/GURPSgen/ – GURPS General

“Still no new thread after eight hours?” edition

Previous thread: Apparently GURPS used to be published in Germany, but only until 2000.

Sand Devil, Blood crazed Druid, Flying Dutchman's Captain, Bastion's Supernatural Overseer, Water elemental, etc.
He had specified area around him [say 30 yards around him or his ship/keep], and attacks his target by creating near her evident copy of himself from material thematically related to him (sand, tree, figurehead, stone, water), which done actual attack [weapon hit at his weapon skill].
Each sculpture requires to be spawned in free hex within weapon reach [so no reach C weapons], by rapid strike [or AOA, so it can be total 6 copies with reach 1 on one target] he can create more sculptures at once. He can warp [as full move] to sculpture place desintegrating her, or she "turns into dust" after short time [~2 seconds]. Sculptures usually material [or not if they composed from someting like sand or water], so if someone wants to run through he can choose to slam or evade.
Sculptures are not tough, like MOS 3+ parry or MOS 0+ block destroys them automatically or just use by one extra parry.
So how to model this?
Like i should start with Warp [most expensive part because of automatic success], ST-based Overhead IA linked with one hex area IA-wall, then how to add other shticks?

>by rapid strike [or AOA, so it can be total 6 copies with reach 1 on one target] he can create more sculptures at once
You might want to try Compartmentalized Mind or Extra Attack for this, or some combination of all three. Might work better.
>He can warp [as full move] to sculpture place desintegrating her
This is a pretty decent limitation on Warp. Accessibility: warp to created sculpture only -20%. Nuisance effect: destroys sculpture in process -5% if you can only warp to a created sculpture
>or she "turns into dust" after short time [~2 seconds].
Reduced Duration on the Wall IA part.

I don't even understand what you mean by the rest.

I'm having a difficult time understanding your post. From what I understand, you want duplicates that spawn behind people, stab them, then disintegrate after two seconds into whatever base material they were borne from. It's probably some form of Ally or Duplication.It's also a real bitch to stat up. It'd be a lot easier if the bodies disintegrated after attacking, so it could just be an innate attack with the surprise attack modifier from Power-Ups Enhancements/Powers.

This week on Grimwyld, exploring the tomb of the Dwarf's dead god,

Going deeper into the complex after checking out the weird alter of the now gone drow-litch led to a dwarf throne room that had been ironically used as a dwarf prison for the lich's test subjects. The only one left was a half crazed dwarf with a big MURDERER brand on his face.

We talked to him then sent his ass packing. Racism to beastmen is not okay. Opening the vault we discovering a room of crystal, ivory and gold, after really overthinking how to open door.

Inside.. We talked to a weird hand thrusting out of the ground, holding a crystal in a goblet. It ask the party dwarves if they were pure of heart and worthy.

Despite sounding a lot like a trap, this weird crystal voice turned out to be legit, and offered power in the form of magic armor to the dwarves, but also fucked up, metal eating side effects and serious lore questions that wait to be answered.

More lore,

.. More lore, but not a whole lot of action. Maybe just as well, the party was gased out and running on fumes after last week, with lots of injuries spread around.

I made some calculations on this per Modifying Existing Damage from PU4.
Probably max. melee damage 5d of impaling [8], then effective cost [40], and all limitations will have 1/5 cost
Melee (reach C,1/1,2/2,3),-20%*0.2= -4%
Environmental (being in his realm),-20%*0.2= -4%
Nuisance Effect (Leave behind Statue, destroyable by MOS 3+ parry or MOS 0+ block or use of additional parry),-10%*0.2= -2%
Nuisance Effect (Attacks only 1 target, additional target need AOA (Double) or Rapid Strikes,-80%*0.2= -16%
Emanation,-20%*0.2= -4%
Area Effect (32 yards),+250%
Overhead,+30%
Statue crumbles to dust after 3 seconds, +0%
40*2.5=[100]
So ability to cojure fragile statues of yourself to attack someone in your household will cost 100 points, feels like reasonable price.

What is going on? Who's replying to who? I am confusion.

More importantly, would you let players trade in Arm ST, Lifting ST or Striking ST for a discount on buying ST during play? One of my players suggested it, and I can't really see a reason not to.

Sure, why not? Newer books already suggest you let people do this for trading 5x Off-Hand training perk into full Ambidexterity.
Might as well allow the same for skills as well. 5 levels of IQ/DX skills worth 4 points per level can be traded for one full level of IQ/DX.

Am I correct in my understanding that characters can make two attacks with the same weapon when using "all out attack: (double)" but must use a second weapon in the other hand when using the advantage "extra attack" and that one can combine both of these to make three attacks?

No, that's about right. Staying on target is HARD.

Although, minor detail, AoA is +1 for ranged, not +2. And where'd you get that sling from?

Yes, our GM changed AOA ranged bonus and evulate to +2.
No, i means there no real sense to shoot more bullets, like you just need to spam double-taps to became MLG 360 NO SCOPE 42.0 KDA, while turns still 1 second frame at which you reacted

>And where'd you get that sling from?

>Yes, our GM changed AOA ranged bonus and evulate to +2.
Gotcha.
>i means there no real sense to shoot more bullets, like you just need to spam double-taps
Pretty much. This is realistic. Rapid fire is only for close quarters and suppressive fire.

>while turns still 1 second frame at which you reacted
You're also a trained professional with hundreds of hours and a couple of firefights under belt with that kind of skill. A "normal" person or a rookie soldier wouldn't have a chance at maintaining his calm, and assuming he's not mentally stunned he wouldn't be allowed to take braced, aimed or arguably even All-Out Attack shots.

What are the best Pyramid issues/articles? There's a lot to check out and I'd like some highlights to start. And anything must see in the older Pyramids?

Also, any good Gurps blogs or home brew collections? I'm an OSRfag and that blogosphere has spoiled me for fan content

Dead system, dead general

Alternate GURPS is always good. Tech & Toys, Dungeon Fantasy, Alternate Dungeons, Thaumatology, and Low-Tech are all ones I use quite a bit. Standalone issues that I've used a lot are Cyberpunk, Cutting Edge, Combat, Way of the Warrior, and Bio-Tech.

I don't know if $10 is too much or too little for a sling.

I mean, you can buy a $54 USD rifle sling. But you can also buy one for $4 USD, or build one from $0.80 of parts.

Check gamingballistic.com. Every thursday there's a pull from all GURPS blogs.

Pyramid Issues: Combat, Alternate GURPS, Tech and Toys, and the 4th Edition Festival issues are solid general-purpose issues.

Blogs: Douglas Cole maintains the GURPS-centric blog Gaming Ballistic. The blog itself is a solid read (Cole is one of 4e's regular contributors), but it's also useful because every Thursday it publishes an aggregate list of almost every GURPS-related blog and post, so it's great for finding other blogs.

For modern day, you can generally just use whatever price is listed online or in stores. GURPS doesn't do economies of scale, which makes sense because that's a headache and a half to codify as rules, but the $1 GURPS uses is pretty close to the 21st century $1. You can confirm this with bullet prices in HT, which are basically all pulled from ammohunter or whatever ammo price aggregation website of your choice.

Not a fan of Discord and my computer hates other stuff. This is how it's been for years and all our stuff is saved to the Skype chat log, so we're in too deep.

I am still looking for applicants, the few I've had were either trolls or people trying to get in our pants. The only person that we almost let in flipped his shit and went full autism when I let him know that one of the players is female.

Did that person happen to be European?

Don't recall, might have been German or something? I blocked them a while ago.

I'm looking to run a Vietnam War game with supernatural elements, is GURPS a good system for that?

Yeah, GURPS does pretty well with the Weird War II and variations on it. Just don't forget that automatic weapons will make combat super deadly and demons and shit not as terrifying as they would be to troops only armed with bolt action rifles.

Man, tunnel rats would be fucking screwed in supernatural Vietnam.

In general, yes. GURPS has really solid mechanics that lend themselves to intense firefights. Its generic nature lets you throw in supernatural things easily enough as well.

It's not just a great system for it, it has a sourcebook for the hard part: SEALs in Vietnam.

I mean your alternatives are basically Savage Worlds or Shadowrun 5E with most of the cyberware ripped out? GURPS is made for this kind of oddball setting construction.

could also be done in world of darkness, but I personally wouldn't

Perfect. I'd love to hear more about your game idea.

I'd say about Nam is that in GURPS default rules it's a bad place to be if you like living for a long time. Guns outrace armor development, you have modern assault rifles and battle rifles shooting at nylon and steel plate flak vest. Gunshots can kill quickly and your only saving grace is the amount of cover and concealment that the jungle offers.

here, thanks for all the fast replies! I'll definitely start reading through the system.

The game plan is basically the hardest of hard commandos hunting for Soviet science experiments in the jungle. What sourcebooks would you recommend reading for cyborgs, magic (I'd assume just GURPS Magic) and psychics?

>magic (I'd assume just GURPS Magic)
That's where you're wrong. GURPS Magic is a catalogue of spells for the magic system present in the Basic Set. There's other systems, but before you tackle magic systems and books, I'd think long and hard on wether magic will be available to the players at all. If the answer is 'no', you'll find great service in either not using one and just being descrpiptive, or just hacking magical effects together using advantages.

For your first game, less is more. The Basic Set's advantages and disadvantages are enough to represent cyborgs and weird experiments, and it's chapter on psionic powers should work as well. Magic is a decent addition, though, because it just expands the list of pre-made spells, so not a lot of complexity there. Honestly, I'm not a fan of the default magic system, but it works great for newbies because it's very straightforward, takes a lot off the GM's plate, and doesn't require much in terms of judgement calls in-game.

Use Action 2. The templates from Action 1 won't be super useful beyond beating into your head that everyone needs at least Luck [15], but the rules from Action 2 are great for speeding up, simplifying, and streamlining adventuring and combat scenarios.

Basic Set has enough magic for your game, really. Either stat things up as Afflictions or Innate Attacks, or use the spells in the magic chapter. Ultra-Tech has cybernetic and cyborg templates, but you don't want to read it for anything else at this stage. Psychics are just done by giving advantages (Telekinesis, Mind Control, Telepathy, Innate Attack (Burning), Clairvoyance, etc).

Seconding Action 1 & 2 for templates and rules. Very good stuff, lots of streamlining that will make running easier, and best of all a treasure trove of examples of the rules in use.

Bumping thread and question for the night
Unrelated, please tell me about your favorite magic items you've had in games

Magic irrevocably changes settings if it's not new to the setting, under extreme control by some sort of cabal, or otherwise too dangerous/inefficient to use for PCs. Magic is too much of a leap technologically for medieval settings to handle. You're going to wind up with something closer to TL3+5. Instant communication alone is fucking amazing, because the size of a kingdom was limited to how far away they could give and receive information (typically through road networks, which also supplied armies as helped move them around). Throw on whatever magic you can find that transports things faster than a horse-pulled cart on a decent road and it quickly gets out of hand.

Of course, most people just ignore all of that so they can play their fantasy with magic. I do it, everyone does it. Not doing it leads to madness, or Technomancer.

To all of you..

For Basic Set magic (and the GURPS: Magic book) every spell is a different skill.

Just like you aren't likely to allow every skill and bit of equipment in the book into your game, you should do the same with spells. Consider every spell on it's own before allowing it in your game and think about how it might change things.

On the bright side, each spell can change a setting a lot. Even if the only magic around is the ability to create fire with FP points that's still pretty huge.

Are there way to make transformation imbuements lasting more than one hit?

If you want to play werewolf commandos ripping up VC Rồng-men in the delta you might want to check out Monster Hunters. This also had Ritual Path Magic, something a lot of people like but you might not fall in love with.

Vehicle Imbuements introduces a perk that does something similar. As long as your effective skill remains 16+, you don't have to roll to keep that your imbuement active, though you still need to spend the FP and the perk is specialized by imbuement skill.

Does the perk let you get away with 0 FP if you can eat the -5 to reduce costs while staying above ESL-16?

What spell are you referring to for instant communication?
I don't have it on my list, so it must have several prerequisites, and as stated, only spells with 0 or maybe 1 would be widely available.

Why is communication so amazing? Instant communication can't be *that* much quicker than travel by horse when you consider the time it takes to react to anything.
I don't disagree with your general point. Magical metallurgy at TL3 would be huge boost in quality to tools for all craftsmen, spells for keeping food fresh, etc.

When it takes so long to react to anything, having communication shave minutes or hours from your reaction time makes all the difference between being caught out of position, and striking an enemy's flank.

If you don't understand why instant communication is so amazing, read up more on the American Civil War and how quickly things went to shit when telegraph wires were cut.

Are you kidding

Yes. Assuming you've got skill 21, go nuts with the -5

Yeah I get that, for small scale it's great. But when we're talking about the size of an empire, amassing and marching soldiers from one side to the next still takes ages, to the point where the time it takes for a horse to travel with the message feels kind of marginal.

Two weeks head start is two weeks head start, bruh. And you don't think faster, more reliable communication would speed mobilization?

You are literally retarded.

Let's say that taking your main military force to the border takes a week, accounting for logistical concenrs, and that it takes half for a scout to return from the border to the capital with news of an attempted invasion.

You'd be retarded not to see that without instant communication, the army takes at least 9 days to reach the border, and with instant communication it takes 'only' 7.

>a week
Try a month. Or half a year. Starting a campaign is a big and arduous task, it's not like you have soldiers standing on the ready.

What are you even doing? This is literally a non-argument, by whichever amount you increase the time intervals, the discrepancy between a campaign with and without instant communication only worsens, making it incredibly valuable no matter the size of the country, characteristics of terrain, or scope of the campaign.

You literally have no idea what you're talking about.

This

Besides the effects on military matters are only part of the story. It has far reaching implications socially, politically and economically.

If it takes two-three months to start a campaign (which is generous, considering all the farmers have to be drafted, equipped, etc.), does the two-three days you save by not having to send the message by horse really matter all that much?

How are you this retarded

You're arguing against the usefulness of instant communications, ON AN INTERNET CAPABLE MESSAGE BOARD

I feel like the weapons in UT are a bit setting specific.

Would you guys like me to add some more generic ones a la paranoia?

Even if it saved only a few hours, it would always be a massive advantage.

...

What kingdom has expanded to massive size because of the internet?

Explain how.

>What kingdom has expanded to massive size because of the internet?
Murrica get Trump as president by internet hype

You are missing the fucking point

Enough so I am now suspicious you're simply trolling us. Too stupid for human capacity...

None really, however science is rapidly advancing at a quadratic rate due to instant communications.

Getting a huge technological advantage would make a society grow pretty quick

If you're this fucking stupid, do yourself a favor and just stop breathing.

>May allow you to catch an enemy in a disadvantagheous position
>May allow you to reach a besieged fort before it runs out of supplies
These two are off the top of my head. The possibilities are endless, though. Information is one of the most powerful tools in any war. The ability to acquire this information accurately, through any distance, barrier, terrain, weather and with no possibility of interception already blows normal scouting out of the water, the fact that it is also instant would give the army that possesses it such a massive advantage that the only way to lose in such a war would probably be simple incompetence and unluckiness, no magic or technology can save you from those.

Yeah that definitely sounds good. We need more UT stuff in general

Yes.
Yes, yes yes yes. Please.

Is there a way to heal someone by a variable amount (like say, 1d6 HP) through advantages? Like a modified attack that heals the amount of damage it would deal.

Just use Healing and let player convert 4 points to 1d6 and 7 to 2d6, just like optional rule for converting adds to dice.

In general, GURPS stands by 1d=3.5 or (with rounding) 1d=4 and 2d=7. I think there are a handful of examples that apply this to healing, but mostly you just need your GM to sign off on it.

It's so simple I feel stupid now. I would appreciate nevertheless a way to 'inverse' damage as it is also an effect that would come up in my campaign (as an example, healing a zombie would damage it instead, pretty videogamey).

Wanna make game highly influenced by Saints Row series.
How much points per pool [stats/adv/dis/skill] to start with, in TL9 without supernatural exotic shit?

>a way to 'inverse' damage as it is also an effect that would come up in my campaign (as an example, healing a zombie would damage it instead, pretty videogamey).
Buy innate attack as alternative ability to that. Toxic or non-incendiary burning should be fine.

Message. The general flow looks like this:
Sound -> Thunderclap -> Voices -> Great Voice
Two "Seek" spells (Seek Food, Detect Magic -> Seek Magic) Seeker -> Message.
Minimum requirements: Magery 1, IQ 12.

If the spell is available at all, it's going to become a major problem, for reasons already covered in this thread. Even if your total global population was only 1,000,000 people, and only 0.001% of those people were qualified for Message, that's a thousand mages, which is more than enough for military application (I'd wager as few as 100, even 50 would be enough).

Even if you banned any spell that required Magery 1 or higher, you have ghetto message in the form of spells like Dream Sending. While it relies on two skill rolls instead of one heavily penalized skill roll, I can easily see a network of "dream talkers" being used, who take knockout drugs to sleep at all hours of the day, and are rigorously trained in dream interpretation (Skill 13, at the minimum) in order to get it right most of the time (skill 15+ preferable). While that does make for a bit of fluff for a setting, it still does wreak havoc on it if you want it to stay middle ages/medieval inspired. And then you have Dream Projection.

And that's not even getting into spells like Measurement and Sense Emotion, both of which would be incredible boons in engineering and politics. Holy shit would Sense Emotion be amazing in politics. No more paranoid dictator killing off everyone, they have a spell that just tells you how loyal they are to you.

I really dislike this approach, since zombies aren't the only creatures that can be affected in this way. I'd require every player to create extra abilities for every type of creature, not to mention sometimes damage will be inverted into healing instead, (attacking a fire creature with fire heals it). Such an approach is simply non-viable, definitely useful for other campaigns but not for mine.

Slap Holy or some other modifier on Healing, and have it as a feature that it harms undead. Probably those with IT(Unliving) + Reprogrammable. It's a pretty simple campaign switch. Ditto for fire with fire elementals (although really fire elementals should have absorptive DR vs. fire). All of this is balanced out by, if the party ever makes friends with a fire elemental or undead, they won't be able to heal them in a conventional manner.

Understood, I'll think more on Message, thank you for your thorough answer.
Dream Sending is interesting, and I'm now considering a country that makes use of it, and allowing the advantages and troubles that go with it play out over the course of the game.

Sense Emotion and Sense Foes are both on the "widely available" list, and I am very interested in them. However, Hide Emotion is right beside them, so for now I think that will all take care of itself.

I think it should be a 0-point Feature of undead templates, something like "Damaged by Healing with Divine power modifier, healed by Toxic Attack with Unholy power modifier [0]."

Fantasy Zombies and the like already have a host of 0-point features like Affected by Pentagram, Affected by True Faith, etc. etc., so throwing one more onto the pot shouldn't be an issue. Also, unless the players themselves become zombies or start building an undead horde of their own, there's no real reason to worry about enemy point costs.

You don't need another ability for every type of creatures. In fact, you can do this in a few ways..

Give Zombies/Undead/Ect a -10 exotic disadvantage / feature: Harmed by Magic Healing. (All Healing deals damage instead).

Or.. like they said You can make damaging undead a AA on a Healing power with accessibility (Only on Undead/Unholy) for -30%

Good luck on your setting. I feel like Hide Emotion could be obvious if it's always deep calm. There's also the issue of it having a duration, while Sense Emotion can be cast once. Assume the average mage has 10 FP, it's 2 FP to cast Hide Emotion and two to maintain. I'm not sure how visible FP loss should be, but I feel like if sprinting for 15~30 seconds makes you lose an FP, it should definitely be visible. That means you can keep someone in a chamber for an hour or two under observation and see if they get winded for no good reason, just stab 'em in the hand as a "matter of precaution" since most wizards will faill the will roll (and repeated "loyalty checks" can happen every month for those whose loyalty is important), take them to a no mana zone, or just have them take a knockout drug so they can't maintain the spell. There are a variety of ways to overcome Hide Emotions, and I can see normal nobles and such using them.

But that's focusing a lot on a single spell, when the point I meant to make was that there are many spells with low/no prereqs that can turn the world on its head.

Saint's Row 1 badasses can pretty casually beat the shit out of normal people and should be 150 points or so.

Saint's Row 2 is still grounded-ish, and ramps things up. Call it 200 points.

Saint's Row 3 is legit crazy and goes to 350. Even a full SWAT team isn't a match for Johnny or the Boss.

Saint's Row 4 is 400, outside of the simulation.

To you it might seem like I'm drowning in a puddle, but I really do need a generic, catchall 'damage heals, healing damages', since I'm specifically trying to recreate an effect I have seen in a few videogames, in Final Fantasy games it's called Reverse (a spell can induce this effect temporarily). While the examples of zombies and elementals are perfect for their specific case, I do need to do something about the general case. I think I might need to create a new advantage or disadvantage from scratch, but I was hoping I wouldn't need to.

Affliction (Variable Enhancement, +500%; Accessibility, can only be used to "reverse" resistances, weaknesses, and other such things, -20%) [58/level].

Built on Variable Enhancement (Power-Ups 4, p. 5) and with the intent that the best you can do is afflict Injury Tolerance (Damage Reduction) 1, which divides injury by two, although it's likely to be a limited form of IT(DR). This lets you negate advantages, afflict disadvantages, etc. and is pretty all-encompassing. This is the best idea I can come up with. Not sure if it does what you want entirely by RAW, either, but it's close enough IMO.

Divine Curse: Holy power source Healing harms you (-10 points) is perfectly valid. Note that Divine Curse, in general, is a very, very flexible Disadvantage.

Here's something a little off topic. I'm a wanna be writer, and to make sure my characters are interesting I run them through gurps character creation. Typically, I give heroes 150 points and villains 200. This usually forces me to give characters flaws, typically ones I wouldn't otherwise think of. Seeing a list of all these advantages and disadvantages can inspire a lot ideas for stories and characters for me as well.

For example, I was writing an older professor character, when I realized he was just too good. He could realistically solve any problem thrown at any character in the book. Running him through gurps, he ended up with about 250 points. So I had to make him REALLY sick and old, plus make a lot more people hate him. He became a much more interesting character.

Does anyone else use gurps or aspects of grups in non-tabletop ways?

I want to have a character with stress-induced Chronic Pain.

What's a good modifier value to change it from a per-session roll?

I've certainly gone the other way, writing stories based on characters from my games.

Limitations and problems with characters really drive the imagination, that's a great point. GURPS disadvantages are great for putting a character into the story and building up limits and challenges the character will have to overcome and can even remind you that heroic, positive traits can hold someone back and tie their hands.

I love Pacifism (Cannot Harm Innocents) in GURPS. It's effect is that a person with it can't use lethal force unless threatened with lethal force and won't take actions that will harm or recklessly risk the safety of innocent people.

Finding ways to make that hold someone back leads to interesting stories. Forcing someone to surrender to police because they can't escape without killing them or putting them in a place where they can't use an easy, expedient option because it would likely kill uninvolved people is fun, and can make a person seem naive to people without the same flaw.

First off, characters in books are always more competent than in games, because games need to be balanced. It's fine if you're developing realistic characters in the real world, I suppose, but for epic heroes?

I don't think your practice is wrong, but heroes of stories don't need to be restricted.

>Does anyone else use gurps or aspects of gurps in non-tabletop ways?
Does buying the books just to read them (and to occasionally build vehicles) but literally never playing any actual campaigns count?