Fantasy Gurps

[hoganbball23]

Hi all. I am working on a classic fantasy campaign and trying to come up with racial creation rules. I am wondering if people have had success with this or if I am overcomplicating and should just stick to the points values in the book. The problem with the points in the book is that some races are just objectively better than others and then my players would have to choose between having more points to build or playing as a race with its associated advantages/disadvantages.

The races in my world are:

Dwarves (35 points in fantasy book)
Elves (35)
Centaurs (90)
Lizardmen, Dont really exist as I imagine them in the book
Gnomes- incredibly inventive and smart. But base (-9) in the book.
Humans (0)

My desire is to create some shifts in point costs for building based on the classical advantages of the races. For example.

Dwarves: Strength*0.5, Extended Lifespan 4, Magical Resistance 3
Elves: Dex *0.5, Unaging, Animal Empathy (1) etc.

Has someone worked on something like this before? Feel free to point me in that direction if so.

If not any suggestions on balancing that. Obviously DX is better to have at 0.5 than strength due to the skills balance of GURPS. Thanks!

[GodBeastX]

You are free to change point values if you want. In games where I want to encourage racial diversity, I tend to just give people selection of race they want, then give them all equal points on top of it.

You -might- consider getting the Dungeon Fantasy 3 book, even if you aren't running Dungeon Fantasy. The races in there are divided in tiers of points, but every race is priced the same for each tier.

[simply Nathan]

Most of my races are 25 points and sometimes I consider making an optional race template for humans to put them at an even 25 as well.

I don't know what you're getting at with those attribute multipliers; modifying stats is a linear thing.

If you want all your races at [0] totals, the best way to do that is to rebuild the races yourself from scratch. For example:

DWARF
Lifting ST 2 [6]
Chummy [-5]
Staid [-1]

ELF
ST-1[-10]
Magery 0 [5]
Flexibility or Brachiator [5]
Appearance (Attractive)[4]
Strongbow[1]
Selfless(12)[-5]

GNOME
ST-5[-50], DX+1[20], IQ+1[20]
Size Modifier -2[0]
High Manual Dexterity 2[10]
Huge Weapons (Size) 2[2]
Curious(15)[-2]

HALFLING LENS (+0)
As the Gnome, but replace DX+1/IQ+1 with DX+2. Replace High Manual Dexterity 2 with Silence 2. Replace Curious with Gluttony.

And so on and so forth, making sure each race's drawbacks and benefits equal out. If going for such an end goal I would strongly recommend keeping the trait lists on the races fairly short as well.

[Turhan's Bey Company]

Thing is, those races are quite literally worth the points. No more and no less. That centaur costs 90 points because he comes with 90 points of advantages built in. So far as game mechanics are concerned, races are just a bundle of traits. The total cost of that bundle is the total cost of the traits that make it up. If a race had +2 ST (40 points), -1 IQ (-20 points), and Combat Reflexes (15 points), it'd cost 35 points to play a character of that race. Having a racial package set up is a convenience. It's a list of traits which lets players set up characters of a particular type quickly, though they may give access to traits not available to others. For example, maybe there's a winged race in the game. If I want to play a character who flies, that's the one way I can, even though I still have to pay the full cost of the Flight advantage.

Anyway, what this means is that if you change the cost to play the race, you're basically giving players free points. If, for example, you were only charging 20 points for that 35 point race, I'd be very tempted to play that because I'd end up with 15 points more than I might otherwise. If you just have things cost what they cost, which is GURPS's current approach, they don't get anything for free if they choose to take a given race, but they're not at any disadvantage relative to people buying a la carte either.

Now, it may very well be that some races cost a lot relative to how many points you're building PCs on. If, say, you're running 100 point characters and there's a race that costs 90 points, anyone picking that race isn't going to be a lot more than...well, being a member of that race. What you'll need to do, then, is make a decision: do you want to play at whatever level you're playing at, where only things like elves and dwarves are reasonably affordable, or do you want to increase the power of the PCs (say, play a 200 point game) so you can have things like centaurs and super-strong lizard men?

[simply Nathan]

Originally Posted by Turhan's Bey Company

What you'll need to do, then, is make a decision: do you want to play at whatever level you're playing at, where only things like elves and dwarves are reasonably affordable, or do you want to increase the power of the PCs (say, play a 200 point game) so you can have things like centaurs and super-strong lizard men?

Or the third option, toning down the abilities of the more expensive races to fit them into roughly the same usability ballpark as humans. D&D has tried this in its various editions, usually failing by making humans either worse than all the core races or flagrantly better depending on the edition and the character level.

[Varyon]

Reducing prices for specific Attributes/Advantages for specific races rarely works well. One way to encourage players to choose races and thus "lock" certain traits in (as opposed to just going human and spending points on whatever they want) is to give races access to traits that others either can't get or need an Unusual Background for. In the Dungeon Fantasy series (which I strongly recommend for typical fantasy games in GURPS), Catfolk have claws and teeth, Corpse Eaters get the Brotherhood of Ghouls Perk (which makes undead and similar not attack on sight), Elves have Magery regardless of class (and have a higher Magery cap than humans) and a unique Talent they can buy up, Winged Elves have frickin' wings, and so forth. There are also race-specific power-ups, like Celestials gaining the ability to Walk on Air, Dark Ones inflicting Terror, and so forth.

Another way is to require occupational templates (classes, also in DF) for all characters, with an extra pool of points that can be spent on buying a racial template and/or improving the occupational template, which can result in players opting for races that complement their chosen class in a way they can't get from just pumping more points into the class. A Catfolk Martial Artist does cutting damage with their kicks and punches, a Winged Elf Swashbuckler can fly around the battlefield and cast a few cantrips to enhance their actions, and lesser foes cower or run before the approach of a Dark One Wizard.

The best way, of course, is to get players who don't mind trading in a few points for locked-in goodies in order to get to play as an interesting race.

[weby]

I went with "standardized costs" for the races in my current fantasy campaign by actually building the races to contain attributes of the total values I wanted them to have.

I built slightly over 100 races, they are 10 or 65 points with some races having both variants for a total of about 140 effective race variants. You can find them in: https://hups.kivinen.iki.fi/k2011:race. Maybe they will give you some ideas.

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by simply Nathan

Most of my races are 25 points and sometimes I consider making an optional race template for humans to put them at an even 25 as well.

Since humans' hat is usually versatility, I give you the human template:

HUMAN [25]
Spend 25 points worth on whatever you want.

This is equivalent to humans in D&D 3e getting +1 feat, +4 skill points at level one, and +1 skill point per level, instead of Low-Light Vision and racial bonuses to skill checks and saving throws.

[simply Nathan]

Originally Posted by RyanW

Since humans' hat is usually versatility, I give you the human template:

HUMAN [25]
Spend 25 points worth on whatever you want.

This is equivalent to humans in D&D 3e getting +1 feat, +4 skill points at level one, and +1 skill point per level, instead of Low-Light Vision and racial bonuses to skill checks and saving throws.

In mine, it's cross-breeding viability which is worth [0] points at the character level. Would consider a template focused on HT and Will or, if really focusing on the versatility aspect, a single level of Wild Talent.

I've put more consideration into making "stereotypical macho man" and "stereotypical girly woman" templates worth 25 for those who want to put as little thought into spending those 25 points but don't want to be, for instance, a half dragon or a half elf.

[hoganbball23]

Thanks guys. Those are all great ideas. Thanks also for the link to the other races I will check that out for sure. While im working on the races I decided to give a bonus to character class as follows. I think each thing is worth about ten/15 points. Thoughts?

Warrior: Your shield is made of one of the following types of wood(regardless of whether the book says iron, you still get whatever base abilities for whatever shield you buy, plus this):

Oak- Your shield has DR (Reflection)-bounces back damage stopped (IE its DR) onto the attacker. See page 47 basic set.

Ash- You gain the Unfazeable and Indomitable advantages while in battle (battle is defined at the GM’s discretion)

Apple- You get Regeneration (slow) -includes rapid healing

Maple-+2 Strength

Yew- Magic Resistance (5)

Fighter: Custom gloves that allow +1 parry, +1 weapon skill and +1 striking strength (you have one for each hand so the bonus is the same regardless of what hand is being used).

Rogue: Custom trap kit that allows +3 to all traps related interactions (arm, disarm, etc)

Assassin: Custom poison of your choosing (see pg 437-439 Basic set) in dosage and amount to be discussed with me.

Mage: A piece of jewelry or other small item of your choosing with some kind of stone in it that contains 5 FP worth of magic power. It can be recharged by spending 1 hr min (scaled-1 FP per 12 minutes) in a place appropriate to your most common spells (if you are a healer mostly, keeping it close to a healthy body. If you're a necromancer, inside a dead rabbit would be appropriate, if you mostly use fire, a fire, etc.)

Cleric: A totem of faith, a symbol of whatever your racial faith is (feel free to make one up). The totem grants the carrier Power Investiture (1) advantage. Spells lists are as follows.
Centaurs- Air spells in the basic set
Dwarves-Earth Spells in the basic set
Lizardmen-Water spells in the basic set

Ranger: 30 Custom arrows that have armor divisor (5). You must take Armoury (Missile weapons) at at least IQ even to make more, otherwise they must be bought from other Rangers.

I realized that the cleric one might need more explanation. In a previous campaign the last session was a huge battle of the Gods while a dwarf army assailled the dark strongholds (all player characters were dwarves). The reason the other races cant go cleric is because their Gods were killed in battle.