Stone Age Weapons and Armor in GURPS - TL0 Doesn't Mean Zero Options

Stone Age Weapons and Armor in GURPS - TL0 Doesn't Mean Zero Options

Many fantasy settings feature the so-called “lost world” locations where technology hasn’t progressed beyond the Stone Age, and dinosaurs and prehistoric animals roam the lands, coexisting with primitive cave men. In D&D, in the Mystara setting, there was the Hollow World that partially fits this description. Frostburn, a supplement for D&D 3.5, featured the Neanderthal race. In Pathfinder’s Golarion setting, you have the Realm of the Mammoth Lords and the Deep Tolguth. In GURPS, you have an entire setting book – GURPS Lands Out of Time. Also, last week, I was playing Jurassic War, an old RTS from 1996, so, after discussing this topic with my friend, I decided to share some thoughts on the variety of gear available at TL0 in GURPS.

TL0 is the longest TL in GURPS, as it stretches from the 2.4 million years BC to 3500 BC. While it is called Stone Age, copper tools become available at the very end of it. If you scroll through GURPS Low-Tech, you’ll find that TL0 peoples had access to a surprising number of technologies and items, even though they had no written language, and some didn’t even have words for numbers in their languages.

Let’s take a look at the melee weapons table in GURPS Low-Tech and see what we’ve got available at TL0. We actually have a lot of variety – axes, maces, spears, knives, staves, and even flails. More than a half of the Axe/Mace skill category weapons appear at TL0. But what you see on the table isn’t always what you actually get. Most muscle-powered melee and thrown weapons shown on the table are made of steel despite being shown as TL0, and steel obviously wasn’t available in the Stone Age. You have to take a look at page 275 of GURPS Basic Set, where it says that such weapons should be made of, well, stone, and those have different stats. Stone blades retain cutting or impaling damage types, but get an armor divisor of (0.5). You can make stone weapons of Fine or Very Fine quality, but they would not receive a damage bonus from that. And regardless of actual quality, stone blades are treated as cheap for the purpose of breakage when parrying a swung weapon made of superior material. So, the quality only matters when parrying thrust weapons, or other swung stone weapons.

So, a stone axe would deal swing+2(0.5) cutting damage. There’s also the question of cost. It is $50 on the table, and if you are playing in a TL0 campaign, then it still would cost $50. However, if you are playing, for example, a TL0 character in a TL3 campaign, then stone would count as an outdated material and hence cost 60% less, and that is $20.

However, stone is not the only material available at TL0. GURPS Low-Tech and Low-Tech Companion 2 have rules for wooden weapons. Cutting damage is changed to crushing, impaling attacks gain an armor divisor of (0.5) and a -1 penalty to damage. This assumes fire-hardening; unhardened wood gives another -1 to impaling damage. Weight remains the same, but cost is divided by 10. Thus, a wooden axe would actually be a club that costs $5. Nothing to write home about, but it’s better than nothing.

Alongside with stone and wood, we can have weapons made of horn or tooth. Cutting damage becomes crushing, impaling damage gets an armor divisor of (0.5). This applies to horn-tipped weapons, but you can also make clubs with tooth edges. Such weapons still do cutting damage, but with an armor divisor of (0.5). In addition, on any successful attack or a successful parry against an armed attack, roll 1d; on 1-2, the edge breaks, reducing the weapon to a club that does crushing damage. Double-edged weapons can be reversed as a free action. The base cost is 20% of the listed cost. GURPS Low-Tech Companion 2 has rules for making double-bitted axes and other weapons, which might come in handy here. GURPS Low-Tech also describes one such weapon – the Polynesian tebutje edged with shark teeth. However, it is not listed on the weapons table.

Finally, GURPS Low-Tech also has rules for making bone weapons. Reduce all damage by -1, even crushing, and otherwise treat it as horn or tooth weapons, but if you roll 1-2 on the breakage roll, the entire weapon breaks, not just the edge. Base cost is only 5%, although some weapons are free. Just grab a dinosaur bone and use it as an improvised club. Don’t pay the dinosaur.

GURPS Lands out of Time has slightly different rules for bone weapons. I like the addition of the possibility to sharpen a bone weapon to a very fine point. Such weapon gets +1 to impaling damage the first time it strikes a target, if the target has no DR or has DR with Tough Skin. After that, the point is blunted, but can be resharpened again outside of combat.

That’s it. Or is it? Remember that I said that copper appears at the end of TL0? Are there rules for copper weapons? There are, but they are very well hidden on page 5 of GURPS Low-Tech Companion 2 – copper blades are simply treated as cheap weapons. However, since copper is not an outdated material at TL0, it seems that they retain their full cost. Makes sense.

But that’s still not all the materials. GURPS Basic Set says that obsidian is a TL1 material. GURPS Low-Tech has four obsidian weapons that are listed as TL0 articles – macuahuitl, two-handed macuahuitl, macuahuilzoctli, and tepoztopilli. The last one isn’t on the table, only in the text. They have special breakage rules that are very similar to those of horn and tooth-edged weapons. But these are microlithic weapons that use small pieces of obsidian. What about obsidian blades, such as axes or knives? Maybe they are TL1? GURPS Low-Tech says that creating obsidian tools, such as scalpels, requires Machinist/TL0 skill. GURPS Low-Tech Companion 2 describes microlithic weapons and blades separately, and when describing bladed weapons, says that TL0 cultures valued obsidian for the purpose of crafting blades. This seems to imply that obsidian blades are TL0, not TL1. So, you get another material that is actually pretty good. Sure, it’s brittle, but against unarmored targets it’s absolutely savage.

If you’re playing a fantasy game, you can introduce other special materials. Perhaps, different kinds of stone, wood, dragonbone, or something like that. I tried reading up on meteoric iron online, and it seems that the earliest historical meteoric iron weapons date back to the Bronze Age, which is TL1 in GURPS. But who knows? Maybe TL0 meteoric iron artifacts just haven’t been found? It definitely would be cool to have a legendary meteoric iron blade as an artifact of a TL0 tribe.

Now that we know what melee weapons are available to cavemen, let’s check the ranged options. At TL0, you get… almost everything. Blowpipes, bows, slings, nets, boomerangs, thrown knives, thrown spears, atlatls. Sure, you don’t get firearms, crossbows, and some more modern variations of the listed categories, but you actually have a breadth of choice. Also, since the crossbow dominance is out of the question, you can have fun with something that seemed underwhelming before – something like a sling or bolas.

However, there’s one question that I haven’t found a definitive answer to. Remember all the materials? The rules say that they apply to muscle-powered melee and thrown weapons. But what about the bows? They are projectile weapons, not thrown weapons. However, it feels that it would make sense for a stone-tipped arrow to deal impaling damage with an armor divisor of (0.5). I believe that it would be fair to apply those rules to arrows as well. That would make bows less dominant on TL0 battlefields and make other weapons more appealing.

Now we’re done with weapons, but let’s check out the armor, as it’s an important aspect of combat. Here we actually still have many viable options – cane, padded cloth, layered cloth, horn, leather, layered leather, straw, and wood. There are also variants not shown on the table – furs, rawhide, and bone. Cloth and leather armor can be reinforced with horn, wood, or shells. The only option available at TL0 is bezainting. GURPS Low-Tech has rules for copper armor, but copper armor is TL1, unlike weapons.

Here’s another inconsistency. GURPS Low-Tech says that helmets appear at TL1, which means that you can safely whack a caveman on the head with a club – he won’t have a helmet. However, GURPS Low-Tech: Instant Armor allows making helmets from TL0 materials. I think it makes sense to allow them. Neck armor, however, is still out of luck.

In terms of shield options, you get access to shields of all sizes, but only to light shields. Heavier materials haven’t been invented yet. But light shield is still miles better than no shield at all! I should mention that GURPS Lands out of Time has stats for shields made from stegosaurus plate and protoceratops fringe. That’s cool!

Finally, there is another inconsistency. All weapon tables list cloaks as TL1 weapons, but GURPS Low-Tech says that cloaks are TL0 items. So, if you want to have caveman fencers, you can have them.

Phew. This was longer than I expected. Every time I start writing something that seems like it will be a straightforward topic, I end up finding some very obscure rules, inconsistencies, and more and more questions. But there is another question that I’d like to answer, does all this matter if you are running a traditional TL3 or TL4 fantasy game? And I will say yes – it does. First, both the real world and fictional worlds are not as homogenous as they might seem at first. You can always encounter a less developed culture somewhere on the fringe of civilization or on a remote island. Some cultures deliberately avoid technological development and might be stuck with the Stone Age tech intentionally. They could be tribal human barbarians, savage orcs or goblins, or anything in between. Such differences in gear and materials used could emphasize the cultural differences and enhance your immersion. Second, GURPS Powers has the Nature power modifier that imposes a penalty on all rolls made with powers equal to the maximum TL of your gear. Thus, druids, totemists, and similar characters are limited to the options I described, if they want to use their powers unpenalized.