Script: Natural Weapons in GURPS

Script: Natural Weapons in GURPS

This is a transcript of my video about natural weapons in GURPS.

If you have ever built creatures in GURPS, you’ve probably wondered about what advantage to use to represent a tentacle, a tail with a stinger, retractable talons, or flaming swords that can be summoned on your command. While it seems simple at first, it’s actually much more complicated and confusing. Wrapping your head around all this as a new player or GM can be difficult, so I hope that this video will help you.

Most humanoid characters will have fists, feet, and teeth as natural weapons for free. They can still use other body parts, such as knees, elbows, and forehead with certain techniques, but for the purpose of this video, we will disregard them. All these attacks use the normal unarmed combat rules, including the possibility of getting injured when parried with a weapon.

The Claws advantage (p. B42) modifies both your hands and feet by giving them claws. There are multiple types of this advantage. Blunt Claws increase your punch and kick damage by +1 per die. Hooves add +1 per die to kicking damage and also give DR 1 to your feet. Sharp Claws keep damage the same, but change the damage type from crushing to cutting. Talons let you deal cutting or impaling damage with punches and kicks, but you have to choose before you roll to hit. Long Talons work identically to Talons, but damage is at +1 per die.

GURPS Power-Ups 2: Perks also has the Striking Surface perk that gives you an innate analogue of brass knuckles. This gives +1 to damage with punches and kicks.

So, there’s your Wolverine, you just have to add Switchable, +10% to the advantage, right? Well, yes, but you still will fight with your claws as with unarmed attacks. Also, what if you want to get ultra-sharp claws that have an armor divisor? The Armor Divisor enhancement is incompatible with claws, so you’re out of luck, it seems, but there is a workaround that I will talk about later in the video. Also, to increase the damage beyond your normal unarmed damage, you will have to buy Striking ST, possibly with the One Attack limitation.

There’s also the Teeth advantage (p. B91) that has three variants. Sharp Teeth change your bite damage type from crushing to cutting. Sharp Beak changes your bite damage type from crushing to large piercing. Fangs change your bite damage type from crushing to impaling. There’s also the Vampiric Bite advantage (p. B96) that includes either Sharp Teeth or Sharp Beak, but also lets you drain HP from the victim. There is no version with Fangs, but you probably can pay an extra character point to make up for the difference. This advantage was later disassembled into a more versatile Leech advantage in GURPS Powers. The Weak Bite (p. B161) disadvantage reduces your bite damage by -2 per die. Again, if you want to make extra-sharp teeth with an armor divisor, you’re out of luck.

If you want to cover your body with spines, you can get the Spines advantage (p. B88). There are Short Spines and Long Spines. Both of them deal static damage that does not depend on your strength and are difficult to use actively.

Then we have the Striker advantage (p. B88). Unlike the rest of the advantages, a Striker is a new body part that cannot be used to manipulate objects or grapple. It can be used to attack at Reach C and inflicts increased damage. Only some physical damage types are available – crushing, piercing, large piercing, cutting, or impaling. Small and huge piercing, and other damage types are off the limits. Also, your Striker counts as a weapon when you parry with it. It does not count as a weapon when it is parried – there is a difference! There’s something that many GURPS players say, and I used to believe that as well – Strikers cannot be damaged. Where did that come from? GURPS Basic Set on page 421 lists the crippling threshold for a Striker as HP/2, just like for a limb. GURPS Martial Arts on page 117 has rules for grappling Strikers and injuring them with Lock and Wrench techniques. There is a Krommpost on the forums that says that Strikers cannot be damaged, but I think that Kromm is simply wrong there. I know that it might sound as blasphemy to you, but this is the hill I’m dying on. I will link the post in the description. But even here, you have to apply some common sense – if your Striker is a tail or a wing, then targeting it as a limb and it being damaged after it is parried by a weapon seems fine, but what if your Striker is a set of horns or tusks? Maybe then damage to them shouldn’t come off of your HP? In any case, keep all this in mind, because I will talk about it some more later in the video.

There is an enhancement to make the Striker longer, and there are limitations to make it more difficult to use, make it unable to parry, make it slightly weaker, or limit its arc of attack. GURPS Martial Arts adds a new limitation – Limb. This limitation makes the Striker not a new body part, but an existing limb. Emphasis on limb, this is not an extremity! You retain your damage bonus and become able to use it with Karate, as well as Brawling. This does not stack with Claws. Limb, Arm is cinematic, but Limb, Shin is realistic. The main benefits here are that you get a damage bonus and become able to parry with the limb as with a weapon. This is especially appropriate for cinematic martial artists, such as D&D monks, who probably can take Striker with the Limb limitation and the Chi power modifier to represent reinforcing the limbs with their inner energies.

Another option is to use Innate Attack (p. B61). Innate Attack is more flexible than Striker, but to make it deal ST-based damage instead of just a certain number of dice of damage, you will have to use the ST-Based enhancement from GURPS Power-Ups 2: Enhancements. This enhancement is marked with three eye symbols, meaning that the GM needs to pay very close attention to it, because it can get out of hand quickly. There are two versions, the +100% version that simply adds your swing or thrust damage to the attack, and the limited +30% version that imposes a cap on your swing or thrust damage with this attack equal to the number of dice the Innate Attack deals. This is confusing, and does not work well with buffs and abilities that might increase your ST. The upside is that it is easy to apply many modifiers, such as Armor Divisor. The text itself also says that things can break easily: “ST-Based can unbalance certain aspects of the game. In particular, Crushing Attack 1d (Melee Attack, Range C, 1, -20%; ST-Based, +100%) [9] boosts the damage of bites, head butts, kicks, and punches approximately as well as Striking ST 8 [40]! And a weak Cutting Attack or Impaling Attack can be an inexpensive alternative to Claws or Strikers. The GM should consider these issues before allowing ST-Based in a non-supers game.” Even though Striking ST is overpriced, this still can result in very unbalanced abilities. Also, you cannot create a ST-based attack with no damage bonus or a damage penalty.

The same book also has rules for modifying existing damage on pages 9-11. They are used for things like applying Armor Divisors and other modifiers to your claws (remember I mentioned that earlier?), but it also works with actual weapons – from swords to guns. The rules themselves are incredibly clunky – you have to calculate how many dice of damage you can deal with your attacks, find out the effective cost as if it were an Innate Attack, apply the desired modifiers to this virtual Innate Attack, and derive the point increase from this value. What if you got buffed by a spell that increases your ST, or you found a gun that deals more damage than you used for these calculations? Then your ability stops working. I think that these rules are so wonky, that they really shouldn’t be used. While the only alternative that exists in the books is GURPS Power-Ups 1: Imbuements, and they are not very good, I still think that there should be a better way. For example, there is the Blessed (Ghost Weapon) [15] advantage that makes you able to attack insubstantial beings as if all your attacks had Affects Insubstantial, +20%. I think that you can treat effects of equivalent enhancement value as the same 15 points, and extrapolate the rest. Or you can use the Sorcery approach of transforming an imbuement skill into an advantage.

What I’ve described so far sounds complicated and confusing, right? But do not lose hope, for there is an elegant solution – the Natural Weapons article from Pyramid #3-65. This article was a godsend to me. It introduces a new advantage – Natural Weapon, and it is much more flexible, clear, and balanced than Striker or Innate Attack. You can use any damage type you want, and you get many options to modify your Natural Weapon – you can make it deal different damage types, you can increase or decrease damage, make it a swung weapon, make it flexible or intangible, increase or decrease its effective weight, increase or decrease its resilience, make it a ranged weapon, and many more. And, most importantly, you can apply the generic attack enhancements! So, if you want your ultra-sharp claws, you can take Natural Weapon (Cutting) [7] and apply Armor Divisor, (2), +50% to them. You won’t have to use the rules from Power-Ups 2! You also have clear rules on how parrying works, how damage to your natural weapon works, and how it can recover HP.

The article has many examples of various natural weapons built with this advantage – bone stakes, chi blasts, decaying touch, horns, ultra-sharp claws, dragon’s breath, lightning whip, and some more.

Natural Weapon does not replace Striker, but coexists with it. There is a box that explains the difference. The main difference is that the Striker is an additional body part separate from the other limbs, while a Natural Weapon is not. Thus, any damage to a Striker is taken off of the body’s HP (and it is susceptible to bleeding, crippling, etc.). However, the Striker allows you to attack while your hands are occupied (grappling, holding something, etc.). In contrast, a broken Natural Weapon isn’t any worse than a broken nail or tooth, but you must use your hand, mouth, etc. in order to attack with it. In other words, games using both advantages should treat tails, tentacles and such as Strikers and claws, teeth, horns, quills, etc. as Natural Weapons.

This advantage is so flexible, that it can do things that aren’t even very obvious at first. For example, I use Natural Weapon to build the signature ability of the D&D soulknife class – the mind blade. It works great with Psionic Powers, because I can make it deal damage based on the character’s psionic skill instead of physical ST. Also, if you use the Quintessence attribute, you can build spells with Natural Weapon and base their damage on QN – this is a great approach. I did not come up with it myself, I’ve seen it being suggested by an anonymous poster on /tg/. I do not even use QN myself.

And that’s it. If I had to summarize what I’ve just said, I’d say – please, give Natural Weapons a shot – this is one of those articles that, in my opinion, should be part of the mainline GURPS books. It is flexible, clearly-written, and less prone to unbalancing the game. It’s just a 10/10 article. And Strikers can be damaged, I will fight you if you say otherwise.