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.
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| 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?
