GURPS is a supremely clever system. It introduced me to points based character design; character advantages and disadvantages; a universal system that could cope with any setting; a mouth-watering, massive skill list. And not a level or a character class in sight!
I played GURPS for years. Inevitably, I uncovered flaws, like the odd way that you can sustain damage up to negative Health; and from that point, and every five points there after, you have to make a survival role. Why every five points? Why is five more deathy than 4?
Or the single second combat rounds. Fine for combat with firearms; less so for sword and sorcery combat. Everyone seems to move at great speed and acts with impossibly acute comprehension of fast moving events around them.
But the thing that bugged me most was an oddity in one of the best rules of all - the hand to hand damage table.
One of the other things that GURPS did differently to other systems was hand weapon damage. Most other systems based damage on the weapon. A dagger might do 1d4 damage, a short sword 1d6, a broadsword 1d8, regardless who was waving it about. The user's strength might add something, maybe a +1 or (as in Runequest) a d4 or d6, but it was the weapon, not the wielder, that determined how much hurting was caused; whereas in GURPS, damage was based on the strength of whoever was holding the sword.
The system also divided damage into two categories, thrusting and swinging - taking a swing at someone with a stick did more damage than poking them with the same stick.
The damage table evolved, from edition to edition, but looks a bit like this:
| ST | Thrust | Swing |
|---|---|---|
| 5 | 1d-5 | 1d-5 |
| 6 | 1d-4 | 1d-4 |
| 7 | 1d-3 | 1d-3 |
| 8 | 1d-3 | 1d-2 |
| 9 | 1d-2 | 1d-1 |
| 10 | 1d-2 | 1d |
| 11 | 1d-1 | 1d+1 |
| 12 | 1d-1 | 1d+2 |
| 13 | 1d | 2d-1 |
| 14 | 1d | 2d |
| 15 | 1d+1 | 2d+1 |
| 16 | 1d+1 | 2d+2 |
| 17 | 1d+2 | 3d-1 |
| 18 | 1d+2 | 3d |
| 19 | 2d-1 | 3d+1 |
| 20 | 2d-1 | 3d+2 |
(d stands for d6. One feature of GURPS is that it only uses six sided dice.)
You can see it is a thing of singular beauty. Damage increases as strength increases, a supremely realistic idea. A wimp with ST of 8 should not have anywhere near the potential to inflict pain like a bruiser with ST 18. In most systems, there isn't really much difference. In GURPS, the difference is huge - the former would do between 0 and 4 points damage, the latter between 3 and 18.
A further rule created an extra tactical element. Damage was further described as Crushing, Cutting or Impaling. Any Cutting damage (sharp bladed things, like axes) that got through armour was multiplied by 1.5. Any Impaling damage (Sharp pokey things, like spears) was multiplied by 2!
Impaling damage was usually based on Thrust and Cutting damage was usually based on swing - you poke at someone with a spear, and swipe at them with an axe. So the spear (based on thrusting damage) may do less basic damage than the swung axe; but the spear may ultimately cause more hurt, once the imapling bonus is taken into account.
It was an ingenious idea that cancelled the tendency to choose, automatically, whatever weapon that lets you roll the most or biggest die.
BUT I found a couple of flaws with these ideas.
I couldn't get my pedantic head around the way that, at some points, it was possible for a strong character to have a lower minimum damage than a weaker character. Look at the swinging damage at ST 16 and 17. Strength 16 gives you 2d+2. Minimum damage 4. ST 17 gives you 3d-1. Minimum damage 2. How does that make sense?
Sure, the average and maximum damages progress logically - the top end numbers always get bigger. But I assume any character of mine will be rolling badly, so perhaps I pay undue attention to what is happening at the lower end of the range of possibilities. Only things hitting me ever roll well.
Oddly, while a lot of people have spent a lot of time trying to refine / improve / over-complicate the GURPS damage system, no-one seems to worked up about this particular aspect. Maybe they have enjoyed better luck than my characters.
Then I became aware of a second problem.
Some weapons, like swords, could do thrusting or swinging damage. You can whack an Orc with the blade, or poke him with the tip. I loved this tactical element - if the orc was wearing armour, you went for the swing so as to blast through it; if not, you stabbed them to get the increased damage from impaling.
But ... but ... sometimes the difference between the amount of damage made thrusting pointless (pun intentional). A thrust does less basic damage than a swing; while you got to double it, you still got to add half again to your swinging damage. This blunted (pun intentional, again) the tactical element described earlier. Swinging was a higher base roll, and still got augmented. Faced with with a heavily armoured foe, you would take a swing. Faced with an completely nude foe, you'd take a swing. In most cases, wouldn't make sense any other way.
Part of the problem stems from the decision to ratchet up Swing damage more rapidly than Thrust. Thrust increases every two steps. Swing every step. But given GURPS's admirable refusal to use anything other than six sided dice, it has made a grand mechanic fairly redundant.
I will explore some possible variations In Posts To Come, but I await comments from my readership with baited breath.
