GURPS General /GURPSgen/

Oxford comma edition.

Why is the long axe so shit? Most two-handed axe/mace weapons are justifiably terrible because they are tools used as weapons or ceremonial shit but long axes were actually used by people who had a choice. If you make them fine, you get +1 damage compared to a good greatsword, at the cost of no thrusting, a ready manoeuvre to change reach and only being able to attack every second fucking turn.

I think I'm going to houserule them to have only a single dagger. That way they are still weak compared to swords (unbalanced, slow to change reach) but sort-of useable.

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Grimwyrd happened again!
>HEAVY RP EPISODE ENGAGE
>CHAPTER INCREMENT +1

The group is recouperated with the army, scouting the ruins of Academ, looking for any citizens of Greyhold not turned to ghouls(or worse). Their scouts return from overnight scouring of the town, with a cartload of boxes; labels in Dwarven overwritten with magic symbols and warnings.

Inside, they discover nefarious devices! Human skulls packed with gunpowder shot, enchanted twists of elemental spirits and the terrible red dust! Between the Dwarven engineering and use of soul-harvested redstone, they can only surmise the horrible purpose of the shipment. They test fire one if the guns, and discover they shoot beams of concentrated necromantic magic and hellfire!

This will not stand

They hatch a plan to dispose of the items magically; Memory, the spirit guide of the Beastman Gray, directs an ancient calling ritual to open a gate to the realm of spirits, to expunge the weapons entirely from our world. Syviis, the storm queen, steps up to empower the magic with her acolytes of the elven rituals. Roderick stands by, magic and sword ready.

The invocation begins; holy white lightning swirls in a circle of power, and the offering is sacrificed to the other realm. The evil contained and purified, sent to the elder spirits.

Then, the circle transforms, and a pool of pure verdant green forms. Rising up slowly from it, a massive man, a crown of thorny horns on his brow, a cape if pure forestry undelaid with the hides of all his quarry. He stands ten feet tall and ten tons strong.

The Erlking

What time of GM are You?
Do you plan out every session or do you improv everything?
Personally I improve everything. I just make it all up on the fly and most of the time it just works

Fun fact: The "partition factor" in Low-Tech Companion 3 is equal to (wall and ceiling area) ÷ (building volume), in units of 1/ft. You can use this information to convert a real blueprint to a GURPS building.

Take pic related. If we assume that the building is 10 ft tall:
>Volume = 10 ft × (20 ft × 62 ft + 10 ft × 4 ft + 16 ft × 14 ft) = 15040 cf
>Area of ceiling = 20 ft × 62 ft + 10 ft × 4 ft + 16 ft × 14 ft = 1504 sf
>Approximate area of walls running from east to west = 10 ft × (10 ft + 62 ft + 7 ft + 10 ft + 10 ft + 12 ft + 62 ft + 5 ft + 5 ft + 16 ft) = 1990 sf
>Approximate area of walls running from south to north = 10 ft × (40 ft + 4 ft + 14 ft + 4 ft + 26 ft + 19 ft + 20 ft + 20 ft + 20 ft) = 1670 sf
>Partition factor = (1504 sf + 1990 sf + 1670 sf) ÷ 15040 cf = 0.343/ft

They then parley. His voice a myriad of noises, quarried stone, falling trees, the clash if spear in flesh. The camp vacates from the vicinity, pure animal instinct widening the gap.

He speaks to them of gratitude for their offering. They speak clumsily of his intent and heritage. He teaches a terrible lesson to the dwarf, Suthri, slicing off a piece of his elemental armor, killing it. The group takes offense. Gray draws his ancient ogre blade and steps up, warning retribution. Everyone holds their breath.

Roderick and Syviis talk down the fight; they have invoked the King of Faerie not for blood but for direction and assistance. He steps back.

He tells them if their enemy, The Darkness. Warns it is not mortal, unassailable. But advises it has mortal pawns, material possessions. The party can wound it's plans if not IT directly. He implores the to use the ancient Dwarven ways. He warns them against failing to reignite the Ansible.

He leaves.

I don’t get either extreme of GM. As someone who was a “plan everything” GM and who suffered under many “plan nothing” GMs that had no clue what they were doing or where they were going, I’ve settling on “plan outlines.” Write it out in broad strokes and improvise the details. Have monster stats you can pull from when you need to and only plan out major critical encounters.

Dungeons are an entirely different thing, though. You should have a floor plan ready, complete with monster and treasure lists if you’re going to go a’crawling.

I'm getting sick of the volume and narrowness of technical skills.

What skills could I straight up drop without damaging the game heavily?

Use wildcards dude.

Make 'em one step harder and define as basic skill.
Use any unknown speciality as -2 (if original skill was A) or -4 (if original skill was H) to basic skill.
Any known speciality is perk for +2.
If want to have speciality level above basic skill buy it as skill and redistribute the points spent on perk.

Personally I have flowcharts. It's easy to make a quick flowchart of whatever area the party is going in and it's easy to diverge if they go off the beaten path.

wildcards are massively overkill in the other direction

Yeah this could work

I wanted to get into this game with the Dungeon Fantasy box set (Forgive me, I love generic fantasy settings). I am wondering if I can do OSR style games with it. Think higher lethality, XP tied to gold or value of treasure with combat disincentivized, and poking suspicious looking floor tiles with a ten foot pole being a common strategy as opposed to using magic to bypass most challenges. My main concern is that the PCs might be a little too high powered, as you average B/X MU starts knowing 3 spells, while from what I can tell Dungeon Fantasy wizards start with 30. I like what I see otherwise, especially the mapping rules.

>XP tied to gold or value of treasure with combat disincentivized
Use Back to School. If an adventurer loots enough money to support himself for a few months without working (or even to hire a teacher on top of that), he can spend time training instead of adventuring.

>My main concern is that the PCs might be a little too high powered, as you average B/X MU starts knowing 3 spells, while from what I can tell Dungeon Fantasy wizards start with 30.
Use Sorcery, I guess.

You can ban spells and colleges, always limit Magery, powerstones are expensive, enchanting is expensive, you simply cannot cast some spells just from the sheer cost, magic is broken in any system, but you can easily make it manageable with few rules, if you're playing a high lethality low CP game, you simply can't have spells that give regeneration and major healing, flying, creating a fucking volcano anywhere... etc.

What tech is Sengoku japan?

>while from what I can tell Dungeon Fantasy wizards start with 30.
While they know 30 spells, they're generally individually weaker than Sleep. (The GURPS spells in general are weaker than the higher end of B/X spells, really, especially AoE ones. Compare D&D Fireball with GURPS Explosive Fireball.)

Also, look at the FP/EP rather than number of spells (an OD&D Magic-User isn't more powerful just because they know all their spells, after all): the Wizard begins with 11FP and Energy Reserve 3, with the ability to buy up FP +4 or ER +10 if they want to spend the points.

Also, the number of spells is a bit misleading: there's a lot of spell prerequisites. Let's say that you want Recover Energy, to recover FP at 1/5min rather than 1/10min. Well, then you also need Lend Energy.

Let's say that you want Fireball, because who doesn't? To take it, you also need Create Fire, Shape Fire, and Ignite Fire. If you want Sleep, you also need Daze and Foolishness. If you want Great Haste, i.e. the one that gives extra actions, you need regular Haste as well.

And then when you want to cast those spells, well, Great Haste takes five energy. Throwing a 3d Fireball takes three energy. By default you'll only have fourteen to spend in any given combat (although regaining two per five minutes, six in fifteen minutes, and be back to fourteen in 55 minutes - double that if you didn't take Recover Energy).

But yes, starting characters are a bit stronger than in OSR. I've seen people peg them as equal to third-level characters, and I can see the argument. Here's the thing, though: advancement is slower and less dramatic.

>XP tied to gold or value of treasure with combat disincentivized
I remember seeing an SJGames forum thread on the topic - maybe check it out?

Thanks for the advice user. I don't know anything about the magic system, so that helped me out a lot. I will check out the SJGames forum thread as well.

Long axe should be a single dagger. Hell, judging by the dueling halbrid the greataxe should be a single dagger.

Another good week for that story, it's been going forever now.

>They test fire one if the guns, and discover they shoot beams of concentrated necromantic magic and hellfire!


Why did your players shoot one of the Warhammer 40k guns? Did they think it might not shoot evil?

What do people mean when they say "GURPS has no flavor"? Does it have something to do with the mechanics, or the lack of a setting? How do I make GURPS as nice and tasty as the other systems?

At least Syviis has the benefit of the doubt on Curiosity baked in. Everyone else is really just inured to the fact that they deal with terrifying black magic on a daily basis.

To be fair, i did describe the guns as being human made, modified with dwarven designs, and powered by red dust and Heart-stone magic crystals. So there was only, like, a 2/4 strikes on the "bad shit" chart.

And they took a shot against a hillside, and not say, a living target. They never found out what the gun does when it hits something with a soul or aura.

>Does it have something to do with the mechanics, or the lack of a setting?
Thats just about it; theres no default setting to work with, as its a game toolkit and not an RPG in a box.

To make your game baked in with all the tasty rpg goodness, have a setting in mind and build your campaign around it, simple as that. A simple target like " I wanna run a ravenloft cyberpunk adventure" should be enough to get the ball rolling.

Thank you, but I have to say,

>I wanna run a ravenloft cyberpunk adventure
please stay out of my head, those are my private thoughts, not yours

imo only retards say that because they can't articulate their opinions on why they don't like it and so spout memes. What they probably actually mean is 'I like systems with lots of subsystems for different aspects of the world, rather than 3d6 for everything'

I actually dislike gurps and just dropped into the thread cuz I saw your post but it definitely has a flavor of obsession over minutiae, nasty combat where there can be a lot of 'they dodge, u dodge, nothing happens, suddenly someone loses an arm' which is fairly down to earth compared to most other systems. Gurps has a flavor of 'gritty realism' and lots of rolling to see if you roll to have to roll, great division of people who are skilled and people who are useless without the division translating into complete disregard for people 'lower' than yourself like in D&D

>magic system
Basically, it's MP-based except the MP is fatigue and it's more integrated into the general system. Extra Effort (Exploits p.20) lets anyone spend FP to be better at stuff. The Holy Warrior doesn't have spells, but Faith Healing costs FP to use. Suffocating drains FP, as well as some other attacks and environmental hazards. Being below 1/3rd FP makes you move and dodge at half value - very bad, for obvious reasons. Losing all FP can result in a heart attack!

Also, you need to roll a skill check to cast the spell - Wizard spells are at 15 or 16, though, so 95%-98%. Bards are only at 84% for Very Hard spells, though, and an Elf Knight would be at 26% if they only put one point into a spell. (38% for two points, 50% for four points.)

Areas with Low Magic give -5 to the roll, though, meaning that the Wizard is now at 50%-63%, the Bard at 26%, and the Elf Knight at less than a percent (5% if they put in four points).

If anybody ever watched the anime KARAS, they will know the some fighters in this anime has the power to transform into a fucking miniature jet fighter (and batmobile). Tried building it but then I realized there's absolutely no information about that mode other than you can see in the few scenes so I dropped it.

It should also be noted that since our characters are leading a small army, so being able to equip them with non-evil guns would have been quite a boon, since our troops are ill-equipped with firearms. Depending on how they worked, they could have been salvaged, or converted back into normal muskets, so it was worth examining them first.

Alas, it turned out they shot pure evil squeezed out of tortured human souls, so destruction it was.

TL 3. Europe was barely TL 4 at that time and they were very much at the cutting edge of technology. Sengoku guns are shit-tier mid-medieval equivalents, armour was made of small plates because they couldn't make big sheets of steel, their ships still had fairly crude sail set-ups, no movable type, no optics, no clockwork...

New GM here:
How do I build NPCs on the fly? It seems like there's gonna be a lot of stuff I'm not gonna account for and I want people to get into GURPS so I have someone else to play with. Pregens are generally solid, right?

Basically I figure out what everyone else did right before the players enters the scene. I also know what everyone else wants. Then I improv based on what I know happened and what I know the others want to happen next.

I usually design a few key encounters than can be flexibly inserted at different points for the combat parts, and I also always have a handful of premade mooks for everything else.

How do I make an advatage that increase damage as hp descreases? Multiple Striking ST with different "Accessibility: Only below X HP"?

Sounds alike the easiest way down the line.

Make sure to get high pain threshold to ignore pain penalties

Basic attributes (and derived), attack skill+defenses, damage, and any fun advantages you can think of on the fly.

Or, well, maybe not even that - you just need the stats the players are going to interact with. If the players are fighting a dude, that means, what, movement, DR, defences, skill, damage, Will, and HT.

For easy NPCs you can just pick a number to represent how generally competent they are and use that when they make a skill check and treat it as a wildcard skill that covers every area you expect that NPC to specalize in.

10 = Minimal training, people that aren't good at what they do
12= Low end, basic professionals, people that can do their job when they have good condtions
14= Competent, advanced professionals.
16= Elite.

For HP..

10= Average adult human
12= Tough guys, thugs, soliders
14= Very tough

Speed..

5 = Fine for just about everyone
6= Athletes and gunslingers
7= Elite gunslingers

Dodge is Speed +3, or +4 for Elite soldiers, hitmen, warriors, ect. (people with Combat Reflexes)

Will and Perception

10= Most people
12= Smart guys and high end fighters
14= Elite rangers, hunters, ect.

For example, let's say you want to make a back-alley doctor NPC.

"Stitch"

Doctor! 14, Fighting! 12, Everything Else! 10
HP 10, Speed 5, Dodge 8, Will 12, Per 12

One fun alternative here is
>Damage Resistance (Absorption (Striking ST), +80%; Ablative, -80%; Flexible, -20%; Tough Skin, -40%) [2 points/level]
One downside to this is that Striking ST is 5/level, so you need five points of "fake HP" for each +1. It's a fun interaction to use for other stuff, though. (Make it non-ablative if you care less about it being like HP.)

But yeah, buying a bunch of levels of Striking ST and separating them with Accessibility seems like a good idea.
Just remember the standard categories: 1/3rd your HP means half move and dodge, 0HP means rolling vs. HT or falling unconscious, -1xHP means you must roll vs. HT or die every time you get wounded, -5xHP means you die immediately, -10xHP means there's nothing left of your body.

For low-tech ones, find the 'Historical Folks' unofficial supplement. Dozens of templates which give enough detail to make a lot of common NPCs.

Much appreciated. I'll take a look at GURPS For Dummies too, just to see if there's anything else I wouldn't think of asking about.

For disposable mooks, you can trim it down to HP, Skill, Damage, Move, DR, and Defense. Truly disposable mooks only need Skill, Damage, DR, and Move—any injury takes them out, and they don’t bother rolling active defenses.

Guy who occasionally drops random characters here.
What's the best way to handle a spear in fantasy setting where foes might have injury tolerance and high DR? Currently I think wielding a Long Spear with a Shield, maybe with Reach Mastery and Shield-Wall Training, is the best way, what do you think?
Also I'm looking for help of native english speakers, the character draws from a japanese game and has an ability called "この魂に憐れみを" which would translate to something like "Mercy to this Soul" but while looking up for a proper translation I came upon "Lord, Have Mercy" and "Kyrie Eleison" as well. Which one do you think is the best one to use as the name of a Divine Favor ability?

Shit, forgot the awesome pic of the Goddess this character follows.

Alright, going to crunch the numbers then.

>while looking up for a proper translation I came upon "Lord, Have Mercy" and "Kyrie Eleison" as well.
That's because the latter is the Greek version of the former. It's a Christian prayer.

Which one is more appropriate would depend on how well-versed your players are in the Greek. Personally I think I'd maybe go for "Lord, Have Mercy". It's got /heavy/ Christian connotations, though, which may or may not be appropriate for your setting.

>Spear vs. High DR
Low-Tech Companion 2 has Armor-Penetrating for implaing weapons. IIRC, -1 damage, any swing cutting attacks become crushing, and the impaling attack gains AD(2). Other than that, high skill to target chinks in armor and vulnerable hit locations (eyes come to mind).
>Spears vs Injury Tolerance
Much harder. Unless they’ve still got a brain you can hit for x4, being limited to thrusting with a x1 multiplier is awful. You could probably fuck around with weapon options in LTC2 to let you add a sw cut attack, but other than that, ehh...

Everything else looks good. Gladiators has rules for presenting/denying sides of your body, which lets you be a little more flexible with your weapon’s Reach, and Technical Grappling lets you do nasty things to enemies you’ve stuck with your spear, but since those use additional books (and TG is pretty complicated), not every group will allow them. Remember to invest in the Shield skill. Spears tend to be 0U, so you’ll need a good Block, and offensively you can use your shield to bash and shove any enemy that gets too close for comfort.

What does the ability do? “Mercy to His Soul” sounds a little awkward but is at least formal. Where I’m from, “Lord have mercy” is used very casually and even jokingly—it may not have the same impact.

Being able to switch to Staff skill and swing with the blunt end helps a lot for dealing with injury tolerance. Failing that, you could technically add a kusari with the rules from LTC2, but it seems stupid and does no more damage than a staff. in general, Staff skill and the Form Mastery perk are what make really disgusting spear guys.

Alternatively, use your shield for dealing with IT. A short spike or conical boss gives +1 to shield bashes, which is OK for skeletons and the like. In the DFRPG, you can add the dawrven modifier for another +1. If you have lots of ST, the bladed rim option might be better, since it allows swing damage.

Another option is Imbuements, which can mix all kinds of modifiers into your weapon attacks.

'Kyrie Eleison' isn't a phrase which is familiar to me as a non-Catholic Englishman. 'Lord have mercy' is familiar, but 'lord' is masculine, so maybe not suitable for a goddess?

If you've got the points, train your character in targeting chinks in the armor at the vitals. You can turn the -10 chance to hit to a -5 to hit.

Targeting the chinks allows for you to halve the enemy's DR. Using a defensive grip from martial arts further improves your chances and is a fairly standard tactic for longsword users.

How would one represent an innate attack originating from a point other than the user? For example the user asks a fire spirit to shoot a fireball at a target. A second later it pops into existence a few yards away, girls a fireball and disappears. That would also imply that it's based off of the spirit's skill not the users.

My gut reaction is to just make it a feature of the attack, or perhaps it would be better represented by an ally. Tangential question, how does fickle interact with ally if at all?

Overhead

Also look at Powers, and it's discussion if crafting Innate Attacks

>That's because the latter is the Greek version of the former. It's a Christian prayer.
Oh yes, I figured that while googling. I separated them because I didn't want to add a slash in there, sorry for the confusion.
I don't really have players, full-time job, night classes and time zone prevents me from playing TRPG...
The setting I'm pulling from has no monotheist religion like Christianity, it's much like Greco-Roman Paganism and Shintoism.

>Armor-Penetrating
For some reason I thought it was meant only for swords but it's actually applies for spers too, great!
>Much harder
There's the option to do thr cut at -1 damage as tip slash but unless the target is unarmored the damage would be so bad one would only fall back to this on desperation...
>What does the ability do?
Originally, it reduces damage by a lot for X turns where X scales with the "Piety" attribute. On this character it's just DR (Force Field).

>Staff skill and the Form Mastery
I like this but my character uses strapped shield so it would take a while to throw away the shield and change grip to staff, though I will keep it in mind.
>conical boss gives +1 to shield bashes
Nice, it's not much but definitely helps.
>bladed rim
Good option once the character gets Weapon Master. Assuming Fine Spear and thr 1d sw 2d, it's 1d+4 vs 2d+2, the shield swing is slightly better and will only get better from there.
>Imbuements
The character's already scrapping by trying to balance combat skills with Divine Favor powers...
>maybe not suitable for a goddess?
Definitely. I'm between Kyrie Eleison and Lady Have Mercy.

Hard to see why that would be different with spears but by RAW using Defensive Grip to reduce chink penalty is only for Sword.
Speaking of which, how does one calculate the hit penalty here? Suppose I have TA (Eye Chink) Skill-5 [6] and use Defensive Grip, do I roll for -3 or half of -8 = -4?

So is the Dungeon Fantasy Box Set worth getting?

Is it changeable enough, so that I can do different things with it (like low magic, more realistic fantasy)? Why should I get this instead of just using other GURPS books?

-3 for using a defensive grip with a sword. You pay to reduce the total cost down to -5 for that particular shot since it's your effective skill.

>Why should I get this instead of just using other GURPS books?
It's an all-in-one product, so you don't need to buy the core books plus whatever supplements are necessary. However, it's only got what's necessary for Dungeon Fantasy.

The advantages are all pre-built, so you can't really mess around much - modifiers aren't given.
On the other hand, this makes it much smoother as a beginner's product.

It's also very much built towards the idea of hack & slash dungeon fantasy, and doesn't have terribly much in the way of support for stuff outside that in the box. There's no pre-built stats for human opponents, for instance, just a bunch of monsters.

It also uses the standard magic system, and the templates in general are fairly cinematic 250/-50.

For more realistic fantasy you might be better off just getting the Basic Set and Low-Tech, although that'll cost more.

Thanks for the information, I already have the Basic Set and Low-Tech.

I was just wondering if it offered enough to still be worth getting. I like the idea of the monster books and the streamlined system tailored towards dungeon fantasy. But not being able to modify the system much (or it's hard at least) is a huge turnoff.

You can modify the system, you just need the Basic Set to do so. At which point DFRPG starts to seem a bit expensive compared to just getting the Dungeon Fantasy booklets.

IMO the best thing from DFRPG set is that SJ Games learned how to format templates.

I did this and it works great. If you want OSR from level 1 you need to rebuild the templates or you get more of the level 3+ start feel. I used Extra Money in reverse, every $500 could be spent on purchasing character points directly. I don't like the default magic system so didn't use it (but I recommend you do until you get more system mastery). It can work well enough if you limit how much energy reserve or FP a wizard can spend on spells per day. Then it doesn't really matter how many they know.
If you do want to reduce beginning character power look at (non-box set) Dungeon Fantasy 15: Henchmen.

If you want to deal with Injury Tolerance while carrying a spear may I suggest the Heavy Spear in Low Tech?

Thrust +3 Cutting damage is quite a hit for things that can ignore most Impaleing damage. The Low Tech one is Reach 3 and ST 11† but I'd imagine it would be fair to have something closer to a post-reform Iklwa as a Reach 1 with ST 11, as many heavy spears were intended to be used paired with a shield. The Zulu example might be the definitive one, even.

You guys had the opportunity to arm your men with devil sticks, and turned it down? Do you like losing?

God, yes. The ones in the booklets are damn near unreadable, while the ones in DFRPG are actually pretty clear! The wonders that proper formatting can do.

“Lord’s or Goddess's Mercy.”

We aren't wise, but there are lines we try not to cross.

>Extra money in reverse
That sounds exactly like what I am looking for. Thanks user.

How do I make good NPC statblocks?

I know that I just have to note the most important things, as I can just give them others things on the fly. But I'm most concerned about balance, as I'm yet very unexperienced.

For example my players will be 200-250 point characters in TL10. How many points should I be looking for with civilians or security guards?

Combat won't be that much of a focus in the campaign, but it will come up. I told my players that due to the nature of high TL every encounter can be fatal, but I don't want to be cheap.

See
He explains it pretty well.

Don't bother with points unless the NPC is extremely important. Whenever they do anything, think about how good they ought to be and use that as a guideline.

Heavy Spear uses two hands so I decided to compare the Fine version of it with using the spear as staff and swinging for crushing damage against Unliving.
The Heavy Spear indeed has better damage output but I think it's too small to justify it. First, a Spear or Long Spear can be used with a shield when not facing foes with IT and Crushing damage is effective against IT(Homogenous).

Thanks, that is actually really helpful.

Don't go Nitzche on us man, we pay good money to watch your group descend into hell and defeat evil with their own weapons turned against them!

Could I use it as reference table for 125 points PCs? Say I'm making a fighter and I want him to be competent, could I give him a weapon skill at leve 14 and call it a day?

I'm personally partial to punching Evil in the face to teach it's place.

Ah, you must be Gray!

Gotta kill that evil boy! Git er done!

Absolutely. SL 14 in combat skills for a 125 point PC isn't bad at all.

Yeah, a Heavy Spear suffers for being a ST 11† weapon.

> mail shirt sounds nice for torso and it only makes sense if it also covers shoulders
> splinted padded cloth is a cheap and decent alternative for the rest of the body, it also looks nice
> how does one reinforce joints with rigid strips of metal?
> drop splints on elbow and knees and add couters and poleyns
> bevor and kettlehelm are cheap and looks nice
I think I've successfully diagnosed myself with autism.

What disadvantage would I use for a secret homosexual living in a very anti-homosexual setting? Just Secret?

Secret works fine. Just need to tweak it based on the repercussions if that secret were to come to light. Is it illegal or just heavily shunned? That sort of thing.

Secret fits perfectly, with up to the "could be killed if discovered" level.

First time gurps gm.

Is there a specific book that has just human style enemies? Going to be running a fantasy campaign with various types of humans and undead as the primary enemies and having trouble finding just your regular old bandit or soldier statted anywhere.

Dungeon fantasy

>having trouble finding just your regular old bandit
Could try these.
enragedeggplant.blogspot.com/2017/11/npcs-bandits.html

Thats actually what I have, dont remember seeing anything like bandits in it though.

Dungeon Fantasy Adventure 1 has a lot of soldiers and orcs.

That should work pretty good, just change around some weapon skills and Id be food for most anything.

Happen to know which book? Looked through the bestiary and adventurers book and didnt see it.

There's the How to Be a GURPS GM book that might or might not be of use.
If you want Fantasy, start with DFRPG. GURPS is a toolkit and DFRPG is a ready-made product aimed for newbies. Another similar lines for other genres includes Action (high tech action hero), After the End (post-apocalyptic) and Monster Hunter (urban fantasy).
Some books I use constantly is Low Tech and Martial Arts.

Dungeon
Fantasy
Adventure
1

See

That works beautifully as well. Who knew reading the thread actually helps.

Hey guys, I'm going to be playing in a 250 points fantasy game. It'll be my first time playing GURPS. I want to play some kind of knight guy. The GM said that we could use the Dungeon Fantasy templates if we wanted, but told us we weren't limited to those. Should I just grab one of those templates, or should I try to make something based on one?

If you are new and don't have anything super specific you are going for you may as well go with one of the templates.

If you're playing a fighter, we need to know if you're using Low Tech or not. It expands on weaponry and changes armor stats a lot.

Alright, thanks. I'll check those out and report back if I have more questions

Just contacted the GM, he said we are using Low-Tech, and TL 3. Will this effect the templates a lot?

The templates not so much but there are a few things you will need to know.
You see, the armors you can find in the Basics are legacies from previous editions and badly researched. Low Tech ones however has solid basis on reality. In practice, it means Low Tech armors are in general much lighter but more expensive. For example Double Mail Hauberk in Basics costs $520 but weights 44# while the equivalent armor in Low Tech costs whooping $1200 but weights only 18#. Fortunately, there's a "Cheap" modifier you can apply to any armor that reduces it's DR by 1 (Mail Hauberk would become 4/2*) but reduces price by 60% (to $480). All in all, this means you will have to pay more for your weapon (=trade one or two character points for cash) but you will suffer less encumbrance (=better move, dodge and some skills).
I'm very sleepy now to give you solid tips but I suggest you take a good read at Low Tech page 100 and the table found in page 110-111. As a quick tip, I'll note that I find myself frequently relying on Padded Cloth, Mail, Mail and Plates and Light Plate Armors in my characters. Reinforced Padded Cloth provides "only" 2 DR but it's very cheap and light. The other's I slap the Cheap modifier and it gives me affordable decent armor until I loot something better.
Also here's a link about an experienced guy talking about the Knight template: noschoolgrognard.blogspot.com/2013/04/the-effectiveness-of-knights-in-dungeon.html
This other article talks about improving some aspects of the template but it requires GM approval: noschoolgrognard.blogspot.com/2013/04/improving-effectiveness-of-knights-in.html
I personally think adding Intimidation to Born War-Leader is a nice and sensible touch that any GM should allow.

Your player hands you a character sheet with pic related, listing only:
Fit [5]
Total Amnesia [-30]
One Arm [-20]

What do you do?

I'm a slut for mysterious shit so I'd likely build a heroic military intelligence or law enforcement officer that had spent time under cover. Memories first to return are of being part of some wicked organization, with the Big Reveal that he was an undercover agent trying to take them down from the inside as a plot twist later.

Zeroed, Reputation (Badass bad guy), Secret (Lethal if revealed, Undercover), Ally Group (Bad Guys), Ally Group (FBI/MI6 Field Team), Combat Reflexes, Mitigation (For One Arm, Advanced prosthetic),

Should we polish this up and FAQ it?

It's pretty much just BAD, isn't it?

It definitely also works for a fantasy background. I mean, goddamn, imagine finding out the weird tattoo on your shoulder is actually a sophisticated magic device that releases the bound ice elemental...

Is taking signature gear to get a good sword worth it?

Specifically a Two Handed Sword, potentially oversized.

Depends on the game. If it's Dungeon Fantasy or similar where you might find a Graceful Penetrating Fine Thrusting Greatsword of Demonbane in some chest, no, it's not worth it. Other kind of Fantasy games where high quality arms are hard to come by due to lack of grandmaster enchanter-smiths, yes, it might be a good idea. Especially so if paired with Weapon Bond or Named Possession.

>Named Possession
What it does?

The tl;dr version is that the weapon grows alongside you, usually in the form of “effective cash” that can be spent on enchantments. IIRC, it’s $500 for every character point you gain. For example, since taking Named Possession and naming your sword “Fleshcleaver,” you have gained 10 character points. This mean your sword can gain up to $5000 worth of enchantments. You talk it over with your GM and agree that adding the Puissance enchantment for +1 damage fits the tone of Fleshcleaver. The enchantment appears spontaneously as the spirit of Fleshcleaver grows more violent and bloodlusting.

What did you use in place of the default magic system?