GURPS Hekinoe 2.0: An Itinerary and Outline

Hello.

One of the problems eye constantly struggle with is the desire to return to Hekinoe, not just the same universe like I'm doing with my Seasonal Arc campaign, but the planet itself. I want to go back there. There are still stories there that need to be told and there are new ways to punish players like Lance and Eric. The only way I'll ever be able to really return to Hekinoe is to finish converting it. In the past, this has been an exhausting process that leaves me scoured out inside with no desire to game. But it's something I want to do. It's something I need to do. It's the only way I'm going to be able to return to Hekinoe to run games or write in. So that's what this post is about. An itinerary and outline of sorts. What I need to do, how I want to organize it and so on. It's not going to be super in depth, it's just going to be a way of organizing and focusing my thoughts. 

Recently I had a brief period where I was going back and forth about Pathfinder Hekinoe vs. GURPS Hekinoe. I had considered, briefly, using Pathfinder. Pathfinder is a more palatable system for players, and it's meaty enough that I think I could make Hekinoe work well in it. I also know it well enough that I can competently and confidently hack it the fuck apart and make it work precisely the way I want it too. However, GURPS is a stronger system overall and doesn't really need to be hacked apart to make work in the first place. I will admit that it can be taxing to navigate all the rules. But, I have a pretty good group of players in mind for the future and I think they can handle it.

So let's get started with my things to do list. The first step is to establish what system I really want to use, and as we've just mentioned, it's GURPS. I am infused with the glory and adrenaline of progress. Woo. 

The next step is to re-map Hekinoe and The Known World. With the changes of Hekinoe 2.0 that I mentioned several weeks ago, I'm going to need new maps for the world to kind of spread out the existing cultures a little and cut out the dead weight (I'm looking at you Plains of Dust). Since we're remapping already and spreading the currently existing contents of the world out a little bit, we can also probably dip our toes into creating a map of the globe as well as putting down continents and such that exist inside my head but have never been placed on a map. Once we figure out where everything is and establish which cultures know where what is, we'll need to alter the main timeline of the world to reflect the various changes that have taken place. We'll also likely need to come up with one or two new continent names as well. 

The next and final step of this very short things to do list, is complete the campaign book. That said, I'd like to also establish a kind of progression guide and chapter list and that sort of thing to kind of focus myself and establish what I'm doing and in what order and that sort of thing. Bouncing around from thing to thing hasn't really worked for me in the past and has left a few dozen out of order documents in my Google Drive folders that I would have to struggle to arrange in a good order. So I want a chapter outline and that sort of thing for this attempt at a campaign book.

So we need to organize ourselves and our chapters to get things situated. For chapter one, I'd like to have an introduction. Who I am and what my experiences have been over the past 20 years or so of gaming. What sorts of games I like to run and that sort of thing. I'd also like to lay down what my expectations are of my players and that sort of thing. Overall I'd like it to be a hey, here is who I am and how I game chapter. Something to give my players insight into how I do things and why I do things certain ways. This seems kind of silly to me, as most of the people I game with have gamed with me since I started, but I've never really laid down why I do things certain ways before. So maybe it'll have value. Who knows. If the chapter ends up being lame, I'll just yank it out. 

After the first introduction chapter, I kinda don't know what to do next. Should I jump right into lore or rules or what, you know? I think I'd like to lead with lore and background material for the most part. So I think I'm going to have chapter two be a fairly large chapter about the races, nations, and continents of The Known World, which is the area of Hekinoe 2.0 that encompasses all our pre-existing material like Kusseth, The Fallen Empire of Man, Serethnem, etc, etc, etc. They'll all be broken up into a few different continents and stuff as I've previously said, but the name will still be used for all the things familiar to us from previous versions of Hekinoe. This chapter will start off with the timeline of Hekinoe and then I'll break it up by continent. This chapter will also be the chapter that includes the racial and cultural templates for the purposes of building characters and that sort of thing. 

I'd like chapter 3 to be about the various organizations and people of The Known World. Groups like The Organization and people like Savage Doc Managan and Laram of Volungshemle. Basically a chapter designed like those old 2nd Edition AD&D Forgotten Realms books Heroes' Lore Book and Villains' Lorebook. I'm not sure if I'll end up including stats and that sort of thing. Part of me wants to, but part of me wants to keep things nebulous and undefined. We'll see. 

I'd like the next chapter, chapter 4, to be about the technology of The Known World. Primarily this is just going to be equipment lists and stats, but I'd also like to talk a little bit about steam technology and electricity and that sort of think. Maybe. Maybe it'll just be gear. Lots and lots of gear. Maybe also some gear specific rules and such. We'll see.

The next chapter will be about sorcery and to a lesser extent, psionics. This chapter is going to go over the lore and history of sorcery and psionics and that sort of thing. The majority of it will be rules material though, as the rules that govern sorcery and psionics and what they can and cannot do will require extensive documentation. Which will be totally fun and exciting to write down for like the fiftieth time. 

The next chapter should be the final chapter involving lore and background material. Chapter six will be about the flora and faun of The Known World. It'll be the Monster Manual chapter. Which should be entertaining to craft. Here is where you'll find all the night fowl and dragon and great ursine stats and stuff. This chapter will definitely include stats, because that's where all the fun is in a Bestiary style chapter of a campaign book. 

The next chapter will be about character creation and advancement. Character creation is pretty straightforward in GURPS, just buy shit, but I want to outline a few aspects and talk about points levels and that sort of thing. The rules for advancement are also pretty straightforward, but I'd like to discuss them in a little detail with my players, rather than rely on them just reading them in the GURPS rulebooks. I want to lay out precisely how advancement is achieved and what some of my opinions and rulings on the topic are going to be. 

I want the next section to a general kind of rules focused chapter. GURPS has a host of optional rules and cinematic rules and that sort of thing. I'd like to talk about some of my rulings on those and kind of lay out which ones I like and which ones I don't. I'd also like this to be the chapter where I talk about generalized rules and mechanics stuff that I've changed from base GURPS. There shouldn't be too much stuff of that nature, as GURPS is pretty solid in my opinion, but what little there is should be clearly documented for players. I'd also like for this chapter to be where I put all the Hekinoe specific skills and techniques, as well as documentation on which advantages and disadvantages are allowed or verboten in which situations. 

So this is what we're looking at:

Things To Do

1. Figure out game system. GURPS. Duh. 
2. Re-map and rename stuff for Hekinoe 2.0 changes.
3. Adjust the timeline of Hekinoe.
4. Complete the fucking campaign book. 

Campaign Book Outline

1. Introduction to me and how I game and why I game and what I expect of myself and my players. 
2. Continents, nations, and races of The Known World. Racial and cultural templates go here, towards the end of the appropriate section. 
3. Organizations and people. Not sure how long this chapter will be or how long it will take. I only have a vague idea about the majority of the cults and secret societies and such of The Known World. 
4. Technology of The Known World. Gear and equipment and stuff. 
5. Psionics and Sorcery. Background information and rules information about sorcery and psionics. 
6. Flora and Fauna of The Known World. Monster Manual/Bestiary chapter. 
7. Character Creation and Advancement. Creating characters and making them better, faster, stronger. Etc. 
8. Rules, as well as other bullshit. 

It doesn't really look like much, if I'm being completely honest. But it's something. It's an idea of how to proceed and what I need to do. It's not some vaguely defined unwritten idea that I should do something or complete something or poke and prod at something. Ideally it will help me focus and organize my thoughts and get me making progress on the changes to Hekinoe 2.0 and converting Hekinoe to GURPS and writing it all down somewhere in a way that people will eventually read and hopefully understand. 

We'll see.

Alternate Rules: Random and Non-Essential Encounter Resolution

Random encounters.

Ugh.

I hate random encounters. I see their main purpose, to add an element of random danger to cross country travel or dungeon delving, and it has merit. But they're nothing more than a time sink. Completely pointless. Yes, you can have random encounters have meaning by adding special encounters to them, like when you roll a 12 on the random encounter chart and end up stumbling across the Wanderer or the Hound and that having an unexpected effect on future sessions. Those can be interesting. Most random encounters are just randomly running into 12 goblins in the dungeon or stumbling across a shambling mound on its cross country shamble.

Ok, first of all, as the GM, you should fucking know how many goblins/soldiers/whatever are in your dungeon, and you should know their patrol routes, assuming they have patrol routes and patrolling regularly fits with the monster type. Ok? If you don't, you're being lazy. These are things that should not be randomly generated on the spot. Unless of course you're playing a sort of randomized sandbox campaign. There are either thirty goblins in the dungeon or there are not. They either patrol or they do not. They either respond to the loud sounds of battle that echo through the dungeon, or they do not. One of the things I despise is reinforcements appearing from nowhere, like they're miraculously summoned by magic, rather than coming from another part of the dungeon where they could reasonably hear the yells of their allies that are currently engaging the PCs.

Anyway. Random and non-essential encounter resolution. That's what we're here to discuss, right?

Non-essential fights are those fights designed purely to drain resources. These are the fights from scenarios where you're just trying to pad the run time or following the guidelines in a DMG for X amount of encounters. They serve no real narrative purposes and aren't terribly memorable because of mechanics, environment, or foes. Or they're fights that you hadn't planned on that the players pick with faceless NPCs like when the players walk down an alley or something and a gang of thugs greets them and the players botch their Charisma (Intimidation) check and are unwilling to pay the 5 gp toll. They're boring and don't feature compelling mechanics or environments or their only purpose is to drain resources so the PCs are unable to leverage their full power and abilities against the end boss or whatever.

Additionally, random and non-essential encounters both chew up an excessive amount of time, because combat eats up the most time in a gaming session and it's not because of rolling initiative or indecision on the part of players. It's because combat is time consuming because it involves everybody doing something. Fine, you can shave off seconds by being prepared and pre-rolling your initiative and attacks and not getting distracted, but four or more players and a GM that likely controls a similar amount of NPCs (if not more) each have to take actions and that eats up time. 

I don't include random encounters in my scenarios and I only include non-essential encounters if I have to. If a particular bandit keep has sixty bandits as members of the bandit group and the players wander in when all sixty are relaxing at the keep, I'm going to make the PCs slog through sixty fucking bandits. It will take time and be boring and they will hate it, but if there are sixty bandits in a bandit keep, they are going to have to deal with all of them whether it be via murder, intimidation, or just avoiding them. I do this because to me, even though they're non-essential encounters, they need to be there for the sake of continuity and perhaps a bit of realism. If a bandit group has sixty bandits, yes, the players are going to have to resolve dealing with all of those bandits because that's how many bandits there are. If they only deal with sixteen bandits out of sixty, what was the point? Ok, the lead bandit is deposed, dead, or brought to justice or whatever. There are still forty-four bandits out there and one of them is bound to be interested in leading the rest to raid local merchants and villages. What was the point? Nothing has changed. Why should the players consider it a success or the villagers consider the reward earned?

Ok, so random encounters are dumb and non-essential encounters waste time. So how do we expedite them if the GM feels the need to use them? This idea is going to be written for 5th Edition, but the general gist of it can apply to more than that. Since the goal here is to imply difficulty or complication or randomness, and not to kill the players, my thought is to resolve random and non-essential encounters as a skill check of sorts.

There are a few ways you can do this. You can treat it as a skill challenge and have every player participate. You could treat it as a pure skill check where a player rolls based on his skills for the group to resolve an encounter vs. a DC or relevant opposed roll from the adversaries, but that's an inelegant one and kind of steps on talky characters making talking skill checks to avoid encounters and steps on stealthy characters making stealthy skill checks to avoid encounter. Or you could just treat it as a group check with modifiers based on the advantages each side possesses. Blah blah blah blah.

The purpose is to negate the pointless slog of random and non-essential combat encounters, to resolve them quickly in a satisfying way for the players and the GM. I say this method is for combat encounters because if you're taking the route of non-combat to resolve another type of encounter, you're going to typically be using pre-existing mechanics to resolve that (dialogue and stealth skills and such).

My thought is to have the players make a d20 roll as a group with their proficiency bonus (for the sake of this discussion, assume that all players are the same level and that sort of thing and no one ever has to worry about varying proficiency levels between members) and give them advantage or disadvantage based on how they compare to the foe and how they want to resolve the encounter. The purpose is to resolve it quickly without getting into nitty gritty details, so it is abstract. If the players outnumber the foes, advantage. If the players are outnumbered by the foes, disadvantage. Maybe the Wizard says he'll use a third level spell slot to cast fireball against the enemies (make sure you deduct that from their character sheet) and that gets them advantage. Maybe the Fighter agrees to use action surge and that gets them advantage. Use the normal rules for advantage and disadvantage nullifying each other and only applying once to a roll. Once you figure out whether the PCs have advantage, disadvantage, or neither on the roll, make the d20 + proficiency bonus roll.

Since the goal is to resolve the encounter quickly and abstractly, rather than kill the players, the result is never that they lose the combat and die. The d20 roll is meant to represent the randomness of combat, obviously. Sometimes players get unlucky and have to use more of their resources to combat a not terribly tough foe. Sometimes foes get lucky and critical hit the Wizard in round one and drop them. So the way you resolve it is based on the success of the group's roll. Maybe on a natural 20 they wade through the combat like golden fucking gods untouchable by man or fell beast. Maybe on a natural one they all take 1d8 damage and one of the players is dropped to 0 hit points and must make a death save once. Then you vary the results, with high results being less costly and lower results using up more of their resources like hit dice and class abilities and that sort of thing.

My thought is to break it up into a range of results as follow:

• 20+          : Amazing success, player's succeed at no cost to themselves. 
• 11 - 19    : One player loses 1 hit die. Determine who loses the hit die randomly. Players may opt to expend one ability that is restored on a short rest instead of a losing a hit die.
• 2 - 10       : Players lose a total of 1d4 hit dice. Determine who loses a hit die randomly. Players may opt to expend one ability that is restored on a short rest instead of a losing a hit die.
• 1           : Each player loses one hit die and one player, randomly determined, must make a death save. Players may opt to expend one ability that is restored on a short rest instead of losing a hit die. If the character that makes the death saving throw fails, he is not at 0 hit points, it is merely noted that he has failed a death saving throw that day. 

So that is kind of what I'm thinking. I think it does what I want, but I'm not sure it's perfect. I like it more than randomly assigning damage or something. It burns player resources, just like actually going through a fight would, and that's the main purpose here. So that's a success. By opting to use hit dice instead of dealing hit point damage or something, and giving the players the option of expending short rest abilities, it kind of cuts down on the 15 minute adventuring day as well. I think. Maybe. Who the fuck knows? I do think resolving non-essential combat encounters this way will result in keeping the players fresher for longer in the adventure, which will allow a DM to keep the actual plot-related combats more interesting and dangerous. 

Regardless, I think it does what I want. A quick discussion about advantage vs. disadvantage when fighting a group of mooks and making a die roll is way fucking quicker than actually going through three or four rounds of relatively pointless combat. This is actually similar to something I'd occasionally do in 4th Edition where after a certain point everyone expended their encounter powers, but foes were still standing and I'd just call the fight and charge everyone a healing surge instead of going through an hour of everyone spamming their at will attacks for round after round. I think that was a popular way of resolving 4th Edition's long fights back then. 

GURPS Hekinoe Magic: Alchemy, Enchantment, and Other Stuff.

So like I said, I want to talk about some other stuff related to magic, especially stuff I haven't spoken of before. We'll start with alchemy. And we'll start with alchemy by discussing how it normally works. Actually, we started with alchemy like three or four weeks ago, but then I found more things to talk about and just kept writing and writing and writing. Someone please stop me.

Adjustable Spells

GURPS Thaumatology has an option called adjustable spells that I've decided is very appropriate for the way spells work in Hekinoe. There are two things you can do with this. The first is that you can pay 4 more energy to reduce the spell's casting time by 1 second (but not to 0). The second thing is that you can add enhancements to spells, similar to when you add them to advantages. So you could apply No Signature (+20%) to cast an invisible lightning bolt or fireball or you could choose Increase Range (2x, +10%) to change fireball's range of 25/50 to 50/100. The only issue is that spells modified this way cost 1 more energy and have -1 to effective skill level per +5% of enhancement. The extra energy used to speed up spells or modify them with enhancement does not count as as base energy for the spell, so it will likely lead to addition penalties to effective skill level due to exceeding base energy cost.

Adjusted Colleges

There are a lot of colleges in GURPS. 24 to be specific. Here's a list: air, animal, body control, communication and empathy, earth, enchantment, fire, food, gate, healing, illusion and creation, knowledge, light and darkness, making and breaking, meta, mind control, movement, necromantic, plant, protection and warning, sound, technological, water, and weather. DnD only has like eight or so. To be fair, the collections of spells in GURPS are way more fucking organized and sensible than in DnD. There doesn't seem to be a lot of organization in DnD in terms of what differentiates a conjuration spell from an evocation spell for instance. 

Anyway. 

I feel like there are too many colleges, especially since this newest system of sorcery in GURPS relies on buying the colleges rather than individual spells. In the chapter on sorcery in the campaign book, the in world justification for colleges, because there are no real spells per se, is to create common language between sorcerers to help them understand what they are talking about. So my purpose here is to reduce the amount of colleges that must be bought by characters that want a broad range of magical ability. Also, there's a lot of overlap in the weather college, all of its spells are either air or water spells already, so the weather college is completely gone. Also, metal spells are lumped into technological, and I feel they are more appropriately earth spells. So here are the new colleges and their contents: 

• Air: Air
• Body: Body Control, Healing
• Earth and Metal: Earth, Metal
• Enchantment: Enchantment
• Fire: Fire
• Flora and Fauna: Animal, Plant
• Food: Food
• Illusion and Creation: Illusion and Creation, Light and Darkness, Sound
• Knowledge: Knowledge
• Making and Breaking: Making and Breaking, Technological
• Meta: Meta
• Mind: Communication and Empathy, Mind Control 
• Necromantic: Necromantic
• Protection and Warning: Protection and Warning
• Transportation: Gate, Movement
• Water: Water
• Removed Colleges: Weather
• Removed Subcolleges: Divination, Plastic, Radiation

So that consolidates things just a little bit, making it a little bit more cost effective for generalists. 

Alchemy

Alchemy is an IQ based very hard skill with no defaults. So you need to have the skill to use it. Once you have the skill, you can make alchemy stuff. This typically requires the purchase of raw materials and doing various things to them over the course of several days, finally culminating in a skill check to see if you produced or did not produce a viable elixir of some kind. There's a list of like two or three dozen elixirs in GURPS Magic and an alchemist can produce any of them. The elixirs all modify your effective level with alchemy based on how difficult they are to create/how powerful they are. For instance, beast-speech is made using alchemy-1 and the resurrection elixir is made using alchemy-6. An alchemist can buy a technique for each elixir to offset their penalties to his skill level though. During the crafting process, an alchemist can make multiple doses of an elixir at once (at a penalty to his effective skill level) and there are several physical forms of elixir that can be made (potion, flammable powder, regular powder, or ointment). Some elixirs are restricted to being made in certain forms. The reanimation elixir, which lets you reanimate a corpse long enough to question it, can only be made in ointment form, for instance. Also, ew.

So that's a rough outline of how alchemy works in GURPS, let's talk about how it works in Hekinoe.

The first major thing is that alchemy is a Will based very hard skill with no defaults. As a side note, it also no longer functions as a default of chemistry. The second major thing is that Magery of at least level 0 is required to utilize the alchemy skill to produce elixirs. The reason for these changes is because the assumption in regular GURPS alchemy is that certain materials have magical essence that can be alchemically manipulated to create magical effects. In Hekinoe, an alchemist is using his willpower to guide and shape sorcerous energy into reagents that have symbolic meaning. In effect, the reagents and the cooking processes are the alchemist's equivalent of a sorcerer's mental constructs. Because alchemy involves the use of sorcerous energy, the region's unreliability penalty applies to a character's skill level when using the alchemy skill to craft elixirs. Because the assumption in GURPS Magic is that alchemy requires rare components, reduce the cost of raw materials for elixirs by 10%.

Elixirs will check for misfire when they are used on or by a target, not when the creation process is completed. The misfire level of an elixir is the effective skill level of the creator's alchemy skill when they crafted the elixir. Every week the elixir exists, roll against its misfire level. A failure on this check reduces the elixir's misfire level by one. In GURPS Magic, the various forms of elixirs have specific ways in which they lose their power, in an instance where an elixir would  lose its power normally (such as a potion being left uncapped for a day or mixed with another fluid) it automatically misfires.

Aside from those aspects, Hekinoe alchemy will work the same as it is described in GURPS Magic. As has been mentioned before, magic items explode when they misfire, this holds true for alchemical elixirs. Originally, I was going to dig through all the elixirs and find the relevant spells or effects they duplicate to figure out how much "energy" was in each of the elixirs, but many of them do not copy specific spells. They just do things. I came up with an alternate solution though. In GURPS, the suggested price of an enchanted item you buy in a store is $33. What I did was find the cost in raw materials for each elixir and divide that by 33 to come up with an "energy" amount for each elixir. These energy values will be used to determine how hard an elixir misfires.

Let's move to our next topic.

Blood Magic

This is more of a side note than anything else, as it is totally useless and impractical in The Known World, but it bears mentioning. In normal GURPS magic, casters use FP and have the option to use HP to pay the energy cost of casting spells. Because sorcerers in Hekinoe disperse some of the excess sorcerous energy from their spells by absorbing it into their bodies, this is an option for casters in Hekinoe. However, the amount of lingering energy in a sorcerer's body is very small, and accessing it is painful. It is only possible in areas of normal, high, and very high ambient sorcerous energy. The conversion rates are 3 HP/FP for 1 energy in very high regions, 6 for 1 in high regions, and 12 for 1 in normal regions. So it's very impractical in the first place and incredibly likely to kill you in regions of normal energy. Basically, you're using your ability to sense sorcerous energy, finding it in your body (or someone else's), and tearing it out with your will. Unliving casters, such as Fallen and Soulless, are immune to this. This practice is known of in The Known World, but it's basically useless due to the amount of sorcerous energy present on the continent. I mean, hypothetically speaking, if there were sorcerer prisons deep beneath Serethnem which Kusseth accesses via a super secret underground railroad of pain and suffering overseen by Brasscoats, sorcerers in such a completely hypothetical prison that find themselves cut off from sorcerous energy because they've been entombed in a blackstone pyramid older than time, might find a use for it. Too bad such a place is completely hypothetical.

Ceremonial Magic

Ceremonial magic is used for two things in GURPS, group spells and enchanting. Spellcasters are allowed to use it on their own if they are enchanting. I'm not going to outline how it works normally, because that system is completely pointless in Hekinoe. Normal GURPS forces spellcasters to rely on their own FP to power spells and the level of mana in the area immediately restores a portion of that energy. In Hekinoe, magic is completely external. This means the main benefit of ceremonial magic, increasing the amount of FP a caster has for casting a spell, is irrelevant. But I want to keep ceremonial group castings in Hekinoe. In regular GURPS, non-casters and bystanders can also add their energy to a spell, but that's stupid.

So what's the goal with ceremonial magic in Hekinoe? I want there to be an element of increased power as well as an element of increased stability. I do want to keep the feature of ceremonial magic taking ten times longer than the spell being cast normally does. I am going to remove the whole thing about enchantment using ceremonial magic. With individual sorcerers being able to command butt tons of sorcerous energy in The Known World, the penalties association with using ceremonial magic to enchant items make it super pointless and impractical. It's a thing that could happen, but there's no reason for it to come into practice in The Known World.

The way I see it working is the group of casters sort of attempt to synch up their minds and form a sort of collective. The easiest way to do this is via the telepathy spell, but it can be achieved via a successful meditation check from each participant. Meditation defaults to Will-6 and autohypnosis-4. This method takes longer, one minute per participant.

These collectives are basically a group of casters working together to make a spell, so there's no real leader. There might be a leader in the sense that someone is guiding the process and declaring the goal to be dropping the biggest fireball ever on Kusseth City, but it's more like an assembly line. Because of this, there are several aspects of ceremonial magic that are an average of all the participants. The averaged aspects are the Will of the participants, the Magery level of the participants, and the level at which they purchased the college of the spell they wish to cast. The level at which they purchased the skill refers to attribute+1, attribute-1, etc. Each of these aspects will be rounded up.

Let's look at an example with a fireball spell.

So we have three casters. They have a Will of 14, 12, and 16. They have Magery levels of 2, 3, and 6. They know the fire college at attribute+0, +1, and +3. So the collective has a Will of 14, a Magery level of 4, and a fire college level of attribute+2. So the collective's base effective skill level with fire college spells is 18. With fireball, its base skill level is 13 (due to the three prerequisite spells of fireball and the -2 due to The Known World's unreliability.

I jumped the gun here, there are more modifiers. For every participant that has a Will of 13+, increase the Will of the collective by +1. For every participant with a Magery level of 3+, increase the Magery level of the collective by +1. For every participant that bought the relevant college at attribute+3, increase the base level of the collective's college skill by +1. With all this factored in to the above example, the collective has a Will of 16, a Magery level of 6, and knows the fire college at attribute+3. Which changes things to a base fire college skill level of 22 and a base skill level of 17 with fireball.

One more thing needs to be averages. I spoke of a technique last post, one that neutralizes penalties to skill level due to exceeding the base energy of a spell, extending if for additional durations, etc. If any participant possesses such a technique, average the value that it is possessed by all participants and round up. So one participant doesn't have it, another knows it at default+2, and the third knows it at default+5. This means the collective knows the Sorcerous Stabilization technique at default+3.

Because there are several minds working on different parts of the spell to make it stable and disperse excess energy and that sort of thing, each participant negates one -1 to effective skill level from exceeding minimum energy, extended duration, etc.

Casting times are ten times longer with ceremonial magic. So a normal maxed out fireball spell would take three seconds. Casting it ceremonially would take 30 seconds. However, the effective skill level of the collective does modify casting time. This doesn't affect the casting time of the collective we are currently using as an example, but one with an effective skill with fireball of 20, rather than 17, would only take 15 seconds to cast it ceremonially.

To be fair, that doesn't seem that beneficial. The third set of statistics, 16, 6, and attribute+3, actually has a fire college skill level of 22 and a base skill level of 17 with the fireball spell and has the Sorcerous Stabilization technique at default+5. So he alone is as competent as the collective.

The problem is that I've used fireball as an example. Fireball is really too simple of a spell to be cast using ceremonial magic. We've also used a very small group of casters with wildly different statistics. If we take a more modifiable spell, like rain of fire, which is an area spell and one with a duration that can be extended, and we take a larger group of casters with attributes that are closer together, the benefits of ceremonial casting become much more stark.

That single caster has a base skill level of 18 with rain of fire (-2 from prerequisite spells, -2 from sorcerous energy). If that single caster, we'll call him Kn'otnak Man'der, chose to cast the 2d-2 burning damage per second version of rain of fire, he could cast it on a 5 yard radius area with the -5 from increased energy cost immediately negated by his Sorcerous Stabilization technique. The base duration is one minute (for a total of 120d-120 burning damage in 2d-2 increments) though. If he wanted it to go for two minutes, he'd immediately generate -5 from increased energy (the spell costs the same to maintain as it does to initially cast), and another -1 from extending the duration. His effective skill to extend the duration would be 12 instead of 18. If he and say 12 other casters were holed up in a secure place casting it as a collective, he'd have a little bit more wiggle room to keep it going and make it larger, especially if the other members of the collective were as skilled as he is.

So that's how ceremonial magic works in GURPS The Known World. In other areas of Hekinoe, it will be slightly different, but the fact that sorcerous energy is so plentiful in The Known World makes those differences irrelevant.

Enchantment

There are two types of enchantment, the kind that uses actual enchantment college spells to enchant an item, and the item version of some spells that allow you to create an item that duplicates the spell's effect (such as the wand or staff you can create for 800 energy and a $400 ruby that casts the fireball spell when powered). Some enchanted items have passive effects that are always on, others are activated effects that cost energy and duplicate a spell. Enchanted items that have activated effects must have a powerstone integrated into them or they cannot function. Well, they can, but a sorcerer would need to channel sorcerous energy into them, which is of minimal benefit since they could cast the spell themselves. There is one benefit though, activating an enchanted item has no ritual component like casting a spell might.

All of the rules outlined for enchanted items and their creation and using them outlined in GURPS Magic operate as normal. Enchanted items have a power rating, the GM makes all the creation rolls for the player, they don't become cursed on really bad rolls, but they do become wonky.

Just as with spells, the misfire level of a magic item is the effective level of the creator's spell that creates it. Each enchantment on an item has a separate misfire level. Enchanted items check for misfire when they are used, but no more than once per minute. So a weapon with the accuracy enchantment checks for misfire when you attack with it, but you probably only have to check for misfire once during a battle. . Every week an enchanted item exists, roll against its misfire level, failure on this roll reduces the misfire level of the enchantment by one. Additionally, the misfire level of enchanted items is modified by the material being enchanted. It's a range of -2 to +2, with materials like glass and paper being -2 and materials like wolf-iron being +2. The material also modifies how often the enchantment checks for misfire.

Blah blah blah, misfires, explody, boom. There is more to enchanting but for some reason I wrote the actual mechanics in the campaign book instead of outlining it here. Most of the rules are already in place anyways, so it would kind of just be retyping pre-existing material. I'd like to talk about how enchanted items are made rather than how they break. The only real change I made was that the exploding enchantment must deal enough damage to destroy the object it is on before it can deal damage to anyone else. I don't think I've specified it before, but if an enchanted item is broken, the enchantments on it automatically misfire.

There are two ways objects are enchanted in GURPS, slow and steady enchantment and quick and dirty. These methods both exist in GURPS Hekinoe, but the rules outlined here replace those in GURPS Magic. Regardless of which method you use, enchanting is an exhausting process. The enchanter expends 1 FP per hour spent enchanting.

Enchanting an object is basically investing an object with so much focused sorcerous energy that you carve your mental construct of what you want the spell to do into the object on the atomic level. Or something more magical sounding. Heh.

Quick and dirty enchantment is precisely that, quick and dirty. It's faster, but slightly more unreliable. Basically, you just dump energy into the item and its enchantment. You're focusing on speed here, not super stable casting. This allows an enchanter to dump energy equal to his Magery level into the enchantment process every minute. However, once the item is completed, there is a -2 penalty to the enchantment's misfire level.

The other method, slow and steady, takes significantly longer. You're slowly and steadily feeding energy into the object to give the enchantment permanence and solidity. This method allows the enchanter to dump energy into the spell equal to his Magery level each hour. This makes the process lengthy, but grants a +1 bonus to the enchantment's misfire level after it is completed.

Shadow Magic

Shadow magic/sorcery is a thing. The Shadowlands/Land of Shadows/Nychtemihar/etc are the only true plane that exists in my universe. There are planes, which I call realms or adjacent realms to be difficult, but they are fleeting and not permanent cosmological fixtures like those we think of from DnD. Nel/Immortal holdings fade when the Nel/Immortal dies or is weakened. Sorcerer's can create little realms, but because misfire, those are unlikely to persist forever. The Shadowlands are permanent. They are where shadow sorcery comes from. Shadow magic is the act of using sorcerous energy to pull shadowstuff from The Shadowlands to do stuff with it. Typically this involves various forms of attack and defense, summoning allies made of shadowstuff, etc.

In previous versions of the GURPS Hekinoe magic rules, this was an advantage based system that relied upon having a connection to sorcerous energy to activate it. I may continue to use that system. Or not. I honestly don't know. The other route to do it is to make a shadow college of spells. This college would basically duplicate spells found in other colleges, but modify them in specific ways. This route would be easier on the player, somewhat, but more difficult on my end because I have to dig through all the spells, which there are lots of. Then I'd have to modify them and recalculate their energy costs and such. Which actually isn't that hard.

Sorcerous Constructs

In the Pathfinder version of Hekinoe, it was easy to resolve issues of the summon type spells. In Pathfinder, these spells summon a creature from elsewhere to do your bidding. Since Hekinoe has no planes, the way to resolve this was to simply say these summon spells were creating a creature from the caster's imagination and it was composed of pure magic. This required no real alteration to the way anything worked in Pathfinder and amounted to a cosmetic change. In GURPS Hekinoe, we have to get a little more involved. In GURPS there are a variety of summon spells (elemental, demon, etc). These no longer exist. The summon beast spells are a bit different, and are unchanged because they use magic to call an already existing creature from the environment to the sorcerer's side. 

So after we've removed the inappropriate spells, we need to create a new spell. We'll call it create sorcerous construct. This spell is based on the removed summon spells. Most of them cost 1 energy per 10 character points and have an hour duration, so I've used that as a base for this spell. 

Basically, the spell costs 1 energy per 10 characters points that the sorcerous construct has. The base value of the spell is considered to be the value of the sorcerous construct meta-trait. So exceeding that carries the normal penalty. The base duration of the spell is for an hour, and it costs half of what it cost to cast it to maintain it. The create sorcerous construct is an illusion and creation spell and it has six prerequisite spells from that college, meaning at its base it will have a -6 modifier to your effective skill level when casting it. It will have additional prerequisites, potentially, for enhancing the creature with certain abilities (for instance granting it fire related abilities will add create fire to its list of prerequisite spells). 

The current value of the meta-trait is 15 character points, so it costs 2 energy to create. This assumes a bipedal creature with a value of 10 for all its basic attributes, no personality or empathy, and no real special abilities beyond the innate abilities garnered from being made out of sorcerous energy (mainly resistance to injury and various living weaknesses).

I cannot sorcery anymore. I have been poking and prodding and writing and researching on an almost daily basis since the previous post appeared. There's still more to discuss, but I need to take a break. 

GURPS Hekinoe Magic: Really? We're Doing This Again?

The answer is yes, yes we are definitely doing this again. There's a not completely ridiculous reason for it though, and I'm not changing that much from the previous iteration. Am I? I don't even know at this point.

First point, in previous versions of this system I've bounced between having sorcery and spells be Will based and IQ based and in the last version I did (IQ+Will)/2. Which is dumb. In GURPS Will is a score derived from IQ. However, Will is much cheaper to improve than IQ is. It takes 20 points to increase IQ and 5 to bump Will up by one. I'm going to follow a suggestion in GURPS Thaumatology and say that spells are based on your Magery level and (Will/2)+5. This makes it somewhat less cost effective for a player to jam points into Will, but still ensures you'll be able to have a decent base skill level with spells.

Previous versions of Hekinoe's magic used additional misfire checks when casting spells. I've come to the realization that that is unnecessary and overly clunky. In GURPS you already make a check to see if you cast the spell, and there are such things as critical failures and successes when casting spells. One of the limitations I've grown extremely fond of is Radically Unstable Magery from GURPS Thaumatology. The gist is that when you fail to cast a spell, it is automatically a critical failure. This limitation comes in three flavors. The first is that you can make a stabilization roll to see if you have the skill to turn a botched spell into a harmless failure. The second is that you get no stabilization roll, all failures are automatically critical failures. The third is the same as the second, except that you roll three times on the critical failure chart and the GM picks what he things is the worst option.

I've said before that one of my design guidelines with magic in Hekinoe is that I want it to be clunky and unwieldy. This is partly to simulate how fucking difficult it is to wield in Hekinoe. I've come to a realization though that the Radically Unstable Magery limitation more than satisfies what I need for my misfires and whatnot, and it doesn't require adding an additional check to the game. 

Looking at Radically Unstable Magery, if we change the language from critical failure to misfire, we've got our misfire checks built right into the system of casting spells. We can also, instead of creating charts and tables going over energy usage and the region of Hekinoe having a effective misfire skill, simply apply penalties to effective skill when casting spells. All we need to do now is use my misfire charts instead of the GURPS critical failure charts. 

Let's poke around with ambient sorcery levels and the effects they have on the continents. I have a table.

Yup. That is definitely a cropped screenshot of a spreadsheet. Don't judge me.  

You may be asking yourself what does that mean? And why is it so small? Let's give you some context. The ambient sorcerous energy levels of The Known World are very high (which is synonymous with very fucked). Fresgulen, which is the continent closest to The Known World, has high levels, Orcunraytrel has normal levels, and Inception has very low levels.

So when a hypothetical sorcerer, we'll call him Karl, casts a fireball spell in The Known World and has a skill level of 16 with the fireball spell, it gets an additional -2 penalty to effective skill level due to all the fucking magic trying to scoot through him into the world. Karl has to divert attention and energy to managing that sorcerous energy, so it is harder for him to cast spells. If he fails to cast a spell, it automatically misfires, regardless of what he rolls on his check. Karl also has mutations because he diverts some of that sorcerous energy away from his spells and into his flesh. Magic items he creates will also periodically explode.

If Karl went to Orcunraytrel for instance, he'd only have access to 10 energy for spells each round. He'd also stop developing mutations and could try to stabilize his failed spells. He'd also never have to worry about his enchanted items exploding.

There are two boons to having such fucked up magic in The Known World. Karl basically has unlimited energy to cast spells with. Most spells limit how much energy you can dump into them by your Magery advantage level. So if Karl has Magery 3, he can still only dump three energy per round into his fireball. However, some spells that would normally require multiple casters or a single caster dumping energy into a spell or item over a long period of time, don't in The Known World. FYI, I'm probably going to change infinite to something less insane but still ridiculously high like 100, rather than infinite. This is because I'm suddenly envisioning Karl rapid fire casting great wish all the live long day. This also means that because magic is so fucking prevalent, it makes enchanted items and devices easier to produce, reducing the costs of such things. I also just came up with an additional column about the recharge rate of powerstones. It's somewhat irrelevant to this conversation though, because this conversation is primarily about The Known World and powerstones aren't used for much more than powering enchanted items in The Known World.

So when do you apply more penalties to effective skill level with a spell? My whole concept of sorcery in Hekinoe works under the assumption that the majority of the spells in GURPS Magic exist, and if they were too unreliable due to excessive energy costs, they couldn't exist. So there's no penalty for the base amount of energy spent on a spell, but energy amount does affect misfire. So you apply a -1 to your effective skill level with a spell when you exceed the base amount of energy needed to cast the spell, and an additional -1 for exceeding further multiples of the spell's base energy cost. Base energy means one of two things: the lowest amount of energy necessary to cast the spell, or your Magery level for spells that allow you to put energy into a spell based on your Magery. Whichever is higher is considered the "base" amount needed to cast the spell. Let's return to Karl and his fireball.

As previously stated, Karl is casting fireball and has a base skill level of 16 with that spell. He gets a -2 to effective skill level due to The Known World's sorcerous energy levels, dropping it to 14 (which is still a respectable 90.7% chance of doing it right. Fireball lets you dump energy into it up to your Magery level each second for a maximum of three seconds before you complete casting it and hurl it. Karl's Magery is 3. Fireball deals 1d burning damage per energy spent on it, so Karl could throw a 3d fireball with a skill level of 14. If he dumped 1 - 3 more energy into it on the second turn, that would exceed the base amount needed to cast the spell and would impose an additional -1 penalty to effective skill level. If he decided to go three full turns at max energy input, he'd be casting a 9d burning fireball with an effective skill level of 12, which is only a 74.1% chance of success. Then he'd have to use the Innate Attack skill to throw it.

As another example, lets look at the extinguish fire spell (which Karl has a base skill level of 16 with), which is an area spell. Area spells have a base size of 1 yard, and casting extinguish fire costs 3 energy. Area spells can be customized, but it costs more energy. You simply multiply the base cost by the number of yards the area is going to be. So Karl's base cost for a 1 yard extinguish fire is 3, so basically he'll have an additional -1 penalty to effective skill level with extinguish fire for every yard after the first he wants to extinguish fires in. It looks like all area spells will operate a similar way.

Spells also become more unreliable the longer they exist. This is mostly only relevant to enchanted items and sorcerously created creatures and objects. Many spells have a specific duration that can be extended via more energy. With a spell that can be maintained, you basically roll against your effective skill level as if you were casting it again when you maintain it. Every duration after the first imposes a cumulative -1 to your effective skill level though, and you also have the issue of exceeding the minimum energy needed to cast the spell.

Let's look at Karl and the resist cold spell, which he has a base skill of 16 with. Resist cold has a duration of 1 minute and costs 2 energy to cast and can be maintained for 1 energy. Karl is in The Known World, so his skill level automatically drops to 14. He casts it successfully though. One minute later, he is still cold, so he maintains it, which gives him a second minute and exceeds the base energy to cast it. He rolls as if casting it again, but has a -1 for exceeding the base duration and another -1 for exceeding the base energy cost, so he's at an effective skill level of 12. He succeeds. He finds he needs a third minute, so he rolls as if casting it again and pays to maintain it. He only gets the -1 for the additional duration this time though, as his total additional energy cost is at 2. If he were to try to eke out another minute from it, he'd exceed the multiple of the base cost and get the -1 from energy expenditures plus the -1 from a fourth duration from the spell.

There will be a technique that may be purchased that reduces the penalties to effective skill level from the various conditions described above. Regardless of how high a character purchases it, there will always be a -2 to effective skill level due to the ambient sorcerous energy levels of The Known World. 

Ok, so that's all fairly minor and basically just makes casting spells slightly less clunky than previous versions of magic in Hekinoe. Let's get to the major change. The one I really want to talk about. Are you ready for this? Here goes:

Magic isn't a taught skill.

Breathe with me now. It took me a long time to accept that fact, and it contradicts much of what I've written in previous posts about magic on this blog, but it's true. I've accepted it. You should too. Ok, magic isn't a taught skill. We've accepted it, together, and bonded over the subject. We're moving on, together, into a future of bright suns and magic that is not learned in a book.

That said, I wouldn't call it intuitive, and we're certainly not talking about inborn magical bloodline DnD Sorcerers here. There are definitely aspects of magic that can be, and are, taught. Learning to sense sorcerous energy, learning to identify types of effects and purposes and stuff. There are techniques that can be taught to focus your will and to disperse sorcerous energy from spells. So yeah, there is a bunch of stuff that can be learned, but the actual spells themselves are not taught, because they aren't something that can be taught. Spells are based on the caster's focus and willpower and their ability to have a solid image of what they are trying to achieve with sorcerous energy. The way I see it is the sorcerer constructs a mental construct that symbolically means "I want to achieve X" and when he calls on sorcerous energy, he dumps energy into it and it either does what he wants or shatters the mold because his will was too weak or the goal wasn't visualized and solidified by his willpower enough. When a sorcerer casts a spell, he isn't running complex algorithms of energy expenditure and the square root of fuck off. He's thinking really fucking hard and focusing his will and imagination into a blade to shave off a chunk of infinite energy that he dumps into a template forged by his willpower for the sorcerous energy to follow to create something.

This might present some issues when we talk about identifying the magic of other sorcerers and such. If spells and the casting and crafting of them is symbolic in nature, how can sorcerers identify the spells of others? How can they work together on a big project? Simple. The sorcerous energy acts as a translator. Actually, think of it like different types of currency and the sorcerous energy itself is a currency exchange place. That might sound preposterous, but we're talking about magic here. So what does this mean for buying spells? It means that each college of magic is treated as a wildcard skill. Which means that each college is treated as a very hard skill that costs triple the normal cost. So buying the Earth and Metal College at attribute-3 costs 3 points and buying it at attribute+0 costs 24 points. Attribute in this situation refers to (Will/2) + 5 + Magery level. Using magic as a wildcard skill does impose a frustrating penalty on spellcasters. That penalty is a -1 to effective skill for every prerequisite spell a spell has. In normal GURPS rules, mid and high tier spells often have prerequisite spells or advantages required before you can learn and cast them. The advantages are usually a certain level of Magery, and those will still be required to cast spells. 

So once again, we'll return to Karl and his fireball spell and his base skill level of 16.  GURPS Magic has a handy table in the tail end of it that lists all spells alphabetically and lists their location in the book, what kind of spell they are (melee, missile, area, etc), what college they belong to, their duration, the energy they need to cast, how long they take to cast, any advantage prerequisites they have, and finally how many prerequisite spells they have. So we look at fireball and see that it has 3 prerequisite spells (create fire and shape fire, which both have ignite fire as a prerequisite). So Karl's base skill level of 16 with fireball is modified by -2 for The Known World's onslaught of sorcerous energy, and an additional -3 for how many prerequisite spells it has. This drops his effective skill level with it to 11. This penalty to effective skill level due to prerequisite spells represents the difficulty a sorcerer has when casting complex spells with lots of working parts. When Karl casts fireball, it is more complex than igniting flammable materials (ignite fire), simply creating fire and letting it do what it wants (create fire), and shaping a fire to conform to his wishes (shape fire) each are alone. It combines elements of all three at the same time, so his mental construct is going to be more complex and he's going to have to direct more energy in more ways.

Don't worry. I have more bad news.

Because spells are not a learned thing, there is a cap on how high you can buy each college of magic. Don't get me wrong, you can get better at shaping the energy and that sort of thing and can become more accustomed to the rigors of spellcasting, so there is some wiggle room for improvement. But not enough wiggle room that you can start buying colleges as attribute+5 and whatnot. The cap on how high you can buy each college is attribute+0. 

Now I have good news.

Shaping and casting spells is primarily about mental focus and having a rock solid picture of your goal, half-assed or fuzzy mental constructs are going to get wrecked. Because of this, characters with the Visualization advantage increase the cap on how high they can buy the colleges by +1. So attribute+1. You don't get it for free, it's a permission the advantage grants you. Additionally, each college has a skill tied to it that does the same thing if you have a base skill level of 15 in that spell. These two permissions stack, potentially allowing for the purchase of a college up to attribute+2. For instance, the fire college is tied to the explosives (demolitions or fireworks) skill, the mind control college is tied to either the brainwashing or the hypnotism skill. This all represents practical knowledge related to the college improving your understanding of what that college is about, which improves your ability to create solid mental constructs to fill with sorcerous energy.

So lets return to fire spells and now we'll say that Karl is into demolitions and has a base skill level of 15 in Explosives (Demolitions) and the Visualization advantage and has purchased his fire college all the way up to attribute+2. Let's say Karl has a Will of 14 and he still has Magery 3, so we're looking at Fire College - 17 for Karl's fire spells. If we factor in the fucked up magic of The Known World, we're looking at 15. If we're talking about casting a fireball, we're looking at an effective skill of 12, or a 74.1% chance of successfully fireballing his enemies. With his Magery 3, he'll be able to hit them with 3d of burning damage, with an average of 11 damage. Assuming no magic of fire specific protections, that has a reasonable chance of fucking a bro up. Or at least making them think about life and wish they'd gone to college instead of trying to rob the shit out of this fucking gunslinging sorcerer in a bowler hat.

Unfortunately we run into a slight problem when we talk about spells like flaming armor (you wreathe yourself in flames, with the usual type of effects). With all the information listed above, Karl's skill would be 8 (because flaming armor has 7 prerequisite spells). Even if Karl has Magery 4 (a suggested cap for most game worlds), His skill would only be 9. Which is a 37.5% chance of success. In previous versions of this stuff, I've allowed Magery to go up to 7. Were Karl to somehow be the most powerful sorcerer in Hekinoe and have Magery 7 (only one character has Magery 7 in this previous iteration of the rules), he'd still only have an effective skill level with flaming armor of 14.

Flaming armor and fireball are small fries though. Move terrain, which kind of allows a sorcerer to go Kandor on an area, has 29 prerequisite spells. Enlarge other, which increases the targets size modifier based on the energy spent on the spell, has 17 prerequisite spells. Reflex, which is kind of like the quicken spell metamagic feat, has 16 prerequisites.

So we see here that we have a shit ton of higher tier spells that are going to leverage extremely high penalties for casting them, plus the pre-existing and fairly minor penalty from The Known World's sorcerous energy, plus more penalties for making spells bigger, deadlier, and longer. We also have the issue of radically unstable Magery and all these penalties to effective skill level causing misfires to be excessively likely. This is something I've been gnawing on for days now and I have some options. My goal isn't to make spellcasting impossible, or two create additional options to negate all these difficulties. My goal here is to make it so the GURPS rules accurately represent Hekinoe's magic and how it works. So, onto options for reducing these penalties and making it functional but still accurate to my mental picture of Hekinoe.

The first is to allow Magery to get to excessive levels. As previously stated, it is suggested that campaigns use a Magery cap of 4 or 5 levels. I've gone with 7 for The Known World in previous versions of this discussion. Capping Magery at 15 would make the lives of sorcerers a lot easier. Most high tier spells end up with 10 - 15 prerequisite spells. Spells like move terrain seem to be rarities. So a character with a Will of 14 or higher would have a decent shot at negating prerequisite penalties and casting spells successfully. The problem then becomes Karl shooting off a 15d (average of 53 damage) fireball in one second in a game world where most creatures have 13 - 20  hit points and have to start making HT rolls to remain conscious after 10 - 15 damage.

The second option is to create a technique that lets you buy off the prerequisite penalties for spells, but doesn't increase your effective skill level with them, just neutralizes the penalties. Which is what techniques do. But techniques aren't meant to be used every time you do something. They're meant to buy off penalties for when you try to do something specific under equally specific circumstances with a skill, not be used all the time in place of the skill.

The third option is to remove the restriction on how high you can buy the college skills. I don't want to. It also makes each college of spells into a massive points sink if you're trying to use skill level to neutralize prerequisite penalties. To buy the fire college at attribute+3 to neutralize the prerequisite penalties for fireball would cost 60 character points total. Whoa. Attribute+10 would be 144 character points. It's not practical and isn't what I want to do.

The fourth option, which is really just option three point five, is to create more criteria that allow for colleges to be purchased at higher levels, but that runs into the same excessive cost thing as option the third. This could be ameliorated somewhat by reducing the cost of the colleges to a very hard skills with double the cost, or even just the regular cost. The actual wildcard magic guidelines lump all colleges into one single magic skill, which offers a shit ton of utility even at three times the cost of a normal very hard skill.

The fifth option is to fuck off and play Fallout 4 for six to ten hours.

The sixth option is to drink scotch until my life makes sense again.

The seventh option, which looks promising, is to drink scotch and combine elements of options one and four. So let's talk about that option.

I think I'm ok with saying that Magery caps at 10 levels. Depending on which points total we use for character creation, characters could start with a Magery level of 1 - 3 and have the option of purchasing Magery up to level 6 with character points gain from adventuring or downtime learning. Magery levels of 7 - 9 would need to be gained via character points accrued during downtime learning. Similar to the previous version of this stuff, there would be one character on Hekinoe with Magery 10. To be able to learn Magery 10 you would have to have him teach you. 

There are 24 colleges of magic, so reducing the points cost of each college to that of a normal very hard skill, instead of three times normal like a wildcard skill would be more expensive than lumping them all into one Magic! wildcard skill. I may combine the colleges somewhat, as there is a bit of overlap between them, specifically the air college and the weather college. Regardless of how many colleges there are going to be, we're going to go with each college skill being a very hard skill, rather than a wildcard skill. I'm also going to say that the colleges default to one another at -4. This would allow characters to focus on a few colleges with their character points, but still be able to do whatever with magic. It would just be harder because they're unaccustomed to shaping and guiding sorcerous energy to do those things. So if Karl had a base skill level of 16 with the fire college, but hadn't bought the necromantic college, he could still try and cast some necromancy, he'd just have a -2 from ambient sorcerous energy in The Known World, -4 from inexperience with necromancy bullshit, plus the prerequisite penalty for any spell he tries to cast. It'll be difficult, but he can do it. 

Interlude: I just took a look at the weather college, it's complete bullshit. Every spell in it appears in the air or water college. So the weather college is gone and we're down to 23 colleges. Woo for consolidation! I might decide to lump the body control and healing colleges together. We'll see though.

Back to business. The maximum at which you can buy each college skill is still attribute+0. But there are three advantages that allow you to increase that cap by +1 for each that you possess. Those advantages are Unfazeable (because it kind amounts to you not freaking out about weird things, like an endless sea of magic trying to shove its way through you like bad Mexican food you bought at a gas station of three in the morning), Versatile (because it means you are skilled at using your mind to imagine things differently than they are), and Visualization (because it means you are skilled at seeing things as you want them to be). So if you have all three, you are allowed to purchase each college up to attribute+3. Additionally, each of the 23 colleges will be tied to a regular skill. Characters that have a base level of 15 in that skill increase how high they can buy that college by +1. Characters that have a base level of 16 in that skill increase how high they can buy the college by another +1. So with all that piled together, you could purchase a college at attribute+5. 

Ok, so that's a rough outline of some changes I'm making to Hekinoe sorcery. I'll probably post a bit more on this topic. There won't be any real changes to the way enchanted items operate, but I would like to kind of outline alchemy at some point since I haven't done it before. Wee!

Alternate Rules: Werebear Archetype

So I'm really fond of two classic monster: vampires and werecreatures. I lean more towards werecreatures than the undead. There's something about them I really like. I think it's mostly the whole primal bestial rage kind of thing. I dunno. I've always been a huge fan of werewolves. They're cool. There's something I find noble about wolves. The pack nature of wolves kind of translates to concepts of community and family and whatnot, even though those concepts don't really enter into the why of wolf packs and such. Wolves are predators and stuff, animals. I can't speak to their intelligence and whatnot, but I doubt love of family is what drives them to run in packs and protect their territory. 

Anyway, point: blah blah blah werecreatures are neat. I'd like to add an aspect of them to DnD. They're not really meant to be player options, but there are suggestions in the Monster Manual. But in this instance I'd like to add an aspect of them to the Barbarian class. There are versions of them that exist for that in previous editions. In this edition, I'm going to go with the werebear, rather than werewolf or something else. The reason for this is because Barbarians are berserkers. Berserk is an old word that some believe means bear shirt. Warriors would wade into battle wearing bear hides and stuff believing these bears to be totems that would grant them power. Supposedly. Who knows what the originally origin of the word was and the why and how of it. It's just what I read on Wikipedia. Regardless of it's accuracy, I like it. So I'm going to run with it. 

I'm just going to say right here that I know that both of the existing arcehtypes for the 5th Edition Barbarian cover aspects of the berserker and having a bear as an animal totem. I don't care. They're dumb and don't have what my goal here is. 

So what do werebears have in 5th Edition DnD. Let's look. They can use their action to switch to a Large bear, their original humanoid form, or a Large hybrid bear/humanoid form. They gain immunity to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage from non-magical non-silver/silvered weapons. They gain advantage on Wisdom (Perception) ability checks due to their keen sense of smell. They also gain the multiattack ability to attack with two claws when in bear form. In bear or hybrid form, they can bite for 2d10 damage as well as use their claws for 2d8 damage. It seems likely that the werebear's bear form is based on a brown or polar bear, and their bite deals 2d6 damage and their claws do 1d8. There's also a note in the lycanthrope entry in the Monster Manual for player characters as lycanthropes it lists a few things. The character gains a Strength of 19 and a +1 bonus to AC while in bear or hybrid form. The one thing that the lycanthrope entries in the Monster Manual lacks is the regeneration we frequently see in film and literature. 

Since we're adding this to the Barbarian class, we need to look at the open spots for ability gains from archetype choice for the class. These spots are 3rd level, 6th level, and 10th level.  

So at third level, the entrance into the the Werebear Archetype, we add that when the Barbarian rages his size increases by one step and he takes on the burly, hairy, hybrid bear appearance of the werebear. Increases in size, specifically from the enlarge spell, typically gives the character advantage on Strength ability checks and saving throws (which the Barbarian already has while raging) as well as providing a +1d4 bonus to damage. We're just going to give the Barbarian a bite attack for 1d10 piercing damage and two claw attacks for 1d8 damage. We're also going to give the Barbarian advantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks involve smell here because it is a fairly minor ability. Finally, Barbarians normally have resistance to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage while raging. We change this to be resistance to non-magical, non-silvered bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage. 

At 6th level we add two things: Strength 19 while raging, a +1 bonus to armor class. 

We have two abilities left for our 10th level ability, the regeneration and the immunity to non-magical, non-silvered damage. I think the reason this edition lacks regeneration for lycanthropes is because previous editions did. But they had damage resistance. In previous editions of DnD, it was at some point in some place explained that damage resistance was no always immunity to types of damage, it was also instant regeneration. So when dealing 11 non-magical, non-silvered damage to a werecreature in Pathfinder (they had DR 10/silver), you weren't dealing 1 damage, you were dealing 11 and 10 of it was instantly regenerated. 

Werewolves play a big part in a book series I read a few years back. Silver was still a bane to them, as is traditional. But their regeneration was wondered about and explained by the characters in the book. Werecreatures regularly go through a physical change that breaks and reforms every bone in their body and transmutes human biology into that of a hybrid creature. Regenerating simple damage like cuts and stabs and bullet holes is fairly simple to replace if you can do that every month. It was also explained that this regeneration was not infinite, it was fueled not by magic, but by the creature's energy like any other biological process. So if you can do enough damage to force a werecreature to burn through its fat reserves and caloric intake and whatnot, it'll die. I am particularly fond of this concept. 

So to cover the regeneration of werewolves, I think what we'll do is say that at 10th level, the Barbarian gains the ability to spend one hit dice as a free action every round while raging while his hit points are below their maximum.   

So here is what we have:

3rd Level Abilities

• The Barbarian gains advantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks that rely on smell. 
• The Barbarian gains physical characteristics of a brown bear/humanoid hybrid while raging.
• The Barbarian's size increases while raging. 
• The Barbarian gains claws that deal 1d8 slashing damage and a bite that deals 1d10 piercing damage while raging. A Barbarian may make a bite attack, two claw attacks, a normal weapon attack, or a weapon and a claw attack with an attack action while raging.  
• The Barbarian's resistance to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage while raging only applies to non-magical, non-silver sources of damage. 

6th Level Abilities

• The Barbarian's Strength becomes 19 while raging, unless it is already higher. 
• The Barbarian gains a +1 bonus to armor class while raging. 

10th Level Abilities

• While raging, the Barbarian may spend one hit dice every round as a free action on his turn to restore 1d12 + his Constitution modifier hit points. 

I'm not sure how balanced it is. I didn't really compare it to the existing archetypes for the Barbarian class. I just kind of slotted stuff in. It might be more appropriate to push the armor bonus to the 3rd level abilities, as it's fairly minor and the werebear's hide wouldn't suddenly be thicker while raging. I dunno. It seems fairly light on oomph, and it all only occurs while raging for the most part, so it does seem kind of lackluster. Not sure. I could perhaps give the non-raging barbarian resistance to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage with penetration by silver and magical weapons, and turn it to immunity while raging, but that seems excessively overpowered at low levels. 

I dunno. I like it, it does exactly what I desired it to do and it doesn't seem to be excessively overpowered. So I think it's a success. Woo!

Ammunition: Alternate Rules

So a thought about ammunition occurred to me last night at work. In Pathfinder, guns aren't that impressive. Shotguns are kind of cool in that you can use a regular old mundane weapon to do a cone attack, and in a regular campaign without the Unarmored Combatant cheat the targeting touch AC would be super fantastic. Plus, the 5% chance of a critical hit dealing quadruple damage is nice as well. 

There are definitely some awesome things that firearms have going for them, but it's not anything monstrous. A pick can deal damage just as impressively, more so even, as they're a melee weapon and firearms need class features from Gunslinger, a feat or class features from Fighter, or magic bonuses, or feat bonuses (at the cost of -1 to hit/ per +2 damage for deadly aim) to increase their damage and a pick can just add in Strength. 

Normally, I don't make players account for the weight or cost of mundane ammo. This is because in Pathfinder guns really aren't that crazy in comparison to bows and crossbows, and even thrown weapons. I do make them track the costs of specialty ammo like dragonspit bullets, wolf-iron bullets, and so on. 

Guns are a little more...gun-like in GURPS though. I'll explain.

So in Pathfinder, you normally can't make called shots. Critical hits are an abstraction for what we define as a knife to the kidney or an arrow/bullet to the eye, and they just deal damage, sometimes impressively. There are variant rules that add called shots to your game though. Each target location on a body has a penalty to hit as well as different effects that occur on a hit (a hit on the location that deals less than 50 damage), a critical hit (a critical hit that deals less than half the creatures hit point but does at least 50 damage), and a debilitating blow (a hit that deals half the creature's hit points in damage, but does at least 50). 

To explain the differences in guns in GURPS (beyond the fact that their base damage is higher), I'm going to compare the called shot system in Pathfinder with the combat system in GURPS, using the eye hit location.

In Pathfinder, the Eye hit location has a -10 penalty to hit. A called shot hit to the eye grants all creatures concealment (25% miss chance, or 50%, I forget) when attacked by the creature. It also gets a -2 penalty on Perception checks (but not vision based ones specifically, which I'm not too bent out of shape about as I assume a bullet or arrow to the eye is going to be fuck me in the ass with a bowling pin level distracting). Both of these effects last for one round, and there is a note that if the creature only has one eye it gets the blinded condition for one round.

A critical called shot to the eye does that same thing, but it also costs the target the sight in that eye. These effects last for 1d4 rounds. 

A debilitating called shot to the eye destroys that eye and causes blindness until subject to a remove blindness/deafness spell or similar effect. It also deals 1d6 bleed damage. A successful Reflex save reduces the blindness to 1d4 hours and eliminates the bleed damage (which is odd because normally you can't Reflex save your way out of weapon based attack). The target also suffers the effects of called shot to the eye for 2d6 minutes. 

So yeah, a hit to the eye will mess you up. Let's look at GURPS. In GURPS, you choose where you are targeting, and each hit location has a penalty to your effective skill level with an attack. The torso location has no penalty, but also has the least effect. Eyes have a -9 penalty (so Guns - 16 becomes 8 unless there are other modifiers to effective skill). Guns all have an accuracy statistic in GURPS, this is a number that is added to their effective skill level every round they make an aim maneuver (the Gunslinger advantage automatically adds the gun's accuracy or half its accuracy, depending on gun type, to your effective skill level). 

Critical hits in GURPS automatically hit and deny the opponent an opportunity to dodge, parry, or block an attack. There's also a critical hit table the determines effect by location, as well as explanations for the effects of dealing damage to a particular hit location. In GURPS you make a skill check to hit, roll basic damage, apply the target's damage resistance if relevant, then calculate wounding modifiers based on damage category and hit location. This final total of damage is called injury. I sometimes call it penetrating damage.  

The eye location can only be targeted by impaling, piercing, and tight beam burning attacks (lasers). Basically something that can fit in the eye hole in your skull. Other damage types just default to your head location. The eye hit location isn't particularly impressive by itself, it just notes that injury over your HP/10 destroys the eye (getting you the One Eye disadvantage, unless you have a bunch of eyes) and is treated as a skull hit without the extra damage resistance your skull provides. 

There is specific mention of toxic damage not having any additional effect whatsoever on the eye and skull hit locations. The skull location normally provides an extra DR 2 to attacks against it, but as I just said, the eye location ignores that. The wounding modifier for a skull hit increases to x4. So if you get hit and after all the DR there's 2 damage and you're using a large piercing weapon (which normally has a wounding modifier of 1.5) it would deal 8 damage of injury instead of 3. Knockdown rolls are also at -10. Knockdown happens when an attack deals injury of more than 1/2 your HP or you are struck in the eye, face, or skull locations enough to cause a shock penalty. You roll against your HT or fall prone and are stunned (you do nothing every turn except make defense rolls at -4 and make a HT roll at the end of each of your turns to see if you get back up on the next one). So the -10 knockdown penalty is pretty significant. 

A critical hit to the head (face, eye, or skull hit location) also has additional effects tied to a 3d roll on a table. The 3 result is ignoring DR and the attack deals max basic damage. So a 2d revolver crit to the eye would ignore any eye DR then deal 12 damage multiplied by the x4 wounding modifier for 48 damage of injury. 

I'm not sure if it is factored into GURPS already, but I'll be making sure to note in the GURPS Hekinoe campaign book that innate DR does not apply to the eye hit location (assuming a character has eyes). For those that  have eyes and want eye DR, the Nictitating Membrane advantage exists and may be purchased up to 1/3 of a character normal DR. So a Fell Human with Damage Resistance 3 could purchase Nictitating Membrane 1 and a dragon with DR 21 could have Nictitating Membrane 7. Wee.

So what is the point of all this? Good question.

Because guns are so much more potent in GURPS, when compared to Pathfinder, I'm going to start charging for ammunition for guns. Kind of. You'll still need to reload as normal of course, and I'm still not going to dick everyone around with noting how much ammo they have for encumbrance purposes, but I am going to start charging them for ammunition. I'm going to break it down into 3 categories of firearm ammunition, cheap, normal, and high quality. 

Just as a note, what I mean by more potent is not necessarily damage. It does take a ST of 13 to get 2d of damage out of swung weapon (axe, club, sword) and ST 19 to get 2d of damage out of a stabby weapon (sword, rapier, etc). Revolvers do 2d and rifles do 4d, which are both solid numbers of damage. So there is a slight advantage to guns in terms of dealing damage. My primary reason for doing this is that injury and HP and armor are very different beasts in GURPS than they are in Pathfinder. Pathfinder is a very abstract game where something like infinite ammo for a 1d8 revolver isn't unbalanced.

Guns are much more versatile in terms of targeting than an axe or club as they have an inherent accuracy that can be applied to better target high value locations like the skull or eyes, and all you have to do to improve your attack skill with them is aim for a round or two. Melee combatants have a similar option, but with the accuracy stat of firearms, they have a big advantage in terms of how quickly they improve their effective skill. I don't think paying a couple bucks every session for ammo is that unrealistic or ruthless of me. 

Back to the ammo categories. Cheap, normal, and high quality.

Cheap ammo is going to be free and you are always assumed to have an unlimited amount of it on hand. However, it will impose a -1 penalty to your firearm's accuracy stat as well as a -1 per die of damage the firearm deals (meaning a 2d revolver will deal 2d-2 damage). Cheap ammo represents something you cobbled together yourself or looted off of other dudes or bought from some guy name Shady Steve who likes to add his ground up toenails to the gunpowder recipe. He can't help it. He just likes to be inside people. 

Normal ammo is going to be normal. It won't modify a firearm's stats at all, and it'll probably go for something like $0.2 per round. Normal ammo represents something purchased at an actual gunshop that wasn't looted off of someone or subjected to questionable storage conditions.

High quality ammunition is something produced by the big name firearms manufacturers in The Known World like Bel'lore arms or Kussethian Military Technologies. My initial thought was to just do the opposite of cheap ammo, +1 to the gun's accuracy statistic and +1 damage per die of damage. I think I might do something different for it though. Some sort of synergy effect. Like if you use a Bel'lore revolver and Bel'lore high quality ammo the revolver does 3d damage instead of 2d or something like that. Not quite sure yet. High quality ammo will probably run $0.5 - $1 per round. 

These ammo variants will also appear alongside stuff like incendiary rounds, wolf-iron rounds, dragonspit rounds, explosive rounds, and so on. 

So there are some thoughts on bullets and shit.