/gurpsgen/ - GURPS General

-3 to skill not -2.

The rules aren't terribly clear which techniques suffer from the risk of falling over, but I think everything with 'kick' in the name and no specified rules for what happens when you miss probably need a DX roll to stay standing.

> Code of Honor (Elven): Never allow needless harm to trees or animals, and always seek to live with elegance and style. The world should be more beautiful and full of life for your efforts.
What "live with elegance and style" even supposed to mean in practical terms? Acting like a person educated in table manners, fine arts and liberal arts?

Never buy rations or clothes of a lower Status or pay a lower Cost of Living. When possible, buy gear with Styling. Always take the mundane elven rapier over the ugly, orc-made Flaming Broadsword of Destruction. No failing self-control rolls against “ugly” disadvantages. Waste resources and magic making sure your gear is spotless while traversing the Bog of Eternal Stench.

Basically, always be pretty, always be cool, and go to great lengths if necessary. If you don’t constantly look like you just got finished shooting for a magazine cover, you’re not Elf enough.

I'm not utterly opposed to this description

Kromm! Get out of our thread!

>autistic enough to think Vehicles is awesome
>not autistic enough to actually design any vehicles with it

Thanks!

Sounds like a good way to make the disadvantage understandable and meaningful in most games.

youtube.com/watch?v=jrtZJjHLeao&feature=youtu.be&t=34
How do I do historically accurate teleport strike?

That's a better answer than what I was hoping for, thanks.

Incompetence: Electronic Operation (Media)

Right now, our party is looking like it'll include a lizardman barbarian, a halfling innkeeper, and a high elf white robe (illusion/mind control variant wizard from Thaumatology: Dungeon Magic). We have a fourth player that's undecided, but I doubt they'll want to roll up a cleric.

How boned are we?

How to make imbuement effects last longer i.e. no rolls every turn to continue to use Ghostly Weapon, or Burning Strike, or Blunting Armor or any other imbuements that can be logically maintained?

How necessary is a cleric for running an inn? You already have the innkeeper, bouncer and immersive entertainment system contractor.

Maybe a cook would be more useful than a cleric.

>How necessary is a cleric for running an inn?
Well, if they running halal inn...

Without any healing aid you're definitely fucked. Healers are core part of any delving band. Honestly, with that party composition you might as well them to prepare their second character because their first will day soon enough unless you throw bunnies at them instead of real monsters. The Lizardmen is a frontline, he will sustain injury frequently. The Halfling is useless. The Wizard is frail, if he's ambushed or the lizardman fall, he's down.
Do you think you could convince the halfling to be a brewmaster instead of innkeeper (I'd recommend telling him innkeepers are of marginal utility)? Not the same as a cleric but at least ou might be able to get a few healing potions to barely survive.
Suggest them hiring a healing henchmen.

By the way, if you're running DF resource management is a big part, the less healing they have shallower will be their delving expedition.

Sadly imbudements last just one round and can't be maintained, to use them again you need to make your roll and pay the FP cost.

I could see a GM allowing you to take No Nusence Rolls on Imbuidemnts you have at SL 16+ to avoid needing to make any roll to activate them as long as you aren't penalized on the roll.

Action 4: Specialist lists the disadvantage Callous as part of a Hard Boiled character (page 6). It also describes the "lens" as "You’ve seen evil and are willing to do anything to defeat it". Why would a callous (don't care about others) would go after "evil"? Personal vendetta? It's certainly not to protect citizens from it.

I wonder if it would make imbuements too powerful if you imported the concept of alternative rituals from Sorcery. As in adding some nuisance effects to the casting process in exchange of reducing the FP cost.
Off the top my head comes casting, gesturing, focus items, power flare, blood sorcery, invoking names, spiritual ripples and sorcerous disciplines. It would be interesting if you needed to shout something like "PHOENIX STRIKE" while wearing the "firebird ring" family heirloom.

Could a character with Callous care about the citizenry in the abstract, for ideological reasons, despite being unable to connect emotionally with individuals?

Sense of Duty, Duty, Higher Purpose, the list goes on.

Look at Rorschach. He's devoted to annihilating evil, but he's definitley callous.

I'm fine about paying energy cost each time i want to strike with imbued weapon or absorb damage with armor, since as we use threshold limited magic and here enough energy to powering them.
I'm mostly frustrated about making extra dice rolls every other turn.
I ask about something at least close to make imbuement active time with MOS charges till end of combat or restart times with reuse.

So I like GURPS and all, but combat is hell for me as a GM: I have to keep track of who full attacked, who suffers from Shock, who's stunned, penalties from low health, et cetera... It really stresses me out at the table, and running combats with more than three or four participants is more an exercise in bookkeeping than fun swashbuckling action.
How do I mitigate this?

Let the players track it for themselves.

Just use EABA Stuff! It's got GURPS conversion tables in it, and it's not needlessly autistic like Vehicles, yet it provides satisfying depth and detail.

Play classic traveller instead

Yeah but what about their 5-10 enemies? (and that's for a small-ish skirmish)

There are some options here.

First, give yourself some props to help keep track of things. Use physical tokens like poker chips to mark off wounds and status on a bit of paper with boxes for stun, shock 1 to 4, ect. You can also use this for a wound track that shows your penalties for injury levels.

Next, again.. physical tokens help. A map with the characters and enemies makes it easy to remember what is going on.

Imbuements seem really underpowered to me, so I'd be happy to let them last something like (Margin of Success) seconds.

I'm also kind of frustrated that there is a system which can do a bunch of cinematic stunts like using your weapon to bind someone, reliable stunning, shockwave attacks and so on but it's so expensive to access and narrow in application that it doesn't work for most characters. In my mind a cinematic strongman should have access to things like deafening display, forceful blow, shockwave and traumatic blow with all kinds of weapons without needing multiple wildcard skills and an expensive advantage.

Try the zombie mob rules from Horror or Zombies (despite the name, quite usable for non-zombies) or One-Man Armies from Supers.

Callous, when combined with “good” disadvantages, can represent an “at any cost” sort of “good.” He’ll plug a dude in the back of the skull and not lose a wink of sleep over it if it avoids a worse scenario.

IIRC, there’s a perk for Eldritch Knight (the imbuement-using DF class) that lets you avoid having to roll to maintain an imbuement as long as your effective skill is above 16. It still costs 1 FP/round, but with things like power items (or powerstones), it’s not that huge of a deal.

Use mooks and cannon fodder. If the PCs are fighting half-a-dozen gobbos, you don’t need that much detail—save that for the Goblin King. DF recomnends unimportant minions go down in one hit (PCs just need to get past their defenses and DR), worthy monsters fall at 0 HP, and only major boss monsters actually roll HT to stay alive/conscious.

Doesn't it is same thing as NNR perk, but with "powered by DFRPG" label on it?

Sort of. You always need to make the INITIAL roll, though. I don’t remember if it lets you “move around” any penalties e.g. if I have Flaming Strike-21, I don’t know if I could swap over from taking -5 to deal extra damage to -5 to avoid paying FP without having to reroll.

I keep discovering new shit about Supers. What’s one-man army?

Essentially Zombie Mobs by another name. Treat a bunch of opponents as a single entity which makes attacks using the rapid fire rules, basically.

HT said at TL5 and after armor have doubled DR or halved cost and weight.
So will that modification allowed in split TLs like TL4+2? And it is setting design switch or player can choose will his armor be tougher or lighter and cheaper?

>What "live with elegance and style" even supposed to mean in practical terms?

Be a poncy prick. Don't trust non elves, don't use that nice new +2 sword because "It's something a barbarian would use", strive to be clean and wear the prettiest clothes, always buy the nobles room at inns.

You're fine, you don't need healing to survive as long as you're being careful. Oh, and at least have someone with first aid in the party, for emergencies.

Couple ways

A: Don't use those rules, GURPS is super modular, removing them won't affect much

B: Run monsters as hordes. Instead of having 20 gobbos, you have two gobbo hordes, each consisting of 10. Mash their HP together, they attack together with an attack or whatever. If you check out GURPS lite zombies they have good horde rules

C: Use visual markers. I personally do this, I have a shit short term memory. Get a little red band if they're shocked or have penalties, things like that

>setting design switch
always up to the gm and their setting

You can run D&D style maps with hexes and tokens, name the gobbos numbers and have a notebook to mark down stats and stuff for each number.

You can use the +2 sword if you have nothing else, but make sure to verbally show disdain every time you need to use it, cringe, visibly exaggerate your hesitation, etc.

Things might go south for the duke boys this fine sunny afternoon...

>Each yard of step – usually one yard, for humans – equals one hex of movement. You may change facing freely before or after you move.
>If the attacker starts in front and runs behind, outmaneuvering his victim through sheer speed, the victim does know he’s being attacked. Treat it as a side attack: -2 to active defenses, unless the victim has compensating advantages.
So in a fight if I have a weapon with reach C, can I step in my foe's hex, roll to evade at -5, change my facing and attack him from behind?

Yep, and they defend at -2. Not a bad deal if you’re already playing an acrobat or other sort of agile fighter. Also shields never protect against attacks from behind, so they lose their DB (if any).

ESCARGO discusses the implications of constantly-increasing skill costs. RAW has skill costs plateau at 4/level. What about FLAT skill costs, where each level ALWAYS costs 4 char. points?

soooo thermobaric ghoul giants....

explode.... a lot

How does increased consumption work with water? Does it even affect water needs by default? If not, let's assume a "water only" version.

Going by the fact it doubles meals a day, I assume for water, it would double the amount of water needed every level (2 quarts per day becomes 4 quarts, or in a hot climate, 3 becomes 6) But, by default you don't start losing FP, until you have gone 8 hours without water. That seems slow, if someone needs like 8 quarts or more a day, so I assume with each level it would also halve the interval before FP is lost, since with the food version, it goes by skipped meals?

So, to summarize, each level of increased consumption(water), would double the amount of water needed, and halve the interval of FP loss. By default a human would need 2 quarts of water a day in a normal climate, and start losing FP every 8 hours they went without adequate hydration. One with increased consumption(water) 1, would need 4 quarts a day, and start losing FP after 4 hours without adequate hydration. With a second level, this becomes 8 quarts a day, and 2 hours before they start losing FP, then 16/1, and so on.

Does this seem right? Should this also affect the "less than 1 quart" threshold before they start taking HP damage?

ruh roh
whats happening on the bridge?

also GIANT SMASH

I am pretty sure it does affect water by default, since the advantage version "Reduced Consumption" affects water(As implied by the "-50%" Water Only). By Extension, I assume a "Water Only" version of Increased Consumption would also be -50%. Beyond that, I can't help you though.

gamingballistic.com/2013/02/11/skill-levels-for-combat-in-gurps/
Is there something like this but for non DF characters (150 points)? Or at least some good list of tips for building fantasy characters (how high should an attribute be, picking advantages, picking skills and their levels)?

Template Toolkit 1: Characters

Showdown! The return of Rolf the teleporting mage and his friend Simon, the mana locus!

theyre posessed

Found it and it's definitely what I wanted, thanks!
Funny how 14 is "only" exceptional in most campaigns while in DF it's below average for a fighter.

I'm currently running a 5e game that i'm not enjoying too much, and I really want to try out GURPS

What should I do /gurpsgen/?

I'll run a GURPS game for you. Just have to return the favor, if you end up liking the system!

When we arrived two sessions ago, we noticed a trap, and disabled it.
We proceeded with caution, noticed another trap, and successfully avoided it.
Two umber hulks burst out of the building we were heading towards—a third trap!—but we won with ease.

Afterwards however, Gray carelessly sprung that second trap…
…and *within* that trap was another trap, as the three giant ghouls that rose out of the water (alongside the 20-something skeleton warriors) were also highly explosive.
This Suðri discovered when blew one up, and the resulting blast toasted the two NPCs who were disabling the *first* trap, *that one* was sprung too.

Mistakes were made.

Pffft

barely anyone died.
no NAMED npc's at least...

The survivor's guilt, though! Suðri was the one who fired the laser at the—as it turned out—highly explosive giant ghoul, and yet he got away unscathed (crit dodge on the 2nd Luck re-roll)… while Roderick was singed, and the two Scorned acolytes got swallowed by the blast!
(Pretty sure a Scorned is only worth, like, half a human at most, who are in turn worth less than a Dwarf—but if you round it up it's probably a tragic loss!)

The ensuing secondary explosion also disrupted the army's formation, giving the third giant a chance to kill three of the men. And the bridge was damaged! It was a very nice bridge! Old Dwarven craftsmanship! AND IT'S ALL HIS FAULT!

Any thoughts? Or would this change be so minor that nobody would care?

Makes buying lots of skills at low level less attractive. Think it makes attributes and talents even better too. So kind of bad in my opinion, although I really prefer the simplicity of a flat cost.

Yeah, this. If it’s 4 points for everything, you’re going to start seeing an “all or nothing” mentality where people drop background or flavor skills. I’m reminded of Pathfinder swapping the skills system from skill ranks to a more binary trained/not trained switch. For major skills, the effects were the same and with less bookkeeping, but 3.5’s x4 skill ranks at level one and +1 ranks/level let you branch out without dedicating yourself totally to that skill, and it let you include a few background skills at lower levels without using too many resources.

In a game where the characters are modern day people playing a Fantasy MMO RPG (yes, like in the animes), how do I treat TL?
What I have in mind is setting the campaign TL as the ingame one (TL3+1) and giving the players free +5 TL.

What's the context of the character sheet? How are you splitting PC's vs mmo avatars? What's the scope of time in the real world versus time in the mmo game world?

If you've ever seem .Hack GU, that's the feeling I'm going for. I'm trying to make it easier for my players to roleplay: instead of trying in vain to make them play a true TL3+1 (or is it 3^? I have to check) character's mentality, they can just roleplay with the modern mentality they're used to they will probably just play as themselves. There's no distinction between the PC and the avatar because everything will happen "ingame". So the sheet is mostly of the avatar but there could be some mental skills that benefits from the modern knowledge (eg first aid).
Now that I thought more about it, maybe the campaign should be TL3+5? It is still TL3 with no computers, guns and cars but it is familiar enough to TL8 in that houses are plumbed, medicines is more scientific than just tacking leeches and praying to god. I'm also having hard time seeing mechanical differences to a game where modern people is banestormed into a fantasy world.

So, which of the three options is best overall?

Vanilla because you don't have to remake every template under the sun to fit a new system with marginal benefits.

>Remake RAW templates with ESCARGO
Hey, thanks for the idea. I'll file that under all the other cool-but-useless projects that I'm too lazy to finish, along with "Make Vehicles writeups for all the planes in my copy of Jane's Fighting Aircraft of World War Two", "Write a program to automatically implement the Infinite Worlds timeline-generation tables", and "Convert all my GURPS PDFs to HTML".

Are imbuements expensive compared to spells? Their effects are usually weaker, the skills are all very hard and the Imbue advantage doesn't give bonus like Magery do.

You seem to have a pretty educated basis of example already

Yeah, but I want to run it

>Demonic Attunement is a Talent that adds to rolls to use Demonological abilities
Does it improve the odds of summoning a demon? Demonologist have this trait at level 3, so if he has Bound Demon (12 or less), he roll against 15?

I like GURPS, but I can't convince my friends to try out GURPS

How do I do it? I just want to run some goddamned GURPS, I like the system so damn much

Well, we need to know more about your friends to give advice. What kind of genre they enjoy? What they expect in a campaign (combat, mystery, character development) etc

>What kind of genre do they enjoy
Fantasy

>What do they expect in a campaign
They say they want a mix, but usually they end up wanting combat

It's not that the campaigns aren't interesting, it's just that they won't try anything but 5e D&D

Find new friends. Your seems to be broken

What do they like so much in 5e? Do they really like it or is it the only system they know intimately?

>Pic related
New and curious? Want your friends to play? Have a free resource which boils the game down to its essence: GURPS Lite.

Lite gives you the essential rules while stripping away the rest of the crunchy chaff. It also strips the list of traits down considerably, dropping supernatural, exotic, and most cinematic traits.

Full license: pastebin.com/kRh5LB2c
>you may distribute this PDF file freely under the above restrictions, and post copies of it online.

Also, be sure to check out the Caravan to Ein Arris, which is a FREE adventure which works with just the rules present in Lite. (warehouse23.com/products/caravan-to-ein-arris-gurps-fourth-edition)

Best advice I have for getting your friends to play: make pregenerated characters (full basic set optional) and give them a choice between them, use only the rules in Lite, run a one-shot and do something GURPS can do that other games struggle with.

Think of Lite as the core of the game, and the rest of the basic set, etc, as building off of that. It's super important that you remember that GURPS is modular. Rules are meant to be ignored, swapped, or added as needed to suit the tone and the fun.

>Do they really like it or is it the only system they know intimately?

They're too scared to try another system, and see no reason why they should

See

Then it will be as easy as to make them play GURPS as is moving mountains. Your best bet is to ask them to play a one-off campaign using Lite + Ein Arris () to let you experience the system. If they won't help you, you need to find a friendlier group.

Why can't use optional specialty on Axe/Mace to use only maces? You don't have to worry about edge alignment so it should be easier than using other weapons.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Short answer is: the mechanical skill is so similar there's no point in differentiating from axe/mace with finer control or mace without.

Controlling the mass on the end of a stick which is an axe or a mace is 80% of the work. Making the right part of the overgrown hammer hit exactly where you want is 20% of the work. Even with a mace that doesn't have an edge, you'll probably want to make a flange or a protrusion be the main point of contact with your target to maximize force:surface area ratio. That's why the Pick falls under Axe/Mace.

Take it from a guy who swings a hammer for a living and chops wood to stay warm: there is not enough difference between swinging an axe or swinging something else that has a mass on the far end of a lever to differentiate between the two skills. The different skills present in GURPS which cover this sphere are basically just the same thing with levers that are different lengths.

Point taken. Do you have any insight to why Knife is an easy skill?

Why do people think two handed mace/axes are so bad?

Dungeon Fantasy my dude, the box set is literally made for your situation.

Having to spend a full turn readying one every time you attack with it (unless you have huge strength, obviously) seems like a rather rough downside.

double dagger and U-parry

So? Shouldn't the damage make up for it?

>Knife is an Easy skill
Probably 60:40 -> reality:game balance. Knives have a comparatively tiny mass that needs to be controlled. Using them in a fight, barring autistically detailed MA combat rules (and their attendant techniques), is not nearly as careful an action as carving wood, cutting rope from someone's body, cutting food such that it isn't mangled, etc. The mechanical control needed is (comparatively) small and the action is simple.

The other part is that its application in game is highly limited. Most knives are very short, getting their best damage at reach C. They have -1 to parry. They have crappy sw damage and their required strength is super low. If you were an average-ST character and you had literally almost any other weapon available, you'd use that in a straight fight.

However, if you dumped a couple ST points for bonus DX/niche-related skills, and you needed a cheap way to kill fleshy humans, knives are pretty nice. Obviously they're preferable in CQC; getting in an armored dude's business and stabbing them in the face with a dagger is pretty effective if you can pull it off.

>Axe/Mace cont.
To reinforce my point about length of the lever being the main variable which is changed: Axe/Mace is an Impact Weapon, as is Two-Handed Axe/Mace. Impact Weapon is a category where its skills default to each-other at -3, as opposed to the -4 default you usually see between skills.

>Two handed Axe/Mace is bad?
Parry 0U (can't attack and then parry) sucks if you lack a shield -which you will unless your ST is ludicrous enough to wield one-handed- or if your dodge is crappy. ‡ ST requirement means readying every other turn unless you have 1.5xST. So you get half the actions that a Greatsword would for no real extra benefit except maybe +1 raw damage when you hit, which you'll be doing half as frequently. The warhammer w/ Sw Imp is the only such weapon worth it because of the wounding modifier.