GURPS General /GURPSGEN/

Previous thread Today's random question:
Is GURPS a good system to introduce people to if they are new to roleplaying games?

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>Is GURPS a good system to introduce people to if they are new to roleplaying games?

I hope so. Our group has played a tiny bit of Pathfinder and a couple sessions of Deadlands Classic, so they're fairly new. But I'm interested in GURPS and am trying to read up on it now to run a game for them once I figure out the genre/setting I want to run

Yes, BUT it is a horrible system for entirely new groups (i.e. new players but also new GM).

GURPS can be super simple and newbie-friendly IF GMs know what they are doing and put in the effort to make (or steal) appropriate templates and set up a list of what rules are in effect. A fresh-faced GM isn't necessarily going to anticipate this, and equally-fresh-faced players won't have the RPG experience to roll with the punches, so to speak, and help the GM when he stumbles.

I'd also use Action for most first-timers.

>once I figure out the genre/setting I want to run
Well, time to fire up them dice rollers, boy.

How well do the 3e books mesh with the 4e core?

Arabian Nights
Robots
Illuminati

Oh...Oh shit

>Prisoner
>Spirits
>Castle Falkenstein

Oh shit.

I would say that GURPS is a nice game for new (pen and paper) roleplayers. I've been GMing for my group for about a year. We were all rpg virgins when we started with Lite. Then we successively added elements from basic, then Martial Arts and whatever we felt was missing.

It's easy to get a grip of and very modular, which I see as very positive. You don't need every complicated rule and as a GM you can do whatever you like with the system. It's perfect for homebrew settings, but I guess it might be harder for new players if they aren't interested in creating their own settings. I feel that GURPS own settings are somewhat lackluster, but then I haven't read all of the book either.

I regularly invite new RPG virigns to my group and they all get the hang of it in a couple of hours and find it all fun and interesting. Non of them have even suggested changing to a more popular system like DnD or Pathfinder and I don't think we ever will.

Here's a 100 points GURPS character for GURPS 4e. I think 100 points is a fair baseline for an adventurer.

ST 10, DX 10, IQ 10, HT 10
Don't even bother with advantages and disadvantages for now.

Set aside 20 points for side skills. This gives you 80 points to put into the guns skill of your choice. Pick rifles because they deal the most damage: you can just use defaults for the others, it won't matter because your skill will be so fucking high anyway. Guns is an Easy skill, so you can get it to 15 for 16 points. Another 16 will get it to 19, another 16 will get it to 23, another 16 will get it to 27, another 16 will get it to 31. There. You have put 80 points into your Rifles skill and now have a 31.

Now you can spread those other 20 points around into minor skills such as Armoury, First Aid, Stealth, et cetera. Sure you won't be good at them, but you're not the skill monkey. So who cares? You can headshot motorcycle gangs with lateral speed of 20 m/s from a half-mile. Oh, and if really want, take just 20 points of disadvantages and you can bump that rifles skill up to 36.

So what can you do with a 36 in Rifles? Well, lets take a look at the range / movement table. This is without taking a 1-second round to aim, by the way.

> you can easily score a headshot (-7) on a running target (-2) at 100 yards (-10). You're rolling against a 17 there, so you've got a 99% chance of success.
>If we extrapolate the range table, you could reliably hit someone at 1 mile distant who is running (-2) and be rolling against like a 17 or something.
>God forbid someone arms you with a Gauss rifle or even a .338. The former has Acc7+2, so with three seconds of aiming you could have an effective Rifle skill of 45.

GURPS 4e is broken.

Rolled 95, 95, 34 = 224 (3d100)

They're 90% fluff or background info. The rest is easily convertible with the official 3e-to-4e PDF floating around and/or a bit of work.

Yeez Louise! I sure hope my GM will allow this build cuz it sounds epic.

>spending 80 points in one skill

Can you take Imbue as alternate ability to some other power?

>Yeez Louise! I sure hope my GM will allow this build cuz it sounds epic.

Why wouldn't he? It's within the rules. The rules are broken.

>Spirits
>Alternate Earths
>Dragons
This is a weird one... Ghosts and Dragons with the "non magical" infinite worlds?

Can you create spells in GURPS? My group plays the shit out of the Hero System and that's one of the things they really like

If your GM allows it, yes.

You would still need to invest points into your imbuement skills, however, and you wouldn't get a point break for only being able to access them occasionally. If it fits your character concept, try fitting your imbuement stuff (advantages AND skills) into an Alternate Form you "power up" into a'la DBZ or most magical girl series. That AF can then be bought as an Alternate Ability.

Alternate Earths focuses on six alt-history settings in particular. You could add in spirits and dragons to any of them, or make it a very tiny Infinite Worlds game with only six (still very different) timelines the party can jump across; get come cyber-Brazilians from Shikaku-Mon, equip them with tesla cannons from the Gernsback timeline, and go kick some Nazi ass from the back of a dragon with your ghost buddies before Reich-5 invades the other timelines.

>not spending 100 points on a group of 50 allies, each having 100 points, that show up 75% of the time
>not making those allies humans that have spent 100 points to get 41 in Rifles
Do you even powergame?

>Why wouldn't he?

Because how the hell could someone have realistically that many points in a single skill? Were they training the skill non-stop they were born? Even a full Masters degree (over a decade of learning) is about 20 CP spread across one to five skills. How is this a valid character concept?

He's someone from another thread that thinks GURPS character creation exist in a vacuum, without the context of a game.

In other words, Air Bud Logic. I thought these jerks grew out of this breed of munchkinism back when D&D 3.0 went out of print.

You *can*, but it's mostly freeform for the basic magic system. For most people, if flexible magic or the ability to create new spells is something they really want, they just switch to a different magic system, of which GURPS has T O N S. Symbol, Syntactic, Ritual-Path, and Sorcery are the more popular ones (especially the last two).

One of my players is constantly trying to pull this shit on me. I think I've posted one example of his homo genius long time ago - basically, he had put all the points into harpoon throwing, spear combat and dolphin riding. Then he was surprised when I threw his "character" away and told him to make a new one.

Rule 0, bitch. AK-74 is within the rules, doesn't means I will allow you one in a fantasy campaign. Actually I totally would allow it, but I will also bring enough for everybody.

>he had put all the points into harpoon throwing, spear combat and dolphin riding
That sounds like the best thing ever.

Actually, a campaign where everyone had a smattering of life skills and just chose one Small Talent-sized pool of skills to jack up to ridiculous levels might be fun for a very street-level Supers game.

the description of unusual background blows that kind of character concept right out of the water anyway
either they're taking a massive point tax for being an otherwise 'ordinary' dude with one or two literally legendary skills, or they're being rejected entirely, at GM's discretion.

not to mention the difficulties you'll have in actually playing a character with 10s across the board, no positive advantages whatsoever, a handful of skills (assuming you bothered putting anything above 11 - if all your skills are at 9 or 10 then top fucking lel) and an abysmal dodge score all mean that you're not going to be playing the character for long anyway

i might be interested in seeing how far such a character could survive, but ultimately i'd have to veto something like that if it came to my table.
i just don't imagine playing such a character would even be fun amongst more reasonable ones.

>Air Bud Logic
What do you mean by this?

I'm essentially doing that in my current campaign.
>DX 13
>8 points for Riding-15
>Animal Friend 4, so effectively Riding-19
>+1 from horse having Mount
>+5 since my horse knows and likes me
>Effectively 25 Riding (Horse)
Plus a full set of equestrian gear lets you offset up to -5 in penalties.
Or something to that effect, I don't have the character sheet in front of me.

Been forever since I've seen that movie, but I think it's that the argument for allowing a dog to play basketball is "There's no rule saying dogs CAN'T play basketball!" Basically, the logic states that you can do something as long as there's no rule explicitly stating you cannot.

99% sure this bullshit has an actual name.

Can someone explain me how the fuck Survival skill works? From what I understand, it has some stupid recalculation mechanic involved, so when you have 13 in Survival (Tundra), you are automatically having 11 of Survival (Desert).
Dafuq?!

>Creatures of the Night
>Illuminati
>Banestorm

The illuminati has been whisked to Yrth and must fight the demons and monsters to become the true rulers of the planet.

Kinda related to the Oberoni Fallacy.

>Deadlands: Weird West
>Mysteries
>Villains
Time for a magical train murdery-mystery game with a mid-campaign robbery climax.

>Stupid recalculation mechanic
You mean skill defaults? And yeah, at the end of the day, the survival skill is about finding food, water, and shelter while mitigating the effects of the elements; the specifics will obviously differ, but general core concepts transfer. If you know how to regulate your body temperature in extreme cold, you might know a trick or two that you can use in extreme heat. If you know how to collect water in the incredibly dry tundra, you can probably slapdash something together for the also incredibly dry traditional desert. If you know where critters tend to hide from the blistering sun, you can probably guess where critters tend to hide from freezing winds.

Also note that dropping from 13 to 11 means you're going from about 80% to about 60% success rate, and that's assuming proper gear. If you drop a dude packing nothing but cold-weather gear into the Sahara, he's going to have a bad time.

Of course the problem with this is that it's also GURPS Rules As Written that all characters must be approved by the ST, rather then being an unwritten rule it's explicate.

The GM is not required to justify or explain why a novelty joke character is rejected from a game.

Still doesn't make much sense. I mean how the fuck you expect from an Eskimo hunter to survive in a tropical jungle? He's even less adjusted to that than Joe Average and his survival knowledge is literally worthless

Yup, that's what I meant.

XKCD had a comic presenting the counter-argument; "There's nothing in the rule book saying we can't kill and eat your dog."

And THAT is where the GM is justified in ruling in MORE severe penalties to the defaults

Eh. Skill 15 for horse riding is perfectly reasonable for experienced Mongol raiders, and the Talent is fine, too. The rest is just skill bonuses (which only last as long as your current horse does, in the same way a doctor relies on having good medical equipment available).

Not that cinematic. Even an effective skill 25 is merely a (once in a generation) grand master.

He knows how to hunt, trap, fish, and forage. He also knows how to spot suitable shelter. His main foe is the moisture and lack of specific knowledge (which berries are poison vs which ones are delicious, what the fuck a panther is, etc.), but I feel that's covered by the default penalty.

If you really want, though, slap on an Unfamiliarity penalty for an extra -2, or even use the rules from p. B173; an eskimo has literally no knowledge of tropical climes, and as such does not get to roll at default

I think unfamiliarity works. He'd be fucked on his first foray, and do better the second and third time time around, but he'd still be more skilled in colder areas he's grown up in.

It's still high enough to trivialise most riding-related tasks, even very hard ones, and the fact that so much of it comes from the bonuses related to horse and gear adds some nice flavour to it. Gives you an extra reason to build that relationship between rider and mount.
You're a once in a generation rider with your horse, but with other horses you're just pretty good.

It's rarely even very relevant to the campaign, if you need to ride you usually don't need to be super good, but it's a fun character aspect, especially when the GM lets me get away with some of my more outrageous bullshit.

So, character creation thoughts. Giving Worm a second shot after I left it behind, and I'm slowly going through to try and figure out how characters' sheets would work. Stuck on one.

The first(?) villain that shows up, Lung, starts out weak but his powers grow with no defined limit as fights extend, taking on dragon attributes. I don't imagine that sort of scaling works in GURPS, so you'd then have to constrain it to a certain maximum power level. Is the character, no matter what, going to have the hilariously high points cost of their maximum power even if it's unlikely it'll ever be reached (10+ minutes in a single combat encounter, resetting as soon as the fighting stops)?

>Is the character, no matter what, going to have the hilariously high points cost of their maximum power even if it's unlikely it'll ever be reached (10+ minutes in a single combat encounter, resetting as soon as the fighting stops)?
Yes. Lung has effectively unlimited potential, given enough time. Infinite power is going to cost a lot.

For Worm, and supers in general, I suggest not caring too much about the point totals. Read this blog post, but tl;dr: build to concept, stick within a given range (500~2500 is the example).
ravensnpennies.com/2016/08/gamemasters-guidepost-building-player.html

Also, build the character first, then the powers. Start with the 25~150 points for your character built without powers, then add on the 350~2350 points of power(s) they have. Balance is going to be a bitch no matter what you do, so it's best to not think of things in point totals, which are poor measures of power to begin with.

Oh, yeah. I was just trying to think on how it would work out mechanically. I've played in a GURPS supers game before; it was ill-fated (ironically enough, *because* of Worm), but "concept over character" definitely applied there.

I'm not sure how to do it. A self-targeting affliction with Cumulative could work, and "Only while Berserk" is a -20% limitation from Power-Ups Enhancements. Get Reflexive on there and he can just spam himself into oblivion levels of ST, but you'll probably want to self-afflict Super-Effort ST.

What's the best books to look at for getting a good idea on how to create your own custom racial templates?

I'm looking at mostly trying to flesh out human successor species well based off of different animals being spliced with human DNA.

What is the proper way to make sure a racial template is balanced?

>What's the best books to look at for getting a good idea on how to create your own custom racial templates?
Bio-Tech. Bio-Tech is full of racial templates.

>Balanced
Experience. Failing that, How to Be a GURPS GM may help. Toolkits I: Templates focuses mostly (IIRC) on occupation/"class" templates, but the advice in it should work fine for racial templates.

>What is the proper way to make sure a racial template is balanced?
Make sure the totals are right?

Seriously, though, one caveat of any game is that things are not going to 100% balanced all the time. Aim to only grant purely physical mechanical advantages and that's a good baseline. A species might have an extra set of arms, but don't go giving their race extra attack off the bat

>He knows how to hunt, trap, fish, and forage
In tundra
>He also knows how to spot suitable shelter
In tundra
>His main foe is the moisture and lack of specific knowledge (which berries are poison vs which ones are delicious, what the fuck a panther is, etc.)
So he basically knows shit

And yet unless you outright ban it, you can make an Eskimo hunter with Survival (Tundra) at 16, then land him in the middle of Kongo and he will do just fine, or at least much better than, say, white kid backpacking there. The default penalty is shit and the entire assumption of "if you can survive in X, then you can surely do fine in Y" is just plain retarded. I'm no survivalist or traveller, but I know that I would probably die if I ended up in mountains, despite doing extensive hikes - in a huge-ass forest placed in a rolling plain. I don't even want to imagine how things would go if I was stranded in Arctica.
And by GURPS rules I would still do better than the next guy with zero practice, because my Survival (Forest) magically transforms into Survival (Arctic) with barely any noticable penalty.

Who wrote this shit?!

Who Gets a Default?
Only individuals from a society
where a skill is known may attempt a
default roll against that skill. For
instance, the default for Scuba skill
assumes you are from a world where
scuba gear exists and where most
people would have some idea – if only
from TV – of how to use it. A
medieval knight transported to the
21st century would not get a default
roll to use scuba gear the first time he
saw it!

That makes some sense though. Sure, you haven't learned the locale-specific aspects of the skill, but if you have points in a survival skill you know a lot of basics of how to survive in the wilderness, like the need to seek shelter, how to manage your water, probably how to set some traps that you can use elsewhere, etc.

I mean doesn't the whole points thing GURPS uses ensure anything is balanced as long as it conforms with the point limit set by the DM?

Not really. Points don't measure balance. They can generally measure bredth and depth, but they are not inherently balanced.

>In tundra
Fishing's pretty universal, Tundra isn't a frozen wasteland 356 days a year, there are summers. Certain skills for hunting and trapping are the same no matter where you go. Forage might be the only one he has trouble with.

Survival also encompasses skills like knowing how to take care of your body, knowing your own limits, basic stuff like starting a fire or using a knife or building a shelter from twigs.

I'd say an Eskimo hunter who spent his whole life surviving off the land has a way better chance of surviving in the a completely unfamiliar biome than a city dweller does.

As someone else pointed earlier, a further -2 penalty for lack of familiarity makes sense.

>I'm no survivalist or traveller
Ya don't say? Are you also not an experienced reader either? Because you managed to miss the second half of my post that gave you exactly what you wanted; instead you just sat in your chair and REEEE'd.

Also, are you fucking saying that a weekend spent backpacking with $400 in camping gear and supplies means you have Survival (Forest) at a professional level? Or that a -3 isn't a significant penalty? A -3 can turn a learned hand (skill-12, or ~75% chance of success) into a clumsy oaf (effective skill-9, or ~35% chance of success).

In truth a lot of survival knowledge is transferable.

Shelter able to hold in warmth and hold out water in the same world-wide and the knowledge of the importance of fresh water, if not where to find it in that environment, is vital. How to build a fire is likewise the same world around.

Don't worry too much about it though. GURPS is a good game, but it doesn't try to flawlessly simulate everything about the world with flawless accuracy.

And that is a good point.

>Race templates and balance.

Fantasy and the Basic Set have parts for this too. In general I'd work less on strict mechanical balancing between available races then making sure everyone has an interesting or cool thing that would make a player pick that race over others.

Ish. The classic example is that a 250-point banker with loads of Status, Wealth, professional and social skills, and all the right advantages is going to get curbstomped in a fight by a 50-point thug.

When designing racial templates, give each one a focus (this should already be the case if they're gengineered humans meant for specific jobs/environments), but make sure their traits are useful OUTSIDE of their specialty and don't go balls-deep into any one thing; if you're familiar with 3.PF's class tiers, aim for making tier 3 templates that are good at their chosen thing and somewhat useful outside of that comfort zone. Talents and attribute bonuses are great for this IMO.

I've heard Transhuman Space is pretty helpful for making post-human races, but I don't know about it myself and there's like 10 Transhuman Space books.

Changing Times is the 3e-to-4e update PDF. Everything else is mostly irrelevant for your purposes; check the folder for 3e stuff instead and the the core version (simple called Transhuman Space).

>Fantasy
>Dragons
>Magic
I actually rolled this. My life is boring.

Would the racial templates be basically the same between 3 and 4?

ST was changed severely.
Also in 3e HP was tied to HT so it can be too high sometimes.

Mostly, though point values will change because 4e dropped 3e's wonky cost progression in favor of a flat x/level cost. Also Basic Lift was changed, so ST values tend to be lower across the board.

Check out Changing Times. It not only goes into detail what changed and how, but also gives a good number of updated templates for baseline human, human+, and para-human species.

How would you stat this glorious quadruple chin when there are no levels of Appearance above Transcendent?

>GURPS table
>Not rolling Kosher 3d6
D'you think imma filthy dndmaggot?

>Russia
>Low Tech
>SWAT
Might be cool. Not sure how it'd work, though.

>Vikings
>Cabal
>Age of Napoleon
Sounds fun.

>Black Ops
>Martial Arts
Cool, sounds interesting
>Magic
Nope!

That's a load of bull.

Clearly he would have high moo-vement,

This one is easy.
>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streltsy
>Streltsy were the units of Russian guardsmen from the 16th to the early 18th centuries, armed with firearms. They are also collectively known as Marksman Troops.
>The first streltsy units were created by Ivan the Terrible sometime between 1545 and 1550 and armed with arquebuses. ... Subsequently, military service in this unit became lifelong and hereditary.
>The streltsy of Moscow guarded the Kremlin, performed general guard duty, and participated in military operations. They also carried out general police and fire-brigade functions in Moscow.
>Streltsy had identical uniforms, training and weapons. Uniforms consisted of red, blue or green coats with orange boots. Their primary weapon was an arquebus or musket, and they carried poleaxes or bardiches, and sabers for defense; some units used pikes. The longer weapons were also used to support the arquebus or musket while firing.
>The Muscovite government was chronically short of cash and so did not often pay the streltsy well.

Streltsy Weapons and Tactics.

You're playing a band of overworked, underpaid armed guardsmen based out of Moscow.
Your unit is responsible for guarding the most high-priority targets and responding to the most severe threats. Revolutionaries, heretics, upstart nobles and corrupt officials are the kind of threats that you're responsible for stopping. Place it any time from 1550 to 1721, but probably around the Streltsy Uprising of 1698

What's a good, simple introductory type of campaign?

Dungeon Fantasy.

Did the standalone game ever come out?

Current release date is October/November.

Great.

Don't imagine anything more modern makes a good intro? I've had complaints about medieval fantasy in my group before. Might just be bad D&D experiences, but who knows.

Could use WWII. It's standalone (contains Lite), but it's built for 3e, so you'd have to do conversion work if you wanted to use it.

Hm. Might have a Weird War II plan...

ok but were are the anime settings

It sounds more like white room theorycrafting
Yeah in THEORY you could Wish for a Candle and go fucking nuts, but if you get a candle and don't use it 'normally', I'll just kick you out because I'm the DM and you're not.

>Autoduel
>OGRE
>Spirits

not familiar with autoduel or OGRE but I think it would be a wild ride.

Autoduel is Carmageddon as an RPG (by way of Car Wars the wargame), and OGRE is a universe where 'you are a bunch of electronics embedded in a massive block of metal calling itself a tank, also your main weaponry is nukes' is a totally normal character concept.

Ghosts are the least of your problems.

In Action! Cinematic rules, and Martial Arts. Make your own setting.

OGRE is...well, it's a Bolo by any other name, really. Fucking land battleships directed by scary competent AI.

Actually, if they can possess machines and computers, ghosts are a very large problem: all the firepower of an OGRE with all the omnicidal rage of a wronged wraith.

Whats wrong with magic?

A lot of Anons (myself included) feel that it doesn't mesh well with the rest of GURPS. Everything about GURPS, from running to chargen to playing, is about tweaking and customization. Then you see Magic and its laundry list of static effects with no real guidelines on making your own. It's just a weird combo. On top of that, there are some straight-up issues with Magic, including a) infinites and absolutes which don't exist anywhere else in the system, b) funky broken spells (Enlarge Self, anyone?), and c) shit they didn't change from 3e like discrete kW ratings.

On the other hand, maybe is just unhappy with the combo.

Are there good ways to tweak magic to make it more fitting?
I assume psi powers suffer from the same kind of problems?

I've been wanting to incorporate a dual magic system into my campaign, one being a "safe" nanomachine based magic that consumes a material not unlike the Dust from the Endless Legend/Space series, and one being a more dangerous occultist type magic that can be more powerful and more risky to use, requiring a connection to a dark entity to be able to perform. Also possible ways to fuse the two.

Can GURPS work with that idea?

>I assume psi powers suffer from the same kind of problems?
Nope, unless you're talking about 3e; 4e is a LOT better.

When people talk about Magic (capitalized like that), they mean the default magic system and/or its expansion book of the same name; there are TONS of variants out there, and only Magic has those issues. Psionics and Sorcery use advantages as a base, Ritual-Path Magic is skill-based and exceptionally exceptionally flexible, etc. etc. Hit up the Thaumatology series to see what all is out there.

Your first magic system is probably something like Psionics or Sorcery -- "spells" are built and learned as advantages -- with all spells having the Trigger limitation to represent needing (I'm assuming) rare/expensive/illegal components to cast. Your second magic system will probably also be advantages-based if only to keep things consistent; instead of all spells having Trigger, though, they may all have Pact, plus another -10% if your connection can be severed by outside forces (e.g. another's spell, cross-dimensional static, blessed silver helm, etc.). Since it's risky, you probably also want to add Fickle from GURPS: Powers (you need to make a Reaction roll when using your power, with a Poor reaction meaning the spell fails and a Very Bad reaction meaning it backfires and fucks you up). A fusion of the two would likely just have Trigger, Pact, and Fickle (plus that extra -10%), bringing costs down a LOT.

Take a look at the Psionics chapter of the Basic Set as well as Thaumatology: Sorcery (a separate book from Thaumatology) to see some examples of "advantages as spells" in action as well as some examples on how to organize them.

I'm new to GURPS, and I'm gonna be playing in a space-fairing oneshot this week. What's the best way to make a face with 100 points (and max 40 from disadvantages) in GURPS 4e?

Are silt-striders mounts or bio-vehicles?

Mounts I'd say. They seem to have been selectively bred like any other domesticated beastie. No magical genetic meddling is mentioned in the wiki, or in game from what I remember.

Aren't they kind of controlled by acupuncture to their brains though?

Most will have a few levels of Charisma as it helps with literally everything, and Empathy is a really solid choice. Beyond that, though, there are some choices to make. Reaction rolls are are automatic while influence rolls take time and a willing party; at the same time, though, influence rolls are easy to get pretty dang good at, can open more doors that raw reaction rolls, and have other uses. If you focus on reaction rolls, take Appearance, Status, Reputation, etc., and if you focus on influence rolls, obviously take the skills but also advantages that boost those skills, especially Talents.

In terms of skill choices, that's highly character-dependent; you should probably invest in all the influence skills but pick one or two to specialize in. Fast Talk is going to be a must for almost any character concept, though, as a little bit of bluffing is almost always necessary; if you're playing a rake or a conman, specialize in this skill. Honest negotiators use Diplomacy and probably have the Wealth, Patron, or Contact Group that can back up what the character promises. Streetwise is great for thugs and officials that have to deal with them on a regular basis. Sex Appeal is *the* skill for femme fatales, and the fact that it gets a Very Good reaction on a success makes it a viable choice. Intimidation often complements Fast Talk or Streetwise; it's not really worth specializing in by itself, though, if you're going for general face stuff (leave that to the muscle; a few points in Intimidation plus a size/strength/brutality bonus works wonders!). Lastly, Savoir-Faire is great in specialized cases but unless your GM is running a very specific campaign, probably shouldn't be a face's go-to skill.

Yeah IIRC you sit inside a hollowed-out lump and physically manipulate their brains. Genemodding is irrelevant; a genetically engineered super-horse is still a mount unless you introduce a cavity for people to ride in and control it from.

I mean gene-modding isn't necesarrily a requirement of making a bio-vehicle, and they do surgically modify siltstriders by carving up their shells and upholstering them.

Even in the bio-tech book it talks about how bio-vehicles could easily be natural animals that have had surgical modification done to them depending on your setting and it's natural fauna.

The fact that you carve open silt striders to make a passenger compartment in them, and drive them by poking their brains make them seem more bio-vehicle than mount to me.

Yes, but in bio-tech they usually mean more in terms of surgically modifying by attaching things. Especially if you use the rules that let you stitch on body parts across species.

Just cutting open a shell isn't really that much different from trimming a horse's hoof so you can slap a horseshoe on.

The fact that you ride on a silt-strider and don't strap yourself in to some sort of interface says more mount than bio-vehicle to me.

But if your mind was already made up, why'd you come here asking for feedback?

If your strider wanders off if you stop controlling it, as it's an independent and intelligent creature, then Mount is used to control it

If the thing is unmotivated unless directly controlled, not doing anything to defend itself if attached, and would die without care, then it's a vehicle controlled by Pilot or Driver.