Here I’m toying with how to represent some spells from World of Warcraft in GURPS. Today: resurrecting spells.
It’s not hard to notice that the GURPS Magic Resurrection spell isn’t suitable for WoW feel or for it’s world:
- it’s too costly and time consuming for how often it’s being used in the computer game;
- introducing it would raise many questions on why wasn’t X brought back to life.
This could be solved in a couple of ways. We might borrow from D&D 4, where the more important a character is, the harder they are to raise from the dead: to the point where resurrecting a warlord is impossible, but raising a PC is trivial (for a hero). This explanation starts to crumble, though, when the PCs take on the titans and the old gods.
I prefer to look at what role those spells actually have in the game: they quickly bring back to fight characters who’d need a couple of minutes to come back themselves. In GURPS – that’s Awaken. Assuming that the “resurrecting” spells merely wake up the unconscious solves the above issues nicely. (It also makes the game actually potentially deadly, but that’s not a bug, it’s a feature).
The Awaken spell could be included in the spell lists of resurrecting spellcasters as-is, but it might also be tweaked to better suit the world:
- change it from area to regular, with no effect on cost;
- non-combat resurrect: change the casting time to 10 seconds;
- remove the stun and fatigue countering, but reduce the HT penalty for subjects unconscious because of damage and poison;
- might also be combined with some healing (there are many options for this).
There’s one thing Awaken can’t deal with, as far as i know: Mortal Wounds. You might leave it as-is, or combine it with Stop Bleeding, making Resurrection a Very Hard spell. I prefer something in-between: Resurrection stays a hard spell and cannot deal with Mortal Wounds. But a perk is available: Glyph of Miraculous Resurrection: your Resurrection spell can awaken a mortally wounded character. This feat costs 10 energy. The mortal wound is automatically stabilized. The target awakens only on a passed HT roll, as usually.
Oh, one last thing: I feel like seeing a Spirit Healer while unconscious might be useful. Maybe with the Dreaming skill?
Tinker on, Gnomash out. Cheers!
Gnomish workden 