Go with a Giant Flying Monster (p. 19). One of the examples is "a large dragon" so that fits!
This message was last edited by the player at 16:30, Sat 27 Nov 2021.

Fantastic, thanks so much!

Being "more comfortable in armor than out" might just be flavor text, but if you want them to have greater capacity in armor, then just use Payload to remove the Armor weight from Encumbrance, then slap some Enhanced Move and Enhanced Defenses, maybe even combat Talent all with the Accessibility "Only While Wearing Armor".  If you want it to be a specific set of armor, not just any armor, then increase the Accessibility slightly (like no more than an additional -5%) and slap some crunch text about them needing so much time practicing and wearing the armor to become "bonded".

In reply to Girl Interrupted (msg # 56):

You could also download and install a copy of GURPS Character Sheet (Free), which has a Monsterous Western Dragon template

Link is :  https://gurpscharactersheet.com

Or, get a copy of the GURPS Dragons book and it is one Page 146.

Would someone be so kind as to educate me on how 'pi' damage works?

Let's say Alice fires her 9 mm Glock which inflicts 2d+2 pi...

Let's say she rolls an 8.

Assuming no armor/DR, what would the ultimate net damage be if she hit:

     (a) head
     (b) torso
     (c) arm

Thanks All!  :)

In reply to Girl Interrupted (msg # 61):

Assuming she's shooting a human, she'd do 8 points of damage in all three cases.

Pi is pretty much the gun version of Cr: run of the mill, standard damage. They split it off as it's own thing for dealing with special situations like Unliving or Homogenous targets, or with specific types of armor like Ballistic Vests.

"pi" damage is "piercing".  It's mostly tacked onto bullets (or other very fast moving smaller projectiles) because those sort of weapons/projectiles do not work exactly the same way as standard crushing, cutting, and impaling attacks do.

There are four flavors of pi, each has it's own wounding modifier, but they all enjoy the same hit location and overpenetration benefits, and suffer the same "flexible armor blunt damage penalty".


While you can kinda say "pi is equal to crushing, pi+ is equal to cutting, and pi++ is equal to impaling", that isn't exactly the case and might cause you to overlook the Hit Locations benefits pi damage enjoys that crushing and cutting sometimes miss out on (and vice versa).

Now for your example, I'ma be real with you, I need more info so I'll just supply it... also I'm broadening out your example to show the differences between pi and crushing.  Also, only using pure Basic Set rules, no optional things from other sets (except some made up armors).

Alice and Ecila are fighting a mob of foes, Alice has her trusty Glock (doing 2d+2) and Ecila has a stout shillelagh (and also doing 2d+2 because... I said so).  For ease of example let's say they're both hitting, no misses, and the mooks are too dumb to defend.  They also both deal 8 damage with each attack...

They take the first mook group (HP 10, no armor, auto fail HT checks), hit each of their mooks in the Face, the Torso, and the last in an Arm.

The four that take face and torso hits take 8 injury [(8 damage - no armor)x1 wounding mod*], all four take Major Wounds (over half their HP in one shot, Basic Campaigns pg 420), fail their HT checks, are Stunned and Knocked Down.  The two mooks who take arms hits both take 6 injury [(8 dam - 0 DR)x1 wm; capped at [(1/2 HP) + 1] for a limb], both have their arms crippled, both took a Major Wound (crippled extremities are treated as Major Wounds even if below "1 past half HP", say for a hand, foot, tail, etc), fail their HT checks, are Stunned and Knocked Down.

*  The way damage is applied may sound simple (and it kinda is) but I see it trip up experienced Players and GMs all the time, so I'll lay it out real quick:  Damage is the amount rolled on the dice, so Alice's Glock does 2d+2 pi, and when she rolls an 8, that 8 is the damage.  the "pi" is her wounding modifier, it controls some Hit Location benes as well as directly influencing the injury.  To find injury, (the amount of HP loss a target suffers from an attack) first take the damage, subtract any DR, then apply the wounding modifier, the result is the injury the target takes.

I say this only because I've seen far too many people say things like "I hit, they take 13 cutting injury!" when they meant "13 damage with a cutting wound multiplier" and I've seen Players go ahead and "helpfully" multiply the damage by the wounding modifier without bothering to account for an enemy's armor... or forget to apply the wound modifier to damage they take after subtracting DR, etc.  Yeah, it's a bit to keep track off, but just hoping a quick refresher here helps some people...




The next wave gets interesting, they have armor!  (HP 12, DR 2 heavy leather "jakcets", DR 4/1 ballistic vests, and DR 2/1 "impact" helmets with face masks - good against crushing)

Again Alice and Ecila take on three each, hitting Face, Torso, and Arm, again 8 damage each time...

Alice drops the face shot guy with one hit (7 injury after DR 1), deals with the arm guy after two shots (6 + 1 injury = 7 injury cripples), and ends up having to dodge around till she lands six hits on 'torso dude' as his leathers and concealed ballistic vest give him an effective DR 6 against her Glock's pi damage.  But he does finally reach HP 0 and whiff his Unconsciousness Check.

Elica also has to juggle her foes a bit, everyone needing two hits, the face dude drops with HP -2 after the second hit (6 injury is not a Major Wound with HP 12), torso guy drops at HP 0 after two attacks (taking 5 injury + 5 injury, and then whiffing their Unconsciousness check), and like with Alice the arm guy takes two hits.

To stop belaboring a point, "pi" and "crushing" are very similar, I could have used different weapons like impaling and cutting to showcase those difference (or pi-, pi+, or pi++), but I was kinda sticking with your setup.  Armor and Hit Locations will make a difference, but well, you kinda chose poor Hit Locations to show off that difference.  "Head" isn't a Hit Location, that's Face or Skull, both are different...

Frex if they were both making Skull shots on their foes, the foes have an additional DR 2 and take a x4 wounding modifier (and are at -7 to hit).  Face hits don't have Skull DR or the extra wounding modifier (are -5 to hit and cannot be hit randomly from behind).

Eye shots would also be an interesting set up, Alice can target eyes as she has a piercing attack, however Ecila with her crushing attack cannot (and would be making Face shots instead).

Neck and Vitals both also work differently as Hit Locations for them, Alice enjoys the Vitals, to hit -3, getting a x3 wounding modifier while Ecila cannot target them, and they can both target the Neck at -5, but Alice has no benes where Ecila gets a x1.5 wounding modifier (crushing and corrosive get x1.5, cutting enjoys x2 on the Neck).



The other major difference is that piercing (piercing, impaling, or tight-beam burning damage with a ranged attack†) damage "enjoys" Overpenetration (Basic Campaigns pg 408), which sometimes is not so very enjoyable (if there are things behind your target you don't want getting shot up).  With Overpenetration if you hit with significant enough damage (anything in excess of the foe's HP + front and rear armor) "blows through" and the projectile will continue to travel into another target.

Frex if Alice were rocking a Bolt Action 7.62 rifle (7d pi) hitting the first mooks (HP 10) at range for an average 21 damage... then... the first mook in front would take 21 injury but the round would Overpenetrate 11 damage into any mooks behind him as well.  If they were wearing DR 2 heavy leather, then the first mook would take 19 injury, and the round would Overpenetrate 7 damage (HP 10 + DR 2 front + DR 2 back) into the next mook.


† I personally also apply Overpenetrate to cutting attacks, and to melee versions of those attacks if and when appropriate.  So say a long spear being heroically thrust through two enemies that are tightly inline, the giant's sword swinging through multiple hexes worth of foes, the Jedi's lightsaber loping through their foe and the floor, ceiling, walls...
This message was last edited by the player at 17:59, Sat 23 Apr 2022.

Wow, involved, but cool!  Gurps is awesome!

Thanks evil and gor

Help! I have a clever player unfamiliar with Gurps magic who wants to do the below.

Can anyone help me figure out how many fatigue this would cost?

He wants to build a bridge using Shape Earth to create a 1 inch thick, 2 foot wide, 200 yard long bridge out of lava stone.

If he has a level 16 in Shape Earth, can anyone tell me how many fatigue that would cost?

He says 4 fatigue.  I'm seriously doubting that.

Also, question #2: IF he managed to create that, would the 1 inch thick bridge hold the weight of say, a 250 pound man walking across, or is the spell designed to ensure that normal breakage doesn't occur.

Lastly, question #3, If he casts at 1 less fatigue per list fatigue cost because of his high skill of 16, but he's maintaining 2 other spells which reduces his skill now to 14, does he still get the high skill reduction of fatigue or not?

I hope someone can figure this out, because I am stumped.

The answer to Question 2 is No... not over 200 yards [600 feet or 2 football fields].
Not over even a quarter of that distance.

The cost is 1 per cubic yard of earth shaped [has to be there first] and twice that for stone.
Does he have a large supply of Lava Rock?

A cubic yard is 46,656 cubic inches if I remember my math, so each shaped cubic yard gives him 162 feet of "bridge", times 4 is 648 feet in length, so he is correct in that it will be "long" enough, and will cost him at least 8 FP and then 4 more to maintain after a minute or it's a sudden let down. To move  600 feet will take him several minutes I'd think. Thus he risks running out of FP and again, what a let down.

I'll leave the rest to people more familiar with magic tricks than I, but my 2¢ is no, he cannot do it.

Does shape earth affect rock too?  From the description it sounds like they mean earth (dirt).  I would think you would make the form from earth you want, then cast earth to stone.  But I'm not sure.

Also, at 1" thick I'm thinking there's no way the stone bridge could support you over 2 football fields.  You could make the bridge in a lattice honey comb pattern so you could increase thickness and still be able to traverse it.  But stability is also a concern.  I'm thinking the weight of this thing would create a lot of stress at it's two anchor points.  I'm not a structure engineer, but it could collapse the moment you step on it.  But again, I'm not sure.

In reply to jason254 (msg # 67):

The ability to shape Earth does not automatically make him a civil engineer...to make it strong enough to span that should require a civil engineer roll at least, with a lot of penalties. Also, he would have to shape it all at once, otherwise the part previously shaped would fall into the abyss...the strength of arcs relies on having both ends connected.

But 1 inch thick straight across will never support its own weight, let alone the weight of a person. That is a flat bridge, and he will need a much thicker arc. You can calculate the thickness required if you want, or just make a ruling on it, but even in a fantasy world I would insist it needs to be at least a foot thick and multiply the required length by 1.5 to allow for the arc, but only tell them what they need after they pass an engineering roll.

That's 3.70370...yds³ of stone.  This will matter in a moment.  For future reference I keep this page in my bookmarks:
https://www.calculator.net/volume-calculator.html


According to DFRPG Spells (it's handy) it costs 1 FP per cubic yard of earth (minimum 2), double the cost for stone, hextuple for worked stone (like a stone wall).  Duration 1 minute.

Simple math says round up, 4yds³ times 2 is 8 FP, 4 maintain; or for him 7 to cast, 3 to maintain.

Stone has a Move of 1, so however far to the bridge point and then 200 seconds, or 3 minutes twenty seconds plus however far away the obsidian is from the chasm.  So they're spending 16 FP, minimum.


You are correct.  if he gives you guff about "raising it up from the lava all at once and that's only like XX feet down, it should take a lot less time!"  Then ask him to start making HT checks for breathing in fumes and the intense heat of being in a volcano,...


It won't even support it's own weight.  Obsidian is incredibly fragile.

Maybe if it was say 6 foot thick moorings, a 30* grade, and tapered to a foot thick at teh top span... and the PC had Engineer (Civil) or Architecture and made a decent roll.  Let me put it to you like this:  A steel bridge as described would flex and bend under it's own weight at the center and probably tear free from it's moorings under it's own weight (but I doubt this mage would even bother with moorings).  It's simply too long and has no support structures.  So he has to maintain it for it too keep it's shape and not fall apart.

Look at bridges, they have supports for a reason.

Now, it's up to you if the spell will "hold up people" if he maintains it while they are crossing.  For me, I use the Rule of Cool which says "Yes, but he also has to pay for the weight of the people", if he has Levitate, I'd just charge him that, otherwise call it another 2 cubic yards of stone weight per person the bridge has to hold aloft at a time...


Maintained spells only reduce "Effective Skill Level", cost reduction is off of Known Skill Level, so he's rolling against a 14, but still gets the FP reduction of having Skill 15+.
This message was last edited by the player at 01:53, Thu 07 July 2022.

Wait, wait, wait...  does he mean obsidian or pumice?

Because the first is simply laughable, but the second is hilarious.  My sides need to know how far to launch into space over this one...

In reply to evileeyore (msg # 70):

I was thinking Granite or Basalt, but hey, there are many options.

Does anyone know the write-up/rules for

"Born War Leader" ?

Thank you!

In reply to Girl Interrupted (msg # 72):

Born War-Leader 5 points/level

Intelligence Analysis, Leadership, Savoir-Faire (Military), Strategy, and Tactics. Reaction

Bonus: Military officers, tribal war-leaders, soldiers, and other professional warriors.

Alternative Benefit: As for Born Tactician (above). Alternative Cost: 5 points/level.

Sources: GURPS Banestorm, GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 1, and GURPS Monster Hunters 1.

Thanks. So, let's say I pick Born War Leader +2, do I get a +2 on any specific skills?  Or is it only a reaction bonus?

In reply to Girl Interrupted (msg # 74):

You get +2 on the skills Intelligence Analysis, Leadership, Savoir-Faire (Military), Strategy, and Tactics. Reaction

Thank you!  Sorry for being a ditz!

In reply to Girl Interrupted (msg # 76):

All good.

So, let's say Fighter A rapid strikes and succeeds both attacks. Opponent declares an All Out +2 retreating dodge.

Does Opponent get to add the +2 to BOTH of the 2 successful rapid strikes or just one?

Looking at Campaigns, the +2 bonus to the defense applies for the entire round:

Thanks! As I suspected!

So, this animal's bite causes 1d+1{4} cut (0.5) damage

Could someone educate this confused GM what that means?

I get the 1d+1 part, but what's the rest of it mean?

Thanks!