GURPS General - /gurpsgen/

I even tried converting it on another site and still it just boots me out

What book and what site?

GURPS - Basic Set (The two books combined) and on Lulu

Don't know what to tell you. I've never had that problem. Maybe there's a forum?

Can you try and see if it works for you right now? I need to know if its a me problem or a lulu problem

Sorry. Can't check from my phone.

Is there a 4e book that has stats or a template for a Satyr or Faun?

How about Lizardfolk, Minotaur, or Ogres?

Dungeon Fantasy 3 has gamey versions of all of those, I believe. It has "Fauns" but no satyrs, Minotaurs, Ogres, Dragon Blooded, and "Lizard Man."

You know what would be kick-ass, but likely isn't ever going to be produced?

A GURPS Basic Game box in the vein of the Dungeons & Dragons Basic Game, that's what!

There would be three or four different adventures to get one's feet wet with the rules...which would themselves be some combination of GURPS Lite and GURPS Characters/Campaigns that affords many options yet entices the customer to pick up the actual books. I'm thinking Fantasy (gotta have it in today's market), Wild West/Steampunk (something old, but not medieval-era, that *is* adventurer-friendly), Modern (perhaps with supernatural elements?), and Science-Fiction.

Horror and Fantasy have Satyrs, Dungeon Fantasy 3 has Fauns, Lizardmen are in Dragons, Tales of the Solar Patrol, and Banestorm as are Minotaurs and Ogres (both of which are also in Dungeon Fantasy 3)

Thanks, guys!

Anybody have a source for a some undead templates?

Both for the undead templates themselves, and so I can derive a core "type" template that covers the basics of undeath?

And finally, is there somewhere I can find a wide variety of prebuilt powers, either to use or to use as a starting point for building my own?

I'm trying to plan a political intrigue campaign with some friends set in renaissance Italy (around TL4 or 5) where the characters basically do black ops missions for a politician so he can gain more power, which will hopefully end with him reaching highest office. The problem is, I've never DM'd a campaign before in any system and have only really read through the basic set. Can someone give me tips on how to run an engaging and fair campaign and some pitfalls to avoid? Additionally, are there any books or anything specific to political type campaigns that could give me inspiration as to how things like that should be run from a technical aspect? I really appreciate any info you can give me.

There are TONS of "undead" templates in the GURPS Horror supplement.

>Last thread someone asked about innate attacks

Innate attacks scales faster than ST in damage. GURPS usual suggestion to "control" this is to cap innate attack damage to either "ordinary" melee or ranged damage (depending on tech level).

As a general tip, in low tl games, innate attacks should usually require some resource to use, because otherwise they'll push ahead of the norm. In high tl games, guns can usually keep up, and then putting too many resources on innate attacks makes them useless compared to just owning a gun.

You know what would be awesome? GURPS pdfs with ticky boxies next to Advantages and the like. Basically the Trait sorter only intergrated with the book for ease of use.

>ticky boxies next to Advantages
>Trait sorter
What're you talking about? Could you describe it better, or give an example?

I think it's time for Veeky Forums to get shit done. Anyone want to organize to make a GURPS Lite "game box"?

Thanks, user! Useful advice.

I wish you the best, but I'm procrastinating on too many projects as is.

I still have my very different d20 fantasy heartbreaker to build (while it would be neat if it made me money, I mostly want it for my own campaigns), two different software tools (one for Pathfinder, and possibly later adding 5e support), and a world building tool, which I intend to be both useful for tabletop gaming, and which I intend to leverage in making a videogame.

Of course in addition to building the materials for the GURPS campaign I want to run, which I'll probably have a hell of a time finding players for.

What do you have in mind? Perhaps a communal effort towards creating the meat of the box's contents* that anyone could print and use for their own purposes?

*Absent the actual box and any potential miniatures, naturally.

It sounds like they're looking for a couple different short 1-off adventures with pregenerated characters, that run off GURPS Lite, designed in a way that they will encourage people to want more options and keep gaming picking up the full rules.

Read "On de Medici's Secret Service" from Pyramid 3-30. Then read Hotspots: Renaissance Florence. Then Wikipedia for detail on the crusades and cities and leaders of your specific date. You'll never hurt for ideas between Wikipedia (or a history book if you like that sort of thing) and Assassin's Creed 2.

That time period (15th century) is *awesome*. There are crusades, warring city-states, invading Ottomans, antipopes, great artists & inventors, gunpowder cannons (and grenades! though the firearms are really for shit), the silk road for the eastern exoticism (gurus, mystics, ninja, kung-fu masters), the massive French army, Dracula (vlad the impaler, the voivode of wallachia))

The Basic set is fine and really all you need. Low-Tech (and maybe Martial Arts) covers all the gear catalog you need (skip the stuff in Basic).

The Reaction Table (Basic, p. 560), and some advantages that give reaction bonuses (try to keep the players from taking anything giving penalties) and social skills (Savoir-Faire, Current Affairs, Area Knowledge, etc.) should go a lot of the rest of the way. For technical though, try not to touch the dice if at all possible (unless one of the players is a socially awkward fa/tg/uy) during social interaction. Role play!

Also, come up with a list of 20 male italian names and 20 female italian names (and another half dozen for each gender for the Ottomans). At least. And refresh the list as the names get used. This goes a *long, long* way towards improvising an NPC on the spot.

The best advice for a new GURPS GM is "Use as few rules as possible! GURPS has a rule for everything, *don't* try to use them all out of the gate!"

Hey guys, what are the essential skills, advantages, and abilities that an adventurer type would need to get by in an Action, Fantasy, Dungeon Fantasy, Low-Tech, or Monster Hunters type campaign?

>Pyramid 3-30
I mean Pyramid 3-10.

Isn't there a list in How to be a GURPS GM? If not then the official forums has a post by the line editor. Google something like "GURPS everyman skills"

Pretty much exactly what said.

I've never been good at making adventures, though. I'd be willing to help with editing, rules, making it into a .pdf that looks halfway decent, etc., basically anything that doesn't require me to be terribly creative.

A completely fan-made supplement for GURPS Lite that uses all (or most) of the rules across a few different adventures set in different TLs would be great, especially if there was an 'under the hood' look at how the challenges, especially combat and characters, was designed.

It would be good to be able to break that out for a one-off to get new people into GURPS.

I do think that part of the problem of GURPS is that there's very little hood, outside of DF and MH. You can see all the engine parts, and that can be overwhelming to newbies.

I feel like the solution to that is making template use more front and center.

I don't know how you'd go about doing that though.

I know that for my next game (and first GURPS game, for players who have never played GURPS) character creation is going to be mix & match lenses sorted by category (with lots of categories, and players picking at least one thing from each), rather than going freeform point buy.

>that uses all (or most) of the rules
Especially if it includes something like Shadowrun's On The Run where rules were spelled out with page references and guidelines for how things can play out ("The team has several options for gaining entry to the concert. Buying Tickets, Bribery, Sneaking, Forgery, Seduction, Strongarm, Unconventional Entry" each point with it's own paragraph on how it works and how to GM it.) On The Run may not be the best but it does a whole lot right for a brand new GM and I don't know of another intro adventure that holds the GM's hand like that one does (I'm fishing for recommendations BTW).

I'm a big fan of teaching someone how to GM. Anyone can learn to play given time and incentive but a GM is likely to become that time and incentive for someone else (after moving I went from being the only GM for a year to being one of three). It's like a pyramid scheme.

>there's very little hood, outside of DF and MH
Perhaps I should have been more clear - Everything will be 'all hood', so to speak. If you're familiar with Savage Worlds, the Deluxe version has five two-page adventures at the end of the book, one of which has four characters already statted out. I'm envisioning something similar, a short adventure (two to four pages at the most) with characters already fully statted out, disads and all. Combats would have pre-made enemies and everything. At the end of the adventure, there would be an extended "Designer's Notes" that detailed how they balanced everything, made the adventure work, what rules they decided to use and why, etc.

>Templates
That'd be the other option to completely pre-made characters. GURPS overall could benefit a lot from a more... legible format for templates. I get headaches whenever I try to read DF's templates, for instance. I'd definitely re-do how the templates are done, or provide an alternative option, or something. What's good for saving space isn't necessarily good for reading.

>First game
Good luck, and I agree with mixing and matching instead of free reign. It'll be a better experience for all.

>Teaching new GMs
Agreed. I have a friend who GMs for me and he's just... it's amazing how even the most simple things can blow right past the average dude, y'know? I'll give On The Run a read-through for inspiration.

>different adventures set in different TLs
Infinite Worlds is ideal for this. Not only different TLs but different adventures could highlight different rules. Kind of like the early campaign missions of most CRPGs.

"On sneak-world you can't use your guns without drawing too much attention. Here's how Stealth and Grappling work and how to combine them for sentry removal." Or "This place is engaged in trench warfare. Here's explosions, shrapnel, and suppressing fire."

Basically, I'm going to combine chargen ideas from several different systems (Rolemaster, RuneQuest, & Shadowrun being the main ones, but I may also add in some ASoIF style house/guild building element) into a single package, under the GURPS system, and drop this alternate character generation method for my players to build legal GURPS characters for my campaign.

Hell, maybe I will submit it to Pyramid when I'm done, too. That could be neat.

Yeah, kindof like that. Though I would very strongly suggest you do your pregens more closer to what they do in deadlands or shadowrun. Each pregen fills exactly one sheet, and has all of the specific rules about the character so you know what you can do.

So if you want to play as "Sister Mary, Demon Slaying Nun with a Holy Shotgun", the GM can literally just pass you that page.

It's a graphic design decision with very important practical implications.

Thanks!

Based on that list I slapped this together.

I'm going to give this to my PCs, in addition to whatever they actually build.

Do you have any suggestions or comments for me?

Player Character
There are some things that are essential skills in this kind of action-heavy campaign. In addition to anything else taken by the players when building their character, all player characters have the following template. All Skills are bought to the “Attribute+0” level. Select options which add up to the total template cost. Any unspent points are lost.
Skills [26]
Nonoptional [14]
Climbing(a)[2]; First Aid(e)[1]; Gesture(e)[1]; Hiking(a)[2]; Holdout(a)[2]; Riding(a)[2]; Stealth(a)[2]; Throwing (a)[2]
Social [1-4]
Choose: Carousing(e)[1], Diplomacy(h)[4], Fast Talk(a)[2], or Interrogation(a)[2];
Perception [1-2]
Choose: Observation(a)[2], Scrounging(e)[1], or Search(a)[2];
Melee [1-2]
Choose: Axe/Mace(a)[2], Broadsword(a)[2], Knife(e)[1], Shortsword(a)[2], or Staff(a)[2];
Ranged [1-2]
Choose: Bow(a)[2], Crossbow(e)[1], Thrown Weapon (one kind)(e)[1];
Unarmed [1-4]
Choose: Boxing(a)[2], Brawling(e)[1], or Karate(h)[4]); Forced Entry(e)[1];
Grappling [2-4]
Choose: Judo(h)[4], Sumo Wrestling(a)[2], or Wrestling(a)[2];

You might want to build your pregens with no name, and one or two choices.

That way if you get two people doubling up on a pregen (it happens) they can at least be slightly different.

That looks pretty good and at least ensures minimal competence in most of the stuff an adventuring hero should be able to do.

I'd drop Search (it's really just for finding keistered stuff), make a note (if the game setting fits) that riding can be swapped with driving, and add climbing (if you can't even haul-ass up a tree you deserve to get eaten by wolves).

Also, since I'm a bad and lazy GM I put 4 points in everything on each template or make everything a multiple of 4 since the costs plateau at +4 per +1 to skill (which might make you think that everyone will take knife instead of broadsword [which covers baseball bats too, BTW] but knives have their own problems (reach, can't parry as well, low damage, etc.) The extra +1 to hit generally isn't worth it.)

>Hicking
Only if traveling time is important and you won't railroad end result anyway.
Same with Riding.
>Holdout
For everyone? From what you named murderhobos will perfectly fir and they don't need holdout.
>Interrogation
>for random adventurer
Meh. Intimidation for tough guys.
>Choose: Observation(a)[2], Scrounging(e)[1], or Search(a)[2];
Observation is the only one that will be actually useful most of the time.
>Melee
>Ranged
>Unarmed
>Grappling
Just let them choose it for themselves, goddamit. They will buy additional skills if they feel they need it.

Sean "Kromm" Punch, the big name in GURPS for mechanics, actually has a pretty solid/concise list for 'essential' adventuring skills (insofar as your standard fantasy game would need): forums.sjgames.com/showpost.php?p=369148&postcount=21

>and add climbing
Oops, didn't see it on your list, ignore this bit.

Yep. Just like I said here: . You posted the link though so I'll defer the internet points to you.

Climbing is the first item in the template.

>I put 4 points in everything on each template
Ah. yeah, I'm going to let them move the points around between categories, so long as they pick at least one thing in each category and stay within the point budget.
I've also decided I'm upping the template total value to 30, to give them a bit more wiggle room, and to let them grab 2 things in one category.

That post specifically, is what this template is based on, with slight changes since it will be a fantasy game.

>Only if you won't railroad end result anyway.
I tend to run sandbox games. Don't railroad results. If they have 2 weeks to get something done, and they wasted 12 days travelling because they fucked around or someone built an incompetent character, they have 2 days left or miss their chance, and then them missing their chance is part of the story.

>Holdout for everyone?
How does that not make sense for a group of wandering adventurers/mercenaries?

>Interrogation
You'll note there were several other social skills in that category. They have to take at least one of them.

>Observation is the useful one
Yeah, I figured. Search could be handy occasionally though.

>Having a bare minimum combat competence for adventurers in a variety of areas is bad!
YMMV obviously, but this is going to be for a somewhat dungeon fantasy type game centered on adventuring, guilds, and factions. They're gonna fight, giving them *SOME* fight skills for free on top of what they pay for with their 250 (or whatever my campaign point total ends up being) doesn't seem so terrible to me.

I thought Mana would solve my problems, turns out it exacerbated them, any tips on adapting Vancian casting?

I'll need some more information to deduce what is going on here. What kind of campaign? What kind of characters? What is it that made everything worse?

Use Sorcery with various levels of Limited Use required.

>adapting Vancian casting

Unless you are literally doing a The Dying Earth setting, why?

If you must, the easy way is Sorcery, Modular Abilities with Limited Use and Requires Preparation. They can slot spells by "level" (cost) as desired, but forget them when casting and must relearn them in order to cast them again.

It's going to be work. There's another RPG they used to publish that had a lot of flaws but went all in on Jack Vance style wizards you might just want to use instead. I forget what it's called, but it came out in the 70's and stayed in print a long time so you should be able to get the books cheap.

Gurps Infinite Worlds: What would be the best POD for "France is the bad guy of World War 2"?

That's just normal homeline Earth.

Search really dose almost nothing. In the last thread someone figured out if cut off someone's clothes they can't hide anything larger then a freckle from a pat down and if you are sick enough for a body cavity search you automatically find everything without needing to roll search.

To be fair even with pretty rudimentary knowledge It's incredibly easy to make spellcasting essentially free, Vancian casting stops that dead.

>What were your problems
>what gurps magic system were you using
>How did it exacerbate them?
>Why do you want to go to Cancun, specifically, rather than picking one of the several existing gurps magic systems?

If you're dead set on vancian, you could
base it on sorcery with some homebrewing or you could build it using powers and alternate powers.

How is that?

Wouldn't you also use search to search a room for hidden doors and whatnot?

Hidden door's actually use Observation or Traps, according to DF. Search is near exclusively about frisking dudes and rolling corpses. I think it's also used to quickly get something from a packed container?

I remember someone talking about a spells/day system a long time ago (I think it was for Dark Souls?). IIRC, they had a variety of spell effects, all of which were Follow-Ups to a no-wounding guided pi- attack. That might be the best way to tackle spells/day with a system as broad and maleable as Sorcery; all spells have Follow-Up and the carrying "attack" is divorced from the Sorcery system of Modular Abilities and learned spells.

Hitler was a francophone?
Or DuGaulle was a Facist?
Or ww1 reparations go too far and France carved up Germany hardcore.
The league of nations didnt disband, and France takes the helm?

Use Ritual Path Magic, only allow them to cast spells by preparing charms beforehand.

Random fascist/military coup.
That's like super plausible and these people were a problem until like the 80s.

You could go with Action Française not being condemned by the Pope in 1926 for whatever reason you want. They lost a lot of their people then, because many were religious people who joined AF to oppose the secular government. Maybe it'd be enough for them to gather enough power or seize it later.

And that too. If AF gets its way after WW1, they'd have asked for a complete dismantlement of Germany and their partition into several german states. No doubt they'd end up trying to gobble a few later and start shit, or maybe they'd join Hitler (though they hated him IRL, since they wanted a weak Germany, and no war) in a war against communism, and then backstab Hitler and destroy Germany then. Hilariously enough, at the time they basically hated the jews as much as nazis, but refused any association, IIRC.

Hence the reason I recommended to drop it.

Actually, if you just ban Ritual Adept, the penalties will add up to making "improvised" spells incredibly fucking hard and *exceptionally risky* for even archmagi while still technically possible. I've always liked it when wizards can try suicidal 11th-hour shit like that.

Also, hanging spells > charms. I love coming up with fun triggers for my hanging spells, and it's closer to vancian preparation anyway.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippe_Pétain
This guy was the leader of Vichy France after Hitler occupied the north, and they've got quite a story to them already. I'm sure it wouldn't be too far outside the realm of possibility to just make Vichy France form naturally and kick off WW2 with this guy as French Hitler instead of being a result of Germans.

Are there any rules to determines how easily a firearm remains/drops out when it's tucked into one's pants or even simply held fast through one's own belt?

The character in question will be running and climbing, so it is of some importance to determine if they lose their weapon.

Read up on high tech. It's very unrealistic to store a gun in your pants. There's even a perk to defy reality and keep it there.

That entry makes mention of it potentially firing, but not whether it will remain in the impromptu "holster" at all for any appreciable length of time.

Also, the PC doesn't have either the Unluckiness or Cursed Disadvantages, so those are a non-factor.

Wouldn't it make more sense for a Mosley's Fascist Britain being allied with the Axis? France prior to World War 2 was politically mild and stable; the communists divided themselves into irrelevancy and the conservatives were to busy publishing journals to care about militarization.

I'd say an insecure weapon, be it put into a pocket, a handbag or waistband, falls out on failed DX roll if you perform any action more vigorous then walking.

You can secure it to prevent this with a tight belt, bit of rope, lots of tape or staples. If you do so I'd forgo the DX roll, but require 5 seconds to free it from it's binding and ready it.

I'm looking at GURPS for the first time and the rules for combat require HT checks to not die or to remain conscious.

If a character has a HT of 18, are they pretty much unable to die or be knocked out until they have -5 times HP?

You always fail on a 17 and an 18, regardless of circumstances. You do however only fail about 1% of the time if your HT is 16 or above, until modifiers bring it below that point.

Oh yeah, the automatic fail. I guess that's also a very high level too?

Like I said, it applies to a roll of 17 or 18, always. It could go away if you have some really special Cosmic rule that would likely cost a ton of points, but generally that wouldn't be a good idea to put on HT rolls to survive.

Yeah, 16 HT is sort of unrealistic and quite powerful, but even then you can only keep performing vigerous action for a couple minutes at negative HP before you pass out.

It's likely to take someone finishing the job with a point blank headshot or other excution to finish you, but you DID spend 60 points on HT. For the same investment you could be killable only with blessed silver or fire.

Here's a graph that I made that shows whether it is better to increase HT or HP if we are solely speaking to the maximum amount of damage one can take before dying... HT up to 14 before any HP is the best investment, and then after that it gets a little murky.

Gurps vehicles when?

When you write it for yourself. People have been nagging them for GURPS vehicles for a decade.

If you do, please base it on space ships.

>Sourcebooks that don't exist, and shouldn't

GURPS WW1
GURPS Vehicles
GURPS Mehca
GURPS Ultra-Tech 2: Better Edition
GURPS Wild West
GURPS GURPS

Vehicles would be good, but it doesn't need a big book.

Just give me a concrete way to adapt vehicles built as characters into a cost, and some vehicle creature templates to make things easier.

You could do it in like 10 pages.

Likewise for mecha.

And weapons and other gear for that matter.

Just give me some concrete guidelines for converting characters or templates to equipment, and give me some sample template pieces, and I'll run with it.

What's good about this system? Would it be good for a magical school role play?

Almost everything. Yes.

Nothing really. Nah.

Meh, it's okay.

Those all sounds like good books.
Though I doubt they'd make a Wild West book since there's already one for 3e and there aren't much rules in it, it's mostly fluff.

Someone in the last thread asked about modifying RPM so you need to research & learn your spells first.

ravensnpennies.com/2014/04/gurps101-beginners-ritual-path-magic.html#.V3d0YCMrLmE

I'll be employing this in my next campaign.

>books that shouldn't exist
>GURPS Vehicles
>GURPS Ultra-Tech 2: Better Edition

user, no, those are the ones we want!

Please specifics?

That sounds worthy of brewing, and like a fairly simple approach. After all, you can typically build *Anything* in Gurps, right?

>Build existing equipment as templates that yield a single power, or as a character.
>See Point Totals.
>Compare to Costs in Book.
>Collect Examples in Excel.
>Determine an averaged out Points:Cost ratio, as well as how much things deviate from that.
>Come up with some piecemeal built power/advantage templates you can build new weapons/vehicles with, based on the ones that exist.
>Release to anons, or publish in pyramid.
>People use these rules to build new collections of stuff. That stuff gets posted online or in pyramid.
>Better for everyone!

It would take some time in front of a spreadsheet, and building a pretty decent collection of stuff as powers and characters, though, since I'm sure the GURPS guys just guessed and made shit up, or looked at real world data rather than building it modularly.

Personally, I want a decent collection of converted equipment for "GURPS Shadowrun", and "GURPS Star Wars", and "GURPS Halo", and "GURPS Mass Effect".

That would cover all of my ultra tech needs quite nicely.

How crippling exactly is the Cursed disadvantage? I know that it's heavily dependent on the GM and obviously pretty awful given how many points it gives you, but does anyone have any experience with it in practice?

I'm wondering because one of my players picked it and I need to know a general metric for how badly I should fuck this guy over.

>"What's good about this system"
Short of rules for building custom equipment and vehicles (which you kindof have to fudge), GURPS can do anything.

>What do you mean?
GURPS is the LEGO of RPG Systems. If what you want to do is not a kit you can buy off the shelf already made (like most other RPGs), all the component parts exist so you can combine them together and build the ruleset you want.

>Would it be good for a magical school roleplay
GURPS has rules for building children as characters.
GURPS has several different magic systems, depending on what you're looking for, and several guides for customizing them.
GURPS has a book for designing superpowers.
GURPS has lots of rules for expanding combat to make it more interesting.

It's the only game I've seen that you can tweak the options so it can handle running Fullmetal Alchemist (Adjusted Ritual Path Magic) OR Avatar the Last Airbender//Legend of Korra (Chinese Elemental Magic) OR Naruto (Powers, Maybe Sorcery).

You could also easily use it to run a historical game. Or (slightly less easily but still doable) an elder scrolls game.

It will run whatever you want, but there will be more up front GM work before you start your campaign if its not a published setting for GURPS, selecting options, building the things you want using the existing materials.

Of course, once you're set up for ONE Fullmetal Alchemist campaign, you're set up for ALL fullmetal alchemist campaigns you might want in the future, and (If you share it) other people are also set up for it.

You could probably build a Nasuverse campaign too, but I don't know enough about the setting to tell you what to use.

I do suspect it would struggle with something really high powered like DBZ/BLEACH/Avengers/Justice League, but maybe not.

Honestly, I don't know why there aren't more fan made campaign guides for GURPS 4e, given how long it's been out.

And unlike many other RPGs where you're just homebrewing and guessing, in GURPS you're building it with published pieces which already fit together, and you typically only build the stuff you need.

A Nasuverse campaign wouldn't be difficult at all, In fact the magic is near identical to the GURPS default.

Oh, a few weeks back another user shared his experience with cursed. It ended up getting him drowned. In a desert campaign.

My personal recommendation: Have something happen about once per session that screws him over. It should be something bigger than a minor annoyance (minor loss of coin/health), but more something that greatly complicates something previously simple. Don't aim to kill him, but it could occasionally be a possibility. It could sometimes be stuff that affects other party members too, but it should always hit the cursed guy the worst.

Examples:
Hard-to-replace gear lost or broken
Sudden ambush
Circumstances beyond the players control slows him down/hinders him at a critical moment
Help suddenly unavailable (eg. doctor being out of just the medicine the PC needs.)

This works out pretty much how you'd think, but dose have interesting data. From a pure survival standpoint your best is to improve your roll to avoid death (HT based, but modified by Fit and Hard to Kill) rather then buy more HP. At 14, and to a far greater extent at 15-16 you no longer get much, or any benefit from buffing the roll.

This makes Hard to Kill better then HP in this case. But there are other cases to consider, as HP dose things that aren't just surviving a giant amount of damage.

More HP doesn't just increase the amount of raw abuse needed to kill you, it increases the amount of damage you take before you feel it. More HP increases the thresholds to cripple a limb or extremity and how much you can take before you start having to roll HT every second to keep from passing out. In extreme cases it also increases the speed you recover from injury.

The basic lesson here? Everyone should try to snag Hard to Kill 2 and Fit if their character concept and points allow. They massively reduce the chances you will die until the 'magic number' of instant death.

You can always just have things happen out of the blue too. A floor giving out under his step, a sign falling just as he walks by or a shelf tipping over to fall on him or a candle tipping over and catching his bed on fire.

Gives him a good chance to try out those dodge rules, maybe paired with observation to spot threats before it's too late.

Realy, a good way to do things would be to just look at serenipidity and think "but what would be the opposite of that?"