Animal conversion guide

[Stormcrow]

So I've written a guide to converting animals between the third and fourth editions. Constructive criticism is welcome and requested, though I'm not going to argue about the basic approach, and responses of "But GURPS Animalia..." are kind of missing the point.

People often ask how to convert animal stats, and the responses "they're pretty close already" and "use GURPS Update" fail to notice the fundamental problems of either approach. My guide tries to be a happy medium between just shoving third-edition stats into the fourth edition and getting a degree in animal biology to discover the stats by experiment.

http://trimboli.name/convanimal.html

[hal]

Kerplunk - the sound of a PDF document being stored in my GURPS UPDATE folder along with the original document for converting 3rd edition characters to 4th edition stats.

Next step - is to go to the links provided in the document and add those as a printed PDF to the document. :)

[hal]

Quick comment: Rather than give animals Combat reflexes per se, perhaps enhanced dodge or what have you. Combat reflexes is largely supposed to help not just with defense, but avoid being surprised (aka mentally stunned). Of course some animals with major fight or flight reflexes may qualify for combat reflexes for that reason.

[Stormcrow]

I'm trying to keep this as by-the-book and as close to the 2004 spirit of the rules as I can. Enhanced Defenses are mundane traits intended for cinematic characters, not exotic traits intended for non-human characters. For this reason, you won't see Enhanced Defenses on realistic animals.

The distinction between active defenses and avoiding surprise is mostly below the resolution of animal stats. This is illustrated in the lack of accommodation for animals in coming out of stun caused by surprise: it's an IQ roll, but surprised animals obviously won't be stunned for as long as that, so clearly animal stats do not take into account surprise in this way.

As the rules say, "Many animals have Combat Reflexes, which adds +1 to defenses." No mention of surprise or initiative. In the Basic Set, housecats, tigers, tiger sharks, large boars, small boars, cavalry horses, heavy warhorses, and gryphons have Combat Reflexes; notably, lions, guard dogs, great white sharks, and timber wolves do not, animals you might argue do a lot of fighting. It's the really quick or war-trained ones that get Combat Reflexes, not necessarily the ones that are best at fighting or defending themselves.

Thanks for the suggestion, though. I'm glad you find it useful!