/gurpsgen/ GURPS general

This is an entirely supportive argument for the Survivable Guns alternate rules
>Halve damage, improve armor divisor one step

>Survivable Guns
Trauma plates will fuck you

>the Halfling pound is 50% a human pound
How do you figure this? Would Halflings just start at a normal ST of 7 compared to a human's 10?

Are there exact rules for determining what ST things should have at what size? I just know of the chart about human heights and weights, and the fact that larger creatures get a discount on purchasing ST by -20% point cost per SM, though by extension would smaller creatures get a 20% penalty per negative SM?

Also, would just adjusting the game to have the relative SM kind of screw things up in the long run since everything from coins to planets has a size modifier stat, and shifting that around could have some odd ramifications?
Also having characters be made as if they were just SM0 rather than SM-1 could cause some issues if you wanted to put them on a different planet, or use the same characters in a normal setting game where humans and other such SM0 creatures are common instead of being populated by halfings and gnomes and such.

From Fantasy, p.15

I fucked up, page 51.

>It just bugs me when people think a knife stab is a trival wound that causes minimal injury. Statistically, it's vastly more likely to kill you then a gunshot.
I seem to remember that the average number of wounds in a person who dies of knife wounds is 12. Unfortunately, I don't remember my source for that. Anyone able to back that up, refute it or provide a comparable number for gunshots?

Also, don't higher power bullets generally have better odds of expanding, fragmenting and tumbling, therefore raising the odds of hitting something very important and putting larger holes in more organs?

Also, it seems like penetration beyond 14 cm of flesh could be pretty significant.

Humans aren't all meat; most of them wear a few layers of tough fabric over the top of them, some of them have a lot of fat and bone is kind of tough but often useful to smash through (because it's generally helpful for holding the person in shape, very important things might behind it and splinters of bone can do even more damage).

Even more importantly, humans aren't all exactly 14 cm deep from all directions and bullets don't always follow straight lines once they hit something. Hitting someone in the shoulder and going all the way through the torso seems like it would be even worse than being hit in the shoulder and having the bullet stop around the ribs. Quite often humans in gunfights will be lying down, which means a bullet could have almost two metres of human to go through before any extra energy was wasted. Sure, bad things start to happen with fairly shallow wounds, but a couple of muscles being ripped open and one lung being punctured is probably more survivable than dozens of muscles and a whole bunch of organs. Even something as simple as a hole in the front of your chest vs. that plus another one in the back seems like more penetration would be nastier.

Of course, whether the actual trauma lines up with GURPS numbers is a whole other question.

>RAW/plateauing skill costs: 1, 2, 4, 4, 4...
>Exponential skill costs: 1, 2, 4, 8, 16...
>Flat skill costs: 4, 4, 4, 4, 4...
Switching from RAW to exponential would have a lot of cascading effects, as detailed in gamesdiner.com/escargo . However, switching from RAW to flat costs would be much simpler, wouldn't it?

That _IS_ what they're designed to do, you know?

Preparing for an ADVENTURE campaign using mostly GURPS Lite, with a few mechanics borrowed from the full game. I want racial temperature tolerance but the RAW version is way too granular.

Here's my proposed alt version:

Temperature Tolerance (5): Ignore HT checks and any penalties for non-extreme high or low (choose one) environmental temperature. For tolerance to both, this advantage must be bought twice.

With a +100% modifier to allow extreme (desert, arctic) tolerance.

How balanced does this seem?

Pretty good for a rules light version. That's a nice handwave ability and cost comparably to useful advantages of the same point investment

You're wrong.

>Guns, in short, should all do the same damage.
[autistic screeching]

The hole is the least troublesome thing about a gunshot wound. Impalements are a "fairly common" injury in ERs. And you know what? It's not that serious usally (depending, of course, on the case).

A gunshot is ALWAYS a medical emergency. Why? Because the damage caused by the bullet is not just the hole itself - it is that, plus the force behind it. That force is not simply perpendicular to the entry hole, it also rotates, and also creates a 'shearing' effect. It's kind of like if it was, at the same time, a drill, a hammer, and a pair of scissors. Possible fragmentation means that you will probably hit something that wasn't in the bullet's original trajectory. The thing is that the bullet indirectly harms things well away from the "theoretical line" that is its trajectory through the body. You have to remember the tremendous amount of energy the bullet carries. Comparison:

6mm Plastic BB Bullet, about 2 J
Punch (or a stabbing, I suppose) 100-450 J
9x19mm Parabellum, 481 J
5.56x45mm NATO (used in M4s), 1767 J
Soviet 7.62x39mm (used in AK47s), 2,108 J
.50 BMG (M2 Browning MG, Barret M82, AW50...) 18,050J

Small blood vessels will break with minimal amounts of force (see: bruises). If a few break, no big deal. But if a lot of small vessels break, that sucks (since ALL blood eventually reaches thin blood vessels). You don't even have to hit something important to cause major bleeding.
1/2

Knife wounds are not immediately life threatening unless they hit an artery/organ (that can happen, and it's why you should fear stabbings). But it's actually pretty hard. Our anatomy is designed to protect us. Hitting the right spot between the ribs takes quite a bit of luck (unless your opponent's sitting still...). The liver and spleen are somewhat hidden beneath the bottom of the ribcage. The aorta is buried beneath the intestines. The kidneys are a good place to aim for from the back (Every minute 1/5th of all your blood goes through your kidneys. Amazing, huh?) You could go for the neck, but anything's deadly if it hits the neck anyway, so that's not really a testament to the deadliness of knives.

Let's go for a practical example:
Say I stab you in the liver. You will bleed a lot. But if you reach the hospital and get treated, you'll be perfectly fine, since I probably destroyed a very small part of the organ.

If I shoot you with a rifle in the liver, the whole thing's fucked. (It's like if I smashed the whole thing with a hammer). Massive bleeding will ensue, and you will probably need a transplant. But I will probably also harm the kidney, too, since it's close by. The damage might reach your cava, intestines, pancreas... It's not something you will easily recover from.

It's not that knives aren't dangerous. It's that blow-by-blow, minute by minute, gunshots are deadlier and have more severe consequences. Of course, you will die without medical treatment either way.

if you consider cold and heat occasional groups, and mild cold/heat rare, this is exactly in line with just buying them as the appropriate immunity traits, so it should be balanced

With Survivable Guns they freakin' hard to penetrate, and they really hard to degrade after AK 7.62 full burst.
In game where i got GM with Survivable Guns he was really mad about how bulletproof my character was with Survivable Guns + Trauma Plates combo.
But, well, he heard a lot about how Survivable Guns good for gunfights, but don't know about Trauma Plates.

Part of that is due to how trauma plates are written in High Tech. They're only 10"x12" (or less). That's only like 50% torso coverage at best. I give them the 1-in-3 partial coverage Low Tech added to armor. Or stop shooting center mass and use random hit locations.

Remind me the easiest way to take a vampiric bite/Leech and link in a "venomous extacy" where the metabolic hazard saliva gives orgasmic problems

I'm weighing my options, but I feel vampire bite as written is fine, but then adding the salivary venom is odd

>Adding a toxic attack (1 point)followup with symptom(1/3 hp, adds irritant Euphoria )
So the toxic damage seeps in, and when enough hits you get loopy until it heals
Or just adding
>Linked Affliction 4 (euphoria)
For a roll again ht-3 to gain the condition on contact with the bite/mouth

I hate having to coach my group through different rule sets so we play GURPS for almost everything. I haven't found anything yet it doesn't work for. For games I play in with other groups I use whatever the GM runs. I've never felt the other system had better rules even though some have been equally good. What I miss from other systems in GURPS is the shared setting knowledge the players of other games have.

Daily reminder that I can easily make a 250 point character that can head-shot enemies from 568 miles away. Also can make a 100 point character that has a 16 Parry and basically cannot be hit in melee, with ease, because GURPS' retarded linear skill costs make it child's play to minmax without even the barest vestige of thought required.

So I'm looking to port over my 5e campaign into GURPS (assuming my table enjoys it after a trial game). What progression of books should I read? Lite -> Basic -> Dungeon Fantasy?

If i'm not mistaken, Dungeon Fantasy is a standalone book so you could just go directly there. Maybe lite -> trial game -> Dungeon Fantasy

Put "How to be a GURPS GM" somwhere in there too, after you have a decent grasp of the rules.

Daily reminder that I don't need to play with autistic people like you.

Daily reminder to stop replying to that idiot already.

youtube.com/watch?v=wXwPtP-KDNk

Do you want the bite to be immediately pleasurable or delayed pleasurable? Linked Affliction means the moment they sink the fangs in.

Toxic could be counterproductive. You are draining people, but the damage your Tox does reduces the amount you can get from them. 4 HP for an average person to feel happy from it means you are really fucking them up.

Also watch out for a few things
>Infinite uses costs a lot more in GURPS than DND
>Wild shape is shapechange/morph, and it's as strong as the point costs say
>Read up on more than the basic set magic to make wizards. Check out Magic, Thaumatology, and Powers
>Warlocks use the pact modifier, and are likely evil megalomaniacs, or have a hazardous duty
>Sneak attack is just targeting vitals, and not a special ability

These are good points, Thank you :)

I hadn't thought of the implications of linked tox reducing leech effectiveness

Brilliant

>port my 5e campaign into GURPS
So from a shitty system into a slightly less shitty one? Good idea in theory. In reality, GURPS and 5e are completely different kinds of game, and GURPS is absolute trash for heroic fantasy. Unless you are already running D&D as a super gritty death simulator, it's pointless. Also, any game-ist type things in D&D, like the feats, will port over shittily. Basically, you're going to dump a shitton of extra rules onto your group, for a system whose biggest weakpoint is emulating heroic fantasy, and basically ruin your campaign.

I convinced my D&D group (who were originally playing 4e) to switch a campaign to 3.5 and it was the worst mistake ever. Ruined the best campaign I've ever been part of (as a player, that is) because the DM didn't learn the rules and the players did. Also the setting was not set up to handle the high power 3.5 magic, and the threats we faced were quickly BTFO by magic that can do everything and anything. So that ruined the game. Similarly, the differences between GURPS and 5e, will probably ruin your game as well.

Well since 80-points-in-guns user is still here, lemme dump my retarded, probably rules violating build here
Gun Fu p.29:
TA (Rifle/Skull) +4 Hard Technique, 5 Points, -3 to Headshots instead of -7
High Tech - Weapon Tables p.6:
Barrett M82A1 .50 Browning 6+3 (Scope+Bipod) Acc, 1 Aim manuever +9 Effective SL, Damage 6dx2 Pi+
Guns (Rifles) DX for 1 Point
Power-Ups 1-Imbuements + Thaumatology - Sorcery p.11:
Far Shot Guided Weapon (Rifles) Combination Bought As Advantage With Cosmic: No Die Roll Required, and Reduced Fatigue 2, For 32 Points At Skill Level DX
Results:
Effective SL for Headshot regardless of range: 16
New Range W/0 or 1 Extra Passes: 34000/130000, latter range the bullet takes 4 turns to get there, former range is immediate
Points Spent:38 w/required 1 aim maneuver, 57 to have enough skill in guns to not need acc from aiming to reach effective SL 16
probably could spend a few more points in guns to be able to hit moving targets without needing extra passes
Rate of hitting with 1 extra Pass (theres literally no reason not to, as far as i can tell): 99.96%, exact range only determines number of turns needed for the bullet to actually arrive there, lower ranges can potentially afford more passes to reach even more absurdly close to 100% accuracy if needed
If you want to interpret Sorcery p.11 as saying that you cannot take weapon specialties on imbuement skills as advantages, and must buy extra skill to soak penalties: then without paying more points 1/2D is 3400 and max range is 13000, and you do not get extra passes
Minimum Damage: (12-2)*4 for 40 Damage, which has an 88% chance of killing a 10 HP&HT character with no other relevant advantages or head armor instantly, Average Damage: (42-2)*4 for 160 Damage, Maximum Damage: (72-2)*4 for 280 Damage
Beyond 1/2D: Minimum Damage: (6-2)*4 for 16 Damage, Average Damage: (21-2)*4 for 76 Damage, Maximum Damage: (36-2)*4 for 136 Damage
excuse the awful formatting

A WEAPON TO SURPASS METAL GEAR

Nice. Certainly much more complex than mine. Although that wasn't my point originally: many games CAN be broken with effort, but my point was that the GURPS skill system takes no effort to break, it IS broken because of linear costs, which are pointless because you pretty much have to look at the table to figure out skill costs anyway (I mean, I memorized them after a few weeks of playing, but still). The game claims to want lateral skill purchases yet rewards the opposite, and slips in an optional "rule" (just GM advice, really) to put retarded hard caps to keep their crappy system in line, with its boundless chargen and fluid, uncategorized build points....hmmm, nothing can go wrong there, can it?

Also mine is only core rules, but I hesitate to even call it a build, because it really isn't.

Good luck with that character at the embassy diplomatic dinner.

I think you're misunderstanding what I mean by port. I'm not trying to 1:1 move everything over. I really don't care if there is or isn't a perfect analogue for the GWM feat, for instance. I'm looking to move the adventure over into this system, and have the players rebuild their characters from scratch into whatever it is that they wanted to play in the first place. The problem we're having with 5e is that we can't make characters as we envision them, rather we have to abide by the limited classes the game provides. Consequently everything feels same-y, and characters simultaneously have too little and too much to do.

I've been told GURPS is as complicated as you want to make it, and that it's modular as fuck. I already have to juryrig all sorts of shit in my 5e campaign to make it work, so it seems like a good fit for me. What exactly are its problems with heroic fantasy?

Have fun walking everywhere.

>The problem we're having with 5e is that we can't make characters as we envision them, rather we have to abide by the limited classes the game provides
Why?
Seriously, what's the hangup here?
Why can't Steve the bars get striking strength?
Why can't Bob the fighter buy a magical cat ally?
What, in GURPS, is stopping them?

the biggest problem with 80-points-in-guns-man is the fact that every gun has a listed max range, so theres only so big of a range penalty he can potentially soak up simply because his gun is incapable of shooting far enough to take advantage of his almighty firearms expertise
therefore, i posit, in addition to 100-points-in-perception-man, a 80-points-in-armory(Longarms)-man, to build a sniper rifle with a long enough range for 80-points-in-guns-man to actually be able to take full advantage of his namesake skill

How about an 80-points-in-propaganda man, to sell us on how cool he is that he "broke" the system?

...That'd be kind of cool actually.

Except my character won't be going to that dinner. Ever hear of role specialization, faggot? Why the fuck would I make that character for a political intrigue campaign?

I'll switch out Survival for Driving. The other skills there are just as example. If I *really* wanted to do shooting and nothing else, I'd have a 36 base score.

I'm actually not sure what you're asking me. Perhaps you meant what in 5e is stopping them?

>Survival for Driving
Have fun in the Jungle/Desert/Taiga. You should at least have Savioure-Faire (Contract Killers) or (Military) or (Autistic Loners).

I don't think it's cool that I broke the system.
I think it is a bad thing that the system is broken.
Savage Worlds has the same issue, although it actually puts a hard cap on skill at chargen, so it is slightly less retarded.

>Why can't Steve the bars get striking strength?
What the fuck is this sentence? Steve the ... bard? Maybe you meant to type? And the hell is striking strength?
>Why can't Bob the fighter buy a magical cat ally?
Because that shit ain't for sale, usually. Wizards don't buy their familiars, you stupid fuck, and there's nothing in any D&D rules ever that say a fighter can't buy the same magic items as a wizard. Maybe you're thinking a rust bag of tricks?
>What, in GURPS, is stopping them?
The GM contradicting the rules to control the game however he wants.
B172, motherfuckers.

>lol if you don't have X skill, I'll throw you into X situation
>oh you picked X skill now? Time for Y situation instead.
You sound like a shit GM.
Let me see some of your recent GURPS characters that you've played, and I'll come up with situations they'll get fucked in.
You won't, because you know I am right, and every character has weak points.
Meanwhile, in a straight up fight, my character will more than likely BTFO yours. Given that I can destroy you from 300m without even trying.

My God you're retarded. The first guy is fucking confused and thinks the discussion is about 5E GURPS which doesn't even exist. Port-user is trying to move 5E D&D characters to GURPS, which is gonna be interesting as a lot of the abilities in D&D classes have wildly different point costs in GURPS.

>a lot of the abilities in D&D classes have wildly different point costs in GURPS.
You mean, they don't exist at all.
i.e. action surge, second wind

>B172
ok then, B487, Under "character-design problems"
literally the first sentence describes 80-points-in-guns-man, the rest of the section suggests ways to correct it, even providing a couple of optional rules for that purpose

No, I'm pointing out that you don't have enough breadth of skills to be a good character. Nothing here is out of line for a decent adventure. You think you won't have to drive in the 3rd world hunting dictators?

And yea, you'll btfo my charcter because you got 250 points and disads. My character only got 150/-75. "Hurrdurr, I have more points and can btfo your character" Good job, that's not impressive.

You know you can make advantages in GURPS, right? Second Wind is just recovering some HP with a limitation on uses per day or requiring so many hours of rest after.

Action Surge would be one-turn enhanced time sense or something like that. I don't have the Basic Set handy, but that's not my problem. It's possible to fix your issue if you just put forth the effort.

I'm not trying to port over things from DnD 1:1. I'm trying to move the adventure, the story, over to GURPS, and I'm planning to have my players remake their characters into what they had originally envisioned instead of what they settled for in 5e.

I don't care if there's no second win, action surge, etc. Doesn't matter. That wasn't central to my fighter's character concept, that's simply some class feature that came with the package he settled on as the closest approximation to the character they wanted to play.

Like I said in you can just make advantages if you need 'em.

well satan, you probably should start with lite, then go to basic, then probably check into stuff like martial arts and thaumatology, dungeon fantasy is pretty much GURPS' attempt to closely emulate the feel of D&D and a bunch of its setting assumptions, so i guess look at it if there's some D&Disms you want to keep

>And yea, you'll btfo my charcter because you got 250 points and disads
It's a 100 point character, faggot. I can headshot you from 300m with a 100 point character.
Sorry the character I specialized for combat isn't that good at anything else. Hmmm... maybe I SHOULD play a 150 point character. Then I have 50 extra points for peripheral skills, in addition to the ones I already have in the image I posted. That should be enough for some good skills! And holy fuck, 75 points disadvantages? I was holding myself back with a 25% starting total disadv limit. Because I wanted to be fair. But I can easily take another 25 points of disadvs and have 25 more points for skills. Now I can have a decent driving skill, too, as well as fast talk and other shit.

And this is 100 points, by the way. Not 250. or 150. Give me 150 points and I'll make my gunman plenty well-rounded and still have a higher enough shooting to destroy enemies with ease. Fuck, with that rifles skill I can walk fire between a halfdozen enemies and even with a Rcl of 4 I can probably mow them all down. I don't remember how many bullets get wasted in between targets when you walk autofire, but I'm sure I could do it.

>You know you can make advantages in GURPS, right?
You can make feats in D&D, edges in Savage Worlds, merits in World of Darkness. You can always homebrew, faggot. GURPS isn't special. If anything, 5e is easier to homebrew for than GURPS, due to having fewer rules.

>Action Surge would be one-turn enhanced time sense or something like that.
Kek.
>actually trying to import 4e-era MOBA-style abilities to a realistic RPG, just to satisfy me
>being this desperate for GURPS to be able to do EVERYTHING by implying that homebrew is uniquely suited to GURPS

Holy shit, no wonder GURPS players are treated like Jehovah's Witnesses on Veeky Forums.

What? Are you ?

...

>homebrew
nothing he said was homebrew though? the modifiers alluded to are both like right next to each other in Power-ups 8 and probably also found in a couple other places, and the advantages are in basic set
applying modifiers to advantages is literally their entire purpose and definitely RAW, so without some insane definition of homebrew that also covers things outlined directly in official books, it isnt homebrew to have those traits in a game

see

D&D has rules for how to make your own spells, but it's still homebrew.
Even if it weren't, why would OP want to spend all that time converting his game to another system....when he's already playing a system with those mechanics? Sounds retarded.

There are things GURPS is good at. But heroic fantasy? Nah. Especially not D&D-style fantasy.

idunno about more recent editions, but the ones whose books i read the rules for making your own XYZ were more or less "look at existing things and eyeball where they should be relative to those things" rather than how GURPS does making your own traits, where there are explicit point values and exact percentages for modifiers and everything needed to find the exact point value of a trait are very explicitly spelled out.
the way i see it, if its just kinda a suggestion of vaugely how balanced something will be, its homebrew when you make something using those guidelines, but if theres explicit hard and fast rules outlined in the book, it isnt official content per se, but its not quite homebrew, because its just slapping together chunks of official content into one big package rather than making things up wholesale yourself and slotting it into the existing game
it'd be like saying 80-points-in-guns-man is "just some homebrew crap so its not a problem with the system" just because he isnt explcitly given a stat block in any of the official books
and i agree, GURPS sucks for D&D style fantasy, which is why if i wanted to play D&D style fantasy i'd go hunt down my old group and play D&D again

>gurps has explicit rules for creating powers
Speaking of which.....

>Hurr durr durr. You are a faggot GM. I won't play in any game not tailored to my special snowflake.

dude, i agree, GURPS is easy to snap in half if you ignore one of the core assumptions the system makes, which is that the GM is there to shoot down any clear cases of abuse so that the rules don't have to have to be bogged down and made harder to parse by bunch of clauses about putting too many modifiers on cheap traits or putting too many points in a skill
its an assumption the likes of Mutants and Masterminds makes too, and AFAIK pretty much all systems with explicitly spelled out ability creation rules with a similar level of detail in it as gurps makes, simply because the rulebook would be like 10x-100x as long if they had to put something similar to the D&D polymorph errata on every single modifier and advantage to spell out and delet all possible crazy edge cases of abusive modifiers and point crocks

Add side effect directly to leech.

Why engage? He'll just reply something like:
>But, but, but I'm a whiny little bitch who can't think beyond muh disregard fer yer GM fiat. You faggot.

because i hate myself and love to see his responses

Because the general is dead otherwise. He only comes in after a couple generals die before reaching the post limit anyways. It's his way of keeping /GURPSGEN/ alive. Hell, with the distraction he makes, other discussion can queue up for another general after he leaves again. He's honestly saving us.

How do I incentivize players into choosing a race template?

Everyone always goes with humans. The books’ answer seems to be to have disadvantages in the template that don’t count to their disadvantage total. However people don’t seem to be sold on it, especially because this doesn’t matter if they haven’t maxed out their disadvantages.

I asked my players about it and most said the templates were too expensive, (each around 30 pts) and that they would rather pick out their own advantages. Most have gone with Human or the ‘Cursed One’ template which is 0 pts, allows them to take superhuman/alien traits and has a -7 reaction modifier social stigma (-35pts). If I didn’t allow cursed ones I’m sure more people would have picked among the races but I’ve allowed them to do something similar in previous games and they all seemed to have a lot of fun with it.

I have a couple solutions for making race templates more appealing:

The first is to just Discount them. Knock ten or so points off each one. I suppose the reasoning is advantages are a little less advantageous if they are forced to select them as a bundle. One might be useless to their character.

The second is to add a list of advantages and skills to each race that will be discounted or easier. A dwarf might treat smiting and other craft skills as easy and Magery might be a little cheaper for an elf.

What do you guys think?

Post your racial templates.

Give other races abilities humans can't have. Humans are natural. Give some supernatural shit to less natural races.

Dungeon Fantasy has a set of races that work this way. It's a very good option.

>Discounting stuff

Don't do this. It's a giant pain in the ass and unnecessary.

this

Damage Reduction, Regeneration, Heighten Senses and Flight are all abilities you can give to nonhumans to make them desirable to players. Natural weapons like claws are good too.

Give the races unique traits that fill their niche. I made a race that was the only one that could see invisible spirits naturally as well as shrug off spell effects more easily; this, plus higher ST, made them natural mage hunters. Other races were designed among similar lines.

Another option, increase caps instead of introducing discounts. If most races are limited to Lifting ST 4, let dwarves buy up to six or eight levels or remove the cap for them entirely.

Here you go:

Mortal Races:
Humans [0]
No Traits

Dwarf [28]
Secondary Characteristic Modifiers: SM -1, Will +1 [5].
Advantages: Alcohol Tolerance [1], Lifting ST +2 [6], Night Vision 9 [9], Hard to Kill 3 [6], Extended Lifespan 1 [0].

Elf [39 pts]
Secondary Characteristic Modifiers: Per +1 [5]
Advantages: Appearance (Attractive)[4], Perfect Balance[15], Telescopic Vision 1 [5], Voice [10], Lifespan 1 [0].

Halfling [33pts]
Secondary Characteristic Modifiers: SM -2, Will +2 [10].
Advantages: Green Thumb 1 [5], Hard to Kill 4 [8], Silence 4 [20].
Disadvantages: Mundane Background [-10].

Lesser Races:
Kobold [13]
Secondary Characteristic Modifiers: SM -2
Advantages: Claws (Sharp Claws) [5], Discriminatory Smell [15], Night Vision 3 [3], Striker (Tail; Crushing) [5], Teeth (Fangs) [2].
Disadvantages: Social Stigma (Subjugated) [-20], Short Lifespan [0].

Goblin [-1]
Secondary Characteristic Modifiers: SM -2, Per +1 [5].
Advantages: Night Vision 5 [5], Acute Taste and Smell 2 [4], Resistant to Disease (+5) [5].
Disadvantages: Social Stigma (Subjugated) [-20]

Constructed Races:
Clay Golem [40 pts]
Advantages: Regeneration* (Regular) [20], Regrowth [40], Immunity to Metabolic Hazards [30], Unaging [0].
Disadvantages: Incompatible with magic healing [-20], Disturbing Voice [-10], Social Stigma (Subjugated) [-20]
*To heal, a Clay Golem must be able to shape its clay

Cursed Ones:
Your kind spreads disease, defeatism and desertion.

Lifespans cost 0, because they won't have any effect in the game save in the prologue.
Clay Golem needs some work, doesn't eat/breath/bleed etc. but if I added all that it would cost far too much and no one would take it.

Was off making dinner, no need to get pissy.

Yeah, I'm and I'm not seen my strong niches or racial identities. The only thing significant about dwarves is Night Vision 9, and a 28-point template for a 9-point ability is meh. I know elves are the "do everything and do it well" race, but your listed advantages have no theme or sense of unity.

Give races a clear niche to fill and they should be more popular.

Racial templates are already really good. You don't count any racial disadvantages to your disadvantage limit, so every point in them increases your point total.

As other anons have said, restrict some advantages if people take Human. Also, with your clay golem issue, maybe preventing them from using certain weapons unless custom made, or ditch regen and make it so they don't heal naturally, they have to be rebuilt. Then you can add the no sleep and no food advantages without it being broken.

Dwarves have two unique traits (Lifting ST, Night Vision), neither of which are really exciting. HtK 3 is also overkill. Elves have two unique traits (Perfect Balance and Telescopic Vision), and the former needs to have a much better description to show how it's worth 15 points. Halflings have a ridiculous amount of hard to kill, although I guess nobody can out-sneak a halfling.

Kobolds have a lot of personality, so they look fine to me. Goblins also have a lot of personality, but I recall races with negative point totals having their disadvantages count towards the disad limit. Clay golems are overpriced because Regrowth is overpriced. Reverend Pee Kitty reprices it to 10 points.

Beyond that, what said. I think goblins and kobolds are fine as-is, maybe throw Reduced Consumption on goblins if you track food quality and that sort of thing.

I'm with this guy.

You are giving a lot of stuff people can buy elsewhere. Aim for races that cost around 20 points, with 30 points of advantages and 10 points of disadvantages.

Also, not for nothing, but Regrowth is really, really expensive for what it does. I'd give clay golems considerably more disadvantages to balance it out.

I like the unique traits idea, would spice up the races a bit. a certain race being able to see or talk to something would fit into the world well, too.

The cap idea is also good. Usually I will just tell them something is too high if it seems to break the game, but a hard cap would mean I won't have to do that.

This is something that I have done. because humans are limited to the mundane traits, I thought giving superhuman traits to the races would give people a reason to play them. It may have, had I not given them the Cursed one option.

My player who is most experienced with GURPS is completely opposed to the discount option. It's off the table, at this point.

I wanted to keep the races general but I suppose that makes them boring. In the world Dwarves are skilled artificers, a unique trait something similar to gageteer might spice it up a bit. Elves are certainly the least fleshed-out race in the world. They have their own druidic magic, I guess? Might include that.

Those are pretty straight conversions of standard fantasy trope races. You can either turn them up to 11 or scrap the standard list.

If you turn it up to 11 remember that disadvantages don't apply to a characters' disadvantage limit when they're in a racial template. "Elves and dwarves always have enemies. It's impossible to live that long and not make a few." Then really scale up the appearance and maybe add a level of that not-terror reskin from Powers. . . Awe was it? Give the dwarves melee-only crushing attack "punches" and DR on their arms so they can dig through mountains without tools. Halflings can do shadow form.

If you scrap the standard list maybe do something like Celestials [25ish] (wings, transcendent appearance, TK, Sense of Duty, Honesty, Truthfulness), Trolls (regeneration, +ST, dark vision). Maybe a centaur. And, hell, this is GURPS a human-sized or larger octopus has been a thing since early days.

Does lowtech have rules for half-swording?

Yes.

Cool, I haven't used low-tech much but my player wanted to apply the technique and I told him I'd need to look into it.

It might be in Martial Arts. I'm sure someone else here knows.