GURPS General /GURPSgen/

>quirk
You mean perk. Signature Gear. It actually guarantees that you can get your gear back one way or another unless you, a player, willingly get rid of it, then it's lost forever.

Speaking of which, are signature gear immune to breakage rule?

Another big Pro of it as an innate attack, is that you generally have a bit more "freedom" with the traits of the weapon. If you make a handgun as a piece of custom gear, it will generally be limited by normal values of Range, for a handgun, which usually isn't more than about 220/2200, while with an innate attack, you're free to give it a longer range, if you want.

On the other hand, it's probably going to be more expensive a cost in CP, than buying it as Signature Gear. That's the real trade-off, in my mind. Custom Equipment is very much subject to GM fiat, and they'll probably severely curtail it based on the limitations of the TL. An Innate attack gives you more freedom, and will probably let you get to higher "bounds" of effectiveness.

How I do it is, they can break, but they'll never be broken permanently. It's guaranteed you'll be able to get it repaired, and for cheap/free too.Maybe you've got insurance, maybe it's covered by your bosses at the monster hunter organization, maybe you know a mechanic who owes you one. Point is, you can get it back in commission, straight away, and at no heavy cost.

What weapons and attacks is everybody else going to be using?

If you make one guy buy a gadget gun and everyone else gets to pick whatever they like from a gear catalogue, that seems unfair, especially if their guns are just as good.

On the other hand, of most characters are using much weaker weapons, like swords or bare hands, or paying points for things like innate attacks, then someone with some serious firepower getting charged to buy it as a gadget seems reasonable.

Also, I forgot to add, that it will also just break less often. It won't be any more durable, but it will just not be deliberately targeted by NPCs, except in rare circumstances, and if you wind up dropping it or whatever, I probably won't roll for damage, unless it's dropped into a very hazardous environment, but on top of that, when it DOES break, it follows what I laid out above.

Signature Gear is a contract with the GM, that this piece of gear is as much a part of your character as their personality, and the GM agreeing not to fuck that up, just like they agree not to Godmod your character into acting OOC.

The rest of the party is an RPM mage, a Not!Paladin wielding a holy sword, and a human detective with a .44, and a ton of investigation skills and contacts. So myself and the paladin are meant to be the major muscle.

Ha, found another errata:
>When doubling up, Fit [5] becomes a general HT +1 [10], and the ""solider"" may opt not to double up on one skill
GURPS Action 4, p17, emphasis mine.

Adding fancy ammo (including RPM charm bullets) to a gadget is problematic. With equipment you don't have to worry about it.

Honestly, I'd just take a BFR.

Another user here
Is this [thing] going to help you get around legality/purchase restrictions too? Because a hand built custom weapon you've been tooling together for yourself for a few years is entirely different than filling out forms at the NRA and ATF for your custom frame Barret .50

Legality isn't really much of an issue, given the premise, and the game being very cinematic, so I guess it isn't?

>Legality isn't an issue
Cue the GM running a plot point around the ATF stinging your operations in the middle of downtime.

Does IQ5 animals have "language"?

While rolling the Heroic Background Generator it was defined that my character was raised by a Gryphon. I'm wondering what's the best advantage for someone that learned to "communicate" with Gryphons, Animal Empathy to understand their feelings or Speak with Animals to understand their language, if they have one.

From what I can gather, you could argue they do have ''language'' but unlike an animal with IO6+ it cant learn more and are limited in what IQ based skills it can learn, tho in the end its a matter between GM and Player do decide,

Animal Empathy makes more sense here, while animals can be smart, they're basically limited to a small set of cries which you can figure out anyway if you can understand their feelings, although Speak with animals is more beneficial on the long run if your GM will let you take advantage of it, so I guess Animal Empathy is the safer bet.

Appreciate the help, I'm going with Animal Empathy then (actually Good with Gryphon to save points...)
Now to solve how the heck a Golem-Armor Swordman works as a Mentor. I'm probably going to reroll this section, if it keeps going on my character will be fit to join a freak show or something.

Did you grow up in an abandoned wizard’s menagerie? That may make more sense then you randomly running into and getting adopted by various different monsters throughout your life. Maybe you grew up in a dungeon.

The rolls mentions "A home in a small village" and "Pastoral countryside or lowlands".

Okay, I rerolled the supernatural entity table and got "Elementals". I guess I'll embrace wackiness, my current plan is some odd mix of air-infused barbarian-elementalist-martial-artist mix. Going to get Close to the Earth 4 as "his parents were druids", the mama Gryphon adopts the boy (maybe she was Ally of the boy's parents!), air elementals takes liking of him because of the talent bonus and relationship with the flying beast and blesses him into an air-infused. He's probably going to be a unarmed fighter because away from civilization he has no access to weapons or knowledge to cast spells. Swap Chi modifier from Martial Artist's abilities to "Spirit" and it should get things interesting enough.

I prefer to stat out things like that as gear, and taking Signature Gear for them if they are a part of the character's legend rather then just gear they use.

It's nice when you might also face other people with a giant goddamn gun like a Winchester 1887 bootleg.

Does anybody know what happened to that ancient "GURPSNet" mailing list where some autist has posted literally a thousand Vehicles write-ups? It seems to have died: mail.sjgames.com/pipermail/gurpsnet-l/

The final message listed on the archive linked below, sent on 2016-07-18, mentions that the server had been having some problems: mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.html

Bumping with the awesomeness of GURPS Vehicles.

what the fuck

Yes, GURPS Vehicles is awesome, isn't it?
I tried testing out GURPS Vehicles a few years ago, but got bored before getting very far. Don't hold it against me if any calculations are wrong.

Sweep isn't as bad as it sounds. You roll vs the highest of DX, Acrobatics, Grappling or ST, but for many enemies that is going to be a pretty even 10 to 14.

One of the neat things about Sweep is that if you've got a very high ST it gets rather more useful, as you roll vs that instead of Sweep.

As you noted, getting knocked down really takes the fight out of someone.

>what was the highlight moment of your current/previous campaign?
Definitely when, as a group of essentially socialites with only basic ideas of what goes in the commanding structure of an army, we got to reroute an hostile army WMD-using away from a large metropolitan area in Wallonia/Belgium to instead go try to attack Holstein, a much more well-fortified area.

Granted we got some help that was out of this world...

Quick and dirty spreadsheet I just made.
It seems if you're using thrust impaling predominantly (ie spear), you really need to target Vitals to compete against swings.
Add difference (fine spear vs good broadsword) can be helpful but it's tipped back by Weapon Master.
Considering Impaling weapons doesn't do very well against enemies with injury tolerance, it seems swing is most of the time better (a fine hatchet is better than a good broadsword, for example)

Aaaaaand I of course forgot to attach it.

Fits well enough. Unless you get something you can't slash

Fine Hatchet ($400) is cheaper then Good Broadsword ($500), but lacks a thrusting option that can come in handy pretty often...

A Cheap Broadsword ($200) deals the same damage as the Fine hatchet, cost half as much and the sword might break more easily if it makes a roll to avoid it, it's still less likely to need to make those rolls because it weighs more and you can stab a dude with it.

The sword also leaves you with an upgrade path. A Very Fine broadsword cost $10,000 so you won't be picking up one very soon, but a Fine broadsword runs only $2,000 and beats the hatchet.

I want to run a campaign set in 1700's america, where the party would be exploring, fighting natives that kind of shit. I'm new to GURPS but i know it would be the best way to run it, what books should I be looking at?

Too busy actually running, playing and building stuff to bum around in these threads too much right now, but love you boys and good gaming to you!

Anybody has experiemented with structure withing powers page 33 Powers book? Especially the prerequisites part. Would you like to see such a book or treatement for a powers book (like psionics.)

Broadsword is a pretty trash-tier sword and hatchet is a weirdly excellent axe though. Most good thrusting weapons offer reach 2 and many of them have excellent parry options and can be fast-drawn.

That said, I concur that swing is OP. Edge Protection helps a bit by nerfing cut damage.

Taking a look at polearms I noticed Dueling Glaive is a lot weaker than Dueling Halberd. If you have ST12 and doesn't mind the extra +4 lbs, is there any reason to use it?

What's something you can't slash? Are you talking about hit locations?

Fine Hatchet is actually $200 (+9 CF) and a Very Fine one costs $1000 (+49 CF), though I highly doubt those are available in the general market, if I were to GM I'd require a smith contact or something.
I dislike it, but technically you could per LTC2 attach a spearhead in it for thrust damage. I suppose one could balance it by requiring spear skill to use it instead of axe/mace (like when wielding a polearm in one hand). Also, when a thrust comes handy? I think you mean targeting chinks (and eye slits) but I'm not sure.
Speaking of cheap heavy weapons, ins't it a little cheesy? I had the impression SJ Games abandoned Cheap (Quality) for those and uses Cheap (Balance), given it's the only "available"* option in later booksl like DFRPG.
*Not really available but some weapons like Machete implicitly uses it.

The ability of a Katana and Longsword to attack at reach 2 without compromising parry while also holding a shield (maybe not very appropriate for a katana, fluff it as a Shashka or something) seems to make them the best options among Broadswords. The only downside seems to be the slightly more expensive price and TL.
Meanwhile I also agree with you regarding the Hatchet, it's small (-2 bulk), light, can be passed as a tool and effective at both melee and range. Spending 2 or 3 points in Axe/Mace and Thrown Axes to have it as a backup weapon sounds like a good idea. The only, but probably very big one for a backup weapon, is the lack of Fast-Draw.

Yeah, it really only works in realistic games. As soon as you start using obscene ST scores and highly cinematic advantages meant for swashbuckling campaigns it starts to fall apart. If you've got, say, ST 7 thrust is vastly superior, at 11 they're equal, and above 13 swing starts accelerating away.
Honestly, just reworking Weapon Master to a flat +2 or +3 negates the issue even in fantasy games for most races except ogres/Giants and such.

The dueling halberd's stats are really funky and don't fit with anything else. I'd be inclined to just throw them out and fit it to other axes.

>Is Cheap (Quality) cheesy?
It's a deep discount that won't come up very often, but the core book does say that most swords are Cheap.

Cheap (Balance) feels like an odd thing to use in it's place, given that -1 to Skill should be imminently noticed by anyone that picks one up, and inherently badly balanced weapons like maces and polearms don't suffer from a penalty to skill.

Reminder: If you want to make GURPS more palatable for newcomers, abandon 3d6 in favor of 1d10 + 5. The difference between the two distributions never even reaches 5%.

1d10+5 doesn't even have the same range as 3d6. Crits never happens, skills at 15 or above auto-succeeds in most situation. How does it even make stuff easier for newcomers?

Anyone have gurps thaumatology?

Check the OP image.

Cheers. Didn't notice that it's actually a PDF

>The difference between the two distributions never even reaches 5%.
That's all that matters. People don't like bell curves, and this is as close as you can get to 3d6 without bell curves.

(If you really care about criticals, roll to confirm any result of 6 or 15 with another result of the same number.)

>People don't like bell curves

Ah, this thing again. Sure, if that's what the people you know is like but I've never met anyone that has a problem with this.

>The dueling halberd's stats are really funky and don't fit with anything else. I'd be inclined to just throw them out and fit it to other axes.
Interestingly, I'm reading some threads about it on the official forum and I've seem suggestions saying the exact opposite of yours.: forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=101820

Another oddity I noticed while trying to replicate pic: Removing pick from a poleaxe or dueling halberd and adding an axehead or hammerhead leads to different results:
Poleaxe: $100 10.5 lbs
D. Halberd: $95 10 lbs
Exact stats otherwise. I'll probably just round it to $100 and 10 lbs

>It's a deep discount that won't come up very often, but the core book does say that most swords are Cheap.
>Cheap (Balance) feels like an odd thing to use in it's place, given that -1 to Skill should be imminently noticed by anyone that picks one up, and inherently badly balanced weapons like maces and polearms don't suffer from a penalty to skill.
Not that I disagree with you, it's just that a while back I was taking a look at falchions and noticed making a cheap heavy weapon has practically no downside.
A cheap longsword costs $280, has both decent swing and impaling damage, can be wielded with a shield while keeping its thrust attack's reach 1,2 and only has chance of breaking when parrying a weapon with 12 lbs.
I don't know, but wouldn't making it parry as if it were -1 or -2 lbs better? The above longsword would start breaking at 9 or 6 lbs, in the first case it would become unable to parry heavy polearms and two-handed axe/mace. The second would add greatswords to the first.

>People don't like bell curves
And you’re basing this on what exactly? Bell curves were a selling point for me—fuck flat probability distributions in the ass, you shouldn’t be as likely to crit as you are to do totally average—and I can’t imagine anyone requiring flat distribution for any coherent reason.

So how does "Raise Cone of Power" in Thaumatology p. 52 work? So far what I'm getting is
>requires ceremonial casting
>base time to cast: 1hour (so ceremony takes 10 hours?)
>upon casting has to be tended by atleast 1 person knowing the spell
>upon casting has base energy of 1/2/4 (depending on local mana level) per original ceremony participant
>tending it requires frantic (?) dancing. successful dance adds double the base energy depending on mana level. critical success adds triple. Does the dance need to last entire hour? Does each dancer add that much energy or does it get added only once an hour
>cant be maintained from energy collected in the cone itself
>tapping the cone requires iq roll and has to be used on next spell
Is that correct?

If a Martial Arts style list two (or more) skills that default to each other, do I have to pay 1 point on them all even if they're defaulted?
Sojutsu lists Spear and Staff, both defaults to each other by -2. If you have one at DX+2, a single point on the other will do nothing. Seems unfair to require wasting a point that could have been used to buy the style perk.

You invest points in something you want to be more skilled at. By default, 1 point in skill is much better than rolling from defaults, even if that 1 point has lower SL compared to default.

Doesn't raising a skill that defaults off a skill you have, raise it up FROM the default, if that's higher than the 1 point level for the skill? Like if I have Guns(pistol) at Dex+4, and I put 1 point into Gins(rifle) which defaults to pistol at -2, it goes up to Dex+3, rather than the usual level for 1 point in a Dex based skill? And the "dead" levels the first poster talks about, come about during the period when you try to overtake the defaulted skill?

No. You still learn the skill at the respective RSL.

>By default, 1 point in skill is much better than rolling from defaults, even if that 1 point has lower SL compared to default.
How so?
If the spearman has Spear at DX+3, his Staff skill will be by default DX+1, 1 point in Staff will do nothing, he needs 4 points to improve it (and doing so is wasteful compared to rising Spear).

Basic set p.173, "Improving skills from defaults"

Difficulty in tasks related to that skill is reduced.

Well, that makes me really upset. I was willing to accept two-handed sword and broadsword being two different skills, since they default at -2, and it's cheap to buy them up to be equal, but instead a master swordsman with 24 points in Broadsword, has to spend ANOTHER 24 points in two-handed sword, just to make up that -2 penalty when he puts a second hand on his sword? That's fucking insane. While holding a sword in one hand, versus two, does have some differences in stance and technique, it's not that fucking drastic.

See

wtf are you smoking?
B.173
"If your default level in a skill is
high enough that you would normally
have to pay points for that level,
you may improve the skill past its
default level by paying only the difference
in point costs between your new
level and your default level.
Example: Suppose you have DX 12
and Shortsword at 13. Since
Broadsword defaults to Shortsword-
2, your default Broadsword skill is
11. Skill 11 is equal to DX-1 for you.
This would have cost 1 point had you
bought it directly. The next level (DX)
costs 2 points. The difference is 1
point; to raise your Broadsword skill
from its default level of 11 (DX-1) to
12 (DX), you need only pay 1 character
point. You do not have to pay the
full 2 points for DX level!"

Why would someone do that? Just go on the internet and tell lies?

...

So that's 8 points instead, for the master swordsman to hold his sword in two hands without penalty? That still seems a little ridiculously expensive, though not as bad as having to buy it up from the basic levels. I feel like this would work better as a Technique, or something.

That's exactly what I'm talking about, once the "difference in point costs between your new
level and your default level" becomes higher than 1, there's no point in spending a point in it and if you improve the mains skill further, it becomes a dead point.
Master of Defense is a style that takes a hard hit by it, a lot of its components defaults to each other and you might end up with a lot of dead points.

Then do it as a hard technique.

If you spend 8 points on the main skill, you improve both skills by 2, if you spend it on the defaulted one only it will increase by 2.
Also 2H Swod and Broadsword default at -4

So yeah, that definitely seems like something they should take a look at fixing, with 5e, if they ever do it.

This sounds good enough fix, I think.
Your swordsman would need 5 points to match both skills and my Master of Defense wouldn't have dead points, he'd invest a single more point to improve it by +1.

Though techniques have their own flaw, in that you should never buy more than 3, because at that point you're better off buying the underlying skill. And that's also why I absolutely love wildcards that include lots of techniques, and basically give techniques out like candy when PCs are building wildcards

Speaking of Cheap, I have a question about
Better Fantasy Armor (noschoolgrognard.blogspot.com/p/better-fantasy-armor.html)
Cheap modifier increases weight and makes chinks easier to target. Mails are flexible armors and therefore have no chinks. Does it mean a Cheap Mail's only drawback is the increased weight?

Whats the best way to mechanically represent your character having a dangerously large penis?

Extra Leg (Long; Cannot Kick)

Striker (Impale) 1 level

Find a player without such low self-esteem or who doesn't project inadequacy wish fulfillment into the game?

What's your problem with Celtic Mythology, bigot?

Ally + Dependent

In GURPS the name of the advantage is irrelevant, you buy the effect. Thus the correct way of getting such advantage would be Accessory: Large Dildo [1].

Yeah, that's right. Although I'm not sure how physically possible cheap mail is... there's a minimum level of quality for steel to be drawn into wire.

Maybe use Butted from Low-Tech instead?

So the explosive rounds from High Tech, mention a linked explosion. What is the damage if the explosion? I can't find it anywhere. Also, if it detonates inside of something(like a tank, or the inside of a giant monster), does that effect the fragmentation? Is it just assumed that they all hit the interior of what they explode in?

I need help making a character, I based him off a build I used to love in a videogame (a weird mix of halberdier and rogue) but after fitting it in the 150 points budget, it seems rather weak.
He has decent skill with his main weapon but seeks to lack everything else. He's bad at influence rolls (only decent carousing and low intimidation, no diplomacy), low per and will, bad armor and the most troubling of all, low stealth.
How do I improve him?

None. Faggot. The problem is magical realm bullshit.

>Melee Weapons
>Hooded Cape

>18
>decent
Dude. Tactical Shooting gives Rifle-18 to best-of-the-best snipers. I'd call it reasonable maximum for realistic people, not just decent.
What you trying to make is 250 points DF hero on 150 points budget, so of course he isn't going to be amazing at everything.

There weren't "umbrella" in the equipment list...

I admit I used DF as a reference, but I used the "henchmen" version of Swashbuckler and this character has "only" 16 on his skill, +2 comes from Weapon Bond and Balanced weapon.
Also Gaming Ballistic's "Skill Levels for Melee Comba" article seems to suggest 14 is barely acceptable and 18 is entry-level (albeit for DF).

For the first part of your question, it depends on so many factors that it requires you to take specific real-life examples. Certain firearms list the specific effects of explosive rounds either in their statblock or in the text entry--those are basically the only ones available, and generally only for those weapons. Ultra-Tech has caliber-standard effects, though, so you'll have stuff like all 10mm rounds dealing a set amount of explosive damage.

For the second part of your question, I'm less sure.

Since you're using it to simulate a specific warhead, and there are literally thousands of them, you'll need to look up the payload of the real-world warhead you're emulating and compare it to the listed ones. Same as you do if you want to use one of the literally thousands of rifles or pistols not listed in High Tech.

If you're simulating a high explosive warhead that detonates on impact (has a linked effect) it can't practically detonate inside something, if you still manage to do it somehow anyway, use the guidelines for internal explosions and go from there, counting damage for every fragment is retarded, untenable and unrealistic, as there are often hundreds or thousands of fragments.

Just noticed I made a mistake, his skill is 17 actually 17. I forgot to lower it and give the weapon +1 skill feature.
Well, that's 4 points to invest in something.

See the individual weapon descriptions. If you want to figure out the effects of an explosive round which isn't listed, you can use the rules on B415 based on the mass and REF of the explosive filler.

No idea how to calculate fragments for internal explosions... I would say treat it as a direct hit which bypasses DR, but the rules for direct hits aren't clear on how many fragments actually hit.

Seems weird to include generic rules/costs for converting ammo to explosive, but not guidelines for what that will actually do.

The guidelines seem pretty clear to me, there are a ton of examples in High Tech already.

Delusion (Quirk) -1

Your options pretty much come down to either lifting Two Handed Axe-Mace up to match with the dueling halbrid and other axes on a pole, or knocking the dueling halbrid down to match with the other axes.

Either works alright. The game won't shatter if you deiced to fix the weird mismatch between the Long Axe and Dueling Halbrid by making the long axe better.

What's the most overpowered magic system for GURPS?
If you ever played Ar Tonelico, I want magic in my game to be like that: Slow to cast but with devastating, fight ending effects. The caster is defenseless while casting, so the job of the fighters are actually protecting them while doing so (this doesn't preclude they end the fight themselves).