[37-0128] Power-Ups 1 - Imbuements.pdf - GURPS - sororita

POWER-UPS

I MBUEMENTS

Written by SEAN PUNCH

Illustrated by ED NORTHCOTT, JEAN ELIZABETH MARTIN, and DAN SMITH

An e23 Sourcebook for GURPS ®

STEVE JACKSON GAMES

Stock #37-0128

Version 1.0 – May, 2008

C ONTENTS

I NTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

About the Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

T HE I MBUE A DVANTAGE . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Multiple Imbue Advantages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

I MBUEMENT S KILLS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

What Can I Imbue? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Enhancement Skills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Transformation Skills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Imbuing Spells . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Noncombat Imbuement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

Optional Rule: Combination Skills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

I MBUEMENT IN THE C AMPAIGN . . . . . . 14

GURPS Dungeon Fantasy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

GURPS Martial Arts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

GURPS Supers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

I NDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

About GURPS

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GURPS Power-Ups 1: Imbuements web page is at

www.sjgames.com/gurps/books/power-ups/power-ups1 .

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Rules and statistics in this book are specifically for the

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begin with B refer to that book, not this one.

GURPS System Design

❚

STEVE JACKSON

Managing Editor

❚

PHILIP REED

Marketing Director

❚

PAUL CHAPMAN

GURPS Line Editor

❚

SEAN PUNCH

WILL SCHOONOVER

Production Artists

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Director of Sales

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ROSS JEPSON

Indexer

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NIKOLA VRTIS

PHILIP REED

and NIKOLA VRTIS

Prepress Checker

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FADE MANLEY

GURPS FAQ Maintainer

❚

PHILIP REED and

JUSTIN DE WITT

❚

MOLOKH

❚

MONICA STEPHENS

Playtesters: Ze’Manel Cunha, Peter Dell’Orto, Craig Roth, Mark Skarr, and Emily Smirle

GURPS , Warehouse 23, and the all-seeing pyramid are registered trademarks of Steve Jackson Games Incorporated. Power-Ups 1: Imbuements, Pyramid, and the names of all

products published by Steve Jackson Games Incorporated are registered trademarks or trademarks of Steve Jackson Games Incorporated,

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C ONTENTS

Art Director

Errata Coordinator

Page Design

I NTRODUCTION

Ever wanted to give a character the ability to make the

longsword in his hand flaming or the arrows from his bow (or

bullets from his gun) armor-piercing? For one particular mag-

ical or otherwise “special” weapon, this is relatively easy: buy

the desired Affliction, Binding, or Innate Attack with suitable

gadget limitations from pp. B116-117. But a few fictional

heroes are capable of imbuing any weapon of a particular class

– perhaps every weapon they use – with special properties.

That’s a little more complicated!

The Modifying ST-Based Damage rules in GURPS Powers

might seem appropriate at first. That prescription applies the

desired enhancements to ST-based damage exactly as if it was

a Crushing Attack of the same size, and uses the point cost of

just the modifiers as the cost to alter the nature of your bare-

handed damage. Unfortunately, that system was designed for

unarmed, ST-based crushing damage, and is extremely diffi-

cult to extend to weapons – especially if they’re ranged, not

crushing, and/or not muscle-powered (guns, for instance, have

all three problems).

You could still try, of course. You could build the most

expensive attack that you’re capable of creating by imbuing a

weapon and modifying its stats – the attack with the best dam-

age, range, RoF, etc. Then you could subtract the price of the

basic advantage, read the point cost of the modifiers as that of

the imbuement ability, and only allow the modifiers to aid

weapons that, once imbued, would be no better than this best

attack. But that would be a delicate exercise before the game

began and tedious in play – whenever you grabbed a new

weapon, you would have to do hasty math to determine

whether the imbuement pushes it over the line!

This mediocre showing isn’t surprising. Enhancements

in GURPS assume that you have a specific attack to modify.

They misbehave when you’re after the ability to modify

something as general as “anything that may come to hand”

. . . because, really, there’s no fair price for modifiers when

you have no idea what they might modify at some future

point. A munchkin player might even point out – not with-

out some justification – that because ordinary guns and

swords don’t cost points in GURPS, enhancements on them

would be multiples of 0 points and hence free!

Fortunately, there’s a way around this headache. GURPS

already has a set of abilities that make weapons more effective.

These potent traits can increase accuracy, lower target

defenses, reduce DR, raise attack rate, extend the useful range

of missile weapons, and many other things. They are, of

course, combat skills. (For the curious, lowering defenses is

simply Deceptive Attack, reducing DR is targeting chinks in

armor, raising attack rate is Rapid Strike, and increasing accu-

racy and range are basic skill effects.)

Still, ordinary combat skills don’t quite cut it when it comes

to adding genuine attack enhancements. No amount of believ-

able training will let you pick up any pistol and fire armor-

piercing shots no matter what its actual ammunition, or grasp

any broadsword and set the blade ablaze. Such feats call for a

new kind of skill – an Imbuement Skill.

Imbuement Skills are akin to both cinematic combat skills

like Breaking Blow and Pressure Secrets, and magic spells

like Flaming Weapon and Penetrating Weapon. They channel

some exotic or supernatural force – such as mana, the

wielder’s chi, or super-powered bioenergy – to give the user’s

weapon special capabilities. While they’re priced and bought

as skills, the GM is welcome to treat them as something

closer to advantages.

A BOUT THE A UTHOR

Sean “Dr. Kromm” Punch set out to become a particle

physicist in 1985, ended up the GURPS Line Editor in 1995,

and has engineered rules for almost every GURPS product

since. During the GURPS Third Edition era, he compiled both

GURPS Compendium volumes, developed GURPS Lite,

wrote GURPS Wizards and GURPS Undead, and edited or

revised over 20 other titles. With David Pulver, he produced the

GURPS Basic Set, Fourth Edition, in 2004. His latest creations

include GURPS Powers (with Phil Masters), GURPS Martial

Arts (with Peter Dell’Orto), and GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 1-

4. Sean has been a gamer since 1979. His non-gaming interests

include cinema and wine. He lives in Montréal, Québec with

his wife, Bonnie. They have two cats, Banshee and Zephyra,

and a noisy parrot, Circe.

I NTRODUCTION

T HE I MBUE A DVANTAGE

It isn’t balanced simply to let PCs buy whatever Imbuement

Skills they like. Just as wizards need Magery to cast their spells

and martial artists must be Trained by a Master to learn

Breaking Blow, individuals who can imbue require a special

advantage, which we’ll define here before discussing the skills.

Incendiary Weapon – rather than cherry-pick favorites. This

limitation doesn’t waive Imbue level prerequisites and always

applies to the whole advantage; to get Limited Skill Access for

skills that require Imbue 2 or 3, buy Imbue 2 or 3, respectively,

and apply this limitation to the entire advantage (even if only

one of your chosen skills is at the highest level!).

Imbue

M ULTIPLE I MBUE A DVANTAGES

You can buy more than one copy of Imbue provided that all

versions have power modifiers and the modifiers differ. You can

give any or all of them Limited Skill Access, if you wish; this is

occasionally a little cheaper than Imbue for one source with the

same total number of skills, but not very often – and not by

much. When you have multiple instances of Imbue like this,

you must learn each Imbuement Skill for a specific source; e.g.,

Envenomed Weapon (Bow; Magical) isn’t the same as

Envenomed Weapon (Bow; Chi).

This has one significant drawback, of course: You have to

pay extra points for two or more versions of Imbue – and pos-

sibly for several versions of your favorite Imbuement Skills to

go with them. This is more than offset by two major benefits,

however.

The most obvious benefit is that you’ll rarely be without

your imbuement abilities. If countermeasures or other prob-

lems faced by one power source cause it to fail, you can switch

sources without missing a beat. If one Imbue advantage is

somehow crippled or drained, you still have the other.

The most potent benefit is that you can use differently

sourced versions of the same Imbuement Skill simultaneously,

like any two other compatible skills, provided that you can

make the skill rolls and afford the FP cost; see Multiple Skills

(p. 5). This produces cumulative effects, where applicable. For

instance, Envenomed Weapon gives 1d worth of poison at -3 to

skill, 2d at -7, or 3d at -10, so if you knew both the Chi and

Magical versions, you could avoid a tricky skill-7 roll for 2d

damage by making a pair of easier skill-3 rolls for the same 2d

– or, if you’re skilled, you could get 6d of poison damage, cir-

cumventing the skill’s normal 3d limit, by making two skill-10

rolls!

10, 20, or 40 points

You can learn Imbuement Skills that grant additional capa-

bilities to weapons ready in your hands – including your hands

themselves, claws, and so on. Each level of Imbue (maximum

three) gives access to more and increasingly powerful

Imbuement Skills. The prerequisite level of Imbue for each skill

is noted with that skill.

Special Limitations

Unmodified Imbue is a “wild” ability that works anywhere

and isn’t subject to special countermeasures, although protec-

tion effective against the type of attack that the empowered

weapon delivers works normally. However, Imbue is often asso-

ciated with a particular power source and subject to that

source’s drawbacks; this may even be a requirement in certain

game worlds. Simulate this by giving Imbue a suitable power

modifier; e.g., Chi (-10%), Divine (-10%), Magical (-10%), or

Psionic (-10%), all from GURPS Powers. If the power modifier

is Cosmic, you only need the +50% version to bend a few limits

(see individual skills) and avoid being dispelled, but you must

take the +300% version if all of your Imbuement Skills can

ignore DR. An upside of adding any power modifier is that the

power’s Talent adds to Imbuement Skill rolls!

One special limitation is common on both wild and power-

linked Imbue:

Limited Skill Access: Your Imbue only enables you to acquire

some Imbuement Skills (each of which you can still buy for

multiple weapon skills). The limitation is -80% for a single skill,

-60% for two, -40% for three, or -20% for four skills. Access to

five or more Imbuement Skills isn’t a meaningful limitation.

The GM may require PCs who want two to four skills to select

thematically related choices – e.g., Burning Strike and

I MBUEMENT S KILLS

Imbuement Skills have no default, except across specialties

(see Specialties, below). All are DX/VH, although the GM is wel-

come to make them IQ/VH if that would better suit the power

source of Imbue (e.g., for psionics). Every Imbuement Skill has

some level of Imbue as a prerequisite.

(Rifle), and Thrown Weapon (Knife), respectively. You can spe-

cialize in any weapon skill that suits the skill type (see Types of

Imbuement Skills, p. 5), and there are two further specialties

that work slightly differently:

Throwing: This specialty lets you imbue hurled objects not

covered by any specific Thrown Weapon skill, regardless of

what they look like. It works with both Throwing and Throwing

Art (if you have it!).

Unarmed: This specialty enables you to charge up bare-

handed attacks regardless of what unarmed combat skill you use

– although you’ll find striking skills more useful. It covers kicks,

Specialties

All Imbuement Skills require specialization by particular

combat skill. For instance, Multi-Shot (Pistol) – associated with

Guns (Pistol) – is different from Multi-Shot (Bow), Multi-Shot

(Rifle), and Multi-Shot (Thrown Knife), for use with Bow, Guns

I MBUEMENTS

What Can I Imbue?

Imbuement Skills require specialization by combat

skill. Those with weapon skill specialties can imbue any

weapon covered by the associated weapon skill, those

with the Throwing specialty can charge up any hurled

object not covered by a weapon skill, and Imbuement

Skills that have the Unarmed specialty can enhance any

strike delivered by the user’s natural “melee weapons” –

punches, kicks, elbow strikes, knee strikes, head butts,

bites, claws, stings, etc.

However, you can’t imbue a ranged attack bought

with points, whether natural (like a racial ability) or

superhuman, even if it has gadget limitations. To this

end, the Innate Attack skill (p. B201) is never a valid spe-

cialty for Imbuement Skills. If you want to enhance such

an attack, put the desired modifiers on the underlying

attack advantage and pay for them directly. Imbuement

Skills exist specifically to enhance attacks for which you

can’t easily do this, like swords, guns, and fists.

You might be able to enhance spells and/or equip-

ment other than weapons. These special cases have

important rules of their own. For details, see Imbuing

Spells (p. 11) and Noncombat Imbuement (p. 13).

Ranged: Only missile and thrown weapon specialties are

available. For missile weapons, it’s the ammunition rather than

the launcher that’s imbued.

This distinction is made on the grounds of whether the

granted effects make sense for a given category of weapons. For

instance, enhancements that affect ranged combat stats have

no meaningful definition for melee weapons.

Imbuement Skills are also split into two large functional cat-

egories; see Enhancement Skills (pp. 6-11) and Transformation

Skills (pp. 11-13). Technically, there’s a third category here –

Combination Skills (pp. 13-14) – but this straddles the line

between the first two and isn’t truly distinct.

Using Imbuement Skills

To use an Imbuement Skill, you must be holding a ready

weapon of a type that skill can affect (if only at default); a mis-

sile weapon must also be loaded and ready to shoot. You can-

not empower an unready weapon or unloaded missile weapon,

or a weapon that you, personally, aren’t using. You can never

imbue a weapon and hand it off to someone else – the only way

to give another person an imbued weapon is to charge up a pro-

jectile and attack him with it!

Imbuement Skills require no concentration or preparation.

Roll before you make each attack roll. If you succeed, add the

skill’s effects to that attack. Failure simply means you don’t get

the benefit of the skill. Critical failure also costs 2 FP.

Each use of an Imbuement Skill costs 1 FP. You can pay this

with standard FP or, if your Imbue advantage is part of a power,

out of an Energy Reserve associated with that power. You can

try to avoid this cost by making your Imbuement Skill roll at -5

(but if you critically fail, you still pay 2 FP).

Many Imbuement Skills offer variable effects. This doesn’t

change FP cost but gives an additional penalty, cumulative with

the -5 to avoid FP cost. Without very high skill, it often isn’t pos-

sible to attempt the more potent effects “for free” (or at all!).

You can use an Imbuement Skill multiple times per turn: roll

and pay FP once per attack roll. A rapid-fire attack is just one

attack roll, so roll and pay FP only once for that. Keeping the

special effects of your skills “on” full-time while your weapon is

in hand requires no skill roll or FP – thus, even a low level of

skill can look cool!

punches, and blows with Claws, Strikers, Teeth, etc. It doesn’t

include natural ranged attacks such as a dragon’s flame breath

(see What Can I Imbue?, above).

Specialties of a given Imbuement Skill default to each other

at the same penalty as the associated combat skills. For

instance, if you know Flaming Strike (Broadsword), you can

attempt Flaming Strike (Shortsword) at -2. There’s no default

between specialties for completely unrelated weapons.

To be able to imbue more than one weapon type, buy several

specialties – possibly improving them from default, for related

weapons – or purchase a wildcard Imbuement Skill.

Wildcard Imbuement Skills

Those who can truly imbue any weapon may learn a “wild-

card” (“!”) version of any standard Imbuement Skill; see

Wildcard Skills (p. B175). Price such a skill as usual for the

desired level and then triple the point cost. Such a skill works

with every applicable combat skill – and possibly even with

skills for noncombat equipment (see Noncombat Imbuement,

p. 13). For instance, someone with Flaming Strike! could turn

any weapon to flame, be it a staff, a sword, an arrow from a

bow, or a bullet from a gun.

Defensive Use

You can attempt to imbue a weapon on somebody else’s turn

for such purposes as parrying and discouraging a foe from

grabbing your weapon. To do so, roll (Imbuement Skill/2) + 3,

adding +1 for Combat Reflexes. The modifiers and FP cost

work as usual. Success gives your weapon the skill’s usual ben-

efits for the duration of one defensive action.

Types of Imbuement Skills

Imbuement Skills are divided into three basic classes based

on what weapons they can affect (for further details, see What

Can I Imbue?, above):

General: Any specialty is possible – Throwing, Unarmed, or

any weapon skill.

Melee: Allowed specialties are those for melee combat skills

(all Melee Weapon skills, plus Cloak, Garrote, Lance, Net, and

Shield) and Unarmed.

Multiple Skills

You can use as many different Imbuement Skills as you like,

provided that you can make the skill rolls and afford the FP

cost. You can even use the same skill more than once if you

know it for several power sources (see Multiple Imbue

Advantages, p. 4). However, you can never use more than one

Transformation Skill (pp. 11-13) of any kind per attack, certain

skills are mutually exclusive, and you can’t combine skills that

produce exactly the opposite effect (if there’s any doubt, the

GM’s decision is final).

I MBUEMENTS

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