RogerBW's Blog

This supplementary volume in the Monster Hunters series offers improved abilities for some of the standard hunter templates.

Disclaimer: I was lead playtester for this book, and therefore did not pay for it.

There are shades of Shadowrun here: in the first edition of that game, it rapidly became clear that conventional weapons were underpowered compared with magic, and supplements were written to try to boost them. Here there's a similar feeling that the templates with paranormal abilities don't need much in the way of boosting, but the others – the commando, techie, etc. – might benefit from more choices.

Although this material is presented as more stuff for experienced characters to buy, there's no particular reason why it couldn't come out of a character's initial point budget if other parts of their template were removed.

The power-ups themselves are sorted into general (combat-orientated, available to any PC), utility (also available to anyone but less focused on combat), and professional (restricted to specific templates). Costs are variable between about 3 points and 20+ per level.

Some of these power-ups (such as Dual-Weapon Mastery) are taken from other GURPS books, but tweaked to fit into the Monster Hunters model. Others, like Push-Ups Make You Bulletproof or Run and Gun, are new (and yes, they're broken down into standard GURPS powers too so they can be tweaked if desired).

Finally, there's a system for inventions, either bodging together something to copy the effects of an existing device or coming up with an entirely new machine. Mostly this is a way of pricing powers with Gadget limitations, with a very cinematic approach.

I definitely intend to make these powers available to the players in my upcoming Monster Hunters campaign; I'll be a bit more cautious about the invention system, but I think most of the rough edges have been sanded off. GURPS Monster Hunters Power-Ups 1 is available from Warehouse 23.