Monday, October 10, 2016

Powers: (Inspired By) Pidgey

S'bird.
Continuing down the scorched earth on my way to oblivion, it's Pidgey and friends!

Gust

Just use Air Jet from Thaumatology - Sorcery. If you like, take off the no wounding modifier.

Sand Attack

In pokemon, this lowers accuracy, presumably by throwing sand in one's eyes. Let's make this also inflict coughing as an affliction, and a temporary disadvantage of Bad Sight.

Sand Attack

Keywords: LeveledResisted (HT)

Full Cost: 28.5 points/level.
Casting Roll: None, use Innate Attack (Gaze) to aim.
Range: 10 yards
Duration: 3 minutes
The "caster" shoots sand into the opponent's face, blurring their vision and giving them coughing fits. The target rolls a contest of HT versus the caster's will to resist, failure means both type of bad sight and coughing for 3 minutes.
Statistics: Affliction 1 (HT; Decreased Range, 10 Yards, -30%; Disadvantage, Bad Sight, Nearsighted and Farsighted (magical), +45%; Fixed Duration, 3 minutes, +0%; Increased 1/2D, +15%; Irritant, Coughing, +20%; Malediction 2, +150%; Sorcery, -15%) [29]
Notes: Each additional level gives the opponent a penalty of -1 to their resistance roll. This spell is most efficient at even levels as each level is 28.5 points.

Quick Attack

This is a little difficult to emulate in GURPS, but some of the mechanical benefits can be implemented. The easiest I know is to use a somewhat modified version of Enhanced Time Sense, assuming that it is something like a meta-trait that is Combat Reflexes and all that other stuff, let's pretend that all the other stuff costs 30 points, so Enhanced Time Sense (No Combat Reflexes) has a full cost of [30] without even considering limitations. So, a buff that makes a user able to act before almost anyone else might be:

Quicken

Keywords: Buff

Full Cost: 39 points.
Casting Roll: None, use Innate Attack (Gaze) to aim.
Range: 100 yards
Duration: 3 minutes
The "caster" gives the benefits of Enhanced Time Sense (minus Combat Reflexes) for 3 minutes. Notably, this means the benefactor goes before everyone without enhanced time sense, and certain illusions are easier to see through.
Statistics: Affliction 1 (HT; Advantage, Enhanced Time Sense (No Combat Reflexes, Magical), +270%; Fixed Duration, 3 minutes, +0%; Increased 1/2D, +15%; No Signature, +20%; Sorcery, -15%) [39]

Wing Attack

This is just a normal physical attack specifically using wings. They are noted to have extra long reach, so you might consider giving yourself long arms with no signature (so that the arms can reach further but don't look freakishly long.) and some Striking ST that is limited to the one attack, because it is a bit strong (Maybe Striking ST 4?)

Mirror Move

This is a really weird expensive ability, that I think works best if we consider the paradigm of Sorcery. Instead of actually adding a special move, let's enhance our ability to improvise moves. This is just modifiers for the Sorcerous Empowerment advantage that looks like this:

  • Reduced Time 2 (Accessibility, only on an ability seen in the last second, -30%) +28%
  • Reduced FP Cost 3 (Accessibility, only on Hardcore Improvisation, -20%, only for an ability you have seen in the previous second, -30%), +30%
Effectively, this is around 12 points for level one of mirror move, and 6 points for each additional level (saving one point every 5 levels!!!) and allows you to improvise a spell immediately, but only if you just saw it. These extra points do not increase the size of the modular ability pool for the purpose of hardcore improvisation, but they also do not necessarily need to be bought in lockstep with each level of the advantage either, and it may have less than or as many levels as one has of sorcerous empowerment.

Feather Dance

I felt like this post was a bit light so I went a few generations out to pull in this easy ability, which lowers enemy attack power cumulatively. This is simply an affliction of nega-Striking ST, which is allowed to be cumulative.

Feather Dance

Keywords: Leveled, Obvious

Full Cost: 53.8 points/Level
Casting Roll: None, use Innate Attack (Gaze) to aim.
Range: 100 yards
Duration: 3 minutes
The "caster" coats the enemy in soft, cuddly down, lowering ST for the purpose of attacking by 4. This is cumulative. This is resisted by a roll against DX, not a contest. Each additional level penalizes the DX roll by 1.
Statistics: Affliction 1 (DX; Based on DX, +20%; Cumulative, +400%; Disadvantage, Striking ST -4 (Magical), +18%; Fixed Duration, 3 minutes, +0%; Increased 1/2D, +15%; Sorcery, -15%) [54]
Notes: This spell is *slightly* more efficient at levels with multiples of 5... saving a whopping 1 point.

Other Thoughts and Conclusion

Mirror Move and Quick Attack are the most difficult attacks on this list to translate into abilities. I really need to come up with some original ideas before people start thinking this is a pokemon GURPS.

1 comment:

  1. The side effects of Sand Attack are pretty good, but Enhanced Senses gives the combination of Nearsighted and Farsighted as -30 (they're done as Alternative Disabilities; p. 12). I think I'd go straight to Bad Sight: Low Resolution from the same box. Depending on how 'magical' you want to be with it, you could consider 'Environmental: Available Dust, -10%'. No Sand Attacks in a 'clean' environment!

    Also, Malediction has no 1/2D.

    The general idea of Quick Attack came up in a forum thread a couple months back. Sadly, I don't think it ever came up with a really good idea, and your version is at least as good as anything there.

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