[Basic] Disadvantage of the Week: Lame and No Legs

[johndallman]

Lame [-10] to [-30] is a mundane physical disadvantage. You would normally have legs, but they are less useful than normal, or even absent. This disadvantage appeared at GURPS 1e, although it has changed since then.

No Legs [0] to [-50] is also a mundane physical disadvantage, for species without legs, which use some other means, or none, to move. This disadvantage appeared at GURPS 4e, to unify various racial disadvantages that had been created piecemeal.

There are various versions of Lame, all of which require you to reduce your Basic Move, for which you do get to claim full disadvantage points, and impose penalties on skills that require the use of your legs. Those skills include all melee weapon and unarmed combat skills, plus all kicking but not ranged combat skills. Hiking, Climbing and other movement skills would usually be penalised, but GM judgement is required for individual cases.

• Crippled Leg(s) [-10]. Some of your legs are fine, but some don't work properly. A human has one bad leg. Reduce Basic Move to half Basic Speed, -3 to skills that require use of your legs.
• Missing Leg(s) [-20]. Some of your legs are fine, but some are missing. A human has one leg. Reduce Basic Move to 2, -6 to skills that require use of your legs. With crutches or simple prosthetics, you can stand and walk at Move 2; without them, you cannot. Kicking is possible, but takes the -6 penalty.
• No Legs [-30]. All your legs are missing. Reduce Basic Move to 0, -6 to skills that require use of your legs. You cannot stand, walk or kick at all.
• Paraplegic [-30]. Your legs are present but don't work. The effects are the same as No Legs. You have the additional disadvantage that your legs can be attacked, but this is offset by the fact that recovering their use might well be easier than acquiring a new set.

Buying off Lame, via surgery or ultra-tech, works normally, and you have to buy back the Basic Move too, although you could reasonably do that in installments as you get used to it. Lesser technologies that provide full-function prosthetics give a Mitigator limitation. A muscle-powered wheelchair, or wheeled platform isn't a Mitigator, and gives you a Move of ST/4, rounded down, but has many practical disadvantages in coping with small spaces, curbs, stairs, and vehicles.

No Legs also comes in several versions. For all of them, you cannot kick, have no need for leg armour, and cannot be attacked in the legs you don't have.

• Aerial [0] means that you have ground Move of zero, and have purchased some form of the Flight advantage, for which you calculate air Move normally.
• Aquatic [0], [-5] or [-10] means that your ground Move is zero, and you live in or on water and are fully adapted to that, suffering no skill penalties for it. Your water Move is equal to your Basic Move. This is a basic [0], but if you can't dive, or your mobility depends on things that can't be armoured, such as fins, masts/sails or paddles, [-5], or [-10] if both problems apply.
• Bounces, Rolls or Slithers [0] means you move like a snake, or a rolling robot. Your ground Move is equal to Basic Move, as if you had legs.
• Semi-Aquatic [0] means that your water Move is your Basic Move, and your ground Move is 1/5th of Basic Move, rounded down, because you “walk” on swimming limbs, like a seal on its flippers. You suffer normal skill penalties (compiled in Pyramid #3/26) in water.
• Sessile [-50] means that you're firmly anchored and cannot move at all, in any environment. Your Basic Move is zero, and you don't get any points for that. You can't use a moving platform: moving you takes considerable effort, by other people. If you have manipulators, you can use weapons with no penalty: unlike Lame characters, you have a stable base, which probably means you have a penalty to Dodge. This is intended for corals, trees, talking megaliths, and the like.
• Tracked or Wheeled [-20] normally goes with the Machine meta-trait. You have no legs, but travel on wheels or caterpillar tracks. You may have one to four of these, or any higher even number, which are treated as legs for hit location purposes. You aren't required to reduce ground Move, and can buy up to three levels of Enhanced Move (ground). People trying to follow you with Tracking skill (or its default) get +1 if you have wheels or +2 if you have tracks. Tracks also give +2 to hearing rolls to detect you, but make it easier to travel off-road. You cannot jump, nor can you get past obstacles that require legs to work with arms, e.g., for Climbing rolls.

It seems possible to have both No Legs (Tracked or Wheeled) and Lame, if some of your tracks or wheels are missing or damaged.

Lame and No Legs are rare options on published character templates. Lame is used for various temporary conditions resulting from injuries. No Legs (Tracked or Wheeled) is common for robots, and (Aquatic) for sea-dwellers. Bio-Tech makes use of No Legs in many of its more extreme works of bio-engineering, and DF follows suit for monsters and other creatures. Fantasy offers Lame for artificers, scholars and sages, and Horror and Madness Dossier have more 'orrible monsters. Hot Spots: Renaissance Florence points out that gout can cause Lame, as can Nazi science in Infinite Worlds.

Martial Arts has more detail on the combat effects of these disadvantages, and ways to acquire Lame through injury, while Yrth Fighting Styles has more on fighting underwater. The Power-Ups series has a perk with a prerequisite of Lame, as well as the obvious physical quirk; Space has guidelines for the mobility of various kinds of aliens. Age of Sail Pirate Crew naturally features Lame (Missing Leg). Thaumatology adds No Legs (Portable) for things that can't move themselves, but are easy to carry, which is heavily used in Transhuman Space: Changing Times.

Writing this while recovering from a temporary case of Lame, I realise I've never used Lame on a character, although I've had AI Allies with No Legs (Portable). What use have you made of these disadvantages?

[ravenfish]

I always thought there ought to be some disadvantage value for No Legs (Aerial), at least for when the Flight advantage is limited. When flight has Cannot Hover to give a minimum speed, or Winged to prevent use in close quarters, to say nothing of possibilities like Gliding or Space Flight Only, lacking ground mobility is a significant disadvantage.

[whswhs]

I lean toward the view that a large vehicle like a galley that has to be rowed, or a raft that has to be poled, might plausibly be given Portable as well, or something close to it.

[dcarson]

Originally Posted by johndallman

Writing this while recovering from a temporary case of Lame, I realise I've never used Lame on a character, although I've had AI Allies with No Legs (Portable). What use have you made of these disadvantages?

You mentioned Portable but didn't list is since it isn't in Basic. From Thaumatology.

• Portable [-30] means that you have ground Move of zero but are compact enought to be carried. You can't have an Advantage that implies movement like Wings.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by whswhs

I lean toward the view that a large vehicle like a galley that has to be rowed, or a raft that has to be poled, might plausibly be given Portable as well, or something close to it.

Makes sense, although large vehicles with character sheets, but no engines, aren't very common. Presumably this was prompted by the ship in your fantasy campaign?

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by johndallman

Makes sense, although large vehicles with character sheets, but no engines, aren't very common. Presumably this was prompted by the ship in your fantasy campaign?

Actually, no, because I built that as Signature Gear, not as an Ally. I never have done a character sheet for it. No, this is just something I've been wondering about for a while.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by johndallman

Writing this while recovering from a temporary case of Lame, I realise I've never used Lame on a character, although I've had AI Allies with No Legs (Portable). What use have you made of these disadvantages?

Lame has always something that happens my PC's (and NPC's) rather than something they are. Adventurers generally need to be able to move around.

I am always using Sessile and portable for various sentient plants, buildings, swords, and gadgets.

Originally Posted by ravenfish

I always thought there ought to be some disadvantage value for No Legs (Aerial), at least for when the Flight advantage is limited. When flight has Cannot Hover to give a minimum speed, or Winged to prevent use in close quarters, to say nothing of possibilities like Gliding or Space Flight Only, lacking ground mobility is a significant disadvantage.

I agree. If you are a hovering ball or floating blimp then its not a disadvantage, but flight disadvantages can be quite severe. If I had to house-rule a version in, I'd probably use legless with a mitigator.

[Fred Brackin]

In the World of D'y'r't the PC mage Aldehar the Incendiary had no Legs. He used the Levitate spell (and eventually a Flying Carpet) to get every where.

He wore a long wizard's robe that brushed the ground most of the time and he used to freak out rangers who came upon the party's tracks. :)

He also never told the same story twice about how he lost his legs but his felow PCs tended to think it was soemthing like a Crit Fail on a Fireball roll. He wasn't caled "The Incendiary" for nothing.

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

No Legs is very important to me because snakes have become important to my personal setting race line-ups.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by ericthered

Lame has always something that happens my PC's (and NPC's) rather than something they are. Adventurers generally need to be able to move around.

In my French swashbuckling campaign, one of the PCs got into a fight with some street thugs that left him with a severely broken leg bone. A surgeon was able to provide some repairs, but his leg was never the same. After the rolls were over, the player said "Bad Leg and Addicted to Laudanum? Sweet!"

The character never was able to move fast after that, but I did let him take a variant on Drunken Fighting, since this was a cinematic campaign.