The Many Facets of Freezing in GURPS

The Many Facets of Freezing in GURPS

Elemental damage in GURPS often can be unituitive if you come from another system. I've talked about this more extensively in another post, but in this post, I would like to give some attention to cold damage - how you can do it in GURPS. After all, most RPG systems have cold damage, and there are many fictional abilities that freeze victims, so it's a good topic to explore.

GURPS has no cold damage type - what do you use then? First of all, I have to mention that cold and ice are very different things. While in other systems, something like a hail of icy daggers might deal cold damage, in GURPS it is better represented as impaling, cutting, or piercing damage. A ball of ice launched at the enemy would deal crushing damage, possibly with fragmentation. I would like to talk more about cold without any material component, a type of energy damage.

Let's check our options.

Attacks that sap heat from the victim deal fatigue damage with the Freezing, +20% modifier. This means that recovery from this FP loss is only possible in a warm area. You should keep in mind that fatigue attacks do not ignore DR, unless you make them do so. Fatigue attacks are very powerful, as even large monsters often have as many FP as a normal human.

Attacks that deliver intense, focused cold are burning attacks with the No Incendiary, -10% modifier. This makes them almost identical to fire attacks.

This is quite boring, right? You can spice things up with additional modifiers to make cold feel distinct. What you definitely should look at are Side Effect and Symptoms. For example, you could apply Side Effect, Paralysis, +200% to a fatigue, burning, or even physical cold attack if you want it to have a chance to freeze the injured target. This is what some cinematic example abilities in GURPS Powers do. Keep in mind that this is a very powerful effect, as even a single point of damage that goes past the DR will force a HT roll that will last minimum 1 minute - this is deadly. If you'd like to tone it down, I suggest also adding Reduced Duration, 1/60, -35%. This will replace minutes with seconds. I should once again mention that Side Effect works differently in the most recent printing of GURPS Basic Set - you have to replace penetrating damage with injury. This might be important. Aside from Paralysis, you could go with a DX penalty and/or Numb. I like that.

If you don't like Side Effect, consider Symptoms. This will add a little bit of bookkeeping, but give cold attacks some extra flavor. As before, this enhancement is valid both for fatigue and burning cold attacks, and maybe even to ice attacks, if you want that. The book suggests limiting Symptoms to weak attacks that deal 1d damage or less. Some appropriate effects would be DX penalties, Numb, and Brittle. Or... all of the above! For example, you could go with something like Symptoms, 1/3 HP, DX-2, +60%; Symptoms, 1/2 HP, Another DX-2 and Numb, +80%; and Symptoms, 2/3 HP, Brittle, +15% for a total of +155%. This will represent the gradual loss of muscle control and shivering due to freezing.

But that's not all! You could also introducing Binding into the mix! Remember Sub-Zero? You could represent freezing with Binding modified with Engulfing, +60% and, possibly, Suffocating, +75%, if you feel particularly cruel. GURPS Powers also introduces a 0-point feature for such abilities on page 138 - you treat FP lost to failed attempts to break free as freezing, but the victim does not become helplessly entangled on a roll of 17 or 18. You should remember that to work properly, Binding needs to have ST no lower than half of the target's ST. For example, to freeze a ST 10 human, you would need to use Binding 5 or higher. Even if you simply use Binding 5, you still make the target lose a turn to break free, which is great for you.

    You can use Binding independently, or you can use the Link, +10% enhancement to combine it with a damaging cold attack, be it fatigue, burning, or something else. I suggest applying 3 or 4 levels of Binding per die of damage - it seems that it should work fine. And I think that would make cold attacks much more interesting. However, I will probably go with Side Effect, DX-2 and Numb, +90%.

Do you have any other ideas or suggestions?