Intermission: ST and HP for Unliving and Homogeneous Creatures

GURPS is built to be an anthropocentric, but generic, system. As such, the baseline for injury and destruction is that of a living human. To change this assumption, we use traits such as Injury Tolerance - which has many variations, but the main ones we'll look at are "Homogeneous" (or Homogenous, as it's called in the original and revised editions of the Basic Set. I would use that for consistency, but DFRPG called it Homogeneous!) and "Unliving".

"Unliving/Machine... includes anything with complex or moving parts: e.g., electronics, firearms, powered vehicles, robots, and most other machines. Homogenous (sic)/Diffuse... includes anything that lacks a complex internal structure; e.g., fabric, furniture, and muscle-powered melee weapons." - Basic Set, p557

Unliving objects and creatures, like cars and guns, have internal structures, but are either mostly hollow, can function reasonably well with damaged parts, or have redundancies that prevent them from being instantly lethal. (For example, GURPS After the End 1: Wastelanders allows players to buy Injury Tolerance (Unliving) as the "Redundant Organs" mutation.) Homogeneous objects and creatures are, as the name suggests, just made of one material: there is nothing you could hit to plausibly deal more injury. These traits, among other things, adjust wounding multipliers to represent the lack of vulnerable internal structures that make poking holes in living things such an effective way to kill them. 

The car still does its job - an admirable work ethic

What's harder to swallow is their adjustment to ST and HP. Why do Unliving and Homogeneous creatures and objects get more ST and HP? Why is this rarely reflected in published monster stats? And can we rationalise it - bring it into line in a playable way? 

Intermission: The Monsters (Don't) Know What They're Doing

 I currently have, on my bookshelf, two books by Keith Amman: The Monsters Know What They're Doing, and How to Defend Your Lair. They sell themselves as tactical guides for the DM (as both are most definitely written with D&D 5e in mind), for individual monster combats and the task of building and defending a home base, respectively. Right up my alley, I thought - as would anyone that reads this blog - but while the books were enjoyable enough reads in and of themselves, I found them far too specific. 

The first, titled after the author's blog, concerns itself with picking apart the individual stat blocks found in the 5e Monster Manual, using them to construct playable tactical advice for the GM. (If this sounds like a lot of work for the average 5e DM, you would not be surprised to learn that the foreword reveals that Amman cut his teeth on GURPS, only agreeing to run a 5e game at his wife's request on behalf of her co-workers - a conversation all GURPS GMs have had.) This isn't a trivial task by any means, especially as many of the stat blocks aren't especially internally consistent, and many of the abilities are hard to use in combat or actively unhelpful. Indeed, I suspect that Amman put more effort into justifying these monster abilities than the authors of the Monster Manual did, and I'm by no means trying to put the man down. It just wasn't quite what I was searching for. 

What I was searching for - as are many GMs, I imagine - was generic advice. The D&D combat system blurs out many of the identifiable combat tactics that we see in real life, on occasion reintroducing them as feats (such as Battlemasters have available) or animal traits (such as Pack Tactics). This leads to a very undifferentiated "core" combat experience, which teaches some odd habits. Carrying these over to GURPS, or other similarly tactical games, can lead to absurd results - frequent misses, combats that end within a second or two, wolves diving onto the party's blades face-first. This essay is for GURPS GMs (or anyone running a tactical system) who want their monsters to behave like thinking beings rather than XP dispensers.

The Barrow III: Brawls, Blasphemy and Bumps in the Night

The party's day starts with a thud, as a snoring Garret rolls out of his bed. "God," he groans. "Feels like I slept for a year and a half."

Lottie: HT, vs 10: 14, failure by 4.

Miguel: HT, vs 12, +5 (Rapid healing) = 17: 15, success by 2.

Everyone's in reasonably good condition after the previous day's healing, although the two that were injured still bear some bruises and scratches. While Lottie makes up a stew of hardtack and salt pork, Elias does his best to scratch a map of the barrow as they know it onto the table with a lump of charcoal.

Elias: Cartography, vs 12, +4 (extra time) = 16: 14, success by 2. 

"Here's the route we took yesterday," he begins, tracing a line with his finger. "There's the surgery rooms, and there's the large hall we found the undead in." He pointed to the large oval that dominated the table. "There was nothing back the other way, but I think if we take a right down this corridor we can get to the sunken hall much quicker."

    The thief grumbles. "Do we really want to?" 

    "That's the only way forward I can see," the monk shrugs. "We could leave, of course."

    Garret taps his fingers impatiently. "No chance. We're finding Rutger - and besides, we've found nothing worth the trip so far. I'm not heading back to town with my tail between my legs because the little girl's too scared of a few dusty old bones." Nodding his assent, Miguel straps on his sword belt and places his hand on Lottie's shoulder. "They won't get the jump on us again," he reassures her. She twists free of his grasp. 

    "But what if the rest of the place is underwater? I'm not going swimming down there." She looks at Elias for support, but he smiles apologetically. 

    "I understand your concerns, but I don't think it could have sunk much deeper than that without bringing down the whole structure. The rooms on this side," he pointed at his makeshift map, "might be waterlogged, but I doubt they'll be submerged completely." The thief sighs, and laces her boots extra tight. 

Intermission: Archery Styles

Styles were added to GURPS Fourth Edition in Martial Arts, and represent a great tool for characterisation and for widening the combat space. Player characters don't just know Broadsword, they know Iaijutsu, which distinguishes them from the random bandits that jump them. Having Style Familiarity also vastly increases the number of perks you have available, as shown in the table below, which can make or break a character. I defy you to build a samurai without at least Grip Mastery and Form Mastery! 

For the GM, the use of combat styles can help with world-building by distinguishing some factions from others, or some players from others. It can also act as a justification for granting enemies abilities and options the players don't have access to, with the added bonus that it might be available at some point (after a long quest to prove their worth, of course). It subtly shifts the responsibility for remembering combat rules from the GM onto players, too: if everyone can Riposte, it's part of the GM's job to remind them of the rules. But if only one player character knows how to Riposte, that's his job - which makes it all the more exciting when he pulls it out to save the day.

So, styles make a great reward for players and the GM alike. Melee fighters are well-served by the styles in Martial Arts, which can be easily adapted to different settings by filing the serial numbers off, and Thaumatology: Magical Styles extends the concept to mages to great effect. But what about ranged combatants? Martial Arts describes four archery styles: Foot Archery, Kyujutsu, Kyudo, and Yabusame. They're nice - especially Foot Archery allowing up to Arm ST +3! - but we can do more by taking some pointers from Gun Fu, which did the same for action-movie gunslingers, and Tactical Shooting, which built styles for realistic shooters, and making some action hero archery styles, after the jump.

Intermission: A Recipe for Trouble

Magical potions and salves are a staple of classic fantasy. In addition to providing a convenient way to keep adventurers in play after taking one too many swords to the gut, they make great plot devices and quest hooks (the wizard's guild is in need of two score rabbits' feet and the heart of a dragon), as well as making for more interesting tactical decisions. Do we use the invulnerability potion now, or later? Do I poison my arrows with demonbane or spider's venom? Though these considerations usually won't make up the core of a party's tactical repertoire, they can provide a little extra boost to a party in a pinch, and can provide a way for weaker party members (or enemies!) to stay helpful even without fireballs and greatswords. 

Faced with such utility, the alchemically inclined player might want to have a go at brewing their own elixirs. There's plenty of precedent for it in video games such as Skyrim or The Witcher; GURPS Dungeon Fantasy alludes to it obliquely in rules about collecting monster bits, and template skills like Alchemy and Herb Lore, and there's abstract rules for making "bush potions" in DF16 - make a Herb Lore roll and Bob's your uncle, here's a 2d healing potion in a pinch. But being so abstract loses a lot of the charm of alchemy, at least in my mind. I don't want to have a big bag of Alchemy Ingredients, $300, 2lb: I want to mix a pinch of ginger root, a bugbear's spleen, and milk of redgrass! So, should we expand the alchemy system? Why wouldn't we do that? And will I go insane writing it? Let's find out. 

Handle with Care: a Treatise on Character Progression

"One player character is much more powerful than the others, and it's making it hard to balance fights."

"My players have bought everything they need and now money is worthless."

Have you caught yourself saying anything like this? Your problem might be to do with character progression, the leading cause of death among games in the 18-34 age bracket.  Here, I'm going to discuss why it exists, what problems it causes, and why you don't actually need it. 

Dungeon 001: Goblin Cave

 Finding myself without the time or inclination to play through these dungeons, I'm just going to post them - maybe someone will get to use them! You're on your own for monster stats, though, as I wouldn't want to repost published content. 

Dungeon map courtesy of Donjon RPG Tools

1: Entranceway

Shape: SM 0 arched ceiling. Dotted with small stalactites and stalagmites. 

Walls: Rough limestone, solution-carved. Damp. 

Floor: Rough limestone, solution-carved. Damp. Dotted with shallow depressions in the floor, filled with water. 

Atmosphere: Darkness -7; only light is from entrance to east. Cold, from water evaporation. Slight breeze directed SW. Occasional dripping noises, with echoes. 

Entrances: Stepped 40° slope up to E (0). 

Smooth 30° slope down 3' to SW (2), through horizontal SM 0 gap where the wall meets the floor. 
Traps: None. 

Monsters: None. 
Treasure: None.