Thursday, December 11, 2025

Fright Checks: Rule of 19

The GURPS Rule of 14 (p. B360) says:

If final, modified Will exceeds 13, reduce it to 13 for the purpose of the Fright Check. 

This means that there's no way to ever not fail a fright check at least 16.2% of the time (unless you have Unfazeable; or 9.25% of the time with Rule of 15/Brave; GURPS Power Ups 2: Perks p. 13, GURPS Monster Hunters 1: Champions p. 25) no matter how many positive modifiers apply.

Tuesday, August 26, 2025

How to Bring Your Face to a Sword Fight

Parrying Unarmed Attacks GURPS Basic Set Campaigns p.  376 says:

Parrying Unarmed Attacks: If you successfully parry an unarmed attack (bite, punch, etc.) with a weapon, you may injure your attacker. Immediately roll against your skill with the weapon you used to parry. This roll is at -4 if your attacker used Judo or Karate. If you succeed, your parry struck the attacker’s limb squarely. He gets no defense roll against this! Roll damage normally. 

This rule has some problems. It's actually pretty vague about what kind of damage you do ("normal damage", duh) and it can result in some silly outcomes and degenerate tactics.

Friday, March 28, 2025

Disadvantage "Load"

GURPS Characters p. B11 suggests limiting disadvantages by total number of points in order to keep the game from becoming a "circus". This is at best a blunt instrument.

Thursday, March 20, 2025

The Ultra Simplified GURPS Combat System You Probably Don't Know About

Are you a person who wishes there was a way to run combat in GURPS that was super simple? One even simpler than the Combat Lite chapter of GURPS Characters (pp, B324-328)? What if I told you this system exists in an often overlooked GURPS book and that even if you are aware of it, you might have missed that you could just use it as your only combat system?