[Basic] Skill of the week: Armoury
 

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.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Armoury
 

I've seen Armoury show up a great deal in my military sci-fi games involving maintenance of arms and armor (I know Soldier can cover a lot of it, but if you want to go beyond the basics, you need Armoury). But I've never seen it come up when making new weapons, but I don't run games with many inventors.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Armoury
 

I recall two uses of it in my games,
A gadgeteer in a Supers game who built all kinds of weapons for himself and the other players. Resulted in an Arms race for awhikle there.

The other was a Musketeers campaign where one guy made a box gun and a number of other minor things. It was highly used to deal with malfunctions as well.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Armoury
 

Well, either Armoury is unusually uninteresting, or I was overly thorough in running down references, and didn't leave much for anyone else to say.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Armoury
 

More the latter. I used it a ton, but you already stated what we used it for. Though I will say I've never seen a character who really centered on it, or watched someone pump it up and have other people jealous of him, as I've seen with some other skills. It's not that it isn't useful (a gadgeteer could make some serious use out of it), just that it doesn't seem something people want to really focus on. And in games where people might want to focus on it, you're more likely to see Engineer! than to see, say, Armoury (Heavy Weapons)-20.

EDIT: Though now that I reread your post, I notice you've missed a serious use of Armoury! And I only notice it because I've been tinkering a lot with spaceships. It's the skill you use for repairing vehicular armor and vehicular weapons. This means it's the skill used for repairing certain parts of a starship. Furthermore, an engineer can temporarily boost the output of engines. Now, this has nothing to do with Armoury, but you do this by using the repair skill of the engine (so, like, Mechanic(Subwarp drive) or whatever). If you wanted to have something similar with weapons, like "Overcharge the phasers and FIRE!" then you'd probably use the Armoury (Heavy Weapons) skill. No such rule exists, but I think it would be relatively easy to create a house rule, using the overcharged engines as a model.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Armoury
 

Yeah. I never try to use RPG spaceship design systems. I find fictional technology beyond the currently-plausibly-foreseeable sufficiently arbitrary that if I'm playing an SF RPG, I prefer to stick to the people-driven parts.
Makes sense. There are precedents in loading firearms with "hot" charges, as per High-Tech p165. A general rule might be something like "Use appropriate Armoury to increase damage and its side-effects by +10%, with -1 to Malf. For each extra +10%/-1, the Armoury roll is at -2."

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Armoury
 

I have an armoury question and felt this was likely the best place to ask it. Armoury (Body Armor) has a specific note that shields is not covered by it so are shields handled by Armoury (Melee Weapons) instead or would they have their own specialty not listed in the RAW?

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Armoury
 

Yes. Read the paragraph at Melee Weapons again. See that "as well as all kinds of shields". Personally I'd have no problems in letting you use Body Armor at no penalty too, but some people get upset when multiple skills will cover exactly the same task.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Armoury
 

Doh! Thanks for pointing that out. Completely missed that.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Armoury
 

Making weapons and armor, duh. :)

But seriously, Armoury(small arms) can be used at low levels and with minimal equipment. With a circular saw with a carbide blade, a set of good files, a good drill and a vise, you can make a variety of firearms out of common piping. Oh, a torch helps too.

The simplest zip guns are shotguns or .22s with simple slam-fire pins. You make two lengths of pipe, one the size of the shotgun shell, one slightly larger than the other one, so that they will slide inside each other. Rig up a simple pin set up, load a shell into a barrel, slide it into the reciever(heh), and then slam it back to fire a 12 guage shotgun shell! Poof! That can be done with off the shelf parts from any hardware store(or plumbing store) and wrenches, hammers and nails. And JB Weld. Probably a base time of 4 hours or so to plan and build. It's a single shot weapon that requires a ready action to take apart after firing, a ready action to remove the spent casing, a ready action to draw a casing, and a ready action to load it into the barrel, then another ready action close the breech(HAHAHAHA. "the breech" he calls it..). That's a 1(5) ROF, and a Fast Draw Ammo roll can shave that down to 1(4). No safety, no sights(use a fluorescent zip tie around the barrel with the catch up as a bead if you wanna get fancy), a crude stock at best. It's dirty, nasty and cheap.

But it's also something you can build with a bare minimum of equipment or materials. And if you're a decent shot, turning some pipes and washers into a shotgun is better than using it as a club. It takes a bit of time to do, but it's not hard. Useful if you're playing some sort of "weapons specialist" type who is separated from his firearms for whatever reason. Being able to fashion a crude gun is a useful ability if you are already heavily invested in firearms.

You can also scrape the phosphor off of matchheads and use that as a crude propellent for a muzzle loader built from pipes and wood.

With access to a vise, drill, saw, torch and power, you can make simple single-shot weapons out of pipes and barstock in a day or two with a safety! I wouldn't drop it. Unless you built in an ejector of some sort, it's going to be a ROF 1(5) weapon as well. But it's a little bit safer.

These weapons are not built to very high tolerances and use low pressure rounds. The sloppy tolerances help to keep them from catastrophically failing, as much of the pressure of firing is vented and lost through gaps between the action. This creates a noisy and impressive shot though, with lots of smoke and fury. You're going to get less performance out of these weapons(I'd say atleast -1 per die) for cartridges they can safely handle.

The more time you have, the more you can do. With sufficient time, using nothing more than the aforementioned power drill, torch, power saw and some miscellaneous tools(hammers, screwdrivers, punches, etc) you can manufacture a working gas operated semi-automatic, magazine fed smoothbore rifle. Not ideal, no, but it's better than those jokers trying to use muzzle loaders and those crude pieces of junk I started the thread with.

Armory Melee weapons is good for taking those wall hanger pieces of junk you find in a looted pawnshop and turning them into real weapons. For many of them you can cut off the crappy rat tail tangs and then cur down a portion of the blade to make a true tang, slap some wooden grips on there, then wrap it with wire. It takes about 4 hours for simple modifications.

You can take rebar and heat it up and shape it into survivable spikes or short blades and affixed to hafts or handles for a variety of different weapons.

Armoury can be used to fashion a shank from almost anything. Taking a newspaper and rolling it up, then wrapping it with wire from headphone sets stripped of the rubber insulation will make a rather lethal stabbing implement. heavy enough paper(like poster board) can be folded and taped to make a crude shank that will stab someone. It probably won't kill them, but multiple stabs to the throat would probably prove a point.

Armoury body armor allows you fashion body armor from buckets, street signs and cars with some shears, drills and/or punches, rivets, hammers and plastic. I think you could probably get DR 2-3 from multiple layers cut from plastic buckets, body panels of cars and street signs riveted together. There's my much talked about paper armor(an inch of paper will protect pretty well against a lot of low velocity things), though it is really improvisational(it's going to fall apart, quickly). But there's a lot of everyday stuff that is out there that can be turned into crude armor to protect you from bludgeons and light weapons.

It's a really useful skill, and complemented nicely by scrounging in a survival or post-apocalyptic setting.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Armoury
 

Back when I used to try using the full-sized GURPS skill list, I removed the requirement to specialize by type, not wanting to charge multiple times for the ability to repair and maintain melee weapons, body armor, and missile weapons. Now I've smashed Armoury into a familiarity of the same core skill as Smith, Carpentry, Masonry, Architecture, Leatherworking, Sewing, Artist(also no longer specialized), and Cooking. It's still going to mostly serve as background flavor.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Armoury
 

One of the PCs in my Dungeon Fantasy game has Armoury (Body Armor). So far she's only used it for identifying the value of armor as treasure, and for routine armor maintenance. (For example, she went swimming with armor on in the last session, and knew how to correctly dry everything to prevent rust.) If they ever find good armor that doesn't fit (quite likely, as one PC has Skinny), then she'll get a chance to resize it.

In a low-tech game, it's a nice flavor skill, or possibly a job skill, but not super-important for the average PC in a civilized area where NPC armorers are available. I could see it being more important if the PCs are far from civilization.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Armoury
 

This is true of any craft skill. Adventurers are normally specialists, who trade their rare skills for manufactured goods made by people who did specialize in making stuff.

If you are playing in a campaign where it is likely the GM will drop you naked somewhere, crafting skills can be very useful for the first few sessions after that happens - if you expect that do invest a point in Armoury/TL0, being able to chip a good stone edge can be really invaluable - but otherwise don't come up much.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Armoury
 

Sounds like you'd be happier with Smith!

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Armoury
 

If you use the damage to armor rules from LTC2 and have the PCs operating even slightly away from a base or logistics tail, they might have significant use for someone who can manage at least minor armor repairs in the field.

Dungeon Fantasy doesn't usually track that sort of gear upkeep, which takes away the major routine utility for having an adventuring armorer.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Armoury
 

Wildcard skills cost too many points, especially in comparison to attributes. I prefer to simply narrow down the list of skills and broaden the definitions of those skills, leaving point costs per skill the same.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Armoury
 

In my Fantasy world, my characters often use Armoury skill. And in the middle way form.

The bowman uses it to make his own arrows during the travel or change a damaged bowstring. The warrior use it to remake a sharp tip on a pointless knife, to sharpen weapons after battle, to repair shield and restore lost HP, to remove rust on metal armor after a sea travel, to modify an handle to justify the weapon bond perk, to adjust or create a weapon for the SM of other characters (we have a hobbit and a ogre in the party).
And for me the main use of the Armoury skill (Body Armor) is to adapt a looting armor to his new owner. That follow the LT rules My Armor Doesn't Fit, and the result is than often the characters don't jump directly on the new beautiful magical armor with the Fortify and Ligthen spells and some ornatement. It's mainly a background skill, but essential in battle campaing or during a long travel in the wilderness.

Now the group don't want to go in adventure without their armourer. Like he doesn't had Jewelry, he often miss some aspect on beautiful panoply but he is a crucial element of the party !

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Armoury
 

There's that Pyramid article on abstract prep work (spend time and roll the day before and get points that can be spent for rerolls, etc.). I've used that with Armoury to reroll malfunctions.

At the moment, I don't have access to my collection, or I'd give the issue and title of that article.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Armoury
 

Particularly in a cinematic campaign, you can easily have a heroic armorer who can make higher quality gear than the local NPC's, or at least can do so at less cost and greater speed. Finding a Very Fine Balanced Greatsword in town is highly unlikely, although you might be able to find someone that can craft or order such a thing. You're going to be paying around $21,600 for it, and are probably going to have to wait for some months before it's ready.

A general houserule I've worked out for crafting is to have a character's skill directly determine the speed at which they work. Skill 12 for an Average or harder skill (or Skill 14 for an Easy one) corresponds to Average income for purposes of labor for that TL, and every +1 to skill is +1 SSR to income. So, at TL 3, Armory (Melee Weapons) 12 corresponds to $700/month in labor - you can craft things at a rate of $3.5 per hour. Skill 20 is +8 SSR - $15,000/month and $75/hour. So, that $21,600 sword costs around $100 in materials, for $21,500 in labor. That's going to take you 287 hours, or a bit over a month. With Skill 20 you can afford to take some Haste penalties - a -5 (rolling against 15) will cut time in half, and in a pinch you could risk a roll against 12 (74% chance of success) to drop time to a bit over 57 hours - if you're willing to work 10 hour (rather than 8 hour) days, you can have that weapon ready in a week (and you could drop time further with relevant Craft Secrets - still need to determine how those should work for my variant). A typical armorer makes a bit under $500 in a week, so assuming you're displacing one to rent space at a smithy, you're looking at around $600 for a 74% chance of getting a $21,600 sword in a week.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Armoury
 

My main use of it has been medieval: a squire used the Armoury skill to make repairs on behalf of his knight-master. Later on, he would use it to adjust scavenged pieces of armour to fit when he started recruiting followers, meaning they had viable armour sooner. For instance, if he fought a dozen guys wearing mail shoulder-mantles he might cannibalise those mantles into skirts for the abdomen or sabatons for the feet or otherwise adjust the shaped mail into a new shape.

Looting; you can get a little more mileage from damaged armour found on the battlefield if you’re able to patch it up a little, whether using it or selling it for profit. So this is an economic benefit if not a direct functional one.

With black powder weapons, being able to safely over-charge your firearm can be useful for x1.1 damage and range (requiring Armoury). It might make little difference with a puffer pistol (2d-1 damage) but a wall gun on the ship’s rail (5d+2 IIRC?) does an average of 2 extra damage, which can be helpful when it takes a while to reload and you’re trying to blast through the rails or boards of the other ship. If you only get one shot then it might as well be a stronger shot.

That +10% damage might matter even more if you can use it with cannons; a broadside from a series of 4 lb. ship’s guns (6dx3=approx. 60 damage) does +6 damage per shot. Again, combine this with careful loading and you make that volley count. If you have 10 of these with a broadside that’s an extra 60 damage to the other ship. It might help you tear a larger hole into the other ship when firepower is limited.

Note the Firearm Quality rules in Low Tech require Armoury rolls, and the description implies you modify a pre-existing weapon, so you can upgrade your loot quite handily. When all your NPC backup has their firearms improved with increased reliability and accuracy it can pay dividends in the long-term. Like the OP mentioned, +1 effective Accuracy is a good use of downtime. If you’re able to equip your guys with this as standard, then it helps build loyalty for the unit to see that you are making sure they’re well-armed and if leading a unit of 20 guys giving everyone that extra +1 is going to matter when they take their first volley.

So for me, a combination of Armoury, Scrounging & Rank meant leading a unit with better than average logistics and just making that company stretch their budget a little bit further. The benefits are not immediate but gradually over time it can lead to continuously improving equipment due to cutting costs.

Occasionally you could combine Armoury with Soldier or Combat Engineer and improvised pavises to create barricades and cover. They might not be of noteworthy quality, but they are still essentially easy fortifications to set up on demand.

The thing that stands out to me is these improvements seem fairly granular, or useful on a large scale rather than individually. Those benefits might be meagre in general, but if you are a TL4 officer with Rank 2, commanding 20 people, and all of those have re-sized looted armour, upgraded petronels, and frequently reinforce their position with the help of a pavisade, then that Armoury skill is definitely getting its points-worth.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Armoury
 

I rarely get to play characters instead of being the GM, but I have played two different modern characters who were veterans of special operations forces with a sniper background.

One was a US Marine Scout/Sniper who served briefly with Det One/MARSOC after a decade with Force Recon and the other was/is a Special Forces Weapon Sergeant who went to Sniper School and took the Special Operation Target Interdiction Course.

Both characters were master armourers, largely because most serious professional shooters develop their own handloads, customise their gear and are intimately familiar with the care of their weapons. I won't say that every biography of a sniper I have read focuses on their study of gunsmithing and handloading, largely because I seem to recall a Canadian WWI sniper who just shot his issue ammunition from his issue Ross rifle, but an overwhelming majority of snipers whose biography I've read describe experimenting with loads to fit their individual rifle and many describe multiple other personal touches which require the Armoury skill in GURPS.

My current character has Armoury (Small Arms) at skill 18 and has so far used it for a multitude of things, including: assembling one functional M16 rifle from two broken ones found in a guard armoury, selecting functional weapons and magazines for the whole party from the stock of a black market arms dealer, cleaning and dremel-ing the internal works and replacing the magazine springs of a couple of old Browning pistols to make them as reliable as newer Glocks as long as the magazines are underloaded and the weapon maintained, mounting optics and other accessories for the newly acquired weapons, developing loads for the pistols and handloading a couple of magazines worth of match accurate hollow-point rounds, developing a match load in 7.62x39mm for a semi-automatic AK type rifle and developing a long-range match load for a 5.56x45mm for a 16" barrel Colt LE6920 AR-15 rifle.

And while the other PCs were showering, rambling around the pretty hacienda, eating Mexican food and generally relaxing after a stressful drive and full day, my PC sat at a table handloading a couple of magazines each of the match rifle rounds while wishing he'd had a larger lunch and that dinner would come already. After dinner, he went straight back to work while the other members of the party Caroused with El Patron and his loyal retainers. Which happened to serve to illustrate both my character's Selfless Disadvantage (he was loading for another PC with good Guns skill, but no Armoury) and the fact that he was moping and avoiding another member of the party.

As it turned out, though, his self-imposed exile was interrupted and we do not have nearly enough handloads for an extended firefight at 300+ yards (if our weapons hadn't had to fit into very tight hidden compartments, maybe we could have had one rifle in a proper precision rifle caliber). Which, granted, no one not trained to always prepare for the worst would expect, as any firefight we get into will probably be at point blank ranges. Uh, not that we're going to get into a firefight. Fingers crossed.

Any kind of Monster Hunting campaign pretty much screams out for a master gunsmith and, especially, a character who can cast his own exotic bullets. Making two-piece hollow-cavity shotgun slugs with either silver shot or a small wooden stake inside, large caliber hollow-points with enough volume for a dose of wolfsbane or other toxic-to-supernaturals material or a jacketed silver bullet, these are core parts of proper Monster Hunting preparations and in a gritty campaign, managing it without ruining the weapon, compromising reliability or function as a ballistic projectile, well, it calls for the skills of a master armourer.