Roleplayer #23, May 1991
Look! Up on the Shelves!
The Return of GURPS Supers
by Loyd Blankenship
After six long months of waiting, it's finally back! GURPS
Supers, Second Edition, is now available in stores across
the human-populated universe.
Why a Second Edition?
The decision to release a second edition was based on 18 months of feedback
from garners, and lots of late-night discussions. The general goal was to
modify the system to make it more generic (hence the elimination of Power
Groups, which forced a PC into our strictly-defined ideas of what
made sense) without making it so free-form as to be a "design-your-own-system"
game.
We also wanted to simplify character creation -- it shouldn't take more
than 30 minutes to go from initial conception to character fine-tuning.
Organizational Changes
One big change is in the way the book is organized. Instead of breaking
advantages and disadvantages out according to type (Sensory, Movement, etc.),
they are now sorted alphabetically. This saves a lot of wear and tear on
the index! We also broke the multiple limbs and gadgeteering sections out
into their own chapters, rather than burying them in the character chapter.
We increased the page count by 16 pages -- and we were still running short
on space. We partially solved the space problem by deleting the martial
arts rules (they're covered much more thoroughly in GURPS
Martial Arts) and the psionic powers (David Pulver's new
GURPS
Psionics is shipping with this issue; we couldn't cover
a fraction of the new psi-powers in the limited space of Supers).
This allowed us to add dozens of new advantages, disadvantages, and
super-powers.
Finally, we shuffled the order of the chapters a bit, relegating the sample
characters to the back of the book where they could be easily located by
the GM and wouldn't get in the way during character creation.
Rules Changes
By far, the largest rules change was the elimination of Power Groups. For
those that really liked them, we offered several options for keeping them
(see pp. SU15 and 25). After hundreds of letters and comments, we decided
that Power Groups were simply straitjacketing creative roleplayers into
preconceived slots.
To assuage complaints about the cost of high ST, we added the Enhanced ST
advantage and modified the Super ST advantage. It is now possible to have
a moderately strong super (ST 15-30) without going point-bankrupt, or a
really strong super (ST measured in the hundreds) without using 5,000-point
characters.
There are now only two types of super-powers -- Ranged and Area. Jet and
Missile were really only special cases of Ranged, and have been treated
as such in this edition.
In addition to porting over the existing characters from first edition,
we've added a new pair of supers -- one hero (Tien Tiao) and one villain
(Poprock).
Attack powers now do 1d per level instead of per 2 levels -- but the average
point-cost per level of an attack power has roughly doubled, so the net
result is the same as in the first edition.
Finally, there was quite a bit of numbers-tweaking and errata-fixing --
much more than we could possibly list, even if we devoted this whole issue
to it!
Net Effect
The end result is that existing supers with a low number of powerful abilities
will probably see their point value decrease. Advantage-based supers will
remain roughly the same. Metahumans with a large number of skills (every
skill in an old Power Group, for instance) will usually go up in value.
PCs with very high ST (30+) will be radically cheaper with the new ST rules.
When translating
the sample characters, most stayed at 500 points with only a little
adjustment. Flamin' Jane and Chemico (both skill-heavy) increased to 600
points (they've done a lot of adventuring in the last two years!), and Kodiak
was upped to 550. Blue Demon was increased to 1,000 points (see below) --
not because the rules changed radically, but because we wanted to make him
a really tough opponent! Those supers with very few super-skills -- Black
Pearl, Icepick and Dwarfstar, for instance -- had to be beefed up some to
make 500 points.
Errata
As with any project of this size, errors occasionally creep in. So far,
we're only aware of one major and a few minor ones.
First, you are still limited to a net maximum -75% in limitations on a super
power or advantage. This is un-changed from the first edition and the Basic
Set psi rules -- it just got deleted somehow!
Second, Darkshell's Fireball is Power 8, not Power 16, and does 8d damage
(not 8d+8).
And the major one: the book is still supposed to be dedicated to Joye and
Charles Blankenship --hopefully this printing will sell out soon so I'll
be allowed back in my parent's house!
Blue Demon
ST 260 (290 points) IQ 4 (-50 points)
DX 12 (20 points) HT 15 (60 points)
Damage: Thrust 27d+2 impaling (+2 is from Body
of Metal); Swing 29d +2 cutting
Move: 6 running; 48 flying
Advantages
Alertness +5 (25 points)
Combat Reflexes (15 points)
High Pain Threshold (10 points)
Disadvantages
Appearance: Hideous (-20 points)
Bloodlust (-10 points)
Gigantism (-10 points)
Odious Personal Habit: Tortures Victims (-15 points)
Overconfidence (-10 points)
Reputation (-20 points)
Sadism (-15 points)
Super Advantages
Body of Metal, level 18 (162 points PD 6 DR 18)
Claws (40 points)
Damage Resistance +40 (Hardened +30%; 156 points)
Instant Regeneration (100 points)
Flight (40 points)
Regrowth (40 points)
Resurrection (150 points)
Super Flight x 2 (40 points)
Skills
Brawling-14 (4 points)
Quirks
Plays with its food.
Afraid of jet fighters.
Total Points: 1000
The coven met at midnight to begin the ancient ritual. Caroline, the high
priestess, was hurt, angry and powerful -- a bad combination. She had been
spurned by her boyfriend, and several people told her he had been seen with
Lynn -- a witch from another coven with a grudge against Caroline. Caroline
knew what she was about to do was dangerous, but it didn't matter. Lynn
had thwarted her at every turn, and now Caroline was going to get her out
of the way, once and for all.
As the witches chanted, an eerie shape began to fill the room. At first
it was nebulous, a vaguely humanoid shape of twisting smoke, but soon it
began to solidify into something truly terrifying. It was eight feet tall
and had skin that looked like leather but shone like polished blue metal.
Its wings were like a bat's, with a span of fifteen feet or more. Instead
of fingers it had talons. Its head looked like a skull with horns,
and in place of eyes it had nothing. Not even the back of its head -- the
witches looked into its eyes and saw a void.
Workers on the night shift at a nearby newspaper reported hearing a tremendous
crash. When they rushed out to see what had happened, the apartment building
Caroline -- and 60 other people -- had lived in was being smashed to rubble
by a monster. The photographer who documented the destruction got a Pulitzer
prize for his work.
The witnesses called the police, who in turn called the National Guard.
But before they could respond to the calls, the "Blue Demon" (as
one witness had tagged it) spread its wings and flew off into the night.
Since then, many people have seen the Blue Demon; it has been blamed for
thousands of deaths and untold dollars of property damage. No one knows
what motivates it or where it came from; only one member of the coven survived
long enough to question, and she gasped out very little information before
she died. So far, all of the substantiated attacks have been in large population
centers; researchers have theorized that it is attracted by the psychic
energy field created by large numbers of humans. It has, however, been sighted
flying over sparsely populated areas, and such early sightings have allowed
local authorities in Chicago and Birmingham to successfully repel the Blue
Demon.
The Blue Demon's attacks are particularly horrific because killing is one
of its kinder habits. It tortures with the ingenuity and cruelty of a savage
child, and the strength of a berserk dinosaur. It will linger until the
last second, even in the face of a super attack, to wrench more agonies
from a victim. The U.N. 's inability to handle the Demon is one of the persistent
arguments of the anti-U.N. parties. It is not known if the Demon eats people
for nourishment, or just gets satisfaction from munching them up alive.
A number of people have vanished completely after each attack. Did the Demon
eat them entirely, or take them away to toy with at its leisure?
An unsubstantiated report from Montana had the Blue Demon torturing and
eating several shepherds . . . and several hundred sheep. An unlikely coalition
of televangelists, law-enforcement supers and the SPCA are coordinating
plans for a massive search-and-destroy operation against the Demon.
The most successful attacks on the Demon have been made by teams of supers;
with its size and strength (and high PD and DR), the Blue Demon can resist
most ordinary attacks. The demon has been killed, several times,
but it always comes back, sometimes after no more than a few days.
Typical Dialogue: "Snarl . . . <crunch> . . . burrrrppp."
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