks use attack rolls to hit, they have range, accuracy, recoil, distance penalties, and rates of fire. Lets go with 2d damage for our fire attack and see what we come up with. We'll use burning damage, obviously, which is 5 points/level, putting us at 10 points. We'll apply the psychokinetic/psionic modifier for a -10% reduction, and say it costs 1 fatigue point for another -5%. Now this is just a basic throw a bolt of fire with your mind skill. If we wanted to, we could modify it to be a jet of flame that Donovan just swings around the battlefield at people. We'll called it 8 points.

Next one will be mind lightning. Since lightning is hot, it uses burning damage, so we'll start again at 2d burning for 10 points. We'll then apply psychokinetic and 1 FP/use. We'll give it surge for +20% because it is electricity, which ultimately brings us to 11 points. If we want to jump it up more we could add follow up effect and stunning. Donovan could have himself a little mind taser. If we wanted to simulate a lightning bolt extending from Donovan out to strike people, we could add the jet enhancement. Let's leave it at 11 as a little jolt of lightning he flings out. Next is an acid glob. We'll start with 1d of corrosion damage for 10 points. We'll add psychokinetic and 1 FP/use for -15%, but we'll also add area of effects to simulate the acid splashing to cover a 2 yard radius for +50% for a total of +35% and 14 points. It should also be noted that corrosion damage deals damage to to the target's damage resistance as well as the the target's hit points.

Let's skip cold, and just do a mind blast and call it good. We'll call his mind blast an Affliction instead of an Innate Attack, and we'll fold it into psychic crush, just like Innate Attacks are all folded into one another. The unmodified effect of Affliction is stunning, so that's good, we want that. We'll buy Affliction 1 for 10 points with telepathy for -10%, 2 FP/use for -10% and malediction for +100%. So that totals +80% for 18 points.

Alright, since the mind blast and psychic crush are alternative attacks to each other, we pay full price for the most expensive, which is 34 for psychic crush. Then we pay 1/5 for mind blast, which is 4 points. Our acid Innate Attack is the most expensive at 14 points so mind lightning and mind fire are both 1/5 the cost for a total of 2 points each.

This ultimately puts us at 164 points in advantages and makes Donovan a 232 point character, which is 7 points over our 225 point limit. But we do have some room to modify him at bit. Someday I'll give him telepathic communication, but this is a rough draft so we'll put a pin in that. Let's move on to skills.

Skills
Donovan is a people reader and talkie character. We'll need Body Language, Detect Lies, Diplomacy, and Fast-Talk. Which covers reading body language, sensing lies, coercion through words, and lying. He made an attack roll once, so well give him Guns/TL5 (pistol). We'll give him Hypnotism as well, because it fits with some of his abilities. We'll also need Innate Attack (projectile) to cover his mind acid, fire, and lightning. We'll take Intimidation as well, because yelling at people to get them to do what you want is fun. We'll give him Mental Strength and Mind Block so he can resist people fucking with his brain hole. There are various other skills that would be appropriate for him, for instance there are some bardic themed skills that let you enthrall or captivate audiences. For now, we'll call what we have so far good. This all comes to a grant total of 55 points for skills.

So here's Donovan of the Elduman, roughly, in GURPS.

Character Sheet

345 points

Donovan
41 year old Elduman

5' 11" 150 lbs. 

ST: 8 [-20]

DX: 11 [20]

IQ: 13 [60]

HT: 10 [10]

HP: 10 [4]

Will: 14 [5]

Per: 8 [-25]

FP: 20 [18]

Basic Speed: 5.25 [0]

Dodge: 8

Basic Move: 5 [0]

Build: Average [0]

Size Modifier: 0

Appearance: Average [0]

Technology Level: 5 [0]

Cultural Familiarity The Old Empire (native), Haven [1]

Languages: Malstern [0], Asosan [4], Goebleen [4]

Wealth: Dead broke [-25]

Point From Characteristics: 56

Points From Advantages: 164

Allies: 20 believers (25% points, 6 or less FOA, minion) [6]
Ally: Grey (75% points, always around, minion) [18]
Innate Attack: Mind Acid (1d corrosion, 1 FP/use, psychokinetic) [14]
Innate Attack: Mind Flames (alternative to mind acid, 2d burning, 1 FP/use, psychokinetic) [2/8]
Innate Attack: Mind Lightning (alternative to mind acid, 2d burning, 1 FP/use, psychokinetic, surge) [2/11]
Mind Blast: Affliction 1 (alternative to psychic crush, stunning, 2 FP/use, telepathy, targets Will) [4/18]
Mind Control (3 FP/use, 1/day, independent, telepathy) [53]
Mind Probe (1 FP/use, touch-based telepathy) [11]
Mind Reading (1 FP/use, telepathy, hearing-based) [20]
Psychic Crush: Affliction 1 (coma, 3 FP/use, targets Will, malediction, telepathy) [34]
Points From Disadvantages: -27
Easy to Kill 1 [-2]
Truthfulness SC: 6 [-10]
Weirdness Magnet [-15]
Points From Perks: 0

Points From Racial Template: 42
Damage Resistance 5 (costs 1 FP/min -5%, psionic -10%) [21]
Doesn't Eat or Drink [10]
Injury Tolerance (No Groin) [2]
Unaging [15]
Unnatural Features 1 [-1]
Unusual Biochemistry [-5]

Points From Skills: 55
Body Language 11 [12]
Detect Lie 11 [16]
Diplomacy 13 [4]
Fast-Talk 14 [4]
Guns/TL5 11 [1]
Hypnotism 13 [4]
Innate Attack (projectile) 13 [4]
Intimidation 14 [2]
Mental Strength 16 [4]
Mind Block 15 [4]

Points From Quirks: 

Points From Techniques: 0

Fuck you Cary, and your stupid tier 1 character. Obviously Donovan needs some pruning and modification. I think on my next go round, I'll add the Fragile (brittle) disadvantage to Elduman, as they are crystalline creatures. This means there would be a chance that their limbs are crippled, they fucking break off. It's worth -15 points, so it would help offset his point heavy racial template.