Script Compilation: Low-Tech Weapons
Another batch of transcripts - this time of low-tech weapon discussion.
Axe/Mace
Axes, maces, and picks in GURPS use the same skill – Axe/Mace. It’s an average difficulty skill, like most melee weapon skills. Axe/Mace defaults to DX-5, Flail-4, or Two-Handed Axe/Mace-3. This weapon category is quite big; GURPS Low-Tech has 13 entries in the weapon table. Fortunately, the table is something I can actually show on the screen, so let’s take a look at it. My conversions of D&D weapons add 5 more to the list. You might be surprised by the fact that there’s no hammer on this table, but hammers and maces are the same thing in GURPS. A hammer is just a mace with a different shape.
As you can see on the table, all of these weapons deal swing damage, whatever thrust damage you see is used for sharp hooks that I will talk about later. This means that your damage output is going to be high, even if you’re using Reduced Swing Damage rules like I usually do. This weapon category covers all the usual damage types – crushing, cutting, and impaling, which is good. The numerical damage bonuses also are very good, there’s even a +3 there on the mace! One additional observation is that this is the largest weapon category of TL0 weapons, so if you are a caveman then you’re likely to wield an axe or a mace. This is especially important for characters that have Nature powers that are penalized for having high-tech gear. All axes and maces have Reach 1 which means that they cannot be used in close combat unpenalized. This is not good, but usually there are some ways to mitigate that, such as retreating, learning the Close Combat technique, or having a backup weapon. And now we get to the part that turns off many players, the Parry statistic. See this “U” letter? This means that the weapon is Unbalanced – you cannot use it to parry if you have already used it to attack this turn (or vice versa). For some reason GURPS Low-Tech actually forgets about the “vice versa” part, I believe that this is an oversight. Then we have something that puts a smile on players’ faces – the cost. When somebody asks you why in the hell would anyone get an axe when swords exist, point on this column. Just try to place your finger in a way that obscures the cost of the khopesh. For example, a thrusting broadsword costs $600, while an axe costs $50. On TL3, your starting money is only $1,000 if you’re a homeless adventurer, or just $200 if you are a settled person. So, if you want to have a sword, you’ll probably have to apply the Cheap quality modifier to it. Speaking of weapons of quality, this low base price makes it easier to get better axes and maces. For example, a balanced axe that gives a +1 to skill would cost $250, while a balanced thrusting broadsword would cost $3,000. And remember that in GURPS, a +1 to skill is significant. By the way, this is a place where some confusions and misconceptions might arise – a balanced axe is still an unbalanced weapon, if it makes any sense. Yes, you have +1 to skill, but you still cannot parry after attacking. Getting an even higher bonus to damage is cheaper too – a fine axe with +1 to damage costs $500, while a fine thrusting broadsword costs $2,400. What sucks is that maces do not get this bonus to damage, but you can still make them balanced for cheap. Anyway, you get the point here – low cost is good.
Weight and ST are two closely related parameters. The higher the weight, the higher is the required ST. As you can see, the lightest axes and maces require ST 8 and the heaviest require ST 12. This is more than manageable. You might think that a heavy weapon is a disadvantage, but it’s usually a positive feature. With a heavy weapon, you can break the opponent’s weapon on a parry. For example, an axe weighs 4 pounds, which means that it can break anything that weight less than 1.33 pounds. This includes most knives and sticks. A mace weighs 5 pounds, allowing it to break anything that weighs less than 1.66 pounds. The list is now bigger, as you add some heavier knives, plus some smallswords, shortswords, and the tonfa that weigh 1.5 pounds. This means that opponents that wield such light weapons against you, will likely be relying on Dodge instead of Parry, and Dodge is usually lower. Even if they use a shield, your damage is high enough to damage and possibly break the shield after a few hits. That is, if you are using the Damage to Shields rule, and I think that you should – it’s a good one.
Now, let’s talk about some special features. Four of these weapons – axe, round mace, throwing axe, and mace – have long enough handle to be used in two hands comfortably. These weapons also appear on the Two-Handed Axe/Mace weapon table. Using them in two hands allows you to improve your damage, but also, well, requires two hands. And that’s not good. Seven of these weapons can be thrown with the Thrown Weapon (Axe/Mace) skill. That’s what number [1] in brackets means. They retain their swing damage when thrown, so they can deal some devastating damage at range, if you actually land a hit. I strongly recommend putting at least a point into the Thrown Weapon (Axe/Mace) skill if you wield such a weapon, it can be a good way to start a combat, if you have another axe nearby, or a good way to finish off a running enemy.
Number [2] in brackets means that the weapon has a hook. In this case, it only shows sharpened hooks of the sickle and the khopesh, but picks and most axes can be used to hook. Maces are out of luck without any modifications. The Hook technique can be found in GURPS Low-Tech, but GURPS Martial Arts has a more detailed version of it. What can you do with a hook? Many things, this is a very flexible technique. You can hook the head or limb, then on subsequent turns try to bring him down to his knees or make him fall. This requires a Quick Contest of ST, and you’re likely to have high ST. Unlike a proper grapple, it seems that it does not penalize the victim’s DX, at least if you’re using the basic grappling system. If you’re using Technical Grappling or Fantastic Dungeon Grappling, then this is a proper grapple attempt that imposes its normal penalties. So, maybe it should be considered a grapple in the basic system too? I don’t know - consult your GM. It seems to me that it should. Hook also allows you to disarm the opponent more easily. What I consider to be the most important function of the hook is that it can unready shields. An unreadied shield makes the opponent much more vulnerable.
Number [3] in brackets means that the weapon may get stuck. This is the feature of swung impaling weapons, such as sickles and picks. This is both good and bad, depending on the situation. You get a chance to deal additional unavoidable damage, but you also cannot use the weapon until you pull it out. Be careful with picks.
Number [4] in brackets means that this weapon is better at hitting chinks in armor – the penalty is reduced by 2. This is useful against knights in full plate armor that are hard to injure otherwise.
One more thing that I should mention, but that is not shown on the table – there is no Fast-Draw (Axe/Mace) skill, so you have to take a Ready maneuver to ready such a weapon, but with a single exception – the khopesh. It can also be used with the Broadsword skill, so it can be readied as a free action with Fast-Draw (Sword).
Now let’s talk about weapon modification. How can you customize axes and maces? I’ve already mentioned weapons of quality, but that not all GURPS has. If you open GURPS Low-Tech Companion 2, you will find an entire chapter dedicated to weapon customization.
The first one is the most controversial one – long handle. If you apply it to the axe, you get a better long axe than the actual long axe from GURPS Low-Tech. This is a well-known, I guess rules exploit – you have to decide which version to use. I prefer to just use the long axe from GURPS Low-Tech. There’s no long maces or picks, but still I suggest you be careful with this modification.
The default axe has only one axe head. It is possible to add an additional head for extra $30 and 1 pound of weight. If an axe head breaks due to a critical failure, then you can flip the axe over and still have a functional weapon. This additional pound of weight does not increase the required ST but makes the axe comparable to the mace for the purpose of breaking weapons. This can be important, so if you have extra money, consider getting a double-bitted axe.
Getting a hammer head instead of the second axe head is slightly cheaper, and increases the weight only by 0.5 lbs. But even this expands the number of weapons your axe or pick can break. Also, it expands your versatility. For example, if you were reluctant to fight a foe with your pick because having it get stuck in the opponent would be a death sentence to you, you can flip your weapon around with a free action and use the hammer head to deal crushing damage. Isn’t that great?
You can also customize your weapon with a pick head. This way you can have a pick-axe, an axe-pick, a pick-hammer, an axe-hammer, or whatever you can imagine. For example, GURPS Low-Tech says that tomahawks often have a pick head.
In the same way, you can have sickle heads and spearheads. A spearhead might be useful for fighting in narrow tunnels, where swung attacks are heavily penalized.
Remember I said that maces cannot be used to hook? If you pay extra and attach a hook, then they become able to do that.
Finally, you can add a hilt, even a basket hilt, to your axe or mace. This improves your Parry statistic by 1, sometimes protects your hand, increases the weight, and makes the weapon harder to conceal. I have never seen an axe or a mace with a hilt, and I couldn’t even google a picture. Keep in mind that even though your Parry is improved, the weapon is still unbalanced!
GURPS Dungeon Fantasy also adds another modifier – Dwarven. It removes the Unbalanced quality from the weapon for only five times the cost. Personally, I do not like this modifier. I think it removes an intrinsic quality of a weapon class that should not be removed. But this is just my personal distaste for it.
You can also alter the weapon’s composition. If you expect to fight unarmored opponents, then an obsidian axe can improve your damage and make the weapon cheaper. One other trick – you can make an extra-heavy training wooden mace using the training weapons rules from GURPS Low-Tech Companion 2. It would deal more damage, cost less, but be twice as heavy. This greatly increases required ST, but a 10-pound mace would be able to break even broadswords!
That’s all for the actual weapons, but let’s talk some more about how to use them. As I said before, your main problem is the fact that it is unbalanced. Since Dodge is usually lower than Parry, you need something in your other hand. Typically, it’s a shield. Shields in GURPS are great – they improve all your active defenses, and you can use them offensively with no penalty. However, not only do they not mitigate your close combat problem, but they aggravate it instead, as shields impose a penalty on all close-combat actions. If somebody invades your personal space and prevents you from retreating, for example, by grappling you, he’s going to be a big problem. If you for some reason have nothing in your other hand, consider using Armed Grapple. However, to switch between the one-handed grip and the two-handed grip requires a Ready maneuver, unless you have the Grip Mastery perk. The Close Combat technique lets you buy off half of the close combat penalty, so consider investing in it as well. Alternatively, have a backup knife to draw in such situations. Also, remember the option of adding a hilt to your weapon? You become able to use hilt punches in close combat if you do that. Another option would be to invest a couple of points into the Push Kick technique to regain distance. But generally speaking, it’s better to avoid getting into close combat – be wary of your surroundings.
Another option would be to dual-wield. This way you can attack with your axe or mace, but also parry with the off-hand. In most cases, this is less effective than having a shield, but there are some advantages. The first is Main-Gauche. A knife wielded with this skill not only will give you a decent parry, but also will serve as a backup Reach C weapon. Dual-wielding also shines with the Hook technique as you can maintain the grapple with an axe and attack with the other weapon. However, dual-wielding requires a lot of point investments. On the other hand, you will look cool. You can do the same with the shield for fewer points, especially if it is spiked or bladed, but shields are not Reach C weapons.
A very important attack option for axemen and macemen is Defensive Attack from GURPS Martial Arts. You trade off a portion of your damage, but you retain the ability to parry after attacking. However, you should remember that you still cannot attack in the same turn you parried with this weapon. Defensive Attack should not be confused with Defensive Grip. This one is usually detrimental for axe wielders, as it actually decreases damage and does not remove the unbalanced quality.
Since you are likely to have high ST, you should not forget about the Beat – the ST-based Feint variant from GURPS Martial Arts.
In terms of hit locations, for cutting attacks, it’s easier for you to cripple limbs and extremities, and neck hits get an even higher injury multiplies. Crushing attacks can target whatever you want, but do not forget that GURPS Martial Arts allows targeting the vitals with crushing attacks. Impaling attacks work better against the torso and vitals than against limbs.
Unfortunately, there’s not much in terms of martial arts for axes and maces. GURPS Martial Arts only has the Indian style of Kalaripayit the Okinawan Kobujutsu that include the Axe/Mace skill.
Blowpipe
Blowpipes… Why would you use a blowpipe when you can use a bow instead? Just look at the statline! The blowpipe blows! It seems that there are no redeeming factors here, but in this transcript I will tell you how to get the most out of this seemingly underwhelming weapon.
First of all, the Blowpipe skill (p. B180) is a Hard difficulty skill that does not default to any other weapon skill – only to DX-6. By default, blowpipes shoot small darts, but the skill’s description mentions powders that you can blow at targets within one yard. Unlike shooting darts, this is treated as a melee attack, and it receives a +2 bonus, which is significant. So, the Blowpipe skill is unique in a sense that it’s actually both a ranged and a melee weapon skill. Sort of. You also get a -2 or higher penalty for wind when using blowpipes outdoors.
Let’s take a look at the statline again. The blowpipe from GURPS Low-Tech is a TL0 weapon, which means that it can appear in hands of even the most primitive humanoid tribes. Damage is a static 1d-3 pi-. This does not scale with strength, and small piercing is a very bad damage type. Accuracy is 1, which isn’t good. Range of STx4 is actually pretty decent for most situations. I have to personal experience with blowguns, but I would expect a much shorter range. Notice that there’s no 1/2D range. The weapon itself and its ammunition are light – exactly twice as light as a regular bow. Rate of fire and the reload time is the same as for bows, but you cannot do fancy quick-shooting like archers can. Blowpipes still are quite bulky, same Bulk value as a short bow. However, blowpipes are dirt cheap – only $30, and require ST 2. Even a child or a halfling can use it without any problems whatsoever. A blowpipe dart cost $0.1, which is twenty times cheaper than an arrow. Also, you should not forget that it only requires one hand to attack, but two hands to reload.
But yeah, even with all that, the weapon is basically useless against anything larger than a pigeon. Until you add poison into the equation. Poisons in GURPS are surprisingly strong. While in D&D, I have never seen any players using poisons ever because it just wasn’t worth a hassle for some 1d4 DEX damage or something like that, but in GURPS some poisons are straight up deadly. There are some poison examples on page 439 of GURPS Basic Set, some more on pages 128-130 of GURPS Low-Tech, and some more in the Dungeon Fantasy line. I have also converted most of the D&D poisons, but they use a different pricing scheme, so the dollar costs can be wildly different. But if you’re using existing GURPS poisons, you will be surprised to find out that they are very cheap. A dose of cyanide that appears on TL4 costs only $2. A dose of TL0 curare, however, costs $50. But considering the deadly effects that are very difficult to resist, it’s worth it. You just have to deliver it – hit an unarmored hit location. But this isn’t actually an advantage of blowpipes over any other ranged weapons – you can poison arrows too, so you can do the same thing with bows. But in any case, if you are thinking about getting a blowpipe, you will have to familiarize yourself with the poison rules.
Remember I mentioned blowing powders instead of darts? It is easy to forget about this feature, because the powder blowpipe, also known as metsubushi, does not appear on the table – only in text. It has the same characteristics as the normal blowpipe, but can only blow powders. Can normal blowpipes be used to blow powders? The rules for this are inconsistent. If you can, then there’s no point in having metsubushi as a separate weapon. Rules that I will talk about later seem to imply that normal blowpipes cannot be used with powders. A metsubushi takes one second to ready, and its reload time is not given in GURPS Low-Tech. As for the powders themselves, you can use the same poisons, but now you can also deliver respiratory agents.
GURPS Low-Tech has another blowpipe hidden away within its pages – the incendiary blowpipe (p. LT86). This one can be used as a single-shot flamethrower. While damage is low, it is deals in a cone-shaped area, so it can harm multiple targets. The range is not good though, making it almost a melee weapon. Still, I consider this to be a good option for small characters, such as halflings and goblins, because the damage does not depend on ST.
If you really like blowpipes, there is a “must have” article you have to read – A Killing Breath by Thomas Weigel from Pyramid #3-33. This one greatly expands the assortment of blowpipes, and also stealthily renames them to blowguns, and presents you with a plethora of customization option. As you can see on the table, there are now six blowpipes, not one. If you have a good memory and attention, you will notice that the stats for the normal blowpipe actually differ from the one from GURPS Low-Tech. Now we have tiny concealable blowpipes for stealthy assassinations, and huge blowpipes for long-range sniping. So, if you are using this article, the GM must tell you which statline is being used. Also, you might’ve noticed that the damage type is now crushing, as the default ammunition becomes a blunt bullet.
The article expands the rules for blowpipe usage. There’s not more detail in one-and-two-handed use, more detail about the minimal range, parrying, and, at last, you get the -4 penalty to Hearing rolls made to notice the shot. So, while before you were just told that it’s a silent weapon, now you have an actual mechanical effect.
Customization options are great. You can add a mouthpiece to increase damage and range, make the material weaker or stronger to make the weapon cheaper or heavier and sturdier; you can make a narrow-mouthed blowpipe to decrease damage, but increase range, or a wide-mouthed blowpipe to increase damage, but decrease range. And you can turn any of these blowpipes into a metsubushi. Taking the very low base cost into account, these cost factors do not make the weapon unaffordable, and that’s very good.
Ammunition becomes varied as well. You can fire bullets to deal crushing damage, darts to deal small piercing damage, or spikes to deal impaling damage. Darts can even be rifled to increase accuracy.
The article also provides rules for using blowpipes as melee weapons. Depending on the length, a blowpipe can be a baton, jo, or quarterstaff. This is not an effective melee weapon, but it can still save you in a pinch. You can even outfit it with a weighted head for increased swing damage or a sharp tip for impaling thrust damage.
Aside from providing three interesting martial starts for blowpipe users, the article also introduces a new perk – Breath Mastery. The perk has the Breath Control skill as a prerequisite, and increases your ST by 1 per level for the purpose of determining range and damage with the blowpipe. Blowpipes do not have ST-dependent damage, so I assume this was supposed to be a flat +1 to damage. Or maybe +1 per two levels? I don’t know.
Now let’s take a look at this – a normal blowpipe with a mouthpiece, the wide-mouthed option, and very long spikes as ammunition – will deal 1d+1 impaling damage with a range of STx2. All that on an ST 3 weapon. Considering the typical combat distances, this actually becomes not only a viable, but a superior weapon even to bows in certain situations, even without poison. This is especially relevant to small characters, such as halflings and goblins. If you add the Breath Mastery perk, things become even deadlier. And what about Fine or Very Fine ammunition? I think it might even be unfair to make Very Fine spikes that deal +2 damage.
But this is still not everything GURPS has for blowpipes. If you open up GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 12: Ninja, you will find another weapon that uses this skill, but that’s not actually a blowpipe. Fukumi-bari, also known as mouth darts or mouth needles, are stored in the mouth and then spat at the enemy. I remember this weapon from D&D’s Arms and Equipment Guide, but it was spelled there as fukimi-bari, not fukumi-bari, and I am happy to know that it exists in GURPS as well. Unlike the blowpipe, fukumi-bari has ST-dependent damage. It’s not impressive, but you get many style points for using the mouth darts. Just remember not to apply contact poison to them. The same book also has a blowpipe mount that makes using metsubushi faster.
Finally, I want to spotlight another rule inconsistency. Metsubushi is said to take too long to reload in combat in GURPS Low-Tech, even though no numbers are given. GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 12: Ninja says that reloading a metsubushi takes one minute. Pyramid #3-33 says that a metsubushi takes twice as long to reload as a normal blowpipe, which means that it usually takes 4 second to reload. However, in the ammunition table it says that reload time for a powder is 10 seconds. Which one is correct? I don’t know, but 10 seconds sounds fine to me.
And I think that this is it, unless I missed something. I hope that I made the blowpipe look more effective and interesting to you. You can fire darts, poisoned or not, various powders, or even use it as a flamethrower! Still, in most situations it’s a subpar weapon, but it does seem like a good assassination weapon taking the deadliness of poisons into account. It requires a quite large point investment – it’s a Hard skill, and you probably want some other skills to complement it, such as Stealth, Camouflage, Climbing, and Poisons.
Bolas
Bolas is another rarely used weapon skill in GURPS. A bolas is a length of cord with two or more weights attached. Typically, it is used to hunt small game or stop herd animals, but it can also be used in combat. Bolas in an Average difficulty DX-based skill that has no default. You can ready a bolas quickly by rolling against Fast-Draw (Flexible). This skill specialty was introduced in GURPS Martial Arts.
If we look at the weapon table in GURPS Low-Tech, we will only see two entries – bola perdida and bolas. Both of them are TL0 weapons. Accuracy is low, cost is low, ST requirement is low, and Bulk is low.
What is the difference between the weapons? Bola perdida is just a weight fastened to a thong. Bolas consists of two or more weights attached to cords and knotted together. This also includes a TL3 variant called mijin that consists of three short chains weighted with iron balls, linked to a central ring. The statistics don’t change – metal is denser and pricier, but there’s less of it. A bola pedida deals swing crushing damage, weighs less, travels further, costs less. Bolas deals thrust-1 crushing damage, which is much less than bola perdida, cannot be thrown as far as the former, costs more, and weighs more. Why would you choose the bolas, when bola perdida seems better? Because bola perdida does not perform the basic function of this weapon category – entanglement. Bola perdida is just a one-shot sling that also throws the sling itself, while the bolas also entangles the target. Also, I have to mention that both these weapons can be used in melee with the Flail skill, and bolas deals more damage that way.
Let’s talk about how entanglement works. These rules are described on page 410 of GURPS Basic Set. A bolas can be aimed at any body part, and can be dodged, blocked, or parried. A successful parry with a cutting weapon ruins the cords and the bolas itself. I assume that this does not apply to bolas made with chains instead of cords. Any other parry results in the bolas hitting the parrying arm or weapon.
A successful hit deals damage and entangles the target. To escape, the victim must have a free hand, and must make three successful DX rolls. Each attempt is a Ready maneuver. Animals roll at -3, or -6 if they only have hooves.
If you hit a weapon, or an arm or hand that is holding something, you must roll a Quick Contest of your Bolas skill vs. the victim’s ST. If you win, the target drops whatever it was carrying. Shields that are strapped to the arm are not affected. If you hit a leg or foot, you entangle two legs. A running victim must make a successful DX roll or fall, taking 1d-2 damage. If you hit the neck, the bolas cuts off the target’s breathing until he escapes.
And that’s it. This is a very niche ranged weapon, but it’s actually not that bad. The entanglement can be a fight-changer, and the fact that a bolas can be used as a decent flail in melee is pretty good. I haven’t seen this weapon being used in GURPS yet, but I would love to give it a shot.
Bows
A bow is a simple ranged weapon, right? Right? It might seem that way, but in GURPS, bows can be very complex. This is going to be a long wall of text, because there’s a lot that has to be covered or at least mentioned, so bear with me. I am going to explain everything bow-related in GURPS.
Bow is an Average difficulty skill that doesn’t have any specialties. Or does it? GURPS High-Tech introduces the Slingshot specialty at TL7. If your low-tech world has an alchemical equivalent of rubber, then this specialty might appear much earlier. I doubt that it will upset the balance.
To start off, let’s take a look at the weapon table in GURPS Low-Tech. This table only has six bows. A half of them appear at TL0 – the bow is a very ancient invention. As you can see, they deal decent damage, have decent accuracy, decent range, aren’t heavy, take 2 seconds to reload, and their ST requirement is manageable. Cost ranges from cheap to very expensive, and Bulk is very high. Harsh Realism for Ranged Weapons (p. LT75) suggests giving cheap bows a Malfunction value, and to halve the Accuracy of all bows, rounding it down. Of all these bows, the tubular bow needs a special mention – it is effectively rugged – it has +2 HT and DR 7. GURPS Low-Tech Companion 2 has DR and HP values for all the bows, plus it has rules for cutting the bowstring with a well-aimed attack.
GURPS Fantasy Folk: Elves has two new bows – the elven warbow that is of fine quality and shoots silently, and the seabow that is made of waterproof materials and hence can be used underwater. Normal bows cannot, but they can be made out of waterproof materials for twice the price, according to Pyramid #4-4. GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 12: Ninja has the han-kyu which is identical to the short bow, but can fit into a loose sleeve. It costs $100.
You cannot really use a bow in melee, but it can be used to parry like a light club. However, parrying just once with a bow will ruin it as a bow. This probably does not apply to the tubular bow. GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 11: Power-Ups has the Bow Fencer power-up that allows the user to parry with a bow without damaging it.
Looks simple enough, but now I have to introduce the concept of rated ST. Each bow has rated ST that determines its range and damage. It’s not the same as the minimum ST requirement you can see on the table. This ST requirement determines the minimum rated ST for this bow model. The maximum rated ST for a bow model equals to this requirement multiplied by 3. So, even though damage is listed as modified thrust damage value and range is given in multiples of ST, you do not actually use your ST value to determine them – you use the ST of the bow instead. The bow’s ST does not affect its weight or weight of arrows.
Weaker users can shoot a stronger bow, but will suffer -1 to skill per each point of ST they lack and lose an identical number of FP if the fight lasts long enough to tire you out. Even though they lower ST than the bow they are using, they deal damage using the bow’s ST. It is compensated by these penalties. On the other hand, if you are stronger than the bow, you still cannot deal more damage than the bow’s ST would allow.
To make things super clear, let’s illustrate it:
We have a regular bow with a rated ST of 12. A character with ST 10 will be able to use it – he will deal damage using the bow’s ST 12, but will be at -2 to skill, and will lose 2 FP when the fight ends. A character with ST 12 will deal damage using the bow’s ST 12 with no penalties. A character with ST 15 will deal damage with the bow’s ST 12 and will suffer no penalties.
GURPS Low-Tech says on page 74 that if you are using a foot bow (a bow built to be braced with both feet) then your effective ST is 20-30% higher. Also, I should say that bows use Arm ST and Striking ST for the purpose of being drawn, not Lifting ST. This might sound counterintuitive, but it’s mostly a game balance thing. I will come back to it later, because a certain article replaces it with Lifting ST.
I should also mention the Strongbow perk that appears in many places. This one lets you increase your effective ST for the purpose of drawing the bow if your Bow skill is high enough. If you are playing an archer, you really should take it, it is very good.
Let’s explore the ammunition choices. A normal arrow that deals impaling damage costs $2.
At TL3 and higher, arrows may have armor-piercing “bodkin” points. This changes damage from impaling to piercing, and adds an armor divisor of (2), but does not affect cost or weight.
GURPS Basic Set has rules for improvised flaming arrows on page 410. These require an oil- or –fat-soaked cloth and 10 seconds to prepare, and must be used within three seconds of preparation. They give -2 to hit, but deal one point of burning damage as a linked effect.
GURPS Fantasy Folk: Elves says that a water-resistant arrow costs $4.
On page 73 of GURPS Low-Tech, you can find more variant ammunition – barbed arrows, blunt arrows, cutting arrows, barbed cutting arrows, fire arrows, fire-cage arrows, flight arrows, and humming bulb arrows. This selection of ammunition makes bows significantly more versatile.
If you remember the section on knives, you probably remember that arrows can be used in melee with the Knife skill. GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 11: Power-Ups has the Bow Fencer power-up that allows the wielder to use arrows as melee weapons much more effectively.
Also, remember that ammunition is quite cheap. You can apply Fine or Very Fine quality modifiers to get +1 or +2 to damage. Also, you can have Balanced arrows that give +1 to skill, and a Balanced bow that gets +1 to Accuracy.
Now let’s talk about how bows are used in combat and what interesting tricks and techniques are available.
For a bow, readying an arrow takes a second, but a Fast-Draw (Arrow) roll makes this instantaneous. Drawing the bow by hand takes another second. Shooting takes a second.
A leg-powered bow takes 3 seconds to draw, plus 3 seconds to crouch or lie down and place one foot on the bow (4 seconds for both feet). If a footbowman stays on the ground, subsequent cycles need only 2 seconds to place the feet. Ammo-readying and shooting times don’t change.
If you come from the D&D background, you will probably be frustrated with how slow the bows are. After all, in D&D you could fire many shots per round. Fortunately, GURPS Martial Arts has rules for quick-shooting bows on page 119. An archer who has already drawn an arrow can try to ready and shoot his bow in one smooth motion. This requires an Attack or All-Out Attack (Determined) maneuver – a Heroic Archer (p. 45) may instead choose Move and Attack – and calls for two Bow rolls at -6. For anyone, All-Out Attack (Determined) adds +1 to both rolls. Heroic Archer halves these penalties, and Weapon Master halves them again. Heroic Archer is a new advantage. This is something like Gunslinger, but for archers. There are many benefits, I will not list them. The first roll is to draw the bow. Success lets the archer ready his bow instantly and shoot at once. Failure means he readies his bow too slowly to attack this turn but can shoot at no special penalty on a later turn. Critical failure means he drops his bow. The second roll is to shoot. This is only possible if the first roll succeeds. Treat this as an ordinary ranged attack, but with the extra penalty above. Thus, if you precede the quick-shooting attempt with a successful Fast-Draw roll to ready an arrow instantly, you will be able to shoot every turn!
GURPS Martial Arts also has new rules that might be relevant to archers. First, it has rules for using Fast-Draw to draw multiple arrows at once. Second, it has rules for using Fast-Draw in awkward position, which might come into play when using a footbow. Third, it has optional rules for prediction shots and ranged feints. Prediction shots basically are ranged Deceptive Attacks, and ranged feints are… ranged feints. I suggest being careful with these two rules. For example, prediction shots for bows might be okay, but do not even think about allowing this rule in Ultra-Tech games. Personally, I do not use these at all.
You can use the Dual-Weapon Attack option with a Bow if you have two arrows ready. This way, you can attack one target twice or attack two different targets. GURPS Tactical Shooting limits this to a 30-degree angle. In cinematic games, you can improve this application with a technique.
For cinematic archers, GURPS Basic Set has the Zen Archery skill that allows you to mitigate range penalties.
There are some techniques that can be used with bows. GURPS Martial Arts has Close Combat and Mounted Shooting. GURPS Fantasy has Chariot Archery, Shoot Backward, and Shoot Over Mount. Jason Levine, also known as PK, has another technique for archers on his website – Instant Shot. I will link it in the description. GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 11: Power-Ups has the Quick-Shot power-up. If you deconstruct it, you will get a technique that lets you buy off the quick-shooting penalty.
Pyramid #3-61 also has two perks for archers – Flawless Nocking and Flawless Fast-Draw.
Finally, GURPS Fantasy Folk: Elves has the underwater archery technique that lets you buy off a penalty for using bows underwater that… doesn’t actually exist. So, this technique is useless. Speaking of using bows underwater – there are rules for that in Pyramid #3-26, but some of them were reprinted in GURPS Martial Arts: Yrth Fighting Styles and GURPS Fantasy Folk: Elves. Normal bows and arrows cannot be used at all, unless made of waterproof materials or properly enchanted. Ranges are divided by 10, and damage is halved. Shots through the water surface also suffer from refraction across the boundary; add a -4 penalty to hit. Maybe the Underwater Archery technique was meant to buy off this penalty?
GURPS Low-Tech describes two accessories for bows that enable some interesting options.
The first one is the arrow guide that allows you to shoot lighter ammo that can’t be reused against you by enemies who lack similar equipment. You fasten or hold this gutter-like accessory in place and launch short, unfeathered darts down it. Any type of bow may use an arrow guide. Its darts have a flatter trajectory than arrows, but are lighter: +1 to Acc, -1 to damage. Change Shots to 1(3); the dart must first be grasped and then placed in the groove before drawing the bow. Other stats are unchanged. Guide: $50, 0.5 lb. Dart: $0.50, 0.03 lb.
The second device is the panjagan – fastener that fastens together five arrows, allowing them to be nocked and fired as one. Once launched, the arrows would separate. A panjagan costs $10, neg. This reduces the bow’s range and accuracy, as well as the arrows’ hitting power. A group of five arrows gives -2 to hit, -2 to damage, half Range, and RoF 1x5. Reloading time is normal, but Fast-Draw (Arrow) attempts to draw clusters of arrows are at -3, in addition to any other penalties. Trick shooters were known to fire as many as 10 arrows this way! There’s no evidence that this was ever done in battle, but the GM may wish to let cinematic archers try. This gives -4 to hit, -4 to damage, half Range, and RoF 1x10. Thus, if you are planning to use this device, you have to familiarize yourself with the shotgun rules.
You’re probably waiting for me to mention the Deadly Spring – an article from Pyramid #3-33, so let’s talk about it. This article is not for players, but for the GMs. And not for just any GM, but for a GM who is willing to dive deep into the mathematics and physics behind bows to design your own. You will see very scary formulae that have absolutely incomprehensible concepts, such as… cube root and square root! But jokes aside, even the article suggests using a spreadsheet, so if you’re planning to design bows, just open up Microsoft Excel. Even though most of the physics used in the article is known to me, I have never used this article. However, I really appreciate its existence. I can imagine a person getting inspired by all this and making a list of custom-made bows and arrows, especially if he could come up with numbers for fictional materials, such as dragon bone. That could be fun.
I guess that for the sake of completionism, I have to mention that GURPS High-Tech has compound bows and Pyramid #3-96 has an article about ultra-tech bows.
And that’s finally it. As you can see, archery is not that simple in GURPS. On the other hand, this amount of detail might make playing an archer more satisfying to you. I hope this was helpful.
PK’ Instant Shot technique - https://www.mygurps.com/index.php?n=Main.NewTechniques
Broadswords and Shortswords
When you think of a fantasy fighter or a medieval knight, you are probably thinking about swords. The sword is an iconic weapon, and GURPS has many categories of swords. Today, I would like to talk about the largest melee weapon category – Broadsword, and also Shortswords. Broadsword is an Average difficulty skill that has many defaults – Force Sword-4, Rapier-4, Saber-4, Shortsword-2, and Two-Handed Sword-4. Shortsword is another Average difficulty skill, but it has even more defaults. I guess I should also mention the Force Sword skill that deals with various energy blades. There’s no such weapons in GURPS Low-Tech, but this skill still might be useful if you have a magical energy weapon.
If we look at the weapon table, we can see that the first Broadswords appear on TL0, but they aren’t real swords. Jo and light club are crushing weapons that are just wielded like swords. Macuahuitl is an obsidian-edged club that has some special rules. If it parries or is parried by any weapon, or is used to strike DR 2+, it suffers -1 to cutting damage until repaired. In addition, on any successful attack or successful parry against an armed attack, roll 1d; on 1-2, the edge breaks, reducing the macuahuitl to a club that does swing+1 crushing damage. Fortunately, the weapon has two edges – the user can reverse it (a free action) and use the other side until it, too, breaks! I like these obsidian weapons. There’s also the tebutje that isn’t on the table, but is in the text. On TL1, we have the khopesh that can also be used with the Axe/Mace skill. And only on TL2, we get some actual swords, then even more of them on TL3 and 4.
Damage-wise, broadswords are very versatile – you can deal crushing, cutting, and impaling damage, and get access to both swinging and thrusting attacks. Damage bonuses are okay, but nothing extraordinary. The pata is a special case – thrust + 3 impaling is nothing to sneeze at. If you are observant, you probably notice that all broadswords have Reach 1 on TL 0, 1, and 2, and only on TL 3 and 4 you have some swords that have Reach 2. No broadsword can be used properly at Reach C – that’s a downside that can seriously hamper the swordsman in certain situations. Most broadswords are balanced, but some of them have unbalanced parry.
The average weight of a broadsword is around 3 pounds. This means that you shouldn’t worry too much about having your weapon broken, unless you are facing somebody with a heavy two-handed axe or mace, or a polearm. Minimum ST requirements are also nice – from 9 to 11. Thus, even an average person should be able to wield most broadswords.
Some swords have special features. For example, the khopesh has a sharpened hook. The hook sword also has one, alongside a hilt that can be used to punch. Pata and backsword have basket hilts that protect the hand and enhance punches. When using the estoc, reduce penalty for targeting chinks in armor by -2. Some of the broadswords can be used in two hands, using the Two-Handed Sword skill. These swords are jo, bastard sword, bokken, katana, longsword, thrusting bastard sword, and late katana. Finally, shotel has -2 to hit, but also -1 to block and parry for the enemy.
As you can see, the broadsword is a very versatile, good weapon, but it has a downside – the price. Broadswords are expensive, unless we’re talking about TL0 jo and light club. For example, a thrusting broadsword costs $600, when the starting money at TL3 is only $1,000. And if you want to have a Balanced or Fine broadsword, you will have to pay much, much more. If you want a broadsword as your starting weapon and do not want to buy Wealth, consider buying a cheap quality broadsword.
Now let’s take a look at the shortswords. Just like broadswords, they appear on TL0 with crushing batons and obsidian cutting weapons. However, proper shortswords appear on TL1, and the rest are TL2 and 4 blades. The damage types are the same, but damage bonuses are, obviously, worse. Reach is almost always 1 yard, but some shortswords can be used in close combat, which is a nice bonus. All shortswords are balanced, but short baton has a penalty to parry. Most of the shortswords are much lighter than broadswords, and hence have lower ST requirements. Outliers here are the falchion and large quadrens that weigh as much as a broadsword. Shortswords still are quite expensive, but much more affordable than the broadswords. Shortswords do not really have any special features. They are just shorter, lighter, and cheaper broadswords, and that’s exactly why I decided to combine them in a single post.
Aside from simply stabbing and swinging, what can you do with a sword? First, you can wield a sword in reversed grip (p. MA111). This way, you improve your thrusting damage, Feints, and Deceptive Attacks, but you hamper your Reach and swinging attacks. However, using your Reach 1 sword in reversed grip allows you to use it in close combat with no penalties, and this is great.
Another way to drive off an enemy who has invaded your personal space is pummeling (p. MA111). In this case, you use unarmed combat skills to hit, but not putting a few points into unarmed combat skills usually is a big mistake.
You can wield a sword in Defensive Grip (p. MA109-110). This improves your Parry against frontal attacks, but decreases it against side attacks. So, use it only when fighting in single combat. If you are using a one-handed sword, you get a penalty to hit, but a bonus to damage. If you are using a broadsword that can also be used in two hands, such as a bastard sword, you decrease the breakage chance and hamper your attacks even further, and decrease damage.
But that’s not all! Swords have some exclusive rules – they have a second Defensive Grip. You can place a hand just behind the tip. This works the same as the normal Defensive Grip, but your reach drops to C, which can be good, and damage becomes thrust impaling – or thrust crushing, if blunt. Swinging becomes impossible. However, when using this grip, you remove -2 from the penalty to target chinks in armor, and this bonus stacks with similar bonuses. So, if you are using an estoc in this grip, you remove -4 from the penalty to target chinks in armor.
In some situations, you can also grip the sword by the blade and bash enemies with the hilt, or use the crosspiece with the Hook technique. Using a sword this way requires the Two-Handed Axe/Mace skill. The book doesn’t actually say what damage using a sword this way does, and if you are taking any penalty to hit. I suggest treating it as an improvised club or mace. Apply -2 to hit, and determine the damage by finding a mace of a similar weight on the weapon table. You’d probably need some DR on your hands to perform this trick, but you can do it with bare hands. Would it do any damage to your hands? It probably would. I would treat it as thr-3 cutting, or something like that.
You can use a sword to grapple with the Armed Grapple technique. If you use the Choke technique, then your choking damage becomes cutting, and you should remember that cutting damage has an increased wounding multiplier when hitting the neck. This rule is expanded to cover all Armed Grappled in GURPS Martial Arts: Technical Grappling.
GURSP Low-Tech Companion 2 has weapon customization rules, and many of them can be applied to swords. You can make any sword more cutty and less stabby by applying the falchion option. The armor-piercer optional rule allows making any impaling weapon an armor-piercing one, but then you have to remove the estoc from the weapon table. You can add a hook, disarming prongs, or attach a kusari to the handle. The hilt can be removed or improved. Finally, if you’re playing a cinematic game, you can introduce a new skill – Thrown Weapon (Sword) and the throwable sword modification.
Crossbows
Last time, I explained everything about bows, so now let’s tackle the crossbows. Yet again, this probably is going to be a long one. Some concepts work identically to the bow, but some new features make the crossbows much more different from the bows.
Unlike Bow, Crossbow is an Easy difficulty skill. By default, it has no specialties, but GURPS High-Tech introduces the Speargun specialty. It’s probably irrelevant on low TLs. Before we take a look at the weapon table, I have to explain the concept of rated ST again, because things work slightly differently for crossbows.
Each crossbow has rated ST that determines its range and damage. It’s not the same as the minimum ST requirement you can see on the table. This ST requirement determines the minimum rated ST for this crossbow model and ST required to aim and shoot it properly. The maximum rated ST for a crossbow model equals to this requirement multiplied by 3. So, even though damage is listed as modified thrust damage value and range is given in multiples of ST, you do not actually use your ST value to determine them – you use the ST of the crossbow instead. The crossbow’s ST does not affect its weight or weight of arrows.
Rated ST assumes a crossbow braced against the shoulder while drawing the string two-handed. Drawing a crossbow two-handed this way takes 2 seconds. Readying and placing a bolt takes 2 seconds. Shooting takes a second.
Typically, crossbows are lowered to the ground, braced with a foot in a stirrup or with one or both feet on the bow, and drawn by straightening up. This uses the strength of the entire body, which allows drawing a crossbow with 10-20% higher rated ST (+1 or +2 ST for a ST 10 crossbowman) with one leg, or 20-30% higher ST (+2 or +3 ST for a ST 10 warrior) with both legs. The stirrup appears at TL3, costs $50, and weighs 2 lbs. A leg-powered crossbow takes 3 seconds to draw, plus 2 seconds to crouch and place a foot in the stirrup. Ammo-readying and shooting times don’t change.
A similar TL3 alternative is the belt hook. Instead of bending, the crossbowman kneels, catches the string on the belt hook, and stands up, drawing the string. These three steps take 1 second, 2 seconds, and 2 seconds – a total of 5 seconds. It increases the user’s effective ST by +10-20%. A belt hook costs $25 and has a negligible weight.
Another TL3 cocking mechanism is the goat’s foot. A fork-like lever is braced against the crossbow stock. Two hooks extending out from the fork engage the string. Pulling back the fork’s handle draws the string back. Using it takes 20 seconds. It increases the user’s effective ST by +30-40%. A goat’s foot costs $50 and weighs 2 lbs.
Finally, there’s the detachable windlass. It takes 5 seconds to attach it to the weapon in the first place. Several models exist, each with its own specific ratios of draw time and ST.
At TL4, the cranequin appears. Costs the same as a windlass with the same ST multiplier, weighs half as much, and takes twice as long to use. Still requires 5 seconds to attach initially.
Unlike bows, crossbows use Arm ST and Lifting ST for the purpose of being cocked.
I should also mention the Crossbow Finesse perk that appears in many places. This one lets you increase your effective ST for the purpose of cocking the crossbow if your Crossbow skill is high enough. If you are playing a crossbowman, you really should take it, it is very good.
Here’s something that works differently for crossbows – even though you cannot draw a crossbow that’s too strong for you, you can ask your stronger friend to do that for you. You will still be able to shoot it.
Now, finally, let’s take a look at the weapon table in GURPS Low-Tech. The first crossbows appear at TL2. And the first crossbow on the table is just the crossbow. There are no special rules, but it gives us a good baseline – good damage, high Accuracy, good range, moderately heavy weight, a moderate cost and minimum ST of 7. So, the maximum rated ST for the normal crossbow is 21.
Then we have the gastraphetes. It deals more damage, has longer range, but is heavier, and is very expensive! It has a unique built-in cocking mechanism – the belly brace. A long slider is pushed out the front of the weapon, a claw at the end engages the string, and then the user leans into a curved stock, forcing back the slider. It increases the user’s effective ST by +30%. A typical gastraphetes has rated ST 13, so a ST 10 warrior should be able to draw it. Takes 2 seconds to prepare the slider, 2 seconds to lift, and 2 seconds to cock, plus 2 more seconds to draw and place the bolt. Its ammunition is heavier than normal, but it seems that it costs the same. Or something is missing.
The last TL2 crossbow is the repeating crossbow. It deals much lower damage, is much less accurate, and range is much shorter. It is also heavier and costs more than the normal crossbow. The catch is that it allows a much higher rate of fire. It has an ammunition hopper that holds 10 bolts. It’s operated by working a handle backward and forward manually. The shooter must take a Ready maneuver before each shot. A repeating crossbow takes a second to cycle and a second to shoot. Bolt placement is automatic. The description of the repeating crossbow says that its rated ST can’t exceed the user’s ST. The box that describes rates ST says that maximum rated ST is 70% of the user’s ST. The box is probably correct.
At TL3, we get even more crossbows. The first one is the composite crossbow. It deals better damage than the normal one, has longer range, but is slightly heavier and significantly more expensive. No special rules.
The next one is the pistol crossbow. Damage is lower, Accuracy is lower, range is shorter, weight is lower, but it costs the same as the standard crossbow. However, it has a pistol grip, so it requires two hands to ready, but only one to fire!
Next up is the prodd, sometimes spelled with a single D. Instead of bolts, it launches lead pellets that deal piercing damage. Special prodds exist that lob primitive naphta grenades or flasks with alchemical liquids. These have Accuracy 1 and Range -/x5 and can’t shoot pellets.
The last TL3 crossbow is the slurbow. This is a composite crossbow with an unusual arrow guide built in that can be loaded with one small dart or several. Statistics on the table are given for two medium-sized darts or five smaller ones.
All TL4 crossbows are made of steel. They are sturdier and heavier, and they allow for high rated ST; however, they are less efficient. Use half the rated ST to determine range and damage. Typical values: ST 15 for fowling crossbow, ST 20 for hunting crossbow, ST 30 for military crossbow, and ST 36 for siege crossbow. Usually, they are cocked with a cranequin. The siege crossbow also requires a tripod - $360, 19 lbs.
But wait, there’s more! GURPS Low-Tech has another table with crossbows on page 83. These are personal artillery weapons – ballistae and scorpions light enough to serve as personal weapons. Unlike the custom-built previous crossbows, these ones are standardized, so they have static damage and range values. They list two ST values. The first ST listed is that needed to aim and shoot the weapon effectively. The second, in brackets, is the mechanism’s rated ST. If this exceeds 10, only use it when pulling back the string by hand; reduce it to 10 when cranking the weapon.
Ammunition cost is different. Bolts: $33/lb. Lead Bullets: $1.60/lb. Stones: $1/lb. Lead bullets for ballistae give +1 to damage and make damage type large piercing (pi+) for 0.03-lb. and 0.06-lb. models, or huge piercing (pi++) for larger ones. Gadgeteers might lob other hard spheroids of suitable weight (e.g., chemical-filled glass balls) from ballistae.
Ballistae and scorpions have an aiming problem. These weapons typically have a narrow field of view between the springs. Seeing through this to aim is difficult! Before taking an Aim maneuver with the weapon, the operator must take a second and make a Vision roll to acquire the target. The following modifiers are applied: a basic +10; target’s SM; range penalties (p. B550), which can be offset by taking extra time (p. B346). The cheiroballistra is an improved design that does not have this flaw and lets you Aim normally.
Harsh Realism for Ranged Weapons (p. LT75) suggests giving cheap crossbows a Malfunction value, and to halve the Accuracy of all crossbows, rounding it down. GURPS Low-Tech Companion 2 has DR and HP values for all the crossbows, plus it has rules for cutting the cords with a well-aimed attack.
Let’s explore the ammunition choices. A normal crossbow bolt that deals impaling damage costs $2. A dart for a pistol crossbow is $1. A dart for a slurbow is $0.5. A lead pellet for a prod is $0.1
At TL3 and higher, bolt may have armor-piercing “bodkin” points. This changes damage from impaling to piercing, and adds an armor divisor of (2), but does not affect cost or weight.
On page 73 of GURPS Low-Tech, you can find more variant ammunition – barbed bolts, blunt bolts, cutting bolts, barbed cutting bolts, fire bolts, fire-cage bolts, flight bolts, and humming bulb bolts. This selection of ammunition makes crossbows significantly more versatile.
If you remember my post on knives, you probably remember that crossbow bolts can be used in melee with the Knife skill.
Also, remember that ammunition is quite cheap. You can apply Fine or Very Fine quality modifiers to get +1 or +2 to damage. Also, you can have Balanced bolts that give +1 to skill, and a Balanced crossbow that gets +1 to Accuracy.
Pyramid #3-26 has rules for using crossbows underwater, but some of them were reprinted in GURPS Martial Arts: Yrth Fighting Styles and GURPS Fantasy Folk: Elves. Normal crossbows and bolts cannot be used at all, unless made of waterproof materials or properly enchanted. Ranges are divided by 10, and damage is halved. Shots through the water surface also suffer from refraction across the boundary; add a -4 penalty to hit. Pyramid #4-4 suggests treating waterproof materials as a quality modifier that doubles the price.
If you’d like to design your own crossbow, you can use the Deadly Spring – an article from Pyramid #3-33. I guess that for the sake of completionism, I have to mention that GURPS High-Tech has compound crossbows.
And that’s finally it. As you can see, crossbows are complicated in GURPS, and the fact that rules are spread out across different pages does not help.
Fencing Weapons
In D&D 3.5, most fencing weapons, and some other were considered so-called “light” weapons that could be used with the Weapon Finesse feat. In GURPS, all weapon skills are based on DX. What makes fencing weapons different from the others? In this transcript, I will tell you everything about this weapon category.
First of all, fencing weapons do not belong to a single skill, but to five skills. All five are Average difficulty DX-based skills. Rapier covers all long, light thrusting swords. Saber covers all light cut-and-thrust swords. Smallsword covers short, light thrusting swords or one-handed short staffs and sticks. Main-Gauche is the skill of wielding a knife or jitte/sai in the “off” hand. Finally, GURPS Martial Arts added the Force Saber skill on page 215 that deals with fencing energy blades.
Now let’s take a look at the weapon table. As you can see, rapiers are thrusting blades… wait, why is there a swinging cutting attack? Shouldn’t cut-and-thrust fencing blades be covered by the Saber skill? Why is there only one saber in the table? Why is the saber identical to the light edged rapier, except for being slightly lighter? What is going on here?
I found two Krommposts on the forums that shed some light on this:
On rapiers: Real-world rapiers have edges. Like swords with blunt tips, rapiers with blunt edges are a weird GURPS-ism dating to Man to Man. It would be nice if we could change "edged rapier" to "rapier" and "thrusting broadsword" to "arming sword" or something, but we're stuck with convention.
On sabers: The GURPS fencing saber is neither a cavalry saber nor a sport saber. It's actually a third thing that comes closest to a dha or a shortish katana. It isn't entirely fictional, but it comes close . . . it's in the game to cover things like sleek, curving elven blades, and to allow those who want katanas to work like fencing weapons to have something suitable.
I tend to agree that the issue is more one of categorization than of omission. Quite a few styles that list Broadsword are functionally saber styles, and the Saber/Smallsword split probably wasn't well-thought-out. If I could do it over again, I would probably reduce the number of fencing skills from four (Main-Gauche, Rapier, Saber, and Smallsword) to three (Main-Gauche, Rapier, and Smallsword), reinstituted the Short Staff skill, and tossed anything called a "saber" under Broadsword, Rapier, or Shortsword, depending on length and heft.
So, if you do not like the Saber-Rapier skill split, feel free to remove the Saber skill. Or leave it as is. The saber is superior to the light edge rapier, but it needs its own skill to offset that! I also expanded the Saber skill with the D&D elven courtblade, it works perfectly there.
Now let’s actually inspect the tables. As you can see, almost all rapiers appear on TL4, with only jian appearing on TL3. Some of them can only thrust, but some can also cut. But remember that even with a thrust-only rapier you can deal cutting damage with tip slash. The damage bonuses are not good. Thrust +1 and unmodified or even penalized swing is definitely not something to write home about. Reach is pretty good. Being able to hit at Reach 1 and Reach 2 will help you keep the enemy at bay. Being unable to fight in close combat is a downside, but as a fencer you should not let anyone come that close to you. Weight ranges from 2 to 3 pounds. Three-pounders should only worry about their weapon being broken when facing an enemy with a two-handed axe, mace, or a Polearm, while lighter rapiers and saber have many more weapons to worry about. Strength requirements are okay – from 8 to 10, so even an average character will be able to wield a rapier. Cost ranges from high to very high, so if you want a more affordable rapier, apply the cheap quality modifier. Improving you rapier will cost a lot too. And now let’s take a look at the primary advantage of fencing weapons – fencing parry. See the F in the Parry column? That’s what it means.
When you are wielding a fencing weapon, you get a +3 bonus to Parry when you are retreating, so it rewards mobility. This bonus makes it very hard to hit you. However, all fencing weapon attacks and parries are penalized for encumbrance. It should be clarified that medium encumbrance applies -2 to both attacks and parries, not -2 to attacks and -1 to parries. The Armor Familiarity perk can mitigate this penalty. As a fencer, you should always be aware of your surroundings to be able to retreat for that sweet +3 bonus. Also, when you use a fencing weapon, you get halved cumulative parries penalties, which helps immensely. And that final downside is that you cannot parry flails at all!
Before I talk about techniques and other stuff, let’s take a look at the smallsword table. There are only three weapons – the TL0 short staff, and two TL4 blades. These weapons are much lighter than rapiers and hence prone to breakage. However, they are also cheaper, and have a much lower ST requirement. The dress smallsword can even be used in close combat! A stick is usually easy to find in a pinch, so an improvised short staff could be a good defensive weapon when you do not have anything else.
And the final table is the main-gauche table. It is comprised of weapons of other categories, namely Knife and Jitte/Sai, that can be used with this skill. The primary use of the Main-Gauche skill is parrying with the off-hand. As you can see, any knife that is wielded with this skill not only loses its -1 penalty to Parry, but also becomes a fencing weapon! Also, since this is the primary function of the skill, Main-Gauche parries do not take the off-hand penalties. If you attack with a main-gauche, then the normal penalties are applied. You still can use a main-gauche with this skill in your primary hand, and you will still have a fencing parry, but you will also be able to attack at the full skill level. This is why Knife is an Easy skill, but Main-Gauche is an Average skill. I will not go over the weapon here, because I will talk about them in more detail in the future. I just want to show you what weapons can be used with the Main-Gauche skill, and what benefits the skill provides.
Fencing weapons have some unique techniques. Bind Weapon (p. MA67) allows you to use a fencing weapon to bind another fencing weapon after a successful parry. You can use it offensively too. Basically, this is a form of a weapon grapple that has the possibility to disarm, and also prevents the opponent from retreating, which hampers fencers significantly. It is the most useful when you have another weapon, such as a main-gauche, but you can always make a kick in the groin or something similar. If you are wielding a jutte with the Main-Gauche skill, then you can use this technique to bind any weapon, not just a fencing weapon.
There’s also the cinematic Initial Carving technique for the Zorro fans out there.
You can use a fencing weapon in a Defensive Grip (p. MA110-111). In addition to the usual effects, you become able to parry flails at the usual penalties. I am not sure if you can wield a rapier in a Reversed Grip (p. MA111), but there’s nothing in the rules that says that you can’t. You do penalize your defenses, so I doubt that it is worth it. And the weapon probably should not count as a fencing one in this grip. Since rapiers, sabers, and smallswords are swords, they also get access to the second Defensive Grip that allows for a finer point control. This makes your Reach C only, reduces damage to thrust impaling, makes swings impossible, and removes -2 from the penalty to target chinks in armor.
And that’s it. If you give GURPS Martial Arts a thorough read, you will find many fencing styles. All of them capitalize on mobility and defense, with such techniques as Bind Weapon, Counterattack, Disarming, Feint, and Targeted Attack. Many have Main-Gauche or Cloak as a complementary skill. A fencing weapon would be a good choice for a new player, in my opinion, as while there are not many special rules, most of them benefit your survivability and help you familiarize yourself with the combat system in general. Thank you for watching, and I’ll see you next time!
Saber post #1 - http://forums.sjgames.com/showpost.php?p=1793601&postcount=27
Saber post #2 - http://forums.sjgames.com/showpost.php?p=535286&postcount=18
Flails
Flails in fantasy games are not as popular as swords and even axes. After all, if I recall correctly, in D&D 3.5 flails did not have any special rules or features. In GURPS, however, flails work very differently from most other weapons, and they are dangerously effective. In this transcript, I will tell you everything about flails in GURPS – both one-handed and two-handed ones.
First of all, unlike most melee weapon skills, Flail and Two-Handed Flail are Hard difficulty skills. This alone might turn off some players, as this makes investing into these skills feel suboptimal, when there are so many Average difficulty skills available.
Let’s take a look at the weapon tables. As you can see, the first flails appear at TL0. Damage is always swing crushing – not very versatile. The Morningstar has a whopping swing+3 damage, which is a lot for a one-handed weapon. The two-handed flail has swing+4, even higher! For one-handed flails, Reach is always 1 – that’s okay, but being unable to fight properly in close combat is a downside. All flails are unbalanced, unfortunately – this is a big disadvantage, so a shield is advised. The TL0 flails also have -2 to Parry – they definitely are not good defensive weapons. If you look at the price, you will see that the flails are quite cheap. Cheaper than swords, at least. Most flails are actually quite light – only the Morningstar and the two-handed flail are heavy. The Morningstar also has a high ST requirement. I should note that bola perdida and bolas can be thrown – I will devote a post to them, so I won’t talk about this aspect of them here. The weighted scarf can also be used as a garrote, but again – I’ll save that for the garrote post.
Now let’s talk about the signature feature of flails. Because flails tend to wrap around the target’s shield or weapon, attempts to block them are at -2 and attempts to parry them are at -4. Fencing weapons and knives cannot parry them at all! An unarmed fighter can parry a flail, but at -4 in addition to any penalty for parrying unarmed. A fencing weapon can parry flails at normal penalties if held in a Defensive Grip. Also, the fact that knives cannot parry flails is only mentioned in the Flail skill description and nowhere else, so it is easy to miss. I didn’t even know about it before writing the script for this post.
This alone makes Flails very good. Typically, block and parry are higher than dodge, so these penalties are significant. Fencers struggle the most, because flails just no-sell their defensive benefits. Some flails are worse at penalizing defenses. These penalties are halved for the bola perdida, bolas, nunchaku, thonged club, and weighted scarf.
I should also mention that the two-handed flail skill has the three-part staff. It’s an exotic weapon that takes a -1 penalty to hit, but this penalty can be negated with the Exotic Weapon Training perk. While the damage is slightly lower than that of the flail, the three-part staff has Reach 1-3 without the need to take a Ready maneuver to change it. And it is cheap too. In addition, it has the second weapon profile that is used for Dual-Weapon Attacks – you hit two targets – one with each end of the weapon. GURPS Fantasy-Tech 2: Weapons of Fantasy also has double-ended flails – like the D&D dire flail. These weapons are expensive, but not unbalanced, unlike other flails.
Flails also have a unique technique – Return Strike. You can exploit the flexibility of the flail to strike the enemy from behind while facing him. If the enemy is unfamiliar with this move, he gets no defense at all! Otherwise, his defense is penalized further. This is a very fun technique.
If you check GURPS Low-Tech Companion 2, you can see the weapon customization options. For flails, not much is available. You can give your Morningstar a long handle. Bolas, nunchaku, and thonged club can be given a chain instead of a rope. Or you could add a hilt. If you allow cinematic options, then you can make a throwing flail. Such flails are thrown with the Bolas skill. Since all flails deal crushing damage, you cannot improve their damage with quality modifiers, and that’s a shame. Another small downside is that there is no Fast-Draw (Flail) skill.
Flamethrowers
Flamethrowers definitely are not something you think about in your typical fantasy game, but they historically existed for a long time in some form or another. And, of course, if there is something in real life, then it probably exists in GURPS as well, so let’s take a look at the low-tech flamethrowers.
First of all, all flamethrowers are Jet weapons. This means that despite being ranged weapon, they are treated as long melee attacks and hence take no range or speed penalties. Second, GURPS High-Tech introduced a new maneuver – All-Out Attack (Jet). A flamethrower can be played over an area up to three yards wide as an All-Out Attack. Roll separately to hit each target. Divide damage and burn duration by the width of the area (round down).
I have already talked about the incendiary blowpipe in my post about blowpipes, so I will ignore it here. What interests me is the Liquid Projector (Flamethrower) weapon list. By the way, Liquid Projector is an Easy difficulty skill. We only have five weapons here – cheirosiphon, eruptor, fire-lance, fire-siphon, and iron fire-lance. They can be further split into two groups.
The first group is fire-lances. A fire-lance is something like a bamboo or paper rocket tied to a wooden pole with its exhaust pointing toward the enemy. The user needs a Ready maneuver to take hold of it,
another to light it, and a third to shift grip to full length. Once used, it’s discarded. It’s range is quite short, and damage is not impressive. Once ignited, it spews flame for 60 seconds and cannot be shut off prematurely. It is quite cheap, however, only $50.
The iron fire-lance is made of iron, not bamboo or paper. It deals more damage and burns for 120 seconds, but is much heavier and more expensive. There are some additional features – it can be loaded with ceramic shards to deal linked small piercing damage and is can be reloaded. This requires 10 minutes and an Explosives (Fireworks) roll.
The eruptor is a semi-portable version of the iron fire-lance. Typically, it is placed on a static mount that costs $270 and weighs 13.5 lbs., but a sufficiently strong character would be able to wield it normally. It burns for five minutes, deals even more damage, has longer range, but is expensive and heavy. It’s rechargeable in the same way as an iron fire-lance, but this takes 20 minutes.
Now, there is something that feels undercooked here. Did you notice that there’s no information about how much ammunition for the fire-lances costs and weighs? How do you reload it then? I was about to go on a tirade here, but I remembered something – the demolisher template from Pyramid #3-36 that is based around primitive gunpowder weapons, including fire-lances.
This Pyramid article has another weapon – the burner. This one uses an alchemical substance called shattersand that is essentially serpentine powder. The burner itself is based on the iron fire-lance, but it burns for only 30 seconds, but deals more damage. It uses the Liquid Projector (Burner) skill, but it’s just a renamed Liquid Projector (Flamethrower). The article also says that you can parry with a burner in melee by using Two-Handed Axe/Mace skill, and that you can make it into a combination weapon with a great axe or a warhammer. This increases the ST requirement by 1, as it makes the weapon slightly more heavy and expensive.
But, most importantly, it gives use the price and weight of ammunition. Plus, it says that a critical failure on the reload roll causes an explosion. So, let’s see – reloading a burner requires 3 pounds of shattersand that costs $50 per pound. Shattersand is five times as expensive as serpentine powder. Thus, to reload a normal iron-lance, you need 3 pounds of serpentine powder that costs $10 per pound. We can also extrapolate the numbers – even though the normal fire-lance cannot be recharged, it requires 1.5 pounds of serpentine powder, and the eruptor requires 7.5 pounds of serpentine powder. Without these numbers, I do not think these weapons are even usable, as you do not know how to reload them.
The second group consists of the cheirosiphon and the fire-siphon. The cheirosiphon resembles a squirt gun with a large tank attached and a fuse of slow match just outside the nozzle to ignite the fuel. It deals high burning damage and has ST-dependent range, unlike the rest of the flamethrowers. It is very heavy, but still is a hand-held weapon. A shot may hit a single solid target or spread out over a two-yard radius on water. Listed damage is for initial hit; continuing damage is 1d burn per second for 1d seconds after initial impact. The cheirosiphon takes 10 seconds to prepare for firing. After first shot, further shots may be fired continuously. They don’t have to be fired continuously, like the fire-lances. Unlike the fire-lances, this weapon is very expensive.
The fire-siphon is a mounted version of the former. Range is not ST-dependent, and the ammunition reservoir is five times larger. Unlike the cheirosiphon, the fire-siphon’s flames burn for 10d seconds after the initial impact, not 1d seconds. Also, it requires a two-man crew to operate the pump.
Readying it takes a variable time; roll vs. crew’s average ST every 10 seconds to see if the fuel has started to emerge. They may substitute ST-based Liquid Projector (Flamethrower) skill, if higher. After first shot, further shots may be fired continuously.
The book also mentions versions of these weapons that use naphta instead of Greek fire, but does not say anything about their stats. Also, I believe that all these weapons should deal large-area injury, like high-tech flamethrowers.
Can you guess the problem? Right, yet again, we know what is the ammunition for these weapons – the Greek fire – but we have no idea how much of it is required. Again, Dungeon Fantasy comes to the rescue. GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 7: Clerics has a low-tech flamethrower at the end of the book. It is similar to the cheirosiphon, and it says that a pint of fuel is good for one shot, and that each pint takes 30 seconds to load into the tank. Thus, if we use the same numbers, then the cheirosiphon can hold up to 12 pints of Greek fire, and the fire-siphon can hold up to 60 pints of Greek fire. Greek fire costs $10 per pint, and each pint weighs 1 pound. That sounds more or less okay to me.
And that’s it. As you can see, low-tech flamethrowers are unique weapons with lots of new rules, but they can be interesting to use. However, with just GURPS Low-Tech, they do not seem to be usable due to the reloading problem, but I have found the solutions.
Garrote
Have you ever seen a garrote being used in GURPS? Or in any tabletop RPG at all? I do remember using it once against the player characters, and that was fun. So, let’s talk about this obscure and very specialized weapon.
Garrote is an Easy difficulty DX-based skill. It can only be used on an unaware or helpless target, and you must attack from behind. This often requires investing in Stealth or using it in other situations when the target does not expect an attack. You must target the neck at the usual -5 penalty. But, since the target is helpless or unaware, you can always make it an All-Out Attack (Determined) for +4 and possibly Telegraphic Attack for another +4.
Despite the victim being unaware, he still can parry with a hand or a ready Reach C weapon, but at -3. He also usually is mentally stunned for an additional -4, so the chance of a successful defense is not high. I assume that you cannot do a retreating parry, because that would be silly, right? Wire garrotes do not exist on low TLs, but if they did, you would be able to damage the hand even on a successful parry.
What is nice is that you can choke the victim immediately, you do not have to wait until the next turn, and you get +3 to ST for that purpose! Rope garrotes deal crushing damage, but wire garrotes that do not exist on low TLs deal cutting damage. Do not forget that even crushing damage is increased against the neck! The victim also begins to suffocate.
To break free, the victim must win a Quick Contest of ST-5, Judo-3, or Wrestling-3 against your Garrote skill. Since Garrote is an Easy DX-based skill, you can get a high level for cheap, and you do not have to be very strong.
Let’s take a look at the weapon table in GURPS Low-Tech. There are only two garrotes – the actual garrote and the weighted scarf that I talked about in the previous post. Both are cheap, but the garrote is dirt cheap and has a negligible weight. They can only be used in close combat, and cannot be used to parry. I’d say that the weighted scarf is almost always superior, as you can use it as a flail. The book also suggests three improvised garrotes that can be used at -1 to skill – belt, bootlaces, and scarf. Only scarf deals full damage, belt and bootlaces choke at -1 damage.
And that’s it! I guess I could add that GURPS Martial Arts: Technical Grappling adapts these choking rules to the technical grappling system, but I found nothing else about this skill. As I said, I used the garrote against the player character once, but I think that you should be careful with that. I can feel very unfair to just be attacked with almost no chance to defend and then die. If you are planning to use it as a GM, make sure to remind the players about Back Strikes, Wild Swings, and all other rules that might help them fend off the assailant. I’m sure that after one encounter with garrote-wielding enemies, they will invest in neck armor.
Guns
The only category of personal low-tech weapons that I have not covered yet is the guns. Guns in fantasy games are a contentious topic. Some people believe them to be anachronistic, and some people just do not like the aesthetics. Personally, I’m okay with guns, but not with all guns. So, let’s take a look at what GURPS has to offer when it comes to low-tech firearms.
Before I get to the actual guns, I have to talk about the locks. The lock is the mechanism that ignites the powder and discharges the gun. GURPS has four types of locks.
The first and most primitive type is the cannonlock. It had a simple touchhole, like a cannon’s. Thrusting a handheld slow match or hot wire into the touchhole fired the gun. Cannonlock firearms appeared at TL3, unlike the more advanced guns. A slow match costs $2 and weighs 0.2 pounds per yard, burning for 1 inch per 15 minutes. You can also improvise it, but it will reduce your Malfunction rating.
Then we have the matchlock - this lock placed the burning match in a mechanical holder attached to the gun. Pulling a trigger moved the match into the touchhole. The glowing match made guns harder to conceal and highly visible at night. A critical failure on Fast-Draw (Ammo) may either extinguish the match or set off the powder prematurely, causing 1 point of burning damage to the user.
One of the more modern designs is the wheellock that uses a clockwork spring and a serrated wheel. Some parts of this mechanism can be improvised with certain skills.
Finally, we have to flintlock that is the most advanced TL4 design. There are different variants of this lock, and those may impose the familiarity penalty.
All right, now let’s take a look at the weapon tables. The thing that I have noticed with firearms that the statistics in Low-Tech actually are significantly different from those in the GURPS Basic Set, so I will show them side by side for comparison.
The first weapon category is the gonnes. These are primitive TL3 firearms. All are cannonlocks. They are used with the Guns (Gonne) specialty, but this specialty was only introduced in GURPS Low-Tech – in the Basic Set they were used with Guns (Musket). Basically, this is a miniature cannon on a long wooden pole.
Firing such a cannonlock requires looking at the touchhole rather than the target. This means sacrificing any Acc bonus for aiming and incurring -2 to hit for divided attention.
Some gonnes had two-man crews: a man to fire the gonne and a man to hold and aim it, avoiding the -2 and retaining the Acc bonus. Only the man aiming the weapon needs Guns skill. The one touching it off rolls against DX (or Guns, if better); success sets it off instantly, failure means the shot is delayed by a second, and critical failure indicates a dropped match or wire.
Unlike other firearms, gonnes can shoot not only lead bullets, but also crossbow bolts. Weird, isn’t it? Normal gonnes deal okay damage, but their range is not very good for guns. The handgonne from the Basic Set is very different from the Low-Tech gonne – just take a look at weight and reload time! GURPS Low-Tech, however, also has two other gonnes – the Mr. Facing-Both-Ways Gonne that can be flipped around with a Ready maneuver for a second shot, and the massive ten-eyes gonne that has five barrels on each end, allowing for what can count as rapid fire at this TL. While you can have a crossbow that is more effective than a normal gonne, the multibarreled guns actually give them an edge over other ranged weapons.
Pyramid #3-36 has the demolisher template for Dungeon Fantasy that is based around explosives and primitive firearms. It calls gonnes boomsticks and introduces double- and triple-barreled variants. They look absolutely fine and definitely would not unbalance anything. The article also has rules for using gonnes in melee – you can parry with the Two-Handed Axe/Mace skill, and can also turn your gonne into a combination weapon with a great axe or a warhammer.
You should also keep in mind that TL3 firearms use serpentine poweder, not corned powder. The boomsticks from Pyramid #3-36 use alchemical shattersand that is, essentially, serpentine powder. Keep it away from water and fire!
And that’s it for TL3 guns, but there’s many more on TL4. The first category is shotguns. They deal low damage, they have low range, but due to being shotguns, they can have a massive effective rate of fire. For example, the effective RoF of 175 gives a free +7 bonus to hit. This is massive! The blunderbuss also helps with Intimidation and is easier to reload while on a moving vehicle. All these shotguns are flintlocks, so this is very late TL4. Personally, I disallow them in my games. In fantasy games, many opponents will have no armor or light armor. And these weapons will simply shred such unlucky targets. Flintlocks do not exist, blunderbusses do not exist.
Pyramid #3-36 also has the musketeer template for Dungeon Fantasy. That one also have some blunderbusses with some new options for them. If you are planning to use one, I suggest you take a look at that article.
The next weapon group is muskets. The Basic Set only has two muskets, but GURPS Low-Tech has a whole plethora of them to choose from. The arquebus, caliver, musket, teppo, and winged tiger gun are matchlocks. The musket is special because it requires a musket rest. The teppo is special in that it uses serpentine powder despite being a TL4 gun. All of them deal good damage, except for the teppo that is pretty bad. Accuracy is moderate, range is good. Reload time is very long, and weight is quite high. The cost is pretty low, all things considered.
I ran some calculations, and despite damage being high, these matchlocks should not upset the balance too much and overshadow crossbows and bows. Remember, they are basically single-shot weapons with such long reload times. Still, in my games, I decided to lower arquebus damage to 2d+1, caliver damage to 3d, and musket damage to 4d, and increase their costs. I want firearms to be present in my setting, but I do not want them to be ubiquitous.
There are two wheellock muskets – the carbine and the wall gun. The appearance of the wheellock is when the firearms become better than muscle-powered weapons due to having lower reload time compared to crossbows with comparable damage values. Wheellocks and anything more advanced than them either do not exist in my games or exist in limited numbers.
The rest of the weapons – the flintlock carbine, all variants of fusil, and the puckle gun are flintlocks, even more advanced than wheellocks. This is late TL4 technology, so if you do not want the guns to overshadow older weapons, I suggest you forbid them. But if you want to play a proper late TL4 game – go ahead! It can be very fun, I have tried it an enjoyed it. I should mention that the fusil description hides some variants that are not present on the table, and that the flintlock carbine has a telescoping stock. By the way, there’s an entire article about the Puckle gun in Pyramid #3-52.
Pyramid #3-36 also has some muskets for Dungeon Fantasy games. Take a look at them, if you are thinking about introducing firearms in your game.
The next weapon category is the pistols. GURPS Low-Tech has many on the table. The only matchlock pistol is the tantsutsu. Despite being a TL4 weapon, it uses serpentine powder. There’s a good variety of wheellock and flintlock pistols to choose from, and even the bizarre duck’s foot pistol with some interesting special rules. Numbers-wise, even wheellock pistols should not overshadow other weapons, so I allow them in my games. Yeah, wheellock muskets are out, but wheellock pistols are in – just because I said so. I find that pistols provide another option for characters with very low ST, such as halflings.
Pyramid #3-36 has pistols for Dungeon Fantasy. I based my pistols on these statlines, because GURPS Low-Tech uses historical examples, while I was looking for something more generic.
GURPS Fantasy-Tech 1: The Edge of Reality also has combination weapons, such as the gun-knife, gun-sword, and even gun-shield. These are stylish, even if not super-effective, so they are fine in my book.
Finally, we have the rifles. There’s only three of them in GURPS Low-Tech, and with their Accuracy, range, cost, and reload times in mind, they might be appropriate only for late TL4 games. So, in my games they are very limited.
Pyramid #3-36 has some generic rifles for Dungeon Fantasy, if you want. GURPS Basic Set has no TL4 rifles.
I should also mention the air rifle from GURPS Fantasy-Tech 1: The Edge of Reality. This weapon is actually very cool and has a niche. I don’t think its inclusion would unbalance anything, so I allow them in my games.
So, with gun stats out of the way, let’s talk about the extra rules. Reloading the gun is not that straightforward. First, calibers are not standardize, so you will have to make your own ammunition. GURPS Low-Tech describes the process and the bullet-molding gear. Metal ammunition costs $20 per pound. If you are wielding a gun, make a note of how much a bullet costs for you. Second, reloading times vary depending on the lock of the gun, the side from which it is loaded, your posture, usage of cartridges, Fast-Draw (Ammo), and the Quick Reload perk from GURPS Tactical Shooting. The reloading processes are described on pages 94-95 of GURPS Low-Tech, so I suggest you to calculate your reloading time with and without a Fast-Draw (Ammo) roll.
Then, I think you should familiarize yourself with the Malfunction rules from the GURPS Basic Set. They are, in my opinion, are essential for firearms, especially low-tech ones.
The rest of the rules depend on how detailed you want to treat the firearms in your games. Enabling or omitting some of them might make firearms stronger or weaker, so you can adjust the desired power level by picking the right rules. GURPS Low-Tech has rules for wet conditions affect firearms, and Pyramid #3-36 has another variant of them. The same Pyramid also has rules for handling gunpowder and fire. Low-Tech also has rules for variant ammunition, careful loading, handling, cleaning, and maintenance. Finally, Pyramid #3-36 has rules for guns emitting clouds of smoke that impair vision, and GURPS Tactical Shooting (p. 16) provides an alternative.
In any case, try things out. If you do not like the result, feel free to adjust things or just embrace the gunpowder-heavy fantasy. Give GURPS Tactical Shooting a read if you want some gritty gunplay, or GURPS Gun Fu, if you’d like something cinematic – both of them have many interesting options and techniques for gunslingers.
Jitte/Sai
Jitte/Sai is a weapon skill in GURPS that I have never seen in use. I guess these weapons are even less popular than the garrote and lasso. However, they do have some special mechanics that I would like to cover in this post.
First, Jitte/Sai is an Average difficulty skill that covers any tined, one-handed swords designed to catch rigid weapons. These weapons are built for disarming, and give +2 in the Quick Contest to disarm an opponent. Furthermore, if you attempt to disarm on the turn immediately after you parry your opponent’s weapon, you need not roll to hit his weapon first. This still counts as an attack, but, as you can see, it does not require an attack roll.
If we look at the weapon table in GURPS Low-Tech, we will see that there’s only three weapons in this category. Quadrens is a weird four-bladed dagger that deals decent damage, but has a negative armor divisor. Unlike other Jitte/Sai weapons, it can be used in close combat. However, it is expensive. Also, quadrens can be used with the Knife skill.
Jutte is a blunt baton with a single prong for catching parried blades. Unlike the quadrens, it can be used for swinging attacks, but it blunt and has Reach 1. It is cheap and light.
Sai is a three-tined metal truncheon with a long central spike and two short prongs. The description says that improvised sais might be blunt. Also, the description mentions the tuja – a small fishing trident – that is the same as sai but with a (0.5) armor divisor. The special feature of the sai is that it can be thrown with the Thrown Weapon (Knife) skill, which is a nice bonus.
You might ask me, if the skill is called Jitte/Sai, why is there no jitte in the weapon table, but only jutte? GURPS Low-Tech clarifies that, referencing some sources swapping the names of jutte and jitte with an additional confusion arising from a shift in transliteration practices. The actual jitte is identical to the sai.
Jutte and sai, but not quadrens can also be used with the Main-Gauche skill in the off-hand. This way, they become fencing weapons that are very good for parrying. However, if you are using it with the Main-Gauche skill, you do not benefit from the disarming quality of the Jitte/Sai skill – you have to disarm normally and without a bonus in the Quick Contest. But if you are using these weapons with the Main-Gauche skill, then you do not take the -2 to hit when disarming, because Main-Gauche is a fencing weapon skill. Confusing? It really can be.
In the post about fencing weapons, I mentioned the Bind Weapon technique. It works even better with the Jitte/Sai skill. With this skill, you can bind any weapon on a parry and do not have to step into close combat. This is why Jitte/Sai weapons work great when dual-wielding. You have to remember that if you can change skills without changing the number of hands involved, though, you can simply specify which skill you’re using as a free action at the start of your turn. So, switching between Main-Gauche and Jitte/Sai according to the current situation is easy.
There is also the cinematic Snap Weapon technique that lets you break weapons that you have successfully parried with the Jitte/Sai skill.
And that’s it. I think that this weapon group deserves more attention, as it has some nice tricks up its sleeve. However, it only shines when you are facing armed enemies and not some monsters with fangs and claws.
Knives
Knives in GURPS are quite special, even though at the first glance it seems that what can be more normal than a knife? First, Knife is the only Easy difficulty melee weapon skill which makes it very easy to get a decent level in this skill. This also makes it a good backup weapon – just invest a point into the skill, and you will be able to wield a knife decently in a pinch. Knives can be readied quickly with the Fast-Draw (Knife) skill.
Let’s take a look at the weapon table in GURPS Low-Tech. As you can see, this is a large weapon category that spans from TL 0 to TL 4. Damage is low, which is expected of such small blades – the highest you can get is swing-1 or thrust+1, and not all knives even get a swinging attack. Damage types are cutting and impaling, plus crushing for the short baton. Reach is either close combat only or close combat and 1 yard. Knives are designed for close combat, and this is where they shine – when you get up close and personal with the opponent. Parry is… not good. Most knives get an intrinsic -1 to Parry, which hurts a lot. Remember that a -1 in GURPS is not insignificant. GURPS Basic Set also has a rule that is not mentioned anywhere else – knives cannot parry flails at all! Knives are cheap, which is great, because not only it makes them affordable to most characters, but it also makes applying quality modifiers easier. Knives are also very light, which makes them even worse for the purpose of parrying. Knives also have low ST requirement and it is possible to hit the ST cap even for a realistic character. In GURPS, your effective ST when using a weapon cannot be higher than the minimum ST required times three.
Many knives have special features as well. Large knife, small knife, wooden stake, and dagger can be thrown with the Thrown Weapon (Knife) skill. I will talk about throwing knives in more detail in my post on thrown weapons. Katar, deer antlers, knife-wheel, and slashing wheel have a metal hilt that partially protects the hand. Main-gauche has a hilt that fully protects the hand. The katar also can use Brawling or Karate parry if better than normal. Rondel dagger, katar, and stiletto are better at targeting chinks in armor. Deer antlers can attack to disarm without the -2 penalty to hit. Rondel also can be locked with any metal gauntlets to make disarming you more difficult, but only in Reversed Grip. A special mention should be given to the balisong – it can be folded or unfolded with a Ready maneuver to give a +1 to Holdout. GURPS Martial Arts introduced Fast-Draw (Balisong) skill to flip it open quickly, but it is not available on low TLs. However, in a fantasy game, I can definitely see some weaponsmith coming up with a design that allows this, so do not disregard the Fast-Draw (Balisong) skill entirely.
Some knives can be wielded with other weapon skills. Long Knife can be used with the Shortsword skill. Deer antlers, knife-wheel, rondel dagger, stiletto, slashing wheel, and main-gauche can be used with the Main-Gauche skill that turns them into an actually good defensive weapon. Quadrens can be used with the Jitte/Sai skill that can make it a good disarming weapon.
This table isn’t really complete. The Knife skill can also be used to wield throwing knives in melee, but at -2 to skill. This should add large throwing knife and small throwing knife to the table. Bayonets are identical to large knives in terms of stats, but cannot be thrown. They can be used with the Knife skill. Haladie is a knife with blades above and below the grip. It is identical to the Large Knife that lets the user choose freely between the rules for a normal grip and a Reversed Grip, but cannot pummel and gives -1 to skill. I assume that this penalty can be bought off with the Exotic Weapon Training perk. A haladie costs $80 and weighs 1.5 lbs. I have no idea why it’s not on the table. It can be used to represent many fancy fantasy knives. An arrow-like knife, such as emeici or siangkam can be treated as either small knife, large knife, or long knife, but can only make thrusting attacks. No cost adjustment is mentioned, but I would subtract $10 from the cost – it is noticeably worse after all. I am bringing up siangkams because they were a weapon in D&D, and in GURPS, they are hidden deep in the text. Kris is a wavy knife that can be treated as small, large, or long knife not balanced for throwing. Usually is cheap. Again, no cost adjustment is mentioned, but I would subtract $5 from the base cost.
Finally, there’s something that, in my opinion, needs a special mention. There were rules for it in D&D, but in GURPS it might take some time for you to find them – using arrows in melee. An arrow or a crossbow bolt can be used as a dagger that deals full damage, but not more than 1d-4. After any successful strike or parry, roll 1d – on 1-3, the arrow breaks. Any special features of the arrow apply here, so you can use a bodkin point arrow with an armor divisor of (2), and so on.
I already mentioned Reversed Grip and even talked about it in other posts, but in my opinion, it is the most important for knife fighters, so let’s talk about it again. Rules for Reversed Grip can be found on pages 111-112 of GURPS Martial Arts. Basically, any knife can be wielded in the normal grip and reversed grip, and changing between the two requires a Ready maneuver. You can do it as a free action if you roll against your Reversed Grip technique. There are many effects, but the main ones are that thrusting attacks get +1 to damage in Reversed Grip, but swinging attacks become worse. Swinging attacks of knives aren’t good right out of the gate, so using knives in Reversed Grip is more often beneficial than detrimental.
Another rule that should be mentioned is Tip Slash (LT62, MA113) – you can use a thrust only weapon to deliver weaker cutting attacks. This might come in handy when a dagger is all you’ve got, but you really need to cut something, like an armor strap, for example.
In terms of customization, there’s not much you can do with knives. If you look through GURPS Low-Tech Companion 2, you’ll see that you can modify the knife to be better at cutting and worse at stabbing by applying the falchion option. You can remove the hilt or add a basket hilt. You can attach a kusari to the hilt or add prongs for catching blades.
And this is it for knives. They seem simple, but they actually are more complex than some other weapons. You will not be a great damage dealer with a knife as your weapon of choice, but it is generally a good idea to put a point into the Knife skill to have it as a backup weapon. Since this is a Reach C weapon, it’s one of the few weapons that can be used when grappling with no penalties. In addition, since this is a Reach C weapon, you can also use it underwater at no penalty!
Kusari
Kusari is a very interesting weapon group in GURPS. This is a very stylish weapon that has many special rules, so let’s dive deep into the books and find everything that might be useful.
First, Kusari is a Hard difficulty skill unlike most melee weapon skills. GURPS Basic Set says that this skill covers weighted chains wielded in two hands. If you look at the weapon table, the only kusari there is a one-handed weapon. I found no errata or any clarifications on this. So, let’s check GURPS Low-Tech, maybe kusaris are two-handed there. As you can see on the table, most of them are two-handed weapons with the exception of the actual kusari. GURPS Low-Tech errata does not say anything about this either. I even checked DFRPG, and it’s the same there – the skill description says that kusaris are two-handed, but the weapon table disagrees. What is correct? I have no idea. I am no weapon or martial art expert, but it feels to me that the kusari should be a two-handed weapon. After all, how would you adjust its reach with just one hand? Or maybe you can attack with one hand, but you need the other hand to change Reach. On the other hand, I have been shown videos of people using a two-yard kusari one-handed. Or maybe you can use a kusari up to two yards with one hand, but longer ones with two hands? I just don’t know. I have never noticed this rule inconsistency before.
Kusari is a very special weapon group, because every single weapon is very different from the rest, so I will have to talk about each one of them separately. Let’s start with the kusari itself, because many of the rules will also apply to other weapons. First, you have two weapon profiles – swing and thrust, and both deal decent damage. The damage type is crushing though, so you probably won’t get a good injury multiplier. Reach is 1-4 yards with the need for a Ready maneuver to adjust it. Parry is awful – a minus 2 penalty and unbalanced! Sure, you can mitigate the unbalancedness with Defensive Attacks, but -2 still sucks. This is definitely not a defensive weapon. Cost is affordable. Weight is high enough to break some very light weapons. Strength requirement is only 11, nothing severe.
So far, it seems quite underwhelming, but not everything is on the table. Page 406 of GURPS Basic Set has special rules for kusaris. Since kusaris are a subset of whips, some whip rules apply as well. First, when you attack to disarm, you get a +2 in the ensuing Quick Contest, just like when using Jitte/Sai. Second, you can use a kusari to entangle the opponent instead of damaging him. This attack is resolved at a -4 penalty and uses the Lariat rules. For more on that, watch my Lasso post. This aspect of kusari use can be improved with the Entangle technique from GURPS Martial Arts.
Kusari also behaves like a flail – attempts to parry kusaris are at -4; fencing weapons (and knives, if you go by GURPS Basic Set) cannot parry them at all. Fencing weapons wielded in defensive grip can parry them, but with the normal penalties. Blocks against kusaris are at -2. But there’s something extra! If someone parries your kusari with a weapon, make an immediate skill roll. On a success, your kusari entangles the weapon. On a failure, nothing special happens, but on a critical failure you drop the kusari. On his turn, the opponent can disentangle his weapon with a DX roll, if he has a free hand. If he doesn’t do that, on your next turn you may disarm the opponent without rolling to hit – just roll your Quick Contest. And remember that you get a +2 bonus! GURPS Martial Arts also expands these rules a bit. If the opponent uses Cross Parry with two weapons, he can parry, even with fencing weapons, but you can entangle both of his weapons. This is brutal.
That’s cool and all, but there are some detrimental special rules as well. First, if you have your kusari not on Reach 1, that is Reach 2, 3, or 4, then it becomes unready after an attack or a parry. It takes one turn to ready a two-yard kusari and two turns to ready a longer kusari. I highly recommend getting the Reach Mastery perk to be able to change Reach as a free action. However, you should keep in mind that this does not affect time required to ready a long kusari after attacking or parrying. I will link Kromm’s post on that topic in the description. To be able to ready a kusari quicker, you will have to use the Extra Ready approach that I talked about in the post about Two-Handed Axes and Maces.
If you swing your kusari, you must have enough headroom or free space to your side. The rules for fighting in confined spaces that you can find in GURPS Underground Adventures say that you can use swinging weapons in such situations, but at the normal close combat penalties from GURPS Martial Arts. GURPS Basic Set, obviously, was written before GURPS Martial Arts, so I am not sure if this limitation for the kusari was intended to be a hard “no” to using these weapons when obstacles are present, or if they meant that you can still use them, but at the close combat penalties that were introduced later in GURPS Martial Arts. Also, on a critical miss on a swinging attack, a roll of 3, 4, 17, or 18 indicates that you have hit yourself in the face, and that will hurt a lot! These two drawbacks can be mitigated if you snap the kusari at the opponent instead of swinging – this is what the second, thrust weapon profile is for!
I have already mentioned the Entangle technique, but there are some other ones that might be useful with a kusari. Armed Grapple gives you a new close combat option. Disarming will make you even better at disarming that normal. And, the last but not least, Return Strike. I talked about this technique in my post about flails, but it is also available for the kusaris. This technique allows you to strike the enemy from behind while facing him, and your long Reach makes it easier to use. Thus, you can use a Reach 3 kusari to strike enemies two yards away from you from the back, a Reach 4 kusari to strike enemies three yards away from you, and so on. This is an excellent combat option that is worth investing into. I should note that you cannot use the Sweep technique with the kusari – to do the thing D&D spiked chain specialists do – use the Entangle technique.
Finally, I should mention that there’s the Fast-Draw (Flexible) specialty that was introduced in GURPS Martial Arts.
So, we took a look at only one of the weapons. The next one is the chain whip. It uses the same rules as the kusari, but it has some special features as well. The length of a chain whip is not fixed 4 yards, it can be from 1 to 4 yards long. This results in more flexibility. Long chain whips will be heavier and more expensive than the kusari, but will also deal more damage. However, you cannot thrust with the chain whip, which is a downside in cramped spaces.
The rope dart is cheaper and lighter. It has Reach 1-4 yards without the need to change it with a ready maneuver. It can be used to swing for quite low crushing damage or thrust for low impaling damage. However, it doesn’t actually use any of the special whip rules. It cannot be used to entangle, it does not entangle weapons, it’s not good for disarming either. I believe that the free space and critical miss restrictions still apply, but it is not stated anywhere. Basically, this is closer to a throwing dagger that can be retrieved after being thrown. And no, you cannot reel people in like Scorpion.
The kusarigama is a combination weapon – it’s a kama with a two-yard kusari attached to the handle’s butt. So, this is not a weapon, this is two weapons. So, you will have to use the normal dual-wielding rules. Consider either buying the Ambidexterity advantage or the Off-Hand Training perk. The first two attack profiles are for attacks with the two-yard kusari. The third attack profile is for swinging the kama on the end of the chain. When used this way, the kusarigama cannot disarm or entangle like a regular kusari. Needless to say, this is a cinematic option. Normal attacks with the kama use the sickle statline. So, if you are planning to use the kusarigama, you should also invest in the Axe/Mace skill and, possibly, even the Hook technique. The intended way to use this weapon is to entangle with the kusari and finish the enemy off with the kama. This is super stylish, but it requires a lot of investment. But this is only one version of this weapon! The text in GURPS Low-Tech has two more. The second variant is a kusarigama with a four-yard kusari affixed to the butt. STATLINE +$40, +2.5 lbs, ST?. The third variant is a kusarigama with a two-yard kusari atop the handle, opposite the blade. This permits one-handed use but counts as only one weapon, either a kusari or a kama – choose each turn). I assume that this version uses the same statline as the normal kusarigama.
GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 12: Ninja has another weapon – okusarigama. This is a scythe with a four-yard kusari mounted on the head. It is possible to plant the staff on the ground or against the body with one hand (takes a Ready maneuver but lowers the weapon’s ST requirement by one) and swing the kusari with the other. When used as a scythe, use the scythe statline, so you might want to invest into the Two-Handed Axe/Mace skill and maybe even the Hook technique. In a cinematic game, you can swing the entire scythe by the chain – damage becomes sw+4 cutting, but ST becomes 15! Cost is $95, and weight is 10 lbs.
The kusarijutte is a jutte with a two-yard kusari attached to the handle. Just like the kusarigama, this is actually two weapons, so you have to invest in Jitte/Sai skill or Main-Gauche. The latter option is quite nice because the kusari is not a good defensive weapon, so a fencing off-hand parry is a good addition. This combination weapon works even better for disarming opponents, as you become able to disarm both on a successful attack and on a successful parry. Some versions hide the kusari inside the jutte and release it out the tip of the weapon. This should work like the third version of the kusarigama – one-handed use is permitted but counts as only one weapon, either a jutte or a kusari – choose each turn. This disguised option is twice as expensive for a mass-produced item or five times as expensive for a custom-built one.
But that’s still not all the options. GURPS Low-Tech Companion 2 has rules for attaching a two or four-yard kusari to almost any other weapon. So, you can have kusariswords, kusariaxes, kusariglaiveguisarmes, and even kusariflails.
How do these combination weapons interact with Fast-Draw? Do you use Fast-Draw (Flexible) or the specialty appropriate for the second half? My gut tells me that you should use the latter or maybe that you cannot use Fast-Draw with them at all. Or maybe this is where the Dual Ready perk might come in handy.
I should also mention the barbed chain from GURPS Low-Tech Companion 2. It’s an exotic weapon that has an intrinsic -1 penalty to hit that can be mitigated by the Exotic Weapon Training perk. It deals more damage and imposes a -2 penalty on all rolls to escape entanglement. As a downside, any critical failure on an attack deals 1d-2 cutting damage to the hands of the user. Cost is double. GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 12: Ninja also says that barbed versions of kusarigama and kusarijutte exist as well. These cost $175.
Oh, by the way. The same book also says that if you’d like to use a kusari as a thrown weapon, you should use the Bolas skill.
And that’s finally it. As you can see, Kusari is easily the most complex weapon group with many special rules. You might have to learn rules for dual-wielding, special rules for whips, jitte/sai, hooked weapons, flails, lasso, and even bolas. This is definitely not a good weapon choice for a new player, but an experienced player definitely has a lot of room to capitalize on specific gimmicks.
Kromm on Reach Mastery and Kusari - http://forums.sjgames.com/showpost.php?p=697221&postcount=3
Lasso
I bet that when you scroll through the list of skills or the weapon table, when you notice the lasso, you go “Ah yes, the lasso, I forgot that it even exists!” And I do not blame you; it is a very forgettable weapon. Let's see what it is all about and how it can be used.
First of all, Lasso is an Average difficulty DX-based skill that has no default. If you look at the weapon table in GURPS Low-Tech, you will find that this skill is only used with a single weapon – the lariat. The entry doesn’t even give us much information – everything is special-special-special. But we can see that it is quite cheap, not heavy, not bulky, and has a low ST requirement. Also, appears on TL 1, well before cowboys became a thing.
The actual rules for using a lariat can be found on page 411 of GURPS Basic Set. A lariat is a treated as a thrown weapon that can be aimed at any body part. The only valid active defenses are dodge and parry, the target cannot block. A successful parry with a cutting weapon damages the lariat, but any failed parry means that the parrying arm is ensnared.
If you hit the torso or arm, you must take Ready maneuvers on subsequent turns to keep the target snared. Roll a Quick Contest of ST on your turn. If you win, you immobilize the opponent, but if you lose, he pulls the lariat from your hands.
If you hit the neck, the same rules are used, but the victim is at -5 to his Quick Contest to resist. If you win, the lariat cuts off the victim’s breathing – use rules for Suffocation on p. B436.
If you hit the foot, the victim must roll against DX or fall instead of rolling the usual Quick Contest of ST. If he was running, the roll is at -4. If he fails, he takes damage, and if he fails while running, he takes even more damage. After that, the same rules are used for entangling.
One special rule is that you can train your horse to keep the lasso taut and use its ST instead of yours in these Quick Contests. And horses are much stronger than normal people!
You can escape from a taut lariat by cutting the rope. To escape from a limp lariat you must have a free hand, and mist make three successful DX rolls. Each attempt is a Ready maneuver. Animals roll at -3, or -6 is they have hooves.
If you miss with a lariat, readying it again takes time – one turn per 5 yards. The typical lariat is 10-yards long. This means that every yard of lariat weighs 0.3 lbs. and costs $4.
Does anything look strange to you? What does “immobilize” mean in this context? The precise game effects are not stated. Douglas Cole on the SJGames forums suggests treating lasso as something of a ranged grapple:
“Once you spend an attack achieving said thing, then you could do grapply actions after that despite not being in close combat.
It does require GM adjudication or the application of some common sense: yes, you can drag someone around or yank them off their feet. No, you can't push on a rope. Yes, you can strangle someone, but no, you probably can't do a funky joint lock thing. Yes, the foe can also yank on YOU!
Precise mechanics aside, treating the tools as grapple-at-a-distance helps me resolve the "what works, what doesn't" stuff.”
If you look through some other books, you can find some bits and pieces about the lariats. For example, GURPS Martial Arts: Technical Grappling, aside from providing rules for using Lasso with Technical Grappling, mentions that despite lariat being a ranged grapple attempt, when throwing the lariat you use striking hit location penalties, not grappling hit location penalties. Also, some possible follow-up to a successful grapple attempts are listed: Everything that defaults to ST - Shoving People Around, Wrench Arm, Neck Snap, but not Choke Hold or Arm Lock.
If you carefully read GURPS Low-Tech, you might notice that there’s a weapon that exists in the text under the sodegarami entry, but doesn’t exist in the weapon table – the uurga, or Mongolian pole-lasso. The description states that this is a pole with a rope loop at one end - it is used like a polearm but can entangle like a lasso. The uurga has Reach 2, 3*, Cost $40, Weight 6 lbs. Polearm? Sodegarami is a weapon that uses the Staff skill, not Polearm. So, I assume that the rest of the statline is identical to sodegarami without the sharpened hook, and that uurga actually uses the Staff skill, not Polearm. Since this is a melee weapon, it doesn’t use the Lasso skill to hit, but uses the same rules. The number of available follow-up moves probably is higher because you have a rigid staff attached to the rope loop, not a limp rope.
Nets
Nets in GURPS are a strange weapon category that is listed on the ranged weapon table, but can be used in melee. Net is a Hard difficulty skill that defaults to Cloak-5. If we look at the weapon table in GURPS Low-Tech, we will see that there’s only two nets.
The large net is very heavy – 20 pounds! – but is available on TL0. It is cheap and doesn’t even have that high of a ST requirement. When thrown, it has no 1/2D, and has a maximum range of (ST/2 + Skill/5). GURPS Martial Arts says that the large net requires two hands, but the table does not reflect that. DFRPG clarifies that, saying that it requires two hands to ready, but only one to attack. The melee net appears later, on TL2, and only weighs 5 pounds. It is even cheaper, and has ST requirement of 8. When thrown, it has no 1/2D, and has a maximum range of (ST + Skill/5). No other weapon has its range calculated like that.
So, how does one use a net? Any net can be a thrown entangling weapon. The only legal defenses are dodge and parry. If the target parries successfully with a cutting weapon, he also damages the net. Nets are diffuse objects that are hard to damage properly. The large net has DR 1 and HP 21, according to GURPS Low-Tech Companion 2, and the melee net has DR 1 and HP 13. If you are using DFRPG, then the only legal defense is a dodge, parrying doesn’t work. I think that’s reasonable, especially for the large net.
If the target fails to defend, he is entangled and cannot move or attack until freed. Escaping from a net works similarly to escaping from bolas or lariat – you need at least one free hand, and must make three successful DX-4 rolls. Each attempt is a Ready maneuver. Animals roll at an extra -2, as do humans with only one hand available; rolls to escape from a melee net are at +3. If you fail three consecutive rolls, you become utterly entangles and must be cut free.
You can also break free by damaging the net. You can only use Reach C attacks, but you hit automatically. However, due to the net being a diffuse object, it might take a while! It might seem that there’s something wrong here. For example, why isn’t it possible for a very strong monster to just burst through the net? Fortunately, DFRPG has some alternative rules. First, cutting the net with a Reach C cutting weapon requires three Ready maneuvers, but no rolls. Second, with a Ready maneuver you can roll a Quick Contest of ST vs. 14 for a melee net or 22 for a large net. If you win, you burst the net! It seems to be that 14 and 22 are very close to the nets’ HP values – 13 and 21, respectively. So, maybe it was meant to be a Quick Contest of ST vs. HP of the net.
GURPS Martial Arts added some new rules. A fighter with a net can trail it in front of him to trip foes. The hex containing the net is bad footing that gives -2 to attack and -1 to defense rolls. Furthermore, the wielder can try to yank the net out from under the enemy. Roll a Quick Contest of ST. If the user wins, his opponent falls. Otherwise, nothing happens . . . but if his ST roll is a critical failure, he falls instead!
According to GURPS Low-Tech Companion 2, both nets have thin cords that can be targeted to break the weapon.
The melee net can also be used as a melee weapon. It has a reach of 1 or 2 yards. Handle the attack as per Lariats (p. B411) and the victim’s attempt to break free as per Bolas (p. 410).
As you can see, the rules are all over the place. It works both as a lariat, a bolas, and as Binding with some extra features. It’s both a melee and a ranged weapon, the number of hands required is inconsistent, and other rules are changed between normal GURPS and DFRPG. And then we have GURPS Martial Arts: Technical Grappling. Nets in Technical Grappling work like an entangling grappling attack, but there are also rules that can be backported into normal GURPS.
A thrown net is an enveloping weapon that attacks an area; such nets can be quite large. On a miss, a net occupies a circular area with a diameter found by looking up its SM on p. B550; e.g., a SM +2 net can envelop a single SM +2 creature, and fills a five-yard-diameter area on a miss. A net on the ground is considered bad footing (-2 to attack, -1 to defend).
This has several implications. First, thrown nets should be used at +4 for attacking an area, but they are assumed to take a -4 for entangling, so this bonus is negated. Second, nets are area attacks, so you really cannot parry them – you have to Dodge, and only if you can retreat out of the area. Third, nets have +1 to grapple for every SM the net is larger than the target. If the net is of lower SM than the target, treat it as entangling instead, like a limp lariat that also probably can be parried and dodged normally. Finally, the net requires space to use. Look up its SM on the Size and Speed/Range Table (p. B550) and read across to the “Linear Measurement” column to find the radius of the circular area needed. For example, that SM 0 net requires two yards of clearance in all directions around the wielder.
I feel that if you combine the DFRPG rules with the ones that can be adapted from Technical Grappling, then nets become much more sensible. In any case, nets can be devastating. I feel that they deserve much more attention than they get right now, but this is probably the case of people not wanting to deal with all the special rules that, as you could see, can be very confusing.
Polearms
Polearms is GURPS are a very interesting weapon that is deadly, but not very straightforward to use. First, Polearm is an Average difficulty skill, like most melee weapons. If you look at the weapon table in GURPS Low-Tech, you will see that this is a huge weapon group. Most of the polearms appear on TL3, with only one specimen at each TL below 3. Generally speaking, all of them have great damage, both in terms of numbers and damage type versatility, good Reach, decent price, moderate-to-high ST requirement, and require two hands. Some of them are unbalanced, and some even become unready after attacking.
The oar is the only TL 0 option and is just a large oar used as a makeshift polearm. None of the characteristics are particularly good, but at TL 0 beggars can’t be choosers. Weight of 8 pounds makes the oar able to break many weapons on a parry.
The glaive appears on TL 1 – it deals swinging cutting or thrusting impaling attacks and has long Reach. However, even thrusting attacks are unbalanced, and swings make it unready. The text says that glaives were often equipped with a hilt and/or a hook.
The naginata appears on TL 2. It is shorter than the glaive, swinging attacks deal less damage, but thrusting attacks are not unbalanced, and swinging attacks do not make it unready. ST requirement is only 9. This weapon has a special feature – it can be wielded with the Two-Handed Sword skill. You can also draw it quickly with Fast-Draw (Two-Handed Sword) – you cannot do that with any other polearm.
The bill is a bladed polearm with a hook on the back. Usually, this hook was used to unseat mounted knights. It can thrust and swing, is very long, but is unbalanced and becomes unready after attacking. The hook is sharpened, so it also deals some damage, and when it is used to disarm, it doesn’t take a -2 penalty to the attack roll. The dueling bill is a shortened variant that has worse Reach, but does not become unready and is not unbalanced on thrusting attacks.
On TL3, people learn that you can shorten the shaft of a glaive, and so the dueling glaive appears. Took them long enough. It is shorter, and more balanced version of the normal glaive. It can also serve as a musket rest.
Halberd is one of the heaviest polearms – 12 pounds! This means that it can break even such weapons as longswords on a parry. It deals a disgusting swing+5 cutting damage with the blade, a disgusting swing+4 impaling damage with the back spike, and good thrust+3 impaling damage with the axial spike. You should keep in mind that the swinging attacks make the weapon unready, and swinging impaling attacks can get stuck. The shorter and lighter dueling halberd is a very good two-handed weapon that does not become unready.
The horse-cutter comes in two versions – heavy and light, but both of them are unbalanced even on thrusting attacks, and become unready after a swing. Heavy horse-cutter is the only weapon as heavy as the halberd – swing+5 cut hurts a lot!
The lajatang is a stylish weapon that deals cutting damage on both swings and thrusts, and isn’t very long. If you are cross-checking two enemies at once, you can use it to deal cutting damage to both. Other than that, there’s nothing special here.
The monk’s spade is a short polearm with two blades. It can be swung for cutting or crushing damage, or can deliver thrusting cutting attacks. Damage is worse, compared to most other polearms. But it’s stylish!
The poleaxe is a large axe head on a long pole, backed by a hammer head. It has long Reach, high cutting and crushing damage, but becomes unready on any attack. This is one of the few polearms that does not have a thrusting attack.
The pollaxe, not to be confused with the poleaxe, is dueling polearm with an axe or hammer head, a beaked peen, a top spike, a spiked butt, and a metal-reinforced shaft. The book says that this weapon is optimized for the Defensive Grip. The weapon on the table has a hammer head; if equipped with an axe head instead, it’s identical to the dueling halberd.
I believe that the uurga listed under the sodegarami entry should be used with the Polearm skill as well.
In terms of customization, polearms probably have the most options. GURPS Fantasy-Tech 2 has double-ended polearms, if you’re interested in such weapons. The same book has rules for making full-metal polearms instead of the normal ones with a wooden shaft. GURPS Low-Tech Companion 2 has many other options – longer handles, shorter handles, axe heads, barbs, butt spikes, hammer heads, kusaris, pick heads, prongs, sickle heads, spearheads of various sized, trident heads, hilts. This book basically lets you design your own polearm with any combination of heads, blades, and spikes.
So, how does one utilize a polearm properly? The first problem is that you have both hands occupied, so you cannot use a shield normally. However, you can still use a shield on a guige. The polearm’s long reach helps you keep the foes at bay, if you play your cards right. You probably noticed that many polearms are not unbalanced when they are used to deliver thrusting attacks – you can exploit this by using Tip Slash to deliver cutting thrust attacks. If your weapon is unbalanced on swing attacks, but does not become unready, then Defensive Attacks become a very good option for you. In any case, it’s better to save swings for fallen or disarmed foes. When fighting one-on-one, you also should keep Defensive Grip in mind, as it will make you better in defense, especially when coupled with Defensive Attacks. If you want to switch between grips quickly, get the Grip Mastery perk. Changing Reach always requires a Ready maneuver, so you might want to get the Reach Mastery perk. You also can use any short Polearm as a staff, so you might want to buy the Form Mastery perk. Polearms can also improve your jumping ability in cinematic games – take the Combat Vaulting perk for that.
If your Polearm has a spearhead, then you can use it defend against charging enemies by using stop thrusts (p. B366) or planting the spear against the ground (p. LT55). If you have a long Polearm that has Reach 3 or higher, you can wield it cooperatively with an ally by taking the Two-Man Pike Training perk (p. LT9). I talked more about these applications in my post about Spears.
If you are fighting with a Polearm, the following techniques might be useful for you – Armed Grapple, Disarming, Hook, Sweep.
Just like spears and staffs, polearms can be used to shove or slam two adjacent opponents at the same time, take reduced penalties for multiple parries per turn, and can be used to block both halves of a Dual-Weapon Attack with a single parry.
And that’s it. As you can see, polearms are the most customizable weapons in GURPS, and they are very versatile. An experienced player can get a lot out of a Polearm, but it might seem underwhelming to a new player.
Slings
What ranged weapons do fantasy warriors use? Usually it’s a bow or a crossbow – people often forget about slings. I remember that in D&D 3.5 they dealt only 1d4 damage, which was underwhelming. But how do slings work in GURPS? Are they good? Let’s see.
Sling is a Hard difficulty skill. This alone makes it an unattractive choice for many players – after all, Bow is an Average difficulty skill, and Crossbow is an Easy difficulty skill. And now let’s check the weapon table in GURPS Low-Tech.
Slings, just like many bows, appear at TL0, and the rest are TL1 weapons – crossbows do not exist yet. Slings deal swing damage unlike most other ranged weapons. This means that a character with a sling will deal significantly more damage than a character with a Bow that has the same Strength. Slings are also versatile in terms of damage – they can deal piercing, crushing, or even impaling damage, and swinging impaling damage is nothing to sneeze at. Accuracy is much worse than accuracy of bows or crossbows. Range is also much worse, but usually more than enough for your typical encounters. Weight is very low, and that’s nice. Cost is much, much lower. Slings are dirt cheap. ST requirement of slings is also low, and most of them need only one hand to throw the stone, but two hands to reload. Reloading time is the same as for bows – two seconds. Bulk is also low, so it is easier to use it on the move.
I talked about the bola perdida in my post about Bolas, but I did not mention that it can also be used with the Sling skill. So, you can use a bola perdida with Bolas, Sling, or Flail skill. Unlike all other slings, this is a thrown weapon, not a projectile weapon, so you only get one shot. Coincidentally, this is the only Sling weapon that can be used with only one hand, because you do not have to reload it. And it can be drawn with the Fast-Draw (Flexible) skill.
Speaking of Fast-Draw – Fast-Draw (Flexible) can be used to quickly ready any sling. It is not said anywhere, but it probably should not apply to the staff sling. Sling ammo and throwing stones, when carried in a container, can be readied quickly with Fast-Draw (Stone), increasing your rate of fire.
The common sling is just a thong or cord with a pouch or cup for a missile. The staff sling is the same thing, but attached to a stick, increasing power and range, but requiring two hands. These two slings can fire unshaped stones that can be found for free, but at -1 to hit. The default projectile is a shaped rock that costs $0.06, which is very cheap. At TL2, they can also launch lead bullets that give +1 to damage and double the range. A lead bullet costs $0.1, which is not much more expensive.
The heavy sling is designed to launch larger projectiles – it deals more damage, but its range is shorter and ammunition cost is higher. It can launch unshaped stones, shaped rocks that cost $0.1, but cannot launch lead bullets.
Slings, heavy slings, and staff slings can also launch oil flasks or primitive Molotov cocktails. This reduces Accuracy to 0 and range to 40% of the normal range. This is especially important in fantasy games, where a variety of airborne poisons and alchemical grenades are available, giving this weapon an edge over bows and crossbows.
The dart sling is designed to hurl foot-long finned darts, but it cannot hurl normal sling projectiles or flasks. Impaling damage type, however, hurts living targets a lot! A dart costs $1.
In terms of optional rules, slings do not get much love. Harsh Realism for Ranged Weapons (p. LT75) suggests replacing piercing damage type with crushing for slings. Quick-Shooting Bows (p. MA119-120) suggests allowing quick shooting for slings to increase their rate of fire for particularly skilled users.
And that’s all GURPS has for slings. I would say that a sling is a good ranged weapon of choice for a new player, as there are not many special rules, and it does not require a lot of monetary investment. They definitely can deal a lot of damage, and at short ranges can contend with bows. Their low ST requirement and swing-based damage makes them appropriate ranged weapons for small races, such as halflings and goblins. I hope this was useful.
Spears
Spears in GURPS might seem very underwhelming, but I believe that they are still decent weapons even for a new player. Spear is an Average difficulty skill. Unlike some other skills, Spear covers both one-handed spears and two-handed spears, which is a nice bonus, especially since you can wield some spear in either one or two hands.
Let’s take a look at the weapon table in GURPS Low-Tech. At TL0, we have the spear. It deals decent thrusting impaling damage that gets even better when used in two hands. Reach is only 1 yard in one hand – by the way, I have no idea why the asterisk is there. When wielded in two hands, Reach becomes 1-2 yards and needs a Ready maneuver to adjust. I highly suggest taking the Reach Mastery perk if you are planning to use a spear in two hands. The spear is not unbalanced, is cheap, weight is okay, it probably won’t get broken in combat, and ST requirement is more than manageable. The spear can be thrown, but I will talk about that in more detail in the post about thrown weapons. I should mention that all spears have access to the Tip Slash maneuver that lets them deal cutting damage – even if it is not listed on the weapon table. This option can be important in certain situations. Also, the spear can be wielded with the Staff skill! If you are wielding a spear in two hands, you can switch to the Staff skill as a free action once per turn and enjoy a +2 bonus to Parry. If you take the Form Mastery perk, you will be able to switch between these two skills multiple times per turn. You should also consider the Grip Mastery perk to switch quickly between one-handed and two-handed grips, and normal and Defensive Grip.
The heavy spear can only be used in two hands. It deals high impaling damage and high tip slash cutting damage, but is unbalanced. It is more expensive and heavy than the normal spear, and requires more ST. Also, it cannot be thrown. If you plan to use the heavy spear, keep in mind that there’s errata that replaces Reach 3 in the Tip Slash attack profile with Reach 2, 3*. Since this is both an unbalanced and two-handed weapon, you probably will have to rely on Defensive Attacks or wear a shield on a guige.
The javelin is mostly a thrown weapon, but it can be used in melee. It deals less damage than the normal spear and can only be used in one hand. It is cheap and light. Low weight is more of an upside here, because you want to carry multiple javelins. By the way, I recall seeing Kromm post on the forums that you can hold up to six javelins in your hand at once. I wonder if the Quick-Swap perk would let you throw a javelin each turn.
The next weapon is the short spear. And… it’s almost identical to the javelin. The difference is that the short spear has a better tip slash damage and cannot be thrown.
Next up, we have the long spear. It is something between the normal spear and the heavy spear. It can be used in one or two hands, and has Reach 2-3 yards, requiring a Ready maneuver to change it. I believe that this is the only Reach 3 one-handed weapon, if you do not counts things like kusari and whips. However, it is unbalanced when used in one hand. I think that this is a good weapon when used with a shield – the shield covers Reach 1, and the long spear covers Reach 2 and 3.
The next weapon is the pike. It can only be used in two hands, but has Reach 4-5*, requiring a Ready maneuver to change. This is some massive Reach! Also, it is unbalanced and very heavy, but the ST requirement is still manageable. The text hides two variants of this weapon – the four-yard pike that has Reach 3-4*, weighs 10 lbs., and requires ST 11; and a six-yard pike that has Reach 5-6*, weighs 15 lbs., and requires ST 13. Here’s where some relatively obscure rules might come into play. Did you know that any Reach 3 or longer spear or polearm can be wielded cooperatively by two people? There’s the Two-Man Pike Training perk in GURPS Low-Tech that allows that. You both can grab the spear and act at once. Your effective ST becomes higher, and effective HP for the purpose of resisting slams becomes higher as well. Basically, this is a variant of the Teamwork perk. I have never seen this being used, but it’s an interesting option.
The final weapon on the table is an exotic one – the trident. Like the normal spear, it can be used in one or two hands, and has the same Reach. When used in one hand, it is unbalanced. Being an exotic weapon, it takes a -2 penalty to hit that can be negated with the Exotic Weapon Training perk. It deals better damage than the spear, but has a negative armor divisor. However, it has some extra features. First, it can strike to disarm without -2 to hit for using a non-fencing weapon. Second, the target takes -1 to Dodge, but +1 to Block or Parry. This is definitely a unique weapon that isn’t really bad.
That’s all there is on the table, but the text before it hides some other weapons. The first one is the ahlspiess – a solid-metal spear. No cost adjustments are mentioned, but proper rules for building full-metal weapons can be found in GURPS Fantasy-Tech 2, you might want to check them out. The same book also has a double-ended slashing spear.
Then we have the bayonets. Striking with a fixed bayonet requires the Spear skill. Damage is thr+3 impaling, and Reach is usually 1-2*.
Iklwa is a short spear with a long, broad head, unbalanced for throwing. But… the short spear cannot be thrown, so there’s no difference. Partisan is the same as a normal spear, but cannot be thrown. As an upside, impaled foes cannot run themselves through to close with the wielder.
Tepoztopilli is a wooden spear with pieces of obsidian inserted around the perimeter of the head. If used to strike DR 2+, it suffers -1 to thrusting damage until repaired. This does not happen on a parry.
Finally, there are some variants of the normal spear. Some spears have an L-shaped hook at the end, making it unthrowable, but enabling using the Hook rules. This adds $10 and 0.5 lb. Some other spears have a crescent-shaped or a semi-circular head – damage becomes cutting.
GURPS Low-Tech Companion 2 has some other customization options. You can make a barbed spear that gets stuck like a pick; you can add a butt spike, a kusari, prongs,
In terms of techniques, I can suggest Armed Grappling and Sweep. Spears can be used in Defensive Grip, and they do not harm you damage because you’re not using swinging attacks. If you want to switch between grips quickly, buy the Grip Mastery perk. Some spears can also be used in Reversed Grip! This improves damage further, which is great, and doesn’t really impart that many penalties. So, you really should consider this option, if you can handle the reduced Reach. Also, you might want to invest in the Reversed Grip technique. Just like staffs, long spears can be used to slam or shove two opponents at once. Also, just like staffs, spears gripped in two hands take halved multiple parry penalties and can parry both halves of a Dual-Weapon Attack with a single parry.
Finally, if you’re planning to use spears, you might want to familiarize yourself with the Stop Thrust rules from p. B366. I have to emphasize that Stop Thrust is not the same as Stop Hit from GURPS Martial Arts. Stop Thrust rules let you use the Wait maneuver to brace your weapon to receive a possible enemy charge. If you actually hit the charging enemy, you deal ex tra damage, but the enemy can push through with a good Will roll and still get to you! GURPS Low-Tech introduced a variant on the stop thrust on page 55 – planting a spear. You can brace your spear for a charge by pressing it against the ground with a Ready maneuver. Then, it works almost the same as a normal stop thrust, but the damage is calculated as for a lance – basically, a slam with the spear’s damage type and bonus.
That’s it for the spears, but I also wanted to cover lances. Lance is another Average difficulty skill, but it is very limited in its utility. This skill can only be used while mounted with a high-backed saddle and stirrups. Lances, unlike spears, are sturdy enough to deliver the energy of a horseman equipped like that. Tournament lances are blunt and shatter on impact. You cannot use the Lance skill to parry. The weapon table in GURPS Low-Tech only has one lance. It deals thrust+3 impaling damage, but is increased by the mass and velocity of the mount. Reach is 4 yards. Basically, this is only useful in a mounted charge. What I don’t understand is how you use a lance otherwise, because GURPS Martial Arts mentions using lances with the Tip Slash maneuver. So, I will just leave it at that – I do not understand Lances fully.
And now that’s it. I hope now you can see that spears are not as bad as they might seem, and you won’t be as reluctant to try them out as you might’ve been.
Spear Thrower
Let’s quickly talk about another underutilized weapon category in GURPS. Personally, I didn’t even know that such weapons exists before I got into GURPS. Spear Thrower, not to be confused with Thrown Weapon (Spear), is an Average difficulty skill that governs the use of the spear throwers – a long, flat stick with a notch or a loop at one end. You are at -5 when there’s less than two yards of overhead clearance. You can ready a spear thrower quickly by rolling against Fast-Draw (Sword). Yeah, it’s a bit counterintuitive, but that’s how it works.
If we take a look at the weapon table in GURPS Low-Tech, we’ll see that there’s only three weapons there. All three are TL0 weapons, which is nice. The atlatl is just a stick used to launch javelins or darts. Compared to the actual throwing dart and javelin, this is strictly better, but you need the actual atlatl taking up your hand. Range is better than for normal throwing damage, and damage is swing impaling, which will hurt a lot. The atlatl requires two hands to ready, but only one to fire. If you check the Shots statistic, you will see that the reload time is only one second, but only if you have a javelin or dart ready in your other hand. I recall seeing Kromm say on the forums that one can hold up to six javelins in one hand at once. The disadvantage is that the ammunition costs a lot.
The woomera is the same apparatus, but larger. The ammunition becomes a full-sized spear! Damage is even better, but the woomera itself is heavier and bulkier. Reloading works the same as for the atlatl. The ammunition costs even more - $40 per shot!
The last weapon is the stone-launching stick. This weapon doesn’t launch spears, but uses the same principle to throw stones, so it still uses the Spear Thrower skill. Unlike atlatl and woomera, the stone-launching stick deals crushing damage. This weapon is closer to Slings than atlatls. It can launch unshaped stones that can be found for free, but at -1 to skill. It also can launch shaped rocks that cost $0.1. It cannot launch lead bullets, just like the heavy sling.
Staffs
Staffs or staves, depending on which plural form you prefer, will pleasantly surprise you if you’re new to GURPS. In D&D, they were underwhelming weapons, but in GURPS, they are extremely good. Staff is definitely a very good weapon for a new GURPS player, but an experienced one will be able to use some interesting tricks as well.
Staff is an Average difficulty skill that defaults to DX-5, Polearm-4, or Spear-2. Let’s take a look at the weapon table in GURPS Low-Tech. This weapon category is not that big. Many of the weapons appear at TL0, which is nice, but there are some TL3 weapons as well. All staffs have a thrusting attack and a swinging attack, and all staffs require two hands to use. Finally, the most important feature of staffs – most of them have a whopping +2 to Parry, making them excellent defensive weapons!
Jo is a relatively short staff, but not short enough to count as the actual short staff. It costs merely $10, and is quite light, so it might break on a parry against a heavy weapon. Strength requirement is very low. Reach is only 1 yard. It can also be used with the Two-Handed Sword skill, but the statline is worse.
Quarterstaff is longer – its Reach is 1-2 yards and damage is better. It weighs twice as much as the jo, making it a sturdier weapon, and its ST requirement is only one point higher. Cost is the same $10. Just like the jo, it can be used with the Two-Handed Sword skill.
Long staff has the same damage as quarterstaff, but has Reach 2-3. It weighs one pound more, costs $5 more, and has the highest ST requirement of all staffs – ST 10, which is still not high.
The next weapon on the list is quite a mouthful – qian kun ri yue dao. This is a metal bar with a sickle-like blade at either end, and two handguards – each with another crescent-shaped blade on it. Unlike previous staffs, this one can swing for cutting damage, and thrust for impaling damage. Both ends can be used against adjacent opponents as a Dual-Weapon Attack that deals thrust cutting damage. This weapon’s hilt provides DR 4 to both hands on a roll of 1-3 on 1d. In close combat, you can also deliver hilt punches for cutting damage with Brawling or DX. This is an exotic weapon, so all attacks except for the hilt punch take -1 to hit, and this penalty can be removed with the Exotic Weapon Training perk. This is an interesting weapon, as it can be used effectively at Reach 1, still can be used in close combat, is versatile in terms of damage types, and still have +2 to Parry. However, it costs much more than your normal staff - $250.
Sodegarami is a reinforced staff with barbs along its length and a barbed head that’s either forked or T-shaped. It can swing and thrust like a quarterstaff at Reach 1 and 2, but its primary attack is a sharpened hook for snagging clothing. Unlike all previous staffs, sodegarami does not have a bonus to Parry, and its hook attack is unbalanced.
There’s another related weapon that is not on the table, but is in the text. Sasumata ends in a wide, blunt fork intended to enclose the opponent’s torso. Use the same statistics, but remove the thrust+2 crushing attack. However, a sasumata wielder can shove (p. B372) a standing foe using the Staff skill, or pin (p. B370) him if he’s prone or against a wall – both at Reach 1, 2. The same entry also details the uurga, or Mongolian pole-lasso, but I believe that it’s meant to be used with the Polearm skill.
Another weapon is listed in Pyramid #3-89 – the khakkhara - A $250 quarterstaff with metal shodding, rings, and an outsize head, giving +1 damage but -1 to skill unless the wielder has the appropriate Exotic Weapon Training perk.
If you’d like to have a full-metal staff, consult GURPS Fantasy-Tech 2. The same book has many double-ended weapons, some of which are wielded with the Staff skill.
Even without any special rules, staffs are quite unique and easy to use. But if you’d like to get tricky, there are some interesting things in GURPS Martial Arts. Useful techniques are Armed Grapple and Sweep. The latter can help you exploit your long Reach to knock an opponent prone and then deal with him with more ease. The book also has rules for using other weapons with the Staff skill, such as two-yard polearms and spears. In some cases, this switch can be done with a free action. You can, for example, thrust with a spear, then switch to the Staff skill for that sweet +2 bonus to Parry. The Form Mastery perk allows you to do that multiple times per turn.
With a staff that is at least two yards long you can slam without damaging yourself, or you can shove two opponents at once. You can slam two opponents at once too, and you can even target the neck for a better injury multiplier. The Shoves and Tackles perk improves this application of the skill.
In addition, when you are using a staff, you have halved penalties for multiple parries in a turn, making you even more effective in defense. In addition, you can parry both halves of a Dual-Weapon Attack with a single parry roll at -1. You can also use a Defensive Grip to increase your Parry even further, but make your swinging attacks worse. If you’d like to switch grips as a free action, buy the Grip Mastery perk.
I should also point out two perks. Combat Vaulting is a cinematic perk that makes your staff improve your jumping and acrobatics rolls, and Sacrificial Parry lets you parry at attack directed at an ally beside you. With your long Reach and high Parry, this makes you a valuable ally.
And that’s basically it. What can I say? Staffs are excellent! What’s bad about them is that they usually are limited to crushing damage, and the damage cannot be improved with quality modifiers. I highly recommend you to try out a staff in GURPS, you won’t regret it.
Thrown Weapons
I rarely see thrown weapons being used, and that’s a shame. I’m a big fan of thrown weapons, but I still understand that this is not something you usually specialize in. Thrown weapons typically are used to start a fight or to finish a fleeing enemy. All Thrown Weapon skills are Easy difficulty skills, so it really won’t hurt your character much to put a point or two into it, especially if you have other ranged weapon. Before we look at the weapons, I strongly recommend checking out The Ten Tweaks to Customize Combat in Pyramid #3-34, because it adds some nice things for thrown weapons, such as allowing All-Out Attack (Strong), Committed Attack (Strong), and Defensive Attack, and letting you add distance moved before the throw to the range.
Let’s take a look at the weapon table in GURPS Low-Tech and explore the differences between all the different specialties. Thrown Weapon (Axe/Mace) covers many axes and maces that can be used in melee, but there is a new arrival here as well – the large hungamunga. In melee, it is treated as an axe at -2 to skill. At TL2, hungamungas are made of soft iron and may bend on impact. Roll 1d after a throw; on 1-3, the weapon bends and is useless. Straightening it takes 10 seconds and an Armoury+3 roll. Ignore this rule for steel weapons at TL3+. Most of the weapons in this category deal good damage, which can be crushing or cutting, but do not have a good range. They are also heavy, meaning that you probably won’t carry many of them.
Thrown Weapon (Dart) only has one weapon on the table – the throwing dart. Damage isn’t impressive, but this weapon is light and has one of the longest ranges among all thrown weapons. GURPS Martial Arts has another throwing dart – the plumbata. If a thrown plumbata hits, it becomes useless except as a baton until straightened. Should it strike a nonmetallic shield – deliberately or on a block – it will stick and deform, penalizing Shield skill: -1 for any at all, -2 if total projectile weight is at least half shield weight, or -4 if total weight equals or exceeds shield weight. Removing each plumbata requires a Ready and a ST roll at a penalty equal to its damage roll. In either case, unbending the head requires a free hand and a foot, and takes three Ready maneuvers and a ST roll. Now this is an interesting weapon!
Thrown Weapon (Disc) is a specialty that doesn’t exist in GURPS Basic Set – it was introduced in GURPS Low-Tech, and, I believe, in some other books as well. It only covers two moderately heavy weapons – the discus and the chakram. They deal decent damage and have a very long range, much longer than even the darts. Plus, you definitely get some style points for using these weapons. Imagine playing a discobolus!
Thrown Weapon (Harpoon) covers only one weapon – the harpoon. It can be used as a heavy spear with Reach 1, 2* at -2 in melee. It deals huge impaling damage, but is heavy and has a short range. However, it is tethered! The harpoon requires a Ready maneuver and a successful ST roll to pull out (if you fail, you may try again next turn). It does half the damage coming out that it did going in. A harpooned victim can move, but no farther than the tether’s length; to go further, he must win a Quick Contest of ST to pull the tether out of your hands. He might have to beat ST 50 (or even higher!) to escape if the tether is made of thick rope and tied securely to something solid (e.g., a ship). But how long is the tether? I have no idea.
Thrown Weapon (Knife) is another quite large weapon category that has many familiar weapons, including the sai that isn’t actually a knife. Small throwing knife and large throwing knife can be used in melee as small knife and large knife, respectively, at -2 to skill. The hungamunga is treated as a large knife in melee at -2 to skill and just like its large counterpart in the Thrown Weapon (Axe/Mace) table might bend at TL2. Thrown knives deal low damage, aside from the hungamunga that deals swing damage instead of thrust. Accuracy is also low, and so is range. However, weight and cost are low too, so you can carry many of these weapons.
Thrown Weapon (Shuriken) takes thrown knives to the extreme. Damage is even lower, Accuracy is slightly higher, and range is short. However, weight and cost are so low that you can literally buy a hundred of them. They can also be used to scratch in melee with DX, Brawling, or Karate, and if you take the Razor Kicks perk then you will be able to scratch with kicks as well. I love ninjas, so I have a soft spot for the shurikens.
Thrown Weapon (Spear) covers, well, spears. Both the spear and the javelin can be used normally in melee. They deal decent damage, have a surprisingly high Accuracy, decent range, but you probably won’t carry many of them. The text also hides another weapon – the pilum. The pilum acts like a spear, but deforms when it hits the shield, using the same rules as plumbata. You probably noticed that both the spear and the javelin have two statlines each – a normal one and one with a thong. What does it mean? It refers to the Thong Throwing technique on page 13 of GURPS Low-Tech that lets you increase range and accuracy by imparting spin to the spear. That’s pretty cool.
Thrown Weapon (Stick) covers only two weapons – the throwing stick and the boomerang. And no, the boomerang does not return to the user, but the book says that the GM may make an exception for characters with the Throwing Art skill. Both of these weapons act like batons in melee. They deal decent damage, are light and cheap, and have huge range. Did you think that the discus has long range? Think again. While the name of the skill might sounds unattractive, this is actually a good weapon category if you want a throwing weapon.
But that’s not all. GURPS Low-Tech Companion 2 has a box that describes what stats and skills you should use when throwing weapons that are not designed for that, and even lets you buy off the skill penalty with a technique. It also suggests a new skill – Thrown Weapon (Sword). Swords are thrown point-first, and they actually might deal decent damage, but range will be low. And do you remember how much swords cost? Are you Filthy Rich?
Pyramid #3-118 and the recently released Shields Up! have another new skill that is only available to those with Weapon Master (Shield) – Thrown Weapon (Shield). Thrown shields deal decent damage, but do you really want to relieve yourself of your shield? By the way, if you do not have this skill, then you throw shields with the Thrown Weapon (Disc) skill, but at a penalty.
Things that do not have their own skills, such as stones, grenades, flasks, etc. are thrown with the generic Throwing skill. It’s actually a very useful skill, because fantasy games usually are full of various airborne poisons and alchemical grenades that can be used with this skill. Dropping heavy objects on enemies while flying is done with the Dropping skill. This is one of those skills that make you raise an eyebrow when you read GURPS Basic Set for the first time – a skill for what?
Then, there’s the cinematic Throwing Art skill that makes all other throwing skills unnecessary. It allows throwing literally anything you can lift, and gives a huge bonus to damage. Remember the card throwing guy from City Hunter? That’s Throwing Art.
Finally, I would like to point out two advantages. Heroic Thrower from Pyramid #3-89 is the analogue of Heroic Archer or Gunslinger, but for thrown weapons. Super Throw from GURPS Supers increases your range and damage with throws.
And that’s it. There are many throwing weapons in GURPS, but few of them have any special rules. Using thrown weapons usually is easy and intuitive, so do not be scared of putting a point or two into the thrown weapon skill.
Tonfa
First, what is a tonfa? Basically, it’s a baton with a protruding handle on one side. It uses its own Tonfa skill, which is an Average difficulty skill that defaults to Shortsword-3. In the Basic Set, it doesn’t even have a statline – it’s just a baton with some additional rules, but GURPS Low-Tech and GURPS Martial Arts reworked the rules, so let’s talk about them instead of confusing ourselves with the old rules.
While both of these books have the same statline that you see on the screen now, GURPS Martial Arts describes all the special rules for tonfa fighting. For example, it says that Fast-Draw (Tonfa) is its own skill specialty.
Tonfa is a unique weapon because it can be wielded in three different grips. This is my using information from GURPS Martial Arts and the internet, because the book only provides rules for two grips.
The first grip looks like this – you grab the handle and the long part of the tonfa extends from you. While this is the normal grip for the purpose of rules, real-world tonfa fighters call this a secondary or reverse grip. When you wield it this way, you use the Tonfa skill to attack and parry, which permits both swing and thrust attacks. However, you may use Brawling or Karate parry if better than usual weapon parry. Even if you use Brawling or Karate to parry, you treat it as an armed parry, which is a very good bonus. Since a tonfa weighs 1.5 pounds, it can even parry axes without worrying about breakage. Swings only strike at Reach 1, while thrusts work both at Reach 1 and in close combat, which is good. Damage, however, is not impressive. This grip also allows you to use Armed Grapple and, as suggested by GURPS Martial Arts, the Arm Lock technique and those similar to it. Remember that switching between a one-handed and two-handed grip required for Armed Grapple is a Ready maneuver, unless you have the Grip Mastery perk.
The second grip looks like this – you grasp it by the handle and hold it against the forearm. For real-world fighters, this is the primary grip, but in GURPS, this is the reverse grip. And you do not even use the Tonfa skill for this grip – you use Brawling, Karate, or DX to jab with the butt of the weapon or to parry. You can only thrust in this grip, and only in close combat, but the attack receives damage bonuses for Brawling or Karate – exactly as if it were an unarmed strike. How does one switch between these two grips? You do it with a Ready maneuver or as a free action with the Reverse Grip technique. However, Tonfa is a special skill even in this aspect. Since its handle make switching between these two grips more easy, instead of rolling against Reverse Grip, you can just roll against your unmodified Tonfa skill to do it. This has several advantages over the Reverse Grip technique. The first one is the you do not drop your weapon on a failed roll – you just spend the entire turn changing grips. A critical failure does not injure you, but just makes you drop your weapon. And, most importantly, Reverse Grip has a default of -6, which is huge. With the Tonfa skill, you have no penalty at all. However, if you buy the Technique Mastery perk for Reverse Grip technique, you can improve this grip change aspect above the actual Tonfa skill. Honestly, I’d rather just buy up the skill. You should keep in mind that even though the grip change can be a free action, you can do it only once per turn – once you’ve changed your grip, you stay with that grip until your next turn.
The additional benefit of wielding a tonfa in this grip is improved defenses. You parry with Brawling or Karate with no penalty even against armed attacks, because the tonfa was designed for it. And even if you fail the parry, the opponent can choose to either hit the original target or the weapon. So, it is much harder to get your arms crippled when parrying this way. Remember that Brawling parries are at -3 against swung weapons, so a tonfa gives you an effective +3 bonus to Parry in such situation. And if you are using Karate, then you enjoy the improved +3 bonus when performing a retreating Parry with a tonfa. This is amazing. Encumbrance penalties can be a nuisance, but they are relatively easy to overcome.
You can also strike with the other end to the rear when wielding a tonfa in this grip. This enjoys a +1 bonus to damage, but obeys the usual rules for a Wild Swing (p. B388) or a Back Strike (p. MA67).
I forgot to mention that tonfas usually are wielded in pairs. And when wielding them in reverse grip you are using unarmed skills for combat, and those do not have off-hand penalties, unless you are using harsh realistic rules for unarmed combatant. That means that dual-wielding is much easier for you. You could also wield a tonfa in the normal grip in your primary hand, and a tonfa in reversed grip in the “off” hand, getting the best of both grips. That would require you to invest in the Tonfa skill though.
And there’s the third grip that is not mentioned in GURPS, but is mentioned on Wikipedia and other internet resources. You grab it by the shaft as use it as a baton with a hook. It is said that this is a very uncommonly used grip, but I am surprised that GURPS omits it, because hooked weapons are all over the place in GURPS Martial Arts. This will use the slightly adjusted baton statline and will be using the Shortsword skill. As I mentioned, the handle can be used as a hook. I talked about hooks in my axe post, but to reiterate shortly – you can hook a limb or head to unbalance the enemy, you can hook a weapon to disarm the enemy, or you can hook a shield to move it out of the way or unready it. Hook is a good technique, but requires some investment to be used effectively. If we go by RAW, then switching between the first and third grips is a free action, because it switches weapon skills without changing the number of hands. But I think that this makes no sense in this situation, I would require a Ready maneuver.
That’s all GURPS has for tonfas. They definitely are not excellent weapons, but they still are quite versatile, especially when you take the fact that they were used when other weapons were outlawed into account. As you could see, if you are playing a monk or a martial artist, a pair of tonfas doesn’t harm your wallet much, but greatly increases your defensive and offensive potential. And you do not even have to buy the Tonfa skill at all! But let’s get tricky, we are playing fantasy games after all. I wrote up three variants of this weapon.
The first one is the spiked tonfa that sports a blade on its short end. Dealing impaling damage with butt jabs is nice. The second one is the bladed tonfa that basically is a dual-bladed shortsword with a side handle. And the third one is a spring-loaded tonfa – a normal tonfa that can also act as something like a pistol crossbow. I think such variants would be great for a fantasy ninja.
Two-Handed Axes/Maces
I have already covered one-handed axes and maces, but I didn’t talk about their two-handed counterparts. They actually differ a lot. From what I’ve read online, players do not really like these weapons much and consider this weapon group to be one of the worst ones. So, let’s dive deep into this topic and see what’s up.
Two-Handed Axe/Mace is an Average difficulty skill that defaults to Axe/Mace-3, Polearm-4, and Two-Handed Flail-4. An immediate downside is that there’s no Fast-Draw specialty for this skill.
Let’s take a look at the weapon table in GURPS Low-Tech. The first of these weapons appear on TL0, which is nice. This means that you are free to give such weapons to cavemen or very primitive barbarians. Damage is where two-handed axes and maces shine – their damage is on par with Polearms and sometimes is even higher. All three melee damage types are covered – crushing, cutting, and impaling. So, not only you deal a lot of damage, you are also quite versatile. Reach is either 1 yards or 1-2 yards. In the latter case, it takes a Ready maneuver to change Reach, which is not good. While the Reach itself is good, I strongly recommend buying the Reach Mastery perk to change reach as a free action. All two-handed axes and maces are unbalanced – you cannot use them to parry if you have already swung it this turn (or vice versa). That’s not good, but there are ways to mitigate this downside. Cost is quite low, so almost any character can afford such a weapon. Low cost also makes it easier to apply quality modifiers. Weight is generally high. This means that many of these weapons will be able to break many other weapons on a parry. Sure, this might affect your encumbrance, but if you plan to use such a weapon, you probably have high Strength. Finally, we get to the ST requirement, which is where players often become disappointed. See the double dagger symbol? It means that this weapon not only requires two hands, but also becomes unready after attacking, forcing you to take a Ready maneuver to make it combat-ready again, even if you use Defensive Attack. This also makes Rapid Strikes impossible, I believe, but still allows All-Out Attack (Double).
How can one deal with this downside? The first option is to have very high ST. If you have 1.5 times the listed ST (rounded up), then the weapon does not become unready after an attack. This requires a lot of investment. For an ST 11 weapon, you will need ST 17, for an ST 12 weapon, you will need ST 18. Generally speaking, having ST this high benefits the concept of a damage dealer, but you might have had plans to spend you points on something else. You should remember that for melee weapons, ST requirement is Striking ST, not Lifting ST. If your GM allows that, you can buy Striking ST instead of raising your overall ST. It is not 100% clear whether the Huge Weapons perk helps or not, but I would allow it to add to the effective ST for this purpose.
The second option is relatively new and unknown. GURPS Monster Hunters Power-Ups 1 introduced new modifiers for the Extra Attack advantage that allow you to take a Ready maneuver instead of attacking. If you can only take a Ready maneuver, then this is a +0% enhancement. Basically, this turns Extra Attack into Extra Ready. A +100% version allows you to use the Extra Attack either as an attack or as a Ready. 25 points is a lot! But this is a generic Ready maneuver that can be used for anything. Extra Attack has the Single Skill, -20% limitation, and I see nothing wrong with applying it to Ready. But that would mean that you can also use this extra Ready maneuver to, for example, draw the weapon, stow it away, or change grips. I suggest increasing the limitation value to -40% to let you use this extra Ready maneuver only to ready your Two-Handed Axe/Mace after attacking. This would make this ability cost 15 points. Might seem like a lot, but it’s definitely cheaper than buying 6 extra levels of ST. But do not forget that it’s still up to the GM to allow this approach.
In terms of customization options, two-handed axes and maces are the same as one-handed ones. You can either check my previous post or open GURPS Low-Tech Companion 2 to see all the options.
What techniques are useful with the Two-Handed Axe/Mace skill? Armed Grapple is a good one, because it gives you more options for dealing with enemies in close combat. The Close Combat technique is another one that might come in handy for that. Feint is also something that you should consider investing in, because landing an attack is much more important when you cannot attack every turn. Some weapons, such as scythe and great axe, can be used to Hook, so the Hook technique might be a good addition to your arsenal. Since you are wielding a two-handed weapon, it is more reasonably to hook limbs to unbalance the opponent and set up a finishing blow. Finally, two-handed axes and maces are long enough to enable you to use the Sweep technique. It is very useful to knock enemies down to set up a finishing blow.
There are some other rules you should be aware of. Two-handed weapons in Defensive Grip (p. MA110-111) increase your parry against frontal attacks, but decrease it against side attacks. It also decreases damage and imposes a penalty on Wild Swings. You are very unlikely to actually use a two-handed axe or mace for defensive purposes, so this grip is rarely useful. What you should really look into is Beat – a ST-based Feint variant introduced on page 100 of GURPS Martial Arts. The downside is that it only penalized one defense, but here’s the catch – if you have high ST and wield a heavy weapon, most opponents will rely on Dodge. Parrying is dangerous due to the chance of weapon breakage. Blocking is dangerous as well because you might just either cut through the shield or break the shield in a couple of strong hits. Dodge is usually the lowest defense, but penalizing it with a Beat is difficult – you have to grapple or Hook the target. So, if you can penalize Dodge, you can do that. Even if your opponent blocks or parries, you can use Beat to greatly penalize that defense and force him to rely either on Dodge or risk damaging his weapon or shield again. Normal Feints are also good, because if you take some time to set up an accurate attack, you might finish the enemy in a single hit.
Since you are using an unbalanced weapon that also becomes unready after attacking, you should also worry about your defense. You should have high ST and your weapon is cheap, so consider investing your leftover money into good armor. Alternatively, remember that wielding two-handed weapon does not mean that you cannot use a shield! GURPS Low-Tech Companion 2 has rules for guige use – using your shields with no hands while it’s hanging on the neck strap. It’s less effective than using a shield normally, but still much better than nothing. You should also remember that you probably have other party members. Two-handed axes and maces work much better with friends who can distract the enemy or protect you when you are taking that goddamn Ready maneuver after swinging your weapon. If you take the Teamwork perk, you can even have your ally Feint an enemy and transfer the benefits to you, which is great!
As you can see, this weapon category is not that simple to use. It’s probably not a good choice for new players, but experienced players should be able to get much more out of this seemingly underwhelming weapon choice.
Two-Handed Swords
Two-handed swords in GURPS get more love than two-handed axes and maces. Why? Because they do not become unready after attacking, and most of them are balanced. This makes them much simpler to use, and hence they are an attractive choice for players, even new ones. Another upside is that Fast-Draw has the Two-Handed Sword specialty. Two-Handed Sword is an Average difficulty skill that covers not only very long blades, but also certain other weapons, such as one-handed swords wielded in two hands.
If we look at the weapon table in GURPS Low-Tech, we will see these one-and-a-half-handed swords – bastard sword, bokken, katana, longsword, thrusting bastard sword, and late katana. When wielded in two hands, they get increased damage and reduced ST requirement, but the rest of the characteristics stay the same. They, just like all other weapons covered by this still, can both swing and thrust, and can deal impaling, cutting, and crushing damage at Reach 1 or 2. So, they are simple and versatile weapon, but they cost a lot.
Naginata is a Polearm that can also be used with the Two-Handed Sword skill and hence can be readied quickly with Fast-Draw, unlike all other polearms. It is one of the two weapons on this table that are unbalanced on swinging attacks, so consider using Defensive Attacks to mitigate this.
The first two weapons on the tables are staffs – I talked about them in my post about staffs. They are strictly worse when used with this skill instead of Staff – they have worse damage, Reach, and do not get a bonus to Parry. Basically, this is just for people who do not have the Staff skill but need to whack somebody with a stick.
Tetsubo is actually a two-handed wooden club with an iron-studded cap. It is usually used in the Defensive Grip, according to GURPS Low-Tech. It can also be used with the Two-Handed Axe/Mace skill. This is another weapon that is unbalanced when it is used for swinging attacks, but on the other hands – it is quite cheap compared to other weapons on this table.
This leaves use with only three weapons that are actual two-handed swords and not weapons from other categories used with this skill. The two-handed macuahuitl is a wooden club with pieces of obsidian glued into place to create an edge. If it parries or is parried by any weapon, or is used to strike DR 2+, it suffers -1 to cutting damage until repairedG. In addition, on any successful attack or successful parry against an armed attack, roll 1d; on 1-2, the edge breaks, reducing the two-handed macuahuitl to a club that does swing+1 crushing damage. Fortunately, the weapon has two edges – the user can reverse it (a free action) and use the other side until it, too, breaks! As I have said before, I am a big fan of obsidian weapons, even though this one cannot deal impaling damage and has a fractional armor divisor on its cutting attack.
The greatsword and the thrusting greatsword are the true two-handed swords. The first one has a blunt tip, and the second one has a sharp tip. Typically, a greatsword has a ricasso – an unsharpened length of the blade for the wielder to grasp in the Defensive Grip without damaging the hand. These weapons are very expensive, but they deal good damage, have good reach, and are balanced. They are pretty good overall, aside from the fact that they are two-handed weapons. They are also quite heavy, which means that they can break many weapons on a parry.
The two-handed swords do not really have that many special rules, but there still are some things that you should know about. Two-Handed Swords are long enough to be used with the Sweep technique, which is great. You can also hold a two-handed sword in the Defensive Grip that improves your frontal parries, but decreases your side parries and makes your attacks weaker. This grip also allows using your weapon in a slam. Since the two-handed sword has a long parrying surface, it takes halved penalties when making multiple parries per turn, and can also parry both halves of a Dual-Weapon attack with a single Parry roll at -1. In terms of customization, there’s not much that you can do – you can remove the hilt or add a hook.
And that’s it. As you can see, two-handed swords are quite simple, but you have to deal with the fact that they are two-handed weapons. Still, they are a good weapon of choice for a new player.
"Unarmed" Weapons
If you look at the title, you might think that it makes no sense, and I wouldn’t blame you for that. But in GURPS, there are some weapons that are used with unarmed combat skills. GURPS has three unarmed striking skills – Boxing, Brawling, and Karate. Unskilled characters use DX instead. Let’s take a look at the weapons table in GURPS Low-Tech. There are three categories of unarmed weapons. The first one encompasses universal weapons that can be used with any unarmed striking skill – Boxing, Brawling, Karate, or DX. The second one can only be used with Brawling or DX. And the third one can be used with Brawling, Karate, or DX. Boxers are out of luck.
All these weapons have something in common – they receive damage bonuses for knowing the unarmed combat skills at a high level, just like normal unarmed attacks. If you have Sharp Claws or any other claws, they do not affect damage. I assume that the Striking Surface perk doesn’t stack with these weapon either. Do not forget that these are unarmed attacks, so you do not take off-hand penalties. Very useful for dual-wielders!
Let’s inspect the universal weapons first. Since the Boxing skill is in there, that means that all of them enhance punches. There are only three weapons – brass knuckles, myrmex, and cestus. All of them deal the same damage – thr cr, all of them have Reach C and Parry 0. The cost is low, and so is the weight.
Brass Knuckles are as likely to be made of horn, iron, steel, or reinforced leather as brass. The wearer ignores the rules for hurting yourself when punching, but also suffers from Bad Grip 3.
Myrmex is a leather hand wrapping with sharp edges that inflict shallow cuts. This is still crushing damage, but I think it would be reasonable for this damage to cause bleeding. Myrmex provides the hand DR 1, but also Bad Grip 1.
Cestus is a studded or spiked leather hand covering. It provides DR 4 to the hand, but does not give you Bad Grip, unlike the former weapons. There’s actually another version of the cestus that is not on the table, but is in the text – an elbow-length cestus. This one costs twice as much, weighs four times as much, and provides DR to the forearm, that is DR 4 to the arm on 1-3 on 1d. In addition, it gives +1 to damage not only to punches, but also to Elbow Strikes. I think that improving Elbow Drop damage would be reasonable as well.
What is unclear here is how much time it takes to put on your myrmex or cestus. If we look at GURPS Low-Tech: Instant Armor, then we will see that almost all gauntlets take 10 seconds to don, so I assume that myrmex and cestus take 10 seconds as well. It’s also not specified if the DR provided is flexible or not, but I assume that it is flexible.
But wait, we forgot one other weapon – the scissor glove from GURPS Martial Arts: Gladiators. It is a metal tube that encloses the forearm with a protruding crescent-shaped blade. The tube provides DR 5 to the forearm of the wielder. This DR is rigid, not flexible. What makes this weapon different from others? First, it’s heavy – five pounds! It’s quite expensive - $200. However, it can both thrust and swing for cutting damage, and it has Reach C-1. This is one of the few ways of dealing swing-based damage with an unarmed attack. The downside is that you cannot hold anything else in your hand.
If you are playing a character focused on punching, then any of these weapons are very good for you. A +1 to damage might seem small, but it’s actually significant for unarmed combatants. Having DR on your hands and forearms is nice as it makes it more difficult to get hurt by a successful weapon parry, and makes it easier to parry weapons. Sure, DR 1 is nothing special, but DR 4 of the cestus or DR 5 of the scissor glove is significant. It even allows you to use the Parry Missile Weapons skill unarmed!
Now let’s take a look at the second weapon group. The first weapon is the blackjack. It is mentioned in the Brawling skill description. The Karate skill description says that it cannot be used with a fist load or a blackjack. Later on, the Improvised Weapons perk was introduced. It says that it can be taken for the Karate skill to be able to use fist loads with it, so if you have this perk, then you can use the blackjack. Does it cover the rest of the weapons in this section? I don’t know. The blackjack is more expensive than the brass knuckles, weight more, and has a minimum ST requirement. However, it can be easily improvised. Also, the blackjack is designed to deliver a beating without obvious bruising (a Diagnosis-2 roll is requires to notice the injury on a casual examination).
The next weapon is the combat fan. This one has two modes of attack. A folded fan can be used as a fist load, and an unfolded fan can be used to deliver cutting attacks. This mode requires one less ST, is at -2 to hit, and does not get a damage bonus from high skill. It is kind of underwhelming, but it sure is stylish.
The rest of the weapons in this group are not actual weapons, but hilt punches with other weapons. Hook sword and qian kun ri yue dao deal thrust-1 cutting. Note that qian kun ri yue dao does not take the usual -1 penalty to hit due to it being an exotic weapon. Backsword and cutlass deal thrust crushing damage. This metal hilt provides DR 4 to the hand, cumulative with gloves, but cannot be used with metal gauntlets. Hilts of hook sword and qian kun ri yue dao do not enclose the hand completely; DR applies only on a roll of 1-3 on 1d.
GURPS Low-Tech Companion 2 has an option of adding a partial or full basket hilt to any other weapon.
Now let’s take a look at the final weapon group, the one that can be used with Brawling, Karate, DX, but not Boxing. The bladed hand can either thrust for impaling damage or swing for cutting damage, which is great. Again, this is one of the very few ways of dealing swing-based damage with an unarmed attack. Reach, however, is only C, and swing damage is worse than that of the scissor glove. Thrust damage is better, though.
Tonfa can be used for butt jabs with these skills. If you’d like to know more, check out my post about tonfas.
The last weapon is shuriken that can be wielded in melee to scratch and cut. This deals low thrust cutting damage. If you specialize on throwing shurikens, this can be your backup way of dealing cutting damage in melee. GURPS Power-Ups 2: Perks has the Razor Kicks perk that allows you to hold a shuriken between your toes, enabling you to use shurikens in melee with your kicks. This gives better reach and damage.
This isn’t the end yet, as there’s more even weirder weapons. Yawara is not listed on the weapon table, but is described in the text. It is a short stick held in the fist with its ends protruding, used as a fist load and a lever. Instead of giving +1 to damage with ordinary punches, it gives +1 to damage with the Hammer Fist technique that defaults to Brawing-1 or Karate-1. A yawara also grants +1 to follow-up rolls with Judo holds and locks (to injure, prevent escape, etc.).
Kakute is a ring with small teeth or “horns,” used to get a firm grip on an opponent and assail pressure points. A pair – one on the ring finger, one on the thumb – gives +1 to rolls to prevent a grappled foe from breaking free and +1 to Pressure Points skill while grappling, but Bad Grip 1 (p. B123) with weapons. Twisting the rings into position for grappling or out of the way for other tasks takes a Ready maneuver. So, this is an unarmed grappling weapon, if you can even call it a weapon. It’s on the weapon table, so it must be a weapon.
GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 8: Treasure Tables has two new weapons to be used with unarmed combat skills. The warbeak is a prow-like visor that is attached to any helmet. It allows the wearer to head-butt in close combat for thrust-1 pi+ damage. The Head Butt technique is described in GURPS Martial Arts. The battle fangs are a set of sharp metal false teeth. This weapon lets you bite for thrust-1 cutting damage, but impede speech. It is usually used with Brawling or DX, but with the Biting Mastery perk you can use this weapon with Karate.
There’s a couple of rules questions that remain unanswered. The first one is weight. Some of these weapons have weight. Is it added to your normal unarmed attack effective weight when determining weapon breakage? I don’t know. The second one is quality. Can you make, for example, Balanced brass knuckles for +1 to skill? I don’t think so, even though there’s nothing in the rules explicitly saying that you can’t. For weapons with sharp hilts, such as the hook sword, is the damage bonus for Fine or Very Fine quality added to hilt punches? It probably does. Does the +1 to skill from the Balanced quality apply to hilt punches? Probably not, but who knows?
Whips
Whips are not battlefield weapons, that’s for sure. They aren’t very effective in single combat either, but they are stylish, as there are some interesting tricks you can do with a whip. Let’s explore the realm of whips and see what they can be used for.
Whip is an Average difficulty skill. I also would like to mention the other two whip skills. Force Whip is another Average skill that governs the use of whips made of energy or force. It might seem like this is a strictly sci-fi skill, but there are many spells and abilities that require this skill, such as Lightning Whip or Fire Whip. Such whips usually can only strike for damage, but not entangle. There’s also the Monowire Whip – it’s a Hard difficulty skill that is used with monomolecular wires with weights. This is going to be a special post, because I will cover this weapon even though it’s very unlikely to be used in your traditional fantasy game. I just want to cover all melee weapon skills.
Let’s check the weapon table in GURPS Low-Tech. There’s only three weapons there. Whips and light whips do not have a fixed length – you can buy a whip of any length from one to seven yards. Each yard increases Reach, weight, cost, and ST requirement. The light whip requires ST 3 + 1 per yard. The normal whip requires ST 5 + 1 per yard. Whips are melee weapons with the longest possible Reach on low TLs, but you have to take a Ready maneuver to adjust Reach. As you can see on the table, damage is very low, and it has a fractional armor divisor, so do not expect heads to roll. Damage type is crushing, while some other RPG systems make whips deal cutting damage. Parry is awful – a minus 2 penalty and unbalanced! Sure, you can mitigate the unbalancedness with Defensive Attacks, but -2 still sucks. This is definitely not a defensive weapon.
This looks very underwhelming, but whips also have many special rules on page 406 of GURPS Basic Set. First, when you attack to disarm, you get a +2 in the ensuing Quick Contest, just like when using Jitte/Sai. Second, you can use a whip to entangle the opponent instead of damaging him. This attack is resolved at a -4 penalty and uses the Lariat rules. For more on that, read my Lasso post. This aspect of whip use can be improved with the Entangle technique from GURPS Martial Arts.
Unlike the kusaris, whips do not behave like flails – there’s no penalty to parry them and they do not entangle weapons on a parry. Sucks to be a whip user.
If you have a whip longer than one yard, then it becomes unready after an attack or a parry. It takes one turn to ready a two-yard whip and two turns to ready a longer whip. I highly recommend getting the Reach Mastery perk to be able to change Reach as a free action. However, you should keep in mind that this does not affect time required to ready a long whip after attacking or parrying. I will link Kromm’s post on that topic in the description. To be able to ready a whip quicker, you will have to use the Extra Ready approach that I talked about in the post about Two-Handed Axes and Maces.
Now, there’s also something that is unique to whips – kusaris cannot do that. You can “crack” a whip – this is the sound of the tip breaking the sound barrier. Your Whip roll is at -4, but you get +2 to damage. GURPS Martial Arts introduces a technique that lets you buy off this penalty.
Also, any whip blow is painful: anyone who suffers a whip wound to his arm or hand must roll against Will, modified by the shock penalty for the injury. On a failure, he drops anything in that hand. This can be very useful.
I should mention that there’s the Fast-Draw (Flexible) specialty that was introduced in GURPS Martial Arts. Force and monowire whips are readied with Fast-Draw (Force Sword). GURPS Martial Arts also has rules for tying up the target you entangled with your whip.
GURPS Fantasy-Tech 2 has diabolical whips. They are cinematic weapons that have all the upsides of whips but none of the downsides. I’m not a fan of such trade-offs. However, the barbed whip modifier that is written there sounds good for a D&D-style game, I would allow that on normal whips.
The last weapon on the whip table is special – the urumi. It’s not a whip, but a long, flexible sword that is used to whip the target. Blunt and sharp versions exist, but they cost the same. The urumi can deal crushing damage or cutting damage with the fractional armor divisor. Blunt urumi can only deal crushing damage. The urumi is still unbalanced and bad at parrying. It is also quite expensive. The urumi can only attack the target normally – none of the special whip rules apply. So, no entanglement, no readying, and no cracking. The text also mentions shorter versions; they’re worn like metal belts and are consequently known as belt swords: These get +1 to Holdout, but lack of a useful handguard gives an additional -1 to Parry. Damage sw-2 cr or sw-2(0.5) cut, Reach 1, 2, Cost $300, Weight 2 lbs., ST 7.
Now, I would also like to briefly talk about the monowire whip. This is an ultra-tech, superscience weapon that uses its own skill. It deals good damage with an armor divisor of (10). A control allows you to vary length from 1 to 7 yards, changing both reach and ready time. Adjusting the length requires a Ready maneuver. When used to snare an opponent or a weapon, the whip cuts into its target, inflicting thrust+1d(10) cutting damage every turn it is pulled taut until the victim escapes. A “drop weapon” critical miss indicates that you have hit yourself or a friend. It’s a cool weapon that I’ve never seen in use.
And that’s it – I’m done with all the melee weapons. As you can see, the whip shouldn’t be your weapon of choice if you want to deal a lot of damage. But weakening your enemies by disarming and entangling them is something the whip can easily do. Thank you for watching, and I’ll see you next time!
Kromm on Reach Mastery and Kusari/Whip - http://forums.sjgames.com/showpost.php?p=697221&postcount=3
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