[Basic] Skill of the week: Armoury

[johndallman]

The skill of building, repairing and modifying weapons or armour. Requires specialisation, such as Small Arms, Body Armour, Melee Weapons or Heavy Weapons. The specialisations vary with TL, as do the defaults between them. This is a "build" skill in Design-Build-Use triads, as per B190. It defaults to IQ-5, or the corresponding Engineer specialty, which is what you need to design weapons or armour. Those Engineer specialties also default to Armoury. Connoisseur (Guns) also defaults to Armoury; remember that the reaction roll modifiers for styled weapons (High-Tech p10) only apply to collectors, potential buyers (and possibly serious gun fans), not to everyone who sees them.

B407 describes using Armoury on firearm malfunctions, which can be bought up with the Immediate Action technique (see High-Tech). Repair rules are on B484, and the Intuitive Armourer perk (High-Tech) allows you to maintain one weapon without Armoury skill, as an example of One-Task Wonder (Power-Ups 2: Perks). Action: Exploits gives common activities and uses for the skill in the modern day. Most GURPS books that give templates for fighters include appropriate Armoury specialisations. They seem to generally agree that trained soldiers have a point in Armoury, soldiers expected to operate independently have 2 points, and a professional armourer has 4 points or more. Armoury is an optional skill in many martial arts gun-based styles.

B345 gives equipment modifiers. My experience is that characters either use Armoury very rarely, or a lot, without much middle ground*. If you use it heavily, boosting skill with a quality toolkit or a full workshop (gives +2, as per Action: Heroes p30, High-Tech p24) is very worthwhile, because there are lots of rolls, and critical failures tend to mean bad things happen in dangerous fights. If you can't get to skill 16 that way, take Extra Time (B346). Working on equipment for someone with a different SM gives a penalty (Fantasy p137).

Gun-Fu naturally has a lot about Armoury (Small Arms) for TL6+, including modifiers for weapon upgrade tasks in quite a lot of detail, along with perks, combat moves based on Armoury ... the works. Tactical Shooting covers much of the same ground, but not all of it and has more rules for realistic concerns, like adjusting gunsights. Check with your GM if you should use Gun-Fu or High-Tech rules for upgrading guns, as they aren't the same. High-Tech has much more breadth of coverage. It also has the "Exotic Bullets" and "Handloading and Reloading" boxes, which definitely repay careful study. Hand-matched rounds and drastically upgraded rifles can get you to Acc 9, plu 'scope bonuses, which makes a big difference to hitting at range. I suspect that for exhibition shooters, tuning a rifle and cartridge for one specific distance might let you squeeze in another +1 Acc.

Monster Hunters has some streamlined rules for Armoury (Small Arms) and a longer list of exotic ammunition. Horror has an additional specialisation, Armoury (Esoteric) and rules for using it. Low-Tech adds another specialisation, Armoury (Liquid Projector), deals with variant ammunition in low-tech firearms, and has a little on making low-tech armour, considerably amplified in Low-Tech Companions 2 & 3.

Making useful weapons or armour with spells from Magic or abilities from Powers usually requires Armoury skill. Fitting battlesuits to their user requires appropriate Armoury, too, as per Ultra-Tech. And in a Zombies campaign, you'll need it for salvaging and repairing scarce weapons.

There aren't a whole lot of modifiers or TDMs for Armoury, except for equipment modifiers and some Gun-Fu modifiers for difficult tasks. BAD applies in Action, of course. Simply fitting appropriate accessories and the like is +4 to armoury. However, if you end up using armoury a lot, critically falling a roll will happen eventually, and cause problems.

What bizarre specialisations of Armoury have you used? What cool things have you done with it?

*I bought Armoury up to 15 on a character last weekend so that I could try the skill out in the context of a campaign, and write about it here. So far, I'm upgrading most of the party's pistols and loading hand-matched ammunition for them, getting them to effective Acc 4 instead of Acc 2. And that feels like a really worthwhile use of downtime in a WWII counter-intelligence campaign.

Addendum: Since post-apocalyptic reloading of cartridges is a frequent subject of discussion, it seemed worth noting that Pyramid #3/88: The End is Nigh has a definitive treatment of the subject by S.A. Fisher and Hans-Christian Vortisch.