Unofficial GURPS 4.5e—or, your favorite post-Basic Set rules

[Michael Thayne]

Edit: for non-D&D players, the title of this thread arguably should have been "4th edition, revised". But I'll leave it as-is rather than edit all my uses of 4.5.

I've been thinking about trying to come up with a sort of unofficial "GURPS 4.5"—a list of optional rules that clearly work better than the rules that originally appeared in the basic set 12 years ago. I've decided there are three or four main ones:

Much of what's listed in Kromm's "Ten for Ten" article in Pyramid #3/70. This is Kromm's list of things he wishes he'd included in the original fourth edition, so arguably serving as a kind of "GURPS 4.5" was half the point. Using this as a starting place for this project seems like a no-brainer.

"Magic as Powers" from Powers, and/or Ritual Path Magic. GURPS 4e's magic system is infamously bad. Using an alternate magic system fixes that.

Alternate Guns Specialties and Techniques from Alternate GURPS III. This may seem like a finicky rules changes to give pride of place in designing GURPS 4.5, but every time I design a character for a TL7-9, I find myself going through the same annoying process of figuring out which of the many guns specialties I care about, which I care most about, how many points I can save by relaying on those juicy -2 defaults... it's annoying. And apparently not even all that realistic.

Knowing Your Own Strength from Alternate GURPS IV. ST scaling is one of the biggest frustrations about GURPS 4e. I was leery of this approach for a long time, because it didn't explicitly rescale weapons & armor, but after thinking about it more, mixing quadratic/cubic damage with log BL doesn't actually seem problematic, at least on the scale most fantasy warriors and supers operate on. Bench pressing a tank actually should be easier than destroying one bare-handed. (I have a kettle bell I can deadlift fine, but I'd be hard-pressed to destroy it bare-handed.)

Some smaller changes that I still like:

Various ultra-tech toy catalogs from Tech and Toys Pyramid Issues. In particular, if I were running a TL9+ game, I'd completely replace the standard Combat Hardsuit with the Hardshell Suit from Pyramid #3/12. The Combat Hardsuit seems just a little too good compared to other ultra-tech armor.

The "Metatronic Generators" rules from Pyramid #3/46. Really useful not just for blatant "super science", but anything that fits the genre of your campaign, but is very different than the gear that PCs could normally buy for cash.

Various optional rules from "worked example" serieses. I'm talking about Dungeon Fantasy, Action, Monster Hunters, and After the End. These series have rules that are often clear improvements on the rules in RAW, only a few of which sacrifice significant realism. (In some cases, unrealistic rules are replacing other unrealistic rules, so they're at least realism-neutral.) Among other things, it's nice to have alternatives to the Basic Set gadgeteering rules, which as I understand it were originally created with the extremely silly Illuminatus University in mind.

What did I miss? What are your favorite rules that you'd want to be part of GURPS 4.5e?

[Eukie]

The expanded Reaction/Infulence rules from Social Engineering give interacting with people in different ways almost as much depth as combat does. It's not perfect, but it expands GURPS in a field that is so universal that I frankly think it should be part of the core book.

[philosophyguy]

The expanded reaction rules are a great idea.

I lean towards RPM for magic, but either RPM or Sorcery would be the default system.

I'd do explicit sets of options for granularity, so the GM had guidance on how to adjust the crunch level. How to be a GURPS GM does this well for combat; I'd do a similar treatment for non-combat adventuring. This would probably draw heavily on Action 2 and After the End 2, in order to simplify or organize that material found in Basic Set, especially chapter 10 on success rolls (all the detail on physical feats) and chapter 14 on injury and fatigue.

[kracht]

I especially like the "Blunt Trauma and Edged Weapons" box in Low Tech (p. 102). But I have not studied its consequences in depth, so I have no idea whether there might be problems in making it "core".

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by Eukie

The expanded Reaction/Infulence rules from Social Engineering give interacting with people in different ways almost as much depth as combat does. It's not perfect, but it expands GURPS in a field that is so universal that I frankly think it should be part of the core book.

Oh, good catch. I own Social Engineering, but a lot of the stuff I've referenced it for seems to be very fiddly in ways that only matter in unusual situations. But the stuff from p. 26 through the end of that chapter looks really useful.

[simply Nathan]

Personally I do not like any of GURPS's magic systems other than the regular skill-based system from Basic and Magic, Imbuements, Divine Favor, and tenuously Sorcery or basic Magic As Powers. The other things you can do with the system other than fixing problem spells from the basic system may be for other people, but they're not for me and I would absolutely detest them replacing it as the standard.

Now, my favorite post-Basic Set rules are Heroic Archer, the Imbuements system, Internal (Advantage) from Bio-Tech, and the Divine Favor system.

[Mr_Sandman]

I think Impulse Points from Power Ups 5 are really worthwhile for the right kind of campaign. Although that was one of the rules mentioned in the Ten for Ten article.

For Superhero campaigns, I like power scales from Supers, p. 19. It provides a bit more structure than just a point value, and gives players guidelines that help avoid overpowered or underpowered characters.

I'll second Imbuements and Divine Favor. I like how they worked out when I used them in a game. However, if I could include just one magic system in GURPS 4.5, in addition to the default system from Basic and Magic, it would be Path/Book magic. It fills a very different niche and creates a very different tone for working magic in a game.

[Michael Thayne]

Imbuements are cool conceptually, but suffer from some conspicuous balance issues. Now that I think about it, I would love if the next "Alternate GURPS" issue of Pyramid had "Alternate Imbuements". That would be in my "GURPS 4.5e".

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

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"Magic as Powers" from Powers, and/or Ritual Path Magic. GURPS 4e's magic system is infamously bad. Using an alternate magic system fixes that.

Oh hell no! If either of these was the only option for running mainstream Fantasy much less dungeoncrawling I wouldn't use Gurps for those purposes.

Adding Path/Book Magic for handling modern Urban Fantasy is useful and it could be stretched for lower tech fantasy but Magic as Powers IMHO works only in Supers games (though some people may be running LT Supers and calling it fantasy) and I find RPM both excessively vague and excessively mathematical for any particular purposes.

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Oh hell no! If either of these was the only option for running mainstream Fantasy much less dungeoncrawling I wouldn't use Gurps for those purposes.

Adding Path/Book Magic for handling modern Urban Fantasy is useful and it could be stretched for lower tech fantasy but Magic as Powers IMHO works only in Supers games (though some people may be running LT Supers and calling it fantasy) and I find RPM both excessively vague and excessively mathematical for any particular purposes.

Eh? I don't know what you consider "mainstream fantasy", but magic as powers strikes me as ideal for dungeon crawling. If I wanted to slavishly replicate D&D in GURPS, magic as powers would without question be the way to go. I just took a whack at building a character with the "sorcerer" template from Pyramid #3/82, and came up with the following:

Spells:
Complex Illusion 1 [9]; Dispel Magic 1 [12]; Explosive Fireball 4 [8]; Lesser Geas [11].
Advantage Options: 15 extra points in spells (see previous), Sorcery Talent +1 [10], Will +3 [15].

That's very D&D-ish, especially with the ability to "improvise" an infinite variety of minor spells via Sorcerous Empowerment. The only downside is it's arguably too powerful, since you can chuck out a 4d area attack every second forever (with alternative rituals).